The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S4E09

Episode Date: September 21, 2014

It's episode 9 of Season 4. We have seven tales for you in this episode featuring stories about harrowing hauntings, ceaseless cessation, and ruinous retribution. The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first two tales.  "A Very True Haunting" written by Greg Fox and read by Jessica McEvoy. (Story starts at 00:06:40) "A Family Portrait" written by L. Chan and read by Norm Sherman, Jessica McEvoy, and David Cummings. Additional music by Tisha Boone. (Story starts at 00:17:15) "She's Still Here" written by Christie Gable and read by Alexis Bristowe. Music by Kerry Kelso. (Story starts at 00:51:30) "I Died Again Last Night" written by Ashley Franz Holzmann and read by Corinne Sanders. Music by Kerry Kelso. (Story starts at 01:01:55) "The Greater Good" written by Edwin Crowe and read by Peter Lewis. (Story starts at 01:12:50) "The Diner" written by L.J. Dishaw and read by Nichole Goodnight & David Cummings. (Story starts at 01:31:15) "The Devil Lives on Old Mill Road" written by William Dalphin and read by David Cummings & Alexis Bristowe. (Story starts at 01:46:35) Click here to learn more about Norm Sherman and The Drabblecast Click here to learn more about L. Chan Click here to learn more about Ashley Franz Holzmann Click here to learn more about Edwin Crowe Click here to learn more about Peter Lewis Click here to learn more about William Dalphin Podcast produced by: David Cummings Music & Sound Design by: David Cummings & Brandon Boone, 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. To give it to your fear, there will be no sleep. The no sleep pot. Serial boxes would be stacked on top of one another on the kitchen table upon our return from wherever we were at. We laughed it off, but I still gave the painting a second look as we left the room. Normally in my dreams, the rooms are distorted in some way. But in this one, everything is perfect.

The morning after it happens, I just, like, I would. Wake up, alive and unarmed. I thought someone guilty of the crimes he committed would not be stupid enough to leave their house on law. The lights seem too bright. The restaurants seem to be quiet. The patrons seem to be watching us far too intently. Well, naturally, you can't tell a child to stay away from something and not expect that child to be curious. It's episode 9 of season 4. Welcome to the show.

I'm your host, David Cummings. We have seven tales for you in this episode featuring stories about harrowing hauntings, ceaseless cessation, and ruinous retribution. As the air gets cooler and the leaves start to change color, we welcome the arrival of autumn, at least for those of us on the northern part of the globe. And with autumn's arrival comes the thoughts of pumpkins, soon to be jack-a-lanterns, and, of course, Halloween. I've got some exciting announcements to make about that, but as always, I first want to introduce some newcomers to the show. Making her first appearance with us is narrator Nicole Goodnight. You'll be hearing more of Nicole's talent and enthusiasm in upcoming shows as well, so we welcome Nicole as a new member of the team. Also making his first narrating appearance on the podcast is a

fresh-faced, up-and-coming kid who's trying to break into the world of podcasting. You may know him as Norm Sherman. Sure, Norm is the host and head honcho of the multi-Parsec award-winning series The Drabblecast, which we've recently featured on the show. And yes, he's the editor of the renowned sci-fi audio fiction podcast, EscapePod. He writes, he composes music, he writes, he composes music, he runs an empire. But if you were to take away all of those things, Norm has had very little experience in the world of podcasting. So we welcome Norm to the show and hope that we can give him a bit of

exposure. I have a feeling he's going places. Now, I previously mentioned that I have some big announcements about the show. I figure now's as good a time as any to let you in on a little secret. A few weeks ago, I took a big step, some might say a big risk, and decided to leave the security of my full-time job to become, yes, a full-time podcaster. Yep, I am now officially a full-time podcast producer, working from home and trying to make a go of this crazy little project called the No Sleep Podcast. It's thanks to all of the people who have believed in us enough to become season past members. I'll never be able to thank all of you enough for your support.

