The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S5E01

Episode Date: February 8, 2015

It's episode 1 - the Season Premiere of Season 5. We have five tales to kick off the new season featuring stories about chilling childhood memories, alarming artwork, and devilish diners. The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first three tales.  Trigger Warnings "Do You Remember the Lullaby Girl?" written by Jimmy Juliano and read by Jessica McEvoy & Elle Hama. (Story starts at 00:04:30) "Radio Silence" written by M.N. Malone and read by Rock Manor. (Story starts at 00:17:05) "Pictures of a Nightmare" written by Jimmy Juliano and read by David Cummings & Otis Jiry. (Story starts at 00:30:05) "Painting of a Hallway" written by William Dalphin and read by David Cummings, Mike DelGaudio, Alexis Bristowe, and Rock Manor. (Story starts at 00:52:00) "Free Coffee with Order of Pie" written by Michael Marks and read by Mike DelGaudio, Jessica McEvoy, and David Cummings. (Story starts at 01:16:00) Click here to learn more about William Dalphin Click here to learn more about Michael Marks Click here to learn more about Rock Manor Click here to learn more about Otis Jiry Click here to learn more about Mike DelGaudio Click here to contact Alexis Bristowe Podcast produced by: David Cummings Music & Sound Design by: Brandon Boone & David Cummings "Pictures of a Nightmare" illustration courtesy of Lukasz Godlewski This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons License 2015. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Warning. This is a horror fiction podcast. Beware. It's intended for mature adults, not the faint of heart. Aware. Join us at your own risk. But close your eyes, tales of horror to frighten and disturb as the sleepless hours take past. Brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast.

Season 5. Episode 1. Welcome to the No Sleep Podcast. I'm your host, David Cummings. We have Five Tales for you this week, featuring stories about chilling childhood memories, alarming artwork, and devilish diners.

Well, it's the premiere episode of Season 5. Thanks for joining us again. It's exciting to kick off a new season, and with this being, our fifth season, I thought we'd look back and pay homage to the early days of the show. This season's opening theme harkens back to the first episodes of the podcast, and it takes a slightly less grandiose approach to the theme. We also have a slim-down disclaimer at the start, so we'll be getting into the announcements and stories a little quicker this season.

I want to send out my sincere thanks to those of you who, who pre-ordered their season pass five. I was genuinely blown away by the response. The fact that so many of you chose to pay a bit, or a lot more for the season pass, really encourages everyone on the show. So thanks for everyone's generosity and support. And if you haven't yet signed up for season pass five,

there's always time to do so. Just visit the No Sleep Podcast. and click on the Season Pass link. As we kick off the new season, it's great to welcome back our cast of regulars, along with some longtime friends. You'll recognize many of the authors and narrators this week. Jimmy Giuliano shares two stories with us on the season premiere. Jimmy used to use the pseudonym Chance Patrick,

who you may recall wrote such great stories as the red light in the warehouse and the crawlers, to name just a few. We also have narrator El Hama making a cameo with us this week. Elle has been indispensable as the person who keeps our Tumblr presence up to date. Even though she's not at the mic much anymore, I'm grateful for her ongoing support of the show. Make sure you check out the no sleeppodcast.tumbler.com to see the great work work Elle is doing there. So with authors like Jimmy and William Delphin and Michael Marks thrilling us this week,

and narrators like Jessica McAvoy, Alexis Bristow, Mike Delgado, Rock Manor, and Otis Jiry bringing the tales to life, I'd say we're off to a great start. I hope you'll make Season 5 of the No Sleep Podcast your weekly destination for horror audio fiction. And with that, it's time to start the show. In our first tale, we meet a woman who recalls her younger days with her sister. Growing up with an imaginary friend is a common occurrence, but as we learn from author Jimmy Giuliano, when one sister can't quite shake her attachment to her childhood friend, the results leave both her and her sister struggling to cope. Narrators Jessica McAvoy and Al Hama read the tale for us as they asked the question which haunts the sisters.

