The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S7E07

Episode Date: May 22, 2016

It's episode 7 of Season 7. On this week's show we have six tales about unseen terrors, lubricious limbs, and the bloodiest of bloodlines."Bilderberg Road" written by Kevin Cullen and performed by Jesse Cornett & Nikolle Doolin & Kyle Akers & David Ault & Dan Zappulla. (Story starts at 00:03:00)"Phantom Possession Syndrome"* written by Matt Dymerski and performed by Peter Lewis. (Story starts at 00:27:25)"The Highway Dancer" written by C.M. Scandreth and performed by Erika Sanderson & Nikolle Doolin & Alexis Bristowe. (Story starts at 00:54:30)"A Homeless Man Died in a Parking Lot"** written by Braden Stevenson and performed by Corinne Sanders & David Cummings. (Story starts at 01:11:10)"The Crimson Candle" written by Manen Lyset and performed by Matthew Bradford. (Story starts at 01:23:25)"The 1% - Finale"** written by E.Z. Morgan and performed by Mike DelGaudio & Peter Lewis & Nikolle Doolin & Erika Sanderson & David Ault & Jessica McEvoy & Nichole Goodnight & Alexis Bristowe. (Story starts at 01:36:45)Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast Click here to find The NoSleep Podcast on Google Play Music Click here to find The NoSleep Podcast on Spotify Click here to find The NoSleep Podcast on iTunes Click here to learn more about Kevin Cullen Click here to learn more about Matt Dymerski Click here to learn more about C.M. Scandreth Click here to learn more about Manen Lyset Click here to learn more about E.Z. Morgan Executive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon BooneAudio adaptations produced by: David Cummings & Jeff Clement* & Phil Michalski**"The 1%" illustration courtesy of SabuAudio 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

Be forewarned, 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. Episode 7, Episode 7, Ildeberg Road, Phantom Possession Syndrome, a highway dancer, a homeless, Man died in a parking lot. The crimson candle. The 1% finale.

It's the No Sleep Podcast. I'm David Cummings. Thanks for joining us. On this week's show, we have six tales about unseen terrors, lubricious limbs, and the bloodiest of bloodlines. Question, what are you listening to right now? Whether you call what we do a podcast, on-demand audio, or internet syndicated audio broadcastification of digital content, there is no denying that, let's just go with the term podcast, that podcasts are becoming more and more mainstream and accessible these days.

And as such, there are more and more platforms on which you can acquire the content. In the past few months, two of the biggest streaming audio service, services, Spotify and Google Play Music have made podcasts available on their systems. Well, sort of. With both of these services, they're rolling things out slowly, so whether or not you can find shows like no sleep on them, depends on what country you're in, whether you use an iOS or Android device, and I think whether your mother's fourth cousin once removed on her father's side is a descendant of the House of Tudor. Let's just say, say it may or may not quite be ready, but keep checking if you'd like to use those services

to listen to our shows instead of your funky tunes. And if you do find yourself with access to our show on those platforms, consider subscribing or connecting with the show so we can gain some visibility on those platforms. It will help others find out about us. And while we're talking about that sort of thing, I should mention that it's never too late to leave a friendly review and rating on our content. iTunes. That sort of stuff can help a lot, even for shows like No Sleep who have been around a long time. Almost five full years now. How about that? So no matter how you listen, we're glad you're

with us now, so let's wait no further and start this week's show. In our first tale, we meet a man who is having some car trouble. Well, to be precise, author Kevin Cullen would probably remind us that his car is the least of his worries. You see, he stranded in the forest, and his attempts to get help from a nearby house have left him fearing he may never, ever leave that forest. Performing this tale are Jesse Cornett, Nicole Doolin, Kyle Akers, David Alt, and Dan Zapula. So check your maps and your GPS, because there's one turn you definitely want to avoid. That's the turn. onto Bilderberg Road. Oh God, my car won't start.

God, it still won't start. They must all know where I am now. My white car sticks out like a ray of sunshine in the darkness of the surrounding twilight forest. I've got to get the word out. That is if I'd make it out of this. Whoever gets this message, if you ever find yourself on a road called Bilderberg Road,

do not stop driving. I did. And now my car won't start. I started someone's fingers are beginning to wedge my door's window down. I called the cops. When they hung up on me, I called my parents. I told them I loved them. Then I hung up.

I didn't want them to hear me something and screaming any more than they had to. Now you're all I've got left. Not sure how much time I've got until that window gets low enough for them to reach in for me. So I'll try to make this fast. My day started like most days Un-eventful I'd been under some stress from work With several large project deadlines looming just on the horizon

I thought it might do me some good to step out of the office Before the shit really hit the fan Enjoy some nature while I still could The woods were only a few miles away from the office after all And it was a perfect place to decompress When the work day was over I hopped in my car and took off, heading straight for the trees. I know the forest roads well enough.

I've lived here for a few years and am no stranger to the calm, curving sweep of the roads that wind through the large oaks. Sometimes on the weekends, mostly, I'll wake up before the sun rises and head out to the forest with my sketch pad and attempt to draw the forest's dawn. You know that brief moment when the sun hits the trees through the mist and its rays dapple across the fallen leaves. I'm not that creative an artist, but I'm good enough to make myself smile. Anyway, so as I was taking my afterward cruise, I noticed a dirt road branching off from the paved street with a street sign I'd never seen before. Bilderberg Road was all it said. Sounding interesting enough, I thought maybe some new folks had moved into the woods.