And what does that mean to you, dear listener? Well, starting right now, we are planning on releasing new episodes of the No Sleep podcast each and every week. That's right, a weekly podcast. It's going to take a lot of... work, so I can only ask that you bear with us as we settle into a weekly routine. Sure, some shows might not make it out until a Monday every now and then, but the goal is to have a new episode in your feed each and every Sunday. Are you a free listener? Well, you can expect the usual 35 to 45 minutes show every week. Are you a season pass member? Well, get ready for two hours of

scary stories each and every week. It seems appropriate to make this change now right before October, the month of horror. Not only will you get four episodes of the show during October, but we'll also feature our usual Halloween bonus episodes, one full-length version for our free listeners, and a special bonus episode exclusively for our season past four members. If you're not already a member, now would be the perfect time to get yourself a season past four so you can experience all of the horror of the Halloween month. So I am excited and, yes, a little scared about all of this. On behalf of my ever-supportive wife, we thank you for listening and supporting what we do.

I hope all of you will continue to support the show so we can carry on with the thrilling and chilling world. that sends shivers down your spine every other week. Oh, no, wait. Sorry, I now mean each and every week. Now, let's get this week's show started. In our first tale, we meet a woman who grew up in a haunted house. That might sound rather straightforward, but as author Shannon Cook shares,

the events of the haunting were witnessed by multiple people, on more than one occasion. Narrators Jessica McAvoy and I will read the story for you, which shows that the supernatural is not the only realm for hauntings. But nevertheless, this story is about a very true haunting. When I was a kid, my parents got a divorce. These days, I might as well tell you that I have two arms, two legs, and a face. My mother was abusing drugs heavily and fell off the face of the earth.

off the face of the earth, which is fine because I lived with my dad anyways. He didn't let me see her after she had me stay in a house with an abusive fuck she was dating. He would hit her in front of me and smile afterwards, sweating, red-chested, like it was a great workout. He'd lay me on the couch and put a pillow over my face until I'd pass out. I can't tell you how hard he'd beat me when I mistook a BB gun for a real gun and shot him. For all the times for a gun not to be real, right? Well, after my dad had a very civil conversation with him via baseball bat, I stayed with my dad permanently. The times were good, but the bills kept on getting harder and harder to pay.

Eventually, we had to move out. We moved into my uncle Donnie's. Donnie was an interesting man. He'd walk around everywhere in his tidy whitties, which, in all honesty, should have been called tidy yellows. When I say everywhere, I mean he would be. go check his mail, mow the lawn, and answer the door in the sons of bitches. The only way you'd be able to tell that he had any kind of underwear on is if he stood at side profile. His belly was so massive, it bloated and melted over waistline like too much muffin in the muffin cup.

Needless to say, he was a very carefree individual. While my dad, on the other hand, was a very stressed and short-fused person. Anything would make him angry. If someone followed him on the road for too long, he would be. would start yelling at the top of his lungs, cursing the car behind him as if he would hear him and change directions. I remember sitting through long rants with his face turning as purple as a plum. The color of the broken capillaries on his face turned crimson.

Spit would begin to drip off his chin. Even as spit wanted to flee from the profanity. Yet at the end of it all, he would wrap it up with something like, just remember to replace the toilet paper. Those two were polar opposites, truly the odd couple from hell. Yet the one thing they did agree on for a brief period of time was that our home was haunted. Who could blame them? Weird freaky shit was happening all the time.

We'd leave the house and come back to open doors that we had made sure we're closed. Chairs would be moved from under the table. Other generic ghost stuff like that. It went on for a few months. It's not like we could really do anything. There weren't real-life ghostbusters and there definitely wasn't a witch doctor in our town. We just had to live with open doors for a while. A tragedy, I know.

Well, after a while, my dad asked me how long it's been since I've spoken to my mom. It had been a while? Years. I guess I did need to talk to her. See how she was. After all, the last time I saw her, she was dating someone abusive. I began a search for a while. I contacted family members on her side.

They all told me the same thing. I haven't spoken to her in years. I assumed it was just a lost cause. The only bit of info I got was from her sister who said she was getting into meth and that she wasn't the same person she used to be. I told my dad who told me if that's the case than just to give up. So I did. But ever since the search for my mom stopped, things with the ghost got weird.

The open doors expanded to a whole new level. Cabinets and the refrigerator door were open whenever we left while the front and back door were completely locked. Serial boxes would be stacked on top of the door. of one another on the kitchen table upon our return from wherever we were at. Clothes would be on the floor of our rooms. The same clothes. Every time.

We would see footprints in the carpet, ones that didn't match any of our foot sizes. They were small, and they would always be at the foot of my bed when I woke up. Always. For a while, I thought it was some kind of guardian angel, until the kitchen eyes started to go missing. Then I feared for my life. My Uncle Donnie would try to reassure me that it's not going to hurt me, while my dad roared a blend of profanities and his own opinion.

