The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S6E01

Episode Date: September 20, 2015

It's episode 1 - the Season Premiere of Season 6. On this week's show we have five tales about bedroom bugaboos, missing minors, and illogical liftoffs and landings.The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first two tales. Trigger Warnings"The Strange Death of Arthur Warden" written by M.N. Malone and read by Mike DelGaudio & Nikolle Doolin. (Story starts at 00:04:00)"Black on Black" written by S.M. Piper and read by Jessica McEvoy & Nichole Goodnight. (Story starts at 00:22:40)"My Guardian Angel" written by Caity Reaburn and read by Erika Sanderson & David Cummings. (Story starts at 00:58:00)"Missing" written by L. Stark and read by David Ault & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts at 01:08:50)"I Was an Air Traffic Controller" written by Milos Bogetic and read by Peter Lewis & Nikolle Doolin & Mike DelGaudio & Nikolle Doolin & Erika Sanderson & David Cummings. (Story starts at 01:20:20)Click here to enter our Season 6 Sleepless ContestClick here for The NoSleep Podcast StoreClick here to learn more about S.M. PiperClick here to learn more about Milos BogeticClick here to learn more about Mike DelGaudioClick here to learn more about Nikolle DoolinClick here to learn more about Erika SandersonClick here to learn more about Peter LewisPodcast produced by: David CummingsMusic & Sound Design by: Brandon Boone & David Cummings."My Guardian Angel" illustration courtesy of Lukasz GodlewskiAudio program ©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. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a horror fiction podcast. By listening to our stories, you are choosing to be frightened and disturbed for your entertainment. You do so at your own risk. Brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast. It's the No Sleep Podcast. I'm David Cummings. Thanks for joining us. On this week's show, we have five tales about bedroom bugaboos, missing miners, and illogical liftoffs and landings. Well, hopefully better late than never, season six has arrived.

I can't thank all of you enough for your patience over the past few weeks. I simply couldn't ask for better, more supportive fans. I love all of you. I think a great way to start the new season would be to, oh, I don't know, give away a ton of stuff, so let's do that. As many of you know, our musical composer and backbone of the show, Brandon Boone, has an album called Sleepless, featuring arrangements of some of the music he's written for our show. It's a great album, and one I like to listen to when I'm relaxing or reading stories. Brandon has graciously offered to give away 10 downloadable copies of the album,

so you can listen to No Sleep Music whenever you want, especially while wearing your brand new No Sleep Podcast T-shirt. Yes, that's right. Each winner will also get a No Sleep Podcast T-shirt of their choice as part of the prize. To enter the sleepless contest, simply go to our contest page at contests.the no sleeppodcast.com to find out how to enter. And speaking of t-shirts, we finally have the no-sleep store open for business.

It's not quite full of merchandise yet, but our first t-shirt design is ready for ordering. Until we get our storefront up and running, please check the show notes for a link to our store to see the t-shirts, crew necks, and hoodies available. There's even wall art if you, you want to hang some no-sleep designs on your wall. And for those of you who were wonderful enough to pre-order your season past six, I haven't forgotten about your contest. I'll be giving away not five, but ten T-shirts to winners randomly selected from everyone who pre-ordered season past six. So that's a lot of music and swag up for grabs. Let's hope it signals the start of something great as we kick things.

off. Now, you've waited long enough. It's time to launch season six. In our first tale, we join the police as they investigate the mysterious death of a local man. The scene of the crime was ghastly, but wholly inexplicable given the setting. In this tale from author M. N. Malone, we learn about the man's strange obsession and how it could lead to a deeper understanding of how he died. Performing the tale are Mike Delgadoo and Nicole Doolin. So hold on to something because it's time to learn more about the strange death of Arthur Warden.

Aside from the splinters of the breached door, the ground floor apartment was relatively spotless. The glossed wooden floor that spanned the kitchenette and living room had been swept clean. The counters were pockmarked by neither crumb nor dish, and the white area carpet that sat squarely beneath a handful of black leather chairs and couches bore not so much as a faded stain. The large plasma screen was dustless, the stacks of Blu-rays and DVDs nearby untouched. Though the bathroom showed signs of a fairly recent shower, there was no evidence of anyone other than the apartment's owner having been there. Further investigations showed that not a single space in the entirety of the apartment was out of order.