There were a few cottages and B&Bs that dotted the forest. Maybe these were its newest race. I turned down Bilderberg Road and drove slowly for a while. The road was pitted with bumps and holes and felt like it was in disrepair despite it being so new. A half hour eased by and the sun began to lower below the tips of the trees. It was time to go home. I love the woods. Don't get me wrong. But being there, as the sunsets always feels different than being there when it rises.

The darkness is different. The gloom more imposing. And the bears would be waking up soon. Last thing I needed was to accidentally hit one with my car. I pulled on to what little shoulder there was and swung my car around too quickly. I heard something crack beneath me and then everything stopped working. My light shut off. My steering wheel stuck and the car refused to turn back on.

I wasn't worried. Not yet at least. It was still a few hours of evening daylight, and if it worse, came to worst, I could hoof it back to the main road and hitchhike into town. Or I could call AAA and relax while they came to my rescue. I opted to go with Plan B. I rang them up and explained where I was to a receptionist who sounded like he'd just woken up. A truck would reach me within an hour or two, but most likely two. Great.

I suppose I was fine with it. Two hours gave me time to walk the road a little bit more. Maybe run into whoever just moved in. I hopped out of the car, put on my sneakers, and started walking. As long as I stayed on the road, there was no chance of getting lost. And even then, my internal compass was usually on point. But as I was walking, I couldn't shake the uncertainty of the coming dusk. I wouldn't say I was afraid of the dark, but I'd read so many ghost stories and skin.

Walker legends that it was impossible not to think about the coming darkness that way. I took a deep breath. Breathe. Then another. Of the road ahead of me, a brown paper bag lay crumpled in the dirt road. A little odd, I thought, and discouraging. A new road in there is already litter. I kicked the bag off to the side.

At least it was biodegradable. and then I saw it. It was through the trees up ahead, a large brightly painted brick house. It stood staunch in the trees like a boulder in a stream, and looked as though it had once been out of place, but the moss and constant falling of leaves had assimilated it into its surrounding greenery. A small curl of smoke rose through the chimney that stretched high above the second floor, and the lights in the windows were all lit.

Though the sun would be setting in an hour or so, I decided to say hello. The AAA driver would call me anyway, and it was only a five-minute jog back to my car. I stepped up to their front door, a large oaken thing, and gave it a friendly knock. You know one left. Hello? I'm a neighbor, sort of. Just wanted to stop by and say hello? The door opened a crack and a bloodshot eye blinked out at me. Let me see your hands.

I showed her my hands. I just wanted to say hi. Welcome you to the neighborhood, uh, uh, community, I guess. Another voice, this one, a man's yelled from deeper in the house. Shut the door, Elma. They haven't got a bag. I tried to peek past Alma. Is this a bad time?

It's almost night. What do you want? Just to say hi. In my car, she looked past me into the grove of trees. You should go home. It's almost night. I realized that, but my car broke down a little ways away. I was just out for a walk when I spotted your house.

Thought I might welcome you. So you're not selling anything? No, no, just trying to be friendly. My text message ring tone chimed from my pocket. Alma's face brightened as though a grand idea had just come to her. Oh, well, if that's all. She opened the door wide and beckoned me in. The old woman looked every bit as stereotypically grandmotherly as you can imagine.

Pink shawl was draped across her fly. flowery shoulders and her white hair was twirled up in a fluffy bun. Pardon the mess. The grandchildren are out back. Down the hallway, an older, large man, dressed in flannel, came barreling around the corner and ground to a stop. What the hell are you doing, Alma? Who's this? Alma patted my arm. A neighbor? Sort of. I live back in the city.

The old man looked connoisse. confused. How'd you wind up here? I was just out for a drive when my car broke down. I saw your house and thought I'd be neighborly. The old man and Alma exchanged a look. And almost seemed like hope, and I wondered how long it had been since they'd seen anyone other than their grandchildren. The old man's demeanor completely changed.

Well, pleasure to meet you. I'm Marty. We shook hands, and he led me into my heart. and he led me into the den, where they had a roaring fire going. The room was a large one, filled with books and hunting trophies and overstuffed furniture. Clutters of newspapers and magazines from all different years piled up around its edges, and a few newspaper articles hung from the walls. Beside the severed heads of wild game, on one of the recliners rested a shotgun.

Please, have a seat. It's almost night after all. You must be tired. He scooted a few miscellaneous papers off the couch and padded the cushions. Then he snatched the shotgun from the recliner and smiled at me. Just giving it a cleaning. He prompted up on a pair of pegs jutting from above the fireplace. He brushed off his jeans and eased himself down onto the recliner as Alma reappeared with a plate of cookies,

which she placed down in front of me. Freshly baked. Oh, thanks. So, just out for a drive, eh? I nodded, my mouth full of warm cookie. I come through here ever so often to clear my head. I've never seen your road before, so I thought I'd check it out. Our road, you say?

Bilderberg Road. Ah, Bilderberg Road, yes. That would be us. Yeah, so I was... cruising down the road and my car hit something and just died. Cars have a tendency to do that. Yeah, I guess so. So I called AAA and they said they'd be here pretty soon.

How soon would you say? Not sure. What time is it? It's almost night. Well, yeah. I pulled my cell out of my pocket to check the time and had a few text messages and missed calls. I flicked open the phone. Sorry, people have been texting me.

