The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S6E14

Episode Date: January 3, 2016

It's episode 14 of Season 6. On this week's show we have four tales about supernatural settings and perils from the past. The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first two tales. "Old Florida Boat Trip" written by R.L. Erisman and read by Mike DelGaudio & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts at 00:04:00) "That Old Chicken Coop" written by Rona Vaselaar and read by Jessica McEvoy & Jesse Cornett & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts at 00:28:30) "Hotel Necessity" written by Doug Hantke and read by Peter Lewis & Nikolle Doolin & David Ault & Mike DelGaudio & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts at 01:07:00) "My Old Best Friend" written by Rona Vaselaar and read by & Jessica McEvoy & Nichole Goodnight. (Story starts at 01:49:55) Click here for Rona Vaselaar's book, "Colors of Death"  Click here for Doug Hantke's book, "No Motive for Murder"  Click here to Doug Hantke's sequel, "God's Game"  Click here to learn more about Mike DelGaudio  Click here to learn more about Erika Sanderson  Click here to learn more about Jessica McEvoy  Click here to learn more about Jesse Cornett  Click here to learn more about Peter Lewis  Click here to learn more about Nikolle Doolin  Click here to learn more about David Ault  Click here to learn more about Nichole Goodnight  Podcast produced by: David Cummings Music & Sound Design by: Brandon Boone & David Cummings. "Old Florida Boat Trip" illustration courtesy of Luke Godlewski Audio program ©2016 - 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 Four Tales.

about supernatural settings and perils from the past. A happy new year to one and all from us here at the No Sleep Podcast. I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday season and have started the new year well. We're hoping 2016 will be a year full of fun chills and thrills, and we have plenty in store to keep your night spooky and sleepless. Since this is our 14th episode of season 6, I just wanted to remind those of you who have purchased this and the other 13 episodes so far this season, that you're eligible for an upgrade to a full season pass. Just send me an email at David at the nosleeppodcast.com and let me know you'd like an upgrade. I'll do my best to get you set up as quickly as I can.

I want to bring to your attention a new book from one of the podcast's most prolific authors. You'll likely recognize the name Rona Vassilar. Rona is an outstanding writer who has had her work featured on the show many times in the past few years. In fact, we'll be featuring two new stories from Rona this week to give you a taste of her excellent writing style. Rona recently released her first book entitled Colors of Death Fifteen Tales of Horror It's an outstanding collection of many of her stories

and it's now available as a paperback or an e-book Please check the show notes to find out more about it and to support her talent One of our other authors this week is Doug Henke who has contributed excellent stories to the show in the past, and who also has novels available online. You can find out more about Doug's novels, No Motive for Murder, and the sequel, God's Game, in the show notes.

It's wonderful to have such outstanding writers contributing their work to our show, and since the new year has begun, and our writers, narrators, musicians, and illustrators are ready to kick things off. Let's pop the cork. and start the show. In our first tale, we're on a boat and heading south from Fort Lauderdale. As we learn from author R. L. Erisman, a man and his father are running the boat down the coast for business, but the unexpected need to stop and find a place to dock for the night

leads them to discover some of the areas stranger locals. The man soon realizes that there are bizarre things going on down there, things which might be better left alone. Performing this tale are Mike Delgado and Erica Sanderson. So think twice if you're ever offered the chance for an old Florida boat trip. This happened about 10 years ago. I was in my early 20s then and had just returned to my hometown for summer break from college. After finals and an almost seven-hour drive from Tallahassee to Fort Lauderdale, I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep for about a week. My dad gave me a day to rest and then proposed an adventure. Usually, I would have been a lazy asshole and said maybe another time, but this sounded too great to pass up. My dad was in the boat business.

He had just sold a boat to a client overseas and his usual shipper was booked. The plan was simple. We would drive the boat from its dock just south of Fort Lauderdale to the port of Jacksonville. We would cruise for as long as we could stand it on the first day and either anchor somewhere and sleep in the cabin or try to find a relatively cheap hotel with a dock. The boat was only 28 feet long, so the cabin was pretty small for two adult men. It had no working air conditioning, so we were leaning towards finding a hotel, but we left that up in the air in the spirit of being spontaneous. By the end of the second day, we should have made it to Jacksonville if our calculations were correct, and after staying there overnight, we would see the loading of the boat onto the ship. in the morning. From there, we would rent a car and drive home, and the boat would be on its way to Europe. We shoved off just after daybreak on a warm Florida morning with a bag of breakfast

burritos, a few bags of chips, half a case of bottled water, a large cooler with a 12-pack of beer and two large public subs, and a pint of bourbon. We headed out into the ocean by way of the Port Everglades Inlet. There was a little chop outside, but nothing too rough. I was never a morning person, but the feeling of steaming out to the ocean while the sun rose is just an unbeatable experience. I'd grown up on the water. Whatever petty problems I had melted away out there on the ocean. People call me strange, but the best damn smell in the world comes from the exhaust of an old inboard boat engine. I was glad to be home. For a few hours, I stayed on top of the small tower with my binoculars, spotting large sea turtles and various other ocean-going creatures. It was

around 10 in the morning, but I decided to crack my first beer, because why not? We cruised past the Hillsborough Inlet without incident. Everything was going great, but by the time we were nearing the Jupiter Inlet, the ocean was beginning to act up. After checking the weather report on the VHF radio, we decided that we were going to have to spend the rest of the day, and possibly the rest of the trip on the ditch. The ditch is what my dad called the intercoastal, a waterway that stretches most of the eastern seaboard. The portion of the intra-coastal that I was used to in Fort Lauderdale was a large man-made canal with tons of boat traffic.

