The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S8E01

Episode Date: October 9, 2016

It's episode 01 - the premiere of Season 8. On this week's show we have four tales about myths, massacres, and memories."How Many Fairies?"‡ written by Leo Harrison and performed by Dan Zappulla & Nichole Goodnight & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts around 00:04:10)"YUSDABEE"† written by Richard Jenkins & Amelia Hammal and performed by Erika Sanderson. (Story starts around 00:35:30)"The Pancake Family"† written by AA Peterson and performed by David Cummings & Mike DelGaudio. (Story starts around 01:10:30)"I Found Margaret’s Diary"† written by A. St. Onge and performed by Jessica McEvoy & Alexis Bristowe & Addison Peacock & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts around 01:47:05)Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast™ Click here to enter the Ouija: Origin of Evil contest Click here to learn more about AA Peterson Executive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon BooneAudio adaptations produced by: Phil Michalski† & Jeff Clement‡"How Many Fairies?" illustration courtesy of Jen TracyAudio 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. We're here to frighten you and mess with your head because that's what you want. So give in to your fear because tonight there will be no sleep. It's the no sleep podcast. It's the no sleep podcast. I'm David Cummings. Thanks for joining us. On this week's show, we have four tales about myths, massacres, and memories. Welcome to Season 8 of the No Sleep Podcast.

It's great to have you with us for another season of fearful frights. It's especially nice to be launching the season so close to Halloween. We're working hard to make this a month of pumpkin spice nightmares. And what better way to kick off a new season in October than with a contest? For our production of Boraska on the season 7 finale, we were thrilled to be joined by director Mike Flanagan and his wife, Kate Siegel. Well, Mike has co-written and directed a new movie called Ouija, Origin of Evil, and it co-stars Kate.

It's about a family and their young daughter Doris, who discovers a Ouija game board in their home. When Doris attempts to contact her deceased father through the game's seeing eye, She sees a dark figure and is suddenly possessed by a malevolent spirit. Indeed, it's the perfect film to experience this Halloween season. It's opening in theaters on October 21st, so we want to help Mike and Kate celebrate the premiere of this terrifying film. So here's what we're going to do.

We have two Origin of Evil prize packs to give away to two lucky winners. Each prize pack contains an origin of evil, t-shirt, candle, mint box, and flashlight. And as they say in infomercials, but wait, there's more. Each prize pack will also include a classic Ouija board game by Hasbro, and each game will be signed by Mike and Kate, making this a genuine collector's item to be passed down to future generations of demon-possessed children. To enter, all you have to do is go to contests.

sleeppodcast.com and find the trivia question. Email your answer to us and you're entered in the random drawing for one of the two prize packs. The contest will run until the very end of the month, Halloween night. No entries accepted once November 1st strikes the Eastern time zone. So treat yourself to a frightening film starting October 21st, Ouija, Origin of Evil, and enter to win a great prize. I'm predicting the board will spell out the word win either way. And now it's time for another prize,

which everyone has already won. It's this week's show. So, let's kick off Season 8. In our first tale, we meet a man who is recalling his younger school days, in which he was first introduced to the seemingly innocent horror rituals like Bloody Mary. But as we learn from author Leo Harrison, when the boys' two cousins show him a new game involving innocent mythical creatures, he soon realizes that the line between legend and reality is easily crossed.

Performing this tale are Dan Zapula, Nicole Goodnight, and Erica Sanderson. So steer clear of games like that, especially one called How Many Fairies? I think that there's something about the darkness, the unknown, that fascinates many of us from a young age. As we leave behind the innocence of childhood, getting older and older, it becomes apparent that there are a lot of questions in life for which no one really has any decent answers. Not even mom or dad or grandpa and grandma. We start to realize that there are all of these gaps segmenting our understanding of the world around us. And if we go deep enough, we begin to also understand that these gaps form a singular void, a black cavernous void, bigger than anything we've ever imagined, anything we can imagine.

It's a void so threatening that many of us prefer to believe that it's filled with light, shadowed forests and run-down mansions, silhouetted phantoms, the deepest trenches of the ocean floor, black holes, infinity and mortality. Death. When I try to remember how it was that this dread, this old sense of uneasiness, first made itself known to me,

I am always whisked back to a specific memory. I was in the first grade, and it was a typical day at school, apart from some rainy weather that kept us off the playground. I remember also that it was near Halloween time, And since we couldn't go outside to play, my classmates and I were forced to stay inside, playing board games and telephone, or else reading worn down copies of goosebumps and the magic tree house. Our teacher had left the room for a bit, placing a lazy chaperone in her place.

As we sat around beneath the glaring fluorescent light, trying to dream up some amusing pastimes, our elderly substitute lounged at the other end of the room. She was apathetic and nose-deep in a paperback. Let's play Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary? You haven't played before? No. What is it?

It's a game. A really fun game. What you do, you go into a pitch black room, just like that bathroom over there, and you stand in front of a mirror. Then you chant three times, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary. I stared at my classmate, transfixed. And then the ghost of Bloody Mary shows up in the mirror, and she's all bloody and stuff.

She says, have you seen my baby? And if you say no, then she vanishes. But if you say yes, what? What? What happens? I was riveted. No one knows for sure, because every time someone says yes, Bloody Mary reaches through the mirror and takes them to the mirror world. What happens after that? No one knows. Another kid piped up. It's true. My cousin's friend said yes to Bluilar. Bloody Mary, and he disappeared forever, and no one knows where he went.