Oh, no problem at all. Right, Alma, dear? Not anymore, sweetie. She smiled back and shuffled off. I scrolled through the messages, all of them from AAA. Can't find Bilderberg Road on GPS. Then, please call Bilderberg Road not on maps.

Then, urgent. Call immediately. Then, urgent. Remain in your vehicle. Then, do not leave your vehicle. Call immediately. Police are on the way. Huh?

Marty poured himself a glass of whiskey and took a sip. I shook my head. I guess there's bears or something outside tonight. A bunch of warnings about not leaving the car. Well, it is almost night after all. Yeah. Which reminds me. Alma said your grandkids were out back?

All eight of them. And their folks, too. Hence the mess in here. Shouldn't they think about coming in? Sounds like it's not a good idea to be outside tonight. Oh, it definitely isn't. Alma, would you tell the kids to come inside? I'ma giggled from the other room.

The feelings of unease started to chill my skin again. Something about these people, as friendly as they were, made me uncomfortable. It was almost hunger in their eyes as they'd looked at me. Mind if I use the restroom? Not at all. It's just down the hall there. I stood slowly, took a few breaths. When I got to the bathroom, I closed.

and locked the door. Then I dialed AAA. It's AAA. My name is Ryan. What can I do to make your day fantastic? Hi. You guys were just texting me about not leaving my car. I'm on Bilderberg Road.

Texting you about the car. Uh, hold please. Someone knocked on the door. Everything all right in there? Yep. Great. The tow truck called about my car. Oh.

I heard her shuffle off. The line clicked back on. Yes? Yeah, my supervisor wants to talk to you. Then the line clicked, and a new voice started whispering loudly into the phone. Do not go outside. Do not speak to anyone. Do not for any reason leave your car.

Wait. Do not be alarmed. The police are on their way. What the hell are you talking about? I can't tell you. Not over the phone. Then the line clicked off, and I sat there on the toilet staring at my phone for a minute. I wasn't sure what to do, so I stood up and looked around.

Everything all right, dearie? I looked out the window into the darkening forest. I, uh... A line of 15 small white crosses stood tall against the shadowed trees. Alma? Yes, dear. Where are your grandchildren? Well, sweetie, it sounds an awful lot like you found them.

How about you come on out of there? Here's almost night after all. I punched 911 into my phone and climbed into the bathtub. 911, what's your emergency? Bisters are on their way out to me, but I want to make sure. Where are you? Tell me where you are. I'm on Bilderberg Road. The street's name. is Bilderberg Road. Yes, I'm in a brick house owned by these two old people and one of them has a gun.

They have a graveyard behind their house. I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do. What? You say you're on Bilderberg Road? Yes, you take the road through the forest and there's a small dirt road that leads off the main road. I'm aware, and I apologize, but there's nothing I can do. What the fuck do you mean? The connection cut off and I found myself staring at my phone again. What the hell do they mean? There's nothing they can do. They're the police, for fuck's sake!

Sweetie, it's time to come up now. I looked around the bathroom, but the closest thing to a weapon that I could find was a bundle of soaps. No mirror to break in shards. No towel rack to rip off the wall. And the window was too small to crawl through. Or was it? I pushed against the glass, hoping it would open outward. when I saw something moving in the woods

just beyond the graves. A bear? Something... I'm sure. Never heard a soul in my life. Then how do you explain the graves in the backyard? The window didn't budge. I slumped to the ground. Wasn't us that heard him.

It was that... I shook my head. The gun cocked. Ouch! I pushed myself up and... I took a breath. I pushed open the door. I wanted to fly, or fight even, but my mind betrayed me and my body went completely numb. Marty stood in the hallway, his shotgun raised, Alma right beside him. They didn't look at me the weight I'd expected. There was no bloodlust, no rage. There was just greed. I felt like a fucking poker d'et. I felt like a fucking poker

Chip. Sorry about this, kiddo. He tipped the gun towards the front door. It's almost night. Terrified tears raced down my cheeks. What's going on? Alma patted my arm. Oh, honey, you were the answer to our prayers. I don't... We ran out. It took years and years, but we have Eventually ran out. Of what? Sons, daughters, granddaughters, brothers and sisters,

every one of them. We had nobody left to give. Marty poked my chest with a gun. Go on. Towards the door now. I took a few slow steps back. When you came knocking, I had this here shotgun

pushed so far back. In my mouth, I almost choked on it. What? Alma was going to make arsenic cookies, but we settled on something less painful. That is, until our neighbor showed up. There was no arsenic in the cookies. Don't worry.

We reached the door, and Alma opened it. From the bottoms of our hearts, we thank you. For what? Darling, you just bought us years. Marty swung his gun up and caught me in the gut. I crumpled to the ground. My breath blown out of me, and Alma shoved me out the door and onto their brick stoop.

The door swung shut behind me and a loud click locked it from within. I tried to breathe, but the pain was too much and I could only suck in small, sharp breaths. Then, from the woods around me, figures started to emerge. Dark, humanoid. No, human. They were men and women, all dressed in business attire with suits and skirts and skirts and ties. Only they all wore bags on their heads.

Every one of them, brown paper bags, with no holes for their eyes. They moved towards me slowly, their heads twitching back and forth, like they were listening for something, and they hunched over as they stepped silently through the leaves. Their fingers stretched wide, ready to latch on to. Oh, God!