Think of it like I-95 of the boating world. A million-dollar houses lined both sides and the rich would sit outside by their pools and watch the yachts go by. But as you go north, it starts to change. After a while, the rural areas in between towns grow larger and nature starts to creep in. The waterway winds like a river and you begin to feel surrounded by green. nature instead of gray seawalls. People already think of Florida as a weird place, but you haven't seen anything until you move away from the cities.

Rural Florida contains a special kind of strange that is hard to convey in words. I watched a man drift by on two large pontoon floats with a picnic table strapped to the top. He was puttering along with a trolling motor and was selling hot dogs for a dollar each while dancing on top of the table. I kind of wanted one of those hot dogs, but my dad thought it was a bad idea. It was late afternoon when it began to rain. It was a light rain at first, and I could still make out the numbers on the navigational markers that stuck out of the water every so often.

The previous owner had stripped the boat of its electronics, so I kept track of where we were by following along in the chart book I had brought along with us. We made decent progress, but as it got later, the rain started coming down harder and harder. After a few hours of inching along in a heavy rain, we had gotten pretty wet and decided to start looking for somewhere to stay the night. The only sign of civilization we had seen for a while were a few trailer parks and small rundown houses with lots of land in between them. Soon we didn't know exactly where we were because the rain had obscured my view of the navigation markers. We knew that we would have to stop soon because we couldn't see shit and would run aground if we weren't careful. At some point I realized it had been.

too long since the last navigation marker. Neither the rain was too heavy to see them, or we had veered off the main channel and were no longer on the intercoastal. After another half hour, I was sure we had taken a wrong turn of sorts. The charbook was soaked that started to fall apart in my hands. I cracked a beer and looked through my binoculars at a whole lot of gray. I could barely make out what looked like yet another old RV or trailer park at the edge of the water coming up on the left. My dad asked for the binoculars and asked him what he saw. He replied in a worry tone that he saw a whole lot of jack shit. He said we should dock at this trailer park coming up and see if there was a motel nearby and if we could rent a dock slip for the night.

We were soaked, could use a nice warm meal. We were in a narrow part of the channel when the engine began to sputter. We could feel the shaft lock up underneath us. Just like that, we dead in the water. We both figured pretty quickly that something had gotten wrapped up in the prop. I didn't like the idea, but I knew what had to be done. I took my pocket knife out of my backpack and took my shirt off. I climbed down into the water of the swim platform onto the trance of the boat. The water was murky. I had to feel my way under the boat to the propeller. I could feel a rope wrapped tightly around the prop and started cutting it loose. Once I had cut the rope free, I noticed that it was attached to something on the other end.

I gave it a tug and realized it was tied to a branch that was about half a foot underwater near the edge of the channel. I wondered what the other end was attached to. It didn't make any sense, but the first thing that came to my paranoid mind was a booby trap, or maybe just some jack-ass kids looking to fuck up someone's day. My dad fired the engine back up, and we continued up the channel. The trailer park up ahead didn't seem to have any docks with an actual seawall, so we pulled up as close as we could and hopped off with some dock lines, tied up to a nearby tree.

Some locals were walking toward us now, and the rain was clearing up just enough to help with the visibility a bit. There were three of them. The sight of them gave me goosebumps and made me wish I hadn't watched deliverance a few months ago on cable. It was strange. I noticed that they all had cauliflower ear, an affliction that was usually only seen in career boxers and wrestlers, too many blows to the ear without proper medical attention.

I also noticed the SS Thunderbolt tattoo peaking out from under one of their collars. The fuck y'all doing here? It was the one in the middle, being all friendly and such. We briefly explained our situation and asked if there was a motel in the area. They turned their backs to us and talked amongst themselves for a moment, and then one of them told us that they would show us to Savannah's place and that she ran a bed and breakfast. Once we got there, I was skeptical as to whether this place was an actual bed and breakfast.

No signs. No nothing. Authentic old Florida experience. He patted me on the back as he spoke through a shit-eating grin. It was an old two-story house in questionable condition. I heard the hum of a generator, and at that point noticed that there were no electric poles anywhere. We were more isolated than I thought. We paid the girl up front $50, and she gave us some fresh towels and a bar of soap. After a nice hot shower and a surprisingly decent meal of catfish and fried okra,

my dad was starting to feel better about our situation. He decided to turn in early so we could get up with a soft. sunrise and make up for lost time during today's bad weather. I took a good pull from the pint of bourbon, I retreat for my backpack. I wasn't tired, and I didn't feel like listening to my dad snore up a storm six feet away from my little-ass bed. The girl downstairs was cute. I decided to try my luck. She could wear the hell out of some overalls. I asked her if she wanted to go out to the boat for a beer or two. Sorry, I'm busy tonight. We're all busy tonight. There was a menacing smile on her face.

