The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S8E22

Episode Date: March 26, 2017

It's episode 22 of Season 8. On this week's show we have five tales about nasty neighbors, frantic fathers, and tormenting traps."The Roommate I Only Saw Once"† written by Nathan Anderson and performed by Dan Zappulla & Jessica McEvoy. (Story starts around 00:03:30)"The Neighbor"‡ written by A.E. Golden and performed by Atticus Jackson & Nikolle Doolin. (Story starts around 00:17:30)"Wallmart"† written by Marshall Bannana and performed by Addison Peacock & Nichole Goodnight. (Story starts around 00:46:30)"The Ringing in My Ear"† written by S.H. Cooper and performed by David Ault & Erika Sanderson & James Cleveland. (Story starts around 00:59:30)"I Should Have Canceled Class"† written by John Derrick and performed by Mike DelGaudio & Jessica McEvoy & Matthew Bradford & Jes Echo & Dan Zappulla. (Story starts around 01:13:40)Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast Click here to learn more about Penny Scott-Andrews Click here to learn more about Andy Cresswell Click here to learn more about Tales to Terrify Executive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon BooneAudio adaptations produced by: Phil Michalski† & Jeff Clement‡"The Ringing in My Ear" illustration courtesy of Charlie CodyAudio program ©2017 - 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. I'm David Cummings. Thanks for joining us. On this week's show, we have five tales about nasty neighbors, frantic fathers, and tormenting traps. I would like to formally introduce some of our newest voice actors who have joined the show.

Two of them joined us while the tour was ongoing. They are two superb voice actors who were introduced to us by our very own Erica Sanderson. Penny Scott Andrews and Andy Cresswell have been heard on some recent episodes and will continue to lend their excellent voices to us in coming shows. They are both trained and experienced actors who have worked not only with their but also on the stage and screen. They both hail from England and it makes sense they'd live in the same country since Andy and Penny are in fact husband and wife, just like our other British couple, David Alt and Erica. Oh, wait, no, they're not married.

They only often play a couple on the show. So we offer our belated welcome to Penny and Andy and thank them for sharing their immense talents with us. Also joining us this week is Jess Echo. Jess makes her debut on the final tale of this episode. She joins us from the northern climes of the U.S. Midwest, and we'll lend her voice to various roles from time to time. We welcome you to the show, Jess. It's great to have you with us.

And before we begin, I want to mention our friends over at the Great Audio Horror Fiction podcast, Tales to Terrify. Not only did they win a 2016 Parsec Award for, best short story, but they continue to adapt some of the best stories in horror writing. You may even hear some familiar voices narrating stories over at Tales to Terrify. Their unadorned yet compelling narrations are a wonderful way to hear the works of outstanding authors. You'll hear modern stories, including Bram Stoker Awards finalists and classics from authors like Lovecraft. Please visit talestortorriify.com and make it a part of your regular audio horror listening.

And now we have some terrifying tales of our own, so with our voices both new and familiar, it's time to start this week's show. In our first tale, we visit a college dorm and experience the usual frustrations of living in such close quarters. But as explained by author Nathan Anderson, when one student keeps getting complaints about the noise from his room, he has to figure out why the the noise only happens when he's not there. Performing this tale are Dan Zapula and Jessica McAvoy. So keep your eyes peeled, as the man tells us, for the roommate I only saw once.

I'm a college student, and I live alone in a single dorm room in a building close to the center of my campus. This is my second year living in this room. My girlfriend of a few years lives right down the hall from me, and I spend most of my time during the day in her room. She's a good decorator and generally keeps a cleaner room than I do. I still sleep in my room because the beds are small, and she tends to wake up a lot earlier than me. Our building, called Wharton Hall, is pretty old. The walls are thick, but the floors are pretty thin and creaky. I hear the people above me all the time, and it always sounds like they're stomping around, but I think it's just the building. Last year, I had some friends over to watch the premiere of a show we all followed,

and the person living below me came upstairs to ask us to quiet down. We were all sitting on the floor, the creaking was so bad that she thought we were moving furniture. Or so she said, but she was kind of an ass. The college recently put up drop tile ceilings in this building to catch all the paint that was falling off the existing drywall onto students' stuff. They're renovating it next year. One afternoon I was walking to my room, room 295 on the second floor, to drop off my stuff after class before heading down the hallway to my girlfriends. I opened the door at the top of the staircase, which is right across from my room, and I saw a girl standing at my door as though she'd knocked and was waiting for an answer. She seemed a little pissed. I told her it was my room and asked what was up.

She told me she was trying to write a paper and she needed me to quiet down. I was surprised and I almost laughed a bit since I obviously wasn't in the room. I still had my backpack and jacket on and was just getting back. She told me rather indignantly that clearly somebody was in the room and that I needed to quiet them down as if I was covering for them or something. She told me that I'd been making a lot of noise this week in the afternoons. So I told her I'd check it out and to let me know if I was being too loud again. I gave her my number to save the trip up the stairs.

