The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S4E22

Episode Date: January 4, 2015

It's episode 22 of Season 4. We have six tales for you this week, featuring tales about elusive entities, persecuted police, and freaky families. The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first three tales.  Trigger Warnings "Eater" written by Myra Beth Doughty and read by Rebecca Peason. (Story starts at 00:05:00) "Relationships are Hard" written by K.J. Rath and read by Alexis Bristowe & David Cummings. (Story starts at 00:20:55) "Her Seventh" written by M. Thomas and read by David Cummings. (Story starts at 00:37:55) "Abandoned Bases" written by M. Thomas and read by David Ault. (Story starts at 00:52:50) "I'm Not One of Those Kinds of Cops" written by H. K. Reyes and read by David Cummings. (Story starts at 01:05:25) "My Mother's Roses" written by Michael Marks and read by Mike DelGaudio & Jessica McEvoy & Alexis Bristowe. (Story starts at 01:39:20) Click here to learn more about Rebecca Peason Click here to learn more about M. Thomas Click here to learn more about H. K. Reyes Click here to learn more about Michael Marks Click here to learn more about Mike DelGaudio 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 & Brandon Boone "Eater" illustration courtesy of Lukasz Godlewski 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

Warning, this is a podcast of horror fiction. It is intended for a mature adult audience. The stories presented here are intended to disturb. They are likely to contain death, graphic violence, explicit sex, including imagery of sexual violence, hate crimes, blasphemy, or other themes and images that disturb. We assume by your listening that you wish to be disturbed for your entertainment. If there are themes that you cannot deal with in fiction that are too strongly personal to you, please do not listen. If you feel that any particular episode is moving in a direction you are not comfortable with, please do yourself a favor and turn it off.

In other words, brace yourself for the No Sleep podcast. It's time to give into your fear. There will be... Brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast. I bit into it over and over again, chewing each mouthful and swallowing. The odd things kept happening, and I was growing more scared to sleep in my own apartment. But a loss like that tears everything away from you and leads you with only the bare thought process that makes us human. The scraping wouldn't go any quieter, and when I stopped to stop out my cigarette, it's scratched in the same place.

Anyone will tell you, in all my years on the force, I never treated anyone different on account of their skin color. I poured antiseptic all over the wound on my hand, feeling the intense burn and nearly biting my tongue as pain shot all the way through my arm. It's episode 22 of season four. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, David Cummings. We have six tales for you this week, featuring tales about elusive entities, persecuted police, and freaky families. Well, happy new year to everyone. Are you tired of hearing that yet?

I hope you all had a fun and festive holiday season and rang in the new year with class and grace. It was nice to have a little bit of downtime during the week off, but we're right back into things as we wrap up season four with the final four episodes. And while the calendar tells us we merely rang in another year, I am proud to say that with this episode, we're ringing in the start of a brand new century.

That's right, our last episode was the 100th episode of the No Sleep Podcast. 100 shows, triple digits. So as we start our 101st episode, I hope you'll all continue to listen and help us ring in episode 200 in a few years. This might be a good time to make my usual proclamation about the ways you can help us build a bigger audience for our next hundred shows. As always, having you like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and post positive reviews

on iTunes and Stitcher, it all makes a big difference. And in case you don't know, we have fan run pages on Instagram. and Tumblr, so make sure you join in the fun there as well. Speaking of celebrations, I'm happy to announce the winner of our In-Ear Entertainment giveaway. Congratulations to Melissa Hoffman for winning the custom art print. Well done, Melissa, and a big thanks to Mark Chatterley of In-Ear Entertainment for sponsoring the contest and coordinating the details. Make sure you keep listening in Seasoning.

as we'll have new contests where you can win exciting prizes. So with 100 episodes under our belt, let's kick off another 100 and start this week's show. In our first tale, we meet a rather hungry woman. But her desire to eat is not so much about food, it's about something much darker. As we learn from author Myra Beth Doher, This woman discovers that her appetite can only be satisfied in the strangest way, a way which brings her into contact with a realm most of us will never see. Narrator Rebecca Peezen makes her return to the podcast as she reads the tale for us, and we'll hear how this woman comes to consider herself an eater.