Needless to say, we got nowhere. For one weekend, we had my little cousin over. His favorite baseball team was playing in our town, and my dad's sister asked if they could stay in my uncle's house while they were in town. Well, yeah, what else is family for? He would excitedly plead in monotone. My little cousin carried a doll everywhere he went. It was a strange stuffed monster that looked like it was one out of a back alley claw machine,

but he loved the cheap thing, nonetheless. So much that when we had started going to the baseball game, he threw a monstrous fit after he forgot it at the house. He demanded through a wail of tears that we turned back and grabbed the stupid thing. Kids always get what they want these days. We turn back, as we head back, we start seeing missing cat signs posted everywhere. I don't mean just one missing cat, but several different cats were missing.

My uncle tried to make my little cousin cheer up by making the lame joke that a cat burglar was on the loose. My little cousin gave a chuckle through the tears, but immediately started dry crying again. We got out of the car and started to head upstairs. When we entered the house, we heard the bathtub running. My dad and my uncle made eye contact for but a minute before they rushed over to investigate.

As they opened the bathroom door, water creeped towards their feeling. like a guilty dog. They looked at the bathtub and saw something floating and bobbing in the tub. My dad walked over and turned the bathtub off, then grabbed the object floating in the water. In my dad's hand was my cousin stuffed toy, stabbed several times with a missing kitchen knife.

The knife was still pierced through the chest of the stuffed animal. Wet stuffing was mushing out of the open chest wounds. No one bothered to keep my little cousin out of the bathroom. The look on his face. pale. That was the worst the ghost situation got. That is, until words started to appear on the wall. Crayon was the weapon of choice, apparently.

Red crayon. The words, I love you, were written over and over on the walls. The words varied in size and sometimes even spelling. They always looked like whatever wrote them really struggled to keep straight lines. This was getting ridiculous. My dad decided to take action and call the cops. What else could he do? The cops came and asked their million questions.

Then they started to search the house. They looked in the attic, in the closets, in the garage, everywhere. Then they moved a dresser and saw a hole in the wall. Oh, God. They shined their flashlight in there and saw it connected to the crawl space. The officer at the hole in the wall radioed the officer outside. and told him to look into the crawl space. We only heard broken, popping words through the radio,

but they were still just as terrifying. Okay, I'm down at the crawl space now. I'm just trying to squeeze in here. Hold on. There's nothing here, I don't know. Yeah, there's nothing. Wait, wait. I see a lot of dead cats.

Oh, a lot of them. It's just, look like something's been eating them. The radio cut out, the officer at the hole in the walls, printed out of the house and went to the officer at the crawl space. My dad, Donnie, and I all looked at each other, exchanging worried looks. As we walked outside, I saw the officers kneeling on the ground, like they were arresting something. Then as they stood up, we saw it.

A gray skeleton-looking creature. It had long, dirty blonde hair hanging over its face that hadn't been washed in what seems like years. long withered breasts hung off its chest and its genital area was oozing black. The other officer came back with plastic bags full of knives, cracked pipes, and pictures of me. Pictures of me sleeping. As they put the thing in the car, it looked at me. Those eyes. When an exquisite painting catches your eyes,

it can form a bond that is hard to break. As author L. Chan explains, when a young couple encounter an entrancing painting while on vacation, it isn't long before it's hanging in their house. But soon enough, the painting proves to be a most unwelcome addition to their home. Narrator Norm Sherman reads the tale for us, along with Jessica McAvoy and myself, as we learn the day disturbing history of a family portrait.

Nothing I've learned prepared me for this. We've grown up in an age of reason where we can reduce everything into numbers. That which we cannot explain, we turn into myth. Whispers over campfires blown up into cheap thrills on the big screen. We've glossed over our fears and the true nature of the world with explanations and tinsel. We never understand what's happening until it's too late. I can't explain what happened to us here over the past month. I can't accept it. I can't live with this feeling I have as I sit here. I can feel their eyes on the back of my neck as I sit at the desk and try to puzzle it all out.

Or I already know, and my mind skitters away from the truth I feel deep in my bone. and my gut. One day, I will fail and I will join Sarah soon, but there is some time before that. Time enough to tell my story, whether you believe it or not. It was a month and a lifetime ago. The first time Sarah and I had gotten away

for a real break since our honeymoon. Our lives had filled up with a little, hollow milestones of the corporate race, chasing a promotion here, a client there, living from deadline to deadline, no time for children yet, although we were thinking about it. There were more silences than words between us. It felt good to be on the road, leaving our jobs behind for the first time in years. We followed the coast up to New England, Stephen King and Lovecraft Country. never knowing where we'd rest our heads that night or which fork in the road to take.

