The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S8E07

Episode Date: November 20, 2016

It's episode 07 - the premiere of Season 8. On this week's show we have five tales about minors, mayhem, and memories."I Have One Daughter"† written by Jon Grilz and performed by Atticus Jackson & Addison Peacock & Nikolle Doolin. (Story starts around 00:20:30)"The Room That Echoed"† written by C.M. Scandreth and performed by Erika Sanderson. (Story starts around 00:36:30)"Search and Rescue: The Stairs"† written by R. Brauer and performed by Mike DelGaudio & Alexis Bristowe & Jessica McEvoy & Addison Peacock. (Story starts around 00:58:50)"In My Handwriting"‡ written by Jackson Laughlin and performed by Peter Lewis & Nikolle Doolin & Jeff Clement. (Story starts around 01:21:30)Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast Click here to learn more about the Sleepless Live 2017 Tour Click here to learn more about the podcast, "Small Town Horror" Click here to learn more about C.M. Scandreth Click here to learn more about R. Brauer Click here to learn more about Jackson Laughlin Executive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon BooneAudio adaptations produced by: Phil Michalski† & Jeff Clement‡"Search and Rescue: The Stairs" illustration courtesy of Lukasz GodlewskiAudio 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 into 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 five tales about miners, mayhem, and memories.

It's been a rather exciting couple of months for us here at the podcast. The great reception we've received from our big Boraska episode, the launch of season 8 and all the Halloween goodies, and of course the live tour announcement has meant our audience is growing by leaps and bounds. We're glad to have all of you new listeners with us. Along with this has been the increase in the number of people wanting to help out with the show. Truth be told, the black hole is the big hole that. is my email inbox is threatening to become a singularity at this point, so knowing that I'll never

have the time to respond individually, I'll mention this here on the show. At this time, we're not actively looking to add new voice actors to our cast. We do have some people in the queue who we hope to bring on in the coming weeks, but for the most part, the door to our proverbial dungeon is closed at this time. I really appreciate those of you who have offered to help out, and I hope you can find other ways to share your voice with the world. And as I mentioned last week, it's time to announce the winners of our Ouija Origin of Evil contest. This was our biggest contest ever, with over 700 people entering to win one of the two prize packs. So we pulled out our own Ouija board, dim the lights, and asked the spirits to guide us to the two winners.

The first name the board spelled out was Jessica Britton. Congrats, Jessica. You've been marked by a hopefully not-so-evil spirit as our first winner. Then, after lighting candles and burning sage, we consulted the board again. Amongst disembodied screams, it spelled out the name Stephen Boatman. Stephen, you, sir, are a winner of your very own origin of evil sweden. swag and a lifetime supply of hauntings. So our heartiest congratulations to Jessica and Stephen.

And thanks to all who entered, we hope the spirits will treat you kindly in their own way. And finally, I want to mention our second story this week. It just happens to be written by John Grills, who many of you will know as the creator of the great podcast, Small Town Horror. We're thrilled to be able to do one of John's stories on our show, and if you haven't already, I hope you'll check out Small Town Horror, which is now in its second season. It's a very creepy and engaging serialized story set in a crazy little town in Minnesota. You should make plans to visit.

And so, with John's story and four other great ones all ready for you, it's time to start this week's show. In our first tale, we meet a woman who recalls what it was like growing up with a mother who struggled with a mental illness. As we learn from author Lily T. The young girl was forced to look after her little sister while their father was away and their mother was dealing with issues which became more and more disturbing as time went on. Performing this tale are Nicole Doolin, Eden, Nicole Goodnight, and Erica Sanderson. So do what you can to protect yourself from the monster outside the closet. I was three the first time my mom got sick. I learned to cook so dinner would be on the table when dad got home.

I'm not sure how edible it was, but dad would always smile and say it was delicious. I was six the second time she got sick. My baby sister was only a few months old, so I learned to make bottles and clean diapers. Taking care of Meika wasn't an... harder than taking care of mom. I was 11 when we moved to a small town way out in the middle of nowhere, and she got the sickest she'd ever been. Dad was gone a lot for work, so I learned to hide Mika in the closet, buried underneath a mountain of stuffed animals. Don't come out of the closet, Mika. Don't even make a noise, or the monster will get you.

My parents had pulled me from public education and decided to homeschool me. I would never have admitted it then, but I was a bit excited at the prospect of doing schoolwork sprawled out on our living room floor in my pajamas. Everything went well for the first few months. Then dad had to go to another state for a few weeks. The nearest neighbors were only a few acres away and were prepped on my mom's medical issues. Dad left promising that nothing would go wrong. He'd be home as quick as he could and that everything would be okay. As an eight-year veteran of taking care of my mother,

I was confident in my abilities. He was wrong. I was wrong. We could never have been prepared for the long, long weeks ahead of us. To be honest, I don't remember what time of day it was, or even what I was doing when I suddenly felt that something was off. I do remember that it was the middle of the winter. There was six feet of snow that year, and it was in the double negatives. Mom had been feeling unwell and had spent most of the day teaching me to read from the comfort of the couch. Then everything got quiet. Mika's little cherub face was filled with worry. Mom was just sitting there, staring at nothing.