Suffice it to say, I was petrified. As a pretty sheltered kid, I had never heard of anything like this before. The scariest stories I'd known up until that point were decades-old reruns of Scooby-Doo. On that rainy fall fall day, I was too scared to play Bloody Mary, but it did get me thinking, like I said. My parents weren't religious, and at that age, no one close to me had passed away yet. So the legend of Bloody Mary represented my first exposure to the idea of an afterlife. I asked myself, What's the mirror world?

What happens there? Will I go there when I'm a ghost? Will I ever be a ghost? But even at age 25, I've still never played Bloody Mary. I've never indulged in that curiosity, that void, and I don't think I ever will. You see, I once played a far stranger game than Bloody Mary. It's a game that you may or may not have heard of, a very special game. And I'm going to tell you about it.

I'm going to tell you about the game called How Many Fairies? That kid who first told me about Bloody Mary, on that drive, dreary autumn afternoon. Well, that kid's name was Donnie. Growing up, we've all come across our fair share of kids like Donnie. You know, the sort who get a kick out of pulling pranks and telling scary stories, exaggerating the truth or else downright lying, full of imagination. Those are the kids who keep urban legends immortalized,

distorting them as they're passed on from one generation to the next. Right now, someone. There's a Donnie out there, telling some terrified audience of grade schoolers that, yes, the killer was indeed calling from inside the house. My twin cousins, Jamie and Ella, were of Donnie's ilk. They grew up disconnected from urban life, spending their youth in the deep countryside, where they lived with my aunt and uncle. I understand now that my uncle was a very wealthy man, a retired neurosurgeon with a keen talent for play. playing the stock market, and this, of course, accounted for my aunt and uncle's extravagant Southern Gothic manner, as well as their humble family yacht. Something about growing up in the rural South had endowed Jamie and Ella with the blessing

of enormous imagination. Almost identical in appearance, the two twins spent more time weaving bizarre tales or reenacting original stage plays than they did watching television or reading comic books or playing video games. Given that I was a seasoned Sonic Adventure aficionado, my eight-year-old mind couldn't fathom how on earth my cousins were able to spend so much time doing what seemed to me like nothing, frolicking about the expanse of their backwoods property, fighting invisible dragons and saving invisible princesses

from castles made of thin air. Nonetheless, I spent a lot of time out there with Jamie and, Ella. I have fond memories of their beautiful mansion, as well as the sprawling mysterious wilderness that surrounded it. After all, even though I never took part in my cousin's fantastical exploits, I still had a hell of a time surveying the seemingly endless fields and forests that extended for miles around their house. I'd collect bugs and climb trees and jump haystacks. And then there were Jamie and Ella, always in my periphery, sword-fighting with sticks and battling it out for the sovereignty of what they called the Fairy Kingdom. As you might have guessed, my aunt and uncle

weren't the most over-protective caretakers. They loomed on the sidelines, benevolent, but distanced, and happy to see us preoccupied. I guess that was part of the mystique, the fun of visiting Jamie and Ella's house. It was almost like there were no adults around. I felt free to roam about and doing as I wished. Now, I won't say that I disliked Jamie and Ella, and they were my cousins. As we've gotten older, I've come to know them better, as people. They're generous individuals, their family. When I was a kid, however, I thought that they were weird.

In addition to their nearly identical style of dress, you see, The twins also shared very similar facial structures. Their cheekbones high and their complexions gaunt. They had small, somewhat slanted eyes and long jet black hair that sometimes covered their faces. They moved in coordinated motions, almost always immersed in their fantasy realm. And they were my friends, of course. But at the same time, the pair creeped me out. Just a bit.

Now that said, there was one aspect of my visits that I deeply disliked, but learned to endure. Jamie and Ella's games, you see, their games didn't end when daytime ended. Rather, when the sun fell and the view from their chandelier-lit kitchen overlooked an eerie swath of blue countryside, Jamie and Ella simply began to play different kinds of games. These games, they said, were a lot like those they played out in the forest. Just like there were fairies and a whole fairy kingdom out in the woods, they told me. There was also a whole fairy kingdom inside their gloomy, labyrinthine house. My cousins would explain to me that the fairies lived in a place called the secret world

and that if you wanted to cross over to that world and meet the house fairies, then all of the lights needed to be turned off. I didn't like hearing about the house fairies. At that age, I was better acquainted with the unnerving, haunting aspects of life, more so than I was when Donnie first told me about the legend of Bloody Mary. So I remember feeling unsettled by my cousin's stories about invisible specters roaming dark hallways. Where they saw fairies, I imagined demons.

The problem, however, was that once nighttime rolled around, I couldn't just ignore my cousin's overactive imaginations. There was nowhere to go. Jamie and Ella had no video games, no television, no comic books with which I could distract myself from their antics. It was their way or the highway. And given how far from town my cousins lived, it wasn't an option to be picked up by my parents after sunset. So when it came time to play how many fairies, I either had to sit and endure my cousin's weird ritual, or else skulk off to the kitchen and eat ice cream or something. And for a long time, I actually did just wander off, trying to find some mundane alternative time killer

in a better lit corner of the house, far away from my cousins and their creepy games. My reluctance to play along with Jamie and Ella, for instance, led to a strange sight. myself, eight years old, lounging around my uncle's library, trying in vain to find entertainment from a dusty leather-bound copy of the turn of the screw. I'm sure I would have been traumatized by the book had I not fallen asleep while trying to decipher the first few sentences. This overwhelming boredom eventually gave way to some healthy curiosity. I started to feel like I should give Jamie and Ella's fairy deal a chance.

