The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S8E25

Episode Date: April 16, 2017

It's episode 25 - the Season Finale of Season 8. We conclude our season with two tales about the darkness buried below the surface. "There’s Something Underneath Denver International Airport"‡ written by T. Takeda Wise and performed by Peter Lewis & Jessica McEvoy & Nikolle Doolin. (Story starts around 00:03:00) "My Dad Finally Told Me What Happened That Day"† written by Jared Roberts and performed by Mike DelGaudio & Peter Diseth & Nikolle Doolin & Atticus Jackson & Addison Peacock & David Ault & Peter Lewis. (Story starts around 00:34:00) Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast  Click here to learn more about Peter Diseth  Click here to learn more about Jared Roberts  Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone Audio adaptations produced by: Phil Michalski† & Jeff Clement‡ Season 8 Finale illustration courtesy of Charlie Cody Audio 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. Sleep podcast. It's the no sleep podcast. I'm David Cummings. Thanks for joining us for episode 25, the finale of season 8. We conclude our season with two tales about the darkness.

buried below the surface. As we wrap up season 8, I want to express my thanks to everyone who made this our biggest and best season yet. It's been an honor to be able to work with such a talented team of individuals who collectively make up the no-sleep family. Our listenership, which continues to grow, the fans who support us financially by being seasoned past members, those of you who patronize our store, who came out to see us perform live who interact with us on social media. This No Sleep family is a wide, varied, and utterly fantastic

one. Thank you for sharing in all that we do. And it's a real pleasure to share a special guest with you on our final tale this week. You see, my favorite TV show currently on the air is Better Call Saul, which just started its third season on AMC. And there's a recurring character on the show who steals every scene he's in. He's played by actor Peter Dyseth. And when I found out that Peter is a fan and longtime listener of our show, I knew I wanted to have him join us.

And so, Peter, we welcome you to the show. Thank you for sharing your talent with us. And remember, we have a hiatus episode for you next week, and on April 30th, it's the live show recorded in New York. We'll see you for the start of season 9 on May 7th. And with that, it's time to start the beginning of the end for season 8. So let's kick off the finale and start the show. In our first tale, we visit the city of Denver, Colorado.

But it's not the city as much as it is the airport. You see, as author Takeda Wise explains, a man working at the airport is well aware of all the mysterious conspiracies and tales surrounding it. All silly and nonsensical, right? But an experience he had there one night made him realize there really is more there than meets the eye. Performing this tale are Peter Lewis, Jessica McAvoy, and Nicole Doolin. So decide for yourself if you believe him when he tells us there's something underneath Denver International Airport. About two months ago, I was hired at DIA, the Denver Airport, to maintain their concourse system.

For those of you who've never been, there's this neat little train that runs super fast to three separate concourses, A, B, and C. It's actually rather fun to ride. Now, as I'm sure you can imagine, this little train requires a lot of work to keep going. So once every week, and usually at night, we decommission it and do some upkeep on all the components involved. It's a sweet gig. Pay is good. job is straightforward and I have a very cool boss. Colorado's not too shabby either. But something happened last night that makes me think I need to get out quick. Now I'm no stranger to all those conspiracy theories about the place. In fact, being the greenhead, I've been subjected to all sorts of spooky tales told to me by patrons of the airport and co-workers alike. I've heard about Blusifer, the enormous bright blue demon horse statue that killed its creator, how it signifies the coming of the end times and that its hot red eyes glow deep, deep into your soul, driving you slowly mad.

That the Freemasons, the Illuminati and secret shadowy government, operations all have their tendrils transfixed to the place. About FEMA, the tunnels, the murals, and the artwork, the shape of the airport itself, that a decade ago the windshields of 14 airplanes mysteriously shattered. Some said it was the weather. Others whispered that it was the electromagnetic pulses being tested deep underground. What many may not. Not no, though, is that these are only the public-facing conspiracies. There is a whole other world of conspiracies passed down from generation to generation of the employees who work here. For instance, a few of my fellows have told me that late at night, when they're down working in the tunnels, they can hear what sounds like a barely audible moaning.

The moan isn't high-pitched or low, but both. They say it spans entire octaves like a crowd of people are all making the same sound at once. Others have told me a tale about how one worker got lost in the tunnels long ago and that in his struggles to find his way back to the surface, he found a mysterious room covered in weird glyphs, And on one wall there was a strange-looking keypad. The keypad to nowhere, they called it. And then there's Concourse 23,

supposedly built deep, deep underground below the abandoned tunnels of the automatic baggage system. It apparently has ties to the New World Order, or the army, or Nazi scientists, or maybe all three. Even old Tom, one of the friendly janitors, has complained to me about some supersonic sound that he's been hearing there for the past ten years, making him feel sick, stupid. Says it's a mind control experiment. Yeah, there are a lot of conspiracies surrounding DIA, but almost all of them are a complete bull. Still, there is something quite eerie about the place.

First, and most obvious, it just looks weird. It's supposed to mirror the mountains, but instead just looks like a many-pointed circus tent. An airy, natural light-filled, spectacularly clean circus tent. And second, the entire construction of the place was highly controversial to the locals at the time. They said there was no true need to replace the Stapleton airport and grew increasingly angrier at the cost of this new, unneeded airport grew exponentially higher. And why, they wondered, was it built in the middle of nowhere, in a small valley, no less? Despite all this, though, I could give you reason after reason why most of these conspiracies can be disproved. Sure, these tales were

strange, but they all seemed relatively innocuous to me, and from the first I viewed them as interesting local lore, and nothing more. And yet, there was one conspiracy that tickled me in a way none of the others ever did, one that even I speculated about, unsure what to believe. I wanted to believe, but only because I've seen it. In fact, I work near it. almost every day. It's the one about the locked door. See, there's this locked door on the way between Concourse B and C. It's hidden inconspicuously between the fans that help propel the train forward. Each and every employee who works with the train is given a key to this door, but also warned that it must remain locked at all times. In a way,

It reminds me of that fairy tale, bluebeard, and just like the girl in those stories, all of us tried our keys in the mad desperation to quench our curiosity. None have worked, not a one. Some suggested that it was just a prank, something to give us fuel for gossip, that there was nothing more behind that door except a long-forgotten closet or a water heater or nothing at all. Others weren't so sure. They peered at the door with squinted eyes and tight mouths, worried about what lay behind it. Many speculated. Maybe it was a secret tomb, a place the masons could go to worship, the entrance to Concourse 23 or some other nefarious underground base.

Me, I just thought it was some sneaky, asinine trick to see which employees were actually trustworthy. If it was, though, it didn't work very well, or at least no one can be trusted when their curiosity is peaked. We all tried our keys, all of us. The image of the locked door lingered in my mind long after work and occupied much of the time spent laying in my bed before sleep. It was just so strange to me, so enticing. sinister, and yet for nearly a month I went about my business without seeing anything out of the ordinary. I remember it clearly when I saw the first indication that something else might be going on at DIA. It was late. I was leaving. I saw a light, a dim, with moments of intense brightness,

and recognized it as a flashlight being pointed slowly towards me and away. Curious, I walked closer to the glass inside the door, expecting to see something, you know, relatively normal, one of my co-workers searching for the batteries we had lost earlier, or maybe the second inspector doing his last rounds of the day. Instead, I saw a man. wearing an impeccable black suit and a gas mask. He was squatting by the locked door, looking left and right, down the track and up it.

His back was towards me, leaving me almost completely unseen from where I was standing on the darkened platform behind the sliding doors. His smooth leather shoes shined in the dim light cast by his flashed. light and I could barely make out the hue of his wood-colored hair. He turned to look farther down the tunnel that connected to Concourse C, and I swiftly hid behind one of the walls separating the doors. For some reason, I didn't want that man, whoever he was, to see me. He didn't seem like a normal employee, and my mind instantly jumped to all those theories I had heard or helped think up. After a moment when my breath had slowed and my heart slid down from my throat, I peered around the wall. The man was gone and the tunnel was dark.

Confused and scared, I left in a hurry. The next day, after a sleepless night of rumination, I asked a co-worker I was on friendlier terms with about the man. I was afraid of asking anyone else, afraid they might judge me or think I had finally cracked, or that I was lying trying to add to the gossip, the lore. I was hoping she would at least give me the benefit of the doubt. I caught her up as she was walking out of the break room. Hey, I, uh, I saw something last night. She raised an eyebrow.

Something here. I picked up the late shift, and when I was leaving, I saw this guy. It looked like he was examining the locked door, you know? He didn't look official, or maybe he looked too official. Just a guy, he had a black suit and a gas mask. Gas mask. Dude, I know Potts legal here, but go easy on that stuff. I rolled my eyes, saying nothing.

She sighed. Could have just been a Fed checking for an EMP leak or something. Or maybe the second inspector was cosplaying. But yeah, that's pretty weird. Don't tell old Tom. Yeah. We laughed, but inside I felt the fear. boiling up in my gut.

Who was that man? And what the hell was behind that door? She looked around us, making sure no one else was near and lowered her voice. Look, this wouldn't be the first time I've heard of a dude in a black suit acting suspicious in a place he shouldn't and couldn't possibly get access to. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Just a normal day in the office. I looked at her and smiled and unsure whether she was being facetious or not. She winked and walked away.

So, uh, last, last night, my morbid curiosity got the best of me. Last night, the locked door was unlocked and open and, and I couldn't help myself. It was a blue-beard moment. The second inspector asked me to stay a little later than usual since we've been having maintenance issues with the train all day. He wanted me to do one final inspection before I left for my scheduled three-day weekend. It was very, very late, the witching hour, as my mom says,

and I was one of the few people left in the building. Walking down the tunnel was harder than usual, scarier, at least, and my feet felt like they were cast in steel, heavy and slow. The air itself felt electrified, and I began wondering about the EMPs, and if they really did test them deep, deep below my feet. And then I saw it. The door opened.

I hesitated for a moment, looking back behind me and peering ahead, making sure I was alone before I approached it. Beyond the door was a severe fluorescent light. I could imagine how it looked from afar as I stood there, a silhouette framed against an ungodly bright rectangle of light. Inside was a square room, maybe 300 square feet. It seemed to be made entirely of a dull metal and was completely empty. On either side of the room were heavy-looking doors, but one was totally black and shut tightly, while the other was a corroding reddish color and slightly protruding at an odd angle. Leaning next to the wall at the base of the black door was a familiar-looking gas mask.

I stared at it for a moment, contemplating whether or not to take it when I heard a resounding boom. The door to the tunnels slamming shut. I ran to it, panicked, hoping it would slide open with ease, letting me out of this place. It was locked. I made my way to the black door, trying the handle, which turned smoothly to the left, But no matter how hard I pushed or pulled, it wouldn't budge. I turned, looking at the other door. It looked.