Do you remember the lullaby girl? Help me take off my veil. My sister whispered. She wasn't wearing a veil. I grabbed my sister's hand and I squeezed it gently. I knew it didn't give her the comfort she wanted. but it was the best I could do. I don't want to wear this anymore.

She said in a low voice. She rubbed at her face with her left hand. I squeezed her right hand again, harder this time. I don't hear her. Her voice was so hushed, you could have mistaken it for soft breathing. I want to hear the lullaby girl. Where is the lullaby girl? My sweet sister, I wish I could tell you the truth.

I hear the lullaby girl. I hear her every night. Where is she? She is always here. I just want to hear her again. No, you don't. It's terrible. That awful song crawls inside your head and scratches it every.

every nook and cranny of your brain. Can you make her sing? My sister's head turned towards mine. She looked not at me, but through me. I may as well not even have been there. I released her hand, and it fell to her waist. My sister's head turned back towards the window. The harsh sunlight made her eyes instinctively squint.

Where did she go? She asked no one. The lullaby girl is always here. It was nice to have my sister around again. We drifted apart over the years, but as kids, we were thick as thieves. Sure, I would tease her like any big sister would, but it was the good kind of teasing, the loving kind of teasing. We'd play hide-and-seek during the night.

day and kick the can at night, our laughter echoing throughout the suburban night sky. We didn't have a care in the world. Oftentimes it was just me and her and the Lillaby Girl. She showed up when I was 11 and my sister was 8. I didn't hear her song then, but my sister did. She would be in bed and the tune would drift out of her open closet door, song. and a tiny girl's voice. Lullaby and good night with pink roses bedlight with lilies or spread is my baby sweet head

I thought it was cute at the time imaginary friends were harmless I didn't even find it odd when the lullaby girl began playing high and seek with us, or kicked around the soccer ball with my sister. My sister laughed and giggled, and I just went along with it. I didn't even find it strange when my sister told me the lullaby girl would stand at the foot of her bed and watch her sleep, or watch me sleep, my sister insisted. But I never saw the lullaby girl. I never heard her quiet song as a child. The Lullaby Girl stopped visiting my sister when she was in eighth grade.

Right around the time, my sister was ceremoniously dumped by her first boyfriend. I remember putting my arm around her and telling her it would be okay. Her tears dripping onto the sleeve of my sweatshirt. She told me the Lullaby Girl would make her feel better, but she couldn't hear her anymore. She asked me if I knew where she was with a twinkle in her eye. She smiled at me through her tears, and I hugged her closer. So even though she was 13 and I was 16, we looked all around the house for the Lullaby Girl.

We looked inside every closet, behind every door, in every cobwebbed corner in the basement. We knew we wouldn't find her. The Lullaby Girl was an imaginary friend after all. But in our own special way, it was like we were. We were saying goodbye to the lullaby girl, saying goodbye to being kids, saying goodbye to being carefree. We joked that the lullaby girl packed her things and moved to live with another little girl. My sister spun a globe, closed her eyes, and jabbed her finger at the spinning planet Earth. Her finger landed on Sweden, so that's where we decided the lullaby girl was.

somewhere far away singing her tiny song to a tiny Swedish child I thought that was the end of the lullaby girl I moved away to college a few years later I slowly lost touch with my sister weekly phone calls turned into monthly phone calls

monthly phone calls turned into sporadic emails when she did email me she wrote about weird books she was reading paranormal books books about how we all wear invisible veils and that these veils make us blind to the spirit world

as we get older the veils get thicker but children's veils weren't as thick so they sometimes see the spirits I could only shake my head when I read those at the time I didn't know what she was talking about

she went to college and met a guy They dropped out and moved out west to California. The few times I did hear from my sister, she sounded lost, aloof. Her emails made less and less sense. Generic greetings followed by garbled nonsense. Sometimes she misspelled her own name. I found out later it was the drugs. Lots of drugs.