She explained that tonight was a special night for their town, and almost everyone would be celebrating. She noticed that I had no idea what the hell she was talking about and excused herself. I couldn't tell if she was bashful because she realized I was a total outsider and not just a friend or visiting family member, or if she was nervous like she said something she should not have. Something didn't feel right here. something about these people their eyes were too black the rain had stopped by now and it was about

eleven o'clock i sat on the back deck of the boat and cracked a beer i was feeling fucking restless i took another pull from the pint and tried to think on why my mind wouldn't slow down something didn't feel right here something was wrong and it wasn't just the usual weird-ass florida kind of wrong I decided to go for a walk and stretch my legs. There was a handful of floodlights attached to high poles to provide light. It almost seemed like an encampment instead of an actual town. There was probably a dozen or so small buildings and trailers that all looked to be an ill repair. One off to the side housed a handful of generators with extension cores running in every direction to the various other ramshackle buildings.

I walked the entire perimeter of the area, probably a few miles worth. A few things bothered me. One, where the fuck was everybody? It was late, but there didn't seem to be any evidence of anyone nearby. And yes, I peeked in a few windows. When I start to get a good buzz going, I like to explore. Can't say it hasn't gotten me in trouble a few times, but it is what it is. The other thing that bothered me was that after circling around the whole place,

there was no road leading out. I saw a few old pickups and a couple dirt bites. around, but no streets, no signs, and no roads. We were surrounded by Florida wilderness on all sides. I then walked to the water where there was a houseboat tied off to some trees. There were branches all over the roof and it looked like someone tried to camouflage it. I peeked inside and immediately got a clearer picture of what was going on. There were a few shotguns laid out on the table inside and it had what looked like a science experiment going on in the kitchen. I've seen enough episodes of Breaking Bad to know just what kind of chemistry projects these guys were playing

around with. There were buckets with tubes coming out of them and beakers with various chemicals and all the other usual meth-making accessories. In my mind, I now determined the situation to be officially dangerous. I would go back to our room and let my dad know what I saw. We would keep our mouth shut, be polite, and leave these low lives to their meager criminal enterprise. I took a different route back to the building we were staying in, and at once smelled the worst goddamn smell I've ever smelled before. It was coming from a smoldering fire in front of one of the trailers. As I approached, I took out a small flashlight from my pocket to investigate. Blood was everywhere. The stench of rotting flesh attacked my senses. To my shock, I saw the severed head area of a manatee

sitting on a tree trunk along with strips of meat. I almost threw up right there. There were different pieces of this animal line all over the place. It almost looked like there was some sort of order to the chaos, though, like different pieces forming some obscure geometric shape. I didn't stick around long enough to really study it, though. I took another swig of whiskey and walked just a little faster towards our building, muttering to myself, these fucking degenerates.

are eating a goddamn endangered species. I tripped over a small boat anchor sticking out of the ground. There were three of them, each a few feet apart from the next. Each one was attached to a rope going towards the water which was only a few yards away. I knew this must be how they tied up their small Johnboats that they used for fishing.

All the boats were gone, though. Almost midnight, and they were all out. I looked out over the water and could change. just barely see a campfire going on what appeared to be a small island further down the channel. On the rest of my walk back to our room, I tried to think of what kind of shit they were all up to on that island. Why not just celebrate or hold whatever backwood ceremony they wanted right here where they lived? They were already well enough isolated, and I don't think they all went out there just because of us. Hell, they could have just shot us and sank the boat offshore if they wanted.

After I got back to the room, I laid down and closed my eyes, but I couldn't sleep. I clutched my knife so hard that my hand hurt. I had to know what was going on here. A little after six in the morning, we went downstairs and were greeted with a smile and hot scrambled eggs, steak strips, and grits. After finishing up breakfast and gathering up our stuff, one of the men led us back to our boat and told us to have a good rest of our trip. He said that he and his people looked out for their own kind if they were in need, but that if we ever came back, he would personally grind us up and use us for fishing, chum. We chuckled as if it were a joke and parted ways.

There was no way in hell that I could live the rest of my life without knowing. Despite a deep feeling of dread on almost a cosmic level, I was drawn to that damn island. My dad thought it was a stupid idea at first, but eventually agreed. I convinced him to drive by the island so I could hop off, while he drove the boat around the other side so the inbred manatee butchers back at the encampment wouldn't see the boat stopped in front of their secret island meeting place. I walked hesitantly towards the middle of the island.

