The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S9E02

Episode Date: May 14, 2017

It's episode 02 of Season 9. On this week's show we have five tales about nasty nature, agonizing art, and inhuman inconveniences."The Suicide Orphan"† written by C.M. Scandreth and performed by Erika Sanderson & Penny Scott-Andrews. (Story starts around 00:02:45)"It's Usually Quiet Between One and Five"† written by Michael Marks and performed by Mike DelGaudio & Dan Zappulla. (Story starts around 00:27:20)"The Glaring Man"† written by Elizabeth Ryder and performed by Nikolle Doolin & David Ault. (Story starts around 00:54:40)"Mold Kills"‡ written by A.N.A. and performed by Nichole Goodnight & Matthew Bradford & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts around 01:10:30)"Don’t Go Camping Alone, Ever"† written by T. Takeda Wise and performed by Jessica McEvoy & Atticus Jackson. (Story starts around 01:29:30)Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast Click here to learn more about Penny Scott-Andrews Click here to learn more about C.M. Scandreth Click here to learn more about Michael Marks Executive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon BooneAudio adaptations produced by: Phil Michalski† & Jeff Clement‡"It's Usually Quiet Between One and Five" illustration courtesy of Naomi RonkeAudio 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 storytelling podcast. Our tales are dark and disturbing, intended to shake you up. Listen at your own risk. We are all around you. And tonight's there will be, brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast. It's the No Sleep Podcast. I'm David Cummings. Thanks for joining us.

On this week's show, we have five tales about nasty, nature, agonizing art, and inhuman inconveniences. It's my pleasure to introduce a new artist sharing her talent with us. Naomi Ronka is an artist who works in the linocut medium. Her illustration for this week's episode adds to our already wide array of illustrating styles we're so fortunate to have with our team. Please check the show notes to see more of Naomi's art and learn more about her work. We welcome you Naomi and thank you for sharing your talent with us.

And I'd like to point out something about our lineup of stories this week. Mostly by chance, almost all the stories have themes within them surrounding the issue of suicide. Some mention it in passing while others deal with the supernatural aspect of it. For some listeners, it's important to be aware of that before listening. Our tales are purely fictional and we hope they'll provide a respite. for anyone struggling with dark thoughts. Please know that you're not alone and that help is available to you

and we're glad you're here with us. And so, let's wait no longer because it's time to start this week's show. In our first tale, we hear the dark legend of a mysterious young girl consistently being put up for adoption. But as we learn from author C.M. Scandrith, what led to her losing her first family and each subsequent family

is her bizarre way of provoking those around her to unspeakable acts. Performing this tale are Erica Sanderson and Penny Scott Andrews. So whatever you do, refrain from going anywhere near the suicide orphan. I've long been fascinated

by internet horror stories and creepy pastures. I was young and impressionable when I stumbled across my first. JVK-1-1-1-1-3. 666Z.esp, a story about a video game mod that went eerily wrong. That tumbled me down a dark and narrow rabbit hole into the Russian sleep experiment, then further lost me in the crypted Wonderland where all those other internet classics live. No matter how unsettling the story, I really wanted to believe it. At first, I wanted every single detail to be true. Later, I came to most relish the tales that seemed to contain one or two real, liberally seasoned to please the palates of the audience. And there was a growing envy that rode along with my fascination. I wanted to wield the spices, to be just like those infamous writers.

I wanted to create a viral sensation that would sweep across the internet and make people's spines tingle and burn with genuine, inescapable fear, the kind that really makes you feel alive. But first, I needed to find the raw, true. heart for my recipe. I began to pour over old newspaper articles, looking for weird things in my area. I sifted through mountains of garbage online, looking for a tasty kernel of truth hidden within the bland layers of unappetising urban myths. But inspiration eluded me, and I started to lose interest. As adulthood took hold, it slowly began to strangle my childish ability to believe that there was

something wild running around out there, despite never finding any footprints. I was almost ready to admit that perhaps the world was far more mundane and uninteresting than I'd ever imagined, and that every one of my treasured stories were in fact just marvellous fictions, all pretty frosting and no cake. Then, like a horrible gift dropped right into my lap, I chanced to overhear two nurses at the local hospital talking in hushed whispers about the mystery, of the suicide orphan. How could I not do everything in my power to find out more? I'll spare you all the dusty details about how I came by the information I have.

Most of it was uncovered by boring hard work, ordinary journalism and archive delving. And I'm not proud. When that fails, I found that there's very little information you can't dig up if you use some natural and enhanced advantages. In my case, honey blonde hair, a splash of bright lipstick and a short skirt. The real story begins in the 1970s, when a young couple, Danny and Susan Johnson, prematurely birthed their second child. They named her Catherine. The baby grew quickly and was soon healthy enough to come home, where she was doted on by her elder sister and her parents.

