The NoSleep Podcast - S18 Ep20: NoSleep Podcast S18E20

Episode Date: November 13, 2022

Tune in to Episode 20 of Season 18 for creepy collectibles.“Estate Sale Haul” written by William Stuart (Story starts around 00:02:10)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Operator – Graham Rowat, Caller – Jesse Cornett“I Found It at the Record Store” written by Matt Bliss (Story starts around 00:07:35)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator – Matthew Bradford, Boy – Elie Hirschman, Man – Peter Lewis“A Piece of the Sky” written by Warren Benedetto (Story starts around 00:33:05)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator – Jake Benson“L’Appel du Vide” written by Charlie D’Aniello (Story starts around 00:42:00)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Friend – Jesse Cornett, Interviewer – Kyle Akers, Winston – Jeff Clement"This Book Will Kill You - The Final Part" written by Alexander Gordon Smith (Story starts around 01:09:30)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Jessica McEvoy as Tommi Bright, Jake Benson as the Feathered Thing, and Erika Sanderson as The Witch“D197” written by Tom W. Miller (Story starts around 01:05:35)Produced by: Jeff ClementCast: Manny – Mick Wingert, Manager – David Cummings, Vince – Elie Hirschman“Little Stone Hearts” written by Ryan Peacock (Story starts around 01:27:00)Produced by: Jesse CornettCast: Vic – Dan Zappulla, Aron – Atticus Jackson, Emma – Sarah Ruth Thomas, Old Woman – Erin LillisThis episode is sponsored by:ZocDoc - Zocdoc is a free app that shows you doctors who are patient-reviewed, take your insurance, and are available when you need them. Go to Zocdoc.com/nosleep and download the Zocdoc app for free. Then start your search for a top-rated doctor today.Betterhelp - This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/nosleep and get on your way to being your best self.Click here to learn more about The NoSleep Podcast teamClick here to learn more about Warren BenedettoExecutive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon Boone“Little Stone Hearts” illustration courtesy of Thea ArnmanAudio program ©2022 – 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

The No Sleep Podcast has reached episode 20 of season 18. It'll be over before you know it. S-18, E-20, B-4, sounds like a game of battleship. You remember that game, right? Battleship is a fun board game a lot of us used to play as kids. As an adult, calendar battleship is the frustrating game you play with your doctor, trying to find when you're both free for an appointment, like in three months. But with Zoc Doc, booking an appointment with a doctor.

doctor that suits your needs, fits your schedule, is in your network and in your neighborhood, is easy. Zoc Doc is a free app that shows you doctors who are patient reviewed, take your insurance, and are available when you need them. On Zoc Doc, you can find every specialist under the sun. Whether you're trying to straighten those teeth, fix that achy back, get that mole checked out or anything else. Zoc Doc has you covered. Zoc Doc's mobile app is as easy as ordering a ride to a restaurant or getting delivery to your house. Search, find, and book doctors with a few taps. Find and review local doctors.

Read verified patient reviews from real people who made real appointments. Now, when you walk into that doctor's office, you're all set to see someone in your network who gets you. Go to Zocdoc.com. Find the doctor that's right for you and book an appointment. In person or remotely, that works for your schedule. Every month, millions of people use Zocdoc. Zoc Doc. Make it your go-toe whenever you need to find and book a quality doctor. Go to Zocdoch.com slash no sleep and download the Zocdoc app for free.

Then start your search for a top-rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. That's Z-O-C-D-C dot com slash no sleep. Pretty simple. Zocdoc.com slash no sleep. And now it's time for horror. It's an emergency. It's your emergency?

I need someone right now. Idiot danger? Can you get away from the location? I don't know. I think someone's here. In your house, with you? Yes. I've dispatched an officer to your location.

Please stay on the line until they arrive. Okay. Can you tell me anything else? Anything for the officers to know? It's videotape. Come again? A videotape? I bought a box of old VHS tapes

at an estate sale, horror and comedy stuff from the 80s. Police are on their way. What about the tape? One of them was homemade, recorded. It was a bunch of random kills and scenes from old horror movies. Like a super cut you'd see on YouTube, you know? But it's really old. Then it changed other scenes of people being killed and it looked real.

Like a real killer. filming his crimes. Like a snuff film, you know? But with lots of kills. One after another. And you feel you may be in danger from the person who made the tape? Um, like after the last kill on the tape, the scene changed. Now it's showing the inside of my apartment.

I can see myself on the couch, on the phone. Like the TV is filming me. Oh my God, I'm so scared. Please stay calm. Look, I know it sounds crazy, but I'm telling the truth. I understand. The police are almost there. I just need you to stay calm and answer one more question.

Can you do that for me? The dark hours when you dare not close your eyes. Tales of horror to frighten and disturb. What's that sound you hear from beneath your bed? did. Join us as the sleepless hours tick past. Brace yourself for the no-sleep podcast. VHS tapes have poor quality video and audio, best to be avoided, especially the ones that will kill you. That's what we learned from author William Stewart, from the tale which

was this episode's cold open. Estate Sale Hall, performed by Graham Rowett and Jesse Cornett. I want to start this episode by sending my heartfelt thanks to everyone who joined us at the Stanley Hotel last weekend. From the cast who performed marvelously to the many writers who showed up and shared their excellent tales with us. Of course, to Mike, Kate, and Samantha, who were so delightful and fun. And most of all to the fans who attended and made us all feel so loved and appreciated,

it was such an amazingly special event. And who knows, maybe we'll do it again next year. I hope we can return to the Haunted Stanley Hotel for a weekend of sleepless delights. And speaking of being delightfully sleepless, I trust we're all still alive, well, for now. This week features the final chapter of the series, This Book Will Kill You. Alexander Gordon Smith's epic tale has reached the end. We hope you've enjoyed it. Well, maybe enjoyed isn't the right word.

Let's just say, we hope you're all going to survive it. A big thanks to Alexander for writing it, and to Jessica McAvoy for adapting and starring in it. To all involved, thanks for entertaining us, before killing us. And now, check under the bed and pull the sheets up tight. The darkness is here, but you'll be sleepless tonight. In our first tale, we meet a man who prides himself on finding,

the most unique and rare vinyl records, not just the classics of rock and jazz, but the really rare audio that's been almost lost to time. But in this tale, shared with us by author Matt Bliss, upon purchasing an unlabeled record, he discovers that the audio holds deep, dark secrets therein. Performing this tale are Matthew Bradford,

Ellie Hirschman, and Peter Lewis. So let's listen, listen. closely to the tale, as the man tells us, I found it at the record store. I like to think I have a keen eye for rarities. Somehow, every time my fingers flick through the weathered sleeves in the back of a shop, I always find that one gym. That one overlook record that alluded not only the eye of the store's clerk, but every other person who browsed past it.

This time was different. I could tell it was different the moment my fingertips touched it. It just felt different. The paper jacket was sharp, jagged at the end. It isn't a good sign, but it did catch my attention. The plain yellow covering had seen better days, and those days were probably a very long time ago. It practically fell from the sleeve into my hand,

running to me like it wanted me to have it. There were no label visible, no markings. I held it to the light and examined it. Slightly warped, but for its age, pretty clean. No scratches, scuffs or skate marks, and also no track brakes in the grooves. Just one long recording. Strange. It was a very old, very clean, mystery record. And it was only 50 cents. Well worth it. I went to place it back in the sleeve, and that's when I noticed there was something else inside. I tilted the jacket and shook until it slid free, falling like a leaf from a tree.

A photograph. The dated black and white picture lay face down on the floor. My heart pounded like a bait strum as I picked it up. In my years of digging, I found some strange stuff hidden in records. Money, concert tickets, drugs. I always like finding those things, but I never come across anything like this before. It was a weathered picture of a boy, wearing a long-forgotten style of clothes, leaning against a tombstone.

His eyes were solid white in that weird way eyes looked in old photos. I shivered at the sight. Just an old photo, I told myself, but something about it seemed to crawl under my skin. The boys look, the grave, the odd place that I found it. It was unsettling. I mean, it could have been anyone. Maybe even my grandpa as a child, standing at someone's grave on a farm. The farmhouse behind him did look familiar, didn't it?

