The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S5E24

Episode Date: August 9, 2015

It's episode 24 of Season 5. We have five tales this week featuring stories about horrific houses, cadaverous kids, and haunted history. The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first two tales. "Midnight in the Pendulum House" written by M.N. Malone and read by Mike DelGaudio. (Story starts at 00:04:45) "House Moravec" written by Matt Dymerski and read by Nikolle Doolin & Erika Sanderson & David Cummings. (Story starts at 00:27:50) "Visiting Mrs. Burnage" written by Michael Kemp and read by Jesse Cornett & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts at 00:55:20) "I Can't Disappoint My Father" written by Rona Vaselaar and read by Erika Sanderson & David Cummings. (Story starts at 01:05:40) "As Helen Remembered It" written by Marcus Damanda and read by Jessica McEvoy & Mike DelGaudio & Nikolle Doolin & Jeff Clement & David Cummings. (Story starts at 01:20:50) Click here for Brandon Boone's Patreon page Click here for Chilling Tales for Dark Nights Click here to learn more about Matt Dymerski Click here to learn more about Rona Vaselaar Click here to learn more about Marcus Damanda Click here to learn more about Erika Sanderson Click here to learn more about Mike DelGaudio Click here to learn more about Nikolle Doolin Click here to learn more about Jesse Cornett Click here to learn more about Jeff Clement Podcast produced by: David Cummings Music & Sound Design by: Brandon Boone & David Cummings. Guitar on "I Can't Disappoint My Father" by Nic Oppenheimer. "House Moravec" illustration courtesy of Sabu ©2015 - Creative Reason Media - All Rights Reserved - No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media. 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. Close your eyes, tales of horror to frighten and disturb as the sleepless hours take past. Brace yourself for the no-sleep podcast.

Episode 24. Welcome to the No Sleep Podcast. I'm your host, David Cummings. We have five tales this week, featuring stories about horrific houses, cadaverous kids, and haunted history. I want to start by welcoming all of our new listeners. I've seen a huge increase recently in our listenership and plenty of new likes on Facebook and Twitter followers. I suspect a lot of new people have heard about our show via recommendations and the wonderful nexus within the horror podcasting community. So if you're new to our show, welcome. We're glad you're with us. And you've come along at a great time because next week will be our season five finale. I don't want to spoil

anything, but next week's show will feature a single story, but it's an epic tale over two hours long. It's free for one at all and one you don't want to miss. So now is the perfect time to get your friends and family and social media gang on board with our show. Don't forget to mention the hundreds of hours of free content in our archives. There's enough for plenty of sleepless nights. A lot of people ask how they can get a hold of the great music we feature on the show. As you may know, all of the music you hear is composed exclusively for our stories by our musical maestro, Brandon Boone. And Brandon has a very cool new way for everyone to access the music he creates for the show. Brandon now has a Patreon page, and for the ridiculously low price of a $5 monthly donation,

you'll get access to all the music he writes for each episode in that month. This is high-quality, atmospheric, ambient music with dark undertones, perfect to put on when studying, chilling out, and especially when reading scary stories. Check out the link in the show notes and treat yourself to hours of great music, while at the same time supporting Brandon in his creative endeavors. And finally, I want to mention another great opportunity to fill your ears with dark, and creepy tales.

Joining us this week, as they frequently do, are two of the executive producers over at Chilling Tales for Dark Nights, Jesse Cornett and Jeff Clement. Jesse and Jeff, along with founder Craig Groshek, have opened up their great new member section of Chilling Tales.

Visit Chilling Tales for Darknights.com and find out how you can become a member and get access to a huge amount of material. including exclusive content and early access to new productions. Well worth looking into for top quality horror audio productions. Well, you certainly have a lot of options for things to listen to, don't you? Here's the best way to begin. Sit back, close your eyes, and listen as we start the show.