The same drugs that killed her boyfriend. leaving her all alone in a shitty house with creditors knocking on her door every day. I called her more often, trying to reach out to her. My parents begged her to move back home, but she refused. My dad mailed her checks, but she never cashed them. They flew out to see her, but she was already gone. She met another guy and moved to Washington. another druggy, another shitty house, more creditors.

I didn't hear from my sister for years until one day I decided to check an old email account of mine. I'm not sure why, but I logged in for the first time in months. I had received an email from my sister. It was weeks old. All it said was, Do you remember the lullaby girl? I know how to hear her again. I did remember the lullaby girl, but I hadn't thought about her since we were kids.

Not since that day we spun that globe and my sister's finger landed on Sweden. I phoned my parents and together we flew to Washington. We tracked down my sister. She was in the hospital. I could barely recognize the girl laying in the hospital bed. her face had been carved up with a steak knife she had done it to herself she had tried to remove her invisible veil

it had grown too thick she wanted to see the spirits she wanted to see the lullaby girl again she desperately wanted to be a carefree child jubilantly running through our own neighborhood But the Lullaby girl didn't return for her. The knife didn't work. We took her home and she stayed with me for a few weeks.

My sweet sister spent most of her time just sitting in my guest room, looking out the window. She would try to read, but it was difficult for her after the surgeries. She'd talked to me and I'd listen. Sometimes I'd talk to her, but she'd could. couldn't hear my words. She'd practically dug out her own eardrums with that knife. I'd want to hear the lullaby girl. Where is the lullaby girl? Couldn't tell her that I heard the lullaby girl. I heard the lullaby every night when my sister roamed the hallways of my house, softly singing the song to herself. My baby sweet head. I'd cover my head with a pillow,

but it would go on for hours and hours. The lilybigh girl had come back after all, but I couldn't tell my sister. It would break her heart. My sister left my house weeks ago. She's with my parents now. They keep sharp objects locked up, just in case my sister tries to remove her veil again.

I wish I could help her. I'd give anything to remove my sister's veil and shove it over my own head. It would probably fit nice and snug, since I think I lost my own veil. I now worry that I can see the spirits. Because even though my sister is gone, I can still hear the lullaby girl. I hear her every night. In the days before the instant worldwide communication, we enjoy. nowadays, young boys often found hours of enjoyment skulking through their neighborhoods

communicating on walkie-talkies. In this tale from author M. N. Malone, we meet a man who fondly recalls the bittersweet memories of his best friend, as they acted as the neighborhood spies with their walkie-talkies. Narrator Rock Manor reads the tale for us about how much those walkie-talkies meant to them, even with the years of radio silence. When I was 10 years old, my best friend died. It's easy to read about things like that in the newspapers. Most people, of course, don't have any sort of special attachment to such tragedies. They see it, and maybe, if they are feeling sympathetic that day, utter some sort of

consolatory word to those in their general area. Maybe it will pop up in conversation at lunch as part of some larger conversation. Regardless, the fact is that, save for the family and the few friends that such a child has had a chance to make in such a short time, no one else pays any more attention to it than the other news. Hell, it even usually takes a backseat to bigger things. But Kieran's death really shook. me. We had been born 10 days apart. Our mothers had been friends through high school and college.

We have lived less than a block apart, so naturally from the very moment that we were able to leave the hospital, we were together, always. Kieran and I attended the same pre-K and kindergarten classes and moved on into elementary school together as well. When holidays came around, we were pictures in each other's celebrations. I would have to be. walk from my house and hang out with him, and his parents would even get me a Christmas present and vice versa. We were less friends and closer to brothers. I was an only child, and he had a sister five years as junior. One Christmas, when we were eight years old, our parents decided to get us a special gift. Kieran and I had taken a shine to pretending to be