She was bright and happy, apparently escaping any disadvantages of her prematurity, she began to speak at 18 months and started to read by the age of four. The first tragedy struck the family when Catherine was in kindergarten. The elder sister, Sarah, was found hanging in her wardrobe. A pink plastic skipping rope looped about her neck.

Emergency services were called, but the nine-year-old girl was not able to be resuscitated. As you would expect, the family were devastated. They cooperated with the police and the coroner and endured a protracted and grueling investigation into every aspect of their lives. No evidence of foul play was ever uncovered, and the ruling on Sarah's death was left inconclusive. Either it was accidental, or it was a rare child suicide. Everything slid rapidly and predictably downhill for the Johnsons from there,

with the mother falling into a black depression frighteningly fast, and the father drowning his own pain in a bottle. The date on the second ambulance report is barely six months after the one on Sarah's headstone. Susan Johnson was found in the family garage, her asphyxiated corpse as pink as a child skipping rope, a side effect of carbon monoxide inhalation. The car was still idling, with a hose from the exhaust pipe pushed through a crack in the window. The grim trifecture of paperwork is complete two months later, when Danny Johnson successfully hanged himself in the very same garage,

a sawhorse kicked out from underneath him and his wife's perfume heavy in the air. With no other living relatives able to be traced, Catherine Johnson became a suicide orphan. The Walters were her first foster family. They were experienced in caring for children from difficult circumstances, loved her to pieces and did everything they could to heal the poor girl. Only five, she barely understood what had happened and why, so she adapted quickly. I found one of her first school reports, buried among random papers in a forgotten box beneath the Walder's house.

It paints a bright picture of an exceptionally gregarious child, a little girl who made friends easily and was radiant in her happiness. All seemed to be going very well for Catherine and her new parents. She's all dimpled smiles in the photograph of her cuddly. the kittens she received on her seventh birthday, and certificates and trophy suggest that she was something of an athletic prodigy, outrunning every other girl in her district. There was not a single warning sign that anything was wrong for Jenny Walder, the foster mother. According to the archive reports, she had appeared completely normal,

right up to the day she was found in her bathtub. The life seeped out of her into the deep crimson water. There were no hesitation marks surrounding the long, definite, cuts in her wrists from where she'd opened her veins. The foster father, Michael Walters, survived his wife for another nine months before he succumbed to catatonic depression and was taken to a mental health facility. He didn't move nor speak for the next six weeks, so none of the staff appeared to be sure how he got onto the roof. The leap from the fifth floor shattered his skull into nine separate fragments, and his life ended in a concrete parking lot.

Catherine was left utterly alone for the second time in her short life. She was put into state care while another family was sought to take care of her. Now, this is the point where the rumors really start. The pool of prospective foster families was much smaller 30-odd years ago, and it was becoming difficult to keep her history from the community. People back then were superstitious enough to be very leery of a child with so much death in her past. families long noted as being eager for a child, any child, abruptly changed their tune when it is revealed that the child being considered as Catherine, the suicide orphan.

People were beginning to speculate very quietly that Catherine herself was to blame for the five deaths. I like to think that there were others who shushed them and told them not to be so crude and cruel. A pair of childless atheists, Melissa and Tony Lipsy, finally accepted. the girl into their care and instantly fell in love with her. Melissa was an aspiring writer, who kept long, detailed journals of her life and experiences. After some convincing, her family let me read a few of the ones concerning Catherine. Their existence seemed idyllic, with no great calamities afflicting them, only the very ordinary hardships of family life.

Psychological support was provided for the couple and the child from the day Catherine entered their home, and appears to have been quite careful and thorough for the time. Right up until the point of her suicide, Melissa's diary spoke of love and hope and great plans for their new daughter when she grew up. Indeed, Catherine was excelling in every aspect of school life and had even been moved up a year. The final entry in the notebook is uncharacteristically short

and contains one curious sentence about feeling empty. For no reason that anyone could fathom, On that date, Melissa and Tony Lipsy drove their car to the river, then walked into the water, fully clothed and hand in hand, and drowned together. It was ruled in accident, but anyone who knew about Catherine knew that was a lie. Nobody wanted to adopt her after that. Ten years old, she languished in a state orphanage, other children coming and going. She seems to have made the best of it, a tattered photocopied.

file repeats the same phrases as reports from her early life. She was a child who smiled easily and often, was loved by the other children, and she never caused any trouble. She educated herself, borrowing great piles of books from the local library, clearly reading well beyond her age, and engaged the facility staff in thoughtful and philosophical conversations about her plight. Anyone close to her appeared to like her, yet heartbreakingly she seemed to understand exactly why no one wanted her. The first staff suicide, that of Catherine's primary caregiver, sparked a panic, and half of the orphanage workers refused to come to work the following day. Children were quickly shifted to other facilities in nearby cities and the place was temporarily shut down.