There is no other way to describe it. It looked sickly. The metal itself looked like it was rotting from the inside out, flaking off in large, sharp chips that littered the floor around it. I approached it. cautiously, grabbed onto the handle. It was warm to the touch and pushed down. It stuck slightly before yielding to my grasp and swinging outwards with a piercing screech of metal on metal. Behind it was a dimly lit staircase that descended into the obscurity below. I stood back for a moment,

unsure if I should go down or not, before my curiosity got the best of me, propelling me to take the first step. After that, it became easier, and I began counting the steps to the bottom. I lost count at 123, but I soon reached the last landing. I suspected I was about four or five stories underneath the lowest level of DIA. I was standing in an extremely dark, long, and thin tunnel. Looking up behind me, I could barely make out the dim slit of light from the open door I had come through. As I walked deeper into the darkness, my eyes began to adjust, allowing me to see a spooky

red glow coming from the end of the tunnel, the exit. It took me a good deal of time to finally reach it, but when I did, I gasped. I was standing in a cavernous area so high I couldn't even make out the ceiling above me. I looked back. The tunnel was dark, impenetrable, and above the entryway, words were carved. The abyss looks back. I shook my head, looking towards the camera. I was a raven, stealing myself, and I took the first steps forward, shuddering as I heard each footstep echo loudly around me. Suddenly, a dim beam shot out from above, illuminating a small metal table with a single chair. I wondered if there was some sort of movement activation system, and I became more aware of myself.

I walked closer and saw two things. A pool of dark, viscous liquid surrounding it that I tried not to think about, and a smooth black binder lying on the table opened to a section that read, Procedure, hope to God, it doesn't happen. In case of breach. Mystified, I stepped around the pool. pool of liquid and flipped the binder closed, trying to see what it was called. Scrawled across the top of the binder in white ink with words quarantine procedures. I tried flipping it back to the procedure, accidentally letting it go too soon. The cover of the binder smacked into the table

with force, creating a sound that rang out loud and true in the emptiness. I cringed and then coward. It started immediately, a low, rumbling yet strangely high-pitched, moaning. It was like I was hearing several people make the same sound at once. I looked around, trying to find the source of the sound, but saw nothing. I moved forward, apprehensive, and realized that I was nearing a great chasm. I could barely make out the edge of it in front of me. I stopped short and peered over it, seen what looked like nothing. Or maybe it was just that the chasm went on forever.

Either way, it looked empty and endless. But as I stood there, staring below, I began to make out something sick. A mass of what looked like blackened human bodies, twisting together, melted to one another, writhing as if in pain or pleasure. Suddenly I saw the whites of too many eyes, all looking towards me, glaring.

I yelped, reeling backwards and falling. Behind me a clanging sound rang out, and I looked back to see an enormous coagulated blob of burnt black bodies near the small metal table. A few of its hands held the binder, ripping it to shreds. I stood up and it saw me and froze for a moment before making a horrific sound and heaving towards me. I turned and ran as fast as I could, hearing the moaning grow louder in the chasm to the right of me. And behind me, I could hear it scuffling, scraping, screaming, trying to keep up, trying to get me. I was nearing an incredibly high wall, and I ran towards it, hoping for some miraculous way out. I heard a muted low whistle and looked to my left.

There, underneath the small ball of the glowing blue at such a low frequency I could barely make it out, was the man in the black suit I had seen weeks ago. He was wearing the same gas mask. His messy, slightly wet hair looked black beneath the light and stuck up at odd angles against the mask's straps. He waved and then beckoned me over. Scared, I took a quick look. behind me, and there it was. A great, royally mass of hands and mouths and bare sinewy arms, slowly pulling and squeezing, undulating its way towards me. I was scared, stupid, unable to move.

Ho! I blinked and then leapt into action, running as fast as I could towards the man. He swung the door behind him open as I approached. and through it I could see a brightly lit staircase leading up to a black door with an insignia cut into it. I was too far away to see what it was. The man gestured to the door with his head, prompting me to go through it. But I... I wanted to ask him so many questions.

My voice jerked short, though, cut off by him pushing me through the door. Not violently or angrily, but... like he was trying to save my life. I staggered forward, my heart pounding in my chest, my mouth dry. Behind me, the door was creaking closed. I turned and yelled a frantic thank you. He gave me a thumbs up before turning towards that monster

and unholstering the pistol on his hip. And as the door swung fully shot, I heard four shots fired, saw in quick succession four enormous explosions of bright light through the cracks. No expert, but they looked much brighter than what simple gunpowder would cause. A high-pitched screaming and low-pitched yelling sounded out in unison, raising the hairs on my arm and making me trip backwards slightly on the stairs before I turned and ran all the way up them. As I neared, I neared, the black door, the insignia became clear. A lion wearing a crown and a unicorn, wearing a bejeweled necklace,

holding up a shield split into quarters. The symbols in each section were worn, and I couldn't quite make them out. Perched atop the shield was an open eye with an iris in the shape of a 23-pointed star. I only know this because I had time to count. As it turns out, the black door was a tinted glass portal to an elevator. I mashed the red button projected on the small touch screen to the right of the doorframe repeatedly, cursing the elevator for being so slow. Another shot rang out and the scream rose up again, louder this time, reverberating around the stairway even through the closed door.

A tinny beep sounded and the glass door slid open. I scrambled inside. It was the size of a small room and lowly lit. A smooth female voice rang out around me. Leaving sub-basement 23. Decontamination in process. Perplexed, I looked around me and then I looked up. Above me were hundreds of minute jets.

I covered my face not a second too soon as the jets activated, spraying me with an unusual, scentless substance that seemingly boiled off my clothes but left my skin and hair soaking wet. The substance was so cold, it burned, and I tried wiping it off with my shirt. Another tinny beep sounded and the smooth female voice spoke again. The glass doors slid open and I lurched out, disoriented, into a lightly illuminated room with a single black door across the way. The walls were covered with strange symbols I didn't recognize as being part of any human alphabet. I stared at them in wonder, trying to place them, slowly revolving around the room as I looked. I stopped at the spot where the elevator was, but saw only a blank wall with a single keypad projected on it. I shuddered and headed towards the black door, which opened effortlessly, and suddenly I was back in the 300-square-foot metal room, back where I began.

Behind me, the heavy black door swung shut with a resolute boom. The gas mask lying next to it was gone. The reddish, sickly door was closed too, tightly not stuck out like before. To the right of me, the locked door was locked no more, and I quickly exited the room, hearing its swing shut as I left. The tunnels were brighter now, and I wondered how much time had passed while I was down there. As I was exiting the maintenance door, I ran into my co-worker. She stopped dead in her tracks looking at me with worried, suspicious eyes.

Hey, you're still here? I said nothing. It's just, I talked to the second inspector. He said you went home hours ago. Or at least thought you did, said you never checked back in with him. She looked closer at me. Hey, are you okay? And why are you...

Wet. Did something, you know, strange happen? I heard a noise, like screaming. Yeah, I'm fine. No, no, I'm not. I'm sick. I don't feel well at all. I think I may have fainted down there or blacked out. Stress, maybe. I'm going to go home. Could you let him know? Oh, and I didn't get a chance to fix the fans down there, so... Yeah, gonna go home. See you Monday. I staggered past her towards the exit to the airport. Okay, sure. Get some rest.

But I haven't been able to get any rest. I haven't been able to stop thinking about what happened. What I saw, what is underneath DIA, who that man was. My mind keeps fluctuating between the idea that the government or some other clandestine cabal may be protecting us all from that monster. And the thought that they might not be that they're trying to weaponize it or keeping it for further study. Either way, I am afraid, afraid of what I saw and the implications behind hiding something like that in a place so many people use on a daily basis. And I fear that I am going slowly mad because when I sleep, a single short phrase rattles around and around. and around in my brain.

The abyss looks back. In our final tale, we present an epic story from author Jared Roberts. It concerns a man and his family and how the events of the past seem to come full circle in a most disturbing way. Are the traumatic events in the life of his father and uncle now revisiting him? The man seeks to unravel the mystery. which started one day when his father began to reveal the truth. Performing this tale are Mike Delgado,

Gaudio, Peter Dyseth, Nicole Doolin, Atticus Jackson, Addison Peacock, David Alt, and Peter Lewis. And now, the No Sleep podcast is proud to present our production of the tale titled, My Dad Finally Told Me What Happened That Day. You know how most of the time you feel like, your life pretty much makes sense. You have your family and your friends and happy memories. Even when bad things happen. I felt that way most of the 32 years I've been alive. Some things have happened lately that really, well, they take that feeling away, you know.

And when I think I'm putting it back in order, I got it all wrong. So, uh, well, I need to talk about it. All of it. Just, just, just put it out there. Inwards, because maybe if I do, it'll start making sense. It started when I went to visit my dad about a month ago. We have a good relationship. We just, you know, never talked all that much. His health is starting to decline because, you know, because he drinks too much. He was a little wistful this time.

We were just, you know, having a beer, not saying much. When he says he has something he needs to tell me. You're old enough, you may as well know. I didn't know what he was talking about, so I say he should just tell me. Remember that time I got home from work real upset and I wouldn't tell you what happened? I did remember. It wasn't something I would ever forget. He wasn't just upset. He was scared of something. I'd never seen Dad scared of anything in my life until then. He was the kind of guy whose bar fights are town legends. I also remember he told me,

never to ask him about it. So I never did. A little background. When I was really young, like four or five, my dad and I lived in a cheap apartment on the ground floor. I don't remember much about it. I know I didn't like it there. The kids weren't nice to play with. They'd steal my toys. It was just a, you know, a grimy area. But we were having tough times and it was all we could afford. Probably what I remember most about the place was how I would get woken up. Not every night, but just randomly. These flashing lights would wake me up. I don't remember being too worried about it at first.

I just assumed it was lots of lightning in that area, I guess. I was five. I didn't know Jack about meteorology. One night, my dad had my uncle and his wife over for crab-legged dinner. I remember it distinctly because it was the first time I'd ever eaten crab. Well, while they were talking, I just casually mentioned the lightning the night. before. There wasn't no lightning last night. I thought he was clowning around, so I laughed and told him how the flashing lights woke me up. He and my uncle got serious, and that freaked me out,

because they were always silly when they got together. They asked me more questions about the lights. Nothing I recalled exactly, but they decided I was probably seeing headlights from cars driving by, you know, shining on the curtains. Oh, I guess I believed them. But, you know, after that, I'd always get nervous when the flashing lights would wake me up. Because I knew it wasn't lightning anymore. A few times I called for my dad when it happened, but when he'd get to my room, there was nothing to see. He started telling me it was all in my head.

