The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S6E21

Episode Date: February 21, 2016

On this week's show we have six tales about crazed critters, institutional insanity, and terrifying timber.The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first three tales."Paper Girl" written by C.M. Scandreth and read by David Ault & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts at 00:04:00)"The Fourteenth Floor" written by Rona Vaselaar and read by Jessica McEvoy & Tisha Boone & Corinne Sanders. (Story starts at 00:18:40)"Chyandour" written by Keith McDuffee and read by Dan Zappulla & Carrsan Morrissey & Nikolle Doolin. (Story starts at 00:33:55)"Ludlow Sanitarium" written by Howard Moxley and read by Nikolle Doolin & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts at 01:01:35)"The Lost Little Puppy" written by Michael Kemp and read by David Cummings & Elie Hirschman & Nichole Goodnight. (Story starts at 01:14:35)"Search and Rescue – Pt. 4" written by R. Brauer and read by Mike DelGaudio & Jeff Clement & Dan Zappulla & Tim Valencia & Jesse Cornett. (Story starts at 01:52:15)Click here to learn more about C.M. Scandreth Click here to learn more about Rona Vaselaar Click here to learn more about Keith McDuffee Click here to learn more about Howard Moxley Click here to learn more about Michael Kemp Click here to learn more about R. Brauer Click here to learn more about David Ault Click here to learn more about Erika Sanderson Click here to learn more about Jessica McEvoy Click here to learn more about Tisha Boone Click here to learn more about Corinne Sanders Click here to learn more about Dan Zappulla Click here to learn more about Carrsan Morrissey Click here to learn more about Nikolle Doolin Click here to learn more about Elie Hirschman Click here to learn more about Nichole Goodnight Click here to learn more about Mike DelGaudio Click here to learn more about Jeff Clement Click here to learn more about Jesse Cornett Podcast produced by: David CummingsMusic & Sound Design by: Brandon Boone & David Cummings."Paper Girl" illustration courtesy of Jörn HeidrathAudio 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 six tales about crazed critters.

institutional insanity, and terrifying timber. You all know our resident composer Brandon Boone, as he creates the spooky soundscapes for our stories to slide effortlessly into your ears and your nightmares. But Brandon isn't limited to the creepies and the crawlies. He has recently released his second album of atmospheric music entitled Book of Winter. In fact, your listening to the music,

to some of it right now. It's an excellent collection of instrumental pieces which evoke the frozen, isolated landscapes of winter with a hint of the promise of spring. This is a great album to put on while you're relaxing, reading, or walking through the forest trying to avoid those creepy stairs.

There's a link in the show notes to find out how you can get a copy of your own. Or you can head over to Contests. the nosleeppodcast.com to enter for a chance to win one of five copies Brandon is giving away. That's Book of Winter by our very own Brandon Boone. I'd like to welcome two new narrators to the podcast. Dan Zapula brings a wealth of voice acting experience to the show. Dan is both an actor and musician from the Boston area

and has acted in numerous drama festivals, as well as traversing the Boston independent music scene as a lead vocalist and guitarist. Also making his debut with us is Carson Morrissey. Carson is an independent film writer and director from Cedar Falls, Iowa. His films fit into the thriller and horror category, so he's right at home with us. He'll be majoring in digital media

when not lending his voice acting to the show. So we welcome both Dan and Carson to the podcast, and thank you guys for sharing your talent with us. Now you've got new music to listen to, new voices ready to act for you, and new stories about to start. So what say we jump right in and kick off this week's show? In our first tale, we meet a man who recounts a strange experience he had with a girl in his school. As we learn from author C. M. Scandrith, the girl is an outsider who is mocked and given a cruel nickname based on her odd behavior, but when a bully takes things too far, her nickname proves to be far more apt than imagined. Performing this tale are David Alt and Erica Sanderson, so you'd best learn it's not nice to make fun of The Paper Girl. Have you ever had a memory so disturbing, so polarising and so chilling that you have actively suppressed it?

I remember as a child of around seven years seeing a dying baby bird on the pavement near my house. Tiny and purple pink, fleshy and repellent. The yellow-rimmed beak looks like rubbery plastic and through it the creature gasped its life away, a needle-thin tongue panting as it labored to live. The bluish-gray eyeballs bruised under unopened eyelids. That image haunted me for years, and I worked hard to repress it, trying to forget about the twisted pink corpse that eventually baked into the concrete under the summer sun, then left behind the blackened shape of the fetal creature,

like the shadow of an atomic bomb victim. But there is another man. memory I haven't unearthed for a long time, which I'm going to relay to you for my own peace of mind, to share it with someone else so that it loses some of the power to terrify me during the night. The story of the paper girl. Alison Copthorn was her name, a skinny thing of elongated limbs and not enough flesh. Her family was reputedly dirt poor, which was reflected in her tattie uniform and unkempt appearance. Either flea bites or some other affliction regularly blotched her milky white skin with red blemishes, and her huge brown-black eyes peered through