In our first story, we meet a man whose hobby is exploring creepy, old places. But as author M. N. Malone explains, the place he visits in this story makes him consider finding another hobby. Narrator Mike Delgado takes us on the tour, and it starts right at midnight in the Pendulum House. I'm not going to tell you where Pendulum House is, no matter how much you ask. Suffice to say that the house itself is a very old building and a very old part of the States, one that was once full of life and where that life and quality thereof has been in a steady state of decline since the tail end of the 17th century. The house itself, by my crude estimates, has been slowly sinking into its own loamy grave since the early 18th century, and in that time

it has housed a number of families and laid host to more than its fair share of horrific events. It was through a series of native stories that I first heard about the pendulum house, and it was this that spurred my tracking of the place and subsequent entry into its unhallowed grounds. Maybe this will act in much the same way for you, agitating some adventurous spirit or lust for fear or combination thereof. I hope, honestly and fully, that it doesn't. Maybe you're wondering why they call it Pendulum House. The reasoning, or at least the reasoning that any locals will give you is readily apparent through entering its doors. When passing from the house's porch into the building itself, one is greeted by a large atrium. It's an enormous room, cold, heavy,

and much unlike the rest of the house itself. It is a hub in the house, a central node that connects the four disparate parts of the place and acts as its lifeless heart. On the far end, opposite the entry is a wall that houses two doors, dead in the center of which is a grandfather clock that still ticks, but on occasion skips a beat or two. The atrium is otherwise largely empty, save for two more distinct features. Four marble columns, carefully etched in the austere faux Greco-Roman style, and, unsurprisingly, an aged pendulum, always moving in tight, concentric circles. Admittedly, it's a less-than-chilling scene to wander into. There's nothing poised to immediately harm you,

nothing to ward you off like the cautious scowl of gargoyles or the soap-box graffiti of crazed or troubled youths. It's just a room, domed and topped with a bubble of glassy panes, a room with a pendulum and its containing circle at its center. Even at 11 o'clock in the morning when I'd first arrived at Pendulum House, the room was oppressive. I'll confide that I'm no expert when it comes to hauntings or apparitions or anything like that. In fact, I'm not even a believer.

It's not my job to investigate hauntings or to exercise places tainted by supposedly demonic presences. It's my hobby to hunt down creepy buildings, take a few notes, you know, kind of take in the mean of the places. Most of the time when I go into a place like Pendulum House, the creepy, feeling goes away after a while and I learned to just enjoy the solitude. There was a sort of reserve peace that marks such haunts when the stories and the tales melt away. But the feeling of disquiet never went away in Pendulum House. In fact, it only got worse.

I spent most of the day exploring. The grounds themselves were relatively empty, save for a small cemetery not far from the backyard. The stones were chipped over ground. grown and altogether illegible. Their age was apparent, both by the ways the stones had been reclaimed by the earth and by their simplistic oblong designs. From what I gathered, there were some 30 or so stones stippling the forest that surrounded the area, some curiously farther from the house than others. I also discovered a few patches of dead ground that seemed to denote that

once there had been other buildings on the property. Of course, they had probably been torn down a long time ago, only leaving shadows, absences of growth where they'd been. The rest of the land was either gently sloping hills or dense, deciduous forest, and while this stretched on for acres, I chose not to venture too far from my main point of interest. The oddest part of it all was the lean of the trees, something mirrored by the gravestones. They all seemed to be pitched back from the house, as if turning away, almost as if the house itself in some calamitous burst had erupted from the ground and pushed everything outward. The house itself sat like some crooked vulture, hunched on a nest of fieldstone and cracking

cement. The leftmost side had capitulated somewhat under its own pressure, and the resulting shift of weight had caused that edge of the building to dip down into the dirt so far that the base itself had all but disappeared into the soft ground. I had made a mental note of it, mostly to take when investigating that part of the building, as I wasn't keen on getting trapped in a pile of rubble. When I had surveyed all the surrounding area, I returned to the porch and entered. As the bleary sunset was dipping red below the treetops, I ran through the tails I'd heard in my head. Everyone had told a different one, set in a different time and revolving around different occupants of Pantialum House. But they had all ended in exactly the same way.

The occupants had experienced strange things, feelings, sounds, events, and then, in the middle of the night, they'd just disappear. That was it. And every time someone came looking for them, they found nothing. Nothing save for a ticking clock and a gently swaying pendulum. Somewhere along the line, someone had decided that middle of the night was to be taken as literally as possible. so despite the differences in settings and characters, each story had stipulated that the occupants had gone missing exactly at midnight.

