The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S6E25 - Season Finale

Episode Date: March 20, 2016

It's episode 25 - the Season Finale of Season 6. We conclude our season with four tales about otherworldly visions surrounding our reality. "Every Leaf is a Flower" written by M.J. Pack and fully produced, narrated, and scored by Jeff Clement. (Story starts at 00:04:10) "The Highway" written by Jeff McFarland and read by Jesse Cornett & Alexis Bristowe. (Story starts at 00:14:40) "Creeping Crimson" written by Michael Marks and read by Dan Zappulla & Nikolle Doolin & Jessica McEvoy & Otis Jiry & Nichole Goodnight & Carrsan Morrissey. (Story starts at 00:32:00) "Better Days" written by Robert Ahern and read by Mike DelGaudio & Erika Sanderson & David Ault & Rima Chaddha Mycynek & Dan Zappulla & Nikolle Doolin. (Story starts at 01:13:00) Click here to hear "Soft White Damn," the first tale on episode S5E18 (starts at 04:20)  Click here to hear "Sure to Follow," the first tale on episode S6E08 (starts at 04:45)  Click here to learn more about M.J. Pack  Click here to learn more about Jeff McFarland  Click here to learn more about Michael Marks  Click here to learn more about Robert Ahern  Click here to learn more about Jeff Clement  Click here to learn more about Jesse Cornett  Click here to learn more about Alexis Bristowe  Click here to learn more about Dan Zappulla  Click here to learn more about Nikolle Doolin  Click here to learn more about Jessica McEvoy  Click here to learn more about Otis Jiry  Click here to learn more about Nichole Goodnight  Click here to learn more about Carrsan Morrissey  Click here to learn more about Mike DelGaudio  Click here to learn more about Erika Sanderson  Click here to learn more about David Ault  Click here to learn more about Rima Chaddha Mycynek  Podcast produced by: David Cummings Music & Sound Design by: Brandon Boone & David Cummings. "Better Days" illustration courtesy of Sabu Audio program ©2016 - Creative Reason Media Inc. - All Rights Reserved - No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc.. 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. It's the season six finale, and we conclude our.

season with four tales about otherworldly visions surrounding our reality. I'm glad you're all with us as we bring this season to an end and look forward to a new one in the coming weeks. We've got some excellent stories from Jeff McFarland and Michael Marks for you, and we conclude the season with a story exclusive to the No Sleep podcast. It's written by author Robert Ahern, who you may recall from this season's third episode, and his tale, My Brother, kept talking. We're grateful Robert has chosen the No Sleep Players to bring his new tale to life. As I mentioned last week, we're kicking off this episode with the next segment in MJ Pack's excellent series about Danny and his attempt to flee from the entity relentlessly

pursuing him. Like the first two parts of the series, this is fully produced and narrated by Jeff Clement. Check the show notes if you haven't heard the first two parts. Season 5, episode 18, and season 6, episode 8, both lead off with the first two installments of this series. Jeff is hard at work on the exciting finale to the series, so make sure you're caught up on all three parts when it rolls around in the coming months. And speaking of the coming months, with the end of season six, we're looking ahead to Season 7 and its launch on April 10th. During the weeks in between season 6 and 7, we'll reissue some previously produced

stories to tide you over. And our season past six members can look forward to their bonus episodes, so hopefully there won't be any withdrawal during our short break. Pre-orders for Season 7 should be available as soon as you're hearing this, so head over to the nosleeppodcast.com to sign up. This is going to be our fifth season pass, and I'm proud to announce that for the fifth straight time, the cost of a season pass will remain at only 1999. The support of our members is vital and so appreciated, and I'm glad that we can keep the

cost low so as many people as possible can enjoy all the stories. stories we produce for you. So a big thanks for being with us throughout season six. Let's send it out in style and start the season finale. In our first tale, we experience the penultimate segment from MJ Pax series about Danny. Not even finding solace in sleep, Danny tries to make sense of his ordeal and the mysterious connection to his father. Narrated and produced by Jeff Clement, it's time to venture into the fallen leaves and find out why every leaf is a flower. I managed to make it a few more months. Got to a new place, set up shop, went back to New Orleans for just a day trip to clear out my business in the basement.

No one had messed with it. That was good. That's why I picked such a remote place in the first place. me and my dad we liked our privacy you probably know that by now I went north this time followed the ocean along the east and tried to find somewhere safe somewhere dry

somewhere that no one could leave handprints that's what was following me right the handprints the voice worse what was

was attached to those handprints. It was always different, but it was always the same. My father, something else. My childhood, something else. Shifting, changing, unpredictable and terrifying. I wanted to tell someone about it, but who was there to tell? Ma was in the ground five years now. my dad a lot longer than that what they don't tell you about growing up is how alone you end up feeling i hunkered down in my place in the north

waited because i knew it was coming it had to be coming right the quiet was starting to get to me it was worse somehow that i knew it was coming and i knew it wouldn't stop but didn't know when it got so god damn close last time you know that other me the thing that sounded like myself as a kid like myself at age eight when my dad had left me in the car parked outside some strange house for hours hadn't thought about that in a real long time not until other me jocked some memories i started to think about it though while I waited about how it took so long for my dad to come back

he'd told me to wait but I couldn't I had to pee and I was worried so I figured getting out of the car for just a minute wouldn't hurt right I mean sure my dad was strict but how could you expect

a little kid to wait that long by himself after a while summer faded into fall and it still hadn't shown up. Was it because we had a mild season? No snow, no rain, no crazy weather to bring it on? I hope so. But when I started seeing that thin sheen of frost on my porch early in the morning,

I decided it might be best to fix my sleep schedule. Like no more late-night drinks, keep the whiskey to the daytime and fall into bed by. by 6 p.m. before nightfall. My dad did that, you know, after he got off the third shift for a few years. He said it did him good. Main thing is, I didn't want to hear what could be outside. It only came at night, and I was so tired of waiting, you know.

I thought it might be best to just shut myself off during the times it could come, because either it couldn't or wouldn't get inside without my help, or if it did, maybe I'd just go peacefully in my sleep. That was a nice thought. Then, once I started getting more sleep, I didn't just think about that night outside the strange house. I started to dream about it. In the dreams, I'm little again.

or maybe I'm not. I feel short, but when I look at my hands, they're man's hands, leathery and tough. Maybe they were my dad's hands, I don't know. I use these hands to knock on the door. I have that tight, tense sensation in my bladder, the pinching need to pee. I cross my legs back and forth, hoping someone will come to the door, but they never do. so I go to a window. When I look inside, I see my dad.

He's with a woman. It's not my mom. And he sees me too. And he's real mad. He yells, Danny! Then I wake up. The same dream over and over.

The same way, every time. in the car, have to pee, knock on the door, go to the window, dad with a woman, and see, here's the weird thing. I only have this dream in the daytime. Never had it at night. Well, I guess maybe that's not, no, no handprints yet or anything. Nothing like that. But since the leaves has started to change, since they've gotten all colorful,

red and orange and yellow. They've started showing up in my house. First they were on the porch, but that's pretty normal, right? Gust of wind blows them up there, no cause for concern. But then one day you wake up just after dawn. Like usual, happy to see the sun coming up over the horizon, and you see a trail of them from your front door to the dining room. And they're pretty at first, see.

They're those brilliant fall shades, but they still have enough springy life in them to stay in one piece. At first, you sort of like them. Then, as the season goes on, as you have the same dream over and over again about your dad and the woman and your big man hands, they start to die. They get crunchy and crummel.

You start to find them everywhere, trailing through the house, stuffed in your dresser drawers, folded into quarters and stuck neatly between the bills in your wallet. It's deliberate. It's a message. It's what it does when it can't leave handprints. One morning you wake up coughing, sputtering, tongue drier than you can ever remember. You spit and spit, and wouldn't you know, you're spitting out a mouthful of brittle autumn leaves. Something has come into your house in the middle of the night and stuffed your fucking mouth with leaves. God only knows what would have happened if you'd been awake when it came.

Then, you wonder, is it really your dad you're hearing in the dreams? Is it really your dad yelling your name? Or is it something else? Something crouched by your bed as it parts your lips and begins shoving dead leaves inside. And this, you know, this is what makes you realize you can't get away from it. You can't keep running. You could try, of course. course, you could keep sleeping through its cycle or moving with the weather or whatever.

But one day you'll choke to death on whatever else it's decided to shove in your mouth. And maybe next time, it won't be as harmless as leaves. So you, I, pack up and go to the last place you saw your dad alive. The last place you have really good, happy memories. and you leave the leaves behind. Late night trips across a lonely interstate can be very calming and peaceful for many people. And as we learn from author Jeff McFarland,

even the rain can add to the soothing journey. That is, until an unexpected impact turns the night into a nightmare. Performing this tale are Jesse Cornett's and Alexis Bristow. So keep your eyes on the road and make sure you don't end up stuck on the highway. To this day, I refuse to take US 385 when I travel, especially at night. I know, I know, it's a long stretch of highway, but I'm never taking the chance again. It used to be a route that I would take two to three times a month to Rapid City, South Dakota, from Shadron, Nebraska, and back again along 385. I'm sure some of you have taken it too, even if you didn't realize it at the time.

If you know the Midwest, you know it's flat as hell, and it's always a boring drive. There's absolutely nothing on either side of the road to take in. After four hours of playing in a band with constant noise, lights, and smoke, the senses can use the break. I was on the way back from playing a gig in Rapid City, counting the reflectors and struggling not to zone out. The highway at night, man, it's mesmerizing, almost hypnotic. There's nothing but miles of black enveloping you. The prairie is flatter than a pancake and it makes it all too easy to get lost in your own head. The highway is dangerous too.