I saw a few shacks and tents, but for the most part there wasn't anything out there. The fire had gone out, but was still smoldering. Trails of black smoke still rose and drifted down across the bushes to the back side of the island. I had expected to discover something terrible there, but what I actually found was much worse. I thought possibly there would be more manatee carcasses or some other weird animal sacrifice. Hell, I even mentally prepared myself to find human remains or a giant meth factory, but there wasn't anything like that. There was a structure, built out of sheets of plywood and aluminum siding. It was roughly 15 feet long,

by 15 feet wide. A sheet of plywood on hinges acted as a door on one side of the structure. I approached slowly and with great caution. As I got closer, I heard a voice call out to me. I knew you wouldn't ever leave here without knowing what was what. I walked around the corner of the structure to see the big guy with the thunderbolt sitting on a long chair and smoking a cigarette. He spat on the ground and looked up at me. Sometimes people just got to know.

It calls to them. For others, they could stare at the damn thing all day and it wouldn't do shit. I think it's been a calling to you. Am I right, you slick little Yankee shit? I was born in Florida, you asshole. Not this Florida, son. Not this Florida. He rose from his chair and flicked his cigarette at me and it bounced off my chest.

Well, you might as well go on in now, son. He motioned to the door with his hand and, to my surprise, he turned around and started walking away. He kicked over a bucket and called it a motherfucker and spat on the ground again before I lost sight of him through the bushes and trees. I pulled open the rickety door and entered the structure. The inside of the structure had a dirt floor. There was a circular hole in the far corner of the structure leading down. There appeared to be a wooden ladder propped up against the side of the hole to allow easy access to whatever was further below.

In the middle of the room, on the floor, there was an object. There was a gray bed sheet draped over it. I knew that the key to everything was under that sheet, and I carefully removed it to get my first glist. glance at the thing. The object was about three feet high by a foot wide. It was a black rectangular-like thing. There was writing etched into every inch of the thing in a script I had never seen before. Being an anthropology major, I've studied many old languages, and this was not among them. It was extremely polished and reflected like a mirror. It seemed to be emanating

some sort of phosphorescence, and for roughly two feet around this thing, everything was a bit hazy or in some way distorted. It's hard to explain because my brain had a hard time registering what I was seeing. I could see this thing perfectly, but the area around it was blurring in and out in a pulsing type of motion. Then shit got even weirder. Right there in front of me, nature started to fucking glitch out. The thing continued to have its hazy pulse, but every few seconds there was a zap and a flash, and the whole area just, I don't know. I don't know what I saw. I don't think I'll ever be able to explain it, but there it was. The matter in front of me, sliding and melting around and then instantaneously reforming itself in a bright flash. Along with all

these flashes, there was a sensation of lightning in my brain, an extreme, sharp pain inside my temple that made me collapse to my knees and just stare at the absolute mind-fucking horror playing out in front of me. There was a low buzzing sound that made my eardrums feel like they would soon blow out. Somehow, I made it back to my feet. I tried to physically twist my head away from looking at the object with my hands. I know it didn't want me to leave. It was consuming me. I could see matter entering the object, but not returning. It wouldn't let me turn away. I felt myself leaving this world. I wasn't afraid of death so much as I was afraid of where this thing was taking me. My mind flashed with images and sounds that my brain could barely compute.

I could feel blood running from my nose and my ears. I could feel a dead city on a plane of pitch black existence, with endless towering structures built of pulsing organic matter. I could feel the stench of the place, and it was unbearable. The sensation of rotting flesh filled my nose and throat. With the last of my will, I took the knife from my pocket and jammed it into my thigh. I twisted the blade.

I concentrated fully on this new agony and closed my eyes and turned quickly around and hobbled out the door and towards the boat. I scratched at a bone with my knife and the pain was so intense that the object was not able to break through my thoughts. The man from earlier was nowhere to be seen. My dad saw I was injured and helped me into the boat.

I was drifting in and out of consciousness as my dad throttled up the engine, opened the boat up all the way, and went out the next inlet and cruised 10 miles offshore before turning north. We wrapped up my leg and I slept for the rest of the day. I didn't want to think about the thing that I saw. I told my dad I had found another cut-up manatee near the fire pit and then I fainted and hit my head on a rock and the knife accidentally jammed into my leg. I didn't think anyone would believe my story. I didn't sleep for a week and finally decided that I had to do something, even if it was a small something.

I put in an anonymous phone call to the FBI field office in Miami from a payphone. I told them there was what I thought was a domestic terrorist militia living out in the middle of nowhere with dangerous technology that couldn't be explained. I tried to play up the terrorist angle in hopes that they would find. it more credible than a report about a devil cult or some such bullshit. I told them about the area as best as I could guess by looking over the maps when we got home. Four days later, I saw on the news that a dozen people died in a meth lab explosion during a raid conducted by federal agents. The area reported was a little north of Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center in a small rural township called Oak Hill.

I knew a dozen people couldn't even fit in that small houseboat that they were cooking their shit in, So I guess the feds just went down there and wiped them out. The cloud from the explosion was reportedly a hundred feet high. Children are certainly curious little creatures, aren't they? And there's no surer way to peek that curiosity than by telling them to stay out of a particular setting. As we hear from author Rona Vassilar, a farming family has an old building on the property which the children are strictly forbidden from going inside. Just a safety issue, right?