I try to be a good neighbor. She paced off and walked back downstairs. I unlocked my door and found exactly what I expected. Nothing. I suspected it was just the building settling or the pipes making noise or whatever other bullshit reasons buildings make noise. My room was completely undisturbed in exactly how I remember leaving it. My bed was a mess, clothes on the floor in the corner, recycling sorely in need of removal, and the blinds pulled down. I headed to my girlfriend's room and didn't think about it again for the rest of the day.

The next day was Tuesday, so my classes ran a little later. I was sitting in class fucking around on my laptop when my phone started ringing. It was a nearby area code, but I didn't have the number saved. I let it go to voicemail and then texted them. Hey, I'm in class. Could you remind me who this is? Don't have your number saved. Hi, it's Jessica downstairs.

If you're in class, you need to tell who. whoever's in your room to cut it out. Worse than yesterday. I thought it was strange that the noise would be louder than yesterday, especially considering I was, again, not in my room. I quietly stepped out of class to call her back. Hey. That was the gist of it.

She didn't give me time to convince her that nobody was there. This was now really starting to confuse and piss me off. Either she was messing with me and pulling an aggressively irritating prank where something was making noise in my room when I was gone. I have a small refrigerator that rattles a bit when it cuts on and off, but nothing I dream of complaining to a neighbor about. When I got back to my room, I again found nothing. Everything was as precisely disheveled as I'd left it,

and I found no evidence of someone coming into my room. On top of that, I happened to know that the lock on my door is essentially impossible to pick, as I've tried it a few times when I locked myself out. The doors only have button locks and don't unlock themselves when the door shuts, and they're spring-loaded to swing closed and impossible to prop open without a chair. If someone was getting into my room, they were clearly breaking in, and they were a much better lock picker than me.

Nobody else has a key to my room. So, I was pretty pissed at this point. I kept thinking about how this sounded like the plot of a shitty horror movie. I was ready to get to the bottom of this and get whoever was breaking into my room arrested, so I took an old smartphone I had lying around and installed a security camera app on it with motion and sound detection. If anything happened in my room, I'd get it on camera and get a notification on my current phone immediately. I propped it up on the floor in the corner of the room, trying to make it inconspicuous. I went to bed that night feeling pretty good that I was about to catch the asshole who kept barging into my house.

bedroom. The next day, while I was eating a late lunch, my phone buzzed in my pocket. Motion detected, it informed me. So I stood up, left my stuff in the cafe with my friend, and ran from my room. As I was running, I tried to pull up the live feet of my room, but the Wi-Fi signal kept disconnecting and reconnecting as I passed by different buildings. I switched to cellular, but by the time the connection was established, I was already at my dorm. I bounded. up the stairs into the hallway, into my door. It was locked, and I heard nothing inside. I fumbled with the key and finally unlocked the door, throwing it open and jumping into the room. Nothing. My security phone was still in the corner, but it had slid and fallen, camera up from its admittedly

precarious position. Shit. Still, detecting the sound of my violent entry, it promptly notified me that somebody was in my room. I looked around the room, nothing seemed to be disturbed. I picked up my old phone to check the footage and see if it caught anything before it tipped over. I unlocked it and opened the security camera app. Two clips have been stored on the phone.

The thumbnails were both still frames of the lower portion of my closed door and far wall of my room. The sound must have triggered the camera before anything came into the frame. I know that the second clip will just be me foolishly barreling into my own bedroom and gawking at nothing, so I opened the first clip. I hear the faint sound of the doorknob turning.

Shit. No rattling, no sound of keys or picks fiddling with the lock. The door opens and someone walks in. The camera angle was no good, but I could see the pale bare feet and slim jeans, who I assumed to be a male. Didn't look like anyone I knew, and nobody I know walks around barefoot this time of year. They paced. They walked back and forth between three points on the floor of my room,

walking with such heavy steps that the video was rattling. This kept on for a good few minutes, during which time the phone fell over and all I could see was the ceiling. The sound of the loud pacing continued for a bit, and then suddenly stopped. The footage cut out. The second clip was time-stamped just 15 seconds after the end of the first one. Whoever was here ran like hell when they heard me bounding up the stairs or fiddling with the lock. And I still didn't have a picture of this jerk's face.

This time I was pissed as hell. I still hadn't told my girlfriend about any of this because I didn't want her to worry, and she tends to be more superstitious than me. I was positive somebody was breaking into my room to screw with me, but I was guessing her suspicions would be more supernatural. She knew nothing about it, and I wanted to keep it that way. I decided to solve this once and for all. I was going to get a picture of this guy's face.

I had a nice DSLR camera that also had motion detection, which I avoided using for the sake of conspicuousness and avoiding having it stolen, but I didn't care at this point. The camera had Wi-Fi, so I set it up to immediately take a picture when something in the room moved and upload it to Dropbox. Even if this dick decided to steal my camera, I'd have a picture. I put it on a tripod, made sure it was aimed right at head level on the door, I set it to the fastest shutter speed and auto focus,

and the next morning when I left for class, I turned it on. The camera wouldn't notify me like the security app, so I'd just have to wait and see what it captured when I got back. It was a regular day, no text from Jessica, and even though I knew I'd probably lose my camera, I figured the burglar was probably a student, and I'd likely get it back once I had a picture to show campus police. When my last class let out in the afternoon, I made my way back to Wharton. When I entered the hallway, I saw the door to my room and froze. The door was closed, and the brass doorknob was crushed and mangled,

barely clinging to the hole in the door where it had been twisted out. There were thin, wiry dents in the shape of a hand disfiguring both sides of the doorknob and the bits of wood around the screws had been ripped out of the solid wood door. I pulled the door open.