All sorts of critters find the middle of the road comfortable for whatever reason, especially in pitch darkness, so you need to stay alert. When your eyes start to droop and your brain struggles to do that, deal with the monotony, your mind will start to play tricks on you. Reflectors become eyes. Two lanes become one. Other cars start to dwindle and eventually you feel like the only living thing out in the middle of a wasteland. But trust me, you're not. About a half hour into my drive, my body began to mimic the car's cruise control. The radio was on, but only up loud enough to serve as a dull hum in the background. My eyelids were beginning to feel heavy right about the time I heard my phone

buzz. I snapped out of my stupor and gave my usual greeting. What's happening? Oh yet? It was our guitar player, Ray. He was obviously hammered. Yeah? I was somewhat irritated. I had told those guys that I had to work back in Shadra in the next morning. I've been on the road for like half an hour. What's up? Oh man, we're about to head to some guy's house for a party. We were going to see if you wanted to come. Too little too late, man. Where did you guys go after we stopped for food anyway? We were going to get gas on the way out of town. Another guy at the pump recognized from the show. I'm already about halfway drunk myself So

So Steve's driving Halfway drunk Who are you kidding, man? Hey, don't let any of those fucking frat boys near the van, right? We don't make enough to replace that gear Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you Well, you drive safe dude Looks

over your way. We'll see you tomorrow? Yeah, later. With that, I dropped my phone back in the cump holder. Oblivious, as Ray usually was. I couldn't be mad at him for forgetting that I was leaving. It was only about two o'clock anyway, and I usually worked so I wasn't too worried about the time. Still, not being able to be with my friends bugged me, so I turned the radio up to try and curb my moody attitude.

As the smooth sound of a saxophone flowed through the car, my nerves started to relax, and I settled in to enjoy the rest of the drive. A ripple of light off in the distance and the rolling thunder that followed put a smile on my face. Ray, the weatherman, had been right about the storm. The soft pitter pattern on the top of the car began slowly enough, but soon it would be pouring down. Summer storms in the Midwest always start. start slow. A lot of drivers are intimidated by the rain at night, but I have always welcomed

it as an old friend of sorts. I absolutely loved driving through storms. I mean, being on stage is cool and everything, but if you want tranquility, nothing can quite match up to the light show out in the sandhills. Another half hour passed, and naturally my wipers were going full throbber. I was trying to focus on not riding the rumble bars when suddenly the car bounced with a heavy thud. A spray of red completely covered my windshield for only a second before the rain and my wipers cut through it. Between the beating of the rain against the car, the tire screeching and my heart pounding in my ears, I could barely hear the static that was now pouring from my radio. My hands, knuckles all bone white, clutched the steering wheel like a pair of vices.

I had instinctively stomped on the brake and thrown the car into park. Jesus Christ, what the hell was that? I immediately began fumbling to grab my phone from the cup holder and in defiance of all expectations. I had one bar of service. As I dialed 911, my hands trembled. After a few deep breaths, I held the phone up to my ear and listened for the dial tone. 45 miles outside of Shadron, and I just hit something or someone.

It might have been a person. I don't know. I can't see shit. It's raining too hard. Sir, I need you to relax. Where did you say you were? Are you injured? Has there been an accident? I'm on Highway 385. God damn it. About an hour away from Rapid City. Just send someone out here.

I'm sorry, sir, you're breaking up. I can barely hear you. What? Oh, fuck, not. I glanced at my phone and felt my gut sink when I read the words, call failed. on the screen. All I was left with was some static-laden jazz from the radio in the rain, now slamming into the roof of the car.

I obviously couldn't just leave. I wasn't totally sure I had hit a person, but what if I had? If I just drove away, there'd be no way I'd be able to live with myself. And would the police really believe I just plowed right into some stranger on total accident? I could see it now. my name under the vehicle manslaughter in the newspaper. I had no choice but to cross my fingers, brave the weather, and assessed the damage.

I sat there from what felt like forever, watching the blood trickle down the parts of the windshield the wipers couldn't reach. With a groan, I pulled off onto the shoulder to the highway and opened the door, deciding to use my phone's flashlight to guide my way, seeing any more than five feet in front of me was a struggle.

Hello? I called out, my voice barely reaching through the roar of the rain. From the light of my phone, I could barely make out the skid marks my tires had left. I glanced off to the side at the surrounding hills, but between the rain and the dark, it was impossible to see anything. Only the occasional lightning flash allowed me to see some cow-shaped silhouettes off in the distance. I continued up the roadaways before noticing a crimson trail flowing down by my feet. Trying to prepare myself for the worst, I continued to follow the quickly diluting trail back down the road,

stomping the phone's light and what looked to be a pool of blood. I took several quick breaths, stepped closer, and recited every kind of prayer I could think of in my head. I let out another groan when I saw it. gnarled, mangled flesh lay in a broken heap on the asphalt. The chest had been completely imploded by my tires. Not a single rib was left in one piece. The limbs were all sprawled out and the fur sticking to the blood was matted down by dirt. Wait.

Fur? What the hell? Puzzled. I inched my light up a little further and noticed that the gnawark. old mangled mess of flesh had amethers. I let out a huge gasp of relief and busted out laughing right there in the middle of the road. I had only run over a buck. No hitchhiker or homeless wanderer, just a deer. I was so happy I could have kissed the ground beneath my feet where it not still pouring rain or soaked in blood. Messy as the scene was, I decided I should probably try moving the

buck off to the side of the road, lest someone else go through the same shock I just had. A cleanup crew wouldn't be able to make it until tomorrow anyway, so I grabbed a hold of the antlers and did my best to drag the heavy son of a bitch off the highway's shoulder. Satisfied, relieved and soaking wet, I started to head back to the car. But a quick glance back at the deer made me pause. Why had the buck just been lying in the middle of the road in the first place? It didn't seem to have been struck by any other car. There had been no skid marks on the road besides my own.

I didn't find any pieces of glass or metal on the road. I suppose that stuff all could have gotten washed away, but who would have just hit and killed this thing and then not bothered to move them? Wouldn't they have at least gotten out of it to check the damage? My questions changed completely when another flash in the sky revealed gruesome details, the line of my phone had been.

The deer was completely missing its jaw, and long with it, its tongue. The left eye had been gouged out by what looked to be a trio of claw marks, and there were large chunks of flesh missing from its rump in the shape of bite marks. Zoning out or not, I had for sure ran over the deer's chest. And being relatively flat was evidence of that. A quick sweep from my phone's light didn't turn up a jaw or a tongue. again assuming the rain didn't take them. Even if I had somehow removed the jaw, where could it have gone?

I was sure I hadn't dealt the damage to the deer's head. The fact that it had claw marks on it made me uneasy. And the missing jaw downright freaked me up. There had been mountain lion sightings out in these parts before, and I had no desire to become the next one. I turned and started to walk back towards my car. That's when I saw it off in the distance as another ripple lit up the fields I noticed, a figure. One distinctly different from the cows.

It was hunched over on all fours, but it was far too gangling and too large to be a dog. I thought for half a second that it might have been a person, so I waved my phone's light toward it and called out. Hello? Its head snapped up. Slowly, inch by inch, it turned its gaze towards me. Even armed with nothing but my phone's tiny flashlight, I could see the glassy shine of its eyes through the dark. Like a deer's in the headlights. Before I could turn to run, the eyes disappeared and I froze.

Where the fuck did it go? A few moments later, they reappeared seemingly bigger than before. In the dark, I couldn't see anything, but the timing of the light. was making this thing's movement look like some creature out of a stop-motion flick. When the eyes disappeared once again, my blood stuck in my veins. I realized that the eyes weren't getting bigger. They were coming closer. Panic crashed into me like a tidal wave.

My trip back to the car that began as a slow tipto had quickly turned into a mad dash. True to form, I slipped trying to maneuver around the back of the car and crashed my right. knee into the bumper and exploded up my leg, but I didn't have time to care. I could hear it now. The pounding of feet against dirt and a heavy rasping sound, like a lawnmower that doesn't want to stop. I ripped a car door open and jumped in, locking it behind me out of pure instinct. Without thinking to take the car out of the park, I slammed my foot down on the gas, roaring the engine but not moving in all. I could hear the things approach over the rain. even over the engine, inching closer with each set of heavy galloping footsteps.

The tires struggled to grip the rain slick highway, peeling out as I threw the car into drive. Just as I managed to get some traction, a loud crunch of twisted metal screeched in my ears, and the car started to tip onto its right side. The lawnmower sound had become a chainsaw. Glass exploded into the back seat, and the car fished tailed wildly in its attempt to grip the road with only two right wheels. For the second time that night, I gripped the steering wheel for dear life, and this time I screamed. Darned! I did everything I could to try and start or distract the thing long enough for the car to pull away.

Flash the brides, honk the horn, hell I even popped the trunk. I have no clue why, but that must have been what did it. I did it. I felt the car's two left wheels hit the road hard. It didn't wait to find out what happened. I took off as fast as the car would take me. I screamed down the highway, listening to the galloping footsteps and the grinding sound trail after me. I heard them over the rain pouring in through my broken rear window. I heard them over the static blasting through the radio that had gotten turned up in the frenzy. They kept up until I thought. hit about 85 miles per hour.

I didn't slow down until I was sure I didn't hear them anymore. It wasn't until the footsteps had completely faded away that I glanced in the rearview mirror. There were a ways off, but even through the rain and the dark, I know what I saw. I saw them clear as day. A pair of eyes shining in the middle of the highway. When those late-night drives can be endured no longer, most people are thankful to see a quaint roadside motel with a vacancy sign lit up. As described by author Michael Marks, one couple decides to pull over for the night and rest up at a motel with only a few other guests. But on this night, rest is the last thing anyone will experience.

Performing this tale are Dan Zapula, Nicole Doolin, Jessica McAvoy, Otis Jiry, Nicole Goodnight, and Carson Morrissey. So make sure your next lodgings are clean, quiet, and safe from the creeping crimson. The Hedges Motel and Motor Lodge was the kind of tucked-away place you don't find on purpose. It's not mentioned in any roadside guides or travel pamphlets. It doesn't advertise, and it doesn't have a webpage for booking. In fact, if you blink as you make the turn around the bend where it's nestled, you'll miss it all together. That said, it's not at all an unpleasant-looking place.