Nothing had been ransacked, nothing had been stolen, and the sole occupant, a Mr. Arthur Warden, had seemingly made sure that every aspect of his life was perfectly aligned. The door had been both deadlocked and chained upon our arrival, and the windows had been locked as well, hidden behind drawn blinds. Our notification had been received due to a neighboring occupant, having grown increasingly concerned with the howls and screams purportedly coming from within Mr. Warden's residence. We found Arthur Warden dead in his bedroom upon our arrival. Given the nature of Mr. Warden's homestead, we had been less than prepared for what we witnessed upon entering his bedroom.

Where everything throughout the threshold had been pristine, we found ourselves in something not unlike the remnants of a torture chamber. Sprays of red dappled the white walls and sullied to the pattern comforter that had partially fallen from the bed. The floor was laden with the serpentine coils of spilled intestines. The body's limbs jabbed out in crooked, violent angles, splayed wide like those of a crippled spider. He lay face down in a pool of congealing blood. His brains dashed out in a coarse spatter that spanned. in the center of the room to its terminus at the far wall. I was not the only one to turn my eyes away immediately,

nor was I the sole member of the breach team to grow ill. How the others managed to take the photographs necessary without growing green? I'll never know. After the coroner had arrived and removed the body with the aid of the EMTs who had been on standby when we'd first come upon the scene, we canvassed the bedroom as best we could.

We found the sole window of the room to be locked tight just as the rest. We gathered a number of personal effects, Mr. Warden's cell phone, a handful of half-filled prescription bottles, and what appeared to be a handwritten journal with daily entries. We dusted for fingerprints where we had discovered the body and turned up with only two sets, those of Arthur Warden himself and a secondary pair, which we later identified as belonging to his wife from a previous marriage, Miss Diana Bennett. Having done all that we deemed possible upon the scene, we ferried Mr. Warden's personal effects to the crime lab

and began the identification process with the second pair of fingerprints that we'd discovered. Despite the absence of signs of forced entry or struggle, we were instructed to continue investigations as though the death of Mr. Warden were a homicide, most certainly because of the brutality we had unwittingly stumbled upon. The crime lab revealed no traces of foreign DNA found among the personal effects. In addition to this, we were notified that no record of potentially threatening phone calls

or messages could be traced on Mr. Warden's cell. The medications we had discovered were, for the most part, prescriptions for various gastrointestinal medications and sleep aids, all having been prescribed to him via his established physician at the local hospital. Nothing conclusive had been discovered from the journal, save for the fact that Mr. Warden had apparently lived a very frugal, simple lifestyle. We found ourselves in the difficult position of having to interrupt the lives of most of the occupants of the Art Deco apartment complex at 221 Beaumont. We began our interviews with a neighbor who had

called first, an elderly woman who went by the name Madge Donaker. Madge confided in us that she knew little about her neighbor from across the hall. From what we gathered, she had lived in the apartment complex for almost 25 years, alone, save for her three feline companions. She had, of course, passed by Mr. Warden's residence on a daily basis, but had never heard anything of the sort that she'd heard the night of our arrival. When they had bumped into each other while either simultaneously leaving or returning to their apartments, they had apparently exchanged only the most basic of pleasantries. When asked if she had ever witnessed anyone coming or going from Arthur Warden's apartment, especially on the night in question,

Ms. Donaker spoke to the negative, saying that, even though her neighbor had rarely left his apartment, even more rarely had company. Having gained almost no ground on the case, we excused Ms. Doniker, and continued interviewing the others who had lived in the apartment surrounding Mr. Wardens. Of the ten neighbors interviewed in the process, Ms. Donaker included, only one was able to give us information that we had yet to attain. Jack Redding, a 50-year-old shopkeep at a local grocery, had only moved into 21 Beaumont two years previous.

Not unlike his neighbors, he was a man who largely kept to himself, though of those we interviewed, he was among the most sociable. Mr. Redding, at first, seemed disoriented, almost fearful by his being drawn in in question. When we assured him that he was in no way under scrutiny as the perpetrator of the potential homicide, he seemed more at ease and began to speak more freely. Mr. Warden's bedroom shared a wall with Mr. Redding's living area.