in the army, but not just as soldiers, as spy soldiers. We would skulk about the neighborhood in all black, hiding behind bushes, trees, communicating with what we thought sounded like animal noises. More than once, we were caught by our older neighbors, and they would usually just pretend they hadn't seen us. If contact was unavoidable,

they would act as if they were supportive of our spy endeavors and welcome us in for refreshments. And Kieran and I never passed up the chance to eat the sugar, Greece sweets offered to us as payment for our service to the country. So on Christmas, having taken special note of our interest, our parents pulled money and bought us a set of walkie-talkies. They weren't the kind that barely reached 10 feet. They were bona fide, long-range walkie-talkies, sleek, black, and even with different bands to talk on. Kieran and I were ford. No longer did we need to master the trill, the local birds, or the chittering sounds of rabbits and squirrels.

Now we could communicate like real spy soldiers, official and silent to the outside world. For the next six months, our spy soldier charades continued, and we became increasingly good at not being spotted. One of us would act scout, and the other would remain stationary. I always liked being the scout. There was something special about being the advanced guard, moving out ahead of the protection that was being part of the group and solidifying the safety of our plans. Eventually, we fell into this routine. Kieran would watch my back, and I would dart out as quietly and quickly as possible to a target location, all the while maintaining radio silence. Once there, I would hunker down and wait for him to call me.

I would pull my walkie-talkie up close to my face and whisper in response. Watchman, proceed whatever. A few moments would go by, my heart throbbing in my chest, wondering if he would be discovered. Always, though, he gave a response. Copy back control. Karen would come bolting from his hiding spot to where I was, and we would repeat our actions over and over again. Our parents always told us how great we were at being spy soldiers, and honestly, we believed them. But even parental reinforcement can only keep a child interested in something for so long.

Eventually, we lost interest in the game, but we didn't stop using Milwaukee Talkies. We discovered that we could use them from our respective rooms and still manage to call each other, albeit with a little bit of interference here and there. I wish we had never found out that they reached so far. I wish that we could have just remained spy soldiers. But that's not how it happened. We were ten years old. We were convinced that we were practically adults already.

We still saw each other every single day, and we still made secret plans and spied on the neighbors. But it had all lost its luster. That's why one night. when Kieran called me over the walkie-talkie and told me he wanted to sneak out, I told him that I would do it. We planned to meet up in the middle of our street at exactly 11.15. After our parents sent us both to bed, we helped each other stay awake, talking back and forth and hushed tones. When the red digital numbers of my alarm clock ticked a quarter past 11, I climbed out of bed, shut off the walkie-talkie,

and tiptoed out of my room. Drawing off my past spy experience, I moved deftly through the darkness, descending the stairs without hardly making any noise at all. I reached the front door and unlocked it, easing it open slowly. The creak of the wood against the frame was a thunder in the silence, but after it was open, I strained my ears and hurt nothing.

I eased the screen door open and stepped out on. onto the front porch. That's when I saw Kieran across the street, making his way through the night. That's when I saw him dropping down the embankment on the other side of the road, invisibly, obscured by a parked car, and watched as he began his jog across the road. That's also when I saw the high beams of the oncoming truck flashed in my peripherals as it hurled toward him. The tires screeched, but the brake was too late.

There was a thunk of something hard hitting something metal. The driver sat there for a moment, stunned, and then panicked and took off. When I realized I was screaming. I don't remember the hospital at all. And I don't remember what happened when the doctor came out and told our parents the devastating news. I don't remember what happened when they caught the hit and run driver. All I remember next is the funeral. I remember going up to the casket and seeing him, Kieran, but he wasn't Kieran.

Something about him looked fake, waxy even, and it appeared as though he were in nothing more than an unnaturally long sleep. My parents were crying, and his parents were crying as they all looked into the coffin. That's when I asked them if they would bury his wife. walkie-talkie with him so that I could talk to him, so that he would have someone to talk to if he ever woke up. I don't know if they thought it was sweet, or if they did it because they thought in some way that it might help me cope, but they agreed. When Karen was buried in the local cemetery, it was with the rosary wrapped around his hands and a walkie-talkie in his shirt pocket. For some time after that, I talked to Kieran as regularly as I could, even though I was pretty sure that the walkie-talkies couldn't reach that far.