We moved out to that apartment after a year or so, when Dad's handyman business picked up. Oh, the flashing stopped when we left. So I came to believe it was a combination. of passing cars and my imagination. It wasn't something I ever gave much thought to again, until that talk with dad. A little more background. Another time I was helping my dad out on a job. This was a bigger job, kind of rebuilding a whole house, so he had a few other guys working with us. Some of them I knew and some of them I'd never seen before. I was used to it. It's what he always did on bigger jobs. Well, I was sitting off on my own about to eat my lunch and listening to my

C. D. Walkman. Dad generally didn't eat lunch. He'd just get too into the work. So he was still busy on the site. Suddenly, they noticed a guy walking towards me from the general direction of the site. I didn't remember seeing this guy actually working, but he was making a B-line straight for me. He was an older guy. Head was shaved. He was wearing a Ramon's T-shirt. He sat right down beside me way, way too close. I didn't say a word. I took a little. I took a little. I took a off my headphones because I didn't want to be rude and I said hi. He told me my dad was looking for me and I should be heading back as soon as I finished my sandwich. Well, that was the plan anyway, but I said that was fine. To make things less awkward, I said I liked the Ramones. He didn't even seem to know

who they were. Well, after sitting with me a few moments longer and watching me eat my sandwich uncomfortably, he got up and started walking away. I was relieved. I was putting the headphones back on when he stopped suddenly. I don't know why, but it freaked me out. I froze. He turned around and fixed me with the most hateful stare I'd ever seen. I didn't know what it felt like to be hated. Until then, it was like he wanted me dead. I remember wondering what I should do if he attacked me. But he didn't attack. He just shouted, someone's been sleeping in your bed, and I don't like it. Then he stalked off, leaving me puzzled and terrified. It was probably 85 degrees out, but I was shivering.

I put the rest of my sandwich away and went back to work. I asked my dad who that guy was a little later. He said he had no idea what I was talking about. Do I describe the guy? Dad said nobody like that even worked on the site. At the time, I figured it was just some weird drunk. But now, it has a whole thing. whole new meaning. Things I didn't catch before stand out. Like, my sandwich was still in my box

when that guy talks to me. How did he know what I brought for lunch? Okay, so now you got all that. Well, here's what Dad told me. When I was 15, Dad was called out on a job to some house way on the other side of the Bay. In the town I grew up in, you have two sides. One side of the Bay has all the beaches and the mall, and the other side has downtown and lots of woods. The old part, was on the beachy side. The house he was called to was a quarter of the way to the next town on the woodsy side. So he shows up in his van with all his tools. The front yard is really overgrown. No vehicles in the driveway except the rusting hulk of what used to be a 70s model Chevy. The house is in pretty bad shape, but he went up to the front door. Before he could knock, he saw a note telling him to come

right in and they'd be back soon. He didn't like going into someone's house without them there because he didn't want to be accused of anything. But he'd driven so far already, so he went ahead. He got to work on repairing some wood rot around the window frames. He's there for nearly an hour when he thought he heard someone. He went to check. There was still no car in the driveway except for his van. Hello? He heard what sounded like a door slam. Now, Dad was not the kind of guy to get nervous, but he told me he was starting to get creeped out. And that just pissed him off. So he was He stomped around the house. He saw the back door was wide open leading into this overgrown backyard.

And he wonders if maybe the wind was moving the door. He closed it and was going back into work when he decided to just give the place a once over, just in case. He looks around downstairs. There's nothing much to see. The house is in bad shape, but it's furnished. It's kept fairly neat and tidy. The electricity still works. Someone was definitely living there.

just, you know, not able to keep the place up. So he's pretty much satisfied his concerns, but he goes upstairs to look around anyway. Upstairs is much the same as downstairs, clean and tidy, just, you know, in need of repairs. Something doesn't feel right about the place to him. Now, Dad's never been much of an intuitive kind of guy, so those must have been some bad vibes.

So anyway, the last room at the end of the upstairs hall is closed. It's jammed in the frame somehow. but he gets it open. It's just a bedroom. All painted yellow with yellow furniture. He spots some wood rot around the window frames upstairs, too. He was told there'd only be three windows to do, but this one made four. But he checks it out. When he does, the sill just lifts right off. And there are papers and things stuffed between the walls. Now, he's seen it all. Doesn't surprise him. He pulls the papers out because he plans to go ahead and do this window too because he's like that. He wouldn't ask for more money. He just, he just wants to get the

whole job done. So he pulls the papers out. He sees it's mostly photographs. Now, that's big on privacy, but he happened to see the photographs. He knew he was looking at something bad. He started flipping through them. They were all pretty much the same. The back of each picture is dated. and every one of them was a picture of a little boy sleeping. Dad recognized me in that ground floor bedroom right away. He remembered my stories about the flashing lights, and he knew it wasn't in my head at all. Someone had been taking pictures of me sleeping for almost a year.

He told me there weren't any pictures of other boys either. Whoever took the photos was only taking pictures of me. Well, so he called the police, of course. The listed owner for the house was an elderly couple living in Vancouver. They used to somewhere in the home, but just hadn't gotten around to it in years. They didn't even notice they were still paying the electric bill. They had no idea about the pictures or hiring my dad. It was a dead end.

I had so many questions after he told me this. For one, why would someone who was so far away from our apartment drive 30 minutes at night to take pictures of me? How'd they even know me? How'd they fixate on that one apartment or kid? And why call my dad to find the stash of pictures after a decade of leaving us alone? Dad actually had an answer for one of those questions. But in a way, I find this even creepier. It turns out, he went to the wrong address. He wrote it down wrong. When the police checked his answering machine tape for clues, he was actually called to a much closer home by a completely innocent guy. He stumbled onto this house in the stash of pictures by a completely random misunderstanding.

So who left the note on the front door? It took me a couple of days to process what this meant. I knew it scared the crap out of me from the get-go. I tried talking to my dad about it, but he wasn't in the mood. Shut it right down. I pressed him a little on the flashing lights and he told me I should ask my uncle Matt. So I did. Now my uncle Matt and my dad, they get along great, ever seen him fight in my life. But they're, you know, very different. Matt's easygoing, jockey, always has a kind word for everyone. That's why I was shocked when he actually got mad. He told me never to ask him about it again and to leave him alone. Well, that would have been the end of it right there.

But my bi-weekly phone call to my mom was due, and I didn't really have anything else to talk to her about. So I told her what dad told me, what I remembered, and what happened with Uncle Matt. The hushed way she said it. Like someone might overhear when I chilled me. I didn't even know what she was talking about. There were some odd things in my family that I kind of knew, but no one really talked about. This is a version of it that my mom gave me. Well, my dad and Uncle Matt had a younger sister named Flora.

I never knew her as Aunt Flora because she was gone long before I was born. When Flora was eight or nine, weird things started happening to her. My dad only talked about them when he'd been drinking gin, Mom said. Gin made him brood. She used to hide his gin because he'd freak her out when he talked about these things. But like this one time, my dad woke up because he heard noises in the kitchen. He came out to see what was up. Flora was making a peanut butter and sugar sandwich in the middle of the night.

He asked her what she was doing, because if their mom caught them in the middle of the kitchen that hour, well, they'd have their butts reddened. So Flora told him she had to make a sandwich and a picture for Mr. Chod-Froy. Mom said dad would shudder when he said that part of the story. His voice got real low when he'd say the name. So my dad got mad at Flora because he thought she was being dumb or half-dreaming. Then she showed him the picture she drew. It was a drawing of a boy sleeping with Matt written above it.

Now my dad, being the oldest child, was very protective of Matt and Flora. He immediately felt something was wrong. He took the picture and tore it up, and he told Flora she had to get back to bed right away. She told him Mr. Chod-Froy would be mad because she promised him. Dad asked her who this person was and what he looked like because he meant to tell their mom. She said she didn't know what he looked like, but that he talked to her from the drain in the bathroom sink. He told her all sorts of things, and she'd been talking to him every night for a month. At this point, my mom said she didn't want to talk about it anymore.

I was given her the willies. She didn't even like saying the name. Mom was always kind of superstitious about things. Like she would be afraid to say the names of certain diseases. She'd never say cancer as if saying it causes it. She said just saying the name Chod Freud made her feel like she was being watched. But I asked her more questions and she kept going. She said my dad didn't believe Flora.

She must have been dreaming or just imagined the whole thing. He took the sandwich and ate it himself after sent him. sending Flora back to bed so his mom wouldn't find it. He remembered the sandwich well because peanut butter and sugar was not something they've ever made in that household. He had no idea where she'd even heard of it. So he forgot all about what happened for a few days or weeks. Until one night, he woke up to pee and could hear funny noises as he got to the bathroom. The light wasn't on, but Flora was in there, alone. He stopped outside the door to listen. She was whispering a whole conversation in there.

He figured she was half asleep and didn't know what she was doing. He went into the bathroom to get her. Then he heard it himself. There was a voice coming from the drain. Mom said he would get a distant look when he talked about this and just set the gin down like he couldn't drink anymore. My dad, he can always drink more. The voice he heard sounded.

Probably from coming through the pipes, he figured. But it scared the crap out of him. What it was actually saying, though, was even worse. Mom said he'd try to imitate the metallic voice saying. Come outside, Flora. Come on outside. No one has to sleep out here. Flora whispered into the same that she couldn't,

because her brother might catch her. And the strange voice told her, He never should have ate my sandwich. Hearing it, and my dad's hair stand on end. My mom said it's the most scared he'd ever been. Not one to freeze, my dad pulled Flora out of the bathroom and slammed the door. He warned her never to talk to Mr. Chod-Froy again, because he was bad. He ended up telling his mom, and they found where some pipes had been messed with under the house.

I also found some drawings of my dad and uncle. Uncle Matt sleeping. They were all burned right away and his mom forbade them to talk about it. He didn't handle scandals like that too well at the time. But my dad saw some of the drawings before they were burned, and they weren't drawn by Flora. I've never heard anything about any of this before. Dad and Uncle Matt almost never talked about Flora, and when they did, it was always cryptic. I didn't know what this had to do with me, but my hand was shaking, holding the phone. I thought she was done, but she said that was just the beginning. My mom usually gets tired of talking after ten minutes or so, so I was surprised.