After all, there was nothing else to do. As I saw it, I was wasting valuable time, just throwing all these nights down the drain. So one evening, I finally gave in. I figured, what the hell? The worst case scenario was that I would get a little spooked or maybe just bored. After all, fairies didn't exist. My cousins pretty much erupted with joy when for the first time ever,

I agreed to play how many fairies. They jumped up and down, almost screaming, and grinning wildly, they spoke faster than they could think. I remember feeling good that my compliance had made them so happy, even if their reaction was characteristically unique. Before I knew it, we were sitting in a sort of foyer that adjoined their respective bedrooms. I suppose that this empty space was where most kids would have littered their toys. but since Jamie and Ella didn't have a single bright flashing gizmo or extravagant playset between them, I instead found that the twins possessed an extensive collection of candles. My cousins marched into the foyer, each holding an arm full of candles.

Do your parents let you play with fire and stuff? I don't know. With diligence, they arranged the candles in a six-pointed star. What's that? I asked, pointing at the shape they were forming. A star. I thought stars just have the five points. Not fairy stars?

It's a special star. It makes the fairies come out. We saw it in one of Daddy's old books. All right, I thought. Their game, their shapes. I decided to avoid asking unnecessary questions. The twins snatched up the pair of lighters they brought with them. and then set about igniting the candles, one by one.

At last, I was staring at a flaming hexagram. I started to feel nervous. My parents would kill me if they knew I was up to something like this. And how would my aunt and uncle react if they found us messing with fire? I was about to speak up when, abruptly, the lights cut out. My train of thought veered into a different direction, and at first, in the dark, I could just make out each candle flame. To my eyes, the only thing in existence was this fiery six-pointed star laid out before me,

radiating in the darkness. Jamie and Ella had pulled the curtains, I realized. Gradually, my eyes adjusted to the area surrounding the star. I saw my cousins now, seated so that the three of us formed a triangle. Their odd, pale faces were illuminated from below, giving them an otherworldly appearance. I must have looked the same. I must have looked the same. way to them. What now? I broke not only the uncomfortable silence, but also my vow against unnecessary questions. We sing the fairy song.

How? How's it go? Just join in when you're ready. And then came the chanting, beginning in unison. How many fairies? How many fairies tonight? I waited, unsure of myself. How many fairies? How many fairies alight?

This continued for some time. The flames flickered against their faces, casting grotesque shadows upon the walls behind them. My eyes grew moist, teary from the heat. The twins looked at me, anticipating. I felt no other option. This went on for what felt like too long. The rhythm of the chant, the allure of the flames, the depth of the darkness. The effect hypnotized me.

Five, ten, fifteen minutes, and only this flaming star seemed to exist. There was nothing else, not anywhere. Not on earth and not in the sky. With our voices, I felt that we were drawing something out from the fire, Out into the darkness surrounding, we were giving life to something. And then, somehow with perfect synchronization, the three of us ceased our chant. I don't remember deciding to stop. It felt like the decision came from somewhere else, as if it were the decision of what was created from the darkness,

from the chanting, and from the fire. We were somewhere else now, and nothing looked different, but my mind. My mind was different. I felt scared and calm and excited, but calmer yet. Placed in the same situation, the pot-smoking teenager I had later become, would have realized that this felt like a trip. Now we have to separate. What?

I felt a slight surge of adrenaline. I'd forgotten that anything else existed, apart from the star, the chant, and the darkness. We won't see any fairies unless we go to different parts of the house. It's just how it works. Between the three of us, our words now shared the same monotonous, somewhat inhuman inflection. We sounded drugged. How do I see a fairy? Well, you need to be blank.

Find a dark place and close your eyes. Try to think real hard of a fairy. The fairy will come and see you if you see it in your head. Where... Where should I go? Wherever Ella and I don't, we all have to split up. Go anywhere. It's fun to explore the secret world.

And with that, the two blew out the candles. Darkness fell upon us. And for a while, I didn't say it. anything, didn't move. I decided to ask my cousin something. What if I get lost? There was no answer. They were gone. As I crawled through the foyer without direction, I felt my calm diminish. While my mind remained altered, I couldn't call what I'd begun to feel relaxation. It felt as if strange energies were passing through my head. It felt as if these things, these forces were somehow becoming me as they rushed through my being. I was complacent in this process.

And just like Ella had suggested, I was blank. A sort of invisible water kept rising up from the darkness and washing over me, only to drain away and once more leave me. Blank. Soon I arrived somewhere else, far away from the foyer. Having made it through several hallways, I came to a carpeted room. My surroundings were still wrapped in pitch blackness. I felt as if there was no longer an environment, as if there was no longer of me. Only the void. What now? I sat motionless upon the carpet, silent, feeling only my being and seeing only the darkness. I decided it was high time to try Jamie and Ella's trick. A part of me still felt incredulous.

I grinned a bit as I shut my eyes and began to think. I imagined what I thought a fairy would look like, something from some movie, a tinkerbell or the tooth fairy maybe, a tiny person shimmering with two butterfly wings extending outward from their back. A dark forest somewhere. A fairy. I saw it now, right before my eyes, clear as day. A fairy.

Was this what Jamie meant when he said that a fairy would come to me? I stared through my mind's eye at the creature forming before me. It was so lucid, so realistic, so beautiful. I saw Weber rising up from the large. water beneath it and heard the trees swaying around us. I listened as beautiful music emanated from each plant, each stone, and each bird. I was somewhere beyond time, beyond life and death. I felt at peace. I felt rocks beneath my feet. I now stood on the bank of the pond. Deep enchanted forest surrounded me.