It wasn't, and it did it. I glanced around and no one was watching, so I slipped the picture into my pocket. I tossed the record in a stack with a few more randomly selected records and went to the register. 50 cents, I thought as he rang it up, a deal for any record. But what in the hell was this one? Noodles came right up to me when I got home. His meowing echoed in the empty place as he rubbed himself around my ankle. At least she didn't take you.

I brushed the side of his cheek and scooped him up. Or you, I said, stepping inside my vinyl stuffed den. I mean, it was all I had now, my turntables, my record collection, and my cat. My ex took everything for me, but I would never let her take those things. I put noodles on his perch by the window and pulled the mystery record from under my arm. I looked it over again and held it up to noodles. What do you think, huh? Tommy Johnson, Frank Wilson.

He held his leg up and started licking it in that weird way cats do. Thanks, real helpful. I set the record down and removed the picture. My veins ran cold at the sight of it. Why? What was it about this one that seemed so different? I turned it over, nothing on the back. The picture had to be 80, 90 years old.

What did that say about the record? I set the photo on a shelf above the turntables. I mean, it felt like the boy was watching me while I held this strange record to my eye. I flipped it over, only this time I noticed a faint A scratched by hand near the spot a label would be. I placed it on the turntable, A side up, and flipped the knob, bringing the disc to life. It wobbled as it spun, waving with that warping I noticed earlier. I switched to line one on the mixer, slid the fader left, and thumbed the volume to a comfortable. for. All right, here we go, Newt. I looked over, but he was gone. Cats. I reached toward the

needle, ignoring the small tremble in my hand. I felt like this before when putting on a record, but it was usually from excitement. Not like this. I was afraid, actually afraid for some reason. I swung the arm over as carefully as my hand would allow and placed the needle at the record's edge. A short thump of bass sounded as the needle touched the vinyl and bobbed with its movements. I held my breath until the pop and hiss came through the speakers. Every time I hear that sound, I feel a warm fuzz surged through me. And even then, under the nervousness, I was buzzing with excitement. I was probably the first person to hear this thing in almost a hundred years.

I leaned closer. The static grew louder. I focused my ear and slid the volume up ahead. There was nothing until suddenly screams erupted from the speakers. I jumped back as the blood-curdling sound continued. Harsh, painful cries rumbled across the speakers. I ripped the needle off the record, letting it squeal as I dragged it across the grooves. What the hell?

I recoiled away from the table as the record continued to spin. I was out of breath, ear still ringing with the sound, and I could feel my heartbeat in my throat. I waited a moment just watching it, trying to slow my pulse. To process what it was I heard. I mean, those screams, it sounded like pure torture. I've heard screams in songs before, but this wasn't that. This was pain, pure distilled suffering, carved into wax.

I approached the table as if it might reach up and grab me. Slowly I flipped the power switch and watch the record creep to a halt. I stared at the black circle with even more questions now. I let out of flimsy breath and looked to the picture on the shelf. He moved. The boy in the picture turned his lifeless eyes towards me, smiled, and then waved. What is happening to me? I paced outside the closed door to the den, too afraid to go back inside.

Was I going crazy? Pictures don't move. Records don't scream. I knew there was something funny about that damn right. record, only I didn't expect this. I couldn't get it out of my head. The picture moved. I'd seen it before running and splashing water on my face, and it didn't make sense. I stood at the door, convincing myself that I was wrong. I mean, I had to be, because the only other explanation was bad. I pulled myself together and opened the door. The room looked the same. A good sign,

I thought. I walked to the table and looked at the picture. There he was, the boy, standing in the same position and definitely not moving. Okay, so maybe I'm tripping. I looked to the record on the turntable. Maybe it was laced with Fells D or released some talks in that messed with my head. The only way to find out would be to listen again. I had to see what in the hell it was. I had to know for sure. So, again, I flick the power on and the record spun to life. I lowered the volume and then reached for the needle's arm. The record hissed with static as I lowered the needle to its edge, and I waited. Screams rang over the fuzz once again, and the sounds were just as painful. They heard. Each throat-shattering scream sent a wave of torment through my chest. I wanted to stop it.

I wanted to rip the record off the table and break it. I reached for the record when suddenly it all went quiet. I paused, leaning in as tears filled my eyes when the men surround me. Their faces hidden by the hoods of their cloaks, but I know who they are. I know what they want. They speak words I don't know. They speak as one. The liquid falls on me.

It burns. My inside scream. More burning. I writhe as they watch. The thing inside me. grows with rage. I don't want it here. Their books close with a puff of dust. It's closer now. I see the glints of their blade. They raise it. I scream. My inside scream. Something crackles beside me. The blade moves. The sound grows louder, repeating, pushing the darkness away until I hear.

The record clicked and repeated, spinning at its end. I was on the floor of my den, sweat dripping from my face. It wasn't a dream, though. I was there. I watched it happen to me, my body, the burning inside it. I placed a hand to my gut, feeling for anything stirring inside. Nothing. I rose to turn off the turntable and looked to the photo. The boy was gone. The grave, the farm, it was all there, but the boy had disappeared. I took the photo from the shelf. watching it, waiting for something to move again. It didn't. Something was written on the other side.

166 Forrest Glen. This definitely wasn't there before. I would have noticed it. I sat down the picture and wiped away tears. I had no idea what was happening, but now I knew where to look to find out. Asking my ex to watch noodles was a hard pill to swallow, but I had no other choice.

And after a day and a half of driving through the middle of nowhere, I ended up on the remains of a farm. Fields were swampy now, but I followed an old path through a rusted fence until it led me to a house with the same address. Windows long since boarded over were tagged by some adventurous graffiti artists. I walked around the place, pressing through the tall weeds and listening to the insect noises from inside. sunlight filtered through the trees as the breeze chilled the sweat clinging to my skin. Not once did I stop to think, what am I doing? I mean, it all seemed normal, dropping everything, driving across two states, and circling an abandoned farmhouse because I found the address on a picture that used to show a boy,

but he disappeared when I listened to a screaming record. You know, totally normal. I held out the photo and scanned the scenery. circling around the back of the house with a picture raised, trying to line it up with reality. Suddenly, there it was. The tree matched, the crumpled remains of a barn behind it matched, and sticking up from the ground, right where it should be, was the tombstone. I practically dropped the picture.

I walked forward, flicking between what I saw around me in the photo, until the scene matched up. This is where they took the picture. I said aloud as if the boy was a little. listening. I expected him to be there with me. He wasn't. I moved forward until I stood over the grave and kneeled to read the inscription. May his sacrifice be our rapture. No name, no dates, just the one ominous line. I reached down to touch it and as my fingertips brushed the stone, screams erupted inside me. The same screams from the record. I jumped back and covered my ears,

but still I heard them. I could feel them, as if someone dragged my body across the grooves of a record and the sound reverberated from within. Visions carved into my head like a needle on wax. Suddenly, I knew what to do. I fell to my knees and clawed at the soil, scraping against a stony ground. My fingers stood rigid like claws, scratching until the top layer cleared away and rasped against the underlying wood.

Splinters raised up like needles across the grailts. I pushed the remainder of dirt aside until I could trace the wooden edges. A small square with a rust-stained ring on one side. I grabbed the ring and pulled. The hinges screamed like the record as a door swung open with a shutter of air. Dirt plumed around me. I waved a hand at the cloud, choking on the dusty taste. Grit blurred my eyes, but I could see wooden steps disappearing into the darkness below the headstone.

He was down there. I told myself, I feel him calling, I feel his pain, even from the past. The light from my phone was barely enough to see by, but it was all I had. Grit blurred my eyes, but I could see wooden steps disappearing into the darkness below the headstone. He was down there, I told myself. I feel him calling, I feel his pain, even from the past. The light from my phone was barely enough to see by, but it was all I had.

The space lit up in a faint blue glow, revealing stairs in a tunnel beyond. I put my foot on the first step and tested it with my way and held. I stepped down underneath the grave, listening to the wooden groan of each board along the way. The air was stale in my lungs, a forgotten place, refusing to succumb to time. Posts braced earthen walls, walls that could collapse at any moment. I yam the light toward the end of the tunnel and saw the gleam of red paints in the distance. I moved closer, each step crunching under the pounding of my pulse. I reached the door at its end.