a curtain of piss yellow hair, inquisitive yet curiously soulless. The nickname Paper Girl was not meant kindly, but was meant to be mocking, a cruel in-joke amongst the children of the school. At the end of every class, Alison would pause to sit spraddle-le-legged on the floor and go through the waste paper basket, stuffing used paper into her overstitched school bag, or if a piece fulfilled some mysterious criteria, she would carefully smooth it and fold it and tuck it inside her sleeve. This behaviour extended to the playground too. After the other children had eaten their lunches, she would lean her live, almost alien thinness over the rolled galvanized edges of the rubbish bins and fish out the

waxy paper that so many of the children of that age wrapped their sandwiches in. Being cruel little things, we would spit or snot on our lunch wrappers for Allison, so that she would get our revolting germ-laden discharges on her hands. Allison didn't seem to mind. She would just frown, wipe her hand on her hand-knitted school cardigan, and carefully put the paper into her bag. Being one of the kinder children and alona myself, I would sometimes save up paper for her

and secretly tuck it into her school bag in the cloakroom. Only once did I witness her finding the extra paper I'd given her. I felt as though I'd been privy to something wonderful and eerie, for Allison lifted the paper from her satchel and pressed it to her face, inhaling deeply. Her enormous eyes fixed on me with a frightening intensity. And then she abruptly crowned the pages back into her bag and ran as though followed by the devil. I think we all have a school bully, even those of us who were bullies.

Mine was a heavyset boy who went by the title of Gerald Johnson Jr. I'm not sure what the source of our contention was, but no doubt it was petty and inconsequential to all but schoolchildren. During a typical lunch hour, Gerald would scour the playground for me, and upon finding me would give me a pasting, which usually involved holding me down and punching my arms and thighs until I cried. Consequently, I spent my nights plotting for places to hide at school where Gerald wouldn't find me. On hot and humid summer afternoon when all the children were overtired and cranky from the heat, Gerald found me perched in the sycamore tree near the dense flat. bushes that lined the school perimeter. To cut a long story short, he climbed up the tree, and I kicked him down, where he howled that he would give me the pasting of my life when the

school bell rang, and we needed to go back to class. That's when I saw Paper Girl watching, her dark eyes striped with lank yellow hair. She threw something at Gerald underhand. When it impacted, he screamed in pain and rage, that high-pitched pig-ish squeal that only boys prior to puberty can make. Allison paused for a moment, her expressionless gaze regarding him. Then she dashed into the flax bushes and vanished between the broad papery leaves. Gerald gave chase, of course. After he had wriggled his fleshy body into paper girls' hideaway,

there came two short, panicked screams. I watched from my tree seat incredulous, as Gerald barreled out of the bushes, his face white with panic and his hammy legs pumping as fast as they could to get away from the flanks. Paper Girl emerged after him, calm as ever,

staring after the fleeing bully. Then, fixing me with a gaze of singular intensity, she took a square of paper from her sleeve and inhaled deeply. Gerald Johnson Jr. never spoke of what he'd seen in the flags, and whenever anyone asked about it, he'd fly into a weeping rage and threatened to bash us if we didn't leave well alone. It was rumoured that his parents paid a visit to the tumble-down copthorn house on the edge of town, bordering the gully, but nobody answered the door,

and eventually they had to leave in helpless frustration. A note was given to Paper Girl by the teachers to arrange a meeting, but I doubt it ever got to them, since she folded it with meticulous care, then pushed it up her sleeve. Of course, I was fingered as an accomplice of sorts in the Gerald incident and cautioned to stay away from Paper Girl, as it was likely she would be expelled and I wouldn't want to tarnish my own name. I'm not sure what spurred me to warn her, but I got on my bicycle and peddled the gravel road out to the copthorn property. I felt perhaps that I owed her for saving me that one day. The yard around the house was so overgrown that the path to the house was more an alley between towering thistles

and nodding seed heads of various species. Wattle trees shadowed everything, and I saw that all the windows of the subsiding, two-story property were blacked out with paper. Then Allison was at the door, closing it quickly behind her as she exited the house. Her nostrils flared for a moment, then she relaxed. For the first time I can ever remember, she spoke to me. Her voice, a low, husky tremor, with a faint burr behind it.

You have to leave. The school's going to expel you. I came to tell you. I! A whoop. from behind us caused Allison's spidery fingers to clutch at my shirt. Pushing through the yard jungle came Gerald and his corpulent father, Gerald Sr. I had been followed.

Without a word, Allison yanked the door open, dragging me inside, into the gloom of the house, then slammed the door. As my eyes began to adjust to the darkness, a pale hand and arm wrapped around my head covering my eyes. Don't look. The two Geralds raged outside, the father banging on the old door with massive fists, shaking the frame and shouting nearly incoherent threats.