Well, there may also be other reasons which make the place somewhere to avoid. Performing this tale are Jessica McAvoy, Jesse Cornett, and Erica Sanderson. So for heaven's sake, would you listen to your parents for once and simply stay out of that old chicken? Our farm wasn't all that big, but it was big enough for us to find trouble more often than not.

The us I'm using refers to my brother, sister, and I. They're both older than me, five and six years, respectively, which makes me the baby of the family. As such, I often evaded punishment for our little antics, claiming coercion by force, and I was able to learn much from watching myself. siblings. My second-hand experience made my mischief effective. I was a good liar and a clever sneak. Two qualities that served me well in the battle for independence from my strict parents. That is not to say that I never found trouble, unfortunately. As I got older, my brother and I

especially pushed boundaries, often enough that, despite the careful hedging of bets, we still fell victim to an occasional scheme gone wrong. Sometimes, even now, I wonder if it was destiny that we found the trouble in the chicken coop. It was the one building on the farm that was forbidden to us, which meant it was the one we knew we would find ourselves in eventually. Dad told us when we were growing up that it was an old chicken coop, and I had no reason to believe that wasn't.

true. It was small, not much bigger than Dad's tool shed, and by the time I was born, consisted of rotting wood that had sagged under years of disuse. It had windows, but the glass was mostly missing, probably from the havoc of the seasonal storms, and what was left was clouded over so badly that it had turned to sick gray. Occasionally, one of us kids would creep close to the coop to try to peek in the windows, only to hear our father's stern voice threatening a whoopin if we went near that goddamn mess again. The few times that we were able to peer inside, we were greeted by perfect darkness, as though the holes in the roof didn't exist, though we all could see them from the right

distance. I found it odd that the coop did little to peek my brother and sister's interests. They seemed quite content to stay away, but I was fascinated by that perfect darkness, by the thick feeling of the forbidden clouding over everything, by the heavy wooden beam ground in place to seal the door shut. How could anyone resist, much less a weak person such as I? I held off as long as I could.

I really did, but it ended up not being long enough. Not at all. By the time I was 13, I was ready for what promised to be a spectacular adventure, and nothing short of an apocalypse could stop me. If nothing else, a meticulous planner. You have to be, if you want to break as many rules as I do. I had a backpack, prepared long before I had a date set. I gathered everything I thought I could need, mostly stuff filched from my eyes.

father's workbench. I had a small length of rope, a flashlight, a crowbar, and a dreadfully lacking first aid kit that I had put together myself, complete with Spider-Man bandages. My giant thermos filled with tap water would complete the set when the time was right. I never went riding off into peril without that damn thermos. The hardest part was waiting for the opportunity. My parents were parents still didn't like to leave me home alone, overprotective as they were. And the farm was often crawling with workers who I knew would tell on me. Everyone who came on the farm was read the riot act by my father about the coop. I'd need to wait until all the workers and my parents were gone, which meant that I could be waiting for a very long time. Fortunately for me, only a few weeks

after I made my plans, an opportunity arose, and, as excited as I was, I leapt on it. My older sister had a speech contest over in Redwood, a good three hours away, so mom and dad had decided to go watch her perform. My brother, Darius, and I were spared only because we had already seen her speech a thousand times, and I could, by this point, recited by heart. And I did, obnoxiously, on every car ride after a performance. Mercifully, mom and dad left me at home with Darius to act as babysitter. Additionally, none of the workers were at the farm that day. For the life of me, I can't remember why now.

So that made the timing more than ideal. Now, I considered going without Darius. I really did. but he was too smart for that. His kid's sister's going to play outside by herself for a few hours, with a giant backpack on her back. Yeah, something about that was going to sound fishy. Besides, what good adventure happens when you're alone?

If I learned nothing else from my childhood, it is that adventures are worth sharing if they're worth having. So I interrupted him from his video games and introduced him to my brilliant plan. Darius, haven't you ever wondered what's in that old chicken coop at the edge of the farm? He didn't look away from his game, but I could tell he was on high alert as soon as the words, chicken coop, flew out of my mouth.

No, not really. There's probably nothing in there anyway. It's been abandoned for years now. since Daddy was in college. Sure, sure. I mean, it would make sense that there's nothing in there. But what if there is? No.

Darius didn't look at me. Come on. It will be fun. Nope. Aren't you in the least bit curious? Nuh. Shit. I sighed.

I realized I'd have to change tactics. There had to be something I could do to entice my brother to look inside, or some kind of leverage. If mere curiosity wouldn't do it, bribery or blackmail could probably get the job done, right? Arius, you're on dishwashing duty this week, aren't you? A twitch. Ah, he didn't answer. but I definitely had his attention now. Tell you what?

I'll do your chores for you this week if you go with me, or at least if you promise not to tell Mom and Dad that I went inside. I didn't really want to do this alone, but I was willing to if he was adamant about not following me. Finally, Darius paused his video game and gave me a long, considering look. Encouraged, I pressed on. You and I both know that it's not even dangerous.