Red paint gleamed among the gray boards, a symbol painted on its surface, six lines that met to a point at the bottom, with an arc running through them. I raised my hand to touch it at Scott. I couldn't know if it would be like the record or the two. tombstone, the touch alone would plague me with its visions. But there was no going back. I put my hand on the wood and felt nothing grit, so I pushed it open. It swung open without a sound, unveiling a room that was dark, cold, and much bigger than I would have imagined. I walked inside, my breath reverberating off the layered brick walls. Each stone must have been hand-laid,

and much care was taken to keep the room concealed. I scanned the blackness with the light, taking in the open space in its fetid air. Were you down here? I asked, listening to my voice echo across the room. I looked at the picture, still grasped in my sweaty hand, but he still wasn't there. I moved towards the center, letting the light trace over an oversized stone slab, and I saw him. Bones. That's all he was now. Bones left and forgotten. Until me.

Until I found him, much like the forgotten records that everyone browsed past, not recognizing them for what they were. Until I did, I was always the one to find the lost and forgotten. That's why he called to me. That's why I found his record. I looked at his remains and my heart panged with sadness. Only a child, laying with hands crossed at his chest. They did this, too. People you knew, people you loved. They did this and left you here. I held up the photo and looked inside.

There he was. Holding the photo above his remains, the boy's image moved from behind the tree. It walked across the scenery, pausing, jumping, moving in quick jerky motions. I tried to blink away the discomfort and drop the picture. It fluttered down to his corpse like a butterfly. My feet plodded back while I watched him move closer. Slowly, he shifted his way toward the front of the frame until taking up the entire image. His eyes were still white, and they never seemed to leave me.

Back pressed against a stone pillar, I watched the boy reach through and grabbed the edges of the frame. His gray fingers jutted from the photo, sculptures come to life, worms wriggling for a hold. They grasped the sides and pulled it wider, stretching until his head burst through the opening. His eyes never left me. I was stuck to the stone, petrified by the sight before me. The boy pulled his shoulders over the frame, gray sullen skin climbing into reality, joints twisting in strange ways as his body squirmed through the window to the past. He rose above the picture and stood over his course.

Still, he watched me. I wanted to run. Every part of my insides telling me to get as far away from that boy, that thing as quickly as I could. I didn't. He lunged off the table, surging straight for me. I shrewled back and turned away, pressing my eyes shut, too afraid to watch. He spoke in a breath like whisper.

It was soft and warm, like the static on a record. I lifted my eyes. He stood in front of me, wearing a smile from ear to ear below colorless eyes. He stepped to the stone slab and lay a hand on the bones. his bones. He looked at the remains with a hint of sadness, but still held the smile. I'd moved to him. But when I stepped from the pillar, his mouth open with a crack.

His jaw widened, distended, and he tilted up to the ceiling. Black mist escaped from the glowing hole, pouring from the bits and pieces within him as his image slowly faded into the stream. The remains before him did the same, turning black, twisting, rising into the air. like burnt ash. I watched his body, his image, his spirit rise into the ether and fade from existence. It only took a moment before there was nothing left but a stone slab and faded photograph. I wiped the wetness for my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt. I mean, it was beautiful. I felt like I truly saved him. And the thought of him trapped in there for so many years, abandoned, forgotten, waiting for someone to set him free.

It was all so sad. And yet my heart swelled with the thought that I was able to set him free. I was able to save him to rescue the forgotten, as I've always tried to do. Goodbye, I said with a hand on the slab, and I turned to leave, feeling satisfied that I played my part. It had been pouring rain the whole trip back, and I was just thankful to have survived the white-knuckle drive. Pst, I called out as I stepped inside. Noodles, I'm back, buddy.

He didn't come. I poked my head around the bare place. He didn't show himself. Odd, I thought. Wondering if my ex finally took him, too. I quickly opened the door to the den and stepped inside. My records were still there. At least she didn't take them.

I relaxed, but only a moment, before I heard the sound from the speakers. A repeating soft crackle followed by a wump, the sound of a needle riding the end of the record as it spawned. I tread it to the turntable,

and sure enough, there it was. The mystery record, spinning on top with a needle at its end. The crackle, the wump, playing again and again.

Did I leave the record on the table? Surely I would never be so careless to leave it playing like that. I pressed stop on the player and watched it wind down, staring at it. After the whole ordeal with the boy, I thought the record would just vanish or turn a black mist or something. But there it was. I leaned closer. The line scratched on it, the A weren't there. This was the B side. It struck me then that I hadn't listened to the B side. I reached down and carefully lifted the needle, moving the arm, and instead of placing it back on its rest,

setting it at the start of the grooves. I powered on the turntable. Again, pops and warm static filled the room. I watched the record spin. I'm the rise and fall of the disc, and I waited. This time, I didn't hear the screams that I expected on the other side, but instead it was a voice, a man's voice. Chosen be the one who hears the screams of the forsaken

and rises to the call of the banished. Only then will the circle be complete. I turn the volume up higher and let the chill rise up my spine. Let the old one call to him from the screams of beyond. Let the realm be opened to release his wrath upon us.

Wait, what? Her knochfragium mermente. Thunder crack like a wist, above me. Just strange timing, I suppose. I looked up to the window to see what was happening outside. I was taken aback by the sight of noodles, sitting on his perch growling at me. Noodles? Erknoch fragia mermente. He hissed at me. But he hits me. Don't...

But I stopped, because when I stepped closer, I looked out to the sea. sky outside. It was dark, with clouds swirling in the distance. Let him come in the form he chooses. Let him open the portal and bring forth the dominion of old. Let him come. Nudel swatted at me before darting away, leaving only the window in the swirling red sky outside. But what startled me the most was my own thin reflection looking back. at me. My eyes were cloudy and white. They watched me through the static, and just then, my own reflection waved at me, just like the boy in the photo. Lightning cracked again and split the sky into spilling black mist from the void at its center. If my years of digging through used records

have taught me anything, it's that you always listen to the B-side first. Yet as I watch the horde creatures pour from the void in the sky. My own reflection smiled, staring back through static, filled eyes. He was part of me now, no longer forgotten, no longer lost, or waiting for a collector. Now he was free. And together we watched and listen as the screams of beyond played a rarity of its own. If your job involves going to remote places to collect things for the company, you might think it's okay if you bring home some souvenirs. Nothing wrong with a little gift for the kids, right? Well, in this tale, shared with us by author Warren Benedetto, we meet a man whose job is really out there as an asteroid miner, and he recounts the fallout from a co-worker who decides

to bring home a souvenir from way, way out there. Performing this tale is Jake Benson. So stick to bringing home a little trinket or a t-shirt, the last thing you should bring home is a piece of the sky. With all due respect, sir, you don't know what you're talking about. There was no way Bakerley could have known what the thing was when he picked it up. It looked like a rock. Hell, it was a rock. Just the hunk of the asteroid's crust that he grabbed as a souvenir for his kid. There's no way he could have known it was a nest.

I'm telling you, there was nothing, nothing out of the order. about the thing. It was small enough to fit into his chest pack. That was all. That's why he picked it up. I think he said something about how Evie, that's his daughter, about how Evie would love it. It was tar black, with some gold flecks in it, that sparkled like stars in the light from his headlamp. He said it looked like a chunk of the universe had broken off right in his hand. That's what he was going to tell Evie, that he had brought her a piece of the sky. Maybe if he'd dropped the rock into his hip-pack instead, none of this would have happened. I don't know.

The chest pack. It was right up against his body. I think the things must have sensed his body heat, or maybe his heartbeat, or his breathing. Whatever it was, something woke them. Something made them hatch. Something made them hungry. We were talking about Evie when it happened. He was telling me about the latest videos his wife had uploaded,

about how much bigger Evie had gotten in the two years since he'd last been home. She had turned two right before he left, and now she was celebrating her fourth birthday. That's why he picked up the rock. He promised he'd bring her something extra special as a surprise. He sent her a whole video about it, making it sound like he was on a great adventure, a big deal treasure hunt instead of a non-union mining expedition. God, he loved that kid so much. He just wanted to make her happy and proud.

He really wanted her to have something to show off to her friends, to prove that her dad really did go to work in outer space. What better way to do that than to bring home a piece of the sky? Yeah, I know about the protocols, but I hate to break it to you, sir. Nobody gives a fuck about the protocols. Who cares if we pick up a rock or two? We did stuff like that all the time. Everyone does, the whole crew. On every new expedition, we'd bring something home with us.