I held what little breath I had and pushed myself up, the adrenaline in my system overriding the pain. Just let them do what they came here to do, kiddo. Marty said through the window beside me, where he and Alma stood, smiling. They paid a lot of money for this. Then I ran. I ran as hard as I could, fighting the stabbing cramp in my gut.

One of the people lunged for me, and I dodged right. Their clawed fingers grasping for my shirt. My car wasn't far. Five minutes if I jogged. Yet as I ran, more people kept pushing their way out of the trees, all of them wearing bags. Some stained, others with branches or leaves protruding through them. All of them pale with their fancy clothes and their long, reaching fingers.

I leapt past another one and lunged for my car door as a dozen more emerged from the woods ahead of me. I slammed the door shut behind me and hit the log button as many times as I could. What the fuck is going on? I pushed back against the seat. They had swarmed my car. But they weren't being violent with it. They seemed to be stroking it, holding my car tenderly. When one of them scratched a diamond ring across the window,

the others turned and beat her ruthlessly. And all the while, they never made a sound. Only the rustling of paperbacks. The swish of cloth, of expensive jewelry. My car won't start. Still won't fucking start. I was hoping that they wouldn't make it inside the car by the time the sun came up, but the fingers are almost all the way in through the wedge they've made.

I tried kicking at them and punching them and burning them with a cigarette lighter, but they just come back. And every time they come back, my window gets a little lower. Factions of fractions lower, but still, there's nothing left for me to do. If you've listened to this, then send whatever help you can to Bilderberg Road. If you can, I don't know why nobody else can help me. It's one of life's simple pleasures, scratching an itch. But what if the itch is unreachable in more ways than one?

As we learn from author Matt Dimmerski, a man delving into history via archaeology, finds himself connected to the past in the form of a mysterious itch and the lengths he goes to to scratch it are let's just say extreme performing this tale is peter lewis so scratch all you want it likely won't help if you have phantom possession syndrome people misunderstand how possessions happen decades of Hollywood misrepresentation, separation from old traditions, and a culture of silent suffering. Keep these things out of the public consciousness and make us vulnerable. When it began happening to me, I had no idea what I was dealing with. That ignorance let it fester and grow.

I am actually certain of the exact moment of contamination. I was on an archaeological dig in Montana with two dozen other students, and we were unearthing ancient, out-of-place fossils and artifacts that multiple years of meltback had freed from receding glaciers. There was a rather huge range of relics to be discovered, including never-before-seeing religious sundries used by cavemen that dated some 90,000 years before humans were supposed to have come to North America. While Eurasian Neanderthals had just been starting to bury their dead, these surprisingly modern bones had belonged to people with complex worshipping practices.

It was all disconcerting enough that our professors who had chosen this site more or less at random had so far decided not to go public with the discovery. There was every chance we were mistaken that the data was flawed or something extraordinary had happened to transport these things. here. It would take time to piece together an accurate picture. That particular day, that particular hour, a fellow student named Greer had yet again bullied me into taking his shift. I was already tired from digging all morning, but he was built far more like these sturdy cavemen than I was, and I didn't feel like taking another secret punch in the gut. As a result, I was the one dusting the dirt from an oddly spiked kneecap when a cold gust of wind knocked me forward and caused me to slice my pinky finger. It was nothing really a scrape. The kneecap's protrusion was still sharp,

even after 90,000 years, and I rubbed my finger against my jacket to dispel the itch the scrape had brought with it. I couldn't have known at the time that this malformed skeleton was surrounded by the heaviest concentration of religious relics, but I'm not sure what I would have done even if I had known. The itching continued to nag at my awareness for the next several hours, enough that I sought out some basic medical supplies when I got back to my tent. Disinfectant seemed to make it go away, and I finally lay exhausted on. my sleeping bag and hoped to do nothing but sleep for the next 12 hours. Unfortunately, that was when Greer invaded my tent and insisted I join him for drinking with some of the female students.

We were not friends. It was all part of his carrot and stick routine for controlling people. Threatened quietly, reward, publicly, and never let them relax. I, of course felt trapped. His rewards were well chosen. He seemed to saunter effortlessly among the circles of girls that usually so icily shut me out, and I was welcome and even adored as long as I was riding his coattails. There was no way for me to turn down the opportunity, and taking him up on it just put me further under the effect of his later bullying. But that night, I felt odd. With some alcohol in me, I began to feel that itch returning. No matter how much I scratched at my hand, I never seemed to hit the right spot. It was as if the growing burn was a millimeter or two above my skin and maddeningly unreachable for lack of actual contact. I excused myself a few hours in to go deal with the infuriating annoyance more thoroughly, but Greer caught up and stopped me. He was a head. head and a half taller than me, and he knew it. Usually I backed down, but that night I was filled

with fiery energy. A push sent him staggering back, and he just stared at me as I stalked away toward my tent. Once alone, I scratched my pinky finger until it started to bleed, and then I took out a knife, only stopping when I realized that I would just deal myself of horrible damage. No, I needed another strategy. If the itch was a millimeter above my skin, maybe I could do the opposite of cutting myself. Carefully squeezing the skin, I managed to bunch it up a millimeter higher and then rubbed my contorted hands against the rough fabric of my work jeans. Oh, God, that was heaven. I can't even describe how great that first relief felt.

The most apt saying would be that it was like scratching a long-denied itch, but that was actually exactly what it was. In any case, I lay on my sleeping bag, sighed happily, and slept wonderfully. My dream that night was simple enough. I was walking across snow somewhere, but I wasn't cold. I awoke to about five seconds of continued happiness, and then the itch set in again. Staring at my hand in confusion, I realized that the itch was now undeniably outside my hand. I could rotate it and feel the position change, always maintaining itself about an inch to the right of my pinky finger.