First time I remembered happening. I was about five, maybe six. Like all kids, I was afraid of the dark. Well, not really the dark. We all know that it's not the dark itself that we fear, but what might be dwelling in that dark? The monsters. I was particularly scared of the space between my window and my closet.

At night, I would see a shadow in the corner, big and black, and it looked almost like it would move. It shimmered and flickered. went back and forth from the edges of the closet and border of the window. It scared me. I would lay awake for hours at night watching that corner. Whenever the shadow would drift to the floor, like it wanted to get closer, I would scream.

Mom or dad would rush in and flick on the lights. It would be sobbing and pointing, but of course the shadow would never be there. Spending the rest of the night outside my room was the norm back then. My parents' room, the living room, the floor of the bathroom, it didn't matter where it was as long as it wasn't my room. I could sleep anywhere in the house, wherever that shadow wasn't. The dark didn't bother me in those places. Just my room.

Just that shadow. I don't remember how I ended up falling asleep that night. I think I was in the living room and conked out when my parents were watching some movie. They must have carried me to my room that night. put me in my blankets and shut the door. I don't know how long I was asleep, but when I woke up, I was awake. I wasn't groggy or tired.

I was awake with the shadow hanging over me. I was terrified. I couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't even pee my pants. I saw the shadow and I knew that it could see me. I felt a weight fall on me. I felt a cold move through my body, blankets, and then I felt something else. My fear gave way, and I was no longer frightened of the shadow.

I had a different sensation rushed through me, a pain in my stomach that made me move, made me push against the cold and the weight on top of me. Hunger. I felt famished like I hadn't eaten for days, even weeks. The fear that I felt before could not stand against the sudden. need I had running through me. I needed to eat, had to eat. I could not fight against it.

I rushed up from my covers, pushed against the cold and lunged at the shadow. I felt it beneath my fingers like ice and cotton. I didn't even comprehend how strange this should have seemed. I had grabbed the shadow, the one that had haunted and frightened me. It squirmed in my hands, wriggled and fought against it. my grip. It slid out briefly, fell on the floor, tried to flow back to the corner between the closet and the window. But I grabbed it again, rolling from my bed and pinning the black mass to the wood of my floor. My fingers dug into it, my teeth soon after. I had to eat. I had to. I bit into it

over and over again, chewing each mouthful and swallowing. Every time I bit, I could feel it trying to escape, trying to move from the path of my teeth. It felt like cotton in my mouth, icy and soft and moving and wet. Such an odd texture. After a while, the shadow stopped moving. I didn't stop, though. I ate and ate till it was gone, the last of the shadow going into my mouth. I chewed, swallowed, and fell back to sleep. I woke up the next day back in bed. I woke up the next day back in bed. still under my covers and hugging my stuffed animal goat. A dream. A strange dream.

My mom came in, brought me down for breakfast. I told her of the weird dream I had, how I ate the shadow and that it was wiggly and cold. She laughed and asked me if I was too filled up with shadow to eat my breakfast. Nope. If anything, I was hungrier than ever. The rest of that day, a blur of offense and play, waiting for my dad to get home and telling him about my dream.

He laughed like my mom had, telling me that I was a little killer, and I had to be hungry to eat an entire shadow. When I went to bed that night, the shadow wasn't there. I went to sleep and never had issues going to sleep in my room again. As I got older, I would get these weird hunger pangs every now and then, mostly when I was exposed to things that were scary. spooky stories, urban legends, horror movies, even when I went on a few haunted hayrides with friends. While they were screaming, I would be holding onto my stomach, fighting back the rumbles in it. My friends would laugh, hearing my stomach, and I became the ultimate anti-fear device my friends had. I don't even know how many movies I got dragged to just so they could hear my stomach grumble loudly at those tense moments,

breaking the mood in the theater and getting laughs. I didn't think much of it. it for a long time. So I got hungry when I was exposed to horror. So what? Several of my friends had quirks too. Hillary would sneeze uncontrollably whenever someone touched her nose. Morgan cringed whenever she would hear people say crusty and would gag. Whatever, this was just mine. It wasn't until I was 17 that I realized it wasn't just a quirk. Sarah was having her sweet 16. We had been friends since we were in elementary school, so I was the first person invited. and helped her set up her house with her family.