Allison pulled me along through the house, my bare arms and bare legs brushing something strange and patterned, while an almost electrical humming slowly filled my ears. Then I was pushed into a small cupboard of some sort, and Allison was gone, leaving me and died. The plywood door of the cupboard was shut firmly, with no latch I could find. A terrible commotion followed. The front door gave way, and Gerald Sr. stormed into the house,

bellowing at the top of his lungs. There were other sounds, too, though I don't like to think about them, as they conjure up things that are best left forgotten. Pushing myself against the back of the cupboard, I kicked at the door until the flimsy wood gave way, and I crawled out. into the light spilling from the ruined front door. Around me, the interior of the house had been stripped of all internal structures,

no rooms, no supports. Instead, a huge, spiralled whirl of papery hexagons, each the size of a child, built everything, holding the shell of the house up. And inside each of the cells was a fetal creature, squirming gently in some kind of golden fluid, larval yet human, each one with piss yellow hair, six pale limbs and huge brown-black eyes. Gerald was standing, screaming in terror, as Alison crouched over Gerald Sr.,

an extra pair of white arms pinning his four limbs to the papery floor, while her primary hands forced his jaws open. and a pulsating, semi-transparent tube reared from under her school skirt, jabbing forcefully into his gaping pink throat. Much as I have tried to forget that moment, the oily, almost rainbowed sheen of the girl's slick ovipositor pumping eggs down the throat of a grown man still wakes me in terror some nights. Gerald acted before I did.

I don't know where he found the wherewithal to think in that moment, but while Paper Girl's eyes were closed in the ecstasy of fertilisation, the boy had a gas-fueled cigarette lighter in his hand and had already set alight the paper-wasp internal structure of the house. The flames roared up the tinder-dry walls, and both Gerald and I fled for the door, while Paper Girl stared at us. Her brown-black gaze still soulless and calm,

as the wall of flame engulfed. Gerald and I made a pact never to speak of what we had seen. The fire destroyed everything. I can still remember the piercing alien whales of the Allison larvae as they cooked inside the conflagration still alive. And nothing was found inside but the blackened bones of Gerald Sr. identified by his cracked and charred teeth. Neither of us returned to school for a month. but when we eventually did, the unspoken trauma between us

had killed all vestiges of our childish feud. We had seen things no child should ever see. The petty antics of the schoolyard seemed juvenile and pointless. One day near the sycamore tree, I eventually asked Gerald what he'd seen in the flax bushes that day, asking what scared him so witless that he couldn't speak of it. And as he said it, we both felt the chilly, claws of fear rake our spines. Running for the bushes we plunged inside, clawing through to

Allison's hidden chamber amongst the roots and earth. The paper cell was there, burst open. The larval occupant long ago hatched and God only knows where. Today I saw a yellow-haired girl going through the garbage can beside my bus stop. Her clothes were tattie and stitched cleverly with string and thread. Before the bus pulled away, I saw her nostrils flare and her pale fingers lift a fragment of paper to her face. I hope that whatever it was, it wasn't something of mine. While studying at university, it's a safe bet that, along with your lectures and parties, you'll end up spending some time in the school library. But you may think twice about that, after hearing what author Rona Vassilar dealt with at her school.

A late-night visit to a particular part of her library left her vowing to never return. Performing this tale are Jessica McAvoy, Tishaboon, and Corinne Sanders. So, by all means, hit the books when you have to. Just watch out if you end up on the 14th floor. Love my school. Ever since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to go here.

In the interests of anonymity, I can't tell you the name of the school, but I can tell you it's known for its prestigious academics and killer football team. And I am a huge, huge football fan. I was overjoyed to be accepted. It had been my dream since I was old enough to sit on my dad's lap while he watched the Super Bowl, so you can imagine how much this meant to me. As a result, I learned everything I could about the school. All of its many years of history I studied,

keeping careful track of dates, names, and places. If you give me a date in history, I can tell you if something happened at my school. There was one thing I didn't know, and I was unfortunate enough to find out about it firsthand. It happened one night in the library. I had stepped into the elevator with another girl, a petite blonde sort with dark circles under her eyes

that bespoke an all-night paper-writing session in progress. She was going to the eighth floor. My finger snuck out and hit the 14th button, and she stared at me curiously as the doors slid shut. The 14th floor, huh? What kind of books are you looking for there? The 14th floor is full of more obscure books in the library. Unless you're researching a very, very specific topic,

you're not likely to find yourself there. Seriously, I'm pretty sure one of the books was called The History of Sweet Potatoes in Southern China. Oh, I'm not looking for any books. I just needed a quiet place to study. An interesting note about our library is that the further you go up, the quieter it gets. The first floor is a pretty boisterous place, with its study areas and meeting rooms. The top floor, the 14th floor, is deathly quiet, so much so that you can actually hear yourself think.

The girl gave me a scandalized look. You're not serious, are you? I blinked at her in confusion. So what if I am? The elevator dinged as we arrived at her floor, as the doors slid open. Do yourself a favor and stay out of there. The 14th floor is a bad place. And then she was gone before I could ask her what she meant.