The latter confessed that, on numerous nights, he had heard the man through the wall, moaning and growling and shuffling about. He had, of course, assumed that his neighbor had company in some capacity and that these sounds were the unfortunate byproduct of renting such a moderately furnished flat. When asked if he had ever contacted Mr. Warden about the noises, he expressed that he hadn't for fear that it would seem out of place. Thus the sounds continued, and Mr. Redding began to retire to his own bedroom earlier to evade them. Even though he assumed that Mr. Warden was accompanied in some capacity when he heard such noises,

he never heard anyone enter or leave his next-door neighbor's apartment. When we finally began to narrow our questioning down to the night we found Mr. Warden deceased, Mr. Redding confided that he had, in fact, heard his apartment. his neighbor's cries far before the call had been placed by Ms. Donaker. The sounds, he said, were accompanied by especially violent knocks against the wall that they shared, so loud and so numerous that Mr. Redding had considered calling us to file a disturbance complaint almost three hours before Ms. Donaker did. However, due to his admitted sheepish nature, he instead chose to retire for the evening

and chose to block the thumping and moaning out with noise-canceling headphones. It was only when we asked him how often such things had occurred that he was able to provide us with something new, for what we thought was a relatively isolated incident had, in fact, been occurring almost nightly for the entire two-year span that Mr. Redding had resided at 221 Beaumont. More than once, he had attempted to move into another apartment at the same address, only to be overlooked due to his concurrent occupancy. When asked why he hadn't moved to a different complex, he explained that the landlord who owned the building had halved his monthly rent after Reading had finally expressed his anger and threatened to break his lease. It was clear then that these incidents were in some nature related to the death of Arthur Warden, and we were forced to go in the only direction that we possibly could. Mr. Warden's ex-wife, Diana Bennett. The crime lab had struck gold on their search for the owner of the second pair of five.

fingerprints we discovered at the scene when Miss Bennett applied for a position at a bank. The fingerprinting necessary to attain such a position had flashed a red flag, and her information was directed to us immediately, and it was considered a prodigious stroke of luck that her and our timing had synced up so well. It was clear, though, that the plot was simply thickening, for Miss Bennett had applied for a position at a bank in her hometown, located nearly 13 hours away. The following day we contacted the police department that oversaw the jurisdiction in which she resided and faxed them the information. They were able to get in touch with Ms. Bennett and direct her to us for questioning. Admittedly, it was a hassle to get her to comply, though we were eventually able to without employing any of the excessive tactics sometimes necessary.

On the department's dime, Ms. Bennett was flown in and driven to the station where we attempted our utmost to both welcome her and facilitate her. her compliance. She was already aware of Mr. Warden's passing, and it was clear that she was upset. We began by discussing their marriage, which had ended five years prior. The divorce, she said, had been no fault, and they had managed to separate their lives with relatively little issue. They had remained friends, according to her, and had talked at least fairly frequently over the telephone, which our crime lab supported. When we asked what they discussed, she made it clear that it was mostly day-to-day things, what they had been doing since they'd spoken last, what they were doing for upcoming events, etc. When we inquired as to the nature of their love lives, she

became flustered. To her knowledge, Mr. Warden's private life had remained relatively stagnant after her leaving. Hers, on the other hand, had improved considerably, most likely due to her being nearly 20 years Mr. Wardens' junior, and having found someone of a more suitable age. She had dated, eventually choosing to return to her maiden name for both personal and business reasons, and she had had at least two steady relationships in the half a decade their separation span. Still, it seemed odd that she should be so upset, especially if she had moved on. Naturally, we decided to bring this up. She countered this question suddenly with one of her own.

Could she see how he had died? We exchanged wary glances. Here was a woman who had been, perhaps, the most of her own. most intimate part of a dead man's life. She had been married to him, she had lived with him, and even after their divorce, she had continued to associate and care for him, if not simply from afar. We attempted to dissuade her, being already relatively assured that she had no hand in his passing, but she demanded to see the photographs we had taken. Hesitantly, we complied, hoping that it might in some way give us something else to work with, if she was as intimately attuned to his well-being as she

claimed she could possibly have provided us with further leads to consider. Names of individuals who Mr. Warden had wronged or misjudged or caused issue for. My partner laid the folder in front of her and I watched her face as she flipped it open and scanned the pictures within. Tears sprung to her eyes and ran along the contours of her jaw. She began to whimper, then as she brought her hands about her nose, shaking her head in vigorous opposition to what she was seeing. perceiving her reaction as potentially detrimental to our investigation, I quickly retrieve the images and placed them in my briefcase.