Instead of doing a grand over-the-top event like several of the girls at our school did, Sarah had decided to have a slumber party with a few close friends. There were six of us in total, and it was hysterically fun. He played games we hadn't played since we were little girls, swam in the pool, destroyed a pinata, and had a bonfire. When she opened her gifts that evening, one was a Ouija board. There were giggles and ooze as she pulled back the paper. Chloe in the dark, classy.

We knew we would be playing with it that evening. It was a given. Her parents had laughed and told me to make sure we didn't summon a demon in their house. I was the oldest after all, so I had to keep Sarah in line. I laughed. We set up the board in her basement later, but didn't play until it got late. Rachel, who was a wannabe wicket, decided to take control of the process and let our group of giggling teenage girls on talking to the dead.

There's not enough space around Sarah's basement coffee table for all of us to put a hand on the planchette, so I decided to sit this one out. I sprawled out on the couch behind them and watched. Rachel got into the mood quickly, eyes closed and concentrating more than anyone else, I'm sure. When the planchets started to move, there were giggles and denials of moving it that accompanied them.

Rachel said about asking questions and glaring at someone who refused to stop laughing. Hillary had a notebook in a pen nearby, writing down the letters as they were slowly spelled out while her other hand stayed on the glowing plastic. The first 10 or 15 minutes we were still having a good time, laughing and giving mock shock at the ridiculous chumple of letters we were getting, because it totally makes sense that some guy named Offlats was a hairdresser in the 1990s and died in a fire at Sarah's house. Whatever you say, magic board, sure. After that, though, things started to get uncomfortable.

I don't remember the name of the new contact or what gender it gave, but I remember the sudden pang of hunger that hit my stomach. It felt almost like it was cramping, sharp and deep. I had to get up from the couch and walk around for a bit to see if I could get it to go away. I went upstairs, walked around, grabbed some snacks that were stooped. still set out on the kitchen, tried to get the hunger to go away. But it wouldn't. In defeat, I wandered back downstairs, several bags of chips in my hands so I could

munch while they played. There was someone standing behind the Ouija board. I don't know how to describe it adequately. It looked almost like a person leaning over the coffee table, a finger on the board. It wasn't one of us. It was darker and taller. Limbs a little too long, and it seemed to almost be made of shadow. If the other girls could see it, they didn't say anything.

But I could see the unease in the room, see it on their faces. They might not be able to see anything, but they could feel the sudden offness. Morgan looked pale. Sarah was fidgeting where she sat. My stomach rumbled. They chuckle at my stomach announcing my reappearance, breaking whatever spell had fallen on them, even if briefly. The thing leaning over the board

does not move. They returned back to their game. I'm caught staring at the thing above the board. I can't stop. Whenever Rachel asked the question, its arm would move. Finger pushing the planchette across the board as they read

the letters aloud. The answers it gave were dark. It spelled out death several times to some of the questions, but not always. When Rachel asked who Sarah might marry, it spelled out liar with a smile. My stomach hurt. My teeth hurt. I needed to eat. I needed to ease the pain building in my gut.

I couldn't stop my hand as it moved out. I half expected my hand to pass through the form above the board, certain that I was just seeing an illusion. But my hand grasped the thing's other arm. It felt solid beneath my fingers When it turned its head to look at me I knew that I should have been afraid I should have been running I should be letting it go and screaming

It wasn't human It wasn't natural It wasn't safe Was hunger The others didn't notice when I stood up to go behind the couch Didn't notice the struggle it gave When it fought against my hands As I pulled it with me

They didn't hear the cries it gave When I pushed it to the ground and bit into its ethereal flesh. The screams as I pulled off hunks with my teeth, chewing quickly before sinking in for the next bite. It writhed and fought, but I did not stop. I was so hungry. So hungry.