Maybe she needed to get it out of her system. So she said that after that, Laura used to complain about flashing lights in her bedroom. Everyone just figured she was seeing the light from the lighthouse because it was still active back then. She complained about it for nearly two years, saying she had trouble sleeping. So her mom finally got sick of it and put thicker curtains up in her bedroom. And she still kept complaining. He ended up getting her a sleeping mask. Problem solved.

Well, not long after this, Dad, Matt, and Flora went to a friend's house to hang out because he had a record player and his parents would give him any records he wanted. They'd all just sit around and listen to music together. So Flora left to go home before Dad and Matt did. But she never made it home. he never found her body. In theory, she could still be alive, but nobody really believes that. Mom thinks Dad and Uncle Matt always felt personally responsible for it,

because if they just left with her, she might still be alive. My mom figures that's why the flashing lights things upset Dad and Uncle Matt so much. And I guess I was opening old wounds by asking about it. But at the same time, I find it really spooky that the... the same thing would happen to both me and Flora. And it was upsetting that they didn't take it more seriously when it happened to me. And, well, I also felt really bad about hurting Uncle Matt. I visited him the next day to apologize.

I told him Mom explained everything and I had no idea. He wasn't mad anymore. Actually, he apologized to me too because he said I deserved to know. He said there was a little bit more to it than what my mom had described. A week before she disappeared, Flora had started complaining about the flashing lights again. They figured either she was forgetting to put her mask on or it had been in her head the whole time. Then, a day or two before she disappeared, he couldn't remember. She woke up and her mask was gone.

She couldn't find it anywhere. They figured she just didn't want to wear it anymore. But now, he wasn't so sure. Another weird thing, around the same time, they found footport. in the snow outside the house. It had snowed almost three feet overnight. The footprints led out of the woods behind the house and went straight to Flores' window.

The thing Uncle Matt said creeped him out the most was that the footprints at the window didn't face towards the window, like looking in the house. They faced back towards the woods where there was nothing to trees. For the footprints to not have been covered in by snow, someone had to have walked two-floor's bedroom sometime after midnight and stood there, staring into the woods in a blizzard.

Strangely, he said, they never really worried about it much. Everyone knew everyone there. It just only stands out in hindsight. The day she disappeared, they got a call from Timmy Jean, the boy with the records telling them he just got a new one. Uncle Matt said Timmy was an only child. And he figured the records were how Timmy's parents got him off their hands and made him some friends.

So he was normally pretty excited when he got a record to share. But this day, he sounded flat, emotionless. Matt had to ask if he was even speaking to Timmy. And the whole time, Uncle Matt felt like someone was listening in. He could hear a sound in the background that wasn't quite breathing. It was like someone saying, yeah, real soft. It was around this time where my dad and Uncle Matt grew up. The phone lines were all what did they call party lines.

Each home's phone would have a different ring so they knew who should answer, but anyone could answer or listen in on anyone else's phone call. So having someone else on the line wasn't unheard of. It was just impolite. They went to Timmy's. When they arrived, Timmy said he didn't call them and he didn't even have a new album. Well, Uncle Matt and Dad decided to hang out with Timmy and listen to some old albums anyway. But Flora was disappointed and wanted to go home.

so she left by herself. He remembered thinking it was too bad she left because they found her sleep mask in Timmy's room. Well, that was the last time they ever saw her, Uncle Matt said. He was trying hard not to tear up. He said he remembered it like it was yesterday. Her little brown shoes, bows in her hair, and he said, the oversized Ramon's T-shirt

they'd found during a trip to the city. It was her favorite band. I felt an awful pit in. my stomach when he said that. I don't think I'd ever mention the detail about the Ramon's t-shirt before. Not that Uncle Matt would pull my leg on something like that anyway. I guess it could be just a coincidence. A lot of people like the Ramones, but I've never felt so unsettled in all my life. I told him about the guy in the Ramon's shirt, and he told me just to drop it because it was a long time ago. And that was all he had to say. There's a lot of what Uncle Matt

said that I find strange, like how unconcerned he seemed that Timmy hadn't made the phone call, or the sleep mask. Like I said before, all this stuff I thought I knew about my life and my family, and now I was learning things that turned it ass over tea kettle wrong. It's all I could think about. So when Thanksgiving rolled around two weeks later, I bought two bottles of De Kuiper gin to my dad. When I first unloaded him, Dad looked at me like I was setting a trap. In a way, I guess I was.

I know at least he hadn't talked to mom. They still hate each other. But Dad's a man's man and doesn't turn down a drink. I kept waiting for the opportunity to start asking questions, but it never felt right. Turns out I didn't have to. Dad asked me if Uncle Matt talked. Yeah, but there's a lot that didn't make sense to me. Get used to it.

I was starting to get upset with all the secrecy. We'd always been a family of straight-trial. talkers, or at least that's how we thought of ourselves. I didn't see why this was suddenly changing? So I asked him, why wasn't he more alarmed by the flashing lights in my room when the same thing happened to his little sister? Or why didn't he immediately think I was in danger when he found those pictures of me? Why didn't he do anything? He told me he did more than I'll ever know that I was typical of my video game generation and to go ahead and have another drink because it's Thanksgiving. I did, but I wasn't feeling very much.

thankful. After sitting in silence for a while, which is pretty typical for us actually, he spoke. I never liked that little rap. I just waited for him to elaborate. Dad talks at his own pace. Timmy Jean, I mean. I hadn't expected him to say anything about Timmy. He was about as peripheral to what has happened as I could imagine. But Dad had a lot to say about him. Dad said Timmy wasn't really a bad kid. He was just strange and pale and weak. Most other kids didn't like him. His parents certainly didn't seem to like him. Even the kids who did like him didn't really like him. The general opinion was that Timmy's parents were always gone, although it was hard to tell whether they were home or not. They kept to themselves.

Rumors went around that they were brother and sister. One thing that was certain was that they'd inherited money. Unlike everyone else, they didn't keep any livestock. They just bought everything from the general store for Timmy and disappeared. Dad said today it'd be called neglect, but people watched out for each other back then. One thing that always struck Dad as peculiar was when how they wanted Timmy to go do something other than listen to records, like go play kick the can, he'd say he was going to ask his parents. None of them had seen or heard his parents in the house, so they were surprised. But Timmy would go into this one room, closed the door behind him, and they'd hear him talking to someone in there. Then he'd come out and tell them that he'd

had to stay put. This happened a few times, he said. Not that they invited Timmy Jean out all that much. Another thing he didn't like about Timmy was he'd just do strange things. Sometimes he seemed pretty normal, then he'd change, just like that. This one time, they were listening to some new record he had. He turned it off and told him he'd learned a new song and dance. Dad wasn't interested, thinking it would be childish, but Flora and Matt wanted to see. Timmy started walking backwards in a circle, shaking like he was freezing and making shrieking sounds. It was annoying the hell out of Dad, so he told Timmy to cut it out, but Timmy kept doing it. Dad had never seen Timmy show any emotion other than excitement over his records. When he was doing this dance, he looks downright

hateful. Flora started crying and Matt looked pretty scared too. Dad never had any patience for stupidity. He grabbed Timmy by the shoulders. He said he remembered how Timmy felt. His skin was cold and jelly-like, and he could feel his small shoulder bones like they weren't covered at all. He shook Timmy until he stopped and was back to normal. Timmy started playing the record again like nothing had happened. Dad said they left because Flora was too upset. It was a little after that, Dad said, that when he went to get Timmy for something, he couldn't remember what, that Timmy wasn't home.

Now, that was weird in itself, but Dad went inside to look for him just in case. Couldn't find him. So he decided he just asked Timmy's parents where Timmy had gone. He opened the door to the room where Timmy always went into. The room was kept really dark. They never could see anything when Timmy slipped in. And now he knew why. It wasn't actually a bedroom at all.

It was just a closet. There was a cushion thrown on the floor, some bread crusts and pieces of paper. Oh, and it smelled awful. That said he'd seen enough. He closed the door and got out and he never went back to Timmy's again. because when Timmy would go into that room, they wouldn't just hear Timmy talking. They'd hear someone talking to him. I'd already drank more gin than I should have, but that still sheds shivers through me.

But I thought of something. I asked Dad if this happened after Flora disappeared. He said no. Then how was it you were at Timmy's the day Flora disappeared? Your uncle Matt hasn't always remember things right. He gave me a stern stare. when he said this, like it was something I should keep in mind to the end of my days. I know Dad's looks very well.

He said Matt came up to him that day and had said that they got a call from Timmy to come over and listen to a new record. Dad heard the call come in and that was nothing strange. But he never went with them to Timmy's. He went to the General Store to pick up a present for Betty Coffin, a girl that he fancied. And Matt and Flora went to Timmy's by themselves. Now, when he was at the General Store, he remembered being surprised. surprised to see Timmy in there just picking up some food with a big wad of bills.

He'd never seen that much money in one place his whole life, so he wasn't likely to forget it. He told Timmy hello, but Timmy just paid and walked out with his food and his bills. And Flora never came home from Timmy's that day. And that's all I know about it. Uncle Matt said he was listening to music with you and Timmy when Flora left on her own. Who was he listening to music with then? Wasn't Timmy. I took another shot of gin right there.

I hoped it would stop me from shaking. When I looked at dad, he was staring down with a sad resignation I'd never seen him in before. My dad could drink me under the table ten times over, so after that last shot, he had to put me to bed on the couch. That was the end of our talk. But lying there on the couch, I suddenly remembered something from way back when my family would go down to the beach. We'd all sit around the fire. The adults would drink and tell stories about growing up in that hamlet. And the kids would roast marshmallows and shiver listening to those stories. There were true stories and ghost stories all mixed together. These were the only occasions where

I'd heard them ever talk about Flora before. After what my dad said, I remembered a story my Uncle Matt told. He said he and Flora would go for these long walks in the woods together. My dad used to go with them since he was expected to watch them. But once he hit his teenage years, he got more interested in girls than babysitting. Well, they decided to go back into the woods behind Hyman's general store. There are no trails or anything. They just picked a spot and went into the woods. You can go back for miles and miles into just your woods. It's all national parkland today. Normally they'd walk about 30 minutes or an hour. Dad would have them walk parallel to the edge of the woods. Without Dad, though, they just kept going deeper. Well, they've been walking into the woods

for well over an hour, or at least he thought it was. Flora wanted to turn back by this time, but Matt wanted to keep going deeper and deeper. She followed him because she was scared to go off alone, but she got upset and said she was going back on her own. He told her that's fine and not to get lost. Uncle Matt said she wasn't gone 30 seconds when he felt her touch. He told her, hugging at his arm. He got mad because he thought she was bugging him to go with her again. When he looked, she was pointing at something behind him. He said really seriously that he'd never forget how wide and scared her eyes were. He turned and saw a man standing out in the woods. It scared him, too. The man didn't really look scary. He was just a man. But there was no reason

for anyone to be so far out in the woods. They shouldn't even have been there. The man had his back to them, looking deeper into the woods. He wasn't moving at all. They crouched down as quietly as they could to watch him. But he didn't do anything but stand there. Matt said he didn't like it one bit. He felt there was really something wrong about what was going on.