I was a bit thrown off by the encounter. I can't say I'd ever met a harbinger of me. doom before. But I quickly dismissed her warning as the numbers on the elevator climbed. She could probably tell that I was a freshman and was just messing with me anyway. Sick hobby to have, although I saw the appeal. By the time I hit the 14th floor, my mind had returned to the paper I had to write, on feminism in Japan, if you're wondering. And I stepped onto the quiet floor with no qualms, but it was quiet. I stalked around the floor, scoping out various study desks. I thought it was a little strange that no one else was up there. After all, the

library was the number one place to study, and many students spent entire nights there under the influence of heavy coursework and inhuman amounts of caffeine. Still, the floor was dead. It was just me. I found that it suited me quite nicely as I found a desk near the east window overlooking the campus. I sat down, opened up my computer, and sighed. I had a long night of bullshitting ahead of me. I'd been there about an hour by the time I finally looked up from my computer. Since I'd sat down, I'd had this weird sense of unease.

It was almost like the air was suffocating me, the walls closing down on me and boxing me in. If anyone else here is claustrophobic, you'll know the feeling I'm talking about. It was like I didn't have enough room to breathe. Still, I'd managed to pound out a few pages. Halfway there. I looked up and stared out the window, giving my eyes a break from my screen. When I noticed something strange, a plume of white smoke was rising from my dormitory. Now, the library, being as tall as it is, gives quite the view of campus.

As such, I had the perfect vantage point from which to observe the flames looking out of the first floor windows. My breath caught in my closing throat as I watched girls begin to pour out of the dorm, their mouths covered to shield them from the smoke. I leapt to my feet before I noticed that my dorm wasn't the only one smoking. The two dorms on either side were on fire as well. The students beginning to point and scream as they were engulfed in molten orange. I wanted to scream too, only I couldn't. Somehow it was stuck inside of me.

In a panic, I grabbed my things and threw them in my backpack, slinging it on my back and running for the elevators. I ran down the closest aisle, then veered to the left, expecting to see the elevators on my right-hand side. Instead, I was greeted with more aisles. What the hell? I thought as I stared at the books, holding silent dominion over the dusty floor.

I was positive that the elevators had been there. I shook my head and ran down a few more, aisles before choosing one to follow, expecting to see the elevators, well, somewhere. Again, I was greeted by a never-ending maze of aisles. This is not possible, I thought, my heart beginning to race. In a days, I continued to run, choosing random pathways and praying that some exit would reveal itself. No matter how far I ran, however, I was greeted with looming masses of books, watching me eagerly for signs of distress. I didn't even run into another wall, for God's sake.

I knew the floor wasn't this big, and yet here I was, running frantically with tears in my eyes. In desperation, I tried to find my way back to my desk, but the maze stretched eternal behind me as well. Finally, I slowed down, my heart thumping and bile rising up in my throat. I pulled out my phone to call someone, anyone, just to make sure I wasn't crazy. But it had died. No, no, I had a full charge when I left the dorm. I tried to turn it on, but it didn't work.

Nothing worked. I'll just keep walking. That's it. Didn't have any other grand ideas. I was halfway down another aisle when I heard a rumbling sound. I began, only to be cut off by a book dropping to the floor in front of me. It appeared to have shaken itself off the shelf, if that were possible. It had fallen open.

Its inky prophecy turned skyward. and then I swear to God, it began to bleed. At first, it was just a trickle coming from the book's binding. I wasn't even sure what it was. But then a river began to flow forth, covering the floor, and the sickness rose hard in my throat. There could be no denying that thick were the sludgy shades of red it left. I found myself rooted to the spot until the blood began to shower me from the bookshelves. I screamed, the crimson ink spilling into my mouth, and I dashed for the end of the aisle.

I slipped a little on the floor but managed to keep my balance and push forward, the sound of dripping liquid thick in the air behind me. I ran for a long time. Not sure how long, when I felt my phone buzzing in my hand. I looked down at it, shocked, seeing a call from a blocked number. You're not even supposed to be working, I thought, suddenly wishing it would turn black again. But it didn't, so stupidly, I answered the call. I didn't hold the phone by my ear for long.

Ruffide screen roared at me, blasting its way through the receiver. The voice screamed and screamed without end, and no matter what I did, I couldn't end the call. I dropped the phone and continued running. I felt as though I was at the end of my rope when, as if by some miracle, I saw the elevators in front of me. Oh, thank Christ! I screamed sprinting for the doors. I mashed my hand against the down button as the lights on the floor began to flicker. It seemed like hours later that the doors finally slid open and I stumbled inside, covered in blood and shaking.

I turned back, facing the now pitch black floor and gasped as the doors slid shut. Just before the doors closed, I saw a hand with ripped bloody flesh where the fingernails should be, beckoning me to come closer. By the time I got outside, it was already light, and six hours had passed. I kept around in horror, wondering if I'd really been there that long. Sure, it felt interminable, but I'd figured I hadn't been at the mercy of that hell for more than an hour at most. There was no way. Was there? yet there I was blinking at the light seeping into the sky.