I knew in that instant that the dream I had when I was little wasn't a dream. I had eaten that shadow, just as I was eating this thing now. It had the same iciness the shadow had, though this one's softness was more like that of cake or sponge rather than cotton. It was wet and I drank from several of my bites before ripping and chewing, tasting of dark and the redness of copper. The more it flailed, the more my stomach rumbled, louder and louder as I ate hunger growing, the more I ripped from it. I don't know how many times I bit into it before it finally stopped moving altogether. I finished the rest quickly, unable to stop myself until it was finally gone. The pain stopping at the last swallow.

I was oddly calm after I finished and a little sleepy. By the time I climbed back to the front of the couch, the thrill of the Ouija board seemed to be wearing off. Whatever they had been talking to had stopped a few minutes ago, even with their sudden badgering and attempts to rile the board. They wanted to know what the last word it managed to spell meant. Eater. I've been in college for a few years now, but I've had a few more incidences since then. Felt the hunger well up in my stomach and had the pain develop in my teeth. I've eaten things I don't understand, seen other things run if they notice me staring.

I don't know why I'm like this, why I get this hunger, let alone why I can see and touch what others can't. Why I'm compelled to eat them. I know that my hunger isn't just some quirk. It isn't something that I can control. I've yet to find something even vaguely like what I do or am. I know that I should be more paranoid or frightened with this, but for some reason I can't get myself worked up about it. There's some part of me that is disturbed,

but the rest of me can't figure out why this can't be deemed natural, whatever natural means. I suppose what I'm wondering is, does this make me some kind of monster? That's one of the reasons I'm finally, writing this. The other reason is that I'm killing time at the moment. I promise to stay awake for as long as I could, and writing this is helping me not drift off. A friend of mine that lives off campus has been having night terrors and is feeling uneasy in her new place. It took me a while to get her to

tell me about it. She didn't want me to think she was crazy. She's been feeling like something's watching her, catching glimpses of something moving in the corner of her eye when she's studying or out with people. I offered to spend a few nights at her place this weekend to help calm her down and let her know that there won't be anything to be afraid of. I'm good at helping friends through scary situations. She fell asleep a while ago, but I'm going to try to stay up a little while longer. I'm just so hungry. These days, finding that special someone is no longer relegated to singles bars and speed dating. No, it's all about online dating in this day and age. But as we hear from author K.J. Rath, it's not easy to find the right person with whom to share

your life. You never know what or who you might encounter. Narrator Alexis Bristow reads this tale for us about a woman who thinks she's found someone who's just right for her. But she also learns a valuable lesson. You see, relationships are hard. As a 23-year-old lesbian who was sick of the dating scene, because being a lesbian means I basically knew every other lesbian in the city, and decided to make an account on a woman-only dating site.

The first week, I had a few people message me. I won on a couple dates, but nothing really seemed to last. That was until I met Lacey. She was a stunning 5'7 slim brunette. Her green eyes immediately melted my heart when I first saw her. We had been talking online for a few weeks. I've always been very cautious with my online affairs, making sure I didn't meet up with someone somewhere close to my apartment,

watching them make sure they left after the date was over, so I didn't have them stalking me back to my apartment or something like that. I went to college for a criminal justice degree with the intentions of becoming a part of the NYPD, so I knew the signs of a creep. My date with Lacey was amazing. We hit it off instantly, sharing many of the same hobbies, TV shows, music, and so on. She was amazing. It made me laugh, which is a great way to steal a woman's heart. We ended up going on many dates, but I was still very scared to invite her over to my house.

I explained it to her, and she was very reassuring about my hesitation. She understood. We were still learning about each other. After about a month of talking to Lacey, we decided to start dating. Things were still amazing. We went to the movies. She took me to a production of Evil Dad, The Musical. And I took her to a Mets game because baseball was her favorite sport.