Catherine knew precisely what was going on and asked several times to just be let go. She said she didn't want to trouble anyone anymore, that she would find a place in the woods and live on her own. She was interviewed and re-interviewed by law enforcement and by psychiatrists from her temporary solitary room in a juvenile holding facility until no one had any questions left to ask. The conclusion was rational and completely sensible. It was not this child, but the mythos following this child that was the cause of the suicides. Catherine should be provided with a new identity and placed anonymously in another home on the other side of the country, and then the suicides would stop. Unfortunately, this conclusion was also completely wrong. Tracking Catherine

became difficult at this point. I eventually managed to find her again when a fellow student, her schoolteacher, and her new foster parents all killed themselves within a few months of each other. She was 14, and must have been very much aware what that meant. When she was taken into custody, she fought like a demon and required two male police officers to restrain her. There is a curious note in that police report, stating that those officers received injuries, but Catherine's later medical examination showed no injury at all to herself, not even a bruise. She was placed into inpatient psychiatric care. The breezy, bright child with the easy smile does not appear in any more of the reports I was able to obtain.

She was gone. The teenage Catherine is clearly deeply disturbed and any trace of her personality was probably medicated away. The range of psychotropic drugs they managed to dose her with is extensive, despite some odd notes in her charts from this time. Initial attempts to administer heavy-duty sedatives by injection are simply recorded as unsuccessful and followed by a recommendation for oral medication only.

But pills must have been enough. With the suicide orphan locked away in a psych ward and a chemical straitjacket, anyone would assume that was an end to the bleak trail of death that Catherine Johnson left wherever she went. And with a high turnover of overworked staff, there wasn't much risk of anyone getting attached to the young woman. Some of the inmates in her facility were found hanged or dead from self-mutilation, but, well, it was a place for crazy people.

That sort of stuff happened all the time. No more connections appear to have been. been made. But on the 3rd of August, 1991, two staff members deliberately overdosed on patient medications, and several inmates escaped using the keys of the deceased. Amongst those that escaped was Catherine Johnson. She was smart, once the drugs left her system, much smarter than the others, who were all caught in a matter of days. I think Catherine probably cut and dyed her hair and hitchhike as far as she could get, as there are no sightings of her, despite bulletins and flyers.

The trail of documents was cold for a long time, and I expanded my search wider and wider, hoping to find the lost thread of her existence. And I had one grisly card up my sleeve. Even someone as smart and resourceful as she was couldn't do anything about the one thing that made her trackable. Everywhere she went, people killed themselves. Unfortunately, suicide is more common than you might first think, so the background noise is extensive.

People kill themselves every other day, for all kinds of reasons. A seemingly happy father of three will take a shotgun into the shower and blow his brains out, even though he was recently promoted at work and his life seems perfect. After reading far too many of those stories, I did eventually find Harkarian footsteps. Leading out west, a neat line of unexplained suicide. sides which pointed to the forested mountain wilderness. The common factor that drew my attention was that each of the deceased owned some sort of supply or convenience shop.

I contacted the library near Catherine's teenage orphanage, posing as a family member to access her library records. My suspicions were confirmed. Since she was 10 years old, she'd been researching outdoor survival and how to live self-sufficient in the wilderness. I'm really not much of an outdoors person, but the heady prospect of finding the mythical suicide orphan was too much for me. I probably overstocked on supplies and safety gear, but I didn't want to be caught short in poor weather. With an expensive GPS machine and enough food for a month, I started searching the mountains for Catherine Johnson.

I suspected I was on the right track when I started finding increasing numbers of dead animals. Although that's not unusual in the wilderness, the corpses became very regular, mostly intact and quite fresh. Birds had seemingly fallen from the sky mid-flight, as though their tiny hearts had simply given up. Further on, dead rats and larger mammals marked a sort of grisly perimeter

around Catherine's isolated bolthole. The first sign was terrible and stark. A white board nailed to a tree and splashed with faded, red paint. Stay away or else, it read, like the warning on a child's treehouse. There were more signs as I pushed through the scrub, bearing similar imprecations. Each of them threatened some kind of violence without being specific. Eventually I saw a crude hut through the trees and painted on the door in the same naive hand for the words, come inside and you will die. I knew what was going on here.

Catherine blamed herself for the deaths of everyone around her. She had done so since she was very young, and she didn't want it to happen again. By isolating herself in the wilderness, she believed that she could avoid bringing any more death to other people. And if she didn't have anyone who cared about her, she couldn't lose anyone she cared about. I had walked in Catherine's appallingly sad footsteps for so long that at this point, I really did care about her. and I was no longer thinking about what that meant. Perhaps having spent my whole life looking for that kernel of truth, when I found it, I didn't want to believe it.