A single-story motel and restaurant built with the aesthetic of a log cabin. It sits nestled in a surrounding forest of sweet-smelling redwood and pine, and when mixed with the scent of rain, like when I went, it seems downright heavenly. The burnt orange of the tree bark surrounding the stained wood buildings stands out, even when darkened by the rain and dim light of dusk. Yet, a sinister tone can be felt and glimpsed if you're looking hard enough. The red sign reading vacancy casts its light on the surrounding area, giving the sap leaking from the redwoods the tone of blood.

seeping from open wounds. When my wife and I made the turn that brought that place into our view, I was already road-weary. We had plans to meet some friends of ours at a cabin. It was getting laid, and we'd already been on the road a long time, with plenty of miles left to go. I should have kept driving, no matter the miles between me and sleep. I should have just kept on down the winding road and onto my destination. My empty stomach and heavy eyes had other plans, though, and I pulled into its parking lot. I wish I would have blinked.

My wife, Helen, seemed uncertain. Are you sure you want to get a room? I mean, I could just take over driving while you get some sleep. I answered her before I spoke by putting the car in park and shutting off the engine. I'm exhausted and hungry, and honestly, I just want a real bed for the night. I smiled and leaned back in my seat, rubbing my hands over my face before continuing. Besides, it's getting dark and pouring rain. On these roads, I'd rather not chance it.

I suppose you're right. She looked out of her window and up towards the sky, as if diagnosing the weather. I hope it clears up a bit by morning. A quick flash of lightning filled the air, and thunder rolled above our heads. I think that's the weather god's saying no. I'll get us a room. I smiled and grabbed my jacket from the back seat. I shook the rain from my jacket and stepped into the lobby.

A portly older man behind the counter looked up from his portable television to greet me with a cheery smile. He groaned as he got to his feet and composed himself by straightening his flannel shirt and running his fingers through his thin silver hair before speaking. Good evening, young fella. What can I do for you? He dropped his hands to the counter and leaned forward towards me as I approached. Hey there, I'm going to need a room for two for the night.

I smiled back and took in the decor. A fireplace burned in some other corner of the room and everything still had that log cabin charm inside. I could smell brewing coffee and that added to the warmth of the place. Sign in here. The old man plopped a huge register down on the counter and held a pen out towards me. The ledger was full of names, but only two above mine had the same date. A busy night?

I asked half-joking and hoping the jovial tone came across in my tired voice. A couple others. A family with a couple of kids and their mother fellas. He looked past my shoulder like he was looking for someone as I leaned down to sign. Between you and me, I think the mother two might be a little light in the loafers, if you catch my meaning. He whispered and met my eyes with a slow nod. I chuckled, a bit caught off gar by his antiquated turn of phrase. He stood up straight, looked over my shoulder again, and then limply flicked his wrist down as if to further explain. His eyes flicked around the lobby as if he were going to be caught making his gesture,

and a hint of worry crept up behind the otherwise cheery face. I handed him back the pan as I finished writing my name. Yeah, how's the coffee in your restaurant? Better than what we've got here in the lobby. I can tell you that much. He grabbed the register and put it back onto the front desk. He reached behind him and moved his hand along a row of keys before plucking one off and handing it to me.

Room 1C. Enjoy your stay. Mr. He paused to lean down beneath the front desk and read my name off the register. Mr. Gamble. I took the key from him and put it in my coat pocket. Call me Tom. Mr. Campbell never really suited me.

The old man laughed heartily at my statement as if he were in on some joke that went over my head. Well, Tom, if you need anything, just call the front desk and ask for Otis. He pointed a pudgy thumb at his chest with pride. I nodded and thanked him. As I headed back out into the rain, I looked back only once and saw him return to his seat, watching his little TV with a satisfied smile. After dropping our things off in the room with my wife,

we went on into the restaurant. It was little more than a dining counter being worked by one man who was served as both waiter and cook, but it would do. As we took our seats, we saw the family Otis had mentioned a little, further down the counter. The father, a man in his late 30s wearing a polo shirt and board shorts during a thunderstorm,

nodded to me as we sat down. His daughter was running around with her arms outstretched, making plain sounds as her parents focused on their cheeseburgers. She's adorable. Helen put her hand on my shoulder and looked over at the little girl with a smile. The girl noticed and became suddenly shy, hiding behind her mother's legs. Helen waved at her anyway and took a seat next to me as I looked over the laminated menu. Sorry, she's shy.

The girl's mother chimed in with a soft voice. She too was in her late 30s and far more appropriately dressed for the weather and a heavy jacket and jeans. Say hi to the lady, Liddy Beans. Liddy Beans poked her head out briefly from behind her mother's legs and waved before retreating. It was an act so adorable that even in my time, tired and half-starved state. It made me smile. Hi, sweetheart. Helen looked across me at the little girl, before switching her attention back to the mother.

How old is she? Lydia is six. She looked down at her daughter as we spoke. The little girl stuck her head out again, realizing that she was now the focus of the adult's attention. And a smart aleck. Sit down and eat your grilled cheese, liddy beans. Daddy board shorts chimed in. How you folks doing tonight? A gruff voice suddenly came from in front of us,

and I looked up to see a gaunt-bearded man and a greasy apron now standing there, as if by magic. What can I get you? A coffee and a burger is fine, huh? I tapped Helen on the shoulder, and she broke her gaze from the little girl, long enough to react. Oh, I'll just have the same.

You got it. The cook shuffled back into the kitchen, just as the family was finishing up their food. My wife and I said goodnight to them as they passed, and they wished the same to us. The daughter, Lydia, turned around as she stepped out the door, and she waved goodbye to us before throwing on the hood of her jacket and extending her arms out like plain wings once again as she ran into the rain with her parents. After dinner, we headed back up to our room. It took a nice long shower and Helen laid back on the table. bed, clicking through the channels.

When my shower was over and I was getting dressed, I noticed that I could hear the family from the restaurant talking in the next room. Pretty clearly, too, considering they were talking at normal volume. I spoke to Helen as I stepped out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam. Can you believe how thin these walls are? I know, right? Her eyes looked behind me, noticing how fogged up the bathroom was. Jesus, did you take a shower or creole?

create a sauna. There's no vent in there, no window either. I tossed my towel and rummaged through my bag for my cigarettes and lighter. Guess we're going to have to skip the sex tonight. What does a bathroom window have to do with that? No, you goofball, because of the walls. I found my cigarettes in Zippo and finally zip my bag up. I turned towards my wife with a smile and held them up an offering.

Oh, I don't feel like it. getting up. She spayed out, taking up as much of the bed as possible, and closed her eyes. Hurry back, though. Sex is still on the table. We just have to be really, really deathly quiet. Maybe they sleep with earplugs? I heard my wife laugh as I stepped out beneath the overhang in front of the line of rooms and closed the door behind me. I sat in a chair by the ice machine and had my cigarette. The storm continued to pound down on the little roadside motel, and the red light from the vacancy sign made it look like blood was falling from the sky.

My attention was drawn to the other end of the walkway, as someone stepped out of 1A and started heading my direction. He nodded and raised one hand in a wave as he approached. In the other, he had an ice bucket. Hey there. He smiled as he stepped past and opened the ice machine. Hey, how you doing tonight? I took another drag off my cigarette and blew it out into the streaks of red rain. Pretty good.

He set down his filled ice bucket and looked at my cigarette with Longham. Would you mind if I had one of those? I reached my pack out to him and took one. I lit it for him and sucked in a deep drag with a look of long-lost satisfaction. My boyfriend is always on my case to quit, but... Nothing beats that after a long day. Amen. So are you here with your boyfriend?

He took another drag and scratched his stubble. Yep. We were just talking about how paper-thin these walls are. No shit. My wife and I were just saying the same thing. It's nuts. Why do you think they stuck us all together like this? I mean, we have to be the only three rooms booked.

Why would they put us all right next to each other? I don't know. I twirled the cigarette in my hand while I thought. Maybe it's easier for the cleaning service. No one around here looked too spry. Yeah, maybe. He trailed off clearly thinking deeper about it. My name's David, by the way.

I'm Tom. I shook his hand and finished my cigarette. I heard someone call from down the walkway. I looked to see a man peeking his head out of David's room. Busted. Yeah, I guess so. David flicked his cigarette out into the storm and grabbed his ice bucket. Guess I'd better get back. Good to meet you, Tom.

You too. I responded, rising from my chair. David ran off into his room, and I could hear his boyfriend on his case before he even reached the door. I went back to my room, more than ready to lay down and finally get some sleep. I hadn't been asleep an hour when I woke to the sun. sound of a PA system kicking on with a screech. My wife and I both sat up in bed confused as hell as to what was happening. But before we could even get our barons, the chanting started. It droned out of some unseen speaker and filled the room.

The words weren't English. In fact, they weren't any language I recognized. The voice speaking them was low and weighty, drawing out each sound as it was made. What the fuck is that? I got out of bed and hunted around the room. I could hear the family next door waking up, too. The voice echoed from their room as well, and I realized Daddy Board Shorts was doing exactly what I was doing,

only with more experts. I looked over at Helen, who had already picked up the phone and had it to her ear. There's no dial tone. She slammed the receiver down and got out of bed, rushing over to her purse while I continued to hunt for where the sound was coming from. It was reverberating around the room, making it hard to track down. I went to flick on a light to help in the search, but nothing happened. Are you kidding me? The power's out, too?

I slid my jeans on and got ready to storm to the front desk to ask Chiri Mr. Otis exactly what the fuck was going on. No cell phone signal either. Helen held her phone up to me as if I wouldn't believe her. I could hear daddy board shorts next door. slamming against something, an expletive following each hit. Further down, I could hear David or his partner yelling something I couldn't make out. Stay here. I'm going to find out what the fuck is going on.

I reached for the knob, but it wouldn't turn. I shouldered against the door, but it felt sealed shut. It was like slamming against a brick wall. What are you doing? Helen came to my side, watching me press pointlessly against the door. It's locked. It's fucking locked. I gave up and stepped away from the door, frustrated. What do you mean it's locked? How is it locked?

Helen started to check for herself, and I didn't bother to stop her. I mean locked from the outside or something. It won't fucking open. Well, grab the key. There's no keyhole on the inside of the door, Helen. I turned the lock and deadbolt already. The thing isn't budging. I flipped over a chair even more frustrated. I heard Daddy board shorts yell through the wall. No idea. Are the guys on the other side of you locked in, too?