He took Flora by the hand as something he never did. And they walked away making as little sound as possible. He kept glancing behind his shoulder as they walked. After a few minutes, he was satisfied they were well away from the man. He was long out of sight and probably hearing range. After a few more minutes of walking, Matt heard a thudding sound. Flora squeezed his hand tighter, so he knew she heard it too. They didn't say anything to each other.

Then he heard this scream at the top of someone's lungs like he'd been hurt. Matt looked back and saw the man they'd seen earlier running right. right at them, full speed through the woods, screaming the whole time. No words, just screaming. Matt said he and Flora were so scared they couldn't even run. They backed up against a tree and crouched down. Matt thought the man was going to kill them or hurt them and he didn't know what to do about it. When the man caught up to them, he stopped short only a few feet away. He took a deep breath and shouted in their faces. Get out! They were too scared to move, so the man kept

shouting at them. Matt finally tugged at Flora and they ran and ran back the way they came. When they were almost out, they heard Dad calling for them somewhere back in the woods. They were about to go running back to Dad so he'd protect them. But then they saw him at the tree line and ran to him. He took them home and that was that. He said they never told their mom because they figured they were just trespassing. After Uncle Matt finished his story, everyone was quiet for a good long time. The story said, seemed to bother Dad more than anyone else. I remember being especially upset by it just because it bothered Dad. Then Dad said he remembered that when he first came to get them, he couldn't find them.

He figured they'd just gone home, but he couldn't find them at home either. He looked in the general store and down on the fishing wharf, but they weren't there either. So he went back to the woods. Just as he got there, he saw them running out of the woods, screaming and crying. He asked them what was going on, thinking they'd just. just seen a bear or something, and they just kept bawling. So we brought them home and questioned them to get the whole story. He said he never told Uncle Matt at the time, but he saw them coming out of the woods as soon as he got there. He never did call out for them. I don't know why I suddenly remembered that story. It's just another weird thing that happened to my family. Just an hour

away from where dad grew up in the nearest bigger town, there's a huge sanitarium up on a hill, looks over the whole town. The guy in the woods could be just some guy who got out of there and they had the misfortune of startling him. Could be completely unrelated to everything else. After Thanksgiving, little things started happening that made me uneasy. For one, my mom started calling a lot. Now, I know this isn't overtly creepy, but we normally only talk once every two weeks or so. On top of that, she hasn't been herself. She's been trailing off, going silent for long periods. And sometimes, it's like there's an echo when she speaks. I started wondering if someone's tapping into our conversations, like with a baby monitor or something. And she's been saying

strange things. For instance, after being quiet for a while, she said, what do you mean? down here. She didn't live any farther south than me. She just said it in a tone so flat she could have been reading it. You should come. It's wonderful down below. She changed the subject right after and seemed normal after that. My first instinct was to worry she was depressed or something. But I don't know. The last thing she said was, if I hear anything strange about her, to not believe it. I've also been receiving other phone calls. They started a little bit before Thanksgiving. The first call was an instant hang-up.

The next time was just silence. Each time after that, I'd hear sounds, cars going by, walking, wind blowing. The kinds of sounds you'd hear from a butt call. But they were distorted, almost like someone was imitating the sounds with their mouth. Last night, it changed. There was a voice. The voice had a tinny, metallic tone, and that same echo as when Mom called. The combination made the voice sound inhuman, evil.

The words weren't sinister at all, but the way they were said made me feel like I was in danger for the first time since I started this investigation. The first time, all he said was, I tried to say wrong number back, but whoever it was had already hung up. I got a call a little later from the same voice. This time he didn't hang up right away. You have the wrong number. A moment later, you hung up. On the third call, and again, hung up immediately. I kept waiting for another call any minute, but after a few hours, I relaxed. I figure it really was a wrong number, and they figured it out. I mean, given the last two weeks, I have every reason to be a little jumpy. I get about halfway through an episode of Gotham on the DVR before the phone rang again.

I don't say anything immediately. Neither does he. As soon as he said that, I heard a noise at the front door. I don't know if I've ever been so scared before. I don't have any firearms, but I do have a machete, so I grabbed it and went to the front door. I opened it, ready for that hateful face from the building site, or worse. But my dad was there, actually. He asked me what the machete he was for.

And I asked him what brought him out to my house so late. It's a long enough drive and Dad rarely visits anyway. He got pretty irritated about that. He opened his flip phone and showed me a text, apparently for me. In the text, I asked him to come out immediately. It was an emergency. I told Dad I didn't send him that text. I didn't send him any text.

I've never lied to Dad before and that carries weight. He believed me. To be honest, though, I was glad he was there at just that moment. We had a drink together, and then he said he was going to go back home. I asked him a few questions about Timmy before he left. After Flora disappeared, Dad and Matt were expressly forbidden from having anything to do with Timmy. For Dad, that suited him just fine. Dad nevertheless told his mom that Timmy couldn't have been responsible,

since he'd just seen him at Hyman's general store. His mom said there had always been something wrong with that boy, and she felt if Flora hadn't gone to his home that day, she'd still be alive. While Dad and Matt hoped she was still alive, their mom never really believed she was. She said she saw a dove fly into the house the day after Flora disappeared, but when she chased after it, she couldn't find it anywhere.

Dad said it was just grief, and these kinds of supernatural beliefs were common then. I tend to agree. Timmy made no efforts to reach out to Dad or Matt either. He started keeping to himself after Flora disappeared. They'd sometimes see him by himself at Hyman's, buying lots of food, way more than a boy should need. They never talked.

I managed to find out more about Timmy. I had to hit up people I hadn't spoken to in a long time or barely know at all. But eventually, I hit a few relatives who knew more than I ever expected to find out. So after Flora's disappearance, suspicions about Timmy and concerns about his missing parents grew. The police had looked around Timmy's house a little since it was where Flora was last seen and found nothing. But now they were asked to search the house. They wouldn't say what was wrong or what they found in there.

The rumor was Timmy's parents hadn't been there in a long time. that the police had come out of the house pale and upset. Small towns always have rumors. Hard to say if they're true or false. Timmy was placed with some distant relatives in a larger town an hour away, the same ones I was talking to. They said he was strange and they didn't like him. He was always up and walking around at night. Sometimes he'd stop over the vents in the floor and just stare into them. After he'd been there for a bit, they started to hear him talking to himself in the middle of the night. They'd come up to see what he was doing, and there was no one else around. They started watching him. They noticed he only did this when he was standing over the air vents.

They even found him crouching down over one once. This girl, a third cousin of his, said it still creeped her out, because she knows she heard someone answering him one time. Those vents couldn't have been more than a foot and a half wide, she said, but she heard a man's of voice coming up with the air. She couldn't make out what was being said, but she heard him laughing, and that made her run and hide under her covers. She said she thinks this part may have been a dream, but she always swore she saw a finger poking up from the vent too. She told her parents, but they said to stop making up stories. He'd been through a lot. Her sister said sometimes Timmy would walk out to the woods and just stand there, staring into them. They asked him why he

did that. He said he was waiting to be taken. He went farther into the woods when she tried to talk to him more. One time, the same girl said she heard him talking into the air vents like usual. She was tired and it was upsetting her, so she went to get her parents and have him sent to bed. On her way, she noticed Timmy was still sound asleep in his room. The talking had to be coming up from the vent all on its own. They said Timmy would sometimes steal food from the house and take it out into the woods. When he was caught, he said he had a tree house, but they never saw it if it existed. They'd sometimes wake up and find him staring at them in the middle of the night. They had to start locking their doors. They would whine to their parents to send them away all the time, but they were careful

not to do it when Timmy was around, because despite everything, they didn't want to be mean. One time he asked them why they wanted him sent away. They couldn't figure out how he'd heard. He was living with them for nearly six months when something happened that changed him. They didn't know what it was, but he stopped all of the weird behavior all at once. He wouldn't talk to anyone. He hardly ate. Then one day he just ran away. Police looked for him, but they had no evidence of any kind to go on. But the case went nowhere. also said years later when his house burned down pictures of the fire appeared in the local newspaper people talked about it for weeks because in the picture the smoke looked just like the devil

horns and everything the cousins tried to find the newspaper in their closets but neither of them could i include that part not because i believe in a horned devil that appears in smoke i think it's interesting that his cousins thought he was so creepy the devil would be in the smoke particles coming off his burning house. That's what I could find out about Timmy. Where his home was is now just a lush field of rhododendrons. After Dad left that night, I noticed my mailbox lid was up. I knew I'd closed it earlier when I checked the mail. So I looked inside. I found an envelope with a Polaroid photo inside, an old one, too. It was of me, mom, and dad all at the park together. This park is actually the same place where dad grew up. The houses are mostly gone. Hyman's general store is still

there as a museum. I had to be only four or five in the picture. I don't even remember Mom going to the park with us. I wondered if Dad found it and stuck it in my mailbox, but Dad wouldn't bother to bring it to me if he had found it. He wouldn't see the value in it. I kept looking at it, wondering what it was doing there. It took me a surprisingly long time to see it. see it. In the background, in the thick Johnson grass, there was a man crouched down and watching us. He was barely visible. I couldn't make out his face or any expression in his eyes. I just had a vague but real feeling he meant to do us harm. I kept trying all up to then not to be an alarmist. I hoped most of the strange events were coincidences, but I called the police about the photograph

and the strange text, and I went ahead and called in a wellness check on my mom anyway. I also called Dad over, since I knew they'd want to see his phone. And this is where things got perplexing. The police officer who responded seemed to know Dad pretty well. He was an older man about my dad's age, maybe a little older. I'd never seen him before. Dad introduced him as Kirby and said they used to live a few houses from each other back where they grew up. Kirby did most of what I expected from the police.

He looked at the photograph. He checked out the text. He took my statement. He decided to hold on to the photograph, you know, just in case. But he said it wasn't likely there was anything that police could do about it. Once he was done with me, he gestured for my dad to come outside with him for a talk. I don't think he realized I saw. Dad told me to wait inside and he'd be back in a moment.

There have been just so many secrets lately. So I listened at the door. Does he know? If Dad answered, I couldn't hear it. That's what this is. Isn't it? Sure, it looks like it. Again, no audible answer.