My tripod lay flat on its side on the floor. My camera, completely gone. The TV on my dresser was smashed and leaning against the wall. The cracks on the screen matching the shape of the tripod. Bits of glass from the lens were in a small pile on the floor, and the plastic from the bottom of the camera and the tripod mount were still stuck to the tripod's screw adapter. Someone had crushed my $600 camera with their bare hands and ripped it off the

tripod to keep me from seeing who they were. I suppressed my instinctive terror and immediately took out my computer and logged into Dropbox. A single picture had been uploaded. A jumbled mess of superimposed images filled my screen. I saw my bedroom door closed, superimposed by a dark faceless figure standing in the open doorway, superimposed again by a transparent black blur, which covered half the screen. In the center of the blur were two faint white lights that looked like eyes.

The image was overlaid with the pattern of shattered glass and bits of refracted light. In the fraction of a second it took to take that picture, someone had effortlessly opened my locked door, heard the sound of the shutter opening, crossed the room, ripped the camera from the tripod, and destroyed it, all before the shutter closed again. The thought must have occurred to them that the camera was connected to the internet, because they clearly left in a hurry. I moved out of that room as soon as the school would let me. That was over eight months ago, and since graduating, I've heard from my RA friends still at school

that two students have moved in and out of that room, and that the girl below me left too. They repaired the door and replaced the knob. After seeing the picture and the leftovers of my ruined camera, the school offered to pay the remainder of my room and board in an off-campus apartment and gave me a deep discount on the remaining tuition. All with the stipulation that I don't make a big deal about what happened. I got an invitation to a private Facebook group today from a name I didn't recognize. He was an older guy who also went to my school. The group was called Wharton 295. You can count yourself lucky if you get along with the people who live near you.

Author A.E. Golden knows what it's like when your neighbors are the source of disturbances, even when they don't appear to be doing anything wrong. Performing this tale are Atticus Jackson and Nicole Dooland. So try not to spy out the windows. After all, he's just the neighbor. My wife and I loved our new house. It's not really big, but the three-bedroom two full-bath ramblers sat on three acres of land, and it was perfect for our needs. We had been trying to have kids for the past two years, though that seemed to be taking longer than expected. Since we'd moved in, she had been talking about much more expensive options like fertility treatments and adoption, both of which made my wallet shiver. She looked up prices of adopting a newborn and the cost was anywhere from

25 to 40 grand. I quickly learned that joking around about getting a puppy for only 25 dollars was not a good idea. Lynn had been getting more and more frustrated about the whole baby situation, so her sense of humor had been M-I-A. Our house was at the end of a street with our closest neighbor to our right. From the looks of it, the owner was a single guy with no kids who stayed pretty quiet and to himself. It would have been nice if there were some kids in the house for our future kids to play with, but that's not happening at the moment.

There might have been some kids in the houses further down the street on our row, but we'd only been there for a month and hadn't explored much of the neighborhood. The neighbor didn't do too much on the weekends. He mostly stayed home and did a lot of yard and gardening work. He had a long driveway surrounded by two rows of manicured white and yellow flower bushes. The signs in front of his house were colorful oceans of various flowers, all neat and healthy. We hadn't talked to him at all. During the first week we moved in, I went outside to get the mail and saw him outside tending to his garden.

I looked over at him the whole time trying to catch his eye so I could wave. When I saw him stop and look in my direction, I gave a great big wave and smiled. It couldn't be missed, but he didn't wave back. I got my mail and headed back to the house, glancing back to find him still staring at me. I gave another wave, this one much smaller and quicker. He just kept staring at me, not moving. It was definitely on my list of most awkward moments. I mean, how hard is it to wave back at someone?

I put the mail down on the counter, no longer interested in it. Well, maybe he wasn't even looking at me. We did have some distance between our houses. I couldn't see his eyes clearly. He might have been staring at flat. that were in my general direction. My wife had never talked to him either. At first she wanted to bake him cookies and walk to his house so we could introduce ourselves.

Then she changed her mind. She became indignant, thinking that since we were the new ones on the block, he should have come and introduced himself to us. So we were at a standstill. He hadn't said a word to us, and we hadn't said one to him. outside of my awkward waving debacle he was pretty much non-existent in our lives one Saturday morning a few months after that incident

we were in the kitchen cleaning up after a tasty huge breakfast when I noticed Lynn looking intently outside the kitchen window above the sink while she washed the dishes and what are you looking at you see deer again I squinted out of the window myself as I went over to her blopping our juice glasses in the sink water No, no dear. I'm just looking at the neighbor.