I spoke loudly as I pushed open the door. I'm coming in. She sat by the stone fireplace, a small figure lost in a chair made of carefully woven branches. Dark hair was piled up on top of her head, tied in place with a frayed scarf. Inside, the hut was tidying clean, meticulous care evident in the orderliness of the piles of split logs and the fur-covered furniture. She seemed to know immediately that I wasn't there by accident, that I was not some lost hiker or hunter who'd stumbled into her hideway despite the warning trail of animal corpses and signs.

I should have moved. She turned her gaze towards me. Her face was far too youthful. She looked like a 20-year-old. I should have stuck to my plan and moved to another place in the wilds to stop people like you finding me. Well, I'm glad I did find you. I was unable to stop staring at her. I felt strangely uneasy at how young she looked. She was almost twice my age, yet somehow it felt quite the reverse. You won't be. There was a tense, pregnant pause. Then she glanced to. the iron kettle hung over the fireplace.

Would you like some tea? It's mostly mountain herbs, but it's hot. Not knowing what else to say, I simply nodded. The tiny hut should have been cozy, yet I was cold. Tell me how you found me. And so I told her the same tale I'm telling you now. I laid out all of my clever discoveries from end to end as she poured tea into fired clay cups. the sharp sense of mint and pine suffusing the air.

She was silent while the account unfolded, but would sometimes nod, confirming a snippet of information when I sounded uncertain. At other revelations, she bowed her head and averted her eyes as though ashamed, but she never interrupted. When I was empty of words, she finally spoke. Sir, you wanted fame. That's why you sought me out.

You wanted to tell my story to the world and become a sort of television celebrity. Her voice was layered heavily with undisguised contempt, and I felt the color rise in my cheeks. I guess so. My stomach twisted, pollen, despite the tea. Well, now you have your story. You found your suicide orphan, and everything about her is true. Wherever I go, death follows. It was my turn to be silent for a long moment.

What could I say to that? But I needed to ask. I needed to be sure about one more thing. I have a question. She shifted in her chair, placing one hand on the rough-hewn table. You want to know why I never killed myself? Yes. A knife hung from her belt in a leather sheath.

and with a well-practiced movement, she pulled it free, stabbing it cleanly through the hand resting on the rough wood between us. I shrieked an alarm and reflexively jerked away, the wicker chair nearly tipping me onto the floor. As quickly as she had drawn the blade, she yanked it free, leaving a deep cut that glimmered white tendon, then welled dark with blood. She raised her wounded hand in the air,

and I watched, disbelieving, as the vicious rent in her flesh knitted immediately, like some kind of claymation. It left not even the whisper of a scar betraying where it had been. Poison doesn't work either. She calmly wiped the knife clean on her sleeve. Even deadly nightshade only gives me a tummy ache. I tried a pistol once, but the bullet bounced right off my skull and made a mess of my crockery. The knife was rehomed in the scabbard, and she gave me a one smile.

I'd bury myself alive, but I'm too frightened of spending an eternity screaming into the lightless dirt. Another long silence followed as we sipped our cooling tea. I drained my cup and stared at the dregs of grey leaves, their green all boiled away. I'm going to die, aren't I? It wasn't really a question. Of course you are. What other possible outcome did you think there could be? Did you really think just because you were the one to find you?

find me, it somehow be immune, that caring about the truth would save you. That's not how real life works, I'm afraid. I swallowed, beer swelling like an ugly bubble inside me. How does it happen? It will start as an ineffable feeling of loss, like you've misplaced something important. The emptiness grows inside your breath, that invades your head until it gnaws at all your thoughts, painting everything good with poisonous. down. Eventually, the yawning nothingness within will be so complete that you'll have not left to live for, and you'll end your life. So there's nothing I can do? She leaned forward and grasped my hand in her strong, dirt-rimmed hands. You can do exactly what you are going to do all along, but not for

yourself. Tell your story. Tell people that this horror is true. I am real. And that if you're If anyone comes near me, they will die. She let me go, the intensity fading from her eyes. I can't stand seeing yet another human being die because of me. I declared loudly as I pushed open the door. I can already feel that void inside me, widening, growing, feeding. It's grey and it's cold and it's deeper than space. I've tried as much as I can to stop it.

Therapy, medication, immersing myself in dizzingly happy music and distracting myself with books and films. But everything seems so hollow, so trite, and so utterly pointless now. Nothing feels real anymore. I'm not exactly sure how I'll do it.

But I think that somewhere in my old things from my childhood, there might be a pink, plastic skipping rope. Yes, that seems real. That feels right and true. Working the graveyard shift in an isolated gas station should be relatively quiet, right? Not many people out in the wee hours looking for gas, smokes, or energy drinks.