It's not much more than an old shack. I just want to go inside and take a quick look around. That's worth a week of no chores, isn't it? I held my breath and waited. Apparently, it was because Darius sighed and turned off his game. All right. fine but I'm going with you if anything happened to you in there

daddy would gut me alive that was true enough I secretly rejoiced Darius and I were the ideal partners in crime we got away with a lot more than we would have been able to on our own he made a quick run to the kitchen

to take one of dad's heavy duty flashlights and just like that we were off setting out into the cool air just as the sun was setting. There was something darkly beautiful about the chicken coop at night. The wood was black with age, standing in sharp relief against the dark blue of the fading sky. The clouded windows were almost luminescent under the few strong stars that had already made their appearance. It was strange, the way the darkness seemed to breathe life into the little little.

shack, the way it festered like a crown jewel among the weeds that ensnared it. It was disgusting. It was breathtaking. And I was going to conquer it. Well, we were going to conquer it, I reminded myself, as my brother stood next to me. Are you sure you want to do this? There was an air of uncertainty in his voice, and if I didn't know him better, I'd think he was scared. But no, he wasn't. He was finally excited by the prospect of seeing what was hidden away in that coop, and he was only nervous that I would back out at the last second.

As a response, I marched towards the door. Come on, or are you chicken? He rolled his eyes, but I saw him suppress a smile. Oh, yes, we were definitely ready for this. Finally, after about 20 minutes of hard work, we stood inside the chicken coop. The door had proven impossible to open. The wooden beam barring it had been held in place so long that it would have taken much more strength than we had between the two of us to open it.

Lesser people, would have given up the endeavor right then and there. Fortunately, my brother and I have never been those people. Even better, we have always been resourceful. So when I saw a hole where the wall of the coop should have met with the foundation, I took advantage of it. I was still pretty small, so it was fairly easy for me to shimmy my way inside. Darius, being the older and bigger of the two of us,

had a little bit of a harder time, but after much panting and a little swearing that he hoped I wouldn't hear, we found ourselves inside of our long-awaited quarry, staring at our surroundings like it was the lost city of Atlantis. For us, I suppose, it was. Without our flashlights, we couldn't see anything, which only enforced the strange aura this place gave out. If you've lived in the city your whole life, it would make sense to think that, without the city lights, the landscape would be blanketed in darkness.

But that's not quite true. In the countryside, the stars and the moon provide ample light to get by at night, so long as it is an overcast. Therefore, it was very strange that this shambled old shack with its holes and rocks was impervious to the light. I'd noticed it before, but this was the first time I was embedded in it, surrounded by it. It took my breath away. In a good or bad way, I couldn't quite tell yet. Darius switched on his flashlight as I fumbled through my bag searching for mine. I didn't pay much attention or even notice until he said,

Um, Greta. What? I mumbled, my fingers finally grasping around the stem of the thick black flashlight as I yanked it from my bag. When Darius didn't answer, I looked up and gasped. Darius had turned on the flashlight, and I had expected the powerful beam to erupt in the room, casting sharp shadows and bleeding white light into everything in its path. but it, well, it didn't. The beam of light was self-contained.

It traveled as though through a tunnel, illuminating the small circle of whatever it touched on, but it didn't shed any more light than that. So while Darius swung it around the room, the circle of light dancing over bits and pieces of objects we couldn't begin to discern, everything else was still pitch black. A shiver ran through me because Darius never used that word. I turned on my flashlight, only to be confronted with the same results.

Just that tiny beam of light that couldn't seem to slash through the rest of the darkness. My right hand unconsciously snaked out towards my brother's left, and he surprised me by gripping onto my fingers without any teasing or complaining. Apparently, he was just as freaked out as I was. Let's stick to the walls. Something about this place demanded a hushed voice, and he could feel it as well as I could. Let's start on the left.

We'll go slowly. I nodded, forgetting that Darius couldn't see me in the dark. He was brilliant sometimes, or at least, much more clever than I was. I inched towards the left-hand wall, pulling my brother with me, searching for the feel of the moist wood beneath my fingertips. Eventually, I found it. I pointed the flashlight in front of me, and it fell on the opposite end of the coop, illuminating what looked like a shelf.

Seeing that our path at eye level was mostly clear, I tilted the flashlight down to light our footpath, hoping that there weren't any nails sticking out of the ground. Boy, wouldn't that be fun to explain to Dad. We began to walk. Darius and I swept our flashlights back and forth along the ground in front of us, as we took slow, small, small, small,

steps across the coop. There was debris along the ground that looked promising, and I stopped every once in a while to pick something up, an old key that probably didn't open anything anymore, a leather-bound notebook, a small tin box that rattled when you shook it, as though something small were hiding inside. I stored them in my backpack for further inspection. As we walked, the silence became terribly oppressive, and we couldn't endure it any longer. It was my brother who actually broke it first. Why do you think Daddy doesn't want us in here? The obvious answer was that it was dangerous.