What we did back then? Dad interrupted. It was a long time ago. This here is just a dumb prank. Quit being stubborn and stupid, Francis. Now, nobody ever called Dad by Francis. It was always Frank or Frankie. Calling him Francis was a good way to break your jaw. So was calling him stupid, but Dad didn't say anything back.

What the hell else could this mean? I'm smart enough. We did the right thing. Now, you know it. Someone might not agree. Watch yourself, Francis. Kirby got in his car and left right after that, assuming he in the first question was me. I can say I don't know anything about what they were saying. I asked Dad when he came back in. He didn't get mad. He just said it was something that happened a long time ago and to mind my own business. This has become my business. You told me about the pictures you found in that old house because you thought I was old enough to hear it now. I guess I was wrong.

I tried calling Mom to see if she had any insight, but there was no answer. Not unusual, though I'm still glad I called that check on her. I called Uncle Matt next. To my surprise, he said he had something he wanted to show me, and he'd be over later. When he did come, what he showed me really shook me up, and it made things make a little more sense. Maybe that's why it shook me. Uncle Matt told me a lot more things happened when they were children than I'd ever hear about. Not that he wouldn't talk about them, but he didn't think he even could.

Some of those things stuck with him, he said, and they'd bother him all the time. What he used to have fun doing started to make him feel sick. He thought about killing himself a few times. He even took himself to the sanitarium for a day. I had no idea about any of this. Neither did Dad, he said. He didn't want anyone to know. He started seeing a therapist after this.

Something Dad would have made fun of. I don't know if that's true, but it's what Uncle Matt thought. The therapist insisted because he was just holding back too much. He agreed. What he brought with him was an old cassette tape the therapist let him keep of one of those sessions. We put it in my CD cassette record player and listened. I still have that tape. Day Flora disappeared.

You wake up. You go about your normal day. Tell me about it. When does it start? Matthew, how did it start? It starts when it starts. I got a call from someone. He's asking me to.

to come over to Timmy's place, but I knew that it wasn't Timmy. He said he was, but he wasn't even trying to sound like him. He sounded weird and like frantic. I tell him I don't want to, but he just keeps on saying he's really Timmy, and it's really lonely down here, and he just needs us to come listen to the music records. That's how he put it. He says he's got a new one that we need to hear. So I figure Timmy's at least got to be there. I don't know, maybe it's just some weird friend he's got. So I get Frankie and Flora and tell him what we're going to do. Frankie was at that age when he didn't want to be hanging around with his little brother and sister. He wanted to go after the girls.

He had this one he was all into, so I'm not at all surprised. On the way, he says he's going to go do something else. So it's just me and Flora. And we're coming up to Timmy's house, and we see the doors already open. I don't know why that would be. Well, Flora says to me,

all, all mad. Oh, he's already playing the records without us. But she doesn't know what she's talking about. It's just that record we heard before. Love hurts. And she just says, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you see, look, we liked feeling like we were the first ones to listen to it. So if he listens to it without us,

us, well, we don't even want to bother. So, we get upstairs, and Timmy isn't even there, the little peckerhead. I remember thinking that, little peckerhead. And the room smelled like burning tires or something. Never smelled anything like that before. I took the needle off, because I was sick of hearing that song. I'm doing this, and I see floors all backed up into a corner and just whimper it. She's looking, she's kind of looking past me down by my legs.

So I look to see what she's looking at. There's this guy laying down under the bed. Christ scares me so bad, I jump. I just see his face poking out of the dark He's got this This blank stare Like someone died

But a huge smile And that smile Didn't look right Because he didn't look The least bit happy The guy crawls out From under the bed And it's like he doesn't even see me

Look straight at Flora And he's shouting at her I don't see you in the dark He's too scared to even So I stand in front of him So this guy can't get near But when he's getting near me That burn and smell gets stronger

The weird thing is I felt like I saw this guy before A few years ago But it's like he was different I know one thing And that's That I never want to see him again.

I'm thinking he's just gonna to hit me or something but he puts the needle back at the start of the song and he starts laughing but not like he finds anything funny it's a fake laugh

doesn't even sound human like some folks train their dogs to talk but they don't sound like words at all it's like someone trained some animal to laugh. And he dances all around us laughing like this, and then screaming like he's in pain. And when it gets to the end of the song, he just puts the needle back and keeps going, and we're too scared to move. So now I'm thinking we just have to get out. So when he's moving the needle back again, I tell Flora, she better run or she.

She'll get it later. And that made her take off all right. And then the man's hands on my shoulder. He says, oh, I remember it so well. He says, you sleep. He keeps his arm around my neck like a chokehold. And he dances backwards around the room over and over. And sometimes.

he's yelping and yowling like some wounded animal. I keep thinking he's going to kill me. But he crawls back under the bed after a while and lays on his back. He looks up at the mess. I'm scared to even try leaving. Frankie would have called me a big wuss. He's just staying there. I figure it's okay.

I'm at the top of the stairs. When I get the idea, I'd better look back at him. Ready out from under the bed and just a few feet behind me. I didn't hear him at all. He freezes when I look at him and doesn't move. If I hadn't turned, God only knows what would have happened. The way, all the way out of the house, he doesn't move at all. Once I'm out, I take off running home.

But I never saw Flora. again. You tried to save her, Matthew. That's good. If I just listen to my gut, we never would have gone there. If I kept Flora with me, she might have been okay. If I was just smarter and went with her right away, she'd be okay. All the time I know it's my fault, she's gone. That's it. That's all that's on the tape. Uncle Matt listened to the whole thing with me with his head down. He told me he really doesn't remember it happening that way at all. He said he was sure he told me the truth, but he wanted me to hear this. I think Uncle Matt was so traumatized by what happened, he isn't able to remember it. I don't blame him. What's on the tape matches up with the story my dad told me, so it's probably right.

Uncle Matt didn't know who the guy was or what happened to him. But if he was with Matt and Timmy was with dad, that guy couldn't have been involved in what happened to Flora any more than what Timmy was. Or at least it's not very likely. It's funny, the way things happened all at once. Like, you'll never have heard an old song, then suddenly you'll hear it three times in one day. Well, after Uncle Matt left, Mom called.

She wanted to know what I'd called for. I told her about what I'd overheard Dad and Kirby saying. She said she never wanted to believe it, but it must be true. I told her, she had to tell me, and she agreed. What she told me isn't what I'd expected at all. She said, a long time ago, a sad, lonely man was placed in the sanitarium when they found him living in the walls of the hospital. He had no family, no friends.

After they determined he was harmless, they released him. He wandered through the woods for days. He wandered so far back he got lost and was thirsty and hungry. Then he found a house. He thought it was strange for a house to be in the middle of the woods, but he needed food and water. An old man came to the door and let him in. He had no idea how long he was in there. Something bad happened in that house, so he ran and ran as far away from the house as fast as he could go.

He ran until he came to a little one-store town. hometown. Some of the children in town would talk to him and bring him sandwiches because he made them think he was a good ghost. One lonely boy in particular gave him a place to stay. Timmy showed him music and got him all the food he wanted. He taught Timmy all the tricks he'd learn in his life, hiding and listening and crawling, all the things he'd learned from the house in the woods. He got so used to the boy, he would get mad if Timmy left the home or did anything but spend time with him. He tried to hide himself as much as possible, but when Flora disappeared, people noticed him. They figured out he'd been staying with Timmy, and they figured he did something to Flora.

My dad remembered what Flora had said about seeing a man in the woods, and he remembered the voice in the bathroom sink. He riled up everyone against the man, so he hid even more. He hid well enough that everyone just thought he was gone. When he thought they'd forgotten about it, he figured he could go back to normal. But they hadn't forgotten. Dad saw him. He got some people in town together. They chased him all the way to Dad's house.

Dad followed him under the house. When he thought he'd cornered him, he followed him through a hole in the floor. It took him right under Dad's bed. Dad saw there were trinkets and bedding under there, like the man had been sleeping right under him all along. Dad was so mad he dragged the man out. They beat him up. When they'd done beating him, they burned him up.

And when they'd done burning him, they buried him. They never talked about it since. They agreed they just did what they had to do. What they did was murder. That's how mom told it. It was such a weird story. It wasn't like her to talk like that. I was trembling.

I asked her, where did she hear that story? She said it was just another one of those things dad would say when he'd been in the gin. She said that one took a lot of gin. It bothered him more than anything else. I told her that didn't make sense, and she said that was fine. I didn't know whether to believe it or not. I changed the subject. I told her I called a wellness check on her because I was worried.

She told me I shouldn't have done that. Why? She said I was wasting police time. She wasn't even at her home. She was on a business trip. I guess this whole thing has made me bolder. The next day, I confront the dad about what mom told me. I asked him if it was true.

Where did you hear that? Mom said it. I'll never forget this for the rest of my life. He placed his hands on my shoulder like he's only done once before when he gave me the life advice I'd need after graduating high school. Son, I never told your mother that, and she's not from our town. The way he said it, Like he knew something was horribly wrong, scare the life out of me.

He brushed it off his mom being a major B. I think there was something more. I still don't know if the story was true or false. He won't give me a straight answer. He won't deny it either. I did get a response on the wellness check. They were let into mom's house by a house sitter. The sitter said she's been in the home for a week and there's nothing to worry about.

The officer who called me said he was running. running a trace on her cell phone anyway, because something wasn't sitting right. The next day, I did something I haven't done since mom left. I broke down. I called mom up again and told her everything that's been going on and how it's been affecting me. I told her I couldn't take it anymore. I have a regular life I should be leading. I have a job and friends, but I'm trapped in this maze of lies and secrets. Yes, I can get very dramatic. She said she would book a flight immediately. Then we'd get with my dad and talk things over, the three of us. I told her she didn't have to do that. I know she's busy. Plus, she and dad still hate each other. She told me she still loves

dad and always has. They just had too many differences. He couldn't accept her for who she was. But she always thought it was their destiny to be together. Her happiness in life was the hope that we'd all be a family like we should be. I don't know if she was just saying this to make me feel better. It did make me feel better. But it was also weird hearing mom talk like this. She was never the most emotional person. I thought that's why she was a good fit for dad,

because you have to be thick-skinned to be around him. She said she'd see me soon to put an end to this. I hope your dad makes the right choice. I wondered what she was referring to. but she was gone before I could ask. I called up dad right away to let him know, because her flight couldn't take longer than four or five hours. She'd be arriving in time for dinner.