Her eyes glassy and vacant. The reading book fell from her lap as she slowly stood up and absently walked into the kitchen. We could hear her softly mumbling to herself in there. Then the laughter started. The horrible, awful, hysterical laughter. There was something wrong in it. It wasn't ha-h-ha-ha, something is so very funny.

It was rough and maniacal. I ran into the kitchen and found my mother gripping the counter with tears streaming down her face, eyes full of fear, laughing uncontrollably. She started to hyperventilate, great sobs racking her body, while still laughing in that terrifying way. I rushed to the phone and called the neighbors. Mom was in bed for three days straight after that. Blinds pulled, no lights, door shut tight. I only went in her room to feed her, help her to the bathroom, and give her medicine. Little red capsules.

Three the first time, then two every four hours. Mika and I were very, very quiet during those 72 hours. On the fourth day, she finally emerged. She seemed wilted. Her deep blue eyes seemed darker than before, but that could have been due to the dark circle surrounding them. She smiled weekly at us and mumbled an apology for being a bad mom and told us what good girls we were. She slowly shuffled around the house for the next few days, attempting to do laundry, but the noise hurt her head.

Cooking, but the smells made her nauseous, ditching us, but her brain felt fuzzy. I worried she'd had another seizure. We weren't allowed to tell Dad when we got his weekly call. We weren't to stress him out. Her next episode started much the same. Everything went quiet. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention as I turned to look at mom. She had a crazy smirk on her face this time.

It was almost sneer-like. Mom? She waved her hand dismissively at me. Mom, I'm going to go get your medicine. She cocked her head to the side like a puppy and giggled at me. Medicine. She covered her mouth and giggled. I shot out of the living room and into her bedroom to get those little red pills.

I didn't know what was happening, but I knew those pills were my lifeline. Mika had started to cry when I got back into the room. I handed mom her pills and headed for the phone. Except it wasn't there. I stared at the empty phone jack in the wall with confusion. As I turned to look at my mom, the laughter started. It was deeper than before. Fear shot through my body like lightning.

I grabbed Mika and rushed her to the coat closet. Do you know what it's like to be 11 years old, forcing a sobbing five-year-old into her snow suit to send her by herself to truck through six feet of snow over five acres to get the neighbors? To just know, to absolutely just know that she'd be safer out in the minus 50-degree Alaska in winter than in the warm house with her mother? It's terrifying.

I knew Mika felt it to as she clung to me while I tried to force her out the door. Mika, Mika, look at me. Stay on the moose trail and go get Miss Kim. Tell her mom's sick and then stay there until I can get you. With that, I shut my baby sister outside and turned to face the cruel laughter behind me. Sit down, Mommy. It'll be okay. Miss Kim is on her way.

She'll help you. And then the third most terrifying thing, my life happened. Mom stopped laughing and grinned at me. Her pupils fully dilated, making her eyes look solid black. A-2, girl? What if the wolves and foxes get the little one? Her voice was impossibly deep. I may have considered it a pleasant voice to listen to scary stories from if it hadn't been coming out of my mother's mouth. She just laughed and laughed. By the time Ms. Kim got to as mom had dissolved into a sobbing puddle on the floor. Ms. Kim said my mom was just having another migraine and that she was just confused.

Surely my mom had tried to call Ms. Kim herself, but with a bad case of migraine brain, had simply misplaced the phone and we'd definitely find it later. I expected Mom to be in her cave of a bedroom for a few days after her episode. So Mika and I went about our normal school routine. I was laying on my back on the floor reading some. subject or another when I heard Mika gasp. Mama feels better. Sissy got me my medicine in time yesterday.

Did I scare you? I'm sorry. I was surprised to see her up and about. I was shocked when she opened up all the blinds and let light into the room. I was overjoyed when she gathered us up in a big hug and gave us a squeeze. It was going to be a great day. All I had to worry about was math. I hated math.

I was wrong. Again. After we finished up our morning school work, which included a round of mom and Mika singing a catchy song about vowels, Mika went to take a nap before lunch. I remember I was sitting at my little desk trying my best to ace a math test. I was concentrating so hard that I hadn't noticed how still the room had become. I couldn't hear my mom in the kitchen whipping up lunch anymore.

It was so, so quiet. Even now, decades later, the mere thought of how that silence felt opens up a pit in my stomach. I'm not sure how I got my feet to carry me into the kitchen when everything in my little body was screaming not to. She wasn't there. She wasn't in the dining room either. My heart pounding so hard I could hear the blood pumping through my body. It was so loud in the quiet of the house. Mika! Oh my God, Mika! Rushing to our shared bedroom,

I noticed the door leading into the garage was slightly open. It's funny the small details that stick with you. I should have shut that damn door and locked it. I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I slammed it shut. But I didn't.