I heard him move away from the wall. The chanting felt like it was boring its way into my skull. In a fit of anger, I grabbed one of the chairs and threw it against the window as hard as I could. The chair simply bounced off and landed upside down next to the bed, so I picked it up. and started slamming it against the window as hard as I could. I could hear my wife screaming at me, but I didn't care. I didn't like feeling trapped, and it was driving me insane. Fast.

I need it out of that room. On the fourth hit, the chair shattered into pieces, and not a mark was left on that window. Helen walked over and touched the glass. It's bulletproof. It's bulletproof fucking glass, Tom. Why does a hotel room have bulletproof windows? I opened my mouth to say, I don't know, yet again.

But my response was cut short by the sound of someone screaming bloody murder. Not screaming in anger or frustration like myself and daddy board shorts had been, but someone screaming in pure agony. What's going on? I shouted through the wall. I could hear the little girl Lydia crying on the other side. and beyond her the sounds of screams and cries for help. The mother spoke up sounding more sensible than all of us.

I don't know. Jesus, it sounds like someone is killing them in there. Teddy is trying to see from the window. I figured Ted must be Daddy Board Shorts' real name. I walked away from the wall and peeked out through the window. I did my best to crane my neck at an odd angle and see down the walkway, but it just wasn't possible. All I saw was crimson rain.

Suddenly, the screams of pain stopped, and only the sounds of the chant remained. Sensible mommy was talking to me through the wall. I could hear Ted talking to someone further down the line, presumably David's boyfriend. I sat on the bed and tried to listen as Helen pressed herself against the wall to hear better. He says the red came and got him. He's babbling, making no sense. Jesus, Tom, he's begging for someone to get him out. Sensible mommy was talking to little Lydia.

I could see them cuddled together on the bed in mine's eye, talking to a wall, confused and scared. Then the scream started again. Even through the family's room, I could hear him loud and clear, begging for help and scrambling around his room like a madman. I could hear things breaking as he desperately tried to get away from something in a locked room with no way out.

The girl and her mom next door were crying, and so were Helen and I as we listened to the man's screams die out and pained gurgling as he begged for us to help him. The next few minutes were a mix of confusion, fear, and desperate attempts for escape. The chanting continued over the hidden PA system as Helen slammed her fists against the window shouting for help. I could hear Ted from next door doing the same thing, just kicking fruitlessly at an unyielding door.

I sat on the bed staring at the floor, my thoughts swirling around and trying desperately to find a place to land. I'd never heard anything like the sound of those two men dying, and my brain didn't seem capable of processing it. I wonder what movie they watched. I said it just loud enough for Helen to hear. My thoughts had picked a strange place to land.

Helen stopped her pounding on the window and came over to the bed. She knelt down in front of me. What? What the hell are you talking about? I met one of them outside. His name was David. Him and his boyfriend were going to watch a movie. I looked up from the floor and met her eyes.

I wonder what the last movie they watched was. Tom? Helen collected herself, realized. she needed to help me get myself together. Tom, you need to snap out of it. I know what your brain's doing right now, running in circles. I need you right now, though. We have to find a way out of this fucking room.

Her words barely had time to sink in when we heard a new sound from next door. Ted and his wife suddenly started shouting through the wall to get our attention. I could hear the whole family talking and shouting. What the hell is it? Helen got up from kneeling in front of me and ran over to our wall to hear well. What do you mean? It's coming through the wall.

Sensible mommy was crying as she yelled. I could hear her go back to comforting Lydia, telling her not to look at it. The sound of the family's panic suddenly went wild. Sobs were replaced by screams and shouts for help. Ted was telling his wife and daughter to get as far back from it as they could, and I heard them bump along our shared wall as they attempted to move away. Helen lost it in that moment and looked down at me with wild, tear-filled eyes before grabbing the brass lamp off the nightstand and ripping the cord from the wall.

She started using it like a hammer in an attempt to break a hole in the wall. Helen shouted at me. We have to help them. Tom, get the fuck up and help me. We have to do something to help them. I heard Ted's scream in pain as whatever they were trying to avoid finally got to him. The sound of Lydia screaming for her father, as I could only assume she was watching him die. Finally snapped me out of my trance, and I grabbed one of the broken chair legs to help my wife smash a hole in that wall.

We tore through the wallpaper stucco and drywall with our makeshift tools in a rhythm that made quick work of our side of the wall. Helen slammed the lamp against one of the crossbeams and it bounced off, nearly hitting me. Ted's screams were suddenly cut off, and sensible mommy must have gone into pure protection mode. It was no more screaming or crying. She realized what we were trying to do, and we heard her start smashing something against the wall on her side. The hole on our side might be just big enough to squeeze Lydia the crossbeams being the only thing that worried me. Suddenly a hole opened up on sensible mommy's side too, and their room came into view. Directly in front of us was the woman I'd seen in the restaurant.

Her face now pale and streaked with tears. She worked furiously to tear through the wall, like a trapped animal doing whatever it took to protect its young. Over her shoulder, I saw something far more disturbed. There was a mass of red that looked almost like moss. It pulsed, and breathed as it moved closer and closer to them. It had covered most of their room, and I could tell they didn't have anywhere to go but through. Offshoots like vines shot out, groping blindly and sticking to whatever they touched, is it crept closer.

The worst part was what was sticking out of the center of the crimson mass. It was Ted. His body half melted. His skin was mostly solid. sloughed off and the crimson was crawling all over what meat there was left. His ruined body still reached for its family, a hand outstretched towards his wife as she desperately tried to escape. And my eyes met hers only for a second, but it was enough to crush me inside.

I worked just as furiously as she and Helen to make enough room to get them through, and I wanted to find a way out of that fucking room. I needed to find a way out of that fucking room. that fucking room. The terror apparent in Lydia's voice sent chills down my spine. There was no way we'd made enough of a hole to fit the mother through,

and it was dubious to as if Lydia would fit. Still, we worked furiously, portions of the wall falling away and piling at our feet. Those damn support beams made the amount of space available for anyone to squeeze through minimal. It's too close.

Please, please. Take my daughter. Get her out of here. however you can. No. Helen screamed, still smashing her lamp against the wall. We are all getting out of here. Please, please, take my daughter. Her eyes were filled with tears as she lifted her daughter and told her to climb through the hole. The look of abject terror on her innocent face was enough to send tears streaming from my eyes.

Helen and I both reached through and took her hands. As Lydia tried her best to squeeze into the hole, I could hear her mother speaking behind her. Go, honey, it's going to be okay. It's going to be... Her words turned into screams. And Lydia followed suit. The girl was kicking and screaming as I heard her mother flailing wildly behind her and shouting. Lydia screamed for her mother as Helen and I worked together to try and pull her into our room.

She was stuck and yelling for her daughter. mom. It was too much to bear and I felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest. Hold Tom! Helm was screaming at me. I'm fucking trying. She's stuck. The mother's screams turned into wet choking sounds and gurgles, just like everyone who'd been caught before her. And the creeping crimson mask nearly finished its meal. It would undoubtedly be looking for the next. It's okay, honey. Just a little more.

Helen tried to sound soothing, but her voice was filled with panic. She wasn't moving. Then suddenly something was pulling her in the other direction. Lydia was no longer screaming words, just... In my head, I remembered the first time I saw her pretending to fly around the restaurant. Her shyness, her sweet demeanor. Now here she was, stuck in a wall, screaming as something I could barely wrap my brain around, pulled her towards it to be dissolved in a pile of soft bones.

God, Tom, she's going the other way. It's gutter. It's fucking gutter. I know. Just keep pulling. Don't give up. The growls of our efforts mixed with Lydia's screams of pain. Suddenly the girl came free, and we all fell backwards onto the floor.

I looked up first and was shocked into silence by what I saw, made all the worse in the dim red light that shone through the window. You're going to be okay, honey. You're going to be okay. Helen hadn't looked up yet, and she hadn't noticed the girl was no longer crying or screaming. I tried to tell her as she lay there with her arms wrapped around that little girl's body, but the words were stuck in my throat. When Helen finally sat up and opened her eyes, she looked down and saw what had caused me to freeze in my spot on the front.

floor in horror. Lydia's lower half was gone, and patches of crimson tendrils were stuck to what was left. Some tears came far more freely than I am. We both staggered against the far wall as the tendrils consumed what was left of Lydia's body. I turned away unable to watch what was happening. My mind tried to focus on something other than the sound of her body dissolving less than two feet away from me. I scanned the room for anything that could help us get out, anything at all. The chanting was making it hard to focus, and it felt with each loop it got a tiny bit louder.

And at this point, it was like being at a shitty rock concert. It's coming through the wall. Helen gripped my shoulder and twisted me to see the slime pouring through the hole we'd made, and the vine-like tendrils screeching through and sticking the wall with an audible thwack. I returned to scanning the room. And as soon as my eyes landed on Helen's hair spray, I felt a click in my brain. I hunted around in my pockets for my cigarette lighter, and once I felt it in my palm, I grabbed Helen by the wrist and drug her with me to grab the spray can. I hope this works like in the fucking movies.

My palms were sweaty as I pulled the lighter from my pocket, and when I flicked it, I thought it was going to fly out of my hand. It took two tries for the spark to become a fire. flame, but once it was there, I aimed the hairspray can behind it and walked towards the spreading mass of red hell. I pressed down and the stream of hairspray caught the flame, sending a jet of fire forward, but the range was short, and it didn't touch any of the thing that was starting to cover the whole wall between us and our former neighbors. I started to walk closer, and Helen, who'd been gripping my arm like a vice, suddenly let go and started rummaging through my bag.

I got within range of the thing and tried to douse it again in flame. This attempt was more successful. I washed as the fire licked against the wall, burning away the wallpaper and searing the spreading red mass to its charred black. In the dim orange glow of my makeshift flame-thrower,

a small smile must have crossed my face as my heart filled with a feeling of justice, no matter how small. It was quickly replaced with fear as the thing made a sound. It screamed. Not like a human being would scream, mind you. It was more ethereal.