It's just weird how he spends so much time on his lawn and garden. I looked out and saw him as well. He was on his knees digging something at the front of his house. We watched him for only a few seconds more when suddenly he stood up. He was facing his house and kept staring at it for a few seconds when he suddenly looked in our direction. He seemed to be looking right at us as we both stood in the windows staring at him. We never put up any curtains or blinds on the little window. The light that flooded into the room was always a nice, warm addition to the kitchen.

Um, this is weird. He can't see us, can he? No, of course not. And gave an odd unstable laugh. I mean, well, I guess he can't. too far away, right? Yeah, but it's like he's looking at us. The neighbor kept staring at us for what appeared to be several minutes,

but was only a few more seconds. Lynn wasn't moving and had stopped washing dishes, and I was equally frozen. Suddenly, the neighbor broke his stare and walked quickly into his house. Um, okay. That was so weird. What just happened? She started to laugh.

Well, I really don't think he was looking at us. He was probably looking in our direction. He probably figured out what he wanted to do and went in the house to get something. I had started gathering the dishes again and was placing them in the sink. Very annoyed about the whole situation. The guy had unsettled me since the whole waving, or should I say, non-waving incident. And this didn't help. Okay.

say he wasn't looking directly at us. Lynn gave up on washing the dishes entirely and turned around to me. But you have to admit he's pretty weird. I mean every weekend that's all he does. He never moves his car to go anywhere on the weekends. He stays home all day on Saturday and Sunday. I mean all day every single weekend. He goes out for hours at a time to work on his flowers or mow his lawn.

No one never visits him. He never has company over the day. there. Have you seen one person visit him in the three months we've lived here? Lynn was fired up. I wasn't going to get out of this conversation anytime soon. No, I haven't, but that doesn't mean no one has visited him. We probably didn't see them. Look, let's just finish cleaning up here and go run our errands. I don't want to get back too late. I have to... Matt, you have to admit it's very strange that he only leaves his house to go to work and come back home. How does no one leave their house all week?

weekend or in the evenings. I've never even seen him carry in groceries or come home any later than 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Lynn was a big fanatic about open windows. She loved how the light added to the homey feel of every room. She kept the curtains and blinds open on every window in the house during the day. This being so, she always had a good view of the neighbor's house. And with Lynn working from home mostly every day, one of the perks of being a senior accountant. She was able to see the neighbor's coming and goings. Though our weekdays were made up of working from home, her sister Rita and niece Megan lived only three miles away.

They spent a lot of time together on the weekends, either at our house, out shopping, or at Rita's house, which was why I was surprised that she even noticed he didn't move his car all weekend. Wait, how do you know he doesn't move his car all weekend? You aren't even home most of the time. I'm not home most of the time. the time. In an hour

we're about to go out ourselves. We don't know what he'll be doing. He might have a car full of beautiful single ladies pulling up to his driveway the second we leave. I pretended to fling back long flowing hair over my shoulders. Ha, ha.

But you know he's not. She gave me a smirk and turned back to the dishes. I don't know. He just weirds me out for some reason. I can't explain it. She looked back out the window.

I grabbed an extra sponge and walked to the stove. I don't know. Maybe we should go meet him, break the ice. Maybe take him something I bake like I originally planned and... She went silent. And make a pie so you can throw it at him like they did in the old TV shows? I laughed. She wasn't speaking.

I stopped cleaning and turned around to her. She had stopped doing the dishes again and was staring out the window. An unexpected wave of fear gripped my stomach. What is it? Did he come back out to stare out our window again? I was oddly too frozen with fear to find out for myself. She slowly turned around to me, with a big smile on her face and whispered, Boar, dear, and a baby dear. So cute. Come see.

The week following was very busy. Len was working with a new client and doing a lot of overtime. I was a security guard at the Coffling Gallery of Art. Not an exciting job, but hey, it was a job. My co-worker was on vacation, so I had to cover his week-in shift as well as my own weekday shift, so I wasn't home much. but I got one very funny text message that's Saturday from Lynn. Went somewhere. His car has been gone for hours and it's Saturday.

I texted back. Or maybe he had to work on the weekend like we have to. Stop stalking the guy. Or maybe he went on a hot date. I would love to know. A week later, we were in the kitchen preparing for a Sunday dinner for some friends who hadn't seen our new house. Nothing fancy of spaghetti and garlic bread deal, but it was more for the company than a fancy Michelin Star meal.

As we were cooking, Lynn gasped, looking out the window. What? I wasn't sure whether to be worried or amused. The neighbor, his car is gone. It's 2 p.m. in the afternoon, and his car is gone. This is the second weekend in a row he has left his house. I'm so proud of him. She faked the wiping of tears from her eyes. Well, I'm sure he has gone out on the weekends many times, huh?

I went over to the window and gave her a kiss. You just haven't noticed. But I must say, you are so cute when you turn into a stalker chick. Oh, hush up. I still think he's weird, but at least he's getting out of the house. He's single and young. He should get out and enjoy life. The dinner went well, and the next morning the Monday work routine started over again.