I paused for the briefest of seconds and heard a deep chuckle from the darkness of the garage. It was different. different this time. It was evil. Mika was still sound asleep when I charged into our room. After shutting the door, I paced back and forth. But felt like hours while I attempted to figure out a plan was probably only seconds. The co-closet was right next to the garage door. I'd never get Mika bundled and out without incident. There was only one choice. I shook her awake. Mika. Shh. Her big blue eyes filled with fear and tears.

She looked towards our closet and back at me. I nodded. We buried her under blankets and toys. Don't come out of the closet, Mika. Don't even make a noise, or the monsters will get you. But, Sissy, what about you? Don't come out of the closet, Mika, into the closet. Once again, I shut her out, leaving my sweet baby sister to be brave all by herself.

The monster was waiting for me when I left the room. Smile too big, eyes too dark. Do you want to take your medicine, Mom? You should come eat your lunch, girl. I made it special for you. I followed her back to the kitchen. I should stop and mention that there was one other family member that I've neglected to bring up. We had a mean old cat named socks.

No, the monster didn't turn socks until. lunch. Sox was a horrible pet. She hated everyone. She didn't even like to be petted. I think her only joy in life was seeing how much she could make me bleed or how loud I would shout when she would come at me yowling and claws out. She went unseen most of the time, but now for whatever reason that dastardly cat decided to show her face. Sox was sitting square in the middle of the kitchen looking more irritable than usual. Mother hissed at her. She actually hissed, spittle flying and everything. Panic spread across her face and she shoved me away from her. My brain chose this moment to register the fact that my mother was holding a carving knife in one hand. Her eyes locked and hers

became clear again. She looked at me with such sadness and agony as she placed the blade against her wrist. I dove for the knife and tried to wrestle it away. In that moment, the second scariest thing of my life happened. Mother's eyes went dark. The two wide smile returned, and the tip of the blade pushed into my chest right above my heart. It hurt. It was like I was being burned and flashed frozen in the one spot all at the same time. I thought for sure this was the But she just let go and the knife clattered to the floor. Sox growled. The monster turned, left the kitchen and sat on the living room floor.

My mom was still in there. I saw her. Just a flash of those bright blue eyes. She was in there fighting to come back. As much as I wanted to run, I couldn't just leave her. She had been willing to try to sacrifice herself to keep us safe. I looked at the blade on the floor, the small cut on my chest, and the crazy cat thumping her tail on the linoleum. I went and sat with the monster.

It grinned at me. Was I afraid? Of course I was freaking scared. My mom just tried to slash her wrist in front of me, then tried to stab me, and was now talking to me with a voice much too deep in husky to be her own. I had no clue how I had managed to not pee my pants yet. But there was no way in hell I was going to let this thing know that. No. The monster screamed.

It was both the deep base of a man and the voice of my mom. I could hear her screaming. The monster's voice almost drowned her out, but she was there. Broke my heart into a thousand tiny pieces to hear her scream like that. Sox sauntered up to the monster and sap a cider. No. The monster was furious. I could see my death in the black orbs of its eyes.

I could feel its hatred of me rolling off it in waves. You aren't supposed to look at your mom and see these things. It's not good for an 11-year-old girl's soul. But while we stared each other down, I saw her hand creeped towards socks. That damn cat did something I never would have expected. She butted her head up and under my mom's hand. The second those long, graceful fingers touched socks as fur, Mom came back. Blue eyes wide and filled with terror.

That's when the scariest thing of my life happened. Mom opened her mouth and with her own voice said one single word. Run. For military families, being apart during times in the service can be especially painful. if the father has to miss the birth of a child. But in this tale from author John Grills, a father is overjoyed to return home and meet his new daughter as they start their new family life together. But when his wife begins acting in unsettling ways, he soon suspects something is very, very wrong. Performing this tale are Atticus Jackson, Addison Peacock, and Nicole Doolin.

Let's listen as the man proclaims what he knows to be true. I have one daughter. One of the biggest regrets I'll ever have in life is that I wasn't there for the birth of my daughter. I was on active duty for the majority of my wife being pregnant and had to get updates at best over email or sat phone. The day I came home for good, my wife was waiting with our daughter in the airport. It was the first time I had seen her. in person and I didn't know if I should cry or smile or what. There was too much to figure out in the moment.

So I just stared at her and let her take me in. She had this tiny little face and I was so worried that she was going to cry, but she looked back at her mom for just a moment before reaching out her little hand, hooking it into the side of my mouth and tugging down with a little smile. I fell in love for just the second time in my life. For two years, things went like, I assume, any other family life went. We had ups and downs, money troubles, and the sorts of things that parents deal with, I guess. Before my eyes, my daughter grew up and turned into this little person.