When I'd compiled them and realized this fact, I'd resolved to stay one night at Pendulum House, if not simply to prove that it was nothing but an empty building out in the middle of the woods. I hadn't told anyone about my plans because, by the way the locals all spoke about it, I fear they might drive me out of town like some heathen, complete with pitchforks and torches. It was shortly after nightfall, shortly after ten o'clock, that I heard the first noises in the house. In my mind, I divvied up pendulum house into four quadrants. The first, the leftmost, was the collapsed portion. It had once housed a few rooms and a stair to a second floor,

but whatever disaster had befallen that portion of the house, had ruined them, bow-legging the walls and severing all access above the middle landing of the stairway. The second and third mirrored each other, each bore connecting passages to the kitchen, the living area, the dining area, and a large bathroom on the first floor, while sporting ten bedrooms in total on their second floor sections. The fourth and final quadrant led down into an expansive cellar that had been sectioned off into pantry space, storage, and a laundry area. In it, I had discovered a number of dust-cake jars filled with mostly black liquids, some rusted gardening tools, a few spools of wire and twine, some lengths of chain,

some combination padlocks, and a machete, thrust into the wall with a menacing, rusted glint. It was from the first quadrant that the noises first rang out. I had decided that the atrium was the best place to remain for the evening, and so had set up a base of operations there, with a camping-land-landers. A flashlight, a few bags of snack food, my laptop, and a few glow sticks for backup, just in case my lantern and flashlight failed me. I was in the midst of recording the contents of the cellar in my notes when, from my left, I heard a distant creek peel out. At first I thought nothing of it. That portion of the house had been collapsing, and so any change in wind or shift in the ground,

how anything could cause the boards to rub and shift some more. But then I heard it again, followed by a staccato of thumps and then a long, hard drag as if something were sliding across the carpet beyond the doors. Cautiously, I placed my laptop on the tiling and rose to my feet, toting my flashlight and moving closer. The sounds continued their repetition and when I reached the door, I realized they sounded closer now, as if their cause were approaching the very same threshold. I glanced around the room noting now that I had left the very edge of my bubble of light and was now bathed in shadow and darkness. I staled myself and eased the door open. Beyond, there was nothing.

No figure, no animal, just an empty hallway with peeling paint, bowing walls, and at the far end, a window seeping the white light of the moon beyond. I poked my head through the doorway and sliced. the darkness with my flashlight, but it fell on nothing but wood, plaster, and carpet. I eased the door close again and turned to make my way back to my laptop. Something slammed against the other side of the door. It contacted with a smack and slid, as if someone had clapped their palm against the door's opposite face and ran it down the entire length. My spine grew cold and then hot, my skin prickling and itching all over instantly.

The dark felt full now, like each shadow hid eyes and fangs and claws. My breath caught in my throat and I paused, straining to listen. Sweating now, I gripped the handles again and pulled, faltering slightly, shifting my grip on the light so that in the event of an intruder I could use it as a club if necessary. But when the door was cracked, there was nothing. The same hallway, the same emptiness. I breathed a sigh of relief. The bellow of the grandfather clock nearly threw me into a heart attack. It thundered, sounding half past, and I put my hand to my chest in an attempt to calm myself.

That's when the door to the third quadrant eased itself open with a steady, aged groan. My light swam and landed on the open door. Only blackness peered back. You're psyching yourself out, I said aloud. putting too much stock in folk tales. You've never been one to be superstitious, so why now? After a few moments, I laughed. I had done this dozens of times and dozens of places,

among some of the most haunted in the entire country. And yet, I was terrified here in a place whose history was as vague as the writing on the gravestones outside. Sure, there had been a murder and a rape and even infanticide, too, but most of the horror had come from the disappearances of entire families. There'd been no guarantee they'd died. They'd just gone missing without a single word, decades apart and seemingly without motive. I figured they'd all just left.

After all, wasn't that the most logical explanation? Logic disappeared as I watched the door to the third quadrant close itself. My arms felt cold now. My body felt heavy and distant. As I listened in the absolute silence, hearing only the constant drone of the wind outside and the tick of the grandfather clock, I began to hear another noise. A slight tapping. The slight tapping grew into a knocking, and the knocking swelled into a bang. All the doors, first, second, third, fourth, and the entry were pounding.

Each knocked and rattled in its frame, threatening to collapse, cracking and hammering as if thousands of furious fists, were striking them over and over and over again. I ran toward the center of the room, toward the gently swaying pendulum and my ramshackle camp, thinking I might still be able to grab my things and flee. But when I'd thrown everything into my bag and turned, lantern and flashlight in hand, to sprint toward the front door, I found it no longer existed.

In its place there was only a stone wall and high windows. The windows shown only blackness. The banging stopped. just as abruptly as it had started. I knew now that I was not alone and that something was amiss. I also knew that whatever the house housed had removed my only means of exit. I was trapped. I was not alone.