Lynn's new clients were getting under control and my co-worker got back from vacation, which would free my weekends. I came home Monday night, already mentally planning my Saturday outing. There was a new superhero movie out that I wanted to see. I went to the mailbox and saw the neighbor's car wasn't in the driveway, which was odd since, like Lynn said. He was always home by 5 p.m. and it was 5.45. His car was always there when I got home.

I shrug. I got the mail and went into the house. Hi, sweets. Flynn gave me a hug and a kiss. There is a ton of spaghetti left over from yesterday, so eat up. I think we'll be eating this stuff for dinner all week. Yeah, I saw how much you were putting away last night. I figured that was for dinner tonight.

Under the cable bill, Well, junk mail and a letter from Wright Co. telling me I can save hundreds on my car insurance if I switch to them was a plain, unaddressed white envelope. There was no writing on the front or back, and the letter was sealed. Very odd. Oh, Helena called me this morning asking me if she left her scarf here. It was a red and white dressy kind of scarf. Did you see it? Lynn asked me as she pulled out two dinner plates and drinking glasses. Scarf? I carefully ripped open the envelope. Ah, scarf, no, no, I didn't see a scarf.

Is she sure she left it here? Inside were two sheets of paper. Both folded up, one in front of the other. I pulled out the first sheet of paper and opened it up. It was a very neat, blocked writing on it done with what looked like a Sharpie. He never moves his car to go anywhere on the weekends. He stays home all day on Saturday and Sunday. I mean all day.

Every single weekend. What was this? What car? Was it some kind of odd, new, used car advertisement from a dealership? Well, the thing is, I don't even remember her even wearing a scarf last night. Lynn put a large bowl of spaghetti in the microwave. I pulled out the second piece of paper. It had the same.

blocked Sharpie riding. Car moved Saturday, June 7th, 2014, from 11.03 a.m. to 6.43 p.m. Car moved Sunday, June 15th, 2014. From 4.22 p.m. to 9.16 p.m. Car moved Monday, June 16th, 2014. from 8.30 a.m. to You tell me since you seem to care so much where I am. My blood froze in my entire body as I remembered the conversation Lynn and I had two weeks ago about the neighbor.

Though I knew the answer, I walked to the calendar we kept on the fridge, and of course, it was June 16th. What's up? You keep forgetting your bay dates. I don't know how. I never forget mine. She laughed as she placed garlic bread on a baking sheet. I slowly turned to the window at the sink and walked to it. What is it, honey? Lynn walked to me. She looked at my face and put her hand on my forehead.

Oh man, you don't look good. Are you getting sick? What's wrong? I didn't see the neighbor's car in his driveway. I glanced at the clock and it was six over. 5 p.m. What are you looking at? Oh, I see. The neighbor isn't home yet. It's kind of weird. It's not like him to be out this late. In fact, he's never out this late on a weekday. He's normally... Will you stop being so nosy and worrying about what the neighbor is doing? She froze in shock. Why do you have to worry about what he's doing all the time? Stop it. And stop talking about him. I stormed off into the bedroom and slammed the door.

We sat down on the bed. This had to be some weird coincidence, some joke. There was no way the neighbor heard us talking about him moving his car. We were at home. Windows closed and he was home, nowhere near our house. But yet he had quoted Lynn. Was that exactly what she said? Jeez, I shouldn't have yelled at Lynn.

I never yell. I needed to go apologize, but I didn't want to scare her and tell her why I was so upset. She'd been overly worried and... Oh, no. The letters. And left them on the table. I didn't want her to read them until I could figure out what was going on. I jumped up, flung the bedroom door open, and raced back to the kitchen.

But I was too late. Lynn was sitting at the dining table holding the second letter. Her face pale. She looked up at me and looked back at the paper, her hand shaking. He quoted me. He quoted me. I don't remember what I said word for word, but that's pretty much what I said, Matt. We were in the kitchen.

He had gone back inside. I remember that. Well, maybe he went back outside. Maybe we didn't see him go back out. He had close to our house and overheard us. I mean, it's not a big deal. It could just be some kids playing a prank on us. Might not be him at all.

He's not home yet. Lynn looked like she was going to cry. What does that mean? It means nothing. This whole thing is nothing. I was suddenly marching over to her and snatching the piece of paper from her hand, along with the first paper on the table. I bawled them both up and was about to throw them in the trash when Lynn screamed.

No! She jumped up and grabbed the two balls of paper from my hand, opened them and smooth them back out. This might be evidence if something happens. His fingerprints might be on this. She finished smoothing them out and flopped back down in her chair. I think is going to happen, Lynn. I looked down at her.

I pulled up the chair next to her and sat down. Look, hon, this is silly. I can't explain it or figure it. figure out who wrote it, but we can't get upset. Someone is probably playing a trick on us. Didn't you tell Rita all about how he never leaves the house? Maybe she's playing a joke on you. Lynn lit up. Yeah, I did talk about it. She joked that he's some kind of serial killer and uses the weakens to chop up the bodies. That is a definite possibility she's playing a trick on us. You two are always pranking each other in some way. It was actually a very plausible explanation for the source of this crazy thing. It probably was Rita.