It echoed what sounded like a thousand voices through the walls and made it seem like it was all around us. It even drowned out the horrid chant. I nearly dropped my makeshift weapon to cover my ears but managed to endure. Helen, on the other hand, stopped her search and clapped her hands over her ears to protect them from the hideous noise. Keep going.

Get closer to the door. I watched her take her hands off of her ears and grit her teeth as she returned to tearing through my luggage looking for something. I looked back to see the wall in flames, but the tendrils still spread out. It started to cover the floor in that disgusting, pulsing moss. I pressed down the aerosol can again

and started to cover as much of it as I couldn't fire. the screaming sound continued and Helen and I did our best to press through it. I had to step over what was left of Lydia to get to the other side and next to the door. And pointed the flame down and burned

the now gorgeing mass of tendrils and moss that had covered her. I apologized under my breath as I backed up closer to the door. Helen suddenly raised her hand up and in it I saw a yellow canister of lighter fluid. The stuff I used to read.

fill my Zippo. She ran over to me and started squirting the flames on the bed and wall, and then they burned brighter for a few seconds as the room started to fill the horrid stench. I then realized we were stuck in a burning room as my eyes started this sting from the smoke that rose up all around us. The door! Helen shouted as if trying to explain how we were going to get out. She sprayed the door down with lighter fluid as much as was a little.

left in the canister. I caught on to her lead and turned towards the door with my makeship flamethrower and set it ablaze. The lighter fluid helped the wood catch quick as Helen ran to the bathroom and started soaking towels and water. I looked over at her while she worked, her mind going a mile a minute in survival mode. I mouthed the words, I love you, and saw her make a brief terrified smile before she mouthed and back. A tendril flew from the flames and landed against my leg before Helen finished what she was doing. My leg erupted in pain as soon as it touched me, and I screamed my lungs out before turning my flamethrower on the grasping thing.

I burned my own leg as I torched it free. The feeling of fire was nothing compared to the way that crimson set my nerves alight. I could smell my own flesh burning, and it was preferable to being taken by that thing. A few more tendrils groped blindly for me. landing with audible smacks against the dresser and the window. Helen dodged them as she ran back towards me with two wet towels in her arms. She threw one over me and then leaned down and kissed me. Bust through that fucking door, Tom.

The thing's screams felt like they were going to make my ears bleed as I stared at the burning hotel room door like a rival. I pulled the soaking wet towel around me and crossed it over my face like I was doing an impression of classic dress. I could feel Helen behind me wrapped in a towel of her own and ready to follow me through the hole I was hopefully going to make. I looked back towards the shared wall and it was covered in a mixture of the crimson mass and flames that now licked up towards the ceiling. The fire was spreading fast and we had no choice but to try and bust through that door. If the crimson didn't consume us, the fire would, and either was only moments away.

I got into a runner's stance and took one last look back at Helen, whose face held a stern yet encouraging look, as if to say, you can do this, and you better fucking do this at the same time. I lowered my head trying to get it clear of the smoke and took a deep breath. The air was hot and stunk like boiling blood. I let the burning breath out and charged forward, putting all my weight into my shoulder. I lowered my head as I struck the flaming door and felt it splinter apart, despite more resistance than I was hoping. I went spilling through the hole in a dive and rolled off the walkway out into the rain. I threw the towel off and scrambled back towards the door as I tried to stand. My hands were outstretched for Helen as I saw her make a rush towards the hole I'd made.

She leapt through the fire with her head down, much like I had, but suddenly fell flat on the surface of the walkway. I heard her crash down hard, and it looked as if she'd been drugged down mid-jump. I ran over to her, and as I reached down to help her up, I saw the red tendrils embedded into her leg. Moore fired out from the hole in the door, and just beyond it I could see a great flaming mass rise up and take ownership of the scream that had been permeating throughout the hotel. Helen tried to get to her feet, but the things started dragging her backwards. She wrapped her arms around me tight, and I did the same, refusing to her. to let her go.

The sacrifice must be completed. I heard someone yell from the direction of the lobby. I quickly looked to see the chubby hotel manager Otis waddling towards us with a knife in his hand. The sight would have been almost humorous under any other circumstance, but as he got closer, I realized I couldn't hold Helen and fend off that fat little monster at the same time. Everything that happened next happened too fast,

me to even do anything in reaction. Look what you've done to my motel! Otis screamed as he lunge forward with the blade. Helen looked at me in the eyes for one brief moment, and I knew what she was going to do. God help me, I knew. She released her grip on me, and I tried my best to hold on. I was dragged a few inches across the rain-slick wood walkway as the crimson pulled her back towards the room.

I felt the knife come down and strike my arm, causing me to recoil in pain and lose my grip as I fell backwards off the walkway from momentum. Helen quickly grabbed the fat little monster by the collar, and as I tried to run back over to them, it was too late, though. As the crimson pulled Helen's legs with one quick motion, and Helen held firm to Otis's collar. I reached out for her as I watched them both vanish into the flames of the room. I could hear Otis screaming in sheer and absolute pain as the thing devoured him or the fire burned him. I'm not sure which. My wife, on the other hand, my strong, strong wife, my beautiful Helen, did not scream. The creature howled in either triumph or pain as the room started to collapse down around.

I sat under the red neon life of the no vacancy sign. The no very clearly lit up to keep people away from here while Otis was performing his sacrifice. The chanting still playing through the unburnt speakers in the other rooms, slowly winding down as the rain pelted my skin. The fire spread quickly through the hotel. As I watched, I stood in the rain for hours and watched it burn to the ground. In our final tale, we're told of the experiences of a young, boy named Davy. This boy starts to realize that strange things are happening, but they're

not happening in his world. As explained by author Robert Ahern, Davy's glimpses into an alternate dimension bring him face to face with another version of himself in a dimension suffering and ordeal which threatens to cross over into our realm. Performing this, tale are Mike Delgadoo, Erica Sanderson, David Alt, Rima Chathamisenik, Dan Zapula, and Nicole Doolin. So pay attention to the signs, watch out for them, and above all, hope for better days. Davy was ten the first time he saw a gun pressed to his head. The first time he watched himself tend to his own grisly wounds, or Caliwomen. on filthy floorboards, hiding from the empty eyes of soulless things.

Luckily, he was seeing all this happened to the other Davy. It began with the marks. Thin little scrapes he'd noticed as he was wandering through his house, gouged into the walls and floor, a cluster here, a few there. But when he'd show his mother, she didn't see them. And when he'd reach out to stroke them, he'd find he couldn't feel them. His fingers ran over them and all he could feel was cool, smooth surface. It escalated from there. He would see the gouges more and more on the banisters, on the legs of tables, or running up and down the walls. Soon there were times he could see dozens of them, or hundreds.

At first, Davy believed they were the claw marks of some kind of creature, but he quickly realized that was impossible. Claws all ran in the same direction. but for every cluster of scratches there were four vertical ones and a final horizontal one that crossed them. Someone was marking time. It got worse in the nights, more marks, deeper, more vivid even. He stopped bothering his mother about it, picking up on her discomfort and worry, with the instinctual ability to read people that adults always forget they had possessed his children. He was content for a while.

It was strange, but seemingly harmless, until the televisions started going weird. That phase of it started when he was flicking through television channels, vacant and bored. It was late at night, far too late to have friends over. He arrived on an empty channel swimming with static and stopped, caught by something in the dance of fizzing debris. Something was in there, some kind of pattern. As he struggled to make out the sense, colonel, out to him from within the chaos, the crazed hissing began to congeal, leveling out into a gentle rise and fall that reminded Davy of a voice. As he listened further, straining his ears,

he realized that it was indeed a voice. The interference washing away and surging back, subsiding bit by bit so that he could pick up the odd word. The static began to shape itself into human figures before dissolving, peeling away to reveal hazy, half-bearer, and varied images. Davy saw men with guns running down empty streets, their thick green gas masks robbing them of any humanity. He saw news anchors furrowing their brows as they doubtfully read teleprompters. Static boiled up again and evaporated to show him new images, tanks grinding through scenic parks, screaming crowds pressing as one against buckling walls of riot shields. The insides of massive tents where hundreds of confused, haggard people in hospital gowns pressed together away from the gas mask men.

The motionless figure still armed, but this time their fatigues were covered over in some kind of black armor. The people in hospital gowns had little wounds, tiny punctures that kept pumping and pumping fresh droplets of blood like they refused to close. The gown people made a droning, hollow sound, a sound of fear and dying hope. The picture changed, moaning crowd giving way to more uneasy news readers, and Davy listened. Listen to them, make it clear even to a child, how little they knew. Strange parasites, they're relatively easy to handle for treatment medical professionals, but they must not be kept secret.

If it reports of floating creatures have been attributed to hallucinatory properties of parasites, possibly related to their apparent anti-coagulation properties, Davey knew this wasn't real. He'd been in the room while his parents had watched the news earlier. But if anything, that made him more scared. These things, these strange wrong things, they weren't happening, at least not in the regular news. Davy watched and watched, and all the while more gouges would appear all around him, all throughout the house. About a week into whatever was happening, he started catching.

the glimpses of movement or flashes of color in the corner of his eye, details in his vision that weren't right, even if it was only for a moment. Late one night as he walked towards the bathroom, he heard a knocking behind him and spun around, terrified and desperate to finally see what had been haunting him. It was him. It was Davy, faint and wispy, but definitely him, wearing the same pajamas. He looked scared and tried to talk. But all Davy, the real Davy heard, was a muffled buzz that suggested a voice. Davy approached the apparition step by step.

The other Davy followed suit, almost like a reflection. And as they closed, they reached out. But the moment their fingertips were about to meet, the other Davy vanished, pulled right out of the air. At this point, there was some balance between fear of what was happening and curiosity. If it all stopped now, if Davy never saw anything again, it would torment him for the rest of his life. With a simple childish determination, he decided he would get to the bottom of the visions that were rising up around him, and the false hell the news was documenting. On that front, things were only getting worse.

He'd managed to catch glimpses of the other news again a few nights after seeing the other Davy. The men in gas masks were moving different. faster and more frantic, like they were fighting a losing battle. He saw them firing their guns through chain-link fences to a chorus of squealing animal screams, all overlaid with a scrolling banner declaring, Calcutta lost, Asian coalition withdrawal imminent. The scream fizzed over and cleared again, and shapeless neon orange burned into Davy's retinas.