She started to slowly waddle around the room before wobbling and falling back onto her butt. A sort of six-inch drop that startles them and even scares you as a new parent for the first time, but you know that you can't look scared or they'll cry. She was turning into a little girl, not just a baby. Things for all of life's problems were good. The first time it happened, I didn't really pay much attention to it. I was getting ready for work in the morning. My wife was moving back and forth.

between the bathroom and the closet getting ready for her job. Our daughter was sitting on the floor quickly learning how to use my phone better than I can. My wife walked through the living room, putting in an earring. Okay, girls, let's get ready to go. There was a tick, then a moment of realization on her face as she smiled. Or girl, not sure why I said that. I smiled too. We were both tired.

Our daughter was going through a bad sleeping spell where she would wake up in the middle of the night and demand to be in bed with my wife. Since I can be a little bit of a wild sleeper, thanks for that, Uncle Sam. I would go out on the couch when I brought her into our bed. So no one was really getting the best night's sleep, let alone that we hadn't had sex and, well, I'd lost track at that point. I'd even got a vasectomy since we agreed on just the one child. So, no sleep, no fooling around. We were bound to say weird things. A couple of days later, I was out mowing the lawn when my wife came home from Target

with a few bags of what looked like clothes. I hated seeing that. We didn't have that much money, and one of my wife's true vices was buying little girl clothes and treating our daughter like her personal doll. Admittedly, the cooling noise my wife made when she saw something like a tiny pair of overalls was cute, but come on. I finished up with the lawn and went inside to see my wife removing tags and getting the clothes ready for the wash. She held up a cute little pink dress she had bought.

Sorry, I couldn't help it. It's so cute. I just sort of nodded as I grabbed a glass of water from the fridge when I noticed that there was another dress on the table just like it. What's that? My wife didn't react. She just kept removing tags. Hey, did you get two of the same dress? My wife looked back at me with a blank sort of stare,

and I pointed at the dress on the table. That one? Slowly, she looked back at the table. Oh, I guess I accidentally grabbed two. Sorry, I'll return it tomorrow. You took the tags off already. That's okay. If nothing else, we can get store credit.

It didn't make me happy to know that she probably wouldn't get any money back for the dress, and that feeling was enough to divert my attention until dinner the next night. My daughter has about four things she will ever eat, but we were happy about that much. I know I was a picky eater, so any variation we could get in her, especially anything involving fruit or vegetables, was a win. My wife thought so too, and for just a moment I thought she was preemptively hoping that our Our daughter would have a good appetite that night as I saw her preparing two of the exact

same meal on the little plastic plates we give her. Before I could say anything, she looked toward our daughter's room and said, Girls, it's time for dinner. What? What? She said back to me without looking up from setting the plates on the table at different seats. One at my daughter's high chair and the other at a seat neither of us really sat in during meals. What's the second plate for?

This time when my wife looked back at me, there was something else there. It wasn't that absent-minded look that would come from being tired. Were those parenting moments when you were just an autopilot. She didn't say anything to me. She just looked at me as our daughter struggled her way up into her chair and plop down to eat. Then she walked over to the fridge and put the plate in there, before sitting down and helping our daughter eat. I didn't say anything else to her.

I didn't know what to say. I know she had experienced some postpartum stuff after our daughter was born and there had been a lot going on at her work so I didn't want to feel like I was pushing her or judging her or anything. But, I mean, it was messed up. As you can imagine,

It got worse. Suddenly, everything that was happening with our daughter happened in twos. Two outfits, two dolls, two meals, everything. It didn't take more than a couple of days before I got really scared. I couldn't even talk to her about it. If I brought it up, she would either leave the room or give me the most hateful look I've ever seen from her. I started with the Internet. Mistake.

Never looked to the internet if you were just looking for a simple, calming answer. I got everything on there from postpartum to schizophrenia. It was enough that I was getting scared for my daughter, so I got in touch with her gynecologist. I sat in her office and started to lay out what was going on. I got the usual doctor-patient confidentiality thing that I was expecting, but I had to press her. She was a doctor for Christ's sake, do no harm in all that.

Her silence was harming my wife if she knew anything. She thinks we have two daughters, Doc. I felt near tears. I wasn't sleeping much at all. None of it made any sense, so I couldn't turn off my mind and concentrate on anything. Maybe it would be best if she set up an appointment with me. She won't do that. She gets mad at me if I even try to mention anything involved.

our daughter in the first place. How am I supposed to get her in here? I mean, come on, there has to be something, anything. The doctor looked concerned and even a little nervous for a moment. She could be suffering some postpartum depression. It would make sense. Wait, what? What would make sense?

The doctor's look went from nervous to confused. I just meant that given the difficulties of the pregnancy that it could exacerbate things. What difficulties? She, she never told you? My tears quickly changed to rage. Just tell me what the hell is going on! You need to calm down.