Look, let's just eat dinner, watch some TV, and get some rest. We'll get a good laugh out of this in the morning. We're both tired and I know I'm hungry. Yeah, I guess you're right. At bedtime, we laid in the dark, much quieter than normal. Usually we'd be chatting away about our day, but we'll be. of us were mostly on edge the whole night. Every time I passed a window, I would try to casually, or not so casually, look out and see

if I saw the neighbor's car back in the driveway. It wasn't there. I leaned over in bed to peer at the red glow of the clock on my nightstand. It was 11.33 p.m. Before I got in bed, I saw through the bedroom window that his driveway was still empty. Somehow I managed to fall asleep. I only know this because I was jolted awake by a loud boom at the front of the house. I didn't move, but my eyes were wide open and every muscle in my body was frozen.

I slowly looked over at Lynn, and for some insane reason the sound didn't wake her. She was snoring softly beside me. Maybe the sound was in a dream. I lay there a few seconds longer listening hard for any further sounds. Nothing. I decided it was a dream and turned on my side to go back to sleep. Suddenly, I remembered the events of the evening. The strange letters.

His missing car. I sat up quickly and went to our bedroom window. His car was back in his driveway. I looked as best as I could to see if he was sitting in the car. or standing outside looking at her house again. My eyes were having a hard time adjusting. I couldn't see any details. But I could see that his house was dark.

No lights were on. He probably got home hours ago and was asleep, not even thinking about us. My thoughts of Rita playing games became more concrete. I walked back to my side of the bed and saw it was 3.38 a.m. I had to get up for work in a few hours. All of these cloak and dagger games were exhausting. I sat down in the bed and was about to put my feet in.

When I remembered the noise, that boom sound was pretty loud. What if it wasn't in my dream? I got up again, this time leaving the bedroom and inspecting what I could around the darkened house. The windows were intact. Nothing was thrown in. I walked to the front door. Our front door was mostly a large square pane of decorative glass, so I put up the sheer lace curtain for a bit of privacy. I slowly pushed back the curtain to look outside.

The front of our house faced our driveway in the woods beyond that. It was a very beautiful setting. Nothing looked wrong with our cars. I was about to drop the curtain back and go back to bed when I looked to bed. down and saw a large dark object in front of the door. I frowned. When I came home, there was no package or anything that large anywhere on the porch. And I turned on the porch light and looked closer. Though I wasn't sure, it appeared to be an animal. A dog, maybe? From my angle at the door and the low wattage of the light, I couldn't make out what it was completely, but it definitely

looked furry. I wondered if I should leave it, wait for the dog or whatever it was to leave. It was probably some stray looking for a safe place to sleep. I shrugged and turned off the porch light, yawning as I headed back to bed. I glanced at the kitchen clock on the way. It was 4 a.m. Jeez, I had to be up in two hours. The alarm blared angrily at 6 a.m. but I hit the snooze button more times than I should have. Lynn helped me to quickly pack a lunch, and I raced around looking for my car keys. Didn't you have them in the living room?

Boy, look at this morning. It's so sunny. I heard her say as I ran to the living room, lifting couch cushions. I finally found them stuck between them. I was about to pick them up when I heard a blood-curdling scream. Lynn, what happened? What's... I found her standing at the front door wide open. She was looking down at something.

What is it? I walked slowly up to her. I suddenly remembered the dark, furry figure I couldn't quite make out a few hours before. I had a feeling the cute image in my head wasn't what was on our front porch. What kind of sick person would do this? I looked down and saw the blood. mingled corpse of what was once a dog. It was lying on its back,

and its two eyes were mashed into a red and pink, grotesque mixture of blood, fur, and brains, and skull pieces where its head should have been. The animal's body was cut open from chest to lower belly, and most of its guts looked like they were pulled out, actually pulled out and placed into a horrifying mountain made up of intestines, liver, kidneys, and heart. Right on top of him.

And the blood. There was so much blood. It covered most of our porch. It was him. Rita wouldn't do this. The note. Note. They hadn't even noticed the note.

How did I miss it? It was impaled on the dog's thigh, a knife anchoring it to him. This time, the paper wasn't folded. It was open flat, slightly waving in the wind like a morbid flag. It was the same plain white paper as the other notes, but this time streaks and splatters of blood stained it like tie-dye. I went back into the house to grab a dish towel

and used it to remove the knife and grab the note. Despite the blood, the words were still very clear, written in that same handwriting in black Sharpie. car moved Monday, June 16th, 2014, from 8.30 a.m. to 3.31 a.m. Looks like I did have company Lynn. I slammed the front door and locked it quickly. Over the next five days, Lynn and I had the worst fights we have ever had in our four years of marriage. And most of our fights at home were written on paper. We were too scared to say anything out loud about it. while in our house, since it seemed that everything we said the neighbor could hear.

When we did speak out loud about it, we would leave the house and go out to a restaurant or park. Lynn was dead set on calling the police and having them see the dog, investigate the neighbor, etc. I, on the other hand, did not want that, since I felt like it would make things worse. We weren't dealing with a sane person here. He killed a dog and put it on our front porch. Who knew what he would do if we sent the police to his house about it?