I looked up at the fairy with tears in my eyes. It was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen. The fairy drew near to me and met my eye. Its aura of light overwhelming, almost searing. Once it came to face me, its luminous eyes beaming into mine. The fairy did something sudden, something strange. It winked at me. I awoke from my vision to a loud, startling noise.

Blackness. I was alone in the room again, and my surroundings were cloaked by abject darkness. I felt the carpeted floor beneath me. I felt my heart beating. And then I heard the noise again. I strained my ears, growing alert. Dazed as I was, I couldn't make much sense of what was happening.

Again, someone was in the room with me. Hello? There was a long silence. It felt like in eternity. And then, the sound was nine or ten feet away from me at the other end of the room, seven or eight feet. Part of me was afraid. Another felt reassured. This was just a game.

Nothing could hurt me. The fairy I'd seen in my mind was generous and beautiful. And anyways, this was probably just Jamie or Ella pulling a prank. Yeah, that was it. A prank? Maybe this whole silly game was just a prank, designed to scare me. Okay, stop it, you guys. I scooted back a bit out of instinct.

Nothing, I chuggled. Hey, where's the light switch anyway? I'm getting kind of sick of this. Closer. I swallowed, my mood shifting in an instant. Something wasn't right. Why weren't they saying anything? If this was a prank, I thought, then they were going way too far with it.

Then I heard another sound, a sound very different from the thumb. This was the sound that told me neither Jamie nor Ella were in the room. I heard from just a few feet away from me. A creaking, wheezing, sigh. Not male or female, but androgynous, hoarse and full of phlegm. A sigh drifting through the dark room. Before I could make a move, I fell to hand grab the naked skin of my ankle. It was a cold hand, a fleshy, rotten hand from another place.

It clutched hard at my ankle. Beneath the dimmest hint of light, I made out the vague outline of the thing's form sprawled out before me. I saw long, contorted limbs. I saw a matted, oily mane of black hair. I saw a pair of barely luminous wings, filthy and thin, like stained white. wax paper and I saw two beady eyes glimmering faint in the moonlight. One of the eyes disappeared for just a second.

As with any traumatic event in my life, I don't remember the exact chronology of what took place after that. First, I recall the lights turning on, my aunt and uncle dashing into the room and coming to my aid. I remember that the fairy was nowhere to be seen. Not anymore. I'd been screaming so loud and for so long that I thought I was perceiving only silence. And amid this silence, I heard anguished voices piercing through.

Honey, stop screaming, please. A burly pair of hands grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard. It was my uncle. At once, the room was silent, truly silent. My throat ached. My ears rang. I tried to say something, but my vocal cords were shot. My brain saw fit to erase wide swaths of memory following that moment.

At one point after that, I was sitting at the granite counter in the kitchen, a plate of fresh cookies and a glass of cold milk sitting untouched before me. And then, as I was walking through the front yard, beneath the stairs, my dad holding my hand, nearly dragging me along, as we made for his car. The driveway of my aunt and uncle's mansion, I remember seeing the humble family yacht, draped in white tarp, illuminated by the high beams of my father's SUV. My sister was in the car. She'd just finished a soccer game.

She rolled her eyes at me. She didn't understand and saw the whole situation as a hassle. Only my aunt and uncle knew how frightened I'd been, and only they had heard me scream. But there, in the car, I was a shell of myself. Blank. I was blank. To this day, that word still makes me sick. Somewhere the memory of that night ends, and another begins. Of course, I never told my parents what I saw.

I realized with a sense of rationality surprising for my age, that I would sound crazy to pretty much anyone apart from my therapist if I tried to explain to them what I'd witnessed. And yes, I was enrolled in therapy for a very long time after that night. My parents were upset with my aunt and uncle for a while, although that soon came to pass. After all, my mother and father didn't even know, what it was exactly that they were supposed to be so angry about. All anyone knew was that I'd

stumbled into a dark room by myself and gotten scared. It was a frightening situation for a kid to be placed in, sure, and the family consensus was that an overactive imagination got the best of me. My grandpa simply said, too many horror pictures. As for the twins, I didn't see them for a very long time. Years passed without contact. Recently, however, we got back in touch. They told me that I'd played a very different game than they had on that night. Ella, who now identifies as a follower of the Wiccan faith, explained to me that we conjured something malevolent all those years back. She explained how, after the incident, that strange things started happening around the house. Belongings went missing. Glasses were found shattered.

The twins experienced identical nightmares, nightmares about a winking fairy who transformed into a monster. I told Ella that that was strange. I figured she didn't need to know what I knew. There's one thing that always confused me, though. We sat catching up over coffee at a local diner. It's a weird detail, probably just nonsense. And what's that? I asked. One time, Jamie and I had a dream, a nightmare.

Just like any of the other nightmares, there was a fairy hovering above the pond, just like every other night. But this time, when it turned into a monster, the fairy spoke to us. It said, tell Donnie thank you. My heart sank. Tell Donnie thank you for introducing Percy to the mirror world. Donnie, the kid who told me about Bloody Mary, way back in the first grade. Donnie. Now, at age 25, I don't keep any mirrors in the house, and I sleep with all the lights on.

I do these things, of course, because my name is Percy. When you want to get home after a business trip, the last thing you need is to get lost, navigating a hectic subway system. But in this tale from authors Richard Jenkins and Amelia Hemel, we meet a woman who strays into the wrong area only to find herself in a place she may never get back from. Performing this tale is Erica Sanderson. So make sure you never find yourself

encountering something as strange as a used-to-be. I'm sure many of us have been there. wandering in a trance through the almost featureless maze of humid, stale tunnels that comprise an underground train station. Every city's metro system seems to have the same kind of corridors, devoid of any real style or personality. Tired masses blindly follow the signs, splitting into ever smaller groups as they branch off towards the line they need. Three weeks ago, I was one of them, travelling home from a conference in London. I was aiming to get to Heathrow Airport in order to fly home to Manchester. I know, I know, flying that distance is stupid.