When I got a little older, I would ask my parents for rides to the cemetery, or I would bike there on my own so that I could sit there and talk to him, tell them about my day, about school and life, and how his little sister and parents were doing. But as I got older, as I got into high school, I became too busy and I distanced myself. I stopped visiting, and even though I kept the walkie-talkie, I never talked into it as if he were still alive. I had learned, gradually, that dead wasn't being asleep. It was something far more sinister and it was something that someone never came back from. I graduated high school this year, and that's what brought Karen back to the forefront in my life. Eight years, he's been gone. I often wonder now if he and I would have gone to college together.

If we would have remained good friends and maybe one day had families and kids of our own close together, had children that were as good at friends as we had been. It was those thoughts and questions that made me want to visit him again. those in the realization that as of next semester, I will be going to college halfway across the country, and that I might not have the chance to visit him again for a long, long time. So today, I pocketed the walkie-talkie, got in my car, and drove to the cemetery. I stood above his grave and talked to him for a while. When I couldn't think of anything else to say or do, I pulled the walkie-talkie out of my pocket,

and sat at the base of his gravestone as a last goodbye. I turned around and began to walk toward my car. That's when I heard it. Faintly, muddled, and riddled by static. There can be many fond memories when a young boy learns family stories passed down by his grandfather. But in this, our second tale from author Jimmy Giuliano. We discover that sometimes the memory shared can be much more disturbing than sweet,

especially when discoveries are made about mysterious goings-on in Grandpa's old house. Narrator Otis Jiry joins me in reading this tale about a unique photo album and the photos therein. Or perhaps they should be called Pictures of a Nightmare. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on my granddad's knee and sifting through faded black and white photographs. I still recall the musty aroma as my granddad flipped through the ancient photos, walking me through the stories of generations past. Sometimes at night, I can still hear his gravelly voice. Pictures allow us to... live on to be immortal, you see. You and your ideas will live on in the memories of others.

Nothing reactivates thoughts and feelings quite like a photograph. Nothing is more powerful. And someone had to be there for that picture to be taken. It proves we're not alone. It was those sentiments that eventually led to me and my granddad in a cemetery with Two shovels in the middle of the night hunched over my grandmother's grave. But I'm getting ahead of myself. My grandfather always said that he and my grandmother were soulmates. There were mystical forces at play that allowed them to find each other, according to my granddad, and my grandfather could not imagine living without her.

He always feared losing her. This is probably why, in the last few years of my grandmother's life, my granddad was haunted by a recurring nightmare. My grandmother buried alive, scratching and clawing and pounding at her wooden coffin, left to suffocate and then wrought for all eternity. He knew that someday she would be gone, and in his mind she would always be taken from him too soon. The dream was troubling in itself, but what happened when he woke up from the nightmare was even more troubling. He'd have this dream, or vision, as he called it, of my grandmother buried alive, fingernet,

digging into the thick oak of her coffin then there'd be a blinding light and he'd wake up alone when the nightmares occurred my granddad was alone in bed the woman he shared a bed with for 60 years was always mysteriously absent when he needed her the most He refused to pull my grandmother into his pathos. It wrecked him, destroyed him, and he only ever confided in his young and only grandson. It was our little secret, and I felt special for knowing it. It was something between me and him that no one else knew,

and I imagined myself with my own. grandson on my knee one day, flipping through pictures and stopping on photos of my grandfather. And our secrets, that memory we'd shared together, it would be reactivated, it would live on. It would be immortal. When my grandmother passed on during the summer of my 10th birthday, my grandfather fell into sadness. I was worried that I'd only remember his anguish, that the memories and ideas that lived on would be despair and longing. But during a visit to his small and quiet home, two months after my grandmother passed, I felt a different type of emotion. I heard it in his voice.