I was not safe. And I was trapped in a horrifying house with some presence that I could now feel pressing in, as if the thinnest veil kept us apart. So I did the only thing I could do. I decided to protect myself. Entering the basement after what had occurred in the atrium was no easy feat. I attempted to go almost three full times and my heart failed every single one, save the last. There were still sounds in the dark, much farther off now than before,

and they served as a warning that I was still in the midst of something else. It was the feeling of praise sensing a predator that drove me into that darkened hallway. It was my frayed nerves that kept me resolute as the coolness of the cellar swallowed me. It was my need to survive that steered me, quaking, into the storage, and helped me haul what I needed back to the atrium in a single trip. I slammed each door and fixed them with lengths of chain and twine to the pillars that supported the domed atrium. I placed as many locks as I could, as quickly as I could, noting their combinations in my head and scribbling them whenever I felt I had the chance.

When I had finished, a web of twine and chains, of knots and locks stood between me and whatever dwelt within the hidden walls of the pendulum house. I hefted the weight of the rusted machete in my hands and felt the rough handle scrape my sweaty palm. Then I sat and waited. When 11 o'clock sounded, I almost leapt out of my skin. The clock peeled like a gong, each swell building on the last until the atrium see. seemed like it would tear and burst at its seams from the noise. I took the rush of adrenaline and checked my web again, noting the locks, tugging the knots, fixing the holds where I could.

Now and then I thought I could see a tug on the length of rope or the door it held fast, or I could hear the tinkling of a moving chain and a thump as the door refused to budge. I stared at the clock and watched as time seemed to stand still and slip by simultaneously. Then, at 1159, the clock just stopped. My heart was swinging like a metronome in my chest, keeping time where the ticking of the clock had fallen away. It dawned on me that the noises, the creeks, the groans, the thumps had all dissipated. Even the sound of the wind no longer seemed to exist. Only an eerie, steady silence pervaded.

I listened to my breath and my heart. heart and held the machete fast. Something smacked into my leg. I glanced down and saw the pendulum, no longer moving steadily in small circles, but instead now widening its path, lifting upward and outward and spinning as if pulled by some unseen force. It lilted and then straightened again, and I moved just in time to avoid it as it swung past my face. I swallowed hard in the silence. Like a chorus it rose from within the halls of the house. A steady, horrific cry like a thousand people being flayed alive. Screams and howls punctuated the din as it rose, louder and louder like some hellish chorus.

One door pulled and held fast, crashing back into its frame. Another pounded incessantly as whatever laid beyond it slammed into it over and over and over again. The walls thundered and the ceiling above was a mess of scrapes and clatters. Like stone collapsing on stone. Somewhere far off, I heard metal beginning to grate, and a sound like nails against a chalkboard began to rise until it blotted out the rest. I covered my ears and began to scream.

The lantern flickered and went black. In the dark, I knew I was in hell. I scrambled from my backpack, the cold floor no longer seeming tiled, but rather like patches of stony carapace. When I finally found it, I plunged my hand and felt the cool plastic of the glow sticks I brought. I grabbed them all and in one steady crack of my knee, the atrium flared back to life, bathed in red. But there was no longer an atrium. There were no longer any doors.

In the red glow, I saw the many figures. Their arms reaching, their bodies twisting unnaturally, and I saw their eyes. like animal's eyes, catching the red and reflecting it like thousands of tiny fires. I saw beyond them the taller, thinner forms of something else. Things that stalked on crooked legs, things that scooped and clawed at the masses, cutting them like chaff and spearing them as they walked on jagged stilts. And still further, I saw it. Its body swollen and purple.

its many arms flanked by hundreds of thrashing tendrils that cracked and snapped and hooked. I saw its face like some mockery of an animal's skull, fanged, sockets gaping mouth wide with some macabre glee. I saw the shocks of black fur that erupted from its throat and splintered into needle-like hairs, tracing the contours of its body. I saw it swell until the crowd and it were a sea. single, writhing mass. I heard the drums and the laughter. I heard the thunder and the screams. I heard my last breath leave my lungs. When I awoke the next morning, it was to the silent drifting of a pendulum above my head. After watching it and the sunlight beyond for what felt like