I should have taken the train. More polar bears are melting every day, etc. My firm organises the transport. I just follow the route, logical and environmentally unfriendly as it may be. Those of you who know London, or who are just tube geeks, will know that to get to Heathrow, you need the... the Piccadilly line. So there I was, meandering my way through the labyrinth of a central London tube station at about 11pm. I'm not going to say which station in case it prompts some

idiots to try and recreate what happened to me. Believe me, you do not want to. No amount of internet fame is worth it. My sign directed wandering led me eventually to a set of escalators, far from unusual on the underground, except for the fact that these ones weren't working. I felt a tingling on the back of my neck and tasted metal in my mouth. Fearing that I'd wandered into a construction area, which would also have explained the sudden lack of any fellow passengers, I headed back the way I'd come. I walked for what felt like ten minutes, but didn't reach the central tunnel I'd branched off from. Those places always did get me turned around so very easily, though.

I should have realised at that point that something was very wrong, but I was tired after spending all day rabbiting on about exchange rates and currency derivatives and just wanted to get going. I rationalised the situation. If I wasn't meant to go that way, there would have been a massive no-entry sign or something. Deluding myself, I made the worst decision of my life. I turned around once again and followed the signs back to the escalator. You're probably thinking, all that evidence of something amiss and you still carried on?

What an idiot! Go ahead. You're not thinking anything I haven't hundreds of times over. Back to the escalator I went and descended it one careful step at a time. The advertising panels were empty. Some of the frames were unclipped and I had to brush them out of the way. Even more worryingly, metallic groaning and clicking echoed through the shut. after every time I took a step.

Eventually, however, I reached the platform at the bottom. It was, as far as I could see, empty. That in itself wouldn't have bothered me. It was late, but not late enough that the scramble for the last trains had begun. But what with the dead escalator and the tunnel labyrinth? I was pretty worked up by this point and talking to myself. You're getting over-excited, Hannah. Someone will see me on CCTV and come and grab me if I shouldn't be.

here. Yeah, they wouldn't let random people wander restricted areas. I looked up for the next trains board. There wasn't one. I don't know why, but that simple fact was the clincher. I definitely shouldn't be here. I'd taken a wrong turn and ended up on one of those abandoned platforms that they used for filming. But if that were true, why was it completely lit? It looked for all intents and purposes like a regular tube platform, apart from the lack of a countdown board, of course. But I couldn't ignore the tingling feeling that had begun to spread from my neck to my chest, my primal instincts saying, time to leave, even if I did have to climb Mount Escalator in the process. As I reached the little corridor leading to the way out, the air in the station moved.

A warm breeze and a soft whirring, purring noise came from the tunnel mouth behind me. A train. Maybe the platform was in use after all, and the exhaustion was just getting to me. I turned around to see a comfortably normal-looking white train rush out of the tunnel and glides to a stop. I ran for the door, blinging myself and my overnight bag through the door before they slid closed. Please mind the gap between the train and the platform. This is... The announcement dissolved into garbled noise, like someone spalling through an old. cassette tape at high speed.

Shit. It's okay. These things are ancient. It's just broken. I had the carriage to myself. I wasn't sure whether that made me feel better or worse. The next couple of minutes passed in total normality as we hurtle through the dark. I relaxed into my seat,

gradually unwinding the tight knot in my stomach. That knot began to tighten again for every further minute we spent in darkness. Surely we should have stopped at a station by now. How long had it been? Five minutes? Ten? I jumped to my feet, adrenaline pushing my brain to top gear in an instant. Grasping wildly at something, anything to do, I jabbed my finger at the push-to-contact driver button next to the doors. No response. The little light around the button wasn't lit either. None of them were. I reached up to pull on the emergency stop lever but caught myself just in time. Bad idea. We'll be stuck down here if I do that.

After a second of panic-accelerated thought, I plumped fort seemed like the sanest move at the time. This train is being driven by someone, I said out loud, hoping to make the idea sound less crazy. I'll just walk through the train and bash on the door until they hear me. Of course, walking through a London tube train involves traversing the doors between carriages, doors that are plastered with signs that portend various grave consequences for doing so while the train is moving. Pulling myself together, I grasped the metal handle with my by now very sweaty hands and wrenched it upwards. The door swung slightly open under the air pressure, and the sudden movement caused me to fall back onto the hard carriage floor. After picking myself up, I repeated the procedure with a little more finesse on the other carriage's door

and made a running leap from one to the next. See? Easy, I told nobody as I landed on all fours. At that moment, the darkness outside faded slightly, and I realised that we pulled into a station. At last, I looked up at the doors as they opened, aiming to see where we were. What I saw instead made me voided. it on the spot. The station platform was littered, no, carpeted, with the dead. Many sat against the walls. Most simply lay spread-eagled on the floor. Their skin was various leathery shades of yellow, grey and brown. Rotten eyes stared back at me from lolling heads.

One corpse seemed to be reaching up toward me. I tried to rationalise the situation. It's a film set, or some sick prank, but within seconds all rationality was consumed by a mixture of disgust and terror, and I could do nothing but stare out at the grisly scene. The worst part was the smell, a sickly sweet yet acrid stench that made me sick to even remember. I could see down one of the way out tunnels. It was similarly full of people who had seemingly died down here. amongst them were discarded bottles and food packets some of the bodies seemed to be wrapped in blankets

I don't know how long the train waited in that station but at some point the doors closed and we were once again in motion through the featureless dark I slowly stood up and let my eyes wander the empty carriage as I tried to control my ragged breathing suddenly filled with an insane resolve to discover the truth I wrenched the next intercarriage door handle up and it broke clean off in my hand. I stumbled backwards, collapsing painfully into one of the nearby seats.