Even more surprising, my dorm was intact. I walked around the halls, watching as other students walk by. Finally, I gathered the presence of mine to ask one of them about the fires. There wasn't a fire anywhere on campus last night. She gave me a worried look. Are you sure it wasn't just a nightmare, or maybe you had too much to drink? I didn't dignify that with a response. I locked myself in my room and opened up my computer,

only to find that all those pages I'd written didn't exist. I scoured my computer for them, but they were just gone. I spent most of that day alone and in tears. To tell you the truth, I don't know what happened on the 14th floor. I've spent many sleepless nights trying to decipher the images, the sounds, the slow moments imprinted on my brain, but nothing revealed itself as logic. All I know is that there is something up there, something that took great pleasure in toying with me, something that wanted me to stay. I'm a senior now.

Although I spend much of my time studying in the library, I haven't been near the upper floors since that night. Now I'm writing a thesis, one on homosexuality in China, and I need a very specific book containing homoerotic illustrations from the Tang Dynasty. Guess which floor it's on. There are people who are lucky enough to grow up spending summers at the family cottage. But in this tale from author Keith McDuffie, we meet a man whose familial lakehouse is not a setting for fond memories. In fact, it's somewhere which is best avoided at all costs.

Performing this tale are Dan Zippula, Carson Morrissey, and, Nicole Doolin. So don't let the cottage's fancy name fool you. There are dark times to be had at Cheyendor. Morning has not been kind to me lately. I'm not sure I can say we've ever quite seen eye-to-eye morning in me. She's just being more of a bitch than usual these days. She's a vicious reminder that my desperate attempt at sleep has ended. Daylight is here and with it the rest of the waking world. Expecting things from me, expecting my full attention, because, after all, I've had a restful sleep, haven't I?

That's what they assume. That's what they have to assume. Otherwise, I've got nothing. I'm out of my ass. But the morning isn't all bad. For her, night makes way. For me, night has been the cruelest bastard of all. Ginger, I know, feels the same way, though, unlike me, she gets to sleep.

sleep all day. Ginger is my three-year-old shepherd. Since late last November, she and I have more or less been on the same sleepless nighttime schedule. There are times when knowing she's laying alert at the foot of my bed gets me a few moments of eye resting, but not often. My wife, meanwhile, sleeps through the night like a stone. As far as she's concerned, I'm dealing with an extended bout of insomnia most likely due to stress with the job. If only that were true, but I won't tell her the real reason. I can't. Our son can't afford to have us both losing our minds. Not again. She can't know what happened last time at Cheyendor. Katie fell in love with the place. The moment she crossed the threshold, that was it five years ago. It was a summer so hot and

dry the lake dropped nearly a foot and swimming in it. I felt like a bath. The house belonged to my grandfather who'd passed away that spring and left it from my mother and her sister to grapple over. It wasn't much of a fight, really. Aunt Rita wanted nothing to do with it. She said she indoor was a closet of bad memory as she was keen on keeping shut. My parents, meanwhile, had since moved to Florida, and while they didn't outright gift the house to me when they left, I'd been given the license to make use of it any time I liked. Thirty acres, the entire western coastline. But Cheyendor was never my thing. Chyendor, a name my grandmother gave the house decades ago, when my grandfather first had it built. That's the sort of thing people sometimes do with houses

along bodies of water. Like boats and ships, they're given names. You could suppose it gives a house some quaint character, making it more of an exclusive destination than simply calling it the lakehouse. But a name. A name gives it a soul. for better or worse. From the outside, a house isn't very remarkable. Being in the middle of nowhere, it really doesn't have to be. Northern weather resiliency is all that's key. Its facade is shingled in unpainted cedar.

Its roof aluminum panels with the stains and dents from years of wear. A large screened turret sits adjacent to the kitchen, overlooking the wooden footpath to the large dock and beach far below. And beyond, the Pachnawut, a hundred-acre lake, surrounded mostly by uninhabited conservation woodlands, and then the large, lonely plot she indoors sits on. The surrounding area is what contributes to the beauty of the location, not the accommodations. For such a large piece of property, the house is rather small, about 900 square feet, which is certainly respectable for a part-time home, but when you're up to inviting friends and family

to spend the weekend, it can get rather, let's just say, cozy. And that's just how Grammy wanted. Cozy. So that's how my grandfather built it. And for a rather introverted couple like Katie and I, and not up for inviting people along on our trips, it was just about right. Kids on one floor are adults on the other,

cozy when we wanted to be, and blissfully distant when not. Still, woodland living was never for me. I'm not a city boy by any means, but so removed from the rest of the world feels disconcerting to say the least. Sometimes when the air becomes still and the birds haven't yet woken, it's not just quiet. It's silent. There's nothing.