How could I have an itch outside my body? Agonized and overwhelmed by a tide of anxious energy brought on by the return of the itch, I began considering rather terrible alternatives. The first was, of course, to try to ignore it. The burning continued outside my hand and even outside my glove as I tried to participate in the dig. I was back at the same malformed body that day, and the itch intensified greatly whenever I went too near. I did my best to focus all my energy on resisting the annoying pain, but digging out bones is delicate work, and I knew I would just damage something if I continued.

I pretended I was sick and headed back to my tent. Greer found me out of sight of the others, and let me. left me with a bruised arm and abdomen. Bastard. It was his way. Cold, calculated, and private punishment for crossing him. I didn't have spare energy to resist, and I walked off the added pain.

In fact, the hurt helped me do what needed to be done once I was safely alone in my tent. I'd already found the basic solution the night before. Now I just needed to get my skin an inch out from my pinky. God. Wincing, I carefully pulled out my knife again, sanitized my finger with rubbing alcohol, and then went to work.

I aimed to do as little damage as possible. Cutting a tiny flap of skin, I lifted it, but didn't reach my goal. Stealing myself, I cut a little. bit further and then lift it a little bit higher. Still, not enough. With tears running down my burning cheeks, I cut all the way to my nail and then lifted the flap of skin away from the muscle. I sighed with euphoria as the scratching finally made contact. It was over. Oh, God, It was over.

Scratching to my heart's content before closing the skin again and using bio-glue to seal the cuts, I wrapped up my pinky and fell asleep. I dreamed again of walking across vast glaciers under an open primordial sky. This time evening fell, and I saw something unexpected on a distant mountain. Light and lay quietly for a moment. a time. Cutting myself had been crazy, but that was all over and I was just glad nobody else had seen me behaving so strangely. My relief faded, however, as a familiar burning sensation sparked up again. This time, it was a wide strip of itching, nearly a foot outside my right arm. I slammed my

fists into the hard ground underneath the fabric of my tent, it collapsed and even cried a little. But I knew that there was not going to be an easy way out of this, like I'd thought. I couldn't. Twelve inches out, the amount of cutting would be unthinkable. I would have to, thinking, I was thinking. I just had to apply some knowledge. I got out my phone and did some searches on the internet. Propreoception. That was what it was called. The human body's sense of where its own limbs are.

It was different from the vestibular system, I read, narrowing down what I needed to know. All right. Malfunctions in the proprioception system. What could I find? Phantom Lim Syndrome. Sitting frozen for a time as the itching tingled quietly, I knew I'd hit upon the problem. I hadn't had a limb amputated, but I knew this was still it. I was experiencing phantom limb pain, for a limb I had never had.

Rushing to the dig site, I pretended all was well and went back to work. On fire in more ways than one, I ignored the itching and uncovered as much of the stranger skeleton as I could. My suspicions were vindicated when I began revealing from the ancient rock a third arm. The bones were different in shape and structure and likely would have been categorized as being from a different skeleton, but I knew better. Whatever this thing was, it had more than two arms. My understanding of the situation still contained numerous missing pieces, including the mechanism of how I had contracted this thing's proporeoceptive sense of self, but I had some idea what I was dealing with now. It's easy to say it's time to go to the doctor, but it's another thing to actually do it.

I'd lived my entire life avoiding the police and avoiding the doctor simply because that's what you do in America. I couldn't even envision myself going to them with the fragments I had found, I would be locked up in a heartbeat or given a bankrupting medical bill with no real treatment. No, I had to deal with this on my own. But the limbs gave me an idea. Covering my work with a tarp early and heading off, I evaded the other students and headed on foot to the nearby town with my archaeological tools. It was a small place, mainly populated to serve the National Park, but it did have a graveyard. About here is where, objectively,

I see my decision-making was a bit compromised. The only thing I can offer in my defense is this. Imagine an itch the length of your arm, but outside your body, burning away horribly in a place you can't even scratch. Imagine that, going on for an entire day, worsening with each passing moment. The boiling anger and frustration literally cooks the brain, goading it into desperate action. I can tell you, too, though it is no real excuse,

that my actions were not entirely my own. I found the most recent grave and began digging. The arm was actually fairly intact. After smuggling it back to my tent, I cut away bits of the bone near its shoulder as needed and began stitching both it and myself. Once it was truly part of me, I scratched myself right into a drug-like high. The leathery skin of the corpse's arm came away in many places, as rotting flesh tends to do. But I could feel it. I could feel the itch being satisfied. So, so, so, so happy.

I lay back, relaxed and slipped into that dream again. After treading across a long valley and climbing a steep, icy slope, I came upon a cave wherein dozens of very lost and dirty mammals sat huddled around a fire. The morning light streaming through the fabric of my tent blended with the image of that fire and woke me in a slow transition. I reached up to block the brightness and stared. My hand was not my hand. No, my hand was still there. This was a new one.