It took him a second or two to resolve what he was seeing. It was a flaming, blinding, muddying, classroom cloud, reaching up from a flat gray expanse of dust and a surrounding arid wasteland. The scrolling banner emerged again, announcing in solemn letters. Calcutta sterilized. No evidence that Calcutta was ground zero. Calcutta sterilized. No evidence that Calcutta was ground zero. The screen cut out to a couple of talking heads sitting around a curved table in a news station. They weren't the usual polished mellow panel.

They were disheveled, scared, angry, already angry. Okay, okay, okay, look, we need to be focused on what we talk about. Reginald Holmes, what does the WHO have to say in way of explanation for Calcutta? Davy was struggling to follow, but committed to doing so. He was going to glean all he could. He was going to understand. He'd never been able or willing to follow the news before, but this was important. It was important because only he could see it.

Well, I think it's pretty clear that in most respects, apart from severity, this is mirroring a classic epidemic. It is hitting the southern hemisphere the hardest. It is hitting the third world country is the hardest for the classic reasons. Lack of water to sterilize the entry wounds, lack of education or access to media, lack of shelter. A darker-skinned woman on the far right side of the table spoke. Excuse me? Yes, this is Tanulanka, who's speaking for a private health care provider in India.

Thank you. What Mr. Holmes is saying is perhaps partial truth, but it's a rude answer not intended to the ubiquity of the current crisis. I think our biggest clue in explaining trends is looking at one factor. Mosquito prevalence. Even developed countries with mosquitoes are being hit harder than developed countries without them. So you believe the mosquitoes are acting as a vector? Perhaps, but that's not exactly what I'm saying.

I think that this is not a traditional medical crisis, and the way it is spreading is based on human behavior more than anything. We are all well aware of the stingers, the primary method of spreading the infection. But they're close enough in size to mosquitoes, and, you're close enough in size, and you only feel a small brick at the first place. It only gets really painful when they're already inside. Someone who is used to a similar sensation and is used to seeing mosquitoes

will be much more casual and slow about batting them away. They might not even notice. Which leads me to a wider issue and one I've seen seriously neglected in Western programs like this. There is a serious lack of understanding of the difference between the way rich people and poor people think. The poor are used to crisis. They're used to danger and dealing with it calmly and cautiously, whether it be gangs or disease or the elements. Danger is all too commonplace

a thing to respond to drastically. Everyone in Calcutta slums has known somebody who has pulled through a seemingly fatal case of pneumonia or who offended the gangs and only got beaten. These people need to scavenge for food. They don't have time to worry about the weeping holes on their bodies. But the rich, the Europeans, the Americans, they scare easily. They overreact. For them, infection is the biggest danger they will ever face. So they react urgently and extremely. They do what the news is asking of them. They sterilize the punctures? No. Euphemisms like that, pussyfooting around and understating what needs to be done. is only exacerbating the crisis.

Boiling water needs to be poured into those punctures. It's the only thing that works. And that's a big reason the rich are surviving. They're scared enough to pour boiling water into their open wounds. The image changed in a second and the whole tone shifted. It was the same studio, but it was different. The panel five happy, pristine-looking people. There was no real pall of dread.

So what about what's being called? the Stinger Summer. Twitter, Facebook, they're all flooded with pictures of these things and what they do. It seems they bite you. Some people say they dig into you and you just don't stop bleeding. This is obviously a big deal. I've heard of these things and I've heard the rumors that they bury inside you. It's awful.

That's awful. I mean, where did they come from? How does something like that pop up? I mean, think of the infection possibilities. We've got three or four patients a day in my ER now who just won't stop bleeding. The wounds are small and I haven't seen a burst vein yet, but it's a matter of time. The presenter turned to another woman. Is there a planned government response to this?

The woman took a moment to nod cheerfully before answering. It's being discussed in Parliament today. If normal procedures are followed here, a substantial investigation committee should be established. Davy sensed something beside him and turned. It's you. The other, Davy, sitting right beside him, turned again. It's you. You're a me. How are you there?

Who are you? I'm Davy. Who the hell are you? They argued about this for some time before settling on the conclusion that neither of them had the most remote understanding of what was going on. The conversation started to drift away from the fear and eerieness of what was happening towards more mundane things, both of them confirming that their lives were virtually identical, up until the point where Davy asked one important question. Did you catch any stingers? What?

Stingers. You know, from the news. No, I don't understand anything about the news. It's all lies. I've heard Dad say that too. Follow me. The other Davy led him up the stairs, both of them moving quietly

so they wouldn't wake Davy's parents. He'd had to sneak down every night to watch the TV. The weird stuff almost always happened at night. The other Davy led him to his own closet. The door already opened. He reached down and rummaged around. It didn't look right. He'd brush something aside with his hand

and it would stay where it was, a translucent shifting copy of it being tossed aside to vanish underneath piles of more substantial objects. He stood up and presented a half-present glass jar that only seemed to become solid once the other Davy picked it up. It was grimy, and there were things inside zipping around and pinging off the glass. Davy tried to reach out to grab it, but his hands passed right through it and into other Davy, filling him with an electric feeling of wrongness and disorientation, causing him to yank his hands back out. Based on how other Davy bent over and backed away, he felt it too. Just look at it.

Davy leaned forward to look in the glass. The things inside had slowed down and landed. They just seemed like insects until you look closely. They were like three flying alien needles shrunken down and made of black kite. Their body's a stubby little pyramid at the back connected by a smidge of clear sinew to a rectangular midsection, which was fixed to a long needle of a front section by yet more sinew, all supported by six legs and sporting, buzzing, dainty wings. They call them stingers. Davy's gut dropped. Yeah, cool, isn't it?

People, they dropped a bomb on them. You have to get them out of the house. calm down, they're just bugs. They didn't even manage to bite me or anything. Get them out! Davy heard the door to his room bang open and turned around to see his father in the doorway looking alarmed. He spun back around to see that other Davy had vanished again. He knew there was no explaining what had happened to anyone else,

especially when he understood nothing himself. When he calmed down and got through his adrenaline-fueled sobs, He managed to convince his father that he'd only had a bad dream. He kept probing, staying up late, looking out for the other Davy. Nothing happened for a few nights, but then he noticed something after his parents had gone to bed. There was timber nailed across the window in his sitting room, timber that his hand went right through. Davy turned around to see other Davy sitting on his couch, hunched over, looking drawn and smaller somehow. It's you

Yeah Your parents doing it too They acting all scared What Buying so much food Covering all the windows No No not at all

I just saw you the other day How did so much happen in a couple of days A couple of days I saw you weeks ago But how How could that Before Davy could say anything, there was a flicker, a hiccup in everything around him, and suddenly everything was different.

It was dark, no light coming in, and no sign of anything electrical being on in the house. As he squinted, he saw that Other Davy was on a different part of the couch, being held between Davy's mother and father. Mom, Dad! Other Davy turned to look at him, his eyes wide and feral. He threw up a hand to his mouth to shush Davy, as though his son. life depended on it. Davy's dad looked at other Davy following his eye line to Davy. He looked right through him like he wasn't even there, before returning his attention to where it had been

before, the front door. Davy turned to look at the door too. The room had gotten way colder, like it hadn't been heated in a long time. Bright lights stabbed through the narrow gaps in the timber barring the window, and Davy heard the steady rumble of a large vehicle moving slowly. Time passed in tense silence before something hammered into the front door. Davy's dad threw his mother and other Davy behind him and stepped forwards. The hammering came again and again, bending the door until it finally gave way. And it was not pulled into the room. And in came the men.

The gas mask men from the news, guns pointed in front of them as they forced Davy's dad back. Davy shrank back against the boarded-up window. terrified, as other Davy and his mother cowered into the opposite corner of the room. His dad and the gas mask men were yelling at each other. The gas mask man in Kurt shouts of, get back, on the floor. Get back on the floor. His father bellowing back in a mad tirade. What are you doing?

You're gonna let them in. You're gonna let the fucking stingers in. Davy's dad took one step too close and the objections were silenced by a massive series of booms. Red clouds erupted from Davy's dad, and he collapsed back onto the floor. Davy's mother screamed mindlessly, but both Davies just looked on. Their thoughts and fear blown away by shock. A ringing grew in their ears. Time slowed and they remained limp as the gas mask men surged forward and stripped other Davy and his mom,

which through the fog of trauma that filled his skull, Davy realized was only so they could search them for punctual. He didn't really tried to fight back. His mom because she was too scared. Other Davy because, like Davy himself, it seemed, he couldn't really feel anything. When the gas mask man had violently searched the rest of his house and left, the door still out of its frame, there was a quiet minute or two before there was a shift inside Davy, like his ears suddenly popping. He could feel it. He could feel what just happened and screamed out, falling and losing his mind in perfect synchronicity with other Davy.

Davy felt someone grab his shoulders and catapult him back and forth, and in an instant it all slipped away. The cold and the screams of other Davy and the leaking ruined corpse of his father. It was all swept away, and he was throwing himself around and kicking out in the firm grip of his dad, alive, and begging with him to calm down. He soon did, leaving Davy once more breathing heavily and crying in the arms of his father back in his own house, his real house. His curiosity was burned away. He never wanted to see that other place, those things that weren't happening, ever again. After that he had to talk to a

therapist, no matter how much he protested, and he was forced to take pills that did nothing he could notice, but it made no difference. Almost a week later, he woke up in the middle of the night and could feel something was wrong. He hesitated a long time before looking up over his covers. On the floor was a hunched cloth mass. As he looked closer and his vision adjusted to the darkness, he saw that it was a child, wrapped in a blanket, head wrapped in a scarf, and wearing swimming goggles.

It's you, isn't it? It's the other Davy. You're the other Davy. But yeah, it's me. Is Dad or... Um... Your dad. The other dad...

I don't want to talk about it. How long ago was that for you? Other Davy looked around and Davy saw that the room had suddenly changed. It was dirty, dusty, and everything was tossed around or broken. The walls were marred with dozens of the notches, four vertical, one horizontal for each grouping. A while. What about you? About a week?