hours, I roused myself. I heard the machete clatter to the tiles and I pushed myself up. Quick glances proved adept enough to discern that the chains had been snapped. The locks shattered, the twine cut and the doors splintered. I turned toward the entry and saw that where there had been a door and then none, there was one once again. I slowly bent to pick up my pack and after a moment I grabbed the machete too. In silence I climbed into my car, turned the key, and left pendulum house for good. I'm not going to tell you where pendulum house is, no matter how much you ask. Enough people have borne witness to the horrors it houses, to the evils that lurk within. Enough people have been caught in its fracture of time, one that seems to

ease the unlucky into those places, thin and abysmal, that exist between our own and whatever others run parallel. Enough people have found in Pendulum House a permanent home without choice or chance. I was lucky enough to escape, but there is one thing that still chills me now, months later, as I tell you this, as a warning, as a friend. When I close my eyes, I can still see the swing. of the pendulum and behind it, the thing beyond the veil. And in my ears always, I can hear the steady tick of time

and the fast approaching footsteps of something in the dark. When a medical student has the opportunity to study at a unique residence overseas, it's a welcome change, especially coming off a bad breakup. Author Matt Dermerski tells us about the rather unique location, and we find out that the building itself is far more interesting than the topic of their studies. Narrators Nicole Doolin and Erica Sanderson read the tale for us, so let's journey to the strange home in Prague and enter House Morvets. As I stood at the base of the long lane beneath, staring up at my room.

my distant destination, I supposed my perceptions of that house were being colored by my recent breakup. The plan had been to attend to our studies in Prague together. Instead, I stood alone against the parching summer winds, studying a lengthy alley that carved its way up the precipitous hill with an ancient laziness. Lost in brooding need for motion, I ignored my initial unease and slipped into the cramped canyon where that serpentine alley. began. The walk was quiet, taxing and lonely, but passed by without note in a blur of regretful and nostalgic thoughts. I was in another country, but I'd not yet left the old one behind. As I emerged from the narrow shade, sweaty and bitter, the hill's crowning residents greeted me

with a resurgence of disquiet. The high house had once been noble and sat apart, towering over its environs like an aging patriarch with a tired back. The fourth and highest floor carried a visibly dangerous tilt toward the terminal precipice of that final lot, an allusion I attributed to the hill's steep angle in the stone's weathered patterns. Shadows streamed from sharp carvings, casting incomprehensible patterns across the wasteland

of cracked medieval pavement that otherwise ran bright under dry winds. I was not the only student staying at the Moravette's house, and this was hardly the first year that its surviving matriarch had hosted academics, but I still had to force myself to approach. An inexplicable revulsion held me back, trying to warn me away, but there was no specific reason I could gather to truly give up in return to my home country. And she was there, and my home country,

Disquiet or no, I couldn't go back. I gave a gentle knock on the wide wooden door. An arid breeze brought a sigh past my ears. I looked back at the cobblestone lane, but the midday sun and patterned shade held nothing but emptiness, and the odd tiny weed dancing in the wind. The door swung open, and I turned forward in sudden embarrassed surprise. A white-haired woman stood waiting,

a pleasant smile on her face. She carried a slight hunch to match that of the tired house itself, but her clear blue eyes still shined with particular energy. Her calm and positive tone carried only a hint of accent. A lost student. You've arrived. Lady Moravitz. I followed the cultural advice my advisor had given me. It felt odd to address someone with a noble title like that.

Given that she stood before me in jeans and a faded orange shirt that seemed reminiscent of earlier decades, this was not an old woman. This was a woman who happened to have aged. Her deeply wrinkled face curled up in genuine humor. Dear, really, call me Anita. She pulled out a cell phone and typed in my name in details. So that I'll remember. She returned it to her pocket.

I stepped inside after her and immediately shattered from the chill within. As she led me into the house, I saw almost immediately why she needed to record my details. Eleven other students sat in a long dining room. Lunch had finished at least an hour before, but the plates remained on the table while cultures clashed and friendships were forged. I was in no mood to meet people, and Anethe seemed to notice. Instead of introducing me immediately, she showed me the way of. up a surprisingly narrow set of stone steps that I figured must have been for the servants back when the house had employed them. The chill deepened as we climbed. Is it just you here these days?

I adjusted my backpack and held myself closer against the drop in temperature. She kept moving but threw a smile back. If the cold is bothering you, I can get you a sweater. No, I'm fine, I lied. At first I assumed the house's ancient construction kept it cold, but we passed a vent, and the icy air brought me a shiver. I had seen signs of modern renovations in the front hallway, and that was true here as well. We came to the top of the stairs, and I blinked against the sudden change. White was the dominant color here. The long and close hallway was incredibly clean, and populated only by a decorative little table or two with

plastic flowers in small vases. I immediately found myself thinking of the place as icy, given the painfully chill airflow rolling toward us in the harsh lack of color. Suppressing an oncoming chattering of my teeth, I forced to smile and followed her to my room. She had assigned me the one at the end of the long hallway because I'd arrived last. That was fair enough, but I was already considering the walk back to the stairs at Trek

that I would have to endure with each departure and return. The room itself was plain, Spartan, and serviceable. There was no air vent within, so the temperature was higher, and the patterns were all brown. Glad to escape chill white, I ducked within and dropped my backpack to the floor. A moment later, I thought to thank my new host, so I popped my head out. She had already left me to my own devices, but she had not departed entirely.

I watched her open a nearly invisible white closet door, pull out a vacuum, and begin cleaning up the very scant dirt my shoes had left behind. I supposed it was necessary to keep the smooth alabaster wood floor clean, but something about her movement and manner came off as a bit intent, or even manic. Taking care to avoid any noise, I closed my door, and then went about assessing my new living quarters.

The single window was made of thick double-paned glass. Beyond, I could see a great deal of Prague, and nothing of the winding lane I'd traveled earlier. This window faced the hill's precipice then, and I peered down at a dizzyingly steep series of rooftops that dropped haphazardly into a sea of buildings far below. Hoping for a better view down, I tried to open the window, but found that it was set wholly into the wall.

Not only could it not be opened, it had been constructed to purposely lack the ability. I suppose that was necessary to keep guests from falling out. There was no airflow in my room, however, so I wondered if it wouldn't begin to feel a little claustrophobic over the course of the semester. I supposed that I wasn't really intended to spend much time there. The house did have a sprawling layout that probably,

allowed for privacy through sheer size. Shrugging off my continuing unease, I headed back into the icy halls. I did see the narrow stairs back down to the front, but I also looked in the other direction. The hallway terminated at a junction where a fancy portrait hung on the wall. I approached it, studying the image of an older and respectable man, as heavy eyes gazed eternally at something in the distance. and I knew instinctively who this was. Rastamorovets, the man of the house, and Annetta's late husband. I'd been told not to bring him up. Standing there in front of his picture, I pulled up my phone and looked into him.

His respectable portrait seemed a sham as I read paragraph after paragraph about the scandals of his life. There had been rumors about gambling, about successful shady dealings to run. recover family wealth and about womanizing. The article also included an image of a woman I recognized. It was Aneta, lacking a number of decades and quite beautiful for the change. She stood with her husband, smiling with that same particular brightness. I stared, at first, because she caught the eye so strongly, and then because a strange shock ran through me. It was brighter and much less worn, but I knew the pattern. She was wearing that same orange shirt. It was a picture of the two of them, from before all the scandals. I suppose that shirt meant something to her. A subtle sigh

reached my hearing. I looked up, confused. Had that been the same sound from outside? The revving of a vacuum startled me, and I hurriedly put my phone away as Annette's swift cleaning emotions brought her closer. She kept her eyes on the traces of dirt I'd left on the sheer white floor. Please join the others down the stairs. I did as she asked, wondering if I hadn't heard a slight anger in her tone. The other students pulled me in from the first moment, demanding my story and friendship, and I gave them what I could. They were nice enough, but my mind was still on a girl I knew I would never speak to again. That and on the oddness of the house and its sole caretaker.

School started and I had less time to think about it, but nobody else seemed to find it odd that she wore that same orange shirt every single day. She kept it immaculate just like the house, so the others chalked it up to her being said in her ways. I heard that same odd sigh twice more over the next three months, but I imagined it had to have come from the air system. Because my room was unsuitable for waking pursuits, I often wandered the house and eventually found a library. In addition to a huge range of first print classics, there was also an entire section filled with medical texts.

Each had been leafed through in great detail and written upon with intent. Notes marred almost every margin. They were a bit old but close enough to modern. I'd intended to ask Annetta about them until the nature of the notes changed. You busted. It was probably my tenth time perusing the dusty and unused library, and my third time examining those medical books, so I had to stare for a moment to comprehend what I was seeing. Someone had jotted questions above, and then answered them.