And while I'm fine being alone, I am not fond of being lonely. And that's just what being at Cheyendor alone made me feel. Lonely. Though the house isn't mine per se, I hold all of the, responsibility for its upkeep. It's only fair, we're the only people making use of it. Winterizing the place was the last item to be checked off every year and I'd been doing it for. It's not something I ever look forward to doing. I load the cold. Though this past year after what happened last summer, I was up for avoiding it altogether. I was up for never going back

to Cheyendor again. Ginger and I pulled into the dirt driveway very early on a Friday. I had to burn a day of vacation in order to beat the northbound traffic, hoping to avoid the carloads of leaf peepers that be clogging the highways and making the already miserable trip worse. I had the office reschedule all of my patients for the following week. I hated the fact that I was blowing a vacation day on something like this more than how swamped I'd be when I got back. The ground was thoroughly littered in leaves. Every tree apart from furs and pines were bare to the bark. This far north, autumn had already passed through. The roof of the house was also a blanket of colorful foliage.

Cleaning it off to prevent ice dams and roof collapse was one of the chores on my to-do list for the weekend. I had plenty to keep myself busy for a couple of days. When I opened the front door, Ginger got right to work sniffing about the place as usual. The house had its own smell to it, one I can only describe as stale cabin. I guess every new house you enter or one you hadn't seen the inside of for months has its own smell that you tend to get used to and not notice over time. Like boiled cabbage that seeped into the walls and carpets for over a century, or flowery air fresheners that waft throughout every room and cling like oil to every surface. Sheeondor was stale cabin. It was a mild day for November, and I was glad for the opportunity to throw some windows open

and air the place out. I opened the door to the turret porch and stepped outside. Warm air filtered through the floor to roof screened walls, and through my nose I welcomed it deeply and filled my lungs. Early morning sun glittered upon the lake like diamonds, dancing upon the water. Far below, the wooden dock extended outward 20 feet from shore. Its planks somehow kept bare and free of the fallen leaves. I could see him laying there. Not presently.

This wasn't summer, and it wasn't five months ago. In my mind, I could still see Jake as I'd seen him last. Arms crossed behind his head as a makeshift pillow. Legs linked at the ankles with one foot dancing to music only he could hear. The cords of headphones snaked from his ears to the small music player laying nearby. His usually pale skin already bronzed him from the long stretch of cloudless days under a hot July sun. We'd told him countless times to wear sunscreen, but on vacation you tend to light up on the rules. He was 13, only a fragment of worries of the world in his head.

Ginger sidled up beside me, interested at the moment in what was taking my attention. She stared down below and whimpered as though she knew what I was feeling, or recalling her own memories of Jake. But this wasn't some movie where things like that tend to happen, and I know dogs better than that. I swiped my jacket sleeve across my eyes, unpacked her bag of kibble, and filled her bowl. I took the other bowl to the sink to the sink,

filled with water. And when I returned, the food bowl was still untouched, and Ginger was still where I left her on the porch. But she was whimpering. I spent the morning raking leaves, pine needles, and fallen pine cones. A blanket nearly a foot thick clung to the roof, despite it being angled. The deck was much worse, and rain from the previous week made everything wet and heavy, and dirty. Ginger joined me outside, no doubt desperate for a walk, but enjoying biding her time, gnawing on the largest stick she could find. The work sounds miserable, and for the most part it is, but you don't get many fall days like that.

Looking down at the beautiful palette of colors scattered about the ground, some carried away by the growing winds of an incoming front, it gets you remembering why some say this is the best part of the world to live in. If it wasn't so goddamn isolated, I'd be saying that myself. So I enjoy of it what I can, when I can. With the leaves clear, the last bit of it, of outside work was putting the canoe into storage. Just as we did all summer, it had been left upside down near the small beach. If I was being lazy, I could leave it there, and it would probably

be in the same place come spring. Probably. There was always the real risk of the lake rising higher than anticipated due to heavy snowfall, which would take said canoe on a ride of its own. That happened to our last canoe, and we never saw it again, taken to the depths of the lake. Ginger and I took the walk down to the dock together. I brought a few of the sticks she was chewing with me, and she hopped in anticipation of me throwing one of them for her to fetch. She loved the water, and the swimming would do good and tiring her out. I cranked my arm back to throw, and Ginger took off in the direction I was aiming. I released, and the sticks sailed end over end towards the water, just far enough out for Ginger to make a safe swim to it, but not too close to be easy. She reached

the end of the dock and leapt in without hesitation. A cold shill ran. through my body and thinking of how frigid that water must be. There's no testing of the waters for a dog. Let's dive right in, water's fine. I got to the end of the dock just as I saw Ginger's head gliding above the water, about five feet from the stick. As though distracted by something, she turned around and started to head back to shore. I thought maybe she couldn't see it.

Girlie girl, get the stick, go get it. Her ears perked up and she turned back around. This time she got closer to the stick, but again she turned back around and whimpered. It wasn't as though it was too far for her to reach. Go on. Get it, Ginger. I threw another stick. This one splashed down within her path closer to shore. She wasn't interested.