It was on that trip when we wound up at a small bed and breakfast off the beaten path. I won't say where it is. I would happily go back there and burn it to the ground. Back then it was magic. We felt alive again. The whitewashed facade broke the horizon with the pride of a tombstone. The owner was a dour and cadaverous man by the name of Bryce. Deep bags under his eyes betrayed his lack of sleep. He obviously had a fascination for history and the macabre. The walls were lined with rows of photographs, most yellow with age.

As we wandered deeper down the corridor to our room, they lost the gloss and color of modern photography, reverting to the severe black and whites of yesteryear. Our room was decorated in lavish Victorian style, a strange departure from the simple, modern outlook of the rest of the house. The centerpiece of the room was a lush painting on the wall, a magnificent piece depicting a serene field with a young girl in a simple yellow frock sitting down to a picnic meal on the green.

A forest in the back of the back. dark and forbidding provided contrast to the azure sky and the verdant meadow. Sarah squealed with delight at the find. She'd done an elective and art appreciation in college where we met. Our jobs had squeezed many small joys from our lives, like water from a dishcloth, but I think she missed the art the most. Look at the work on this. She gushed, reverently bringing her. fingertips almost but not quite to the painting. It's so fine you can barely see the brushstrokes.

And the girl? She looks so sad. I examined the painting alongside her. It was indeed masterful, strange that something so exquisite would find a home in this strange little house off the beaten trail. The frame bore a brass plaque too corroded for me to read the inscription. I settled down to catch up with some reading for the evening. Sarah couldn't quite get enough of the painting.

She must have spent hours staring at it, sometimes pulling me over to examine some minute detail, some trick of the brushwork. We only stayed there a single night, but it was one of the most restful nights we'd ever had. We were checking out the next morning, when Sarah interjected as the owner was swiping my card. How much for the painting in the room?

Bryce looked up. I expected him to look affronted or bemused. What I got instead was a look of heartfelt gratitude. His pale features lighting up with a crooked smile the first I'd seen since we'd been at the inn. You couldn't stop talking about it at breakfast, Wouldn't you? Sarah nodded.

It's not good to me here anymore. It reminds me too much of my wife. There's still a little bit of her in that painting, I feel. If the painting really likes you that much, it would be better in your home than mine. I was puzzled at his choice of words. He was a strange man. Perhaps the words had come out, garbled.

Really likes you, he'd said. I was sure of it. He put another $50 on my card, helped load the painting into the car. He looked a decade younger in the rearview mirror as we drove off, found its new home in our living room when we got back home. The first order of business was to clean up the coroner, roaded brass plaque at the base of the frame.

The sharp tang of the solvent stung my nose as I scraped away at the green crust. It yielded flake by flake till the little metal rectangle gleamed. A family picnic in the meadow, 1893. A family picnic, but with just a single girl? I stared at the small white figure again. The girl at the picnic wore a wide grin on her face. I was oddly discomforted by that queer smile. I took out my phone to examine the photographs I'd taken of the painting back at the inn.

It took a while to zoom in on the tiny figure on my phone. I had to hold my phone up to the painting to be sure. The girl hadn't been smiling back at the inn. Sarah brushed it off when I called her into the room. A trick of the light, she said. Angle and lighting could make all the difference when photographing paintings, she argued. We left it off, but I still gave the painting a second look as we left the room. I was hovering in that dark, restless space between exhaustion and slumber.

when I first felt the warm glow of the summer sun on my skin. A strange dream to be feeling that instead of the crisp springtime chill of our bedroom. Soft grass pricked the skin of my forearms, my palms, and the light scent of wildflowers tickled my nose. I came too with a start. I was back in my room, the sensation of the open field fading. I shook my head to clear the fog of sleep. I felt the emptiness on the other side of the bed before I saw it.

The hollow left by my wife's sleeping form. It was still warm from the lingering body heat, the smell of summer. I hissed as my toes encountered the frigid parquet flooring. Sarah! I called into the... darkness beyond the bedroom door. There was something there, at the edge of my hearing, something that I couldn't make out. I padded through the silent corridor.