There were a couple of incidents that I recall during the pregnancy, particularly when she came in for the ultrasound. When I showed her the image of your daughter, she became convinced that she saw two fetuses. It's a common side effect of the fertility drugs. What fertility drugs? We weren't taking fertility drugs. The pregnancy was, I mean, it wasn't something we were trying to do.

The wall of silence seemed to melt away for at least a moment. One of you was. I think she started to realize that something serious was going on. I think she got scared for my wife's well-being. Maybe she was worried about her own job. It doesn't matter. She told me the details. After the ultrasound,

part of regular checkups, we would use an ultrasound to find and check the heartbeat. Again, your wife was convinced that there were two heartbeats. It wasn't anything serious. Most people aren't used to hearing the sound, and it can be a little confusing. But she kept asking if I was sure that there weren't two heartbeats. There weren't. The doctor stopped talking, but I knew there was more. This is my wife's life. This is my daughter's life, tell me what happened?

I think the threat of a lawsuit was enough fear to hear the rest. After your daughter was born, your wife started to push again. Even once the afterbirth had come out, she kept pushing. She didn't say anything, but I'm convinced that she thought there was another child inside of her. We held her two additional nights for observation, had her speak with on-staff therapists, and she was given a clean bill of health. pregnancy and birth can be incredibly taxing both physically and mentally so she could be going back to whatever was going on when she was pregnant

it's possible has she been under additional stress lately work has been rough i guess the doctor nodded that could be it i still think it would be a good idea for her to schedule an appointment to come in maybe she just needs to talk things through or maybe we need to look into medications to help her through As much as I hated the idea of my wife having to take drugs to get better, I went through the same thing after I came home from the sandbox. Thanks again, Uncle Sam. And I hate it. I wanted her to get better.

And it wasn't easy. I basically had to trick her into it, saying that she should go in to get a checkup and flu shot and all that so the girls would be safe. Yes, I said girls. It was the only way I even. got her to respond to my concerns. I drove to her appointment and sat in the waiting room for over an hour until the doctor came out with her.

It was clear that my wife had been crying, but when I went up to her, she hugged me and she felt different. The doctor had a look on her face, too. Something had happened. The gist of it was that the doctor wrote her a prescription just in case, but recommended that we look into some family therapy. The trauma of me being gone for the pregnancy, along with the side effects of the fertility drugs, had paid a toll.

Not to mention the fact that we still needed to talk about why the hell she had taken the drugs and not told me about them. Still, I got to take my wife home. She didn't mention the girls once. Our daughter was at my mom's house for the day while we went to the appointment, so my wife would have time to go home, lie down for a while, rest, and eventually we could go through the healing process. I stayed busy cleaning up the basement for a while until I heard shuffling upstairs. It was getting late, and I knew that I should go pick up our daughter,

so I went upstairs to make sure my wife was okay and asked if she needed me to pick up anything for dinner. What I saw was the end of my world. My wife lay on the floor of our kitchen, covered in blood. A knife in her hand. She had slashed at her own stomach with a carving knife. She made no sound as I saw her push her hand into her own gut, squishing through blood and muscle and tissue. For all I had seen in battle,

nothing could have prepared me to see anything like that. Slowly, as I fell over myself slipping on the blood trying to get to her, grabbing for a hand towel to cover the wound. She said one thing before dying. The doctor was right. We only have one daughter. I need to get the other one out. Before, I said one of my biggest regrets was missing my daughter's birth.

And that's true. If I had been there, maybe I could have seen this coming. Maybe I could have done something about it. My biggest regret was having an autopsy performed. I don't know why I did it. Maybe I thought she had been on drugs or something and needed closure as to how this could happen. I've seen blood and I've seen death, but nothing that would ever compare to what I saw on my own kitchen floor. It was those test results that I will always regret.

The information that an anomaly was found in my wife's uterus, An undeveloped fetus. I can't remember the term they used, but that's how it was explained. Yeah. There was a child in my wife's uterus, though for how long it was impossible to say. They thought it could have been years. All they could tell me was that DNA testing showed that it was my child. Pesectomy or not.

And that it was a girl. Spending summers and vacations at the home of a relative can be the source of wonderful childhood memories. But in this tale from author C.M. Scandrith, we meet a woman who recalls the almost fairy tale home of her aunt and how its many rooms made it a source of endless entertainment. It was only after discovering one very unique room that a most disturbing story unfolded for her. Performing this tale is Erica Sanderson. So understand that this is no fairy tale, for this is about the room that echoed. I never really appreciated just how much like a storybook castle my great aunt's house was.

