The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S4E01

Episode Date: June 1, 2014

It's the premiere of Season 4 of The NoSleep Podcast. We have five tales for you in this episode featuring stories about sinister senses, unwanted visitors, and temporal terrors. The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first two tales.  "Pheromones" written by Anton Scheller and read by Jessica McEvoy. Music by Brandon Boone. (Story starts at 00:05:05) "Beneath" written by Matt Dymerski and read by Brian Mansi & L. Bentley. (Story starts at 00:21:35) "Unlocked" written by Jon Patrick and read by Daniel Simon. Music by Brandon Boone. (Story starts at 00:42:30) "How to See the Future" written by Eric Ponslee and read by David Cummings. (Story starts at 00:56:50) "Behind Closed Doors" written by Kelsey Donald and read by L. Bentley. (Story starts at 01:25:10) Click here to learn more about Matt Dymerski Click here to learn more about Kelsey Donald Like Us on Facebook Follow Us on Twitter Check Us Out on Tumblr Check Us Out on Instagram Podcast produced by: David Cummings Music & Sound Design by: David Cummings, unless otherwise noted The NoSleep Podcast uses the PSE Hybrid Library exclusively for its sound design. This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons License 2014. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The sunlight fades to dark. The freight freight. To give into your fear, there will be no sleep. The no sleep pot. The next day I sat upstairs, barricaded my room, staring out. The chilly wind flowed by exactly as I imagined it might in a wide empty expanse. The hotel staff had been stumped as to how two children had shone off in their hotel alone, and no one had noticed it until now.

Someone really wants to get into our house. They just lost a window to get in. She spoke of seeing family. The phantoms that were future echoes floating in and out. I had my phone ready. Ready to call the police in case they got too close. I think I didn't even breathe for about five minutes. She was developing what Rob was affectionately calling spidey senses.

Without thinking, I flung myself into her arms and began to solve. This time, sitting in the breezy void, I could almost tell the exact moment that things changed. Welcome to Season 4 of the No Sleep Podcast. This is the premiere episode of our next. new season. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, David Cummings. We have five tales for you in this episode featuring stories about sinister senses, unwanted visitors, and temporal terrors. I'm glad you're with us as we kick off our new season. I have been so amazed at the response to season pass four and the large number of people who pre-ordered their pass. I want to, I want to be a lot of people who pre-ordered their

pass. I want to extend my sincere thanks to everyone who signed up early for the new season, and there's still plenty of time to sign up if you didn't have a chance to pre-order. Whether you buy it today or months from now, you will get access to all the current and upcoming episodes, no matter when you sign up. I also want to send a special thanks for those members who use the Pay What You Want feature to give some extra funds to support the podcast. The number of extended payments, with many of them adding a significant amount of money, has been both thrilling and, frankly, humbling.

I'm so glad you enjoy the show enough to support it so substantially. All of our fans are truly the best, so a big thanks to all of you. Now, let's look ahead to our new season. I'm looking forward to some exciting new things for season four. Some of the plans include releasing a soundtrack album of music from the podcast. If you like listening to movie soundtracks or enjoy the dark ambient sounds of the music from the podcast, you'll love what we have in store. Also, due to popular demand, I hope to release some official No Sleep podcast T-shirts and maybe some other merchandise in the near future. All of these plans are in motion, so keep a little bit more.

listening for more details. This would also be a good time to remind listeners that they can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. We also have amazing fans who are helping us out with other social media sites like our Instagram and Tumblr pages. Make sure you check out the show notes for all our social media links and let us know you're listening by connecting with us online. And if you haven't already, please consider leaving a review on iTunes if you like

what we do. Good reviews help us get more exposure, which helps grow our audience. Finally, as we start the show, I want to welcome some new narrators to the fold. Brian Manzi and Daniel Simon are helping us kick off season four. When I was putting this episode together, I noticed that three of the five narrators just happened to hail from the UK. So this show will have a decidedly British sound to it. I, for one, am grateful for their talent and their enthusiasm to contribute. So I welcome them and I welcome you, dear listener, to settle in as we start Season 4. Our first story is about the age-old struggle of finding that special someone to love. Whether it's the world of online dating or the bar scene or blind dates,

it's not easy to find someone with whom you feel a serious connection. As author Amanda McGrath explains, when one woman answers a strange ad for a new perfume, she quickly discovers that this strange new scent has abilities to inflame almost any man who senses it. But stirring their primal passions isn't exactly what she had hoped for. narrator Jessica McAvoy reads the tale for us about the dangers of emitting too many pheromones. It's not that I'm ugly. People don't turn around and gag when they see me.