Someone had noted important sections below between... You don't get to leave me. I'll find out who she is. I'll find out who all of them are. I swallowed down a return of that unease I'd felt my first day, and then carefully placed the books back the way I had found them. I kept my thoughts to myself for a time and only pursued my concerns in a roundabout manner.

The twelve of us had finished dinner and a few glasses of wine had been had, courtesy of our absent host. I knew who would speak most freely. Wright was an American and the drinking. went straight to his mouth every time. At an opportune time, I leaned close to him. Say, do you know anything about how Rasta died? His dumb grin told me I'd struck gold.

He gave me a conspiratorial whisper that I was sure everyone in the room could hear. My only saving grace was that their drunken conversations had them riveted to other topics. Rastomorovets. Right, let out a letter. little burst of air and gave a great nod. Disappeared. Disappeared. A terrible suspicion came over me. Not going to find that on Wikipedia, are you? Heard it from a local chick I hooked up with my first

week here. Only the locals know about it. Whisper it, you know? I tried to sound only casually interested. When did he disappear? Ten years, I think. He leaped up. Bathroom time. He was gone in an instant, but a dark heaviness remained in his absence. I took my leave and headed to my room,

cramped though it was. I sat between close brown walls, staring at my sealed window. What had Annetta done? I absently bit through each of my, nails one by one before I decided I had to investigate further. The main complication was clear. Lady Moravitz never left the house.

She loved the house and kept it chill, austere, and maddeningly clean. That gave me the idea. During another night of drinking, I gave right an anonymous gift, a potted plant, something which he found uniquely hilarious for reasons beyond my count. and he proceeded to almost immediately trip and smash it, exactly as I'd hoped. Annette erased out from rooms unknown and proceeded to clean in a panic. I slipped away.

Her room lay at the very back of the house, and I hurried toward it without my shoes. In socks alone I left no trace of my passage on the stark floors. The door to her room creaked open with a blast of icy air. I braced myself with the cross. coldest room yet and crept inside. Everything within was white. The bed and all its sheets were white. The desk was white. There was no window at all. I'd seen many of the signs, but I knew now that Lady Moravetz contained some measure of hidden madness. This simply wasn't normal.

The desk drawer slipped open without resistance, and I leave. through several white journals I found within. He loves me. I'm so happy to have my roster with me. I checked the corporate text at the very front of the journal. It was only two years old. Either Annetta was completely mad or... When that sigh broached my senses for the fifth time since I'd come,

I finally heard it for what it was. A distant, weak, and hope. hopeless moan. The truth struck me with an almost physical thump to the chest. Rastomorovetz was still in the house. Electrified by my new understanding, I began looking around the room with sharper eyes. Like the closets in the hallways, nearly invisible white doors had been set in the walls here. They were set high, near arm level, and too small to be accessed to another room. But I don't I was still deadly curious. I approached one and slid the clean white wood panels apart.

An empty cube of space sat beyond, also bright white, except for a single crimson little splatter. A drop of blood sat in that cupboard, and it had not yet congealed. It was fresh. A creek sounded in the distance, and I hurriedly closed the cupboard, checked the desk, and slipped back out. the house's maze-like setup lent me a dozen paths to escape. I made it to my room, put my shoes back on, and then casually rejoined the dinner party in the dining room. Nobody had been the wiser.

If anyone had thought about it, I would have told them I'd just gone to the washroom. I laughed along with their jokes and listened to their tales, but my mind was solely on the undeniable fact that something terrible had been going on. in that house for ten years. Was Rasta locked up somewhere? Was Anita torturing him?

Burdened with my horrible suspicions, I couldn't help but feel completely alone. The girl I loved should have been there to help. She would have known what to do. She had been bright, strong, and smart. I didn't understand why we'd ended and I was far from over it even months later. And winter was coming.

coming on, so my time spent in the house only increased. I used every moment of free time manipulating dirtiness in the house so that I would have a chance to explore each and every room one by one. If Rasta was in the house, there had to be a way to find him. I couldn't simply call the police. That had all been done ten years ago, apparently, and they'd found nothing. Without any evidence, I'd look insane. My search took me deep into the inner workings of the house, most especially in my own room. After several days' work, I managed to remove a panel in the wall without damage.