We ended up going with my plan. We disposed of the dog and cleaned up the mess ourselves. Five days with no incident. I got the mail when I came home from work. There was nothing in it except for a folded up piece of plain white paper. I could see many, many marks of the black Sharpie bleeding through. There was a lot of writing on this note from what I could tell. I glanced over at the neighbor's house.

His car was gone. I walked into our dark house and turned on the lights. I went into the office. I was thankful I got the mail before Lynn did. I didn't want her to know about this just yet. She'd already gone through so much emotionally. Frowning, I realized with a jolt that Lynn indeed was not. home. That was very odd since she told me at 1 p.m. that she was leaving Rita's house,

going to the grocery store, and then heading home to cook for dinner. It was 5.30. Where was she? My hands started shaking as I held the note. I had a bad feeling the neighbor's car would come back, but Lynn would not. When you're looking to save some money and start, up on supplies, it's easy to head to the local big box store. But as we learn from author Marshall Bannana, even at the best of times it can feel a little unsettling in those stores, let alone when everything and everyone in the store becomes utterly bizarre. Performing this tale are Addison Peacock and Nicole Goodnight. So when the greeter welcomes you, make sure you're in the right Walmart.

I don't shop at Walmart. That's not a brag. I don't look down on people who regularly have to out of financial necessity. I'm just saying, maybe if I did, I would have noticed something sooner. It was late at night, and I was out of a lot of essentials. I had just gotten off an all-day shift, and tomorrow was looking to be no different. I was resigning myself to having no toilet paper, no soap, and no milk until my next day off. Then I remembered I was also out of lunchmeat and just went fuck it.

No way was I braving the workday without my customary sandwich. I tooled around in my beater trying to find a 7-Eleven or something along those lines when I saw that parking lot behemoth I'm sure we could all recognize in our sleep by now. I reviewed my options and resignedly turned my blinker on. The parking lot was almost empty. There were no carts loose in the lot, which was a first for any store I'd ever been to. I got out of my car and walked into the store. The first problem didn't even hit me until I was securely inside the building

and probably would have driven any seasoned Wallyworlder or scampering in the other direction. The sign had said Walmart with two L's. My tired brain dismissed it as a reading comprehension error instead of the first of many signs that something was very much wrong. The greeter at the door was an overweight man or woman, didn't look too hard, didn't care, who said, welcome to Walmart with accents on the wrong syllables. So it came out, welcome to Walmart. Again, tired and not paying much attention,

don't even know what to expect. I just snagged my cart, which moved only slightly better than a boulder with square wheels, and set off. This place, man was it big. I'm no newcomer to warehouse stores, but this place just went on and on. I shoved my cart down endless aisles, looking for any sign of my necessities. It seemed like every aisle was just a mishmash of the same cheap crap regardless of the signs. I saw value packs of tools, toys, electronics, plastic wear, everything except what I needed. The next weird thing presented itself when I actually examined one of the items. The thing was a five pack of pliers, but when I picked it up, I found it was an empty package. The pliers behind the plastic were just pictures. I thought, sure, it was probably just a security measure,

and I would have to bring it up to the cashier, and they'd fetch the real one from a security case. Then I looked at the next one, a pack of forks. Same deal. I picked up a container of bleach, empty. I was not the only one in the store at that time. A couple of people, as confused as me, were wandering around looking lost. An old lady looked at my shirt, hopefully, and opened her mouth, and I shook my head.

At a store this big, you had to have a lot of personnel, didn't you? Courtesy clerks, loss prevention, stalkers? the works. I dragged my cart around looking for the elusive breed. After, I kid you not, ten minutes, I abandoned the cart because it was slowing me down. Still, no employee in sight. I had heard of rip-off stores before. Places like China where they had fake apple stores so good that even the employees didn't know who they were working for.

But this was America. Why would they do something like that here and to what end? Anyone who tried it would probably get sued into the ground by corporate lawyers before they could open their doors. I had nearly given up on finding a clerk when I caught a glimpse of someone going around in the corner dressed in those Wally World scrubs. I trotted after calling, Excuse me?

They didn't slow down. I got louder. Excuse me! I switched to a light jog. Somehow this person stayed well ahead of me despite appearing to be strolling at a casual pace. I broke into a run. Someone walked out of the aisle ahead of us

pushing another stubborn cart, looking the other way. The clerk turned to go down one of the other aisles. The other side of the clerk looked exactly the same. I stopped in my tracks. Not sure what I'd seen. The other customer caught sight of the clerk leaving and huffed and puffed, pushing their card after the retreating specter.

I had just seen the clerk turn a complete 180 degrees and never seen a face. The front of the clerk had been identical to the back. No facial features. nothing at all. I looked up and realized I had no idea where I was. The clerk had only led me deeper and deeper into the store. There were no windows in this place, and the aisles stretched on for even longer than I had originally gathered.