Hmm. Why are you dressed like that? Because it's cold, but mostly because of the stingers. Some got in when the gas mask men kicked the door down. Mom got the door back up, sealed it with duct tape, and made us both dress up like this. Keep them away from our skin. Oh, I don't. I don't want this anymore.

I don't want to see your house or anything anymore. I'm not making it happen. Oh, why is it so cold? Said it on the radio. We're trying to save the batteries, but we listen sometimes. The stingers, they head towards hotness. I think radio said they might be making outside colder, too. They began to talk because it looked like neither of them was going anywhere.

Other Davey would ask about school, teachers, Davy's friends, and mostly try to keep the conversation off of his own situation. He hung on every word about the most mundane details of Davy's life. The room around them would flicker between the warm neatness of Davy's room and the thrashed a dilapidation of other Davies. Every time it switched to Davy's room, even through all the layers you could see a pain and longing in the other Davy, in the way his shoulders dropped,

in the way his gaze lingered on the shelves of toys, and the clothes folded in tidy piles. Talks like this became a regular thing, and they filled Davy with dread. When they were in other Davy's house, it was so cold like it had never, ever been warm there. There were other events, too. Once in broad daylight, Davy turned the corner into the kitchen and jumped

as he was enveloped in darkness and the icy cold. Behind him, the hallway was well lit, with gentle autumn colors, polished and gleaming. The kitchen was a lightless sty covered in dark streaks, shattered glass, and Davy's mother, or the other Davy's mother, was standing inside it. She was covered in layers of heavy clothing on her entire body, except for her right shoulder, where she had pulled them all down to reveal her bare skin. It was covered in what looked like the punctures Davy had seen,

on the people cowering in tents from the gas mask men, but worse. They were larger, some as big as coins, and a darker, uglier shade of red. It was like what might happen if the punctures from the tent people grew and festered. On part of her shoulder blade, three holes seemed to have grown together to form a misshapen cavity, almost the size of a golf ball. Davy had to put his hands over his mouth to avoid throwing up. But all that wasn't the worst. worst of it. What really buried itself in Davy's mind was that it looked like something was moving

inside of the holes. She was trying to hold back tears. Other Davy rounded the corner from the hallway, which Davy saw had switched to Other Davy's icy, bleak version. Other Davy looked at Davy before turning to his mother. She turned so that the holes faced away from Other Davy. She spoke through a ski mask and her own set of goggles. Go away. Go away. Sit in your room and don't come back in no matter what you hear. Do you understand me?

But I said go away. That was enough. Other Davy walked away, throwing looks over his shoulder at Davy. Davy heard a bubbling and turned back to Other Davy's mom. He saw that there was a pot of water boiling on the stove. She turned the gas off with a quick furtive twist and poured some of the water into a plastic pouring jug. Her hands were trembling and half the water didn't make it in. When she had the jug filled up halfway, she lifted it up in her trembling hands, still clenching her jaw against sobs.

She didn't have the nerve for a slow pour and just dumped it all on before falling to the ground screaming. as her bare skin reddened and swelled up with off-white blisters. After the steam had vanished, a handful of tiny shapes zipped out from under the fridge, in between the presses, even up from a gap in the floorboard, and stabbed into the scalded meat of her arm, digging in with their needle-like noses. She screamed again, louder than ever, and tried to swipe them off, pulling layers of skin away with the desperate clawing grams.

But some of them dug in, leaving fresh punctures in their weight. And then it vanished like smoke. And Davy was back in his own bright and spotless kitchen. Davy was terrified. But nothing the therapist gave him. Nothing he said made any difference. No amount of willing the other world away made any difference.

His conversations with the other Davy continued. And eventually, Davy felt something. He was sitting across from the other Davy, and the conversation had drifted into silence. A numbness was growing in his arm. A strange awareness he was completely unfamiliar with, and he started to feel something, a vague sensation,

not in his body, but a few feet away from his body. Davy? What? I think I can do something. Davy did something that felt kind of like moving his arm, but his arm didn't move. The other Davy's arm yanked forward, an involuntary jerk.

The other Davy jumped up and backed away. How did you do that? No, I just knew how. It must be because we're sort of, you know, we're the same. Not anymore. I think I'm a lot older than you now. Dad said we had six months of rations and we're almost out. We haven't been eating a lot.

Not a lot at all. I don't know. I just come. From then on, that took up a lot of time when the Davies were together. The other Davy quickly figured it out, and soon they were almost constantly practicing on each other. It was the only activity during which Davy noticed the other Davy displaying even the slightest amount of excitement or happiness. Soon they were able to move whole limbs, make the other blink or walk awkwardly. They even had enough control to make each other right or hold things.

Sometimes, if they tried extremely hard, they could, just for a moment, see out of each other's eyes, see themselves sitting across from themselves. The other Davy seemed to like that one a lot. One day, after about a week with no incidents, other Davy appeared again, bringing the cold with him. It was hard to tell with his face all covered up, but he seemed even more bleak than usual. But Davy had long since learned better than to ask him about his life. So after a while they started playing, tugging on each other or sending each other stumbling this way or that, and Davy was amazed as other Davy actually started laughing, deeply,

and almost maniacally as they threw each other around the room without ever touching each other. It was like he was dazed or drugged or something, almost like the old Davy, the real Davy. Davy tossed other Davy to the side and he tripped, striking and sliding across the floor. Other Davy was on his hands and knees, and silence reigned for a few seconds, before Other Davy broke into tears, still staring down at splintered and waterlogged floorboards. I'm sorry. He was worried that the game had woken his parents up. No, it's not that.

She went so bad. What do you mean? He stood up and dragged Other Davy by the sleeve across the freezing other house, into the sitting room and towards a locked door that Davy knew led down to the basement. Nothing happened for a moment, and then there was a sharp bang and a series of broken, hoarse, strangled sounds erupted from the other side. There was tape covering the entire doorframe, layers and layers of it, but Davy could see it move, bending and kicking it like it was being poked from the other side.

The bang came again and again, and the horrible sounds explored new warm. Porped pitches. Please, Mom. Please, Mom. Please stop, Mom. Davy grabbed other Davy by the shoulder and turned him towards himself. Davy, what happened?

Her punchers, they kept growing, spreading all over a body, eating her, changing her. She started saying things, saying she had to go, go find something. Sometimes she calls it mother.

Sometimes she's, She called it big brother. Sometimes she called it God. I had to lock her in there. There were so many stingers. So many stingers coming out of her. Stingers coming out of her? That's how they spread.

No one knows where they come from first. But they get into you. They eat away at you. Change what you are and more more burst out of you. They make you grow them inside you. Oh, God. I, before I got her in there, some, some got on me.

Other Davy pulled up his sleeve to reveal a cluster of gaping holes, some as big as eyes, the worst that Davy had ever seen. He recoiled, screaming, but it took him a second to notice the tentacles. Whether tentacles was the right word or not, as the only word Davy could put to what he was seeing. oily black filaments like thick hair soaked and tar reared up from the wounds so many of them flailing and waving drunkenly around reaching out it seemed to davy at him get away he fell back and pushed himself away along the floor flakes of wood lodging in him as he slid back get away get away please please please let me come back with you back to the house where it's warm Back to dad and mom, back when she was really, Mom, please. Get away!

Davy yelled as much as he could and as loud as he could as other Davy closed the distance. A burst of pain flashed in the right side of Davy's face, and his head spun sharply around and other Davy's voice was gone. He turned back and looked up, up into his mother's crying face in his own sitting room, away from the hellish other house. His mother was losing control, telling him again and again to just stop it, to stop everything he was doing. Davy could see in her eyes she knew what she was doing was wrong, but she couldn't help herself. He didn't care.

He was home. Nothing happened for a few weeks after that, and Davy let himself believe it was over, that the last time had been some kind of climax. Davy was wrong. He woke up one night and was at peace for a few moments before he noticed the cold, the horrible, bone-deep cold. He tried to ignore it for a few moments, but the denial was eroded quickly. He was back there, back in the other house. He cried a while, but he knew he had to do something.

He threw the covers off and stood up in the bedroom, just as he remembered it being. The wallpaper was hanging in rags. The furniture was still shattered, and it was covered in even more filth. There was no sign of the other Davey. Searching through the debris, Davy found the old battery-powered radio the other Davy had been talking about. His heart was beating at triple pace, but he'd accepted that this wouldn't stop, and that he had to figure out something to do about this himself. And to have any hope of that, he needed information.

He turned it on and scrolled through the endless stuff. static that dominated every station. He was at this a long time before the static subsided at a hair's breath thick position as he turned the dial. He left it alone and listened. We've been very lucky, all things considered. We've been lucky to last this long. We can't pick up anyone else.

So at the least, we're the last broadcasters for a long ways. We're doing okay in here. Quite a few of us don't have many punctures. Those who get tossed out. Guessing we've got maybe two weeks left in the best of us. So we're going to let someone talk to you. He showed up back in the early, early days, saying he knew where the stingers came from.

We dismissed him as a crackpot after we heard what he had to say, but in light of what we can see out the windows, he might just know what he's talking about. He was in here, pestering the receptionist. Got stuck in with us when we went into lockdown. Now, please, give your attention to Mr. Peter Heath. Thank you. I maybe don't quite know where this thing has come from,

but I know a guy who says he saw it long before any of this really kicked off, Back in what we in here started calling the normal days before the stingers. His name was Harold. He was my husband, and he started seeing things. Little wrong things I couldn't see.

Starts telling me what he sees, talks to another version of himself, that stuff is going wrong on the news in alternate Harold land, this whole other world that mirrored ours, involving these things they called needle noses, little things that are. bite you, dig into you.

Yeah, you see where I'm going. This keeps going on and Harold stops sleeping. He can't think straight. He gets real scared. Starts talking about the other world and all the shit that's happening there. Hans all getting worse than he. He tells me what it's like and God help us if it sounds just like what we can see looking out from between these shutters.