I panicked a little bit then. Somehow, during the night, the arm that I had dug up from a grave and stitched onto myself had become truly attached to me. I could feel through its leathery fingers, move it at will, and even lift things. I had a third arm. Even as I stared, the itching began again. This time outside my left arm, the morning that I realized. just how deeply in trouble I was. This was no accident, no random brain malfunction, no allergic reaction. Something was inside me and doing this to me. For God's sake, I'd gone to a graveyard and dug up

an arm. Where had that idea come from? And how had it become a functioning part of me? I felt stronger, too. My gear felt lighter, and I felt a tension in my muscles that almost demanded I find a way to employ my strength. As I carefully bound one of my arms under my bulky winter jacket so that nobody would notice it, I almost hoped Greer would try something today. I was hungry for conflict and rather excited at the prospect. of violence. He was weak, and I would show him who was in charge. But he and some blonde girl had skipped out that day. Our particular professor was annoyed, but he always let Greer get away

with things like that. I could see now that the professor was also somehow under Greer's thumb. Pathetic. Piece by piece, I secretly carried the malformed skeleton away and set it up in my tent, exactly as it had been in the ground, surrounding religious artifacts and all. What had at first appeared to have been an honored burial now looked to me like an attempted exorcism. Somebody had invented this particular ritual

about 90,000 years earlier, which meant there had likely been a very dire need. The space above my... My left arm burned with awareness numbing agony. No, I couldn't do it again. I wouldn't. I had to stop myself. But there was another voice inside, whispering about possibilities, screaming about relief.

It was as if the voice came from the skeleton laid out before me, but also from inside my head. The ancient bones contained a fourth arm that was different from both the original two and the third. I staggered into the chill woods intent on fighting the foreign urges with all my strength. It was better if I was delirious and lost, for then I could never find my way to the graveyard. And yet, somehow, I did. This new arm attached to me almost immediately. Covered in dirt and rot in gore and sweat, I found my way to the town church. Long ago, men had found a way to deal with this threat, and descendant traditions still existed.

The priest within did not believe my rantings and almost called the police, until I showed him my forearms and the spiked bone beginning to pierce the skin above my kneecaps and elbows. The foreign entity inside me shed its sly tactics the moment I let myself be chained up. I could hear its voice in my head, angry, violent, and arrogant. Where had it come from? What did it want? The terrified priest surely didn't know, and he did his best to ignore my rants and please until a cadre of other priests arrived. They too stared at my forearms. They too crossed their chests. Tied up in a blank walled stone room underneath the church and surrounded by candles and sigils, I found myself evaluating. the men for traits I could take from them. Many were older, but one priest was younger and had good

muscle tone. I could take that tissue, cut my skin open, and push it inside. It would become mine. I was now the way humans were always meant to be. Editable. It was obvious once little things like squeamishness, disgust, and respect for life were brushed aside. We were modular. Why else would all our parts be so uniform? Even as the priests threw water on me for some reason, I grinned. Humans knew it, too. They took livers and lungs and kidneys and even hearts from the dead and put

them into the living. What was so wrong with what I was doing then, we were all on the same page. The strong deserved to take the week's best pieces and thus become stronger themselves. That was the way of nature. Why then did these people resist? They'd asked for this. They'd cried out against their own biomechanical failure. and eventual mortality. They'd cried out for salvation. They'd prayed. And they had been heard.

Did they reject what they had asked for simply because their arrogant idea of God looked so much like themselves? They mistakenly believed me to be a demon, but if they thought I was their worst nightmare than I couldn't imagine how they would react. if they ever met a real one. And it was gone.

Burning away like so much smoke from every pore. I was covered in holy water and strange fluids and two of the priests were down with minor injuries. The rest were cutting at the stitches holding my two new arms. They fell away. useless. The spiked bone at my knees and elbows was receding too. I shouldn't have been surprised that I'd been unaware of most of the exorcism. The entity had been fighting for control then, even as it had tried to convince me to support it. Had it just been lying? It couldn't really have been one of the good guys, could it? I shuddered at the thought that the horror

The fine world of organic osmosis it had shown me might be the heaven that awaited us after death. You'd be surprised how little bonding there is after an exorcism. It felt a bit like a visit to the DMV. The priests made sure I was all right and that I was myself, and then, well, I was let loose back on the street. What else could they do? It wasn't like we were going to be friends now. Some of them had literally gone white-haired from the shock of whatever they had witnessed, and they refused to discuss it or even look at me.

That was it. That was my possession from beginning to end. I still have the skeleton, although any lingering demonic spirit it contained, is now gone. The only traces of the entity left of the body left, are in me, ideas, attitudes, perhaps a bit of unspoken philosophy. Why speak out? Why tell my tale? Well, it's obvious. We've got a lot to learn. The lessons begin now. I don't consider what I've done bad or disgusting. When they're took Greer out of his tent, bleeding, crying, and screaming. I could only feel the predatory

triumph of the strong. The students and professors were outwardly horrified, sure, but I could tell that they were appreciative that someone had done something to free them all from their false god. Appearances were important to this culture that I knew. Their ferns, they're For what I took from him would be unseen by most, and yet it had been the source of his strength, and would now be the source of mine. I gazed around the circle of onlookers until I found the blonde earl he dallied with the day before. In a way, I could now see her the way he had seen her, in all her willingness and beauty. She was a good choice.

She made eye contact with me and blushed, but did not look away. I grinned. Little girls often dream of being ballerinas when they grow up. But as explained by author C. M. Scandrith, when one girl comes to the realization that dancing will never be an option for her, she creates an imaginary proxy who dances in her stead. Unfortunately, her imagination proves to be far more tangible and far more malevolent than her worst nightmares. Performing this tale are Erica Sanderson, Nicole Doolin, and Alexis Bristow. So guard your thoughts and make sure you don't conjure up the Highway Dancer.