Four stories tall, with two spires and three attics, it was a monstrous edifice of pocked stone, timed darkened wood, and yellowed glass. I spent so much time there in the holidays as a child, especially over Christmas, that it became a secondary home. And when a place becomes so familiar that it seems like home, it no longer seems special or unique. It's just always there, occupying the same frame of reference as an old coat, a favourite teddy bear, or a well-worn book from your personal library. The house was also filled with interesting things which I largely took for granted. A huge telescope was mounted in one of the spires, its great brass barrel painted with black pitch to keep it from oxidising in the damp air. I'd looked at length through the faintly green lenses at the moon and the stars, but the world above failed to capture my interest as much as the cellars did. Stretching under the massive residence was a subterranean collection of tunnels, carved into the chalky soil that the house was built upon.

The cellar was, in its own way, almost as complicated. as the rest of the house. The winery was on the lowest level of three, a dusty room with a single electric bulb hanging from ancient wires stapled into the pure chalk ceiling. The floor was carved from chalk too, and if you brought a magnifying glass in a torch with you, the secrets of the prehistoric seas would reveal themselves

by a tiny preserved shells embedded in the timeless stone. Their perfect spirals folded in upon themselves until they vanished into the centre. too minuscule for even the augmented human eye to see where they began. Nodes of flint and venous streaks of salts also coloured the stone, moisture sometimes welling from the latter, begging you to lick them and taste an ocean that had been dead for a billion years. In the levels above the ground floor,

there were rooms full of scrawled woodwork that collected an interminable amount of dust. In those rooms were huge wardrobes, the likes of which every child has read about in C.S. Louis'clock, books, and it was impossible not to imagine that there were whole worlds on the other side of the heavy fur coats that filled them. Of course, I investigated every such clothes cupboard, pushing eagerly past old suits and stiff gowns. I never found anything but wood at the back, hard and unyielding. No jaunty satires greeted me with tumnous cordiality. No snow dusted my boots. The most interesting things I found in the wardrobes were a dress of Mother of Pearl sequins and a box of letters

from an old lover of my aunt and calligraphy so fancy that I could barely read it. I giggled at the idea of a man with such flowery flourishes in his penmanship, although for all I knew, Robin could have just have easily been a woman given that my aunt had never married. But there was one place in the house that remained strange and unfamiliar, no matter how many times I visited it. This story is about that place. I discovered it during the school holidays containing my 13th birthday. By then, I had explored much of my aunt's great demean,

but there were still parts of the sprawling manner that I hadn't been in. There was a little wing behind my aunt's bedroom that was only for her, a huddle of separate rooms, which wafted their sense of old lavender and sandalwood into adjoining corridors. So, too, were there other places

that were locked or boarded up. For example, the old conservatory was out of bounds to children, as a tree had grown through the glass, and half-buried razor shards littered the overgrown area. But I had found that through a series of dumb waiters in the cellars, I could access some of the locked rooms inside the house. I was just small enough to hunch inside the creaking box and winch myself upward, and in this way managed to sneak into three musty-old rooms full of disused furniture and stacks of newspaper, before I found the room. By mapping the house out in my head, I placed it somewhere in the very middle of the third floor. The curious thing was that if one were to walk around the entirety of that floor,

you would never see a door to the room. It was as if it didn't exist. Even by carefully pacing the length of the rooms that must have surrounded it, I could only just make out how it could possibly fit in between them. But even that is relatively uninteresting. compared to the room itself. It was no larger than a conventional bathroom, and I could just about touch the walls with my fingertips and toes if I lay down on the floor. Everything was wooden, the ceiling, the floor, and the walls. What kind of wood, I'm not sure, because I'm no joiner

or carpenter, but I can tell you it was a kind that I'd never seen before, and have never seen since. The wood was an orange-red, as though a vermilion stain had been applied to it. But when I gouged out a splinter with my pocket knife, it was the same bright hue all the way through, indicating that this was its natural colour. Even more curious was the grain, which was so dark red it was almost black, and formed strange and faintly disturbing shapes around the thick knots in the individual planks. Indeed, when the alcove of the dumb waiter was closed off, the entire room, lit only by my torch, became a surreal world of crimson and black shapes, writhing sinuously as the slender beam of the electric lamp moved around. But it was so peaceful in there. No sounds could be heard from outside, not even the hardest hail or the most thunderous storms. I decided that it must have been designed as a soundproof room. perhaps to practice music in.

That didn't explain why only an undersized teenage girl could get into it via a dumb waiter, though, which I decided I wasn't going to think about. A small collection of objects grew in the room, which I had decided was my room now. During each stay with my aunt, something would be added to make it more homely. I had gathered several throw pillows in a thick embroidered blanket to sit on while I read my books, as well as a box to set my torch upon and several packets of spare batteries to put in it. It was on the day that I brought up the Bakelight AMFM radio

that I found in the garage, but I began to discover how special the room was. The click of the plastic dial was followed by the thump of the circuits interfering with the speaker, but there followed no music. No cultured BBC radio announcer informed me which concerto had been playing for the last hour. Only the faint hiss of static rose from the speaker, and as I fruitlessly searched up and down both radio bands I swore in frustration.