It was some time before Miss Bennett was able to speak without crying again, but when she did and we asked her for any other information, all she said was that no man or woman had ever hated her late ex-husband or wished him harm, at least to the best of her knowledge. We thanked her for her time, apologized for our forcing her to confront the double. death of Mr. Warden and prepared her to be sent back home. I drove her to the airport myself. Before she left the car, she stopped and looked me in the eye. You kept a journal, you know. I informed her that we had taken it as potential evidence, but had ultimately decided that it was a dead end, considering that it only ever had detailed his daily exploits and held no other

evidence of anything sinister. She shook her head. He kept another in the same. He kept another in the the bookstand, the one across from the bed. She left before I could ask anything more, tears streaming again. That night, I returned to 221 Beaumont. I slipped past the police tape and tiptoed through the late Arthur Warden's home, a home undisturbed, but falling victim to time without the aid of its incessant keeper. I entered the bedroom and there I saw the stain that had once been the man, a rigid carmine shadow that had splintered across the wood. I felt my stomach began to turn and moved away, groping for the bookcase in the dark.

I found it, tucked away on the uppermost shelf, hidden between the very end of the bookcase and a massive volume, all but invisible at first glance. I plucked it from its place and opened it. The journal was dated back almost four decades, and, in it, I found the dreams of Arthur Warden. It began with the darkness, he said within, and gradually he began to realize movement. At first he mistook it for his surroundings,

the shifting of shadows, the slouching crawl of hidden demons praying in the dark. But he began to believe instead that it was neither the incessant cloak of night nor what might lie within, but rather himself moving. Each night it grew faster until the movement tore at his skin and ripped at his hair, until it bellowed sharp whistling cries in his ears. Each morning, he said, he awoke deafened by the sounds. That screeching propulsion coupled with something deeper, like the steady thunder of timpany in the distant darkness, and swooning with vertigo,

although he never could remember what he'd seen. Increasingly, he became aware of direction until he was sure that his howling nighttime movements were jetting falls, a sharp, angleless drop into a deeper darkness. It was with this revelation that he began to write more frantically. I skipped to the final entry. It spoke of how tired he was. It spoke of how the falling dreams had taken everything from him,

how they debased his life and thrust it into just as perpetual a descent as his knights always were. He expressed his fears of an eternity like this and wished that something, anything, could remove the hideous trajectory from his mind. More than anything, though, he feared what would happen when he hit the bottom. I closed the journal and glanced at the ceiling, my eyes drawing a line between the splattermark and the dark morning sky inevitably above. I winced as I heard the board's crack and the plaster give. I shielded my eyes when the body lay crooked again before me. It might seem a joke that I've chosen to write or even close an official report like this. More so even that I have chosen to end my career on the same note.

But I assure you, gentlemen, that this is no joke. A world where a man dies by his dreams is no place where justice or equity or reason can be found. It is a hideous, torturous place in which none are safe, and I feel that by my stumbling upon the strange death of Arthur Warden, I have captured the attention of the great cosmic eye that is the root of all that is wrong and dark and capricious and evil and endless. I fear from my life, not because logic dictates that Arthur Warden should have died by the hand of a murderous man, or because I go now into the future with no means of provision, but rather because of what I dreamt last night. I was falling in the darkness,

and I am terrified that I know exactly what will happen when I hit the bottom. It's quite common for young children to be afraid of the dark. The primal fear of the unknown keeps many a youngster up at, night. But as we learn from author S.M. Piper, one young girl realizes that her fear is not imaginary. To her, there really is something hiding in the dark of her bedroom. Performing this tale are Jessica McAvoy and Nicole Goodnight. So make sure you keep the light on, because without it, it's hard to see black on black. As a young child, I always slept with the lights off.

I prided myself on being more mature than the children my age who feared the dark. My first floor room was directly in the middle of an alley just outside, and barely any light ever filtered through my windows. Still, I didn't mind. I wasn't some baby who needed light to sleep. I was a fully grown, extra mature, six-year-old girl. The first night I saw it, I barely understood what I was looking at.

I laid there on my bed, illuminated by a sliver of silver moonlight, staring into the pure darkness of the corner of my room. That corner had always fascinated me. It grew so dark at night that the dresser I knew should be there seemed to vanish completely. swallowed up in the blackness. I would trace my eyes along the visible edge of the drawers, trying to figure out the exact spot where the dresser ended and the darkness began. But that night was different.

I couldn't see my dresser at all, as if the darkness had expanded, bulged out from its hiding spot and claimed new tank. territory in my room. And there, in the center, I was sure, were eyes. I couldn't see them, not really, but I had a concrete awareness that I was looking into the eyes of something looking back at me. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't see anything other than its eyes, floating there in the darkness, watching me, aware of me. I pulled my legs up to my chest and hugged them, staring back with a frown as if my overt displeasure would make whatever it was go away.