But don't tell that to author Michael Marks. He shares a tale about one man whose overnight shift left him shaken to the core and questioning what he thought he knew about reality. Performing this tale are Mike Delgado and Dan Zapula. So hopefully you'll be tucked into your bed when stuff like this takes place, because, you see, it's usually quiet between one and five. I just finished my tuna salad sandwich when the clock struck 1 a.m. Watching that hand tick over to the one was a sign I'd made it halfway.

through my shift, and the rest of the night was likely going to be a breeze. People almost never travel the road after one o'clock in the morning, so at most I'd probably have two or three more people over the next four hours looking to get some gas. The hooker and vampire crowd rarely made their way out to my place of employment. Earl's gas and stop in the middle of bum-fucked nowhere, which was fine with me. I snagged a pack of reds from the cigarette rack behind me and tossed a five and a couple of quarters in the register to cover the cost, then walked out the front door and stepped outside. The cool night air hit me and sent a chill up my spine and to the base of my neck.

Just above me, the neon sign humped, interrupted only by the occasional pop. I looked up at it while I cast its dim red and blue glow down on my face. Earl's gas and stop. The O and the two apostrophes were long dead. At least as long as I'd been there, which at that very first, was pushing somewhere around three years. Oof. Fix your fucking sign, Earl.

You lazy old bastard. I mumbled to myself with a laugh as I held the cigarette between my lips. You know what, though? Earl was never going to fix that sign, though. Earl never fixed anything. There was a shelf inside that if you bumped it just right, would come crashing down. Probably would have only taken a couple of screws to fix it,

and Earl just refused. Store's fine. He'd say in a crotchety old man voice. You act like it's falling apart or something. His tone becoming clearly more accusatory with the second part of a statement. I'll fix it. I'd say only to be dismissed with a wave of the hand and a grumble about liability insurance. The shelf instead remained stocked with paper goods to avoid any potential breakage,

and I eventually gave up the argument. I was only three puffs in tomorrow. my cigarette when a dark red Honda came rolling up the road and pulled into the station. The car was coated with a layer of dirt that shone prominently underneath the harsh fluorescence that hung above the pumps. I couldn't see the driver through the windows, the light simply reflecting the world around the car rather than giving me a glimpse inside. The car sat, idling there for a few moments. The buzz of the light and the sound of the grumbling engine being the only sounds cutting through the otherwise quiet night. I felt an uneasy vibe in the air as I watched

the mysterious new arrival. I could see stilted movements from inside the car, but was unable to make out any defined shapes. Suddenly, the engine shut off, and after a few moments of silence, I heard muffled shouting and the car of rocked back and forth for a few moments. I threw my cigarette down, ready to go check on what was happening. The feeling of unease, replaced by very real anxiety. As soon as I took my first step away from the front of the store, though, the driver's side door swung open and a man stepped out into the light. He was probably in his early 40s.

His hair was thinning on top of his head and stubble framed his wide-cheeked face. He was wearing a striped button-down shirt with short sleeves and a black tie dangling loosely from his neck. His sunken eyes caught mine and he, froze for a second, suddenly becoming aware that I'd been standing there the whole time. Hey, you all right, man? I took another step forward as I spoke. The man looked truly disheveled, and as he walked around the front of the car, this became even more apparent. His clothes were caked with dried mud that flecked off his khaki pants as he walked past the pumps and in my direction. I'm fine. He spoke in a low and

Timid voice. I've just had a long night. He avoided my eyes as he walked past me and into the store. I noticed even more dried mud on the back of his shirt and his skin. There were little rips in his clothes and I could see scratches on his arms. One of his hands looked as if it had a makeshift cloth bandage, you know, just a piece of torn shirt wrapped around the palm. I could see bloodstaining the edges.

It looked as if he had had a long night. Hell, it looked as if he had just fallen down a rather steep hill and gotten in a bad fight with every rock on his way to the bottom. Sparing one last glance back at his car, I followed him into the store. As I walked over to my spot behind the counter, the man weaved his way to the coolers in the back and pulled out a bottled water. He cracked it open and drank the whole thing in just a few seconds. He took out two more and walked back up to the counter, spilled water still dribbling from his chin. And a pack of lights. He dropped the waters in front of me and fished out his wallet.

The look in his eyes was tired and defeated. I felt an urge to ask if he was okay, but, you know, held back. Whatever had happened to him, it probably wasn't something he wanted to discuss with some shit-heeled gas station clerk in the middle of the night. That'll be a 9.45. I grabbed his pointed-out brand of cigarettes from the rack behind me and handing it to him directly. Something told me he was going to need them handy. Anything else for you?