I got to the living room. Sarah was there, sitting on the floor, her nightgown gaping obscenely. I was shocked at the display. There was nothing sexual here. Instead, there was something far. stranger. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, the whites glistening in the half-dark. Her mouth hung open in a parody of a smile, a string of drool dangled from her chin. Her long brown hair, caressed by the breeze, blew across her face, and that broke the spell.

The windows were shut, the air was still, there was no breeze in the living room. I looked up at the painting. The girl in the painting leered down at me. She was in the same position as Sarah. There was a whisper of cloth as Sarah got to her feet. I turned to see her make her way back up the corridor with all the broken grace of a marionette. I felt a crunch under my bare foot.

There, its pale juices. staining the wooden floor was a crushed wildflower. Sarah woke up refreshed the next morning. I fared less well. Sleep's embrace when it finally came was uncomfortable. The darkness behind my eyelids hid nameless horrors and a smiling girl on a picnic blanket. I asked her if she'd slept well. She smiled and told me it was the best of her.

best sleep she'd had in months. She half remembered a dream of talking to someone in a warm place. It was good that she was facing away, pottering at the sink when she said that. The morning sun had melted away the strangeness of the night before, but it all came rushing back with that simple affirmation. When Sarah had left for her day out with the girls, I poured myself a stiff drink, took it to the living room. It had been my favorite room in the house. There was no peace for me there anymore. From the second I stepped into the room,

the hair on the back of my neck prickled. It was that damned painting. I felt that it was watching me, that she was watching me. No matter, the strange brass plaque, and the shifting face of the girl in the painting had already unsettled me, but seeing my wife sprawled on the floor with that ghastly smile on her face was too much for me. I'd take the painting down, keep it in the garage for a bit. I would just tell Sarah that I had to take the painting down to clean it up a little more.

I tried to lift the heavy frame off the nail on the wall. It wouldn't budge. I groped around the edge of the frame, trying to find the spot where the supporting wire hung off the nail. I tiptoed trying to wedge my fingers further in between the wall and the frame. The strain burned the muscles in my calves just before they gave out. I found it. Strangely, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with the wire. I gave a gentle tug, gasped as a pain blossomed.

on the tip of my index finger. I stumbled backwards, the bang of the heavy frame on the floor echoed through the house like a gunshot. Some sharp edge on the nail on the wall had caught my finger, torn a flap of skin off. Bright crimson welled up and ran down to my knuckles. I got to my feet, specks of blood dotted the floor. The trail led straight to the peasant. painting. The girl's features were marred by a scarlet smear where a big fat drop of blood

had been flung onto the painting. Her wide smile took on a whole new dimension of eerieness under that red sheen. Hiding the painting was one thing, but ruining it was another thing altogether. I scurried to the kitchen, moistened a kitchen towel. The pain had settled into a dull ache. I rushed back to the living room. I knelt over the fallen painting, stared back into the pristine pale face of the girl. There was blood on the floor.

There was blood on my hand. There was no blood on the painting. Only that ever widening, mocking smile on her face. I fled the room, chased by the smell of flowers and the whisper of the summer breeze. I moved the painting to the floor of the study and told Sarah that I'd fixed up something better for it to hang off. That decision didn't go down too well.

We had our first fight in months over it. I won out in the end, only after pointing out that the heavy frame had started to bend the nail on the wall. The painting gave us no more trouble for a while. after that. The respite was short-lived. It started up again, slowly, always at night, always unexpected. I'd be lying in my bed, and I'd dream of the warmth of the summer sun, or feel the hot breeze on my toes,

poking out from the bottom of the blanket. I got a prescription for sleeping pills from the doctor. The chemical fog did little to chase away those alien sensations at night. The sense of violation, of invasion, it was absolute. There was no rest for me in my own home. It grew worse. Once I found a trail of dirt and blades of grass ending at the foot of our bed. Sarah was curled up in bed.

Her deep breaths told me she was sound asleep. I followed the trail, blade by crushed blade of grass, out of our room. I left the comfort of my room, already knowing full well where the trail led. The air in the study was hot, the smell of the field magnified into a greenhouse reek. Beads of sweat appeared on my brow. The smiling girl was there, as always, staring at me. There was something mocking, something mesmerizing about those dark eyes. The artist had painted them with a dark humor, so realistic, it was like looking at a photograph.