As I expected, this wasn't welcome news to him. But not for the reasons I expected. Turns out, he'd been getting reacquainted with Betty Coffin. I said that seems like a strange coincidence, but not at all. Telling the story reminded him of her. Curves, son, is how he described her. She'd sent him a message a while back telling him she was back in town. He was just too busy to write her back and then forgot.

So happened they'd made dinner plans that evening and he'd be going to her place. Dad hadn't really bothered much with relationships after he and mom divorced. He tried. Every so often he'd meet a woman he really liked and seemed to like him, well enough to introduce her to me. Something would always happen that scared them away. He used to joke that he was cursed. I think he probably internalized that. It was pretty much never his fault, though.

Sonia accused him of calling her in the middle of the night and telling her weird things. I overheard that fight. I remember one of the things was, You'd be so much better without bones and that he kept calling her jellyfish. I know Dad wouldn't do that. You would never think of something so surreal in a million years. But she believed it was him. Andrea said she started to notice things in her house would move

while she was asleep, and it only started when she started seeing Dad, her CD collection in particular. She said one night she woke up because she heard Dad get up and go to the kitchen. She looked out into the kitchen and saw him staring into the fridge. She started drifting back to sleep again when she heard more noise. The fridge door was still open, but she couldn't see him anymore. This got her mad, so she shouted for him to keep it down and close the fridge door. What the hell's going on? He was still lying in bed right beside her. She wouldn't have anything to do with him after that.

Parker was my favorite of all Dad's girlfriends. She was the tomboy type. She loved camping and she traveled a lot, so I'd hear about all different countries from her. She talked about strange things happening while with Dad, like hearing him talk to her when he wasn't in the house. But she didn't let it get to her. They were together for a while.

One night, she had an accident while driving out into a remote stretch that leads to a dinky copper mining town nearby. She died a day later in the hospital from complications. It didn't seem important at the time, but now I remember Dad wondering why she'd been driving out that way anyway. And her sister yelling at Dad that he told Parker to meet him out there. There were other incidents. I probably don't know about them all. But this one, back when I got Dad set up on IC-C. queue in like 2000 or something, he started talking to this chick. He said she hit him up. Now, he was a two-finger

typeer, so I imagine it took a while to bang out messages. After he got interested enough to ask for pictures, she sent him a zip file full of them, all pictures of himself with a black silhouette edited into the picture. I traced the account as best I could and it got me to an address, the general store out in the national park. He just wanted to drop it. So we did. Anyway, with so much bad luck and love, I guess I was happy for him. He shouldn't be alone forever.

It was just awful timing. I even wondered if he was putting her in danger by dating her. I couldn't tell him that. I told him I'd deal with Mom and he could have his date. While I waited around for Mom to call and let me know she'd arrived, I decided to search my house for holes, bedding, and such. I don't think that's paranoia at this point. But there were no holes under the bed, no nests in the closet.

Plumbing seemed secure, and the vents blew air smoothly. Then I noticed the fridge didn't look straight. I actually thought I was being ridiculous, so I tried to distract myself. But I ended up pulling it out anyway. I never believed anything would be there. There it was. A little hole, just big enough for a little boy to squeeze it. into. I got my flashlight and my machete. I was so sure someone's hand would grab me the moment

I put my head in. No one was in there, though. The space was only wide enough for a very slim man to stand, very stiff. I didn't see any holes in the wall where he could look into the next room, my bedroom. You would have just been standing there, staring into the darkness behind my fridge. What would be the point, I kept wondering? Then I saw the doll. It was made of twigs and had my face on it. Just looking made me feel uncomfortable. I refused to touch it.

Now, call me superstitious, but it felt unnatural. I'd only made that discovery when I saw another doll behind it, bigger and seeming to watch the smaller doll. Its face was a picture of someone who just looked evil. I don't know what even. evil should really look like, I just know this face made me feel like evil was there. I learned my lesson. I immediately called the police and requested Detective Kirby. When he got on the line, before I had a chance to speak, he asked me if I was okay and if I

was alone. I answered yes to both questions, but I wanted to know why. He said he'd been about to call me. He said he'd just gotten word from the police department in my mom's town. He hesitated. I figured they found someone broke. into her house or a creepy letter, but what they had to say was a lot worse than that. They'd found what they believed to be her body deep in a wooded area. It was so remote, it was pure chance a camper found her. I assured him that whoever they found was not my mother. I had just spoken to her. She was on her way. The line went silent. I insisted that I be allowed to make an identification

so they can drop this nonsense. Kirby said the body was past identifying. She'd been dead for over a year. Dental records confirmed it was her. The only identifiable thing was her Ramon's t-shirt. I hung up on him. I had no idea how to process this information. If someone tells you the sky is brown and salt is sweet,

do you accept it immediately? I had been speaking to my mom every two weeks for the last several years and never noticed a change in her behavior or personality. Not until the last few days. If she was dead, who was I speaking to all this time? It had to be her. I know my mother's own voice, her mannerisms. She knew everything my mom should know. So I started to wonder about this detective Kirby character.

Maybe he wasn't on the level. He seemed to have a strange holdover my dad, calling him Francis like that. So I called up the police department in my mom's town. When I identified myself, I was immediately transferred to a detective. He told me the trace on the phone had come back. All calls from that phone were coming from my own town. Moreover, the phone is even registered to a local address. I felt an emptiness inside.

I still feel it. It's only gotten worse. I didn't even have to ask about Detective Kirby anymore. I asked anyway, and it was confirmed. But I already knew. It couldn't have been my mother I've been talking to. She was... Was dead.

I needed to let Dad know right away. I tried calling him, but it went straight to voicemail. I hope this meant he was already with Betty and was safe. I decided to look up Betty coffin, so it was... I could call her and reach him that way. I found her number with an online phone lookup. It was a landline. I called it just in case. Maybe someone in her household knew her cell number. A young-sounding woman answered the phone. She sounded a little over-excited to get a call, like she'd been waiting. I introduced myself and explained that I really need to get through to Betty because my dad was

dating her and it was an emergency. I almost lost my temper, but she explained first. I called Detective Kirby back. I told him he had to get to dads right away because he was in trouble. In a succinct a manner as possible, I told him what I knew. I was hyperventilating. I don't know how he understood half of it. I'm so glad he listened and believed me, though. I couldn't stand way to get home. I got in my car and rushed to Dad's.

The lights were on when I arrived. That's a good sign, I thought. The front door was unlocked. And I walked in, I heard music. I recognized the song, actually. It was Bobby Darren's dream lover. I'd never heard Dad listen to anything but country. Maybe he was trying to impress the girl.

Maybe she had come to his place instead. I called out for him, but he didn't answer. Dad always had such amazing hearing. Even at his age, he could hear way better than me. And he was a great dad. I haven't always made him sound great, but he's my hero, you know. And I knew something was wrong when he didn't answer. I searched everywhere downstairs.

The damn song kept playing in a loop. It wasn't even coming from Dad's stereo. I went upstairs next. The song started over just as I got to the top. When I got to Dad's bedroom, I saw where the music was coming from. A record player was on his bed. I stared at it, not comprehending why I was so afraid to go near it. I wasn't thinking straight.

It took me too long to read. realize it, but the song couldn't be on loop. Someone had to be hand looping it. I backed into a corner involuntarily. I felt control of my bladder near slipping. I even screamed when I heard something downstairs. But I heard them say, police, and I almost cried with relief. The whole time, he was watching me. All I saw was an eye at first, looking at me through a hole in Dad's box spring. The officers, one was Detective Kirby, drew their guns. I pointed to the box spring as a hand reached out and set the needle back to the beginning

of the song. They demanded the man get out. He started making awful sounds. I'd never heard anything like it. Inhuman screams. And one intelligible thing in all the screams. Sleep in me. Cold chills swept over.

over me. They finally dug him out. It was the man I'd seen at the building site, the weirdo that shouted at me, the same one that gave me chills before. He was wearing a dress and a wig with some smeared makeup and a bloodied nose, but it was the same man. I could barely stand to look at the could he wouldn't stop staring at me. I asked where dad was and he said, in my mother's voice. Giving birth to you was the happiest day of my mom. He made me so, so lonely. But you don't know.

And I'll never say another word as long as I live. They took him away. So fast it felt like a dream. Detective Kirby took me with him. I was left to go home and rest. Rest only came when I passed out. And while I slept, they found Dad. The address my mom's cell phone was registered to was the same house where Dad found the photos.

Betty must have called him out there. He'd been stabbed in the neck multiple times. Now, he was the toughest guy ever, so he was still alive when police found him. But it was too much. He didn't make it. Well, that put me out of commission for real. a while. It took me a while before I could accept it. But I needed to make sense of it all, for dad's sake. After arresting that thing in my dad's house, police combed our old house, my house,

my dad's. They found material that's helped to shed some light on the events I've described earlier. Scraps of paper, a journal of sorts. Photograph. combined with additional information from others who grew up with dad. This is how I believed it all fit together. Let's start at the beginning. A schizophrenic was released from the sanitarium, which was really an asylum. He wandered the woods until he had some kind of episode back there. He came out in the little town of Grand Grieve.

Chaud Frey, since I have no other name for him. He went around convincing Chaucer. children to bring him food, like the peanut butter and sugar sandwiches. When he met Timmy, he even got a place to stay. Chaud and Timmy skulked around together. He got sandwiches. Timmy was interested in other things, in particular, that family that lived a few houses down. It were the only kids that would hang out with him. He particularly liked Dad. Dad was handsome, tall, and athletic. So he got Chaud to ask Flora for more than just sandwiches. He wanted to see Dad and Matt sleeping.

When Timmy's parents found out he'd allowed a hobo to squat in their home, though, they got mad. They never beat Timmy. They just yelled at him. Then they tried to kick Chaud out. So Chaud and Timmy killed his parents. Police first found the bloodstains in the house and then the bodies beneath it. With his parents' camera, Timmy started snapping photos of Dad, Matt, and Flora while they slept. Flora noticed the light. She was just a light sleeper, apparently.

This didn't stop, Timmy. He kept taking pictures for over a year. Finally, one night, Flora caught him. She told him she'd tell her mom and that he was going to be in big trouble. The next day, Chod called them over to listen to records. I would guess at Timmy's request, but who knows? When Timmy was coming back from buying food, he saw Flora walking away from the house. He didn't want her to tell on him for taking the pictures, so he grabbed her and dragged her into the woods. Oh, he didn't kill her right away.

And all the photos they found hidden in that house, there was one faded photo of a teen girl. It was Flora. I'm sure of it. In the photo, she was in some sort of cabin. She wasn't tied up, but she looked so, so unhappy. The whole cabin seemed tinged with unhappiness. It was an awful looking place. She was 12 when she disappeared. So she was kept somewhere after her kidnapping.