I tried frantically to reattach the severed handle, but it was no good. The thing had rusted through and was entirely useless. Shrinking into the seat, I cried more than I thought I could ever cry. smashing the broken handle against the seat next to me felt good so i did it over and over and over until i'd worn through the thick macket i only looked up when the lights shifted again another station slowly i stood peering through the glass behind me more bodies just like the last one not so many and the smell was less offensive but it was still a platform of the dead The lights in this station flickered and popped, making a bizarre stroboscopic display of the gnarred limbs and sunken faces of the unfortunate souls outside. The access tunnel seemed to have collapsed, blocked by a massive pile of rubble.

The next station was much the same, as was the one after that. I simply sat there, a stew of shot, disgust, disbelief, and sheer terror brewing in my mind as I did. I didn't know what to do Or rather, I did The idea had come to me long ago I simply didn't want to confront it To face up to what I'd have to do I hoped that if I thought long and hard enough

A better idea would come to me But no such inspired thought came As we slowed into yet another Platform turned crypt I stood and headed for the doors This one would do, I decided The doors opened I took a step out onto the platform, then another.

The doors closed. I looked around and prayed to any gods listening that the bodies around me were indeed dead. As I gingerly stepped over a pair of them near the wall, I fully expected one of them to spark to life and grab my ankle. Neither did. They simply lay there, blankly staring back at me with what was left of their eyes, Gaining confidence, I danced between corpses down the tunnel towards the escalators. They were clear of bodies, bar one spread-eagled in the central section that I had to squeeze myself tight against the handrail to avoid.

Eventually, after about five minutes exhausting climb through the fetid air, I reached the ticket hall. Why? The entrance on the other side of the cavernous room was blocked by a similar collapse of rubble to the one I saw in the last station. It was easily ten feet high and looked completely impassable. I went up to it anyway, hoping I could find some way out. Picking up some of the smaller pieces and tossing them aside revealed a set of stairs leading up. An idea came to me. If I removed enough of the rubble, perhaps the rest would collapse inward revealing a hole I could climb through.

Of course I thought it could just as easily crush me, but what option? did I have? I grasped at the dusty pieces of concrete and metal, wrenching out any I could and tossing them behind me. My arms began to burn with the exertion, but I kept going, determined to reach the surface. A few minutes in, I felt the whole pile begin to shift and leapt out of the way. Nothing happened. Picking up one of the largest metal rods I could lift, I reached out and prodded some of the pieces. My reward was a thunderous roar mixed with metallic groaning as the rubble poured down the steps and into the hall. Gradually, the dust settled, and I could feel cool, fresh air against my face. Slowly, I began my climb upwards, carefully checking each fragment

for stability before trusting it with my weight. In the process, I lost both my shoes and gained several cuts on my arms and legs, but I frankly couldn't have cared less. As far as I was concerned, at that moment, the sooner I was out in the fresh air, the better. Coughing and wheezing from the dust swirling around me, I clawed my way out of the small hole at the top of the staircase and lay on the ground, staring up into the starry night sky. I'd never seen stars like it, a blanket of them as far as I could see. Standing up, the air of the airy night sky. The only light I could see was coming from the station, beams finding their way out through the gaps in the rubble pile.

Everywhere else was completely dark. It took my eyes a minute or so to adjust, but as they did, I began to see why. Almost every building was nothing more than a shell, some less than that. It looked like the pictures I'd seen of London during the war, debris littering the streets, buildings collapsing and more bodies. These ones looked more like skeletons than the grisly remains I'd seen at the station, but they still turned my stomach over as they came into focus.

I jumped and let out a deep, shuddering gasp. My heart, already thumping from the exertion of climbing out, leapt into my throat. Who's there? What's going on? I tried to shout, but it probably came out more of a wail. I heard movement across the street. Slowly a thin shape shuffled out of the darkness towards me. I looked around for something I could use as a weapon,

settling on the least worst option, a concrete slab with a sharp broken edge. As the shape came into the pools of light cast from the station entrance, I saw that it was a girl, a teenager probably. Her hair was long and matted, almost draping on the ground. What? I wound myself up to strike. the moment she turned into a monster or something.

I'd seen horror movies. I knew how this would go. Except it didn't. She simply sat on the ground next to me and looked up, seemingly inviting me to do the same. Gradually, I sat beside her, with enough distance between us to give me time to defend myself should I need it.

The concrete slab remained tightly grasped in my hands. You came here, didn't you? She spoke almost as if her mind were elsewhere. I... I was trying to catch a train. I need to get back. I need to get home. You shouldn't have done that. What? Got on the train. What are you talking about? She turned to face me for the first time.

Unblock the stairs. A new wave of fear gripped me. An ice-cold shocks ran up and down my spine. Why not? There's nothing in there. but bodies. Exactly. A fresh chill gripped my spine. I was about to ask why,

but before I could, the girl was on her feet looking around. Come. Why? I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what in the name of fucking sanity is going on. The girl didn't reply, simply pointed behind me down the street. I turned and could just make out

what looked like the silhouette of a person in the blackness, standing with their arms strangely held away from their body. Used to be. The hell is a used to be. Used to be? Used to be what? Us. The thing began taking long, loping strides towards us.