I've got a whole drawer full of rocks at my place. Ceres, Themis, Fortuna, Juno, two from Juno, actually. Nothing bad ever happened. Nobody ever got hurt. Right, sir. Until now. I say it was maybe two or three minutes from the time he put the rock into his pack to when he started to scream. It was behind me when he fell, so I didn't see him go down.

I just heard him yell. When I turned around, he was already on the ground, rolling on his back and pouring at his visor. I ran to him to see if I could help. I thought maybe he had a breach in his suit. Like maybe he was losing oxygen or something. But it wasn't that. It was worse. It was so much worse.

They were eating his face, man. Dozens of him. Rithing, rust-colored worms just devouring him alive inside his helmet. Each one was as thick as my finger, with a segmented body and a mouth full of pin-sharp iron teeth. And I could hear them. His might was turned on, so there was this sound, this wet crunching and squelching that was like, I don't know, like the sound your boots make

in muddy gravel during a rainstorm. It wasn't gravel. It was bone. Skin and muscle and bone. All of it being gnashed into a pulp by those horrible churning moors. Mostly what I heard, though, were his screams. The mics and our helmets aren't designed for that kind of sound at that volume, so the shrieks were so distorted.

that they barely sounded human. The noise made me flash back to the day when my dad took me to visit my uncle at the slaughterhouse where he worked. It was like the sound of dozens of terrified pigs, all of them squealing at once as they realized what was about to happen to them. It was the sound of abject terror,

of mortal fear. Then, just as suddenly as the screaming had started, it stopped. The inside of Bakely's visor was so smeared with blood and gore that I couldn't see through it anymore. But based on the sound, I could guess what had happened. The worms had forced their way into his mouth. I could hear him gurgling, strangling on his own blood, trying desperately to draw a breath as the worms chewed through his tongue and into his throat.

Bakely was my friend, sir. He was like a brother to me. You have to know that. I want to do what I did. but I had no choice. Things were eating him, but they weren't killing him. Not fast enough anyway.

He was in so much pain. I guess he would have bled out eventually, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time. I was thinking about Evie, about how some day she was going to ask me how her father died. What was I supposed to tell her? I couldn't tell her the truth. I couldn't tell her what I saw, what I heard.

The only thing I could say was that I didn't let him suffer. So, yes, sir. I cut his throat. I had to. It was the quickest way to end it. Believe me, if you were there, you'd do the same thing, wouldn't you? You see the kind of trouble you can get into when you don't follow the rules?

Some people just want to rock instead of letting it roll. Ah, well, maybe it would be better if life had an instruction manual. And to that end, this show. is sponsored by Better Help. Products and devices usually come with instructions or a user manual. Unfortunately, life doesn't. So when it's not working for you, it's normal to feel stuck. Navigating any of life's challenges can make you feel unsure,

whether it's a career change, a new relationship, or becoming a parent. Consider what I do. When I started this show almost 12 years ago, there was no training for how to make or run a podcast. I fumbled and stumbled and learned as I was. went. It wasn't easy. I wish I could have been guided through the rough patches. The same can be said about other areas of life. I wish I had spoken with a therapist sooner than I did. Therapists are trained to help you figure out the cause of challenging emotions and learn productive coping skills, which makes therapy the closest thing to a guided tour of the complex engine called you. BetterHelp has connected

over three million people with licensed therapists. It's convenient and accessible anywhere. 100% online. As the world's largest therapy service, BetterHelp has matched 3 million people with professionally licensed and vetted therapists available 100% online. Plus, it's affordable. Just fill out a brief questionnaire

to match with a therapist. And if things aren't clicking, you can easily switch to a new therapist anytime. It couldn't be simpler. No waiting rooms, no traffic, no endless searching for the right therapist. Learn more and save 10% off your first month. at betterhelp.com slash no sleep.

That's better h-elp.com slash no sleep. Thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. And now let's pop a tape in the old VCR and get back to the horror. When you're young, it's common to want to delve into the mysterious and unknown. Maybe you're bored. Maybe you haven't yet learned that there are enough strange things to trouble you in real life to make looking for them unnecessary. And in this tale,

shared with us by author Charlie Donello, we meet a man recalling events from his teenage years when he and his friend became obsessed with an old VHS tape they found. Performing this tale are Jesse Cornett, Kyle Akers, and Jeff Clement. So remember what curiosity did to the cat. Maybe don't get hung up on looking for strange things.

Otherwise, you might just hear L'Appelle DeVeed. Hey, dude. So, I was browsing this pretty big thrift shop here in Seattle, and I found an old laptop. Not a big deal, but, you know, how nosy I am, so I bought it. Anyway, I found the audio to some kid's school project or something, and, well, you'll have to listen to it. I can't make heads or tails of it, but I know you like this kind of stuff.

And from what I got from the cashier, that store apparently gets donations from the local police station. Unclaimed evidence from closed cases and stuff like that. Hope you like it. And let me know if you managed to find out anything more. Chau. Are you sure it's okay for you to use this for your school thing? It's kind of, I don't know, a weird topic for a high school project. Don't worry about it.

It's totally fine. Well, okay. Whenever you're ready. Yeah, okay. Feel free to interject if you have questions, and bear with me. I've decided it most prudent to prioritize accuracy in detail instead of conciseness when telling you what happened. This is the way it needs to be learned, I think, if you want to truly understand the gravity of the situation. It didn't start with the tape, not right away. It started with Jacob.

Jacob and I met because our moms were childhood friends. They'd grown up together from elementary school through high school, remained close friends after that. When I was born, Jacob's mom, who was then pregnant with him, was made my godmother. That title doesn't mean anything to me, but in my catholic, like family, it meant a commitment by the adult to stay in touch with a child and lend their help if they needed. More practically, it meant that Jacob and I would see each other a few times

a month at least. We'd a good friendship, Jake and I. I mean, I was kind of moody as a child, and I enjoyed Jake's company enough to get in a mood or even cry when the time came to say goodbye and go home. What I mean to say is we were close, even back then. We really were. I'm not saying I'm a follower, you know, in the way that people say it with malice and bite, but I would have followed Jake anywhere. I really would have. The boy had dark, blonde hair he sometimes styled in stiff spikes with hairspray and gel, a handful of plastic wristwatches he'd gotten in happy meals or whatever. all of them with a different movie or video game theme.

More growing up, he was a little different in spirit, though considerably changed otherwise. He had replaced the eccentric hairsty hairstyles with a total indifference or a slight disdain for beauty, favoring comfort and practicality instead. The guy's wardrobe was pretty much entirely plain hoodies and t-shirts in different colors, usually gray, black, dark green, inconspicuous colors like that. And he owned like three pairs of shoes.

Christ, he's like a cartoon character that way. Anyway, the thing with Jake was that he was desperate to experience something magical. He craved the otherworldly, and our fantasies and our games where we pretended we were in magical. lands or given special powers weren't enough to satiate him. We would even pretend to believe the games were real sometimes, but that made it somehow sadder after the game was over. The fact that we couldn't even trick our minds into believing that something magical had happened to us.

I think that was the sign that we were growing up. When we no longer role-played as if we were truly mere people in the inflatable pool, my parents got for the backyard in the summer, but rather posited to each other. Oh, what if we were mer people? And wouldn't that be cool? There was a sense of surrender of having tried tirelessly to find magic to believe in and failing time and time again. I accepted it quietly, as I tend to do with anything else. Jacob didn't. Instead, he started his research. Research.

Can you tell me a little about that? Jake had one goal, and one goal only, by the time we were around 13, to find something otherworldly, in whatever form it might take. Now entering teenagehood, his research naturally took a darker turn, what would the allure of the forbidden,

or whatever the hell it is that brings people like us to things like this. L'Apal du Vide, the call of the void. And the thing is, it didn't start particularly spine-chilling. Not really. If you want to know, it started with cryptids, big and small, which was a great place for it to start, given that our town was adjacent to a national park.

I confess that for me it was all just pretense at first. I didn't think we would find anything in the woods other than small animals, or worst spiders. In hindsight, I guess we could have found bigger animals that could pose a threat, but I didn't think so back then. Those were things that happened to other people. Jake was ready to experience the as-yet undocumented. He was ready, and he was taking action,

and he fully expected to succeed at any moment. After a while, that kind of hope is contagious. and I began to feel a fraction of his passion for the unknown. Chupacabra's undiscovered and Bigfoot, uncaptured, Jacob and I, by now a solid lifelong hunting team, we thought, moved our interests onto the paranormal. Ghosts, poltergeists, demons, haunted dolls, cursed YouTube videos, you name it. Jake and I were a bit limited.