And the blasphemy I used, which I won't repeat, didn't end sharply in the small room, muted against the close, heavy wooden boards. Instead, it seemed to fly out from my mouth and then echo back at me as if from a great distance. It was as though the room were actually much, much bigger than it really was. I shouted then, excited at this prospect. My voice again came back at me, just as though I stood in a vast wooden theatre. I whistled and listened to the eerie echoes fascinated by the properties of this special room that I had found. But before I could begin to investigate further, the school holidays were over, and I had to go back to her ostentatiously modern home in the city,

which couldn't have been less like my aunt's old house. My father had fitted it out with Category 6 network cables, a brand new 60-inch liquid crystal display television, and all the other technical things that electronic geeks like him were interested in. Back at home, I thought about the room a lot, spending most of my time there in my mind. I would run my virtual hands over the crimson boards, studying the woodbrain on the imagined planks

and seeing strange faces peering at me from their knotted surface, hints of lugubrious eyes and traceries of antlers hidden in the mysterious lines. I came to fear the room, just a little, the more I contemplated, the why of it all. There was clearly something unnatural going on in there, and now that I was away from the blissful solitude it granted me, it was apparent that I had meddled with something that was clearly meant to be forgotten. I grew determined to put it out of my mind and concentrate on my studies. I was going to be a writer, after all, just like my childhood literary hero, E. Nesbit.

But despite my best intentions, the idea of the room that echoed still lingered, colouring my thoughts Carmine red and streaking them with servine imagery. It should not surprise you then that when we next stayed at my aunt's house, I went back. The dumb waiter was a tight fit now. I definitely filled out a lot as puberty progressed, though I was still small of stature. My thing sat in the room undisturbed. A portable battery-powered fan had been my last edition, my reasoning being that such a small, closed room was bound to get stuffy.

But it never did. The air was always cool and fresh, even with the panel to the dumb waiter pulled closed. In the months between this visit and the last, I'd half convinced myself that it had all been my imagination. but the echo was nothing more than a trick of clever carpentry, of some acoustic wizardry. I called out then, tentative and uncertain, listening for my voice to rebound from walls that were too far away. Something moved. In the wall opposite the small entrance, I swear the woodbrain had swirled for an instant. I studied it under the broad beam of the torch, seeing again the long, deer-like features of an animal in the wood.

What are you? I stared at the strangely serene face in the arterial grain. Echoes of my sibilant speech drifted back from a distance, and with a strange sense of vertigo, the boards of the room seemed to recede from one another, some forward, some backward, until I stood in a grove of tall trees, primsum sap on their bowls and black leaves forming an impenetrable canopy high above. Then he stepped out from behind the largest of the trees. Cloven hoofed, and with the brown red flanks of a deer, his footsteps were soundless.

An arrow of soft fur rose to cover much of his tightly muscled human belly, above which smooth pectorals and strong shoulders supported the velvet neck and face of a horned stag. I should have been frightened. I should have screamed and run from this depalish apparition, but I couldn't. It wasn't that I was frozen with terror, nor had the sight made me witless. It was more that as he stepped forward on those dainty hooves, his utterly serene expression and those liquid black eyes soothed away any fear and calmed my troubled thoughts.

Who are you? He didn't speak. Instead he sat in the red-brown grass, rippled by the gentle west winds of the forest clearing, folding those mighty legs beneath him. He spread his broad human hands in welcome, and beckoned me to come forward. All but hypnotised, I sat opposite him, cross-legged, and watched as he began to tell stories with his hands, silent and purposeful, majestic and proud. Although I did not understand what he had told me, when I went to sleep that night in the huge four-post of monstrosity that my aunt called a bed, I dreamed deeply and fruitfully.

In my dream, the hands of the stagman came alive, turning into birds and trees, starlit moors and moonlit rivers. I watched him rut with female humans who gasped with pleasure as he mounted them. I watched the children of this union be taken by him and guided to the places of his kind where they would be raised in harmony with the land. I felt a pang of jealousy for both the women and the children, for being part of something so vastly spiritual and ancient. It will come as no surprise to you then, but I spent every waking moment in the room,

calling out until the wooden board slid back into the bowl. of the cloistered forest clearing, until the wise, horned head of the mysterious demigod appeared, ready to share more stories with his strong hands, stories that would not make sense until I slept that night. And so I dreamed of the stag and his people, of his children and their children. Then I watched as armies of men came,

with axes and torches to cut down the forest. I saw the stagman greet the humans and try to speak to them as he had with me, but they were fearful and shot at him with heavy bows. Two arrows appeared in his mighty flanks before he sprang away, bawling in terror and anger from his velvet muzzle. The next time the men came into the forest, he was healed. His eyes flashing with rage and his tines sharpened to diamond hardness.