She passed the stick and made her way to the beach. Ginger, what's up? She paid me no attention and turned to face the lake. She sat down in the wet leaves and sand, staring out to where ripples still lapped away from her wake and the stickside broke. She hadn't even taken a moment to shake off the water that matted down her fur. She cried again. Maybe the cold water had gotten to her after all, or could it be that she remembered? Could a dog replay the day in her own head like I'd been cursed to do for the last five months?

Damn you, girl. Now I see it too. Still, none of it makes sense. Jake is a skilled swimmer for his age. We trust him to know what he's doing. He must have had enough of the sun and jumped in. One desperate yell for help and then he's gone. Ginger leaps in, I follow. We tread water for so long.

We almost go under for good. He doesn't come up. Not minutes later, not hours. Not days. Not ever. Other than the wet puddle he'd left upon the dock where he'd been laying, we never see sign of our oldest boy again. Not unless it's like now, in memory, sometimes best forgotten.

Where did you go, Jake? Where did you go? More whimpering. This time, it's me. The opposite shore was still bright and warm as it undertook the last of the daylight. True to a northern autumn, the coal fell fast upon the shadowed western bank. I brought an armload of firewood inside the house, and in 20,000, minutes had the stove roaring. Ginger had sensed dried off, and after finally eating, she coiled herself into a tight ball by the fire and promptly passed out. Being back at this place must have

taken a toll on the poor girl. I felt like passing out myself, but it was still early, and I had more things to do before turning in. I was intent on getting out of there the next day and not spending another night. If I had my way, I'd be happy not going back ever again. I finished most of the interior or winterizing by about 10 o'clock. All that was left was draining the pipes to prevent them from splitting in the eventual sub-zero temps. But I still had another morning to come, and I preferred a flushing toilet. Though isolated, the house had its own water supply, a cistern situated up on the hillside,

kept full with rainwater, melting snow, and the occasional gas-powered siphoning from the lake. What we didn't have was electricity, except when we threw the generator on in desperate times. With the exception of cell phones with weak signals, we were kept completely off the grid. Katie considered us blissfully incommunicado. To me, we were disconcertingly secluded. I wish I could say I crashed for the night, that I slept like a log, or a dog, as the case may be. It just wasn't going to happen, not without help.

I pulled the bottle of Lefroid cask's strength out of my stash in the closet, emptied it neat into a glass. Three fingers, closer to four. I knocked it all back in one go. It was a shame to treat it that way, but I was ready to be knocked on my ass right quick. There seemed to be no other way. My head flew up from the table and my arm caught the empty whiskey bottle, sending it flying onto the floor. Jake? Jacob? The unbroken bottle continued to roll about on the harbwood while my own voice still echoed in my throbbing head.

My throat was on fire. How long had I been yelling? Damn it. God damn it. I wanted to call Katie I needed to. I wiped the string of spittle that clung to the table to my mouth and pulled out my cell. The time read about 2.30. No signal.

It wouldn't matter, though. She slept like the dead and would wake up for nothing. I couldn't let it get to me again, though. I'd have to forget what happened. I had to sleep. I managed to make my way to the sink, splash water on my face, and took long gulps of it with cupped hands. The house, the water, all of it is freezing cold. I pack the fireplace tight with new logs.

And soon it's again dangerous and hot, and the uncomfortable chill begins to dissolve. The bed was already occupied by the dog. I let it slide, as I always do. She knows this and doesn't budge. Katie's not there, sometimes it be Jake or Will when one of them will. couldn't fall asleep. I'm happy to let her stay. I killed the only lantern I'd lit and slid between the glacial bed sheets. Bronze shadows dance upon the living room walls by the glow through the soot-stained window of the stove. It didn't take long to feel the onset of sleep again.

I rest and think of nothing other than welcoming it, as Ginger already had. I'm awoken not long after by what I believe was a light. I could sense brightness as my lids reddened over my shut eyes, so once I cracked them open, there was nothing. I faced the sliding doors to the outside, the moonless sky beyond, and the still lake far below. No sound other than the muffled cracking of burning wood from the stove in the next room. So I brush it off as nothing. I'm overtired. Minutes later, as I'm just drifting off again, Ginger's head shoots up, ears perked on alert.

She's heard something. That's got my attention, and now my... My eyes are saucers, and I'm listening. But there's nothing. Nothing for a long, long while. Ginger shuffles off the bed and walks into the living room to investigate. I figure that's what dogs are for and let her be. The tip-tap of her paws upon the floor grew distant, towards the front door by the kitchen.

Maybe she's just cold, I think, and she's back by the fire. More likely she has to pee. I wait for her usual scratch at the door, but it never comes. Instead, a low snarl. It's my girly girl, not some wild beast of the night or a thing unexplained. What isn't explained is what's upset her. Like a coward, I keep the bed covers pulled tight to my chin and lie silently in wait. Her growling continues for minutes more, never escalating to a bark.