Dad was always saying that the moment we stepped inside, the roof would probably cave in, and what good were two dead kids? Honestly, it would be such a hassle. There was always a little teardy. teasing tone in his voice, but we could tell that, underneath that, he was at least partially serious. Having stepped inside the coop for the first time, and hearing the groan of the floor as we made our way across it, I could acknowledge that it definitely was dangerous enough to warrant the warning my father gave us. And yet, I don't really know. I get the feeling that he's hiding

something from us. I didn't have to be able to see to know that Darius was shaking his head next to me. Daddy isn't like that. He doesn't keep secrets. Maybe he just doesn't keep unimportant secrets.

Everyone has secrets, Darius. Maybe this is one of his. He was silent for a moment as we finally reached the other end of the coop. We turned towards the right, and I kept my hand on the left wall. We swept our flashlights across our path again, and noticed that there was what looked to be some old farm equipment on the floor in front of us.

We'd have to be careful to avoid it. But then why not tear it down? Secret or not, wouldn't it... Well, wouldn't it just make sense? I didn't have an answer for that one. This wall was much shorter than the other one, the building being rectangular, and soon we reached the end, having found nothing of interest to pluck from the floor and steel. Turning once more to the right, we swept our flashlights, that my brother, my big older brother, strong and intimidating and unshakable, let out a small shriek, one that I couldn't help echoing. We had swept our flashlights up at the same time, checking to make sure that there wasn't anything at eye level waiting to, well, poke our eyes out.

Instead of seeing thick, dusty air, we were confronted with a pair of boots, still as though they were sitting on some invisible shelf. Of course, they weren't on a shelf, not even close. It took me a moment longer than my brother, I think, to figure out how they could be suspended like that. I could feel his hands trembling in mine as he tilted his flashlight up, and I raised mine to follow him. Boots. Dirty, black, crusty boots. Pant legs, chewed through by moths and whatever creature. were hiding in this god-forsaken hole.

And then, at the top of his pants, hands. They were bloodless, and the nails extended a full inch beyond the flesh, looking for all the world like claws, but they were undeniably human hands. A chest, unutterably still and thick, wrapped in a worn old flannel shirt, a neck, obscured by the thick rope, corded around it. Our lights reached his head, his face, pale like his hands. The skin was leathery and sagging from his bones, as though it had hung there for entirely too long

and wanted to break free of its restraints. Lips hanging slack, a large purple tongue pushing its way out. Even in the darkness, I was sure that I saw something wriggling inside that mouth, and I shuddered. Whips of white hair that trembled as though in a faint breeze, although there was none. No, everything in that room was covered. completely still, completely frozen. And those eyes, oh God, those eyes, they were like nothing I'd ever seen before,

and yet they were so familiar, brown like my father's, but the warmth was drained out of them. They were bloodshot, so much so that I couldn't see any whites in his eyes, only damning red. And the longer I looked, the more convinced I became

that he was staring right at me. Oh yes, I knew those eyes from somewhere. From somewhere deep inside me, they called out. A few moments before, my brother had a death grip on my hand, but I found myself quite easily

leaving his grasp as I stepped towards the body. He gave out a choked, whimpering sound behind me, but I didn't respond to it. My eyes were connected to the eyes of that corpse. I couldn't let go of that gaze long enough to watch where I was walking. I had to pray that there wasn't anything dangerous in my way. As I walked towards the body, my suspicions were confirmed.

Those eyes, those dead, bloody eyes were watching me, were following, were holding me hostage, and I was doing exactly what they wanted. I stopped in front of the body. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard a strange creaking sound. I heard my brother saying something, but I couldn't quite make it out, not with those eyes screaming in my head. Without really understanding why, I reached out towards that pale hand that was just at my eye level. Our fingertips touched just so. The next moment was unexpected. The creaking turned into a cracking, breaking sound. The beam that the rope had been attached to snapped, and suddenly, the body was on top of me, crushing me.

I heard my brother scream, but I couldn't find it in myself to respond. All I was aware of was the cold, the goddamn ice cold of that body. It was seeping into my blood as the corpse pinned me to the ground, the heavy body damn near suffocating me. Its face was just above my own, and with horror, I could see that there indeed was something moving inside that moment. mouth. When I thought it couldn't get any worse, the cracking sound was back, and the floor gave out from beneath me, and I was swallowed into the darkness. When I woke up to the blinding white light,

I was sure that I was dead. After all, my last memory was being pinned by a corpse as the world fell away from me. It would seem logical to wake up in the afterlife after something like that, wouldn't it? In actual fact, I was in a hospital, the Wilbur County Hospital, as it were, and I wasn't alone. My mother and father were there, waiting for me to wake up. They were incredibly relieved when I did, but even in my disoriented states, I could see the flash of anger and something in my father's eyes. Shit. We've been found out.

That was really the only thought I found myself capable of having for the next few moments, as my parents called the nursing to check on me. As the nurse checked my IV and took my pulse, I wondered if they were only waiting for me to get better, so the beating I was sure I was getting would hurt all the worse. Is Darius okay? My mother nodded. And my father stared at me intently.