We were something like 15. and neither of our moms were particularly lenient when it came to us going out instead of hanging out at home during the evening or the night. For that reason, our explorations were confined to our own houses. We would have sleepovers and try to contact spirits with Ouija boards we've made ourselves at a cardboard. Our Catholic mothers would have been livid if they had found a Ouija board. Worse if they found out we purchased one with their money. We tried to convince ourselves multiple times that we had contacted a spirit, but as far as I know, no one had ever died in either of our houses, and the messages didn't spell out anything.

I knew it wasn't enough for Jake. See, it's one thing to feel a ghost, or to use a Ouija board, and be pretty sure that one of us probably didn't move the planchette, although one of us probably did. It's another thing to see a ghost, to have a picture or audio recording or a cursed object to cling to for sanity and reassurance. The latter is what Jake wanted, and that's why everything that happened happened. So you blame him? No, that's not really what I mean. I mean, none of it would have happened if it weren't for him, but only in the way a ghost story can't happen.

unless the person the ghost once was died horrifically. Oh. Oh. Sorry about that. Anyway, listen, I can't blame Jacob for wanting proof, for wanting the benefit of undeniability. I wanted that too. I did.

But I also didn't think I would ever get it. I assumed that I would live the rest of my life, sort of wanting to experience, but never really trying to find supernatural. And I was okay with that, though I would never admit to Jacob that I thought his attempts might be futile. In that sense, he could say this all happened because of me, too,

or one of the others involved. But that's what you really want to know, isn't it? Just what happened and how? Right. The truth is, I have no idea where he got the taste. I have no fucking clue, and I wish I knew, because if I knew, then that would prove to me that it does have a history, a past. If I could just trace its footprints back to other people whose lives it has destroyed, then maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But I can't, because that idiot probably bought it off the dark web or some weird shit, and that can't be tracked easily.

Besides, what would I even do? I couldn't go to the police if I found something out about the tape. It isn't like they acknowledge the tape's responsibility in the events that transpired. Besides, I barely avoided being suspected of something when it first happened, on account of being only 16 and a good kid. Even now, they probably have that thing at the police station. Don't worry, I will tell you everything, but you'll be shocked to find there.

There isn't all that much that I know. I know this is something like 15 years ago now, but it's all still very raw, you understand? It's curious that you showed up when you did. I have been thinking of Jacob lately, but I hadn't done anything about it yet. Didn't tell anyone, didn't look at old pictures of us together. I guess I thought I could avoid it. And then you showed up. I never got an explanation about the origin of the tape.

Jacob was stubborn, and he refused to watch the tape until we could watch it at night, together and completely alone. From this, you can probably infer that the point of the tape, in addition to possibly being cursed and allowing Jacob to finally document and experience the existence of the paranormal, which was to us the more mature version of magic, was that we expected it to be really scary. To be honest, I expected it to be some kind of artsy film with, you know, gory or uncanny images

that would scare the shit out of us. I wish that's what it had been. Jake would have gotten a real kick out of it. God, he was nuts. He loved getting scared. He thought it would be, you know, interesting to find out how much fear he could handle before something would break inside of him.

In any case, we got our opportunity to watch it a couple of weekends later that summer. When my parents went away to some resort getaway they bought with their credit card points, and his parents were busy working from home and wanting him out of the house. We were ecstatic. Him about the tape, me more about hanging out with my friend. I had a small TV and VHS DVD player combination set up in the basement. when you arrived. They weren't generally in use anymore, just kind of sat in the basement, collecting dust. But I thought, you know, Jake would think it fun to watch a mysterious tape on

an old TV in a dark basement, rather than upstairs in my room or, you know, something lame like that. You know, we really put a lot of thought into the theatrics of things in hindsight. And yet, we never expected this. So we're excited. We wait until it's been done. We wait until it's been dark outside for a while, 10 p.m. or thereabouts. We sit across like it close to the crackling TV. It was one of those old heavy ones, but small, so that we'd have to huddle close to both have the perfect view of the grainy screen. He pushes the tape in, we hold our breasts, and... Nothing. Nothing? Surely not nothing. Nothing. Nothing for me. Nothing at all at first, except the static. But by then, even that had become a background noise, therefore basically the equivalent

to silence. I thought Jake would be devastated, crushed, I tell you. But then I look over at him, and there was something in his eyes. He had the face of someone who had glimpsed or thought they had glimpsed, a fragment of truth they knew to be but couldn't prove. Maybe what I really saw was the face of a fish caught in a fancy hook. What happened next? He snapped his head towards me with that intense look in his eyes, and he says, Do you hear that? Hear what? I replied, assuming he wasn't referring to the static.

There's like a faint sound behind the static, like a tone? Or more like a chiming, he said. Eyes wide and smile only narrowly avoid. his face. Well, turn the TV off and see if it's still there, I said. He didn't listen, too mesmerized by what I was sure he interpreted as paranormal, or at the very least at what he tried to pretend he believed could be paranormal. You have to understand, we were teens, yes, but we were kids more so than that.

We just wanted to believe. I wasn't annoyed at him, but. did want to hear whatever he was hearing. So I stretched my arm and clicked the TV off. The basement was silent. Above it, the house was silent too. I could almost hear the ticking of the clock that hung on the basement door up the steps next to the kitchen.

No chiming. I looked at Jake asking the logical question. Do you still hear it? I asked. And he shook his head no. I turned on the TV again and made sure the tape was in the machine correctly. I hit play again. Like before, there was only static.

Nothing more for me. But when I looked at Jake, man, he sure was hearing something. Or he thought he was. And I still don't know what it was, though I know what it sounded like to him. I asked him, is it words? He told me that no, no, no, it was a rhythmic repetition of a very sharp and melodic sound, like a bell, but that it sounded so very faint and far away that he sometimes couldn't even be sure he was hearing it. He concluded that it was probably recorded onto the tape somehow, surrendering, as always, too logic over his own illusions.

Something like the video is just static, and the sound makes the viewer think there's something happening in the real world when it's really just a trick. I nodded in agreement. But then, why can't I hear it? I asked. Well, maybe you don't have the same hearing range. Maybe it's too high-pitched or low-volume for you,

but not for me, he replied. By fake defense, ooing as though I'd been burned by his whip. Oh, excuse me, Mr. Soundman. It was a stupid joke, but, you know, we were having fun. despite the disappointment of the tape.

And that was the first time you played the tape. Yes, the first of only two times. And I hope I never see it again. Tell me about the second time you came in contact with the tape. Yes, okay. Well, we didn't mess with the tape for a while after that. You know, we had no reason to, but with our very logical conclusion

that it was just a trick of sound or a gimmick that seemed creepy, but ultimately had no substance to it. We went back to our usual activity, for the next few weeks, playing scary video games, watching movies, hanging out at the National Park a couple of times for hiking or photography. We really kept ourselves busy back then. Then one day we were bored at Jake's place. His parents were out late for dinner, so we'd watch some random super deranged horror movie,

though I can't remember the name. We liked watching it in the living room since we would never have been able to if his parents were home, even at that age. And suddenly, Jake has the tape. I don't know where he got it from, and frankly, I can't remember him having taken it home that first day, though I guess I assumed he had. I can't begin to guess at why he wanted to play it again. What was it that called him to it?

The idea that he could hear a frequency of sound that I couldn't, which is what we assumed had happened? I mean, that was intriguing. sure, but it wasn't exactly a novel idea. We learned all about how sound works at school. Still, he had the tape, and a mischievous grin spread across his face. You want to try again? He asked, as if it was a devilish suggestion.

I said, dude, nothing happened last time. It's just a prank. That's all it is. I don't know why I was so adamant about it. Well, then there's nothing to lose. He replied, the way he had a million times before with a million other things, and got to setting up the tape in the living room VHS player. And then you heard it. No. No.