What the hell was this place? I shivered a little. Time to find the doors. I hunted fruitlessly down the aisles for a while before realizing what an idiot I was. I needed to find a wall and follow that until I hit the floor. front. Easy as pie, right? Wrong. I found the wall and walked along its surface. I made five perpendicular turns. Five times I followed the wall exactly, no front door. I was starting to become

really scared. Okay, this wasn't a real store, but why couldn't I find the door? I thought about it and figured that maybe they had a way to disguise the doors on the inside wall so that when they closed, they disappeared. Nobody looked back when they walked into a store, did they? I continued walking my circuit, patting the wall, looking for a likely place. Hello? Is anyone there? A shaky voice came from an aisle cap behind me. I wasn't really ready to trust anyone in this place, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to answer. I'm here. Are you another customer? Oh, thank God. It was a lady's voice. I could hear the scrape of a cart dragging on the tile floor. I've been here for hours. My cell doesn't get any reception in here. Could you help me out? I seem to be lost. Sure. I looked down the

next aisle. Can you walk in a straight line over to me? I'm sorry. This aisle appears to be capped here. It's just shelves on either side, then a dead end. Can you follow it to the other end? I've tried. Maybe you can see something I'm missing. With a lot of misgivings, I stepped away from the wall and down the aisle. I tried to guide the woman with my voice. She was very apologetic for troubling me. She felt so silly for getting lost in a straight line, her husband would think,

I hit the end of the aisle and got a cold chill. There was the aisle cap. Extra wide, the aisles to either side were empty. Are you there? Yes. Do you see anything? Do you? I just see another shelf with all the same crap that's on all the others.

Her voice held a touch of panic. I don't know how I got myself in here. If there's some opening, I'm not seeing. Maybe I wandered into an employee-only area. It was hard to swallow past the lump in my throat. Maybe. Listen, I'm going to find the front door and call someone, okay? I'll be back as soon as I can.

Just try not to go somewhere that doesn't open up, okay? Okay. The woman seemed a little better now that she had the comforting lie that someone would take care of it. I had no idea what I was doing, but she didn't need to know that. I found the wall again and followed it, aggressively punching shelves. I scattered useless merchandise mock-ups to look for secret entrances. The space between aisles got longer.

I would see an aisle cap two, three aisles wide. I heard other people calling out. I started running along the wall looking for seams. There were no checkout stands, no food court, nothing to indicate where the doors might be. It was a seamless cube of junk, and I was running laps fruitlessly. My first and only stroke of luck hit me that night. I found the greeter. From far away, it looked like a person.

From the corner of your eye, if you were distracted and not paying attention, it looked like a person. But if you really studied it, you realized it had a bunch of weird formations on its head that only just looked like a face. Sort of like those pictures made up a thousand, of colored dots. It only looked like a thing from farther back.

Up close, it was just a bunch of meaningless blobs. The greeter waddled along like it didn't know how to walk. Not an exaggeration, it kept putting its feet wrong and twisting its body like it wasn't used to being bipedal. I crept up behind it and grabbed its shirt collar. The greeter blinked. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. It had no eyes, just a bunch of steps.

that cast shadows that happen to look like eyes from far away. It spooked me so much I let go of its collar. Where's the door? The thing shuffled a little. Welcome to Walmart. Where's the fucking door? I gave that thing a little shove. Look, if you let me out, I won't call the cops.

Just let me go. The greeter looked around and back at me. Welcome to Wall Street. Art. I had a horrible realization dawn on me. Like the double-sided clerk, this probably only had one purpose. I wasn't going to get anywhere with it

because there was literally nowhere to go. I went a little crazy then. I was hungry, tired, and desperate. I threw the grater at the wall and it rippled like a condom full of jello. The wall opened up. I could smell the sweet night air of freedom and started running. Good thing, too, because the wall almost immediately started closing as I ran.

Hit me on the elbow hard. I had a bruise for days, but I was out. The greeter wasn't so lucky. I could hear the squeals as the door pinched shut on it, but I didn't stop to look. I ran to my car and gunned it out of there. I parked in a nearby strip mall and called the cops. I'm afraid I wasn't the best reporter, though. Somewhere between spouting off about a fake Walmart and prisoners, the dispatcher hung up on me. I decided to drive to a police station, but my slightly calmer story was only met with skepticism. After what seemed like hours, I finally got an officer to agree to accompany me to the site. Here's the thing.

I had been aimlessly driving around when I stumbled on the Walmart. I had been panicked as I fled from it. Now I had to admit I was completely lost. The officer eventually told me if I couldn't find the store, I would have to come back. and file a report. I let them go and fled back to my apartment, swallowing down my guilt. I had let everyone trapped in that store down. I hoped that they could at least hang on till morning. I called in sick to my job and drove around looking for the Walmart. I looked through every shopping center, strip mall, anywhere that even slightly resembled the place I'd gone last

night. Finally, I found a donut place I remembered from that night, and from there I was able to retrain my route. I wound up at a big warehouse-type building with that familiar parking lot. All of last night's cars still in place. The building was empty. No sign, no shelves, nothing. I've looked around since then. Every chance I get, but I've never seen another Walmart. I'd like to find out how you can hear the full-length versions of our audio program. Please visit the no-sleep podcast.com. to learn about our season pass program. 25 episodes, each over two hours long, and three exclusive bonus episodes,

all for only 1999. 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

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