And the young girl grabbed my arm and dragged me along behind her. For someone so small, she could really move. My feet quickly grew sore, but I didn't stop. I never even looked back, afraid that if I did, I'd see some hell-spawned creature inches from my face. After running for about five minutes, the girl dragged me into some kind of park and rested a large metal grate across the hole in the fence. They starve. They collapse. No living. No dead. What? They... What? Eat the dead? No. No living. Starve. No dead. They collapse. Second is easier.

Curiosity was beginning to get the better of me. I don't understand. What are they? Used to be us. Used to be friend. Used to be family. But stayed too close to the pits too long. And what they used to be melted away. Then they melt away. So they have to fix it. I vomited.

hacking and spluttering up what was left in my aching stomach. The girl's strange words had just clicked in my mind. They use bodies to repair themselves. Yes. I could vaguely see a smile on her face. Hide the dead. Stop the used to be. I wouldn't worry about them getting into that station.

They had to crawl and squeeze through. No zombies getting in there. They specialize. The girl pointed. across the road junction next to the park. In the faint moonlight, I could see a large, hulking figure slowly stumbling toward where we'd come from.

It looked to be an incredibly large man. The entire right side of his upper body given over to a massive club-like appendage that caused him to stoop and sway under its weight. It's going to smash its way through. We're hundreds of them. That's the first I've seen in a long time. What the actual fuck happened?

here. Big Naomi says bombs. Big who? Are there other people here? Other than you? Big Naomi. Mother. Little Naomi. Me. Not here anymore. I'm sorry. Bombs? Long ago. Red bombs that split the sky. Naomi walked over to what remained of a bench, under which was hidden a small bundle of things. She retrieved a piece of paper and gave it to me. It was a newspaper, a copy of the Times. The headline read, This is the way the world ends. Further Soviet atomic strikes turn New York, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Miami, Houston, and L.A. to contaminated ruins.

The date on the paper was September the 27th, 1983. I didn't know what to make of it. Obviously the world hadn't ended in nuclear fire in 1983, but this certainly looked like an apocalypse. After that, the bombs came here. I sat down on the skeleton of a bench. How had I got here? The world couldn't have ended in the time it took me to get the underground. And anyway, this paper said 1983.

I was born in 1985. How could the world have ended before I was born? unless a different world? Naomi. Little Naomi. Little Naomi then. You said that you knew I came here from somewhere else. Have other people come here?

A few. Back when they used to be were active. We couldn't save them. Can... Can I get back? Maybe. People came from a tunnel. Walk through.

get back? A tunnel? What do you mean people came? While back, people came here now and then, through a tunnel, away from here. And you think that I can, like, go back through the other way? Maybe. How do I know you're not leading me into some trap? You don't. Stay here if you want.

Yes, I didn't really have a choice. If I stayed, I'd probably end up being food for those... things. At least I had a chance of escape if I tried this tunnel. Okay, let's go. And with that, she moved the gate aside again and began walking, carefully checking for anything lurking in the shadows as she did. I ran after her once my brain rebooted and I realized what she was doing. We walked for miles and miles through the devastated city. Before long, it began to get light. The sunrise was a deep red, The light hazy. Nonetheless, the light allowed me to see the world I'd wandered into more clearly.

Everywhere, buildings had been all but leveled. Vehicles lay burnt out and mangled at the side of the road. Some were empty. Some had skeletal bodies slumped against doors and windows. Dust and debris fragments danced in the air as the early morning wind whistled through empty window frames. We didn't encounter another living thing. thing on our journey, although I could hear vague scraping and shuffling noises from time to time. Little Naomi didn't seem at all concerned, and I didn't dare ask about them.

Eventually we reached an underpass, as Naomi said, a tunnel, under what had once been a major road. Down! Little Naomi said, indicating for me to descend the ramp. At the bottom was a body. It didn't bother me. I'd become almost used to the sight and smell of death. Except, I noticed as I got closer, this one was weird.

It wasn't rotten like the others, and it just looked wrong. Its face was mostly just a single flap of skin, with ragged holes stabbed through for its eyes and mouth. Its jaw didn't really exist. It just had a large, gaping hole for a mouth. Dead. Used to be, but dead. How can you be sure?

I killed it a little time ago. Tried to save people who came. Didn't. Oh. We continued around the 180-degree bend and down another ramp further into the underpass. A couple more of those things were slumped against the wall, each with their own distinct, disgusting features.

One had massive bony spikes for arms. Did little Naomi fight that too? There. Naomi pointed down the tunnel. I could see the light at the other side, but the one morning light wasn't enough to illuminate the whole passage. There was some skeletal remains scattered in the middle, but nothing that looked like a portal, I guess. What am I looking for? Don't know. People came from here. Maybe you can get back. It just looks like an underpass to me. I didn't know what I expected to see. I hadn't seen anything weird on my way here. Come to think of it, I'm still not entirely sure at which point I actually crossed over. But then, as I took a few careful steps forward, I felt something, a tingling on the back of my neck, like someone holding a balloon they'd rubbed on their jumper near your skin.

And I could taste metal. Just like when I had first looked down that broken escalator, I turned to little Naomi. I think you're right. It feels weird. Weird. Yeah. Come stand here next to me. I felt happy for the first time in what felt like forever.

Maybe, just maybe, I could get out. And I wasn't leaving this poor girl to die in this hellscape either. No. She shook her head vigorously. It's okay. I don't feel anything at all when I came here. Nothing at all. No, I can't leave.