The second realization was slower to sink in than the first, but as a cold chill crept up my spine, I was no less certain of it. Whatever it was meant to hurt me. I'm not sure what it did to provoke a reaction from me. Honestly, I'm not sure it did anything at all. But maybe it breathed or moved, or maybe my young brain had just had enough fear for one night.

I drew in a lung full of air and screamed at the top of my lungs. Through the house, I could hear my parents noisily awaken, stumbling down the hallway towards my room in a groggy panic. As they approached me, the thing in the dark didn't move an inch. It just stared at me, watching as my mother threw the door open. Light from the hallway flowed into my room and banished the darkness. revealing my dresser sitting there just as I would expect.

I pointed and cried and begged my parents to believe me, but really, what could I say? A six-year-old doesn't have the vocabulary to describe a monster she sensed with none of her senses. They turned the light on and my mother calmed me down, promising to buy me a night's light in the morning. I didn't like the thought of it, but I didn't have the energy to complain. In the light of the next day, however, I was fearless. There was no uncertainty of what I had seen, but the terror was gone, replaced once more by my young petulance. I bristled at the thought of having a nightlight and begged my parents to reconsider.

They told me it was for my own good, and that I should try some time. before deciding I didn't like it. Small and made of cheap plastic, my nightlight was a sorry sight to behold. It was designed like a candle with a clear plastic flame encasing the actual bulb. The light it produced was barely enough to reach the corner of the room where I'd seen the monster. That night, I told my parents it was a waste of time, that it wouldn't be enough even if I wanted, to be a dumb baby who used a nightlight. They smiled and nodded and told me to have a good night.

When the light was off and the door was closed, I turned towards the nightlight. I was going to pull it out of the socket and show my parents that I was an adult who could handle sleeping in the dark. Just as I was reaching for it, I glanced towards the corner and instantly knew the thing in the dark had returned. Just as the night before, it stayed still and silent, watching me. I felt the creeping fear from its presence once more, but I was determined to prove myself.

Besides, I had no proof that the thing was bad. Without taking my eyes from the corner, I reached out from my bed and flipped the nightlight off. It moved. Unquestionably, though I still couldn't truly see its form, I knew it had advanced in the second after the light had dimmed. It stopped just at the edge of a streak of moonlight, weaker now as the moon was waning. I practically leaped out of my skin, screaming and throwing the switch back, grateful for whatever meager light the nightlight could provide. The thing in the dark retreated backwards again, hovering at the edge of its lightless domain.

It was then that I noticed the thing not only seemed to dwell in the darkness, but to surround itself with it. The nightlight's illumination stopped as it neared the corner. The dimming effect wasn't too powerful, but it was plain. to see. From then on, the thing in the dark appeared in my room every night without fail. It would sit in the corner and watch me, getting as close as the light allowed. Sometimes I would try sleeping with the light on, just to have one night where I didn't lay awake for hours, but it wasn't much better. I resigned myself to just living with it. Don't get me wrong. This is not a story of a girl befriending a monster and the two of us living at peace with one another. If there was any

understanding between myself and the thing in the dark, it could only have been that it was a predator and I was prey. That said, I learned to cope. I didn't have much choice. My parents were pretty dug into our little apartment, and the thing didn't seem to be leaving any time soon. I stayed wary, but I grew accustomed. In this time, I also developed a fear of the dark. Yes, the thing I'd made fun of others for had come back to haunt me.

How poetic. I wasn't sure if it was based on anything real or not either. I never sensed the thing in the dark anywhere except for my room. I walked past dark, wooded areas, always in the orange glow of street lamps, and stared into sewer grades and service tunnels from the safety of several dozen yards, but I never felt its presence. As far as I knew, it was confined. mind to my room, but I played it safe regardless.

My phobia became well known among my friends, and from there it disseminated to those who knew my name. As my peers aged out of their fear of the dark, mine only worsened and made me stick out like a sore thumb. I wouldn't enter closets for fear of the door being closed behind me. I wouldn't stay at friends' houses past mid-afternoon, and even hiding under my desk during earthquake drills set me ill at ease. As my reputation grew, I became known as an easy mark in low-light conditions for any bully with something to prove. It would later occur to me that the darkest place I was okay with was my own room, where the thing dwelt.