When my parents told me that I couldn't take ballet classes, I wept as though a beloved pet had died. I think that was my first tangible experience of being disabled. Before that, I'd enjoyed being carried everywhere by my parents or pushed hither and thither in my stroller. While other kids were walking around stores, grizzling about how tired they were and how sore their feet were, I got chauffeered everywhere and could nap as I pleased.

but it wounded me deeply to be told I couldn't do something that I wanted to do. Like other girls of that age, I'd still dress up like a ballerina and play through nutcracker fantasies in my head. When I was in the swimming pool, I'd pretend to be the Swan Princess of Chikovsky fame and imagine that I would someday transform into a girl with legs that worked. And when we went on long car trips to visit various relatives scattered across the country, I would always be kept company by my imaginary double, the highway dancer.

Many of you had your own versions of this creation. For some of you, it was a cool kid on a skateboard who could flip over cars and trucks, or an imaginary video game character that your mind had conjured up in your car-confined boredom. For others, it was a runner or a football player who could duck and dodge through traffic or run along the tops of vehicles leaping from one to the next. My imaginary companion was a more adult version of myself, a ballerina in full regalia, dancing effortlessly along the highway,

leaping and pirouetting over every vehicle that passed in the other direction. She was untouchable and perfect, her legs doing things that mine never could, a dance that no other human being could do either. Her costumes varied on a whim, but her shoes were always the same, battered yet sturdy, broken in but strong, the exact kind of shoes a professional dancer would wear.

She was a perfect mix of dream and reality. But one fateful day I went too far with my fantasy. I can't remember what I was angry about. I think I was tired from rolling my chair around and I wanted my mother to push me instead. Whatever the case, my mood was reflected in the choreography of the highway dancer as we drove home. Her movements were aggressive.

jerky and graceless. I imagined her face was set in the same snarl of emotion as mine and that she came down heavily on each car, denting their ruse with the weight of her irrational rage. My mother's eyes narrowed at me in the rearview mirror. If you don't get that look off your face, you won't get any dessert,

went the dancer. Don't care. And no television. In response, I jerked my head to look out the window and brought the dancer down on the hood of a passing car with every ounce of my petulant rage. The car exploded. That wasn't my imagination. The blast knocked our own car sideways and clean off the road.

Other cars pulled away from the blistering orange fireball ploughing into one another. The noise was utterly atrocious. A cacophony of buckling metal, squealing tires and roaring fuel as carnage engulfed the highway. From my seat in the back of the car, my legs dangling. uselessly. You could only stare in horror while the victims of my childhood prank screamed in agony as they tried to haul their flaming bodies from the wreckage. I watched as their pink and red flesh darkened to umber and charcoal as the fire relentlessly devoured them. I know what you're thinking, that it was all a coincidence. The police later confirmed it. The whole thing was probably caused

by a combination of a leaking fuel line and a bad spark plug. But I distinctly recall the dancer's standing there. Her malefic grin bathed in the hellish glare of the fire, and I knew that she had done it. She taunted me from the road as we pulled carefully away from the crash scene. Do it again. Do it again, or I'll do it for you. Someone went her feet on the roof on another car. It swerved as though hit by a heavy gust of wind. Do it again. As we pulled into a petrol station, I reached deep into my imagination and conjured heavy chains of iron. Before the dancer could respond, the chains coiled about her

and then went tight over her sustained dress. She raged and scrum, crying out in pain, but I wound the chains over, around, and threw an unused petrol pump, then locked it all tightly together with the power of my thoughts. As our car chugged away from that lonely rural station, I heard her whisper in my mind. Should you ever imagine me being free,

I will come back for you. And so I resolved to never think of the dancer again, putting her as far from my mind as possible. Moving House is one of those life events that conjures up old memories, especially as forgotten possessions resurface in the mire of packing. When I came across a childhood drawing of the highway dancer, the memory of those terrible events blossomed fresh in my mind. After it all happened, my parents bought me a Nintendo Game Boy in a pair of headphones, since getting into a car set me to shaking and crue.

crying almost immediately. The immersion in the video games dulled the horror of those events, and eventually the PTSD faded away. And with that, I came to realize that the highway dancer was imaginary, and that horrific accident was nothing but an awful coincidence. Only an idiot would link the two. Such thoughts weren't for the level-headed practical 23-year-olds that I'd become. I imagined her then, her shoes the same, her face now identical. to my adult face. She leapt and twirled, free from the chains that I had bound her with, sailing over cars and dancing along tight ropes of roadside power lines. For a moment I felt a frision of fear, a cold, sick feeling in my stomach. Had I just set her free? Then I reminded

myself that the dancer wasn't real, and that even if I had freed her by imagining her dancing again. She no longer had any power over my adult mind. I went back to packing, calling my girlfriend Madison to help me with some of the things I couldn't handle myself. Time rolled by. Both Madison and I finished our degrees and talked about marrying once it was legal. The inheritance that her parents bequeathed upon us wasn't massive, but it was enough to use as a deposit, and so we bought an apartment halfway between our respected workplaces. Despite my disability and I didn't feel like I'd been dealt a bad hand. My life was pretty good, with an incredibly loving and understanding partner, a decent wage, and family who still cared deeply for me.