My grandfather was hopeful. He took me into his bedroom and slipped out a book from under a sofa. I didn't know it was there, you see. I found it when I reached to find a coin that had rolled underneath. Let me show you. I was ten, and I was far too old to do it, but I sat on my grandfather's knee anyway. There was a guy.

comfort and the familiarity. The book was a large photo album. It was filled with dozens of photographs of my grandfather in bed. His face contorted into fear. In some he was clutching the covers and pulling them off the mattress. In others, his left leg was blurred from violently kicking something unseen. But every picture was some variation of a similar event. He was having a nightmare.

That was the plot. She was there. I wasn't alone. He paused to collect himself, and he stared off into a space unseen. I wasn't alone. His voice was dripping with hope. Weeks went by. My mind was never far from the photos. I wondered why someone would photograph another's nightmares.

Why would you want to capture someone's ultimate fear? Why would anyone want those memories and feelings to live on? I thought about it a lot. In my school journal, I remember writing words in a blindingly red crayon. Isn't a nightmare best burned and buried forever? I'm not sure why I wrote those words or where they came from. They seemed beyond me in some way, like they came from someplace else. I hoped my teacher wouldn't see it because I couldn't explain it.

I wouldn't explain it. It was me and my granddad's secret. My grandfather's thoughts didn't leave the photographs either. One night he arranged for me to sleep over at his house. It wasn't my first overnight trip at his place, but it had been a few years since the last one. I had a feeling something important was going to happen, and I was right. Not long after my parents dropped me off, my grandfather led me into the garage.

On the wall hung two shovels, one about five feet long and one just the right size for a child to wield. He tossed me the small one. It's more than just memories now, I'm sure of it. She was trying to tell me something in those pictures. more than just reassuring me that I wasn't alone. She wanted me to find them, because she knew what I was dreaming about. He tussled my hair. Remember when I said that an idea is immortal?

What if it's more than that? What if immortality can actually exist? I knew exactly what he meant. my grandmother had been buried alive. As an adult, it's far easier to chalk this up to irrational behavior, the raving words of a confused and sad old man. But I was only a boy, and I craved adventure and loved my grandfather more than just about anything.

Me finding that album was a message, and I'm supposed to see her and get that message. I wasn't alone and now she won't be either. As I gripped that shovel in my hand, I saw it as the gateway to knowledge and truth and essentially my grandmother. In that moment, I felt powerful, more powerful than memories that are awoken

by looking at a photograph. What was happening just seemed so real. My granddad's old Buick rumbled the 15 minutes to the edge of town. We parked our car on the side of the road near a tree line, and using the cover of darkness, slipped through a hole in the fence of the cemetery. My grandfather was old, pushing 80, but I'd never seen him move so nimbly and with such determination. His steps were swift and his eyes were laser-focused.

I remember thinking he really believes he will see his wife again. He really thinks she's trying to claw out of her coffin and that he was meant to help her. And because I loved my grandfather, I wanted it to be true. We arrived at her headstone, and my grandfather dropped to his knees. He wiped some fallen leaves off the grass and gently caressed the gravestone. And then, I will never forget this image for as long as I live,

he put his ear to the ground. The night was silence, and my night was silent, and my grandfather closed his eyes. His lips quivered, and he whispered something to himself. I couldn't make it out. The moon was bright, and I pushed the shovel into the earth, gently digging the metal tip into the ground. I badly wanted to hear the scratching and clawing from underneath us.

I envisioned my grandmother's hands. breaking through her coffin and inching through the dirt, her wrinkled hand clasping my ankle, using my leg to pull herself out. I wouldn't be afraid. We'd drag her out of the ground like a child pulling his friend out of a pile of sand at the beach. My grandmother would shake off the dirt and worms and slugs

and whatever other gross and hideous creatures feasted on the dead. But she would be alive and safe. And my grandfather would be right. There is more to immortality than just ideas. People can be immortal, too. Why else would my grandmother have taken such awful pictures of my granddad's nightmares? She was trying to tell us something. Immortality is real, but nothing happened.