I ended up letting my guard down a little and started letting her come over to my apartment after date. She understood how much it took me to start doing that, and she really appreciated it. I was starting to really fall in love with her, and I think she noticed. A couple weeks later, I came home from one of our dates and noticed a few things out of the ordinary around my apartment. At first it was the toothbrush laying in the counter instead of the cup next to the sink. The dirty dishes on the counter instead of in the sink. I'm a complete knee freak, so... Things like this, I would notice.

I had called the cops a couple of times, but there wasn't really anything they could do besides keep an extra eye on the place, make sure it wasn't a homeless man snooping around or something. I figured it must have been someone I had previously gone on a date with, but I deducted it in my head that it couldn't be the case. I had always went through the steps to make sure no one could possibly follow me back home, unless somewhere down the line I'd slipped up.

The odd things kept happening, and I was growing more scared to sleep in my own apartment. I had explained to Lacey what was going on since the very beginning. She had stayed over a few nights when I was too scared to be by myself. After about the seventh time that I asked her to stay, she asked me to move in with her. When she asked me, we had been dating for a solid four months. Reflecting back on it now, I don't know why I continued to stay at my apartment for that long. My plans were set to move in with her within the next two weeks. I hadn't been over to her place before because of all the goings on at my apartment.

But when I first pulled into the driveway, I was shocked. Her house was amazing. I mean, I should have put it together in my head when she said she lived in Oyster Bay. If you're from New York City, you'll know that it's a pretty wealthy suburb, about an hour northeast of the city on Long Island. Her house was a gorgeous two-story with Roman columns combing down from the roof to the front porch. I was moved in there within that night. I was lucky to have my friends help me out, and they boasted on how I'd be their rich friend now.

I was still working my decent paying job at an office of Manhattan, so I corrected them, saying that I would still be the same me. Lacey had never told me about her wealth, or her house. She had told me she lived a bit of ways outside the city and worked at a lawyer's firm in Brooklyn, but never told me about Oyster Bay. I wasn't about to get mad at her about it. I just assumed it was either an inheritance or she had accumulated enough wealth to move out of the city

and into an amazing house. I was happy I moved in with Lacey. Things were going really well for us. We invited our friends over to play board games and drink, and we kept her tradition of going out every weekend and finding a new restaurant in the city to go to. We had even gotten a dog together. And that's when it started again.

The stuff being misplaced. Blankets disheveled, and now stuff was being taken. We called the cops. They checked the place out, but there were no traces of anyone left behind. Lacey started growing frustrated, saying that the cops were just wasting our time, and that we could be doing so much more to try and catch whoever was breaking into our home. She went out and bought security cameras and wired them all around the outside of the house,

and in almost every room in the inside. She updated our security system. She also paid for us to have motion sensor floodlights around the outside of the house as well. Moving into our first year together, she started growing distant. Our weekend dates in the city slowly started to stop as she started keeping herself locked in her study. I confided in my best friend Erica about it. and she advised me to talk to Lacey about her newfound habit of seclusion. So I did.

Lacey began to fight with me about it, saying that all she wanted was some distance. I could tell that the breaking and entering was starting to really wear her down. Every week, something new would go missing. I ended up getting promoted at work and offered a stay-at-home job, which I graciously accepted. Maybe it would help the situation at home to stop. Before you ask,

We never found any evidence on the security cameras around the house. It was like a ghost was stealing from us. Another year it goes by and I'm loving my stay-at-home job. Lacey and I continue to fight. She starts staying out later than normal, coming home smelling like alcohol. I knew she was going to the bar and drowning her feelings in 80-proof, but I could never accuse her of cheating on me. I know she wouldn't do that, given her past relationships.

One day, I collected our mail from the mailbox and noticed that a neighbor's mail got mixed up with ours. I shrugged it off and set it off to the side to find which house it was and delivered to them. Two hours after I set it down on the counter, it was gone. Disappeared out of thin air. I called Lacey immediately and she told me to get out of the house and that she would be there as fast as she could.