Then, almost three years later, she found me. At first, I didn't notice her. I was sitting in the passenger seat, the traffic rolling past the window beyond Madison's copper and blonde hair, ordinary and monotonous. But for a flash of brilliant colour, Capillary red caught my eye. It vanished, then reappeared, then vanished again. Praining my head, I tried to get a better view and was eventually rewarded by a break in the traffic. It was the dancer,

moving over and through the stream of vehicles as acrobatic as ever. However, her face was not at all as it had been when I was a child. Where it had once been serene and almost angelic, her features were now pinched by intense stress and immense pain. and the sensible ballet shoes she'd once worn were now little more than red rags, blood staining her legs from the tips of her toes almost to her knees. I found you. I danced and danced across endless highways until my feet then red,

until my bone scraped stone. And I finally found you. Shock must have been writ large on my face, as Madison shot me in inquiring glance. You're all right there, Ellie? Pull over. Shit door, we're on the highway. As I'll leave in a shoulder. Please, pull over.

Sensing something was horribly wrong. Her deft, tattooed hands steered the car across two lanes and eventually we drifted to a halt on the skinny shoulder of the road. Jesus, Ellie, your feet! I glanced down and immediately regretted it. My shoes and socks were a bloody mess.

My leg stained with scarlet to just below the knees. But before I could get my footwear off to perform a self-check, the dancer intruded on my thoughts again, standing impatient and imposing on the median barrier of the highway. Drive! I shook my head, fumbling at my bloody feet. With that same malevolent grin I recalled from my childhood,

the dancer stepped down and took flight. She gained height and speed, just as she had on that day long ago, then brought all of her pain and rage down upon a hapless van on the other side of the highway. The roof of the white vehicle immediately buckled. The van careened into the next lane with a screaming threat of stress metal and rubber. Drive! Matt, I need to get to a hospital, quickly. As we pulled out into traffic, the dancer spun over the cars with us, arrogant and antagonistic.

You should never have left me there. The anger in her voice boiled through my mind. Suddenly, without any form of warning, she came down on the hood of our car with all of the weight of her changed years of rage. I don't recall anything after that. In the hospital, they informed me that I'd been in a terrible accident. They did it nicely and professionally, offering support services and counselling. I've been banged up pretty badly. Multiple wrist fractures, a concussion, a hairline fracture to the skull and a kidney rupture.

But I wasn't nearly as bad off as Madison. In the ICU, the number of tubes and wires hooked up to her was gut-wrenching. Her always artfully coloured hair had been shaved completely, and the face that I loved was an unrecognisable mass of purple flesh and black stitches. When my mother arrived to take me home, I refused. I'm never getting in a car again. We argued for a while, my mother patiently pointing out how irrational I was being, how in this day and age a person couldn't avoid using vehicles.

As though summoned into existence, the dancer suddenly stood on the other side of the road watching. One wrist hung useless, and blood smeared her bright hair. Get in the car. Spinning the wheelchair away from the road, I closed my eyes and forced myself to think of her not dancing. I tried to imagine her as heavy as lead, unable to move. I tried to conjure the chains again, but my mind was too weak. I think that with the loss of childhood, so too I had lost the power to bind the dancer with my imagination. That won't work again.

I was back to the hospital foyer now, but I could still feel her there, on the side of the road, waiting. So long as I never get in a car or go near a road again, you can't touch me. But you'll have to. Nobody can avoid the road forever. It wasn't hard to find the equipment I needed. It's not like I was considered an at-risk patient. Lying on the floor of the unisex toilet cubicle, propped up against the wall,

I tied the rubber intubation tubing around my calves until I was sure the circulation had been completely cut off. Then I got to work with the scalpel. It wasn't exactly pain-free. Even though I'd had no feeling or movement in my legs since birth, there was a nagging something that my nervous system was trying to transmit as I carefully pared open the white flesh of my ankle, exposing bone, ligaments and cartilage.

A single insistent word slithered into my mind. Stop! As I worked to separate my left foot from my body, in my mind's eye the dancer began to falter. No longer graceful, she stumbled in pain. Our shared bodies were indeed the mirror of one another. She missed a step as I cut through my Achilles, her foot falling slack. A slow-moving car slammed into her, pinballing her into the median barrier on the road outside.

Her steps faltered. She was hopping now, clumsy and hamstrung. By the time I had finished with the first foot, she lay on the side of the road, her eyes dead of all emotion, the bloodless stump still digging repetitively into the asphalt for purchase. She knew her dancing days were forever at an end. After they found me, they didn't reattach my feet. For a person with already compromised limbs, there were too many complications. It was easier just to tidy up the mess I'd made of the amputation. Madison slipped away from us two weeks later.

A massive brain hemorrhage took her in the middle of the night. And while that was difficult for all of us, it was just a little easier for me. because whenever I'm near a road, I can see that hateful dancer, writhing in agony, her bloody stumps wiggling in the air like some stricken insect. And so I make her stagger up onto those ruined sticks of bones and flesh, and dance and dance until her pathetic, pleading screams trickle into the colossal void where Madison's love once had been. presentation. Now it's time to drift off into your own nightmares. If you would like to find out how you can hear the full-length versions of our audio program, please visit the no-sleep podcast.com to learn about our season pass program.

25 episodes, each over two hours long, and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 1999. everyone at the No Sleep Podcast. We thank you for listening. Join us again next week. We'll have more stories for you and whatever that is standing right behind you. This audio production is copyright 2016 by Creative Reason Media Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without. the written consent of Creative Reason Media, Inc.