He shook his head and dropped a $10 bill on the counter before rummaging through his pockets and bringing out a handful of change. He counted out 45 cents and handed it to me. I dropped it in the register without making my own count and handed him a dollar bill back. He nodded at me with an odd look of relief. He shoved the dollar into his pocket and gathered up his cigarettes and the bottles of water. Before I could even thank him, he was walking towards the door. His mind already seemingly a few. steps ahead of him and dragging him along. I expected to hear the doorbell as the man headed back

out to his car, but instead he stopped just short of the door and looked back at me. He stared at me for a few seconds. His eyes full of what looked like, guilt? It made me feel uneasy enough to say something. Can I help you with something else, man? My hand went to the mini bat that Earl kept just below the counter, you know, just in case. No. Just... He stuck the cigarettes in his pocket and used his now free hand to wipe his brow. He looked exhausted and scared, not threatening. Just be careful working out here at night.

Okay, kid? Okay? Yeah, you got it, buddy. I wasn't sure what else to say. The whole situation was starting to get under my skin and honestly, I just wanted him out the door. Yeah. He spoke to the night as he turned towards the door and... opened it. I watched him every step as he got to his car and got in. I saw the spark of a lighter

for a second, and then the engine started. I waited for what felt like an eternity for him to pull away from the pumps and head on down the road. I could feel him looking at me from behind the reflection of his windshield, just staring. I couldn't see his eyes, but I knew. When he finally drove off and vanished down the road, I'd realized I'd been holding my breath and gripping. the bat with white knuckles. I let out a huge sigh of relief and forced to laugh, even though the general unease of the guy's presence had yet to leave me. I dropped my ass on the little stool behind the counter and put my face in my hands. Perils of the night shift. Sometimes you just get a weird customer, I thought, to myself. At least it'll be a nice little anecdote for my

friends later. I laughed into my palms and shook it off, finally lifting my head and opening my eyes. I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw someone standing in front of me. It'd come out of nowhere. The bell over the door never rang when he entered. I didn't hear a car pull up, no footsteps through the door as he walked up to the counter, not even that itching feeling of presence when someone is close to you. It was like a ghost. The way he looked certainly didn't help in dampening the shock either.

He was tall, but well over six feet if I had to guess. He stood with his head bent down towards me and his hands flat on the counter. There was not a single hair on his head or face, not even eyebrows. I could see the fluorescent lights reflect off his cue ball-like skull. His skin was pale and vainy, just on the verge of looking translucent. It looked as if you stuck him under a black light, he would glow. He was dressed in a black turtleneck and black dress pants, something told me that if I looked below the counter, I'd see well-taken care of dress shoes

with a mirror shine that equaled that of his head. The strangest aspect was the expression he wore on his face. An unsettling, stiff smile stretched up the corners of his mouth, yet he kept his thin lips in a tight line. Even stranger, his eyes were closed. Yet his head tracked me as I got up off the stool and kept away from the counter far enough that I could feel the price boards for the cigarettes against my back. Can I help you?

My eyes flicked to the front windows. No car was out by the pumps, which just tracked with every other element of this freak's sudden appearance. I tried to tell myself that he was just part of the late night hooker and vampire crowd, out for a stroll at nearly 2 a.m., a minimum of 10 miles from anything in either direction. He tapped his fingers against the counter and slowly turned his face towards the pumps before slowly turning back towards me, as if he was looking at me through his eyelids. He raised a hand from the counter and pointed down before slowly shaking his head no. Listen, man, if you don't want anything, I'm going to have to ask you to leave.

I didn't sound brave even to myself, let alone to anyone else. He pressed his pointed finger against the counter, and again shook his head. No. My eyes moved below to where he was pointing and saw the minibat. Is this guy warning me not to go for that minibat? How? What the fuck? The realization swirled in my head as I attempted to swallow my heart back down into my body

after a sudden jump to my throat. He cocked his head to the side and his smile went crooked for a moment before he turned. his back to me. I saw his hand go up towards his face and heard something like a hiss of air preceding a wet crunching sound. I stepped forward to grab the minibat. His other hand shot up from his side and his finger wagged back and forth as if to say, disk-tisk. Another wet crunch came followed by what sounded like spitting and laughter at the same time. The man quieted. himself and turned back towards me. That same, oddly stretched smile was on his face, but blood leaked out of his closed left eye.

He held up the hand he had to his face, and the tip of the finger he previously pointed down at the minibat, the tip of his finger was now missing. Blood streaks down over his hand and down the sleeve of his turtleneck. I shrunk back at the disgusting sight as he aggressively knocked everything from the countertop onto the floor. The look on his face, it never changed, though, even as various knick-knacks scattered across the floor, and the register spilled cash and changed out at his feet. He ran his still intact hand over the clean white countertop and nodded, yes. Not to me, but to himself.