What are you? The words died in my throat as I saw the creature slumped against the back wall. The one with the horrifying bony arms stir slightly. Little Naomi, come towards me, slowly, don't look around. She completely ignored my instructions, instead pulling a makeshift blade out of her pocket and spun around. As she did so, the creature heaved itself up to face her. Although, I suppose that's not quite the right saying,

seeing as this thing had no face to speak of, just a wrinkled mass of flesh atop its neck. It lunged forward with one of its spikes, but I managed to pull little Naomi back. The thing overbalanced and came crashing down onto the ground with a wet thud. Please, no, let me go. She writhed about frantically as I slowly pulled us backwards away from the ungainly creature.

It stopped and raised its sharp spikes in preparation to strike. This was my chance. I picked little Naomi up and tried to cradle her in my arms, but she scratched at my skin and screamed so loudly my ears rang. Leave me! She was trying to spin herself out of my grip. Look, I'm trying to help. I'm not leaving you here.

I kept my eyes fixed on the creature, which was beginning to push itself upright again. I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder and realized that the girl had bitten me. This time I was the one who shouted. For fuck sake, stop! Turning my back to the monster, I picked little Naomi up by one arm and one leg

and half carried, half dragged her down the corridor. As I did so, strange, tingling metallic feeling got stronger and stronger until suddenly the feeling evaporated. I spun around. Nothing. No monster. No bodies.

Little Naomi screamed. I looked down and what I saw will forever haunt every dream I ever have. Her skin was boiling, disintegrating before my eyes. I panicked and put her down. She was coughing up mouthfuls of blood. Changed, boats! The last word remained unsaid

as little Naomi's eyes rolled back into their sockets and she ceased moving. I stood there, staring at the unfortunate girl's remains for a long time. I tried to save her. I thought I was saving her. I should have listened. Perhaps it was better this way, I told myself. She was only going to die alone in a world full of monsters. It was alive, of course. I'd murdered little Naomi. I'd caused her to die screaming in an alien world looking up at the face of her killer. For some reason, people from that place couldn't pass through the poor. I'm going to call them. Or couldn't live in our world, something like that. A while later, after reliving the events night after night in my dreams,

I figured that the bones in the tunnel must have been those of people who tried to escape before and then run back through, hoping that the burning would stop. I don't remember much after that. I was apparently picked up by the police, having been wandering the streets of suburban London muttering about murder and monsters. After I was found to be physically unharmed beyond some cuts and bruises, I was evaluated by a psychiatrist, who concluded that I must have been dosed with some form of hallucinogen as a date-rape attempt.

I went along with it. It wouldn't have been worth my while trying to convince them of portals to other realities, monsters born of the apocalypse, or the poor girl I'd ripped from her world and had to watch disintegrate before my eyes. For days afterwards, I constantly checked the London's, news expecting a front-page story about the discovery of a mangled body in an underpass. I mean, it's not exactly something people would miss. When no such news came, I checked what I thought to be the area I'd come out on, Google Street View.

Spent hour after hour searching for that underpath. Eventually, I found it, except it was boarded up, completely sealed with thick metal panels plastered with warning lights. I don't remember anything about how I got out. There was no way I could have opened those from the inside. Besides, I distinctly remember it being light down there. Filing it away as just part of the weirdness, prevent said weirdness from completely breaking my brain.

I tried to return to life as I'd known it before. Trading, currency, monetary policies, boredom. I still dream about what happens. I still see little Naomi boiling to death every night. I've almost accepted that. It's less than I deserve for what I did. A month or so afterwards, I was assigned to do some consulting in London.

I thought I'd be terrified to go back, but honestly, I wasn't. And anyway, I wanted to answer one last question. After I was finished for the day, I headed to the tube station I'd used last time and tried to follow my route. "'Stupid?' "'Probably, but I desperately needed to put this to rest.

"'Following the blue Piccadilly line signs, "'I was led down the formless white-tiled tunnels that I remember. "'However, at one point, I was instructed to turn right, "'when before I distinctly remember going left. "'To my left was a set of thick metal doors "'with a large, no-unauthorised entry sign on them, "'under a small red symbol. I can't be sure, but I could have sworn I'd seen the same symbol on the panels blocking the underparts.

I even asked one of the staff about it, but they just said it was a generator cupboard. I suppose if there is some grand X-Files conspiracy, London Underground wouldn't be on the list to be told about it. There's one final piece of the puzzle that I have, courtesy of the only other person I told this story to, my dad. He worked in the civil service during the 80s and I wondered what he would make of the idea of a nuclear apocalypse in 1983. To his credit, he listened, asked questions and never accused me of being crazy. He was probably thinking it, but never said.

He also said that if it was really true, the date I'd seen on that paper made a lot of sense. In our world, at least. On the 26th of September 1983, the Soviet early warning system detected what it thought to be a nuclear missile heading towards Moscow, launched from somewhere in the USA. The operative on duty, Stanislav Petrov, assumed it was a false alarm. The Americans would launch hundreds of missiles, not just one, and cancelled the alert. Later on, it happened again, and again he cancelled it. The cause of the alarm, which was indeed obviously false, was sunlight reflecting off clouds.

That man averted World War III. Perhaps in little Naomi's world, Stanislav wasn't on duty that night. For time in our netherworld to your own reality. If you would like to find out how you can hear the full-length versions of our audio program, please visit the no-sleeppodcast.com to learn about our season. program. 25 episodes each over two hours long and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 1999.

On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for listening. Join us again next week when our unseen hands will drag you down into our dark storyland. This audio production is copyright 2016-2017 by Creative Reason Media Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. The name The No Sleep Podcast is a trademark of Creative Reason Media, Inc. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media, Inc.