Just a raccoon or a possum rummaging in the trash I'd left outside to take home? This time a year, it could be a deer, perhaps, or even a bear. In normal circumstances, I am not such a pussy. But in normal circumstances, I am not alone. Not at Cheyendor. I'm not normally so exhausted by an afternoon of beating back vivid memories of my missing child, of so many fallen tears my shirt could be wrung out of them. Ginger Quietes

I can only assume that whatever she heard is gone, and I'm for the moment relieved. The bed lurches as she leaps back into it. This time she crawls closer beside me prone against my back. She lets out a drawn-out sigh, and that alone is the comfort I need to feel at peace. She snuggles closer, and I sigh of contentment myself. The growling starts again.

Not from the bed, just outside the bedroom door. It's my girly girl. It's ginger, and I think, How did I not notice her getting off the bed again? Except she didn't. The body next to me moves. I'm suddenly frightened to the point I could vomit, and I feel the bed began to dampen beneath me.

I consider my options. Pretend I'm asleep, and let my dog scare away whatever is in the bed with me, toss the blankets aside and make break for the sliding door. I'm not going anywhere. Fear paralyzes me. It is a voice that is of command, not suggestion. The air is suddenly fetid.

I hate this place. I hate it. I hate it. Go away! The thing beside me makes a sound like a hiss, as though displeased with my thoughts. A weight is lifted from the bed as whatever it is slides away and onto the floor. But there are no footfalls. Only ginger's continue growls. A long shadow grows upon the wall. It's tall, not like the one the dog would cast or any other sort of smaller animal. The form seems human. Please just go away.

Leave me alone. I want to say all of this, but I only dared to purse my eyelids shut. Ginger was just inside the room. She started barking with a voice that said, Get the fuck out of here now or I'll kill you. that this was no warning but a very sincere order. I heard the sliding glass door open, then shut. Ginger barreled into the room, still barking with increasing ferocity.

Standing on her hind legs, she potted the glass door to be let out, wanting to make sure whoever or whatever had intruded on us was gone for good. It's then that I had the nerve to get out of bed, to chance at seeing the trespasser flee off the side of the balcony and into the night. It was much too dark to see a thing. Then I heard it. In an instant, and for a quick moment, bright light filled the room from every window. It seemed to come from all directions within intensity such that I had to shield my eyes from being blinded,

and even Ginger was stunned, and she whined with shock. And without a sound, it was gone, before either one of us had time to adjust. I immediately said about the house, locking the doors in the windows, something I hadn't felt the need to do before, as removed from civilization as Cheyendor was. I discovered the front door ajar, and my hands were shaking so badly that they were barely able to operate the dead bolts. My legs were rubber and my clothes were soaked. I steadied myself against my knees and caught my breath and stared longingly at the empty bottle on the floor. I wished it was full.

I fell backwards onto my ass, pull my legs up to my chest. Ginger sat beside me as I wept until the sun came up. Roughly an hour later, I was able to pose as someone pulling themselves together. The bed I saw was still a mess just as I'd left it. Still wet. The comforter, the sheets, the mattress, even the box spring were drenched through to the floor. That wasn't for me. Along the opposite side of the bed I slept on, the unmistakable wet silhouette of a person.

I had baffled as to what to make of it. Ginger sniffed at it and whimpered. She walked over to the glass doors and stared out at the lake for a moment, then looked back at me expectedly. What's up, girly girl, need to go out? She cried again. I went to the back door, unlashed the lock. Ginger pushed her way past me,

through the door and outside before I had opened it an inch. I watched her scramble down the footpath, not to the nearby woods where she used. did her business. Instead, she made her way to the end of the dock and sat facing the open water that was as still as a mirror. I can't get over how she misses him. She was Jake's dog after all, and Jake was her person, but she's not by the water because she missed her boy. Not this time. Her ears are pinned back. The hair on her bag is raised. I can hear her growling again. I packed up what I needed and hit the road. Physically and emotionally, I was spent.

In my condition, driving was not the best of ideas, but there was no way I would stay longer than I had to. Ginger crashed in the back seat. I'm sure she was just as glad to be gone. Relief washed over me when the tires finally hit the pavement of the highway. My cell began to ring, a still image of Katie's smiling face graced my dash screen. Hey. You already on your way home? Yeah, I've got one more thing to do first. I should be. be home in a few hours.

Okay. Will and I are anxious to see you. You feeling okay? You sound exhausted. I am exhausted, but I'll be fine. Can't wait to see you guys. Please drive safe, okay? All over if you have to.

Okay, I might do that. I'll see you soon. I hung up and glanced at the empty passenger seat beside me. I wish we didn't have to go home. I wish we could stay there forever. I know you do, buddy. Dad? Yeah, Jake.

Why do you hate the Lakehouse so much? I thought back to what Aunt Rita had told me long ago. The truth of why she hoped to never again set eyes upon that place. What my mother had so long denied happening and refused to believe. That, should we return, to be sure to never be alone while along the shore of Lake Paknawan, to never be taken in by that greedy, evil place. Because Chiandor takes those that love it too much, Jake. Never lets go of them. Like it took you, like it took my Grammy, and I won't let it take your mom. The first gas station was another mile ahead. Filling the three empty canisters in the trunk

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