He hunted them, goring them on his massive crown until men lay bloody through the woods, their entrails winding over and through the horns. of the stag. But men are persistent creatures. They captured his children one by one with hunting dogs, clever snares and huge nets. They cut down the forest and burned away his home until he was forced to come out and confront them as the hunters cut the throats of his children and let their warm blood run into the soil, enriching it with a queer fertility. They shot him until his body was so full of arrows that he looked more wood than flesh. Then they cut down the last of

the scarlet trees and hauled the logs away, whence a woman paid the men for both the body and the wood. The trees were lathed into planks that bled red sap and would be built into a room that was cunningly hidden within the rest of her home. I recognised her, knew her. She was one of the women he had mated with. She had the face of my aunt. But the story took place too long ago. It couldn't be her. When I returned to the clearing, I saw the rage in his sagely face for the first time. He knew that I understood the truth of it all. A farmlands around the house, the endless prosperity and wealth my family had enjoyed for generations. It was all built on the imprisonment of this otherworldly being and the blood and death of his own family. The need for vengeance burned hot

in his blood. His hoof poured the turf and I could feel the heat of the air escaping those quivering nostrils from where I sat. But he didn't attack me, even though his muscles strained to be free of his will and tear me to pieces, then wear my drying innards on his crown of tines. I'm sorry. I offered lamely. I am sorry for. for the sins of my ancestors. What they did to you was cruel, despicable and unconscionable. Still quivering with murderous intent,

the stag stared at me with his black eyes, then stalked away into the woods. Then the room returned to a box of red and black, lit only by the dying light of my torch. When I woke at midnight, the moon shone hard and bright through a gap in the heavy brocade curtains. A knife lay on the bed in the shaft of light,

the blade made of some kind of nap milky flint and the handle carved of deer antler. A suggestion of a horned shadow flickered at the door, then the faint patter and scrape of hooves on wood echoed down the corridor. I had never been into my aunt's rooms before. I'd always been too scared to. She was an intimidating woman who radiated health and majesty despite her advanced age. Nobody messed with her, not even my father. but with the flint knife in my pale fist,

I no longer felt any fear of her. I felt strong, powerful and determined. The horned shadow painted the wall above her bed, a silhouette cast by the demigod who'd been trapped in a tiny room for hundreds of years, unable to fulfil his unquenchable need for vengeance, so close to his nemesis, yet helpless to vanquish her. The knife was so sharp that it pierced the quilts and bedclothes without even, in a whisper. The second it entered my aunt and parted her breastbone, it was already too late

for the old woman. Her hand snatched at my wrist and held it in a painfully strong grip, but her blue eyes slid past my teenage features and she snarled in fear, staring at something just above my head. Red blossomed over the sheets, her severe aorta furiously pumping her life away, soaking the bed. The stag was there now, standing serenely beside her. me, the rage gone from his eyes, only sorrow and contempt remaining. He pointed to the dying body of my aunt, and a memory flashed in my mind's eye of how she had taken the stag's power, reaching into the mess of her chest. With an uncommon strength, I pulled back the ribs and sliced her stilled heart-free. It tasted strangely like venison.

I awoke to the sounds of sirens and shouting, then my father running into my room covered in soot. There was a dash outside through smoke and ruddy flames. Then we were in the front garden, watching fire engulf my aunt's house. Later, when the burned-out wreck was safe to enter, the fire investigator confirmed that it had started in a room in the middle of the third floor, likely due to faulty wiring in the walls. The wood must have been incredibly flammable, he said, to create so much heat so quickly,

and probably pulled oxygen like a suction hose through an old dumb waiter tunnel that had been left open. My aunt's rooms, close by, had borne the brunt of the fire. The flame spurred on by a prevailing westerly that fanned them into great sheets of destruction. Of her body, only blackened bones remained, split apart from the heat. The property is still in our family. The farmlands have gone to seed and rot. Wild trees have quickly grown up through the pastures. Their tangled roots choking the life out of everything else.

My father says that one day will sell the place, but out of some lingering respect for my aunt, it stays in our family, growing wilder and darker as the forest slowly reclaims it. In the densest, darkest part of the newly grown forest, now five years on from the fire, I like to sit and read in the heart. half-light of strangely red-tinted shadows, imagining that as a grown woman now, the stag will come and find me, and take me as one of his wives.

But instead of his near silent footfalls, all I hear are the whispering sighs of the leaves and the branches, and the pain in my scalp growing daily. It is a prickling, bony ape like a freshly healed break just out of plaster. At first, it was just under the surface, but now I can feel them. tiny lumps under the skin waiting to burst free and slowly unfurl into diamond hard times i think when i'm ready he will come time in our netherworld back into 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 dot com to learn about our season pass program. 25 episodes each over two hours long and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 1999.

On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for listening. Join us again next week when 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.