The problem is that they don't smile either. And if there's one thing every woman learns far too young, it's that everything is about looks. Only it isn't. I tried clubbing, house parties, online dating. Hell even book clubs. We exchanged glances, introductions, nice words, but no matter what I tried, it never went further than that. Men always seemed to run away from me.

I thought it was my looks. Makeup, push-up, perfect pants, and a shirt or dress with a cleavage so deep that I thought my nipples might jump out. And yet, nothing. I was online, searching for operations to fix all the flaws in my face and body. There was an ad on top of my face and body. one of these websites, blinking fast and red and orange with large black text. Be attractive, no operations, no effort, guaranteed effect.

I usually avoid clicking on ads, particularly those that promise too much, but that one. That one I couldn't resist. The website looked old, like one of those you'd see in the 90s. There was a short text advertising the product, a special perfume, and then a try it for free button. Two days later, a Saturday morning, the mail arrived. I walked up the long driveway, one of the few pleasures of living outside the city and at the same time a bother, because it stopped me from meeting the few single neighbors. Inside was a small green packet that looked somewhat similar to the ketchup packs fast food places give with their fries.

I tried to rip it open, but the plastic was stiff. I pulled harder, and suddenly the whole thing ripped open and splurred it all over me. I've never been more disappointed. I was expecting flowers or fruits, maybe even musk. I would even have accepted chamomile or cinnamon. Instead, the perfume smelled like nothing. In the morning, I didn't leave the house, but around noon I went to buy groceries for the day. There was a couple walking in front of me, one of those women with high heels and a tight skirt,

and next to her a man with fine leather shoes, jeans, and a shirt. He was holding her tightly, and I was already thinking how I could possibly pass, when he just stopped. He just stopped, turned around, and stared at me. His girl was shouting at him, but this man, with his mouth wide open, stared at me. I tried to walk past them, but his eyes followed me. And while she was shouting at him and then me, he finally put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a business card, and ran the few steps after me. Call me, he said. Any time.

Or stay right here. The woman was furious, and I quickly left while she started hitting his arm. He didn't even look at her. His eyes followed me until I was around the corner, and even then I could still hear the woman shouting at him to stop. Timothy Lang, that's what the business card said. I had never had a man so obsessed about me. I let his name melt on my tongue while I made my way to the superman.

market. The other men didn't act as extremely as him, but they did react. I was in the supermarket for less than 30 minutes, but I left with five business cards, three numbers in my phone, and two dinner dates. I called one of the numbers in the evening. He confidently said, this is Jack. When I said who I was, he seemed to melt away. We arranged a date for the next week, and just before I hung up, he was suddenly begging. Hey, he said, he said, said, please, please, please, really come. Of course, I said. Oh, wow, thank you.

I think he wanted to say more, but I ended the call, through the phone on the sofa, and four minutes later, I had paid the $140 for 200 milliliters of perfume. Our perfume is special, said the website. Something you get nowhere else. It's not any kind of flavor. It's the flavor of love. The secret of beauty and the weapons.

that brings even the greatest men to their knees. Pure pheromones. When the bottle arrived, I was, of course, more careful. I rubbed one small drop on my wrists and a second around my neck. Jack was the first one I met. He was dressed in a suit that must have cost a fortune. He brought flowers. Even his hair was freshly cut.

I slowly walked towards the table, and first, when I entered the restaurant, he seemed to be confused, even disappointed. But once I was only a few steps away, his frown turned into a grin. My God, you look stunning. At first he seemed a bit needy, but he was the perfect gentleman and just knew how to make me laugh. He smiled and made me feel more beautiful and wanted than I had ever felt. It was only during dessert when he placed his left hand on my right that I noticed the thin line of slightly wider skin on his ring finger. Are you married?