Satisfaction with a job well done. I knew what he was about to do, and all I could do was watch in curious and horrified silence, frozen with my back against the cigarettes. It's here. The word scrawled crudely by the mutilated finger, more quickly followed by, he took it from us. The man raised his intact hand again for another tis-tiske gesture to signify that taking from them was probably, probably not a good idea. His left eye flicked wildly behind his bleeding eye socket. It looked as if it were pulsing.

I don't even know who you're... I jumped in, attempting to defend myself before I even knew what the fuck was going on. It was a pointless effort. The man held up the intact finger once again and put it to his lips. That stretched smile never changing. Yet somehow I could still hear him shush me. The man lowered his finger and his lips began to part, revealing that there was something in his mouth, something large that appeared to be the cause of his silence. His eyelids opened as well, slowly revealing dark voids beneath. My eyes went to my minibat again, but there was a wonder if it would even do any good. Something that looked like a tongue quickly shot from the inside of the darkness of

his left eye socket and cleaned the blood from around it. An involuntary reaction struck me, causing me to attempt to a climb away on the cigarette display for a second out of pure revulsion, a feeling that would wash over me increasingly in the coming moments. His mouth opened fully, revealing what was inside. A single, massive eye flicked back and forth between the thin lips, and his eyelids curled upwards and smiles, revealing small rows of pointy teeth. Individual tongues licked from around the eye mouths like a normal person would lick their lips. Confusion and horror froze me in place as I watched the body of the thing in front of me twist and contort. I managed to unglue myself from my spot long enough to make an attempt for my weapon.

while it was distracted with whatever the hell it was doing. The hand, missing a finger, darted over the counter and grabbed the small bat before I could reach it. Its arm bending in odd ways and making a horrible breaking and cracking noises as if defying its own design. It swung the bat once in front of me and then threw it across the store. I could hear one of the glass cooler doors shatter. The eye, the eye in the mouth fixated on me. as I stepped back and watched the rest of its transformation in horror, too scared of how quick it had been to even try to make a move.

It turned its back to me, but quickly bent its spine and neck, causing its head to fall lazily backwards like the neck had been stabbed. Its arms bent oddly, the fingers twisting and the shoulders rotating so the elbows bending the wrong way became more like the right way. Its remaining fingers found purchase on the counter. A split began to form at the top of its head, the top now facing down towards the counter. A thick, soupy liquid with the dark red color of blood began to leak out.

The mouths laughed as the crack got longer and wider, splitting them apart and stopping just short of the smiling eye. White points began to jut out from the edges of the seam like, small teeth and a large tongue walled out, slapping itself against the counter as the two small mouths alternated between hisses and giggles. It lurched forward and scrambled over the counter, its leg seeming to come ahead of its arms. Out of instinct, I dodged out of the way of the horror now coming at me and it smashed full force into the display of cigarettes, sending unopened packs sprawling across the floor. As it scrambled to get back into its odd crab walk,

position, I darted forward and leapt over the counter to make for the door. It managed to turn just in time to catch my foot with its mangled hand and tripped me up. I slammed down on the other side of the counter, smashing my shoulder on the floor. As I attempted to recover myself, the thing crawled over the counter, getting between me and the door, while blocking my route for escape. I slid backwards on my ass down one of the aisles and towards the coolers in the back, hoping I could find that mini-bat. I worried that if I was a little bit of the door, I worried that if I If I took the time to get to my feet, the thing would pounce forward again. But as it slid backwards, it instead, it stalked me.

The giant cyclopean eye-mouth thing watching me intensely. The tiny, cruel, mouth-like eyes chattering, hissing, and the wicked tongue flailing back and forth from the center of its face. It jumped up on the shelves, crawling across them like an insect, keeping slow pace with me as my back moved ever steadily towards the cooler behind me, filled with tall boys and mall liquor. I could hear it laughing. It was toying with me, relishing in my fear as it defied logic with its movement and just existence in general.

I slid out of the aisle to see the broken cooler. Soda spilled all over the floor, and the minibat was laying among them. It was a few miles away and I knew I was going to need to get to my feet to make it over there. I looked back to the thing as it moved towards me, still crawling over the shells like a spider moving through its web towards a fly.

Suddenly, its hand gripped a shelf I knew very well. A shelf filled with paper towels and plates because it couldn't hold much weight. As it shifted its weight, the shelf came free and the creature which had been displaying a disturbing grace suddenly fell sprawling to the floor with the contents of the shelves spilling down on its deformed body. I sprung to my feet without thinking and tipped the whole damn shelving unit over on it as it attempted to flail itself back to its feet. The heavy unit came down with a thud on its body, trapping it.