That's the point. I didn't hear Jack's shit. Not either time. There was static. And Jake was fucking flabbergasted. He was elated. But I couldn't hear anything at all. He grabbed me by the shoulder and looked at me intensely, and he said,

Do you hear it? Do you hear it this time? He said, it's closer this time. Closer, he said, not louder. But I didn't pick up on that right then. Closer? He described the sound more clearly like a bell this time, high-pitched and only slightly louder than it had been at my house the first time.

He said he couldn't even tell. if it was really louder, but he really, really thought so. I made him drop the matter after that. It's petty, but I felt left out, and that made me moody. Maybe I'm being a little bit dramatic, but it drove a rift between us. We had always shared so much, spent so much time together, and here was something that his attention was at least part, partly consumed by that I had rather an aversion to.

Still, we were fine. We were us. But how did this all lead to the events that fall? Well, like I told you before, there isn't actually that much I know. All there is are pieces, facts, suspicions, and hopes, all muddled together like a soup? I don't know. Here's what I know for sure. Jake started essentially disappearing for longer and longer amounts of time.

It went from not being able to reach him for an hour or so to complete silence for a whole day. This might seem minor. Not everyone talks to their friends every day, you know. But Jacob and I were close, and this was out of the norm for him. For us. I tried to reach out to him, ask him what would? was happening to our friendship. But I never really got far.

All I got back was, what are you talking about? And I've just been busy with school stuff. That was a lie, and I knew it. You have to remember, our families were involved. I was always as a better student. And during this time, his mom talked to my mom and told her to ask me to talk to Jake about his terrible grades. I know it seems like I was being paranoid.

But knowing what you know about what happened next, can you blame me? No, I suppose not. Can you just tell me what happened? I don't mean to rush you or anything. It's just... No, no, no, I get it. I'm sorry. When it happened, Jake had been gone for a week.

It was his longest disappearance yet, though his mom had gotten used to worrying about where the hell was. he had gone this time, I think she'd had enough of false alarms and cop cars to tell you the truth. When they found him, he was... Well, I don't know if I should say he was out of it, really. He seemed to lucid, more than lucid, as if he'd been on the damnedest lucky streak of his life for the past week. Wait, wait, you actually saw him that day? The report said he was found in the suburbs of Cincinnati. That's a state o'clock.

I was there. I was there because the moment he was arrested, Jake said, I'm not going to talk to any of you. I want Winston-D-S from Allentown, Pennsylvania, or you're never going to find out why I did what I did. So you didn't just see him. You spoke to him? Isn't that why you came to me, of all people? Because I spoke to him afterwards. No, man. I came to you, because when I tried to interview his mom, she asked if I was a friend of yours. Well, it hardly matters why at this point. What you need to know is this. Jake wasn't out of it. He was focused and lucid. And dear God, I swear, he was happy.

And he kept to his word, too, because the moment I arrived, all groggy in my goddamn pajamas, having been pulled out of bed by a pair of officers to drive all the way to Southern Ohio, So, Jake spoke. As I sat down, I said to him, I said, Jake, why? Who was that? Did they hurt you?

But he ignored me. Instead of answering, he said, thank God, Winston, with this wide, sincere grin on his face. He said, I found it. I finally found it. The bell. It took me so long because of how far. it was, but by God, I found it. My mind immediately went back to the tape, and to the chiming he claimed to hear.

And as I made the connection, he opened one of his hands to reveal a tiny golden bell, leaned forward across the interrogation room table, popped it in his mouth, swallowed, and said, Oh, God. He said, I had no idea it could be hidden so deep inside her guts. But I get it now. I get it.

You seem concerned, but not shocked. I guess the report already told you what happened. I have a confession. Huh? I may have broken into the police station's evidence archives. Is that? It can't be. Frankly, it was harder to find a portable VHS player in working condition than it was to get the tape.

Do you want to watch it again? After Jake was locked away, I don't know. I guess I always attributed it to the tape, but I guess Jake was just unwell. I mean, I never heard the chiming at all. So it must have been in his head. Well, think of it this way. If it was all in Jacob's head, then it's like he used to say, right? There's nothing to lose.

Ah, what the hell? If I don't do it now, I never will. That's the spirit. You want to do the honors? Yes. All right. Okay. Here goes nothing.

The No Sleep Podcast presents the exclusive 10-part audio adaptation of Alexander Gordon Smith's epic tale, This Book Will Kill You. This book will kill you is the story of Tommy Bright, a young woman who dreamt about a witch, a room, and a table full of meat. This is her story. This is about what happens when the witch comes back to finish what she started.

But be warned, because this book just might kill you. It's tall and thin, made of concrete and glass, and it looks like any other building in the city, except this one's as hard to look at as the sun. It carved shapes into my retinas, and in those shapes I see a vast, black, desiccated tree, windows like rotholes, all of them blinking. I have to look away for a moment, but it's still there like a dead light, superimposed on everything else. I close my eyes, remembering the dream. I can still feel her pull now. The strength of her as she lifted me up and carried me through the streets, overhouses, down alleyways, to the window, to these windows.

I can see them right now when I open my eyes again, and once more it's just a tower, just a building. I don't understand how this thing can be here. It's wedged between two other buildings. buildings that were once joined together. It's as if the world has added space for it, torn a hole in itself to make room for the witch and her tower. And again, I wonder at the power needed to break the universe this way, that how easily she will break me when I knock on her door. So, I won't knock. I get to my feet like an old woman. My back won't straighten out. There's something

wrong with my spine, as if one of the dead things left their bony hand wrapped around it. I clutched the knife. The blood has half-dried now, and its stickiness is welcome. It makes me feel less like I'm going to drop it. Taking as deep a breath as I can, I limp toward the only door I can see. A big red door, right in the middle of the building. It's as gaping as a dead man's mouth, and as I get closer, I see that It is lined with big, yellow teeth, horses' teeth. They've been hammered into the wooden frame like nails. Clumps of dark hair hang from the lintel, dirty beads woven into them. The tower dwarfs me.

It's so tall it seems to lean out, ready to stamp down and finish me. And I hesitate outside the door, digging into my pocket. It takes me a while to find the folded mess that is pinch, and even longer it is a read through it again. There's not much here, except right at the end. I ran, wrenching open the door and heading out into the apartment building. I didn't know where I was going. I just had to get away. Every door was closed, but I could hear voices from behind all of them, maybe the same voice, chanting, laughing, crying. I ran, stumbling up the stairwell, third floor, fourth floor, those voices chasing me, forcing me higher, higher, until I burst out into a corridor on the seventh floor

and saw the door, and I knew that I was supposed to be here. I don't know how, but I knew that she was waiting for me. I knew she'd keep me safe. The door was open, but all I could see was the floor and part that a kitchen with a tat... Heard me, I could sense... The seventh floor. It's all I need to know.

The lobby's deserted, populated by rats and roaches, and the head of a goat that sits there, surrounded by candles. Its horns curl up like arms. There's a door to the right, marked as a restroom, a second leading to the stairwell, and a third to my left that opens onto a corridor as derelict as this one. I'd have assumed the building was empty if it wasn't for the noises coming from my left.

I can hear somebody crying. I can hear somebody singing too, A keening song that wants to break my heart. There's another sound. Louder and closer than the rust. Makes me think of a dog eating a hunk of meat. It's coming from the first apartment door, and it suddenly stops. There's a sniffing sound, a pat of feet, a jingling of bells.

I turn my back on it, my body boiling with quiet terror as I fumble at the stairwell door. It's stuck. And I throw myself at it. The sound of bells louder now. A wet spill of words flowing from the door behind me. Please, please, please. I give up on it, running for the next door, the restroom. It's open and I push through, closing it behind me,

staring through the gap as a head pushes its way out of the door across the lobby. A shock of short, greasy hair, a face with feathers in its eyes. It sees me. I know it does because it says. Suddenly galloping this way on all fours, its cry the whistling call of a bird. I stumble over the wreckage of the restroom, finding the only cubicle that still has a door right at the end. I shut myself in just as I hear the thing enter behind me. It's bird song filling the room.

I slide the bolt across, stumbling back until I fall onto the toilet seat. The creature pads its way down the room, bells clinking, those awful music box calls creeping under the the door, pushing into my head on needleed feet. I'm crying again. I don't know how to stop. I wait until I can't hear the sound of it anymore. Then I creep from the cubicle out into the lobby. The stairwell door is open and I stumble up the steps, using the banister like a rope, to see that all the doors are open. Noise floods out of them, a torrent of cries and whoops and jeers and whispers and longs and barks and great belly-busting laughter dropping towards me, circling me like flies. I look, because I can't not look.