He looked at me and smiled. Yes, he said, but I'll divorce her for you. I never saw Jack again. But I did meet other men, and he kept calling me for more than a week. If you had asked me a month earlier what I would do if a great guy suddenly showed interest in me, I would have blushed and told you that that wouldn't happen. Afterwards, I would have said that I would hold onto him and do everything to keep him in my life. But with that perfume, the heavy black bottle with K-23 printed on the front,

everything was different. I didn't want to find someone. I wanted to be desired. I wanted to be wanted. I wanted to be stared at and be seen dating one or two or three guys out of time. Two months. I nearly had dates every night. Sometimes when I felt excited,

I used more than just one or two drops, five or ten instead. I enjoyed watching them, the mindless things I made them do. the hours I made them wait, everything for the thrill of being desired and to test more and more how far they would go to conquer me. I made them by food and clothes and trips. I went to quit my job, but my boss, with desire and his big eyes, begged me to stay and gave me six months paid leave instead. Every day I stayed out into the early mornings and enjoyed the ecstasy of a new man.

Rarely I was home, and if ever, those were loud, wild nights. There was a pink envelope in the mail, not the first and not the last, but it slipped from my hands, and I had to step on the grass to pick it up. That time, for the first time in weeks, I looked at my flowers, the ones I had once planted as the only real pleasure in my life. They were flat on the ground, destroyed and ripped apart. The grass, too, in long rings that led around the house, was just mud. That night, for the first time in weeks, I didn't go out. I didn't call anyone. I didn't bring a man home.

That night, for the first time, I heard the moans. That night, for the first time, I glimpsed through the curtain and saw the dozen or so men standing outside. With the trees around my house, it was too dark to see their faces, but some of them looked frail and thin, others bigger, and they all looked pale and exhausted. I watched from upstairs as the figures walked around the house. They went and pressed their faces against the windows. They tried to open the doors.

They tried to scale the walls, but each time fell back on the ground and struggled like tortoises to get back on their feet. And when they did, they went right back to the windows. Some of them wore clothes, suits and jeans alike. Others didn't wear anything at all. No matter if with or without clothes, they all seemed to be constantly aroused. They all constantly pleasureed themselves. I watched as they, every 30 minutes, usually while pressing their faces against the windows, seemed to reach a climax. And just a moment later, they were sneaking around the house again, one passing the other, and both staring at the windows and doors and looking for a way to scale the walls.

I was terrified, and yet too scared to call the police. I didn't want them to ask how it all happened. I didn't want to tell them that I could maybe be a... fault. The first one left at 4.22 a.m. A bird began to sing. The man, one of the stronger ones, suddenly stepped away from the window. He looked around for a moment, and then he ran off. They all left, one after the other, before 5 a.m. Around noon, when I was sure that they were all gone, I grabbed the little black bottle and placed it in a plastic bag, and that bag in another bag and that bag in another, and then I wrapped it in blankets and placed it at the bottom of my wardrobe.

I locked all the shutters in the door twice, and then I wedged the door shut with chairs. Every one of those texts that I got during the day made me jump from my chair. I kept the lights off. I was downstairs at first, but I was too terrified and moved upstairs instead. By 11 p.m., the first one was back. The moans soon began. They were 13 and all. Most came from the front, some also must have come through the field at the back. I thought it would be safer with the shutters locked, but it was worse instead. They knocked and hit against the shutters. One of them kicked against the door, but not with much force.

That night after countless moans and knocks, they left again at 4.30. The next night, when they came shortly after 11 p.m., they seemed different. They seemed more energetic, more aggressive. There were two of them that never went far from the door. They kicked and banged against it while another shook the shutter of my living room window, and the others mostly tried to scale the wall. Some of the stronger ones got further, nearly up to my bedroom, but again and again they fell. They all left in the morning, nearly like a group, as of following an invisible command.

One after the other, within around ten minutes, suddenly stopped, raised his head, pulled his pants up, turned around and ran. I stayed home with my phone off. I ate instant noodles and tried to find the site again to find where I bought the K-23, but all I got was an error message. 404, not found. The search engines still had it in their cache. The images were gone, but the text was still there. There was a new line at the top, one that hadn't been there when I had ordered.

There have been some incidents, the large red letter said. The effects can bury from man to man. Use it sparingly. Below that in smaller font was another line. You can't wash it off, but the effect will fade. That night they were back. They came a bit later, but when the first one came, he ran straight against the wall. He didn't try to climb it.

He just ran against him, as if he wanted to break through the stone. The second one looked at the door and punched it. The third one attacked the second. Within 15 minutes, there were 11 men in front of my house. some fighting, the other slamming against the houses or clinging to the stones, and slowly crawling up the wall until they slipped or another man pulled on their legs. I had my phone ready, ready to call the police in case they got too close. They never did, though.

Something always stopped them short from reaching my bedroom window. They all left around 3 a.m. Some stumbled off. The last one who had been beaten to a pulp by two of the others, woke up and crawled away by 3.30 a.m. I heard an ambulance drive by just a few minutes later. There was an article in the newspaper. The man had been found down my street around 4 a.m. The article said he had been badly beaten but survived. The article also said he didn't remember the attack.

The next day I sat upstairs, barricaded in my room and staring out the window. The first one came around midnight, the second half an hour later, and the third at 2 a.m., when the first one had already left. They mostly walked around the house, silently and slowly, more like cats than men. A few times they tried to climb, and a few times they pleasure themselves. By 3 a.m., they were all gone again. The next day, there was just one man.

He walked around the house twice, then he left. I never touched that bottle again. At some point, I moved it from the wardrobe to the bathroom cabinet. When the men didn't return my calls, I thought about you. the K-23 again, but just to touch the bottle made me shiver. Every morning, I looked at it and then closed the cabinet door again. At some point, I even stopped thinking about it. Nicole had moved out to the city a few years earlier and left me to keep our parents' house on my own. She only wanted to stay over for the weekend, to first see a few old friends and attend a wedding the next day.

Once she arrived, she went straight for the shower, and then, without even bothering with a towel, rushed to her room. I stopped Nicole just before. before she left the house. Hey, I said, please cover yourself when you leave the bathroom. She laughed. Why, are there any men here that I should know about? No, I said, not really. Thought so, she said.

Your perfume is pretty old. Old? Definitely, she said. It's lost all its smell. She was out of the door before I understood what she meant. I called out to her to come back, but she didn't. By the time I had my shoes on, she was already in the taxi. The police told me she was attacked outside the bar, not far from the supermarket.

They couldn't explain the attack. They said the man even was with his wife, but the moment she stepped out the taxi, he ran and pushed her down on the floor and bit her neck. They told me he ripped pieces of flesh from her neck, and then before a passing bachelorette party could pull him off her, he also bit pieces of flesh out of her arm. They said there were many men there watching, but none of them did a thing. They just watched.

They even seemed to enjoy it. The police arrested three of them for masturbating right there in the open right after Nicole had been attacked. I didn't realize it until later until the trial was all over the papers and until this monster pleaded insanity. Only then, with this picture printed in black ink, did I recognize the man? I still have his business card in my purse. Timothy Lang. When a young couple joins her family for the holidays, it's not easy to find everyone a place to sleep.

When the unmarried couple are grudgingly allowed to stay together in the attic room, things seem to be going their way. However, as author Matt Dimmerski writes, The attic is anything but warm and welcoming. Narrators Brian Manzi and L. Bentley read the story for us about the strange things they experienced in the attic when they found out what was beneath. From the moment I reached the top of the wooden stairs, I immediately disliked the room. An expansive antiquated attic that creaked with each swelling winter gust. The space filled me with an uneasy apprehension. As a cover for my disquiet, I pretended to be annoyed that her family had stuck us with the wall.

worst room in the house. Coming up the stairs behind me, my girlfriend urged me to persevere. It was just for the week, and then we'd be free of the drama for another year. To say that I got along poorly with her family would be an understatement. Her young cousins and her aunts and uncles weren't the problem. It really came down to her incredibly old-fashioned grandparents who disapproved of our living together and our avoidance of marriage. This was their house, their creaky, dim, old house, and I knew I would have to put up with her comment and disrespect all week. At least they've given us our own room this year, she offered.

Shivering against the drafts, I clenched my jaw. Right, great. The first evening, Christmas Eve, went about as I expected. The aunts and uncles lined the couches as the kids run around and played. Everyone plied my girlfriend with questions about her coming graduation, unexpected career. A few questions went my way, but those were quickly silenced by her grandfather's turn frown. Unhappy, but enduring, I returned to our attic room without complaint. The night had been called early on account of the Christmas presents to be opened the next morning,

so the house quickly fell quiet. Wrapped in multiple blankets, my girlfriend slept soundly while I sat awake, dwelling on the week ahead. High wooden posts, four in all, flanked each corner of the wide antique bed. As I sat in the creaking, shifting darkness, those guardian posts seemed to stand solid against the drafts, marking out a scant area of calm. Outside the bed space, the entire attic seemed alive. I could see very little by the faint moonlight filtering in through the solitary window, but I felt like I was sitting outside, bare, on an open. plain. The walls seemed laughably incapable of resisting the biting winds, almost appearing