The flickering moonlight cast her pale face into shadow one moment and silvery illumination the next. The shifting light softened the lines of the painting. The breeze seemed to stir the long grass. I thought I saw the clouds drift across the clear blue sky. I leaned closer, taken in by this new illusion. My forearm brushed against the weave of the canvas, and then pain. I looked down at my forearm, a small line of blood welled up from a scratch. I reeled back in horror from the painting.

The girl wasn't in her relaxed pose. she had stepped a little closer, one sharp fingernail extended. Her face, much bigger now, bore the same wide grin she always had. Sarah refused to believe me the next morning. She laughed it off, saying that she'd had sleepwalking episodes as a child and must have wandered out of the house and into the yard. She would hear nothing more about haunted paintings and the like. Occam's razor sliced away at my doubts.

The simpler explanation was the better of the two, the one that did not peel back the comforting skin that the world wore. Everything could be rationalized, the nocturnal wanderings, my obsession with the painting spilling over into dreams, the light playing tricks on my eyes. Maybe she was just toy. playing with us a little over a fortnight. Sarah's nightly escapades had gotten more frequent.

I grew accustomed to her wanderings, the strange smells and alien sensations. Strange that even such little horrors could be acclimatized to after a while. But that last night was different. I woke with a start. Sarah wasn't there Something had woken me

A sound coming from the living room It was a low wordless melody Someone was singing I got up off the bed As I stood The hot breeze seared my face Now something was twisting my senses I was in my room

It was the middle of spring The air was still I stole down the corridor. I would feel the worn parquet floor one second, the tickle of blades of grass the next. The singing grew louder. I had one thing to check first, a suspicion at the back of my mind.

I stepped into the study. I flicked the light switch on. For a moment I blinked away the harsh glare of the afternoon sun, and then it was gone, replaced by the soft glow of the ceiling lamp. The painting was still there, but there was something different. I could only stand there and gape as my mind struggled to process what my eyes were telling it. The girl wasn't in the painting. She wasn't in the painting.

Sarah, I had to find her. The living room, the singing, the yards felt like miles. I got to the end of the corridor. Sarah was sitting on the floor, her back towards me. She wore a light sundress, perfect for a day out in the park. The moonlight through the windows gave the room an unearthly glow. She was not alone. She was hunched over something.

A pair of stick-thin legs poked out from unethly glow. under her right arm. A painfully skinny arm was hooked around her shoulder. The sharp nails scourged her bare back. Fine bloody line stood out on her pale skin. I shuddered and looked at the scratch on my own forearm. I strode over to the light switch and flicked it on. For a second, I lost sight of Sarah and that thing.

Just a second. When the light came on, it was gone. Sarah and I were alone. I called out to my wife, just that same wordless lullaby. The bumps of her vertebrae clear against her pale skin as she rocked back and forth. I called out again as I slowly stepped forward. Her expression was empty, her mouth slack and open, her lips working to fold. force out that nameless tune.

The worst was not on her face, but her dress. A strap hung halfway down her shoulder, one small breast exposed. Around that perfectly shaped breast, I could count the individual crescent tooth marks, leaking blood. I left Sarah in the living room. I was going to end this. There was something unholy about that painting, and I was not going to stop until it was ash on my porch. The girl was back where she belonged, sitting on the green meadow.

Her lips were ringed with red running down to her chin. All I needed was some lighter fluid out of the garage and a box of matches. I lifted the heavy frame off the floor, was about to back out of the room, when Sarah barreled into me. She clawed and shrieked like a thin possessed, her nails scrabbling at my chest. She was a wafish hundred pounds, but her frenzied assault brought me to my knees.

She managed to wrestle the painting away from me. The sharp edge of the frame caught me flush on the chin. My entire world went white. I sat up. The merciless sun, down from overhead. Hidden cicadas lent their voices to a dull chorus. The smell of flowers was overpowering. In front of me, the girl from the painting and Sarah. A mouth-watering picnic spread lay on the ground in front of us. It was a feast, fruit, sandwiches all laid out on

fine china. There was still something wrong with this tableau. Like one of those toy holograms from my youth, there were two pictures in front of me. The first, the scene from the painting with the young girl and the picnic spread. The second, something out of a nightmare. The girl was a caricature of a human being, taut dry skin stretched over, bones. It smiled at Sarah just sat there catatonic. The girl leaned forward and picked up a strawberry from the basket of fruit. That strange glimpse from the corner of my eye again. Its pale finger stuffed the plump fruit into Sarah's mouth. No, I looked again. The strawberry was rancid, darkened patches starting to liquefy.