The girl's got asleep after all. For my 13th birthday, my parents bought me a flashlight. It was the single greatest gift I had received until that point. I took it everywhere with me, shining it into any dark corner I came across. It emboldened me and made me feel powerful, like I could finally take control of my life back. The thing in the dark couldn't get near me anymore, because I was a warrior of light. As I sat in my room one night, waving my flashlight back and forth across the darkness, I began to grow curious of what exactly it was that had tormented me for so long.

Even though I couldn't see its indistinct form, I knew it had a form. I could tell there was something there, but though I spent hours trying, I could never even determine its rough silhouette. Tonight, I told myself, I would learn more about it. I kept the glow of my flashlight trained on the ground, an impassable barrier to the thing in the dark. The beam was wider than it was long, and didn't travel very well, even in my same. somewhat cramped bedroom. It was an acceptable middle ground between the weak nightlight on the wall and the powerful ceiling light above. As soon as I turned my nightlight off, I felt the familiar sensation of the thing moving closer. It waited at the edge of my flashlight, and I peered at

it from my bed. My light was held high above my head, draping me in a curtain of light. light that extended to the walls as I huddled in the corner of my room, seating more and more ground to the thing in an effort to get a better look at it. It's so dumb, I recall whispering to myself, as if acknowledgement of what I was doing would somehow give me a shield of youth, protecting me against evil monsters that dwell in the dark. Closer and closer I drew my beam to me, and closer and closer the thing in the dark approached. It didn't move side to side as it advanced, nor did it even seem to shift its weight. It was as if it just slid along the ground, its passionless eyes staring into mine, waiting to see what I would do. As soon as I felt I was about to

figure out its silhouette. I felt something wet run along the base of my pinky finger on the hand holding the flashlight. I startled and jerked the light forward, pushing the thing back, away, nowhere near me. My heart was racing, but I grinned. It was an adrenaline rush to let that thing get so close it could touch me and be able to hold my own. With a small laugh, I briefly glanced down at my hand, now clutched to my chest, to see if it had left any residue behind. I checked again, not having seen my pinky at first glance and assuming it was still underneath the flashlight. Looking a third time, I only realized what had happened when I saw the dark trail of blood running down the side of my hand. I couldn't find my finger because there was no finger

to find. Screaming as loud and as hard as I could I'd bolted for the door. I was in a panic, at once heading for the doorknob, the light switch and trying to control the direction of my flashlight. The thing suddenly produced a thick, buzzing sound and another lance of pain streaked down the side of my face, followed by a half dozen more along my side and back as I stumbled towards the door. The thing in the dark moved on top of me, and I swung my flashlight wildly around, losing valuable time as blood quickly drained out of my body. Just as I was becoming convinced, I would die on the floor of my bedroom. My parents burst into their room. Instantly, the buzzing stopped.

The weight on my back vanished. They both screamed when they saw me, and my father rushed to call nine. one one while my mother knelt beside me and held me to her chest. I embraced her, and then unconsciousness. I woke up days later, restrained to a bed. A white curtain was draped around me, and from beyond it, there were beeps and bustle one expects from a hospital. Calling out, I was rewarded with a deluge of nurses and doctors, all of them checking my vital and inspecting my wounds, I could feel they were deep without needing to look. Someone held a mirror up to my face, showing me the four-inch scar from the side of my neck

and across my cheek. When I asked about my pinky, people looked at me like I was a wounded dog. It was never located. Next came the interrogation. I almost felt as though I'd done something wrong based on the intensity of the questions. They asked me about my life at home, how I was treated by my parents if I ever felt like my life was in danger. That one caught my attention. Yes, I did feel like my life was in danger.

Could I identify my attacker? I told them that I could, but only by the feeling that ran up my spine whenever it was near. Could I describe it? I said all I could think to say. Black on black. My parents were brought in, and slowly the whole story was explained to me.

My parents had rushed me to the hospital and taken me into the ICU. While I was treated, they were questioned over and over regarding my injuries. They said it was unlikely they were self-inflicted, but my parents were. parents were unable to give them satisfying answers. Thankfully, they weren't officially arrested before analysis of the wounds, suggested that unless my parents had curved talons, there was no way they could have done this to me. Curved talons, I thought ruefully.

So, I did learn something about it. Since nobody was offering up any answers, they started throwing around terms like paranoid delusions and suicidal ideation, and for the next month I was kept under watch. It wasn't ideal, but I wasn't complaining. Even at night, the hospital glowed like a beacon compared to my dark bedroom. But of course, a month came and went, and before I knew it, I found myself back in my home, back in my room.