I asked her if I should call the cops, and she said no. She got home and did a house. scope of the house. No one was in there. I was so confused. How could this have happened? Scared, I followed Lacey's word and didn't involve the cops. I figured that she wanted to solve things by herself.

Within the next week and a half, the cops came knocking on our door. I answered. Is there a Georgia Palmer here? One of the officers asked me. No? I replied confused. I don't know anyone by that name. Can I help you with something?

I asked them as politely as I could. Sorry, ma'am. Wrong address. Have a nice day. The other officer said. I was very addled, but I shrugged it off. Wrong address. By the time I knew it, Christmas was rolling around again.

It was our favorite holiday. Normally Lacey and I would wait to decorate the house together, since she liked to bring things up from the basement and I would start putting them up, getting more finished in a short amount of time. But I wanted to surprise her when she got home from work by the house being decorated. I knew that would make her happy and help mend our relationship. I always hated the basement in that house. It was unfinished, dark, and concrete.

Lacey never took the time to finish it, but she didn't care. As long as it was a place to store things, she was happy with it. I made my way down the wooden creaky stairs and turned on all the lights to make it as bright as possible down there. I found the area she kept all the Christmas stuff at and started going through the boxes to pick out what I wanted to use. After an hour of going through boxes, I came upon an unmarked box. Thinking nothing of it, I opened it to find all of my missing stuff. All of the things that were stolen from me over the years was in this box. A fucker that was doing this to me was sick enough to leave it where I would find it.

Like clockwork, there was an extremely loud knocking at the front door. I jumped from being startled and listened to see if it would happen again. Another loud knock came from the front door with muffled yelling. I sneaked up the stairs and peeked toward the front door. There was a full unit of police at the door. What the fuck was going on? I nervously went to the door and no more. Two cops grabbed my arms and pulled me out of the house as six others stormed into the house.

I was so scared and so confused as to what was happening. I kept asking, but no one was answering me. Next thing I hear is a voice coming in over the police radio. We've got a 419 in the basement here. I had never learned what the different codes were that cops used, as I had never gone to the academy, and it settled for an office job. The cops that had grabbed me out of the house

then proceeded to put me in the back of their cruiser. I kept asking what was going on, getting more and more upset when I wasn't getting an answer back. After securing me in the back, they both proceeded to get in the front and back out of the driveway. I was crying my eyes out. I just wanted answers.

Why was I getting taken away? I saw Lacey's car out of the corner of my eye. She was sitting there, wide-eyed and disbelief as her home was being raided by the cops. Next thing I know, two cops are bolting for Lacey's car. They lob open the driver's side door and tase her, her seizing body being pulled out from the car and onto the road. The rest of the ride and initial trip into the police station was a total blur. I was in a state of shock and disarray.

What happened to Lacey? When will I see her again, if ever? The next thing I can remember is the chief of police coming into the room I was being held in. A nice office-like room with a long table and six chairs, complete with a water cooler and a couple of nice-looking ferns. Miss Bowling? My name is Chief Daniels. You can call me Tom.

How are you doing? He pulled up a chair and sat in front of me across the table. What's going on? Very cliche, I know. It was all I could think of to say back to him. I just wanted to know what was going on and where Lacey was. Miss Bowling, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. Is that okay?

I nodded my head, yes. He sat a manila folder on the table and opened it. I couldn't make out the information inside. He pulled out a photo of Lacey. Do you know this woman? Where is she? I began to get frustrated. I wanted answers.

Miss Bowling, calm down, please. I need you to answer me. Do you know this woman? I nodded yes. Lacey, where is she? Ma'am, please calm. down. Do you need some water? Chief Daniels asked, getting up and walking to the water cooler. No. He sat back down at the table across from me.

Ma'am, I'm going to explain the situation, okay? I sat up a little bit. I needed answers. Do you know of a woman by the name of Georgia Palmer? I shook my head now. The home you were living in was a woman. owned by a woman by the name of Georgia Palmer. She's been missing for almost five years. Your girlfriend, Lacey Schaefer, was arrested for the murder of Mrs. Palmer. What? Lacey? A killer? He continued.

Ms. Schaefer has been using an alias. Her real name is Jesse Kirby. We believe that she said, She has committed over seven murders within the past 20 years. How do you know this? I asked him. Confused, shocked, scared. She uses the same method. She meets a wealthy individual, murders them, then assumes control of their money, a house, and then meets women at bars and sporting events.

She then scares them out of where, they live by stealing various items, making it look like someone has been breaking and entering. She then offers them to move in with her, keeping the stealing up over the years to scare the women. She then will murder the women. I was clenching my fists so tightly. I looked down and they were white. I was going to be murdered by someone I thought I had loved, trusted. We were building a life together, or so I thought.

But I was just another trophy to her. Thanks to you, Miss Bowling, we were able to track her down and put a stop door. If you hadn't called us when you lived in your old apartment complex, we would have still been tracking a ghost. I later found out that Lacey, or Jesse, was going to be serving two consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole. My friends and family were very supportive in the aftermath of all of it. Part of me still can't believe what had happened. Hopefully my story will deter people away from dating websites. You'll never know who you'll find on there.

The struggle of losing the person closest to you is perhaps the most painful experience a person can endure. But when that loss is compounded with an even greater loss, one wonders how to survive the grief. As we hear in this tale from author M. Thomas, a father's grief at losing the two most important women in his life leaves him adrift, that is, until a stranger hands him a bizarre gift, which replaces his grief with terrifying bewilderment. And it all started when he saw what happened after her seventh. I cannot describe to you how I feel right now. What I'm experiencing is so detached from the normal,

I'm almost convinced I've finally gone insane. Almost. My wife, B, died during childbirth. She was gorgeous, funny, intelligent, stubborn. A woman whose laugh was so loud, eating in restaurants was a challenge, and whose stare was so intense it made my handshake. I lost her as she gave birth to our daughter, Sam. Of course, I could have resented Sam for taking away what was once mine in a way nothing else can be.

for taking what was so truly and utterly pure. But I didn't. I knew Bee wouldn't have wanted any resentment. She wouldn't have wanted our only child to have a life ruined by hate. But this isn't about grief. This isn't about the physical sucker punch of forever losing something you loved. This is about something. far more sinister.

My daughter was lively, always running and screaming, leaping up and down the climbing frame, causing havoc in her nursery classes. So for her sixth birthday, a trip with friends to the movies had left her so pent up with energy I could barely keep up with her as she dipped and dodged between people on the pavement. She'd occasionally turned back through the sea of people and shout, Daddy, come on, in a tone that was almost petulant. I couldn't help but love her. I tried to chase her.

I really did. She was too busy looking at me when she dashed out into the road, and the bus didn't have time to stop. A sickening crunch, and the world fell silent. I cradled her broken form in my arms, too numb to weep, too hurt to move. All I could feel was the warm blood gently seep into my clothes. In the state of shock I was in, I could just think about how I was going to wash my jeans. It sounds horrid, I know, but a loss like that tears everything away from you and leaves you with only the bare thought process that makes us human.

The next week was a blur. I can't place a single memory to a time, in between friends and family extending their condolences and the howling sobs of mine that would break out of it. at any moment, a door slamming the gentle hum of the fridge or voices laughing on the radio. I attended her funeral, dressed all in black. By dressed, I don't merely mean my clothes. My very essence was dark. I couldn't feel or think, and the day continued as I went through the motions like a drowning man treading water. Everyone wanted to tell me about Sam and how perfect she was, what an angel

she was, as if I didn't know, as if I didn't realize what a gift my own daughter was. The man stood out from the rest as he walked up to me and handed me this large leather book. I assumed at the time he was a parent of one of Sam's friends, handing me a collection of their photos together. Or maybe I was too numb to even process his cold hands and how he never once mentioned my daughter. For a month, I was lost. I drank and stayed in our now empty apartment alone, watching old box sets, too numb. Come now to even cry. It was only when my sister arrived, when she held my hand and talked to me that I began to come out of my shell.