to move back and forth with each gust. I felt uncomfortably vulnerable. Vulnerable to who, or what, I couldn't say, but the unease I'd first felt had now risen to a wary anticipation. Antique furniture lined the attic's extremities, and I had the oddest notion that someone could easily hide among those dusty relics. Against the whistling winter wind, I would even hear them breathing, keeping my eyes wide open, I scanned the creaking shadows, straining to see by the barest moonlight. Something caught my attention between an old armour and a plastic shrouded sofa. Staring at it, I tried to comprehend what I was seeing. I moved my sight a little over, using the edges of my vision, and the two little circles blinked. I pushed back into the headboard

with a guttural shout. My girlfriend rolled awake, wide-eyed as a seat. Silhouette quickly patted across the floor. Got you. The youngest of her cousin squealed. Got you so bad. I sighed. Get out of here. My girlfriend complained.

Santa doesn't bring presents to bad little girls. Go back to bed. No fair. I'll be good now. The little girl promised, skipping down the steps with one more bout of laughter at having scared me. My girlfriend rolled over, returning to sleep with a grumble. Anoyed, I decided to sleep as well. Embarrassment easily trumped any vague apprehensions I had about the room. As my senses dulled, I heard a louder creak above the shifting winds,

something I attributed to her little cousin. Go back to sleep, I muttered. The creaking immediately stopped and did not return again that night. Christmas Day turned out to be rather fun, occupying my thoughts right up through dinner. It was only afterward while the kids lay in food comers, and the adults chatted lazily over wine, that my apprehensions returned. You know, the attic's really creaky, I said. Lots of drafts.

We don't normally have this many people over. Her grandmother replied, her tone pointed. Otherwise, everyone unmarried would have their own rooms. After a sip of her wine, one of the aunts chimed in. Yeah, we haven't had anyone stay in that attic in almost 30 years. Not since, well, I think it was a long time ago. Her grandmother interrupted. Her manner suddenly, strangely diplomatic.

Wasn't that when Dad's war buddy visited? After two nights, he, stress disorders are a terrible thing. That's all it was. That line of conversation died abruptly. as a discomfort fell over the room. They changed topics and resumed the merriment, but I couldn't let it go. At the end of the night,

sitting up in the bed's scant rectangle of safety, I turned to my girlfriend. After two nights, he walked. Who? With a war buddy? I don't know. I've never heard that story. She yawned drunkenly,

clicked the nightstand lamp off, and rolled over. into her cocoon of blankets. I sat awake again, listening to the darkness, creaks and wind. The clouds obscured the moon that night, and my eyes strained for even a hint of dim light, but found none. As I sat motionless in the pitch black,

the draughts on my face and the subtle motions of the house against the wind stirred up an uncomfortable disorientation. I had the strangest notion, so immersive, so physical, without any senses but touch and hearing, that the vast open plain I'd imagined sitting out on the night before I'd returned, but fuller this time, more real. Still straining my eyes, I peered around the windy darkness for perceived hours, perhaps hoping vainly to ward off some imagined creature stalking the open landscape around the bed's pitiful rectangle of safety. Feeling a bit concerned by my strange fears, knowing that I would never sleep while these abstract terrors gripped me, I decided to indulge them a bit. Slowly, so as to make no noise or disruption, I slipped the blankets off and took the cell phone my girlfriend had left between our pillows.

I crawled forward on the bed carefully, slid my hand out, and found the corner bedpost. The chilly wind flowed by exactly as I imagined it might in a wide, empty expanse. I tentatively raised a hand upward, feeling icy void and breezes flowing slightly faster above, but I couldn't be sure. Couched at the end of the bed, eyes wide in a futile attempt to see something, anything at all, a warm breeze ran down my face. Confused, I froze. Had I found the invisible flow from a vent dispensing heat from the furnace three stories below? I moved my face forward, stopping any.