Beyond ran a great many wires, tubes, and so on. Those things I expected. There was one deviation from those expectations. Several little glass tubes that ran from somewhere deep in the wall to somewhere else deep in the wall. Extremely small fibers sat within each. I stared at them for days and even purchased a magnifying glass,

but all I saw was dirty yellow with traces of red. What thin fibers would be yellow with traces of red? I looked up wires, manufacturing, house hardwares. I couldn't find a match. But these two, were a clue. I focused my explorations on the numerous hidden panels in the house, tracing the glass. Many spread out in branching patterns through the walls, often terminating into hundreds of very small glass tubes. What was I seeing? I still had no idea. I traced them the other direction,

finding that they got fewer and number and thicker as I headed toward the heart of how. House Moravets. By then, I'd grown used to the eternal bone chill and felt one with it. This house in this environment carried a bleak madness that I knew had infected me. Annetta had been obsessed with keeping her womanizing husband, and I had become obsessed with freeing him from her, anything to keep from thinking about what was missing in my life. A major break occurred in late December of that year. I hadn't gone to class in the last month. I needed that time to continue my search.

I was glad for it too because it was during one of those hours that I was supposed to have been absent from the house, that I finally found something important. It was a closet within a closet, containing a hidden apparatus that pumped in and out like some sort of lung. The thickening tubes connected to it directly, and I managed to determine that this air system was separate from the icy air. my immediate thought was that she was keeping Rasta somewhere isolated with its own environment. That would have avoided a number of problems that would otherwise have exposed his presence in the house. She was smart. I had guessed it based on her study of the medical texts, but now I knew.

Those manic and sharp blue eyes hid piercing calculation. I knew that now too because I had the sense that she was on to me. I hadn't given myself away and I'd made no mistake, but she seemed to see it in me somehow. Did madness recognize madness? She made no immediate move against me. I hesitated for a few days out of fear, but then resumed my search when I felt I had no other choice. I'd mapped out the entire house and found no missing space. The entirety of house Moravetz was drawn out in my hidden notes, and there were no extra rooms. I'd even rented a sounder and gone over every inch of the basement. It was that drawing that struck home the horrifying truth of what I'd been mapping. I stared at it, highly aware of everything around me. My brown room hummed quietly

with the systems around it. Snow fell outside the window, and I was holding a picture of something I recognized. There was no more need for the game. In a shaking fury, I stormed through the freezing white hallways, hitting straight for Annetta's room. She sat within, writing in her white journal. She looked up with icy determination. I see from the look in your eyes that you understand.

I shook with the strain of repressed violence. Show me. Her hunch disappeared as she stood straight with ease and grace. An affectation, another lie. She moved to the cabinets in her bedroom walls and opened the one I'd found the drop of blood in. Are you sure? I kept my response quiet but fierce. Show me.

She pressed a hidden square in the cubicle space lifted. It had always been a sort of secret dumbwaiter. I'd never thought to look deeper into it, because the space was simply too small for a person. It was the perfect size, however, for the head of an aging, womanizing patriarch. The glass tubes moved with the mechanical case that came up. I understood now what had been done.

Annetta turned around and smiled. He can never leave me. It was what I'd suspected. The tubes I'd been mapping had been splayed out like a circulatory system, and I'd found the lungs. Rasta had never been in any room of the house. He'd been in the house itself, spayed out through every wall and floor. The tubes held his arteries and veins, and this box held his head. I hadn't expected, however, that the system had actually worked.

Rostomorovets was still alive. He stared at me, trying his best to whisper for help. Lady Moravets studied me with a bright gaze. Are you going to the police? I shuddered. I have to. This is monstrous. insane

Annette, do you see what you've done? She gave a slow nod. He can never leave me, or this house. I have everything I want. She took a step closer.

Before you inform anyone, I should tell you. I've invited your ex-girlfriend, the one you always talk about. She'll be coming here next for the next semester. You could simply keep this to yourself and stay. This house will need someone to take care of it after I'm gone.

Before that, I could help you learn. I froze, trying to comprehend what she was offering. She too had had a partner who had disappointed her and tried to leave. But she'd taken away that disappointment through science and magic. When I didn't respond, Annetta moved to her desk, called out a medical textbook, and held it out. I'd like to say I turned it down. 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 The nosleeppodcast.com and click on the Season Pass link. Purchasing a season pass will help support everyone who contributes to the podcast. And in return, you'll get 25 full-length episodes and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 1999. This is David Cummings. Thank you for listening and join us again next week for the next episode of the No Sleep podcast.

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