I watched my granddad kneel on that grave for 20 minutes in the silence of the night with his ear to the ground. Twice bringing down the shovel to the earth as if to start digging, but he couldn't do it. I thought he was about to give up, but then a startled look crossed his face. He moved his face closer to the ground, and his eyes pinched as he focused. A look of horror suddenly crossed his face. I knew it because I'd seen that face before. It was agony and fear. I'd seen it in the photographs of his face.

his nightmares. As quickly as the fear came, it left him. I watched my granddad weep, and I broke for him. We returned home with nothing to show for our grave-dgging expedition, but dirty kneecaps and tear-stained cheeks. I laid down in the guest room and listened to the tick-talk of the old clock on the dresser. My granddad entered. Maybe another night. He thought for a moment. Then he left me.

I dozed and I awoke a few hours later. Something was happening outside my bedroom. I tiptoed out of bed, cracked open the door and peered out into the hallway. My granddad was on all fours. All the baseboards had been torn off, and my grandfather was grimacing and reaching into the wall. I backed up a bit, feeling bad for snooping, but unable to tear my eyes away. He reached in as far as he could, and his body stiffened in surprise. He paused for a moment, and then he slipped something out of the wall.

It was another photo album. By the look on my granddad's face, I could tell it was his first time seeing it. I inched backwards again, hoping to find safety in the shadows, but still not looking away. He opened the album, took one glance at the first page, and dropped the book with a thud. His hand covered his mouth as he gasped. With his other hand, he reached towards the album and I watched his weathered finger shake. He flipped the page, and he looked as if he was about to throw up.

He jumped up and braced himself against the wall, still trembling. He backed away from the album like it was ridden with a contagious disease, and he eased his way into his bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him. Curiosity got the best of me. I slowly approached the album, my mind racing with possibilities of what would lead my granddad to such immediate fear and repulsion. I bent down, picked it up, and scan the photographs behind the plastic film. I wish I hadn't. I stared at another page of pictures of my grandfather,

mid-nightmare, writhing in fear. But these were different than the others I'd seen. In the foreground of every photo on the page was my grandmother posing next to the bed. But it was not the kind and gentle grandmother I remembered. She was different. Her eyes were piercing and her false teeth were removed. She held them close to my fear-ridden granddad, mocking him, pretending to bite him.

In each picture, my grandmother was smiling. I stared into her toothless black mouth, and it was like staring into a horrible and endless abyss. And in that moment, I asked myself the same question my granddad must have asked himself when he dropped the album and retreated into his bedroom. Who took these pictures? I heard my granddad move from his room, and I quickly laid the album back on the ground where I found it. I quietly scuttled to the guest room and clicked the door shut. The baseboards were back up the next morning, and the album was gone. I never told my granddad that I saw those pictures, and he never told me he found them.

We never discussed what they might mean, and why his own wife seemed to take such morbid pleasure and relish in the unfathomable nightmares of her soulmates. We never discussed the grave-digging mission, nor did we ever discuss the mystical and magical qualities of photographs ever again. and we certainly never discussed who else might have been in his house to take those pictures. To paraphrase my grandfather, he wasn't alone. He died two years later. When we cleaned out his house, I found ashes in his fireplace. Mixed among the ashes were edges of old photos. photographs and charred, blackened pieces of a photo album lost to flame.

I lifted the pieces from the fireplace, and they crumbled and sifted through my fingers. I dug out my old journal that night. I flipped through the creased and wrinkled pages, and I stayed on one passage a long time. I had to agree with my 10-year-old self. Isn't a nightmare best burned and buried forever? Our 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 Noseleeppodcast.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 next week for the next episode of the No Sleep Podcast.