inch from the imaginary wall of safety between the two bedposts. The warm breeze came again at a definite downward angle, brushing across the lower half of my face, as if. Electricity ran through every muscle, and I held my breath. I'd imagined something stalking the open, surreal landscape out in the pitch black. I'd stared out, trying to detect it. What if it lured right beyond the bedposts, trying to see me in return. Was it arched there? Fully the height of the bed and my crouched body, its face an inch from mine. My right hand moved up ever so slowly, bringing the cell phone up next to my face. All I had to do was click a button and it would light up. I hesitated, terrified by the notion that I would illuminate something horrifying

staring back at me. My finger trembled above the buttons. The chilly draft seemed to change shape around me, and the warm breathing vanished. I listened intently, unable to hear any sound of movement, but the physical presence of something directly opposite me in the darkness had gone. I clicked the foam's light on. Nothing horrible leapt at me from the darkness. I shook my head with a sigh. The bedpost stood faintly illuminated by the screen's light, and the only thing I could see was my own ridiculous behavior. Shining the phone around, I found nothing disturbing in any direction. In fact, I found nothing at all. Curious, shivering against the breezes, I shined the phone down.

The bed's heavy feet seemed to rest on open void. Moving closer, but not daring to cross past the bedposts, I tried to make out the floorboards, but there was just nothing. The phone slipped from my fingers then, and bounced from the edge of the mattress and over. Breathless, I watched in anticipation as the spinning dim rectangle of light dropped away. It vanished almost immediately. I hesitated only a moment, and then turned hastily toward the opposite end of the bed, crawling for the headboard. The phone had seemed to drop away at an angle.

Peering over the headboard, I sighted the spinning light again, now far, far beyond the bed, and moving away. It fell for another two or three interminable seconds, hitting something hard with an audible clatter. Its light spilling across. Rock? Rocks? What the hell was I looking at? Even as the confusing image receded into the distance, my racing thoughts finally placed it all. I wasn't on an open plane. I was in a cave. I was moving through a cave, and something huge

in mobile had moved in front of the phone's distant light, blotting it out. But not near the phone, no. The shadow blocking the phone's light was immediate and close, its warm breath on my face now unmistakable. Frozen again, I watched as the enormous shadow passed, crawling above, quite literally crawling on top of the rectangular space marked by the bed's four posts. I could feel the warm gusts from directly above. It was aware of me now, aware of our unfamiliar block of space, aware of something alive inside that space, something it couldn't seem to reach,

but something it most certainly wanted. I cowered down, listening to intermittent scratching noises that belied its attempts to reach us. I felt like an animal. all cowering in a cage, with no recourse except to hide and hope. A blast of sunlight sliced along my eyes, and the attic's furniture and familiar wooden walls instantly melted into form across my vision. I hadn't blinked. That's all I kept telling myself.

I hadn't even blinked. There was no way I'd fallen asleep. It couldn't have been a dream. I reached for the phone between the pillows, but it was gone. Deeply disturbed, I spent the day in a day, internally debating what I'd experienced. I couldn't tell anyone. I couldn't give her grandparents another reason to dislike me, or her family cause for thinking me insane. But this had to be what her grandfather's veteran friend had experienced.

Sneaking away before dinner, all lights on, I examined every single inch of that attic, a rising note of panic pushing me faster the closer night approached. I carefully pried back a loose board in the wall, nothing of note back there. I opened all the dusty furniture, but found nothing out of the ordinary. The moment came when there was nothing left, save the one space I feared the most. I watched it at an angle in a propped-up mirror, wondering if something might betray itself, but the dark space under the bed lay silent and still, emanating inexplicable menace. What are you doing?

My girlfriend asked, interrupting. Um, nothing. Just thinking. Weirdo. Everyone's wondering where you are. It's dinner time. I gulped. Okay. Dinner was a blur. I considered asking someone to switch rooms, but I doubted anyone would.

And even so, I couldn't justify sending my girlfriend's family into that strange nightmare world without warning. And otherwise, there was no place to sleep. and no excuse that wouldn't make me seem strange. I took a flashlight and knife with me to bed, hiding them under my pillow. As my girlfriend slept, I waited. This time, sitting in the breezy void, I could almost tell the exact moment that things changed. The creeks and draughts blared together into a constant cool flow, and I knew we were back in that otherworldly cave.

How it was happening, or where it was, I had no idea. but it had seemed on the night prior that we were safe as long as we stayed in the bed. It occurred to me that I might have focused my search in the wrong place. Maybe it wasn't the attic or the furniture at all. Maybe it was the bed. Something I resolved to investigate in the morning. Using my own cell phone, I dialed hers on the off chance that it would somehow still work. A moment later, the tiniest dot of light appeared in the distance ahead.

A moving shadow almost immediately blotted it out, falling for my distraction. Turning on my flashlight, I aimed it up, intent on proving I was moving through a cave. The attic ceiling greeted my light. The wooden raft is vague, washing and partially transparent. I could see the flashlight's beam grow weaker beyond it, where the light continued up to a wide, distant circle on uneven stone. Stalactites and protrusions raced by at a dizzying speed that immediately prompted me to click my light off and fall back on the pillows. So we were in both places at once then. Feeling strangely assured by my increased understanding of the situation, I lay back, almost untroubled.

Everything would be fine. I'd just lie here and make sure neither of us left the bed during the strange intersection of realities. It hadn't lasted very long the night before. I smiled as I lay there, fancying myself quite the master of the supernatural. I even continued to smile as I heard the scraping sounds start up. The creature, or creatures, had noticed our intrusion. The scraping sounds were joined by a strange creaking somewhere out in the distance, but I figured that must just have been the house itself in the wind.

My idiot smile dropped as I felt a tug on the blankets from the end of the, the bed. The creatures might not be able to get inside for whatever reason, but apparently that didn't mean they couldn't pull things out. Terrified, I tugged back. A harder response pulled me up from the sheets, and I set my feet hard and hauled with all my might. Beside me, my girlfriend stirred in response to the struggle and tore free from the blankets as something heavy hit the bed's frame, shaking us. A strange groaning and growling sound matched it. Too intent on the the increasing pull to explain, I just shouted with absolute panic. She screamed and pulled back with me, resisting whatever was trying to drag the blankets,

sheets and mattress away. The strength of our invisible enemy seemed incredible. She screamed again, and I abandoned the struggle to dive for my knife. The blankets tore away, and the pull focused on the mattress. Holding onto the bedpost in the total darkness, I stepped out with the knife. But there were But there was nothing there, at least not at my height. Feeling the bed shake with a heavy impact again, I stabbed down and felt the blade sink into bony flesh. Panicked, I stabbed and sliced again and again. The thing clawing after us in the darkness seemed to finally give up, and a pained groan emanated in the dark.

Shaking, I grabbed my girlfriend, holding her close as she alternately screamed and cried, too shocked to even ask what was happening. I didn't know how to explain it even if she did ask. All I could do was wait out the otherworldly intersection, knowing that we were safe, that my efforts had actually succeeded against whatever the hell that thing had been. The morning sun soon sliced the nightmare away again. Her jaw still trembling, my girlfriend stared at the light streaming in the window.

Not me. I'd expected the different flow of time in that other place. I had a more disturbing interest. I crept to the end of the bed peering down. Her grandfather lay on the floor, mouth agape, curled up in our bloody sheets and blankets. Horrible wounds covered his chest and neck, and my knife lay jutting from his arm. The floor around him was clean, the blood having fallen into that other place rather than the attic. filled with horror

I suddenly understood a certain part of the night's experience the creaking had been her grandfather coming up the stairs perhaps to say something perhaps to check on us and then he'd had a heart attack crawled over

grabbed at the sheets and groaned for help and I'd stabbed him what is it my girlfriend asked finally able to form coherent words shivering she stared at me unwilling to come look.

I couldn't breathe. I suddenly imagined a life in prison for murder, unable to explain the accident, unable to explain what had happened, and we had a bitter history already, her grandfather and I. There was no way they'd believe me, or even believe that I was insane

if I tried to go that route. An immense force suddenly jerked the roll of bloody sheets and blankets, dragging the entire mess under the bed. Are you all right? She asked, growing worried. Hey, what was it? What's there? My mouth moved for a moment before I was finally able to form words.

Nothing. There's nothing. My eyes frozen wide. I could only stare dumbly at the spot where I'd seen the wickedly bladed claw, reach out from the darkness under the bed, and take her grandfather's body. or episode has come to an end. Thank you for spending time with us at the No Sleep Podcast. If you would like to learn how you can hear the full-length version of this episode, featuring many more stories,

please visit the nosleeppodcast.com and click on the Season Pass link. Purchasing a Season Pass will help support everyone who contributes to the podcast, and in return you'll get 25 full-length episodes and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 1999. This is David Cummings. Thank you for listening, and join us again for the next episode of the No Sleep Podcast.