One morning, one morning I wake up and he's not there. This spot in the bed is covered in blood. I follow a red trail into the bathroom and there he is with a black eye missing teeth and riddled with holes that nowadays we call punctures. I freaked out but he pushed me away screamed at me to stay away from him he broke out the front door nearly naked

and just ran away I way down the streets and towards the countryside and I haven't seen him since Do you think Harold may have been ground zero? I don't think there is a ground zero I think there's loads of them. I think these creatures, the parasites, the whole tentical situation, those fucking monster.

But no profanity on this station, please. If nothing else, I'm dying a professional. Oh, all right, all right. Those things out there and the stingers and everything else, they're all one thing, different stages in the reproduction of the same species. But it's a destructive species and has to move on when it's gotten all it can. So it wears down the walls. Look, I know this is some tinful stuff I'm saying,

but we're well past the point of anything being implausible. I think they jump universes. They wear down the walls as they work, and they send the stingers across to get the whole thing started again. And they just keep at it sideways through reality again and again. And the stingers infect people, and the infected make more stingers and join together. They amalgamate into those monsters.

to hiring over all of us right now. Thank you for your ideas, Mr. Heath. Davy heard a noise from across the house, an agonized grunt. He put down the radio and followed it. The sounds of pain eventually led him in the sitting room, and he saw the other Davy sitting naked in the center of the room. He faced away, rocking back and forth. He was covered in huge overlapping punctures across his entire body,

Every inch of skin red with blood, Stingers burst out and dug back into his flesh, far too many to count. Other Davy would half-heartedly try and scrape handfuls of them away, but there was no urgency to his movements. They dominated the air as well, wickering all around, Davy. Other Davy was so thin, starving. Davy hadn't been able to tell through all the clothes.

The window that had been boarded up was, smashed through, surrounded by broken planks of wood and shattered glass. It looked out into the night and led in soft winds that carried it deep and reverberating sound of moaning. Davy saw that there was a first ape kit lying open besides other Davy. The other Davy poured ointments onto his wounds, gritting his teeth against the pain as he murmured under his breath. He can't use the water. Can't use the water. The drowsy tendrils rose up out of the holes, all drifting towards. Davy. Other Davy sensed their movement and turned. One eye was bloodshot, solid red, and a sagging

eyelid. All of a sudden he looked like he had found an oasis in the desert. He spoke before coughing up thick red matter that splattered off the floor. It's been a while. Oh Jesus, what happened? To the window or me? Same thing. As soon as Other Davy said that, there was a flicker, and as if to illustrate Other Davy's point. Davy was standing in the room at an earlier time, back when the window was whole.

There was a dreadful sense of presence from outside. He noticed a spread of tinfoil in the corner, and a mass huddled underneath it, shifting nervously. Davy was still distracted by this when something shattered through the windows and boards. It was a cluster of... hundreds of black orbs, each on the end of multi-jointed black fingers, that move with rotating swinging motions to look around the room from every conceivable angle multiple times. The jointed eye stalks led back to a common neck, which led outside to a floating mass of

wailing smooth tentacles, like those that Davy had seen rise out of other Davy's wounds. These ones far bigger and inches thick. If the thing had a body, it was buried beneath them. A cloud of stingers surged in around it. It withdrew eventually not seeing Davy beneath the foil. There was another flicker, and Davy was back where he had been. Same thing either way. I saw it.

I just saw how the window broke. Other Davy was too broken to care how. He stood up and stepped towards Davy, who threw himself. back, grabbing onto the wall to stop himself falling, and he realized the notches. He could feel the notches. And in the same instant, he remembered how he'd been able to grab other Davy's shoulder the last time, how he'd been able to pick up the radio. He was here now, really, truly here.

His breath picked up and waves of cold sweat broke on his skin. Let me in. What? Davy's legs were yanked. out from under him by invisible arms, and he smashed down onto the floor. Davy's head yanked up against his will and slammed down into the floorboards. It was Other Davy, he realized. He was taking control of his body again, hurting him with it.

Davy fought back, pushing Other Davy's legs out so that he fell right onto a punch from Davy. Other Davy seemed not to feel it and started grappling and scraping. They'd throw each other's arms out with their minds. fleeing them away when one of them got a grip on the other. Let me in. Then it was like the entire floor was ripped out from under Davy, and everything flipped and all of a sudden he was on top of himself,

looking down at him and gripping the front of his pajamas. For an instant, he was Other Davy, trapped in his body seeing through his eyes, and in that moment Davy felt the pain, the searing shrieking all over and down to his core agony that Other Davy was living in. He let out a guttural shout of pure suffering before everything flipped again, and he was back in his own body, looking up. Other Davy tried to flip again, but Davy resisted with everything he had, pushed against the wall of force shoving into his skull in a way he never imagined was possible.

He saw that Other Davy had pulled one leg up underneath to steady himself. Davy seized control and made it kick out with all the force left in its atrophied mob. pushing Other Davy off him and across the room. Davy leapt up and ran across the room, but from the ground other Davy caused him to throw himself sideways, smashing through the basement door and sliding painfully down the stairs. As he raised his head, his eyes pierced the gloom, and he saw the thing that even once he figured out what it must be,

he would never truly accept what used to be the other Davy's mother. Her skin was all gone, and the flesh eaten away inches. deep. She was covered top to bottom in frantically swinging tentacles, and the lack of flesh revealed their black roots, coiling in and out through flesh and wrapping around exposed bone. Beneath it all, Davy saw her teeth, without lips like a skull, white, stained red. In between remaining areas of flesh, he saw pulsing black sacks that were no natural part of human anatomy. the biggest one hanging in the exposed remains of her abdomen.

Her mouth opened, and after a pause she vomited up an impenetrable haze of stingers. The sack in her abdomen shrinking and sagging as they geysered out at Davy, who struck out and kicked as they smothered him, stabbing into his flesh and digging down. His conscious mind was lost in terror and sharp, stabbing pain. She made a sound like cats going through a meat grinder, and launched herself forward. Davy, catching the movement through the wall of Stingers, thought she was coming at him,

but she threw herself over him and propelled herself up the stairs on her hands and feet with a manic, bestial speed. Davy followed, launching himself up the stairs, his only thought being to escape the Stingers that were boring into him, new gory tunnels being started every moment. He reached the ground floor and pushed other Davy aside before jumping out the window, scraping against glass as he went.

He hit the grass outside hard, pulled himself up, and kept running through the night, causing the cloud to disperse a little, but many kept on pursuing, and God knows how many were already inside him or clinging to his pajamas. His house was near a strong, thin river that divided two housing areas outside of town. He reached the stone bridge that separated the two sides when it hit him, An immense and overwhelming sense of something powerful, and once more he became aware of the Titanic wave of moaning, washing over the world. He looked up, and against the night he picked out a deeper blackness,

a vast shape that shambled forward with an apocalyptic rumbling, surrounded by swarms of floating creatures like the one that had smashed through other Davies' window. It was another mass of tentacles, enormous and enormous, and dragging itself forward with branch-like limbs that mirrored the insane eye-stalk of the creature that broke the window. There were openings on its body, curled up sphincters of black fingers that unclasped and yawned open to let yet more thinner tentacles spill out and drop down the hundreds or thousands of meters to the ground. As they lifted back up, Davy could just about make out what it was holding. People. Skinless, shredded, tentacle-covered people. He saw other Davy's mother

stumbling away down the road towards the giant thing. Her arms open wide like she was going to embrace her own mother, or big brother, or God. Something slammed into Davy and carried him down the muddy slope and into the shallows of the river. He turned to have his head whip back so hard he heard crack and he knew it was Other Davy. They fought again, both for survival like wild animals. Other Davy sent Davy's thumb deep into his own eye socket before Davy kicked out, knocking Other Davy's strengthless frame back into the mud and wimbing him badly. He got on top of Other Davey and began hitting him, smashing his fist down on his face

again and again. Other Davy's tentacles reaching out and brushing his fist as it rose and fell. Other Davy's grasping hand finally closed on a rock half buried in the mud, and he swung it up, smashing it into Davy's face. He seized control of Davy's legs, sending him back to his feet and stumbling back. Davy was struck by the rock again and again and again. The final strike made everything explode into bright light before the bright light gave way to blackness, and Davy fell into the real river. His limp body getting caught in a current, and being pulled out towards the river center, accelerating rapidly away.

Other Davy screamed in protest and tried to follow him, but a few steps in he was snatched away and into the air. He screamed as he realized he was caught in one of the countless tentacles of one of the searching creatures that had let the swarm into his house. He fought wildly and pointlessly as the nameless drone floated up through the air, carrying other Davy towards the hungering monstrosity that continued to grind, inexorably onward, was just swept along. After an eternity of oblivion, Davy began to leak back into consciousness,

feeling wet coldness and a light breeze, bright light staining the insides of his eyelids orange. He opened and forced himself into a sitting position, the movement sending spears of pain through the side of his skull, and found himself looking at trees and flowing water. He had washed up on a riverbed. He looked at the sky and around him. There were no stingers, no tentacle monster.

He was home. As he got painfully to his feet, the memory of the stingers exploded back into his brain. And as he looked down, seeing the countless bloody holes that patterned his flesh and the thin black tentacles that poked out of them to bathe in the sunlight. He was struggling to breathe as he fought off the panic and despair. When he realized, this wasn't right. In the other house with the other Davy, he'd never heard of the little tentacles growing that fast. Very quickly it came to him, and he understood, with the innate understanding a predator has for prey,

exactly what was happening. The stingers and whatever they were making inside him could sense they were alone in this world, alone or close to it. So they were going into overdrive, making more as fast as they could at any cost. This led Davy to realize that he had lost far too much weight for the length of time he could have been unconscious. His ribs start and his stomach concave. And Davy ran back down the river and far across the countryside, calling out for help as he felt the stinger shredding and carving and heating up his insides

as coiling movement built up deep under his skin. And soon, as he ran, his pace slowly. slowing down, they emerged. New stingers, whipping out of his raw holes to buzz away on the summer breeze. Out into the world. Out into Davies world. Thank you for joining us at the No Sleep Podcast.

That's a wrap for season six. Please visit the nosleeppodcast.com to learn more about the show and how you can sign up for season past seven. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for listening, and we hope you'll join us on April 10th for the start of Season 7. This audio program is copyright 2015-2016 to 2016, Creative Reason Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors.

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