My parents stayed with me for hours that night, sitting with me on my bed as I did my best to show them the thing in the dark. They didn't believe me. They would shine my flashlight in the corner to show me that nothing was there. I told them they were missing the point, and they exchanged worried glances between one another. I dreaded going back to school, but I wasn't prepared for the reality of it. My absence, it seemed, had only made my reputation stronger,

further shoehorning me into the role of the weird girl. Psycho, someone would whisper as they'd pass by, loud enough for me to hear. I'd leave to go to the restroom, only to have the word schizo scrawled across my papers when I came back. The one person I could find comfort in was Naomi. She was the same grade as me, and we'd known each other since either of us could remember. There had been times when we drifted apart, usually when she wanted to make another bid at being a cool girl. Well, I just wanted to keep to myself.

But we always found one another again. We met up during lunch on the day I got back, and I vented all the awful things our peers were doing to me. Then I told her about the thing in the dark. So you're saying that there really is a monster in your closet? That was her first question. I thought I'd given a pretty thorough explanation, but I went back and repeated myself. I explained that no, it doesn't live in the closet. It lives in darkness.

It moves through darkness. It only exists in darkness. Part of me had just assumed that there was something wrong with adults, something that made them unable to understand the concept of the thing. But I grew more and more frustrated as Naomi made the same wrong. assumptions about it as everyone else. Was it so hard to understand? I invited her to come to my house to sleep over and see it for herself,

and she looked at me with an odd half-smile, as if I'd suggested we play in a cat box. She eventually agreed, however, and we set a time that my parents would pick her up later that night. I went straight to my room after school, closed the house. the door and drawing the blinds. Flashlight in hand and nightlight on. I flicked off my light and huddled in the far corner of my room, feeling out for the thing in the dark.

It wasn't there. Not dark enough, I figured. I turned my flashlight off, knowing that the nightlight would be able to keep me safe. Huddled in the corner and must have waited for an hour, as the sun slowly set, waiting for the eyes to appear, staring emotionlessly at me from across the room. They never did. Despite myself, I grew anxious. Tonight, of all nights, it had to disappear.

Had it left in the month I'd been gone? The night before, when I tried to show my parents, had it not been there either? I felt like it had been, but maybe I was too distracted with trying to convince them it was real to notice it was gone. Lifting my hand to my face, I traced my fingers along the still healing scar. That was still there, still real. It had existed at some point. I was sure of that. Time passed slowly in my little room.

room as I waited for the thing to appear, but it still felt too soon when the time came to pick up Naomi. Reluctantly, I turned the light on and left the room, hoping that perhaps it just felt shy, or that I'd somehow locked it out of the room. Maybe if I left and came back, the thing would be there again, and I would have something to show Naomi. But it wasn't. It wasn't. It wasn't. It was a We went to my room and I had her sit in the corner beside me. We turned the lights off and waited. Naomi giggling and making dumb, ooh-o-sounds while I stared hatefully at the corner.

Was it doing this on purpose? Why wouldn't it show up tonight? Why couldn't it have left me alone all those nights I cried myself to sleep? Praying the power didn't go out while I was unconscious. What was it doing? Naomi suggested we take the nightlight out. Well, she didn't suggest it so much as call me a baby for still having a nightlight, but I didn't care either way.

It was a matter of survival, and I knew that the thing in the dark existed. Whatever was happening tonight was some sort of trick, and I wasn't going to let my guard down again. Instead, we turned the light on and talked about what had happened over the past month. The newest gossip from school and how staying at the hospital had been for me. Our energy ran out around midnight, and together we passed out on my bed. I never slept without my nightlight. Seven years of living with the thing in the dark had drilled that into me

to the point where it would have been easier for me to stay up for three days. straight than to fall asleep in pitch black. So when I awoke later that night, my room completely devoid of light, I honestly thought I must have gone blind. My second thought was that it didn't matter much if I hadn't. My eyes would be gouged out soon enough. The chill was unmistakably there. I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling, and from directly above me, the thing in the dark stared back. I was so frozen in fear I couldn't even tremble. I just stared up at it as I'd done countless nights before, with the acute awareness of nothing between me and it. For minutes, the two of us watched one

another. I had thought I understood it. I thought I knew that it would always come as close as the darkness allowed, but now it just waited, watching. With nothing to lose, I whispered out Naomi's name into the darkness. I repeated it a little louder, and she stirred from beside me. A third time, and she finally responded, half asleep. Unplug the nightlighting. Unplug the nightlight. Don't be a scaredy cat. With no idea of how to act in this situation, I smiled up at the thing in the dark and suppressed a soft laugh. We were going to die.