Somewhere no one ever thought to look for her. Only Timmy and Chod knew where she was. Probably where Chod hid while the police were looking for. After Timmy thought it was safe for Chod to come out, my dad was first in finding him and was involved in the man's murder. That much was confirmed for me by Detective Kirby. Timmy was already at his cousin's home by this time. He'd been taken as soon as his parents were found. So wherever Flora was being kept, she was left alone once Chod died.

While he was at his cousins, Timmy had a psychotic break. Chod really was his whole world. He'd drawn Timmy into his delusions. He talked to what he thought was Chod in the vents and in the woods, but I don't think anyone was actually there. No fingers poked out at the vent. Because if it wasn't all in Timmy's head, then who was that? After some time with his cousins who didn't even like him, he ran away. He probably had money stashed somewhere, or maybe he became a beggar.

My dad, on the other hand, grew up and moved on. He met a beautiful gymnast and married her. That's where I come in. We were a reasonably happy family, from what I understand, until something happened that made Mom and Dad resent each other. They divorced. Dad fought like hell for custody, and Mom went back west where she'd originally come from. Not long after Mom was out of the picture, I started seeing the flashing lights.

When I told Dad and Uncle Matt, it terrified them. The possibility that I could end up disappearing like Flora is just about the only thing that could terrify my dad. What I never knew is that after I told them about the lights, they went out to the park together while I stayed with Uncle Matt's wife. They spent all day looking for the place they buried Chod, but they finally found it. and they dug him up to make sure he really was dead. That's why Dad was so insistent that the lights were just in my head or passing cars. Because the guy they believed was behind Flora's abduction was dead and buried.

And they had to believe it was him behind it, because if they didn't, they'd murdered an innocent man. Now, since this man probably murdered Timmy's parents, he wasn't all that innocent, but they didn't know that. years later when dad found the pictures of me in that house he knew he'd been wrong whoever it was he figured was the same person taking pictures of flora they'd murdered the wrong person and i was in danger he went out looking for anyone suspicious roughed up a few guys but nothing came of it i thought maybe timmy was still obsessed with dad he did something to sabotage mom and dad's relationship then when When Mom was out of the picture, he inserted himself into the family the only way he knew how, by sneaking pictures of me while I slept.

I believe Timmy must have had our phones and homes bugged. He'd adapted to being a shadow in our lives. Maybe he imagined he was something more. After a while, this wasn't enough to satisfy him anymore. He murdered my mother and pretended to be her for a year. I think this gave him what he really was. wanted, to be dad's wife and my mother. His obsession with my dad wasn't just admiration. He was in love with him. He resented my mom, hated her even, for taking what he believed was his. He wasn't taking my picture

because he wanted to scare me or abduct me. He thought he was being motherly. He drew pictures of himself nursing me and dad smiling behind. And whenever dad found a new girl, he was interested in, Timmy had to take her out of the picture, like a jealous wife. He believed his delusions sometimes. When I let him, Mom, know that I was investigating these events, I think it made him feel more important in our lives. But I think it also threatened him. Becoming aware of him was ruining his illusion that he really wasn't my mom, and that's when he started acting out. When he started talking to me as mom, telling me dad had to make a choice, I think he expected dad to see him as mom and fall in love.

Betty Coffin's body was found. He killed her just to seduce my dad into meeting him. The choice was between Betty or Mom. Because Dad chose Betty, he killed him. He ran back to Dad's house and into the box spring where he'd been living for a few weeks. The music, the makeup, and dress was all supposed to be for dad's reunion with mom if he'd chosen her. At least, that's what made the most sense to me. But there's one very important part that's wrong, a part that makes a lot of it make no sense at all.

Detective Kirby told me they weren't able to identify the man they caught at Dad's home. However, they could positively state who he wasn't. This man was not Timmy Jean. Timmy was a resident at a group home over 300 miles away, where he's been for the past four years. He's practically a shut-in, Kirby says. He never goes anywhere, ever. The man they arrested has no identification. His prints aren't in the system, no dental records, nothing.

And he's so far stuck to his promise. He hasn't spoken since. that night. Other prisoners avoid him like they're afraid. They won't say why, just that there's something wrong. Oh, and there's one last thing. Something I can't say connects to anything else. Has nothing to do with my family or Timmy. It just feels like it fits somehow. I heard from an old friend of Dad's. The friend is a Game Warden at the National Park where Dad's Town used to be. He said over the years he's heard odd stories about things deep in the woods, but one from not too long ago stands out, and he felt the urge to tell it to me. I have no idea why. A couple from

out of town was in the area to do some hiking. Park connects to the Appalachian Trail, so lots of experienced hikers come through. They decided to do a little off-trail hiking. As I mentioned before, there are miles of untouched woods back there, so they had plenty of room for exploring. After a few hours in the woods, they realized their compass wasn't working at all. Their phones had no signal, of course. They were lost. That deep in, the woods were dense, and the sun was starting to set. Now, they were experienced enough to have adequate water, rations, and camping years, so they didn't panic, but they kept walking, hoping to make it to a road or a ranger's camp. But when it got too dark to see, they started to set up camp.

That's when the girl tells her boyfriend she can see a light. He looks, and he can see it too. It looks like artificial light. They weren't sure if they were still deep in the woods or not, but it felt eerie. He walked carefully toward it using an emergency flashlight. They couldn't hear any traffic as they got in here and saw no other lights, but the light seemed to be coming from a real house. A little aged, but no cabin or shack.

There was a clearing around the house, large enough for two people to walk side by side. The guy insisted they examined the perimeter first. His girlfriend thought he was being ridiculous, but he told her he had a bad feeling about the place. She thought the woods at night were just making him jumpy. Still, she went along. Jingled roof, wood-sided walls, curtain windows, even a front porch. What they couldn't find was a road, or even a path or a trail, nothing but woods. The woods surrounded the whole circumference as densely as any part of the woods.

Well, that didn't sit right at all. But they needed help. They knocked on the only door. An older man answered the door quickly. He looked well-groomed, dressed in a nice shirt and a clover sweater. Good evening, strangers. The boyfriend apologized for bothering him and explained how they'd been wandering in the woods all day and his house was the first they found. The man was understanding.

He invited them inside and seated them in his living room. It was nicely decorated and toasty inside. They didn't even notice her at first, but there was a woman seated in the corner of the room. She didn't say anything but nodded politely to them when noticed. The guy and girl exchanged glances. they felt horribly uncomfortable. The man returned to the living room with a tray of tea. He set it in front of them and sat across from them.

They poured themselves each a cup. The man watched them very carefully. He didn't like the way he scrutinized them. The fire crackled and popped in a sinister way, it seemed to them, behind him. Tension of the silence kept mounting. So the guy decided to say something. He noted that he hadn't seen any road. or paths around the house.

So he asked how the man comes and goes. To this, he says, he stays put. How about supplies? The man leans back in a chair and looks at the guy suspiciously. You're awful curious. They heard of strange, wet, thudding noise somewhere else inside the house right then. The man doesn't react, so they pretend to ignore it.

but they were both starting to get nervous. The guy asked the man how far from the nearest road they were. He was calculating in his head if they had enough battery to see them to it in the dark. The man answered that they were very far from any road on all sides. The girl said it was weird to her that the place was so hidden, because unless someone knew it was there or stumbled on it by pure chance, no one would ever find it. There couldn't be an address, after all, if there was no road.

How do I know you didn't come here to kill me? Well, they didn't know what to say to that. They figured it was a joke and laughed uncomfortably, but he just smirked at them. He excused himself and vanished around a corner into a dark hallway. While they were alone, they looked around the room. There was a painting hanging over the fireplace that kept catching the guy's attention. He didn't know why. He hated art.

It was a scene of a couple walking through a clearing. there were thick shrubs around. Now that he looked at the painting more closely, he saw something that he swore wasn't there before. Staring out from one of the shrubs was a man's face, watching the couple with a look of pure hate. He was really creeped out, but he didn't want his girlfriend to see it. They drank more of the tea because it was warm.

They'd taken a few gulps when they noticed the girl in the corner again. They only noticed her this time because she was shaking her. head almost imperceptibly. She kept doing it, shaking her head and looking at the teacups. She became perfectly still again when the man returned. The guy tried to explain to the man that they must be going. He didn't feel well and there had been too many red flags to keep ignoring. The words that came out of his mouth were slurred and ineffectual. He passed out. When he woke up, he had an awful headache. He shook his girlfriend awake as well. They realized they'd slept for some time. The guy suspected they'd been drugged, but couldn't be certain. The man was nowhere to be

seen. Neither was the woman, and their gear was missing. They wanted to leave right away, but they needed their supplies. They had no idea how far from any roads they were. So they went searching the rooms of the house. There were three doors down the hall, all led to bedrooms. The first two were empty. So was the last, but it had their gear on the middle of a child's bed. They grabbed their stuff and prepared to leave, but the guy saw a curtain covering an opening at the very end of the hall, and he just had to know. He pulled it open. It was just a closet. A man and woman must have left the house, he thought. Then he noticed his girlfriend's face. She was terrified of something. So much so she was backing away and tugging at him.

He looked back in the closet. It was the old man, crouched down, naked in the bottom of the closet, looking up at them with a smile that crossed most of his face. But his eyes fixed on them with the most unmistakably intense rage. He started crawling out of the closet toward them on all fours and making sounds like they'd never heard any living thing make before. Well, they ran out of the house and straight into the woods. They moved as fast as possible, cutting themselves and tripping several times.

Something in their guts kept telling them that the man was right behind them, like the man in the bushes in that horrible painting, and he was going to kill them. They finally came out of the woods on a dirt road, and from there slowly followed it to a real road and found their way back to town. They told the park rangers about it, and they were advised to keep the story to themselves. Later, they looked up the area on Google Earth. It took them a while, but they spotted the clearing in the woods. It was even deeper than they thought.

As they zoomed in, the guy saw something weird in front of the house. He cleaned up the image as best as he could. It was still blurry, but a couple knew what it was. The man was standing in front of the house and looking straight up, like he knew they were watching. They sent the image to the Rangers as proof. I know, there are still so many questions. What really happened to Flora?

Was Timmy dealing with someone else? How do he know so much about my mom? Who was that guy that got arrested? Why was the Ramon's t-shirt on my mom's body? I just, I just don't know. So for now, that'll just have to be. No Sleep Podcast. That's a wrap for season eight. Please visit the no sleeppodcast.com to learn more about the show.

On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for listening. And we hope you'll join us on May 7th for the start of season nine. 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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