I could hear it screaming and the tiny mouth shouting what sounded like curses in some language I couldn't understand. It pushed itself up against the weight now pinning its body to the floor. I dove towards the minibat and snatched it up from a, cold pool of soda. The thing had pulled its body halfway free as I ran back over to it and brought the tiny mountain dew-soaked club down on its arm. It howled in what I could hope was more pain than anger, and it reached out for my leg. I stepped back and brought the fat down repeatedly. Two more times down on its head. The seam widened and the more of that viscous blood-like liquid leaked out onto the floor. I could see tiny teeth fly out from the small mouth eyes and the skull cracked.

Finally, with one more brutal blow, the eye-mouth popped like a balloon and pus-like liquid squirted out over the floor and mingled with the soda dripping from the bat and the oil-like blood. The thing fell still. I poked it a couple of times with the bat wondering if I should hit it again or just run out of that store. It didn't move, judging from the chunks of brain matter and skulls scattered over the floor. I decided it was dead. I stepped over its body and around the knocked over shelves on my way up to the counter. I needed to call somebody. The police maybe? What would I even say? It was as I crossed in front of the store's windows. that I noticed them, standing beneath the harsh neons of the sign outside and backlit by the

fluorescence then hung over the pump. There was at least a dozen of them standing perfectly still like statues outside, the lights gleaming off their bald heads. Each of them was dressed the same as the thing I just killed. Their eyes were closed, and their thin, pale lips were pulled tightly and closed into half-smiles. The closest one stepped forward and opened the door, and the rest followed closely behind him. I gripped the minibat tightly in my fist, feeling the blood of the one I'd killed

dripped down over my knuckles as I backed away. They funneled through the door in a wedge pattern, the leader walking steadily closer to me. His eye, mouth, opened to reveal a black iris and pupil. shifting beneath his lips for a few seconds before it looked over towards its fallen double. I backed away, my feet kicking change and bills from the fallen cash register out of the way as I moved. The thing kept pace. The other ones behind it were now opening their eyes, and their small mouths began to whisper and laugh.

Come on then! I found myself screaming at them. Now, so certain I was going to die that some sort of... bizarre calm that replaced my fear was translating into bravery. I'll fuck you all up. Who's first, huh? Two of them broke off from the back and walked towards the fallen one to lift the shelves off its body. The ones still approaching me began to split from the top of their heads.

Their seams opening to reveal their long, pointed tongues. The ones in the back began to twist and contort into their more unnatural, spider-like forms as the leader walked through the change at his feet. Suddenly, it raised a hand and they all snapped back into their mock human forms in an instant, as if their transformation was on a rubber band that had pulled them back into place. I stood there, holding the bat out in front of me as if it would keep them from lunging forward and tearing me to shreds. They did not leap forward, though.

They stopped dead in their tracks, in fact. all but the two who had lifted the shelf from their dead and were now carrying the limp twisted corpse back towards the door. The one in the lead knelt down among the money sprawled out at his feet and began to pick through the coins with its slender pale fingers. It tossed them aside one by one until it found what it was looking for. It plucked a quarter from the pile and held it up to the black eye behind its lips as if studying it. Out of curious instinct, I lowered the batten, leaned forward to see that the small silver coin was not a quarter. In fact, it was like nothing I'd ever seen. It shimmered with different colors as it turned in the light.

Purple, red, green, and blue, all a matter of a single twist of the wrist. The thing closed its massive black eye into an unassuming, tight-lipped smile, seemingly, satisfied with its examination. It dropped the prism coin into its palm and closed a fist around it before standing back up. The others behind it began to shuffle out the door behind and all I could do was stand there, puzzled as fuck was happening. The others had nearly all left the store when the leader turned its back to me and walked over to the counter, pointing down towards what the first one had written here. It's here. He took it from us. It clicked into my mind. The change the man had given me. I hadn't even bothered to count it. I just dropped it in the register without looking at it.

Whatever he'd stolen from these things, he'd given to me. To throw him off his trail, to hide it, just to fuck with me? It really didn't matter. They had found what? They had found, well, they were looking for. It pointed its other finger towards the mess from where I'd killed the first one that arrived, and I could see it shake its head, yes, in approval. It set the coin on the table for a moment, and without turning to face me and gave a slow, soft round of applause. The fucking thing was clapping for me, because I'd killed one of its kind. It picked the coin back up and walked out the door, joining the others. I stood there confused and terrified as I watched the bald, twisted creatures walk out past the edge of the gas station and into the darkness.

I stood there then, and long after. And so, another episode has drawn to a close, and our nightmares dissolve into the ether. If you would like to find out how you can hear the full-length versions of our audio program. Please visit the no-sleep podcast.com to learn about our season past program, 25 episodes, each over two hours long, and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 1999. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for listening. Join us again next week when our dark tales will envelop you in a nightmarish, swirling fog. This audio production is copyright 2017 by Creative Reason Media, Inc.

All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media, Inc.