Do you feel cold? Naomi didn't respond to that for a moment, and I almost thought that it had somehow gotten her already, hacked her to pieces without her even realizing. the way it had taken my finger. A little. It wasn't the right answer. She wouldn't be able to see it,

even if she stared directly at it. I have to go to the bathroom. Again, Naomi stayed silent, but I hadn't really said it for her. Slowly, I oozed down the bed, never taking my eyes off the spot, where I knew the thing in the dark to be. It didn't budge, though I was kidding myself if I believed I would be able to outrun it.

It wasn't just in the darkness. It was the darkness. It was as much above Naomi as it was directly beside me, against me. Somehow, I reached the edge of my bird, unskish, gazed. Having come this far, I sat up and got to my feet, turning around to continue facing it. Still, it watched me. It hadn't moved, hadn't turned its head at all as I inched across the room, but I knew its eyes never left mine. I was standing in front of my bedroom door now, the light switch easily within arm's reach. A simple action. A second, two at most, and we would be safe.

It knew what I was thinking, and together we watched one another, waiting to see if the other would make a move. The alternative was the door. If I could crack it just a little, the light from the hallway would shield me from it. It would be trapped in that half of the room. with Naomi. Cautiously, I reached my hand out. I glanced away for half a second, just enough to spot the doorknob and make sure I was guiding my hand towards it.

The thing in the dark flinched. Easy, I whispered, sounding much calmer than I felt. With every second that passed, I felt as though my legs would be cut out from underneath me, and the thing would fall on to me, finishing the job it had started. But the attacks never came. Even when my fingers curled around the doorknob, and I gently eased the latch out of place,

the thing in the dark waited. I almost cried when I cracked the door open and saw the first sliver of light spill across the room. Emotion flooded over me, the terror and dread slowly draining out of my body. I opened the door further and bathed myself in the light, let it wash away the worries. For a long time, I stood still in the light, watching the thing in the dark hover over Naomi. It was waiting for me to leave. A courtesy, I wondered, or perhaps a necessity.

Either way, its intentions were clear. Earlier, I mentioned that this is not a story of girl befriends monster, but I don't think that's for lack of trying. As I stood in the light, watching it wait for me to go, I realized it was offering me a proposition, sleep in the dark comfortably never again worry about your own safety just occasionally bring others in and leave the room turning towards the hall i took a deep breath a single step and then i thrust my hand out at the light switch the amputation this time was much less neat the light came on to

just in time for me to see my left hand fly across the room, landing on the bed where I'd lay only moments ago. I screamed and fell to my knees, clutching my wound to my chest. Naomi shot up in bed, looked at me, then began screaming herself. Once again, my parents rushed to my aid, wrapping every piece of cloth they could find around my arm. Naomi stood against the far wall. I didn't do that. I didn't do that. I didn't do that. I didn't do that. Another trip to the hospital. Another round of questioning.

Unlike the last time, at least, they had been able to recover my hand and even reattach it after intense surgery. I'll never stretch my fingers out all the way again, but that's fine. I have bigger things to worry about now. It can leave my room. I never knew that, because for the first seven years I put up with that thing. I never once left my room. It's more patient than I ever gave it credit for, because now I see it everywhere. In dark, wooded areas, in sewer grates and service tunnels. Sometimes I see it through a crack in a closet, and I think of Naomi.

me. She visited me three or four times in the hospital, but eventually stopped coming. I learned later that she told people I cut my own hand off when she wouldn't believe my fairy tales. Truthfully, I'm glad for her, glad she doesn't have to believe what happened that night. I keep two things on me at all times now. My flashlight, of course, and a small note. When I first bought the note pad, I wrote in big block letters on the front, every scar a lesson. I thought it sounded cool at the time. But now, when I look at it, I just wonder how many more lessons I can take. Still, I open it up every night before I go to sleep, immersed in the glow of a floodlight, running on an independent generator.

and I read the three listings to myself. Curved talons. Patient. We thank you for being with us for our devilishly dark tales. If you would like to find out how you can hear the full-length versions of our audio program, please visit the no-sleeppodcast.com to learn about our season pass program. 25 episodes each over two hours long and three exclusive bonus episodes

all for only 1999. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for listening. Join us again next week when the darkness pulls you away from sleep. This audio program is copyright 2015 to 2016, Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc.