The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S9E11

Episode Date: July 16, 2017

It's episode 11 of Season 9. On this week's show we have five tales about futuristic friends, conflicted children, and disturbing depths. "The Parasite"‡ written by Andrew Schrader and performed by Kyle Akers & Erika Sanderson & Atticus Jackson. (Story starts around 00:06:45) "The Deepest Part of The Ocean is Not Empty"† written by Jesse Clark and performed by Jesse Cornett. (Story starts around 00:33:00) "A Friend for You"† written by S.H. Cooper and performed by Jessica McEvoy & Nikolle Doolin & Nichole Goodnight & Addison Peacock & Eden. (Story starts around 01:05:15) "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight"‡ written by K.L. McCord and performed by Penny Scott-Andrews & Andy Cresswell. (Story starts around 01:28:00) "Wake Up"† written by Alex Grey and performed by Erika Sanderson & Penny Scott-Andrews & David Ault & James Cleveland. (Story starts around 01:49:30) Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast   Click here to learn more about the Adrian Public Library's renovations   Click here for a free e-version of Andew Schrader's novel "What Goes On In The Walls At Night"   Click here for the paperback version of Andew Schrader's novel "What Goes On In The Walls At Night"   Click here to learn more about S.H. Cooper   Click here to learn more about Alex Grey   Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone Audio adaptations produced by: Phil Michalski† & Jeff Clement‡ "The Deepest Part of The Ocean is Not Empty" illustration courtesy of Naomi Ronke 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

Hey, Jessica, what are you doing in the break room? Finished all your recording? Almost. I have a few more pages, but I decided to break for a snack. Well, that makes sense. After all, you earned the nickname Snacks on the tour. Might as well live up to your reputation for snacking and eating all the time. Guilty is charged. You must be thrilled that the new Nature Box arrived.

I'm glad I can provide snacks for the team that aren't just the old boring and tasteless snacks full of junk. We all need to eat better. That's why I decided to up our snack game with Nature Box. I love it. I can't believe NatureBox has over 100 snacks that taste good and are actually better for us. All made from high-quality, simple ingredients with no artificial colors, flavors, or sweeteners. Trust me, I feel good about what snacks is snacking on. Everyone loves it.

We all found our new snack obsession with NatureBox. You know, they add new snacks every month, inspired by real customer feedback, the latest food trends, and professional chefs. Personally, my favorites are the maple sea salt almonds and the blueberry almond quinoa bites, because they taste amazing, and they really hit the spot when we need to recharge between recording sessions. Like we even get breaks with the crazy workload you give us. Hmm, what's that? I said, is it really that simple? I mean, we just go to naturebox.com slash no sleep, choose the snacks we want, and NatureBox delivers them right to our door.

That's all you need to do. And there's no risk. If you ever try a snack you don't like, don't eat it. Naturebox will replace it for free. Naturebox.com slash no sleep. Got it. Time for me to order a nature box of my own. You know, in case I get hungry again. You're always hungry, snack avoid. Say, where is the new Nature Box? I put it here in the break room this morning. Well... You didn't. Jessica, you ate the entire nature box yourself?

That was a lot of snacks. I can't help it. I get hungry. I need to snack. Like, all the time. But all those snacks? I can't believe... Uh, Jessica, why are you looking at me like that?

Don't come any closer. I'm still hungry, coming. No, no, get away. I'm all fast. You don't want to eat me. I'm your beloved leader. No. Come here, David.

Snacks needs food. And right now, you'll save even more. NatureBox is offering No Sleep fans three free snacks with your first order when you go to naturebox.com slash no sleep. This is a horror storytelling podcast. Our tales are dark and disturbing. intended to shake you up. Listen at your own risk.

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 futuristic friends, conflicted children, and disturbing depths. Our first tale this week comes to us from author Andrew Schrader, Andrew also has a new book out called What Goes On in the Walls at Night?

The book is a collection of stories blending horror, science fiction, and fantasy. What goes on in the walls at night is retro speculative fiction at its most bizarre. You can find a link in the show notes to purchase the paperback version, and Andrew is offering our No Sleep listeners a free e-book version of his novel from his website. Check the link to his website, sign up for his spam-free. mailing list and download a free Kindle, iBook, or Nook version. Consider grabbing your own copy of these creepy tales. And many of you may recall last September when we featured the conclusion to author Rona Vassilar's excellent down in the library basement story. At that time, I brought to your attention the fundraising

effort coordinated by Rona's mother, Meredith, an actual librarian at the very real Adrian Branch Library in Adrian, Minnesota. Many of you joined us in donating money so the library could be fully renovated. And because of you and many other donors, Meredith helped raise $84,000 for the library. And the new and fully restored Adrian Branch Library celebrated its grand reopening this weekend. I'm proud to say that on their donor wall, the No Sleep podcast is listed as a contributor. Our donation is on behalf of Rona, the No Sleep Team, and of course our wonderful listeners. So a big congratulations to Meredith, Rona, and everyone at the Adrian Branch Library. There's a link in the show notes to some news reports about the library.

And who knows, perhaps somewhere down in that library's basement, Joe and Pip are smiling and awaiting new visitors. So we've got books and wonderful new places to find them. But before you start reading, why not let us read some stories for you as we kick off this week's show? In our first tale, we're confronted with a fact that most can agree on. Some people's children are horribly behaved. As confirmed by author Andrew Schrader, it's usually easier to spot trouble in others' kids rather than your own. Unless, of course, your child behaves in a manner so deeply disturbing. Performing this tale are Kyle Akers, Erica Sanderson, and Atticus Jackson.

How much love could you possibly give to someone who you consider the parasite? I see these kids sometimes, driving their parents crazy. Screaming, kicking, crying in the airport or the grocery store. While the red-faced infuriated mother struggles not to smack their grimy. face. I swear my son doesn't kick the walls like this at our house. He just needs more space. This is one version of the usual explanation, but the parent is fucking boiling inside. Those kids are bad, but bad in the normal kid way. The kind of bad I'm talking about is bad, bad. I'm talking about evil, a deep badness that no parent can scream, cry, cajole, or beat out of them. I have one of

those kids. Actually, it's my wife's kid. After she died, I was entrusted with his care. I'm not sure how to say this without sounding awful, but sometimes you just know something about someone. A feeling. A deep-seated unease that's hard to explain. They revolt you. That's how it was with Corey. 12-year-old Corey. Waves of disgust rolled through me as his care worker wheeled him in when we picked him up to bring him home with us. My wife Sally waited for him with open arms. Corey had lived in a facility most of his life and his biological father, long since divorced from my new bride, had been his primary caretaker. Corey had a rare form of palsy. No one knew how to treat it. The doctors could only label the symptoms, not the disease itself, which made him

a medical anomaly. His mind and body were born atrophied and stayed that way. I could only pity the kid. I'd met him once before, seven years before. When his mother and I drove down to Ventura from our home in San Jose, I remember the open room with huge windows that diffused the flowers and piano and patience in a soft white glow like an old movie. Corey's back faced us, and I shivered when the nurse turned him around, beady eyes, one larger and higher on his face than the other. His tiny smile bore right through me. I hated him immediately. Two years ago, Corey's father died in his sleep.

It was mysterious. His heart had stopped. When they opened him up, rumor said that the coroner gasp. Later, she admitted that she had no explanation for the extreme calcification of the man's heart. Men twice his age didn't have the blackened muscle of this 50-year-old man. In some rare cases, people exposed to extreme radiation,

like those in Chernobyl, their hearts would calcify and age prematurely, but that was nothing compared to this. Through complications with the will, there was little money left for Corey's care. The facility in Ventura cost thousands of dollars each month, but with no more incoming cash, the hospital released him into Sally's care.

We set up the spare bedroom, once my man cave, part poker room, part movie corner, and total sanctuary. I got rid of everything. stuffing it all deep into the garage. We retrofitted the room and adjusted the internal wiring for Corey's equipment. We added a small fridge for his medications

and amino acids, and we purchased a van specifically designed for his wheelchair. Then, of course, we moved Corey in. It took two hours to get him inside. I eventually got it down to 30 minutes. Normalins and outs required knocking down the kitchen wall

and widening the door frames. Three months and $28,000 later, Corey was settled in. I didn't like the way Corey changed our personal lives. I stayed later at work, went out with my coworkers, and did whatever I could to stay away from Corey in the house. I don't know why.

Maybe it was this shitty feeling I got when I saw him. About two months later, Sally came home complaining of a sharp stiffness in the back of her neck that ran down to her ass. Her entire spine and the surrounding muscles had tightened, causing headaches and forcing her to walk hunched over. Lying down brought some relief, but the pulsing pains nod at her and forced her to lose several weeks of work. With the remodel and the time we'd had to take off of work, we were almost out of money and our savings was gone. We'd mortgaged the house again.

I took more time off from my sales manager position at a large server manufacturing company, and Sally and I began making the rounds at doctor's office to try to treat her. The first doctor, the one through my insurance, called her condition TMJ. His hypothesis was that Sally's years at a desk job had caused severe muscular issues, but this didn't satisfy Sally. Muscles in our back would seize for minutes or hours at a time. TMJ couldn't explain that. The second doctor proclaimed it was multiple sclerosis, which his tests couldn't confirm.

We went to a third doctor who labeled it fibromyalgia or phantom pain. It was never the same diagnosis. Two months later, we came home from the fifth doctor. I helped Sally inside one arm slung around her back and one propping her up under the armpit. Staggering around the corner, we stopped mid-stride. Corey was lying face down on the hardwood floor in the kitchen. His wheelchair was several yards away, which meant that he fell out and then crawled. Impossible.

I rushed over. Corey was awake. He dribbled a bit, his eyes fluttering once and locking on mine. I picked him up to put him back in his chair. What happened? It was just loud enough to hear over the buzzing refrigerator. And he only dropped him. Speaking? Impossible.

His vocal cords never developed. How could he talk? I looked at Sally, but we were both shocked. What happened? I think you crawled, little guy. What else could I say? With that, I placed him in bed and inspected him for bruises. Thank you, Dad.

You're welcome. I waited patiently for the soft sounds of sleep and then left exhausted. I helped Sally upstairs, her feet curled under her at the arches. Hunched, she hung with one arm around my neck, the other gripping some unseen pain on her back just above the hip. We walked on slowly. The stairs took ten minutes. Sweat soon came in rivers, making her makeup run down her face.

By the time I got her in bed, her complexion had turned sallow, and her face was modeled by pain and cosmetic. What's happening to me? We didn't talk about Corey. Over the weeks, her symptoms progressed. The muscles around her skull in the back of her neck became taut like a rope. Every night I'd spend an hour patting her down with heating pads and then massaging out whatever knots I could. After a week, I started using the rolling pin from the kitchen on her skull and back.

It would help for an hour or so, but then her muscles would snap back and make everything worse. Sometimes the pressure made her vomit for hours at a time And sometimes she could only mutter hoarsely the next day A week later her legs locked at the knees And then at the ankles Her shoulders high and compacted against her neck Stuck out like a hunchback in an old movie Her fingers were narrowed like oak

We visited every specialist in a 50-mile radius Then expanded outward from there We received confused diagnoses and tried certain drugs Hoping they would help Nothing did work became a distant afterthought. Bills piled upon bills. Meanwhile, Corey's physical health improved, a little bastard.

His crawl was apparently not a fluke. I noticed as I cared for him that a certain plumpness has returned to his legs, arms, and face. Ribs still protruded from his cave chest, but they were supplemented with muscle. His thighs quickly lost their veiny marking. His diet hadn't changed. The paralyzed boy's growing smile, returning strength, deepening vocals, the flexing of his fingers, toes and biceps, his cat-like eyes and expanding jaw, working up and down, chewing on nothing. All gave me the creeps.

With his physical health came mental abilities the boy had never had. This was not a return to an old self, like a recovery from a stroke. No, Corey became the boy he never was. And the doctors could offer no explanation for his miracle. While the climb toward proper health continued for Corey, it plummeted for Sally. They were opposites. She collapsed more and more. She always tried to get around on her own and never listened to me.

One night I found her passed out on the kitchen floor. Corey was lying next to her, cradling her head. I knew Corey moved around more than he let on. He'd hide it. I could tell. Sometimes I'd be lying in bed comforting Sally with a bear hug. while she convulsed and tried to sleep, and I'd hear scuttling downstairs.

I'd listen to the sounds of fingernails, gripping the floor, making tiny tapping noises. And once, I could swear I heard what sounded like a body dragging itself up to stairs, pausing just outside our locked door, and then the soft, nasally breathing

of a young boy with damaged lungs. I had nothing but bad feelings for Corey after that. I developed a strange fear of entering his room, sleeping only a few hours at night, I couldn't eat much, normal creaks and groans in the house startling me and setting my heart racing. I needed outside help, someone to tell me if there was something wrong with Corey or if I was going insane. The opportunity presented itself in the form of a co-worker, Peter. Peter was a man of special training and intellect.

I can't say to which branch of the armed forces he belonged, but he was way back when. trained in tracking and apprehending insurgents in foreign countries during the time of our country's great fucked-up war. His combination of logic and intuition made him the perfect advisor. I figured it was best to invite him over, let him see Corey and see what happened. If my intuition was right, he would pick up on something with Corey, vibes, bad mojo. Hopefully I could see that he sensed something, and that would be enough to start a conversation, or at least validate my sanity. When Peter arrived, I showed him around the house. saving Corey's room for last and explaining our family's medical situation.

He was genuinely interested and didn't seem put off by any medical talk that provoked ickiness in most people. I opened the door to Corey's room. Peter remained stoic, not a muscle moved. There was no surprise look or gaze that lingered a little too long. Nothing. Not even when we approached Corey's bed and looked down on the sleeping boy with drool down his chin. Peter asked questions about the equipment. I answered them.

That was all. Disappointing. Peter? I opened his car door for him later on. Can I ask you something? It's a little weird. He nodded. Did you feel or notice anything odd about Corey?

A feeling, maybe? When you went into his room? An emotion? A feeling? I backtracked, rambling. Yes, when we spoke once, you said you would get in the army about people or places. When you went somewhere new, emotions off of people. Shit.

Maybe I'm talking crazy or something. You're not crazy. I did say that. Well, did you feel anything strange? About Corey? Silence. Peter's brow wrinkled. I continued.

See, I've always had this feeling about him, but I can't really explain it. Oh, hell, do you know what I'm trying to say? I wanted him to know I was genuine that I truly felt something fucked up was happening at home, but what could I say? The word you're looking for is intuition. Of course. Well, what does your intuition say about my home? He looked at his feet and pretended to fix his watch.

Me? What do you mean? He told me stories of being in the jungle, having a sense about a particular place and all. And I went ahead and told him about the bad vibes around the house. My wife's sickness, core-acting strangely. I don't know. Sometimes... I think our house is cursed. I don't want to offend you.

Don't worry. You won't. Peter breathed in through his nose and looked around. Something's off. What do you mean? The kid. I'm sure he's well-behaved and all, and I know he has a medical condition. Ah, hell, I can't be sure. It's intuition, not science.

Still... He cocked his head to one side, debating with himself. It's not usually wrong. He paused again, unsure whether to continue. The boy feels like he's sucking the life out of you. The air hung still. Peter understood my hesitation. Looked back out the windshield, nodded, and continued.

The impression I got from being in that room was that the boy is feeding off you and your wife. That's where he's getting his strength. In a normal environment, the same is true. The child always receives its strength from the parents. But this is different. Let me ask you something. Your wife, she's gotten worse since Corey came, and he's gotten better? Yes.

If I were you, I'd put that boy back in the home, whatever it costs, but do it quickly. Why's that? Because he knows we're talking about him, and he doesn't like it. He motioned with his head toward my upstairs window and then zoomed off. As the exhaust from his truck cleared, I turned and looked upward. something shadowy stood in the foggy moonlight. It had the shape of a hunchbacked boy with a huge head and bug eye. Three weeks later, Sally passed unexpectedly.

Her muscles having weakened to the point of disintegration, her heart, being one big muscle, simply stopped working. The funeral was hot, sunny, and miserable. Only a few distant relatives came. My immediate family was all gone. Sally's family was sparse too, having thinned out over the years. Corey stayed home.

I broke the news to him as soft and as gentle as I could. I swear, he smiled a little. That night I checked his oxygen, which he didn't seem to need it anymore, and head brace, which he also hardly needed. I went out and lit a candle for Sally, and I resolved to keep it burning each night for one year. Then I had a drink that lasted three weeks. Soon after my binge, I awoke one morning with a pain in my neck.

Nothing more. It was one of those sharp pains that burned whenever I turned my head. I could only keep my head straight up and down. All day I felt like a skeleton. When I turned to grab something or speak to a co-worker, the needlepoint pain jabbed in tiny spears up and down my back from my shoulders to the bottom of my spine. My head throbbed.

I couldn't see much because my eyes were watering and my vision had turned cloudy. I could only drive with a hand over one eye. Each red or green light caused brain-shocked agony. The next morning, the vicious pain had dulled to constant pounding. I checked on Corey who looked wet, sweaty. Maybe the temperature had been turned up in the night and he'd been baking. I looked, but the heat was fine.

Corey's temperature was normal, but his concave forehead was fiery to the touch and his breathing more rapid than usual. His eyes had moist droplets surrounding them and his orbs were moving rapidly underneath the spotty lids. As I changed his shirt, my left calf muscle seized and stiffened up. So did the whole left side of my body. I fell, caught myself on Corey's bedside bar, and shifted my weight. The pain was intense. Just like a Charlie horse, it got tighter the more I tried to move. Nothing I did could dislodge the knot inside me,

not even jamming my fist deep into the muscle tissues of my leg until I thought I felt bone. Corey's big brown eyes opened. He stared at me sideways. His half-cracked smile seemed to be conveying some joke only he understood. Krusty white flecks dotted his lips. His tongue, covered in white bacteria, lolled around haphazardly. I shrank and disgusted his splotchy skin and his flaking forehead and eyebrows kicked in dandruff. Some of it fell into his open mouth when he moved.

He either didn't notice or didn't care. He threw his head back in what I think was laughter. Head rolling around on its own in an elongated circular motion. A fresh round of pain shot up the left side of my body up into my face, and the muscles began to droop and hang. My lips, my cheeks, I touched my face, I felt nothing. Numb. Then Corey's leg, his left leg, shot out from under the covers.

The blanket peeled back and out came his knobby knee and emaciated limb. The muscles grew. The calf seemed to generate meat and mass from nowhere. veins and tendons and joints popping up like popcorn. I looked at my leg, felt it. It was shrinking. Muscles were vanishing. I hobbled to the dresser drawer on the opposite side of the room

and grabbed four bungee cords from the bottom drawer. I swung one cord around Corey's left arm and tightened it. I snake both ends around him, hooking them together so they connected behind the gurney. I pulled him tight to hold him in place. He didn't like being constrained and tried to rise from the, bed, but the cord did its job, and Corey couldn't budge. Instead, he turned his head and bellowed a wave of rank breath that poured down my throat.

I nearly vomited, but kept myself composed long enough to strap down Corey's other arm and doubly secure his torso against the bed. I stumbled to the other side of Corey's bed with a third bungee, positioned myself against his strong leg, and hooked one end of the cord under the gurney, I wrapped it twice around his leg. I yanked the cord tight. The veins in his leg bulged. Corey tried to buck wildly, but the restrains worked.

A minute passed. The flesh turned purple. Sally, were you watching? Did you believe that your son was some kind of inhuman parasite? That he'd sapped our strength, sucked it right out of us, and into him? Or was I insane? I pulled harder. Corey's leg bulged and pulsed as red liquid tried to pump through his ever-shinking blood vessels.

Stop! A voice cried out from deep inside me. You're torturing a small boy. He's helpless. Corey had maybe another minute before he permanently lost oxygen flow. His leg would be useless. But my toes, as blood in Corey's leg damned up, blood cascaded through mine like a rushing river from my hip to my souls.

I stood. The feeling restored in the left side of my body. My face tightened, my jaw worked again. Corey's lips were tight and eyes wide, his face still in a semi-paralyzed state. He didn't have the strength to escape the bungeys. From his darting glances from the cords to me, I could tell he was aware of his situation and that he was frightened. He frowned and pouted.

Air came in short, rapid bursts from his nostrils. His leg turned dark purple, the color of desert sunsets. His eyes watered in fright and pain. He begged me to stop with muted. grunts, pleading with me as best he could. Something like words sputtered out, but I wasn't listening. I leaned back, blood running from cuts the bungee court had left on my hands. I didn't care.

My leg had come back completely. Suddenly, the boy's groaning stopped, and he stopped resisting the bungeys. I didn't see it in time. Somehow he'd got his left arm out from under the court. Corey grabbed the heart monitor and yanked it toward him. The stand fell. Corey held on to the device. His lips moved as he whispered under his breath.

His arm shook and his eyes closed. Everything went quiet. A humming. A flash of light from the heart monitor. Elevating a pitch and intensity. Corey's body vibrated with energy faster and faster. Something was whistling inside of him, moving rapidly under his skin.

I caught a whiff of smoke as if someone had lit him match. The smell grew stronger. I looked down. Small wisps of smoke billowed out between the buttons on his shirt and grew cloudy. His body vibrated still faster. Smoke grew thicker and whiter. It came out of his pores like fog rising from a lake. Fire shone through the skin on his face.

His body turned red and orange. Tongs of yellow darted out of his skin. Caught his clothing on fire and singed his flesh. His lips curled around his gritted teeth in a sick, lopsided smile. I leapt back and lunged for the door. When I turned around the fire, it already consumed Corey's body in the bed. A massive pyre burned to the ceiling. Flames grabbed at the drapes and swallowed them completely.

Corey's eyeballs caught fire, melted. Ousing from their sockets and tripping to the floor where they sat like mushy colts and lit the carpet of flame. I ran haphazardly out of the inferno, slamming the door behind me. I remember racing down the stairs and out of the house, driving away. I'm here now in a small motel near Livermore. It's been a month or so. I'll be here a while. Last week, I left work for good.

It seemed like a good time to start over. The insurance company still haven't determined what caused the heart monitor to malfunction. There's not much to do here except catch up on my reading, sit by the pool and smell the cows. But today I'm scrawling this story on hotel stationery because I got some news recently. after the sweep of the rubble, the police said they'd found no evidence of another body. Yes, in very hot fires, the body will burn to almost nothing. But we invariably find teeth or parts of the heart.

In this case, we've found nothing. It doesn't rule out that he's gone. I just can't prove it. I haven't left the room in days. I keep the blinds drawn. I don't let the cleaners in. Maybe I'm insane. I don't care.

Three days ago, my left arm began to cramp, and I woke up the next morning with a familiar stiffness in my neck. They ran from the base of my head to the bottom of my spine. I sit here now, I'll desk. I've lost feeling in my body. I just have the muscles and my fingertips. Scribling words as best I can. My fingers are cramped.

I can't turn my head or even look down, what I'm riding. I only see the wall. This will be where they find me. I don't want to make a sound. Even the scratching of my pen is too much. Everything is shutting down now. I can feel it happening. I can hear him scratching. He's in their room. As the human race explores and learns more about our universe, we are reminded that our own planet has places so unexhaired. explored and mysterious as to be utterly alien to us. As explained by author Jesse Clark, one scientist is tasked to descend to the ocean floor in a newly discovered area which is exponentially deeper than previously known.

Performing this tale is Jesse Cornett. So remember, life finds a way, and knowing that fact we can confirm, the deepest part of the ocean is not empty. Over the course of the last few weeks of training, I'd memorized nearly every facet of the Tuscany, every dial, and every readout, and every knob, and screen and nuance of structure. And the quality of the personal submarine's craftsmanship never ceased to astound me. It was a remarkable feat of engineering, this little beast, designed with such care that even the equipment on the hull could withstand more water pressure

than the sea could muster up at any achievable depth. It was my Pegasus, my Trojan horse, my very own Apollo 11. And inside this matrix of layered syntactic foam, I would follow the ballasts to the gratuitous and unexplored depths of Higgins Ma. I began the separation sequence, and the deep diver fell away from the escort and dipped beneath the surface of the Pacific with silence and grace

and a few knots of speed, and then I was consumed in a whole new world, albeit one I'd frequented, that of the sea. Schools of fish swam on by me, and when their cloud passed through a sunbeam and glended silver, and beneath them swam rays that rolled their wings to the beat of the current, and out in the rocks crowned the crustaceans, and sat the plant life that spruced up all the white-washed stones. They're like holiday ornaments. But I had an appointment to keep, and the oxygen tank was a demanding clock, so I dove right on past the old reef, and out into the open waters where the seabed couldn't be seen for many, many miles yet. The mall, 50,000 feet below the surface, Booker. 50,000. Do you know what that means?

means it's a whole hell of a lot deeper down than the Challenger Abyss. He nodded at that. Are you ready to make history? Was I? I thought I was. I prepared for this lonely dive and nothing else for some years now. It was the culmination of a lifetime of work and study in the field, and so tight was its grip on my mind that I often dreamt of it in my sleep.

of what I'd find at the bottom and what it would mean and what monstrous things might take offense to my presence there. No, I shove that thought aside. Tuscany was all the protection I needed in that regard. It offered technology on the bleeding edge in lieu of a heavy hole,

and that was enough to withstand enough water pressure to crush bones beneath skin and inches of steel. What animal had jaws more powerful than the ocean itself at fathom? So I hit the thrusters, and down I went like a bullet to the pitch. I eyed the depth meter as much as I did the sea. 100 feet, sharks and turtles and uncountable fish swept past me. 300 feet, 500 feet, 700,000. A thousand.

1250, the inverse height of the Empire State Building, 1,500. 16. The water began to blur and grain up and darken as the sunlight struggled to push on through. 2,025, 3,000, 32, where the light no longer shines. I continued the descent for hours. The pressure meter ticked up in spasmed bursts, but up it went, up, soon ticking past the point where the weight of the sea would have crushed the steel of another vessel. One mile down. 1.3.1.6.

Where even sperm whales hit their lowest dive. I could now claim with confidence that no mammal on earth was as deep down at that very moment as myself. And still, I dove two miles. 2.1. The water was as black as space now, except for where the lights of the Tuscany pierced through it, and the thickness of the fluid made it look like ink or oil, or some kind of alien sludge that smeared up against the reinforced windows and slimed its way across the hall.

Things were tight down here, despite the vastness of it all. yet still I dove 13,000 feet The abyssal zone Pressure stands at 11,000 PSI I saw an angler float by It and it was startled by the sheer volume of light spread by the Tuscany That dwarfed its own bioluminescent glow

It swam away And I dove further 15,000 feet three miles three point one things get interesting mankind had visited these depths almost infrequently enough to count the expeditions

on a single pair of hands I was now ranked among an illustrious few explorers and although I wasn't the first to hit these marks I'd hit the deepest one yet before this journey was over I was determined and I was capable so I checked the depth chart 16,281.4 feet. Nearly halfway to the world record, the Tuscany continued its dive.

20,000 feet down, the hattel zone. Pressure here is 1100 times what it is at the surface. 22,000 feet, 26, 29,000 Everest. 30.5. 31. The same distance from the surface as a commercial airliner at the peak of its flight. The challenge are deep. What had previously been the lowest recorded place on the seabed, sat at roughly 36,000 feet below the surface in the depths of the Mariana Trench. No light from the sun had ever come close, and to the best accounts life existed there, but only sparsely, and the pressure is unspeakable.

But I was going somewhere vastly deeper, even than that. All we know is we found a canyon, dwarfs the grand, sitting dead center in the Pacific seabed, about 1,200 kilometers west of Hawaii, and another 900 south, and near as we can figure, some 50,000 feet straight on down. 36,000 feet. I was now tied for the world record. 50,000 feet? Why the hell are we just now seeing?

36.5. I did it. My heartbeat swept up to a faster rhythm. I was officially a world record holder. No human being in recorded history had been as deep below the surface as I was at that very moment. New seabed scanning technology helped. Gave us a more detailed topographical map of the hydrosphere than we've ever had before. And once we got back the results, we took a look and there it was. Just waiting for us, inviting us down. 37. So what's down there?

37-3. Hell, doctor. If we knew that, we wouldn't be sending you, would we? 37-9. I suppose not. 38. 38-5. Higgins Maugh, according to the best information available to me at the time of departure, is a pit, roughly a full kilometer across.

It begins at approximately 46,000 feet below the surface and is estimated to bottom out at Higgins Deep, a small valley that sits at its base. some 5,000 additional feet below that. The maw is the largest and deepest such formation in the hydrosphere, and yet its dimensions and location are the only things concretely known about it. That, of course, is where myself and where the Tuscany come in. 43,000 feet down. I hit the floodlights underneath Tuscany,

and the glow washed over an alien landscape that likely had. hadn't seen light in over a billion years. There were mountains here. Mountains. Ones that rivaled the Alps and the wild arches and plateaus that stretched far off to a murky horizon before being shrouded by seawater. I even saw life down here in the depths. A squid-like thing of simply monstrous size swam on by the Tuscany. It stopped for a moment. And during that moment, I thought it might take offense to me. But after looking hard at the Tuscany and brushing a tentacle down the port side, it swam off in search of other things.

And a girl, I descended further, 44,000 feet, 45. And then, all of a sudden, there it was, the maw. My mouth hung by the jaw as the sheer scope of the beast came into view. It was a breathtaking sight to behold, a monstrously large and equally dark hole in the crust of the earth that plummeted to inconceivable fathoms. I descended a bit further, 45, 5, 46,000 feet. And Tuscany fell into its yawn. Somehow things were even blacker in the depths of the thing, even though sunlight had long since been blotted out. 46-5, 47, 472.

I began to become aware of a low current pulling me downward. It wasn't particularly powerful, but it was unexpected, and it was therefore alarming, and yet I couldn't bear to pull myself back up. Not yet. I'll turn around if it gets bad. So down I went deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper still into the cavern. 48,000 feet, 485, 49, 491, and then I saw it. A glow. I squinted and dimmed my lights to confirm the intuition.

What in a night? name of God. It was there, indeed, a dim reddish purple, then green, then purple again, and then blue, floating on a mist of current some few thousand feet down. I resumed the dive to chase it. 49-5, 49-7, 49-9. The glow, whatever it was, was getting deeper and wider, and brighter. Soon it filled up the whole path down and ahead. I dimmed the Tuscany's underlights to their lowest setting, and by 50,000 feet, I could see that the glow was coming from somewhere not directly beneath me. But off to the left and around a wide corner, this cave isn't a straight pit. And sure enough, the hole bottomed out there and then opened up to its left.

Holy, holy God! It was a cavern chamber, at least a full kilometer up and deep and side to side and across. And only the enormity of its radius maintained the darkness of it, despite the presence of thousands of floating bioluminescent pods that pulsed purple and green and blue and red and dimmed in the interim. I took the Tuscany in deeper and her camera's word to life. The cavern became darker still when the pods faded into the water behind the ship. But there were more things to be seen here than rocks. Tuscany, about a quarter hour after entering the chamber,

soon floated on by a bizarrely rope-like plant of utterly impossible size, one that appeared to stretch nearly across the height of the cave and grew wider at the base, although the bottom of it was shrouded in blackness. I took the submarine in for a closer inspection and hit her lights to their fullest setting. My heartbeat slammed. There were suction cups on it, each one as big as the Tuscany herself. And they writhed and pulsed across and down the full length of what was now very clearly, a tentacle. I shoved Tuscany back and away from the thing.

But when I tried to turn her around, the base of the hull colloquy. with the beast and stuck fast to one of its cups. I gunned the thrusters and could hear a wet tearing sound as the machine ripped itself free from the cup's grasp. But then the tentacle came to life. It whipped and whirled and smacked around the cavern and pressed itself to the roof and then it fell down. Deep beyond where the darkness blanketed the floor, the thrusters again. And Tuscany rocketed off the way it came through the darkness. sent off towards the ponds, whose glow I hoped would afford me an opportunity to shut the lights off

the ship and make my escape, if I were so lucky. But very soon I began to hear and feel the movement of something, unspeakably titanic, rolling across the floor of the chamber, rumbled and thundered, and shuddered and shook, and soon clouds of dirt and rock flew up out of the black pitch and blanketed the view forward, and I could hear boulders smack against the ceiling of the cave, before sinking again to where they'd been. The sound had erupted across the entire breadth of the cave. My eardrums nearly burst and likely would have had it not been for muffling of the explosion provided by the walls of the Tuscany. The submarine shook, too, but she held up her integrity well enough for me to fly on past the floating pods. and back towards the yawning mouth of the tunnel that would take me back out into the open deep sea.

The Tuscany buckled and rolled with an impact. The tentacle, I realized, had shot up from the ground and hit the bottom of the ship between her ballasts. But luckily it knocked her with force up towards the tunnel. I rolled Tuscany with a hit and managed to regain some control, and I boosted the thrusters into the turn and up again, now back into the maw. Then I began to climb. 52,000 feet, 51, 515. Can you fail me now.

Hell, doctor, if we knew that, we wouldn't be sending you, would wait? 50.5, 50, 49, 496. Tuscany ascended with panic speed, and all the while she did it, I could feel the rumbling of the tentacles pursued in the walls of the pit. It smashed its way on through the tunnel and whipped and thrashed, but Tuscany was too quick a runner. 47-5, 47, 468, 464, 46,000 feet and climbing high. Tuscany burst out of the mall and was about to rocket straight on back up to the surface.

But then the tentacle flew out beside her and nearly smashed. in her front window. I bent the controls to the edge of their set casing, and Tuscany tanked to the left and up a bit, and missed the ground by inches. I hit the lights again to navigate the labyrinth of rocks as I struggled to remount the climb. But in the light of the ship, I saw it.

These weren't rocks, after all. They weren't other ships. Massive vessels, Imperial warships from ages past, bent and crooked and broken at the bottom of the sea, pulled down here by whatever it was that now threw its back to my devouring. The tentacle smashed along behind me. Mainmasts and battlemen and flat decks and rusted iron and wooden boat hulls were splintered up and tossed to the winds of the sea, never again to reconvene.

I took Tuscany through this nautical graveyard with far, far too much speed for my safety. Under ship's towers, we went, and threw cannon mounts and past the blades of dead engines and around upended rudders. The cacophony of my flight and the destructive paths set by my hunter awoke the life in the place. Fish washed out of holes and cabins and captain's quarters and deep-deck stair flights and soon joined me. me and my effort to escape. But it seemed there was no escape to be found here. The entire ground for countless miles shook and rumbled with seismic force.

It was thunderously loud, and it picked up speed in violence with time. Tuscany finally flew up to miss a splinter crow's nest atop a mast by less than a foot, and finally used that directed momentum to put away distance between the seabed and herself with as many knots of speed as her thrusters would allow without bursting from the effort. The depth chart began to rise. 459, 452, 45,000 feet, 448. You mother fucking. The water itself seemed to shift with the sound.

And then, out of nowhere, Tuscany was no longer the only thing spilling light to the abyss. An orange glow flashed across the sea and for an instant. illuminated nearly the entirety of its vastness. Then it blinked, and then flicked on again and stayed active. I shut off Tuscany's lights to preserve every molecule of power for the ascent. 44-4-4-37. Beside me in the glow, I could make out other creatures retreating to. One's of spectacular size.

Again, that mankind had never catalogued and that I sadly would not have. have time at all to study. There was city bus-sized manoray-shaped things, wrapped up in clouded wisps of transparent jelly, and even that squid the size of a building, all flying upwards in a mass panic. I led the charge. 3.42 looked behind me and down through the rear window. The maw had moved. It was alive. God Almighty! I was in the Leviathan's throat. I was in his fucking throat!

I saw its tentacle tongue lash out of the maw and collect enough fish to feed a small town. Tuscany rocketed ever upwards as the Leviathan whipped even larger tentacles behind it and gained speed with the force of a hurricane. Leviathan opened its maw yet again and spewed forth its tentacle tongue, and with it, it whipped up several Olympic swimming pools worth of water into a gale force maelstrom. The mammoth squid was caught in its fury. I saw, and then it vanished into the pit forever when the maw snapped shut with a thunderous echoed.

Tuscany, meanwhile, continued to rocket upwards and managed to escape the whirlpool by a foot. 8,000 feet and climbing. But the Leviathan pursued me relentlessly, riding on the flood of its own current. Its tentacles, each dozens of feet across and a mile long, beat the water back and tried to gain speed for their host. 37, 37, 36, 4. Tuscany had proved her worth with speed,

and the pressure gauge now fell in jumps. It remained in the red and wood for some time, but it was falling steadily, even as the depth chart rose. 29,000 feet, 28, 3, 275. But the Leviathan hadn't given up the chase. It doubling its efforts. The displaced water rocked the Tuscany, and she buckled and rolled in the synthetic current. And then I heard the maw open up behind me and the water began to whip and swirl itself into. a frenzy by the ocean load. I punched the thrusters to breaking point. The encasing syntactic

foam was pressed to its limits. The reinforced glass began to chip ever so slightly, but the chips broke into cracks, and those cracks began to crawl across the width of the windows. I checked the gauges. 20,000 feet, 198, 194, 193. The ascent. Come on, baby. Come on, come on, come on, come on, please. Now! In the orange glow of the Leviathan's eyes, I could see how quickly the water was slipping by Tuscany and getting swept up into the maelstrom. The submarine began to sway port to starboard and shudder and shake. 174. 17,000. 169, 16,3, 16, 1. 16,000. I watched the gauge with a nauseating desperation.

1595. 1592. I could feel her slowing to a crawl. Come on, come on! 15925, 1594, 1596. And that was it. Tuscany was caught. and no sooner did the depth chart begin to slip, then did I feel the whole submarine lose all sense of control and tumble backwards and around. I was thrown out of my seat and smacked my nose against the roof of the pilot's sphere.

Blood exploded, and it drenched my shirt and sprayed the glass in the entirety of the control set. I grabbed my face and began to apply pressure to slow the blood loss. The Tuscany again flipped ballast over ballast to starboard in the whirlpool. spilled me into the hatch ladder. I felt my shoulder dislocating my kneecap smack into the bottom room. My head swam, and still Tuscany tumbled backwards. The cracks on the window spread faster, the inside of the maw through the hull of the ship. But then, all at once, and not a moment too soon, I got an idea. It wasn't a particularly good one. Hell, it was better than nothing. I managed to

to limp and tumble my way to the controls and grip the handles as the ship rolled. The sound of the roar was so close every last control surface in the sphere rattled in its case. My eardrums rattled too. But then I flared up the thrusters again, full blast and at an angle, and the Tuscany shuddered and flipped and shook. And with fortune, fell straight out of the maelstrom with inches to spare. I felt the edge of the Leviathan's maug raised the starboard side, and the impact again sent me into the roof while the ship rolled end over end over end.

I smacked my ribs up on a dip in the alcove and fell back down into the seat, head first, and then out onto the floor. I managed to ride myself with my good arm and get my bearings. I was free, but only just. The Tuscany banked and tumbled again and rolled, slower now in the absence of the whirlpool's flood current, but not yet in control of its pull. I tried to steer away, but it was useless. The ship flipped around the back of the Leviathan's Titanic Maugh

and up over its head as the beast flew on by underneath me like a freight train. And for the first time since catching the monster's eye, I began to fully appreciate the magnitude of its size. Its back was an endless, snake-like, and sharp. fin spine the size of a minor mountain range. An only quick maneuvering moved Tuscany away from the jagged back fins that chugged up towards me and sliced open the sea itself. They missed me by feet and the blast of the current they'd swept up, sent the submarine reeling backwards off a bit further and into relative safety. I quickly dimmed the lights to their lowest setting and caught my breath.

As the full form of the Leviathan washed on past me, it was stretched far away into the abyss below for well over a mile, and dragging away behind it were thousands upon thousands of tentacles, a forest of the things, each the size of a six-lane highway and tipped with razor-sharp hooks and a flurry of winged fins. It took a full three minutes for the beast to pass me by full full. fully. And then it curved around in the other direction and swam off in search of other things

to devour. The form soon slipped away into a shadow. I surfaced hours later, having allowed the battered Tuscany to take its time with the journey. She was solely responsible for my escape. My quick thinking be damned. A marvel of engineering indeed. Once I did break the surface, I dispersed the distress beacon and then promptly collapsed from exhaustion. Evidently, I was picked up by the Coast Guard some hours after that, a few hundred miles southeast of Hawaii, and pulled from the near wreckage of my submarine and taken to a hospital on the mainland. It was there that I woke up a full day later. As I recovered, I heard some isolated chatter of tremendous seismic activity near where I'd been.

Now the whole ocean floor had changed and moved and shifted form. But I couldn't care less. I told the bastards what I knew. And on top of that, they have the Tuscany. And they have all the recorded evidence. And you now have this written account. What everyone does with this information now is entirely up to them. All I know is that I won't be doing any more diving any time so.

I come to a realization that mankind has more than enough space to expand throughout and live upon and thrive in above and near the surface and on land and in the skies and soon hopefully out there amongst the stars. But that hold ownership of the deep. and perhaps it's best to leave it that way for all our sakes. And so, another episode has drawn to a close and our nightmares dissolve. If you would like to find out how you can hear the full-length versions

of our audio program, please visit the no-sleeppodcast.com to learn about our season 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.

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