Oh, yes, Darius was fine, for now. But both of us were going to pay. I was sure of that. Those were some torturous weeks, as I sat there waiting for my father to punish me. Darius seemed to have already gotten his. He didn't talk much for the first week or so after I came home. Dad didn't treat him any different than usual,

but Darius was still jumpy. That made my heart sink. I was sure that, as soon as I was feeling better, I'd be getting what he got ten times worse. So, when my father called me to help him in the tool shed, I hesitated. I knew that running away wouldn't help anything, but I had the urge anyway as I followed him,

my heart sinking into the pit of my stomach. I wondered vaguely if fear could actually kill a person. I almost laughed at that, because if fear could kill, the moment I saw that body, I'd have been six feet in the ground. Once we reached the shed, my father stopped. I watched his broad, unmoving back for a few moments. He seemed to be stealing himself and, hyper-aware of him as I was in that moment. I didn't sense any anger coming from him. Instead, my father seemed, what did he seem?

I couldn't make it out quite then. Whatever it was, it was foreign to the man that I knew. Finally, he turned around to look at me. Greta, what exactly did you see when you went into that chicken coop? I froze. The question in my mind of, how will I explain this to my father, really hadn't come up. I know that seems like poor planning on my part, but I was having a hard enough time processing the truth that I couldn't come up with a plausible lie on top of that. When I didn't answer, my father continued. Your grandfather, Seamus Wagner, he was a...

bad man. A very, very bad man, Greta. He paused then and didn't continue until I cleared my throat. That seemed to jolt him back to the present from, well, wherever his mind had been, and he went on. I'd never told you about him before. None of you, children, because you didn't have to know. But he was a terribly cruel person. He did awful things, things that I can't tell you, things that you'll never know. There was something dark about him, something that just wasn't right. Wherever he went, he left a stain, a mark of darkness that just couldn't be washed away.

Well, when he got older, he started spending more time in that goddamn chicken coop. He practically lived out there. If you'd ask me why, I'd say that I don't know, and it would be the truth. Something out there caught his eye. He was obsessed with it, and he stayed out there until, well, until the day he held the day he hung himself. My breath caught in my throat, and the world seemed to shake as my father looked me in the eyes. After he died, that building changed. He left his very last mark, his last stain inside of it.

I went in once, only once, after they'd removed the body. And I never... ever went back inside. Do you understand? I nodded very slowly. Now, I think you know why I didn't want you kids in there. So, Greta, I'll ask you one more time. What did you see in there? I stared at him, long and hard. See, the thing about my dad and I, is that,

we're a lot alike. Sometimes we can communicate with just a glance. This was one of those times where I understood exactly what he wanted to hear. Nothing. I didn't see anything, Dad. He nodded at me. Good. Remember that.

He turned to leave the shop when I remembered that I had one last question to ask. Dad? He turned back and gave me a wary look, and I was finally able to place the emotion on his face. Fear. It was raw, unadulterated, fear. I pressed on. Why not tear the building down?

Or burn it then? He was quiet for a moment before answering. Because I don't want whatever's inside to get out. My father died last week. Wasn't exactly expected. A heart attack had taken care of him in the middle of the night, and my mother had woken up next to a corpse. It was hard on her.

Really hard. I wonder if that look will ever go out of her eyes. You know the look. like your whole world has crumbled to pieces around you. In light of the circumstances, I came back home. All of us kids did. We knew she'd need the support. Somehow, I wasn't surprised when she confided in me

that she wanted to leave the farm. I can't live here anymore. I can't live here, but I can't sell either. You know why that place has to stay in the family. I knew exactly what she was asking. We're going to set her up in a nice townhouse just a few miles away. It will be good for her, I think, and I know she'll be happier away from this farm

with all its memories and ghosts. For now, the management of the farm has fallen onto my shoulders. I can't say that I know what I know what I'm. I'm going to do with it yet. Perhaps I'll rent out the land so that other people can farm it. But my mother's implicit instructions were quite clear. It is my responsibility to make sure that no one goes in that coop again. After all these years, I finally talked to Darius about that night.

See, he and I never spoke about what had happened. It was always hanging over us, like the stench of something rotten, but we couldn't vocalize what had happened. When I asked him what he saw that night, he blanched, but he did answer me. The same thing that you did. Another thing had been bothering me for quite some time. How did I get out of there? Did you pull me out of the cellar?

He gave me a strange look at that. There was fear in his eyes, yes, but he was trying to mask it with false confusion and I wasn't buying it. What are you talking about? There's no cellar under the coop. Yes, there is. I remember after it fell on me. The floor gave way. There must be something under there. I expected my brother to keep denying it, but he didn't. Instead, he slowly shook his head. Greta, don't go looking any more into this.

Nothing good will ever come out of that coop. Just leave it alone. These last few days, my mind hasn't been able to stray far from that coop. It keeps coming back, like it's some kind of drug. that I haven't the willpower to resist. I realized something about that night. My bag, along with all those items I'd collected, was lost when I fell. It must be somewhere inside the coop.

As much as I want to listen to my brother's advice and forget that I ever went inside that god damn place, I can't stop thinking about it, especially about that journal. And the cellar? What's in it? Why wouldn't my brother tell me? Does he know? Did our father tell him? I think tonight's the night I end up paying another visit.

And I wonder what I'll see. 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 version, 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. you away from sleep.

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