The spell made me gag. When the girl opened her mouth, Sarah's voice came out. You're finally here. I'm dreaming all this. Sarah's been dreaming you all this time. Or could it be me, dreaming you? It asked back, smiling with perfect white teeth. No, the teeth were jagged and yellow poking out from blackened gums.

She stuffed another strawberry into Sarah's mouth. I couldn't move my body. I was struck watching this slow torture, this thing slowly choking my wife. Sarah's eyes bulged as she struggled for breath. It turned to face me. It's a family portrait. It always needs a family. My family never stays long.

Won't you stay too? This one's already mine. We can be so happy together. Such things I can show you. The reddish juice from the strawberries dripped down Sarah's chin. She began to gag, her throat constricting. I strained, but my muscles would not obey me. There was nothing worse than to be so utterly helpless.

Sarah's eyes locked on mine. Help me, they said. Please help me. The girl paused in her ministrations for a moment, leaning across the picnic basket towards me. She stroked the side of my paralyzed face with soft fingers and gave me a small smile. Somewhere else, that skinny monstrosity leered at me,

graking down my cheek with needle-sharp nails. Sarah's voice issued from those cracked lips once more. You're going to go now. I can't keep you, but you'll be back. Don't fight it. We'll be one happy family. She got closer and kissed. me full on the lips. Just as she pulled back, she caught the edge of my lip with those rotten teeth.

There was a sting as she bit down hard, and when she sat back next to my wife, there was a smear of my blood around her lips. She waved as the world went white. When I came to, Sarah was on the floor next to me. Her eyes had rolled back in her head, and she was shaking like a leaf in the wind. There was a thin line of blood down her chin, exactly like the juice from the fruit earlier. I took one last look at the smiling girl in the painting before I left. It wasn't the same painting we'd brought home. I saw it as it was. The grass, brown, and wilted as far as the eye could see bones strewn in the field bleached white by the harsh sun the sky blood red and the girl a horror of skin and bones grinning wildly i could still see my blood on her lips i scooped sarah up and left our house

it was an aneurism the doctor said somewhere along the highways and byways within sarah Sarah's brain, there was a little loop of traffic, a small loop where things didn't flow as planned. And one day, nobody knows why it was that day and not some other. There was an accident. It was so easy to explain after the fact. Sarah's strange behavior, she had a seizure when the blood vessel burst. I got up and in my haste to rush her to the hospital, I had raised. run into something in those mad moments. I'd blacked out and hallucinated the encounter.

So deceptively easy to believe because it fit in the system of the world, the ordered lie we pretend to believe. It all came crashing down soon enough. After a week living out of an overnight bag at the hospital, I was finally evicted by her parents and forced to go home and get some of the hospital. proper rest. The first thing that caught my eye was that cursed painting. I felt the reality of the past few weeks come crashing down, the feeling of it drove me to my knees. I pulled myself to my feet, suddenly unable to breathe. I wasn't sure if I'd ever see Sarah again as she was, but I sure as hell wasn't going to let that painting spend another minute in my house. I was hoisting it off the floor when something caught my eye.

There, in the meadow, basking in the bright summer sun, was Sarah. Sarah, my beautiful wife, captured in paint on a canvas more than a hundred years old. Her features were unmistakable. I'd woken up next to that face for more than half a decade, and I recognized it now, even through the haze of tears. And the girl in yellow, sitting there with her arm around my wife's slim shoulders, smiling at me, that's the end of what I have to say. I fear sleep now, fear that one day I'll wake up back in that meadow with Sarah and the girl.

Fear that I'd be back there, helpless to help Sarah. Fear most of all that whatever was left in the painting wasn't going to be my wife anymore. That even if I found a way to get her back and that shell in the hospital bed with the tubes and wires and pumps opened its eyes again, it wouldn't be, Sarah. Who had Bryce lost to the painting? I'll never know How long had he watched and waited and dreamt in that New England inn? I remember the look on his face when we drove off. Freedom.

The painting is still there and the weight of the stairs of the two of them is too much for me. Before I go to bed, I touch a shaky fingertip to the painted face of my wife. I raise it back to my own lips to kiss her good night. There is a slight aftertaste to that kiss. Not the dust coating, the painting, or the chemical tang of paint. Something different. Something slightly salty. The taste of tears.

For 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 3rd. 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.