On the second floor, a child in a white dress hangs upside down in the middle of the corridor, a veil covering her face and no ropes to hold her. On the next floor, a naked man with a pig's head sits against a closed door playing with a doll, Skylarks flapping around him as lazily as butterflies. On the next, a bone-thin girl is pinned to the floor by a fat lump of darkness, howling with delirious laughter as its wooden spoon fingers dig into her ribs. The girl and the monster have the same face, a face I know from a photograph on the internet,

the face of a missing woman called Lydia Cross. I'm heading up to the fourth floor when I hear the cross. crunch of a door opening above me, a clatter of feet on stairs. I feel something barrel past me, and even though nothing's there, I can smell mom's bath oils. I can hear her ragged breaths as she runs downstairs, as she runs into the kitchen. I push my face into my hand and scream into it, tripping on the steps, the knife clattering away. I pick it up again, but I keep my face behind my hand for the next flight of stairs, and the next, and the next, till I look up and see a faded seven on the wall. This door is closed, and I wonder if it will be locked. I pray that it will be

locked. When I turn the handle, it creaks open to reveal another corridor, identical to the last six. Electric lights flicker reflected in the damp floor, in the peeling walls. She knows. I'm here. I don't know how I know it, but I do. I can feel it. I lean against the doorframe, digging into my pocket and pulling out the only story that's left. Tubby, my hands are shaking so much I can barely read it,

but I do. And then I read it again. But there's nothing there, nothing I can use. And it hits me, what Cyrus said, that there were more stories that came from here, from this impossible address. There might be hundreds of them, and they all might have told me something.

Each one might have been a weapon I could use against her. Why didn't I find them first? What am I even doing? There's a chirping call on the stairs, right above me, the sound of bells tinkling and soft, padded feet. I'm moving before I even tell myself to, staggering down the corridor past the first open door. There's an apartment inside, and from the darkness I hear the squeak of flesh, the splash of water.

I push my hand to my ear to keep the sound out, walking past the next door, which is Donnie's store. It's got his name written on it in Sharpie, written on it by me in great big bubble letters when I was 13. I can hear him in there, shouting at his Xbox. When I turn the handle and push open the door and call his name, there's just another windowless room. This one swarming with flies. A bed sits in the middle of it, a pink bed covered in stickers, and a young girl lies inside it, kicking out against a nightmare. I keep walking, the whole building seeming to move, to sway from side to side and back and forth like a boat in a storm. I'm rolled from wall to wall, skittering forward, then stumbling back, and all the time the corridor's stretching, plaything that gets longer and longer and narrower and narrower, and the next door won't come to me, it's too small, too far away.

The air like glue, holding me back, but I push, push, holding the knife out in front of me as though it will cut a path. And it does because there's a sudden release, like something's been torn, and the door is right there. It's normal. There's a popping sound in my ear, a mosquito wine. Shake it away, staring at the door, feeling her on the other side of it. Her grins so bright that it's burning through the brick, through the plaster, shaping itself in ash and smoke right there in front of me. I dig the point of the knife into it, chunks of burned wall peeling loose,

embers fluttering out of the grin burn and floating in the air. I dig the knife in and find teeth in the hole, big and yellow. They clatter to the floor and I kick them away, watching them bounce back toward the stairwell, toward the feathered thing that whispers and cheapsed down the corridor after me. I twist the handle. I opened the door. I was six years old when I first saw the witch.

I'm a child again now, pushing open the door to where she lives. I'm the same child who was taken from that liminal space between dream and waking, who was dragged here against her will night after night after night by a raggedy woman with a moon-y grin. The room looks different, and it takes me a moment to work out why. I'm entering it through the door, not through the window, so the opening into the kitchen is on my right. I can see the window to my left, and through the dirty glass.

I can see my bedroom. I can see a girl sitting on my bed with headphones on and her computer on her lap, and her face hollowed out and lined with meat. She must sense me because she twists her empty skull and stares back for a moment before returning to her work. I swallow my mind empty too. Everything good scooped out of it and sloped to the floor. I'm nothing.

I'm nobody. scattered and lost and I'm not even sure what I'm doing as I tread the bareboards. As I walk into the middle of that big, empty room, the knife held out in front of me and my head turned to the side to see the kitchen, filthy, empty, seared into sharp lines by a single bear swinging bulb. There's a table there, sliding into view with every step. There's a table there, and it's covered in meat, a butcher shop's worth. There's a stove, saucepan bubbling.

Can't see her past the wall, but I can hear her. I think toward the door. She can't move quickly. She's far too old for that. But she's coming. Her bare feet scuffing the floor, the lump of her hand knocking against the wall. She's grinning.

I can't see her, but I know she's grinning. I can feel it through the wall, as bright as the bulb. She's grinning because she knows I'm not going anywhere. She's right. I might as well be wrapped in duct tape. I cannot move. I cannot breathe. I just stare at that door.

Seeing her shadow flood the floor like dirty water, see the eclipse of her head push itself around the sill, twisted and bent. Her face buried in clumps of matted hair, but one eye sliding up in its socket, one blistered, boiling eye. And beneath it, one arm, too long and broomstick thin, sliding out to touch me. And I know, I know that if those cracked-boned fingers touch me, I'll never be able to leave this place. So I fight it.

I fight it like there was somebody on top of me, pinning me down. I fight it like there was a hand over my mouth and nose and I was out of air. I kick against the broken shell of my body. I punch. I open my mouth and scream and scream and scream silently. until suddenly my body responds and I'm screaming for real. I'm kicking, I'm hitting, I'm thrusting the knife up, but there's no force grabbing me and pulling me out the window.

There's no waking. I'm here and she's still coming, still coming. I stagger back into the window. She's halfway across the room, broken back and bent almost in two, moving like a puppet moves, jerking her way toward me. Her feet barely touched the ground, her downward pointing toes, scuffing the bare floor. clacking together like they're made of wood.

Her arms are six feet long and sliding from the rags of her shawl. Her hands too big. They're like the hands of the statue in the forest, and they're getting bigger. They look like they could pick me up and fold around me and cut me like a songbird, and that's exactly what they do because she touches me. She's picking me up and I'm Skylark small, caught in the sweaty filth of her hands as her giant face looms in toward me. Her eye, a blister of rage.

Her mouth and nest of horses' teeth, opening to reveal a slab of tongue and a throat red raw and hungry. So hungry. I thrust the knife into the meat of her hand and she screams. The noise loud enough to shake the room to dust, to scatter my bones. I feel myself fall and I hit the floor hard, watching as she staggers, her hand clamped to her breast. She's normal. She's just a woman. I find my feet.

running at her, and I don't hesitate, pressing the knife into the dusty sack of her stomach, and pulling, wrenching, sawing up her ribcage, her sternum. I'm screaming at her, but I don't understand what I'm saying. I can't make sense of it. Only when the knife has reached her throat to do I pull it free, dropping it to the floor and stumbling away. She doesn't fall.

She doesn't even sway. The witch looks down at herself, her hair falling over her face as she pulls the remains of her shawl apart. Beneath is a body that's more dead than alive, a bird nest with a gaping wound from her stomach to her neck. There's no blood. There's just a fine powder that might be sawdust or sand, spilling loose and puddling at her feet.

I retreat until I hit the window again, but I can't take my eyes off her. I can only watch as she reaches inside herself. and pulls something free, something white and square and folded tight. She throws it to the floor and pulls out another and another, casting them into the room until she pulls out one that she keeps, that she holds out to me with a bone-thin arm. It's paper, I understand. It's a story. She drops this one too, then shuffles back to the kitchen, to that table full of meat.

I watch as she picks a handful up, as she shovels it inside the wound I made, then another, then another, filling herself up again. I don't think I can walk, so I dropped to my hands and knees, crawling across the room, seeing story after story discarded there, all computer printouts, all in neat black type on pristine white paper. The one she dropped last lies face-dust. They pick it up with shaking hands. I turn it over, and because I don't know what else to do, I start to read. They don't.

They don't because I did. They took my eyes. I stared. I dared to look because took my hand, because I dared to write, and they called me which, so, which I became, I became my story. They told my story.