She'd said and listened to the most inane things I said and gently coaxed me out of my depression. Not completely, but enough for me to begin to live what was almost a real life again. That was when I opened the book. I decided to remember Sam for all the joy she gave and was prepared to reflect on her life without feeling miserable. I opened to the first page. It was essentially a binder full of Polaroid photos of my daughter growing up. I furrowed my brow.

They were taken from my own. a distance, blurred slightly, and I was in a few of them. I began to feel sick, but hoped that the following photos would provide some explanation. I came up with every excuse of how the man obtained these photos, desperate to view the moments of my daughter's life without a sense of trepidation. The photos grew closer and closer to my daughter's birthday. I could see the day I gave her a tiny bike after she turned five and the skinned knees that ensued. The book had so many more pages that I assumed the rest were empty. But there was a photo of her just before the movies on her sixth birthday. I could recognize the pink raincoat she insisted on wearing and my hands on her

shoulders. There was no photo of the crash. Instead, her life continued inside this book. Her seventh birthday had a photo of me and her in the garden, covered in paint with a huge canvas on the ground and an extremely messy painting. Her seventh birthday. Her seventh birthday. The reality of what I was seeing hit me then, and I slammed the book shut. I sat there at the kitchen table staring at the leather. This must be some sadistic Photoshop, I hoped. Someone had taken the time to pull a horrid prank on me. I say, I hoped, because essentially, I couldn't believe the other explanation, even if there was one. Gritting my teeth, I decided I had nothing to lose and kept reading.

I can't explain the emotions I felt whilst reading accurately, listening to the sound of the pages turning. I can try, but nothing could prepare you for something like this. Her life continued, showing her losing her baby teeth, her first day of senior school. My turning of the pages became more frenzied, and I began to notice something. The photographer was getting closer, closer to her. As she grew older, not as she grew older,

Not in every photo, but a general trend. The photographer was getting closer and closer. More daring, perhaps. She was beautiful, stunning. As a teenager, she looked just like her mother, all curls and smiles. I grew older, too, but the photos began to include me less and less. Her 16th birthday was strange. A group of her friends sitting outside, drinking from little plastic cups at a picnic.

But there was someone in the background, near the bushes of the park where this was taken, a dark figure stood. You wouldn't have noticed him, if not for the small shadow he cast on the grass. I leaned back for a moment and exhaled. This was too weird. I'd been so caught up in watching my little girl grow up, I hadn't thought about how this would end. Moments like this are so utterly surreal that sometimes you remove yourself from them.

I almost felt like I was watching myself read these, like this was a dream or a program on the television. I continued. The dark figure became more and more present in each photograph. I could almost make out features. His presence was towering, and as I turned the page, I expected to see him disappear. But instead, as the photograph screwed,

closer to her 18th. Each birthday was marked by a caption underneath the Polaroid saying another year. She was no longer somewhere I recognized. Instead, the photos were of her in a dimly lit house.

Her face contorted by fear, striking all sorts of weird poses. Sometimes she would be dressed like an ancient queen, or she would be dressed like a maid scrubbing the floors. The figure was there even closer now. His legs or his arm would appear in each and every one. No matter how she was dressed, in every photo her face had this desperately pained expression. Oh, it killed me.

There were bruises on her face. She looked thin, ill even. I couldn't do it. This was sick, properly sick. I soldiered on. The last photo I looked at, before I slammed the book shut and swore to never, ever look at it again, was of her eighteenth.

The caption underneath it read, At last, in sloppy writing, she was looking straight at the camera, crying, she was on her knees, dressed in a black evening dress. With an apple in her mouth, and her hands bound behind her back, her makeup was ruined by her tears.

It was if she was, bleeding me, begging me to help. But I couldn't. I closed the book and left the room. My whole body convulsing with sobs. Couldn't, of course. She was dead. The thing that keeps me up at night isn't the content of what I saw.

It's that there were so many pages left. Your 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 No Sleep Podcast.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.