They told it wrong. And they told it wrong. And they told it wrong. And they nearly broke. I broke me. I broke every day. I have my tongue. I took it back. I have my hand. I took it back. I have my eyes and I have my tongue. And I have my hand. And I have my hand. I have my story back. I wrote it all again.

And nobody else can take it. They took my story. And now my story kills them. Kills them. Kills them. I'm a disease. Deceased. You have only to think of me.

And I. see you. You have only to think of me. I see. Do you? I see. There is no game. There are no rules.

There is only a story. This story has killed you. I don't understand, I think, and I say, I don't understand. I say it again, and again, and again, and again. And I look over my shoulder to see my faceless self sitting on the bed, and I look into the kitchen to see the witch sewing up her ragdoll belly with thick twine. And I look at the knife and know that there's only one person left again. can use it on to end this, to end it once and for all.

It's three feet away, but it feels like a million miles. Just being here has drained me of everything. Madness has emptied me. I'm a rag doll and there's nothing holding me up anymore. Push myself across the floor, the weight of the air above me too much to bear. I can't reach it, a shadow hanging over me, the witch's face. She rolls me over and she's pushing something inside my mouth, a lozange of folded paper. Then she's pouring something after it, a liquid that boils against my tongue that sears its way down my throat.

I gag, spitting, but there's a hand over my mouth driving my lips into my teeth and I have no choice but to swallow. Paper jams and I have to work it down because I can't breathe past it. It's too big. I can hear the witch. Her voice is a thousand voices all chanting as one, drowned out by the agony in my mouth, in my throat. I punch, I fight, and then she pulls her hand away and I'm catapulted toward the ceiling.

Through it, my hands in front of my face as I accelerate into darkness, into some place that isn't here. I see her, the witch. I see her as a young woman, her trial, her torment, her torture. and finally the horror of her burning. One boiling, blistering eye raging through the flames. A broomstick thin arm reaching out, curling into itself, fat crackling. Her ashes buried deep beneath an old black, desiccated oak tree.

Her voice is inside me now, writing. inside me now, riding on the pain. It's the sound of a hundred screaming voices, unbearably wrong. Even here, I have to clamp my hands to my ears to hold the shattered pieces of my skull in place. I'm crying out for her to stop, but she does not. I see her ashes sprout-like seeds. I see the ground grow her back from the dead things and the decay. and the defecated dirt, weaving the shape of her until she is whole enough to walk away. I see the way she isn't part of this world anymore, the way she knots herself into the in-between, into the liminal. I mean you move the butt-spun like it.

I get them. I see her vomiting stories, sending them into the world like birds. I see the way they spread, like a virus. If you read one, if you so much as hear a whisper to mention of them, you are hers. We turned our voices into weapons. This time, her voice is her own. I realize I've closed my eyes and I peel them open to see her shuffling away back to the kitchen. I managed to turn, gagging, retching, trying to bring up what she made me drink.

But it is lodged inside me. I can feel it there. A sheet of paper unfolding inside me. The witch is at her table, sawing meat, slinging it into a bowl. The saucepan bubbles, spitting fat. I don't understand. I say again. And there's something wrong with my voice.

My face feels numb. You do not need to understand. You only have to speak. Speak, I say in my not voice, taking a step toward the kitchen. You only have to tell your story, the way I tell mine. And I spit out a laugh, because I know now why I'm here. I came to kill a witch before she rotted my life. But the truth is, she was never my enemy.

I see it now. My dream. I see her grin. I see her shadow flood the floor like dirty water. See the eclipse of her head push itself around the sill, twisted and bent. Her face buried in clumps of matted hair except one eye sliding up in its socket. One blistered, boiling eye, and beneath it one arm, too long and broomstick thin, sliding out to touch me, touch me. Her fingers. twitch, and I stumble into her, feel her broomstick arms crack and curl around me. I press my face into the nest of her hair. She led me to her. The stories were her map. She wants me here. She wants me. She's wanted me since I sat down and shared her story with the world. Why? I croak into her, the word burning up the ruin of my throat, echoing from something that used to be my mouth. Why not? Her voice is made of dust, a voice that has lived through centuries. You have many stories to tell, child, but only one that will make a difference.

Only one that will be heard in every home, whispered in quiet corner. spread from person to person to person. Are you not a writer, a storyteller? A writer, I think. Wasn't this what I always wanted? Wasn't this why I wrote her story in the first place? They all have a story to tell. Her fingers are in my hair, plucking the knots from it, smoothing it.

Tubby, I think. How many more? Were they all like me? Did she call them too? Did she open their lips and push a sliver of magic down their throats? Wash it down with boiled fat. They are dead things too. They are her dead things.

And they will spread her disease, her curse, until there is nobody left to infect. You made them monsters? Men made us monsters. I made us powerful. I can make you powerful too. I can make it so your stories sing. I can make it so they rot. Your voice is your weapon.

Do you accept my gift? I don't think I have a choice. It sits inside my hollow chest and sings to me. I don't think I have a choice because what the witch wants, the witch gets, and she has wanted me for soul. long. I don't think I have a choice because I have no life to return to. I am here. I belong here. I think I always have. I nod and I hear a purr deep inside her throat, a cooling pigeon call.

Then eat. I look at the table, at that table full of meat, at that table littered with breadcrumbs. There are bowls there, empty heads. I know that one is flints, his hair shorn to the bone. The other belong to Tanner, I'm sure of it. There are no rules. She always wins. The witch uses her hawthorn fingers, scoops up what lies there, and she feeds it to me. She presses the meat to the inside of my head, and I know that I don't have a face of,

anymore. I don't have a mouth to eat with. I don't have eyes to see. There's a hollow where my brain once sat, and yet I can still think. I can still see. I can still breathe. I can still speak. Thank you, I say. She always wins. You can go anywhere, child. She tamps the flesh down inside me. You are me. Tell your story and know that every time you do you draw blood. You spread my disease.

You push the rot a little bit deeper until there is nobody left with us. You are me and you are the world. My world. She lets go of me, busies herself at her stove, at her saucepan of bubbling fat.

Tell your story. and spread our curse a little further. And I smile with the mouth I no longer have. I reach up and feel inside the empty shell of my head, and I laugh, because she's right. I can go anywhere. There are no rules. She always wins. There are no rules.

She always wins. I was six years old when I first saw the witch. I was 16 when I became her. There are no rules. I always win. There are no rules. I always win. And I'm laughing, laughing with the broken shell of my body,

screaming and screaming and screaming with it until suddenly my body responds and I'm screaming out loud. I'm kicking, I'm hitting. And that same force suddenly sweeps me up like a pair of arm. around my middle and pulls me back out the window and back through the city and brings me here, right here. It brings me to you. I'm sorry.

I wasn't entirely honest with you at the start of this story. Not about the fact that this book will kill you, because it will. It has. I just didn't tell you the truth about, Why? About who? I've been a little naughty. Can you feel me there right behind you? I'm watching you read. I'm watching you take in these last few words. If you turn around now, you might see me. A girl with an empty head lined with meat. A girl with no eyes who still looks. A girl with no mouth who still whispers. It's your own fault. You can't say I didn't warn you. Stories are powerful,

especially hers, especially mine. Stories are weapons, and this weapon has killed you. Are you ready? Dick, close your eyes and listen. Really listen. Listen into the quiet behind the noise of the world and hear me. You won't be able to unhear me. You won't be able to make it stop. Tonight, you will feel my crack-boned finger scratch itself down your cheek. You will wake to find my bird nest body pressed against yours, laughter echoing around the empty auditorium of my skull. Tonight, I will take you with me. I will take you to meet you. The witch. You cannot change this, but you can delay it.

Your only hope is to share this, to find another home for me. Maybe then I'll come for them first. Who? Does it matter? Your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, perhaps your child? Wouldn't any of those be better than this? better than seeing me crawl up beneath your blankets in the middle of the night, better than me carrying you away with me to a place where the witch lives.

Try it, and maybe you'll find yourself with an extra day, an extra week. Maybe, but sooner or later, you have to come. We're all there, we're all waiting, and there are so many of us. What kind of story will she make you tell? What kind of dead thing will you be? A thing of meat or feathers? A thing that whispers or screams. A thing that pinches or punishes.

A thing that rot. She will just be more meat on her table, more fat in her pan. Either way, sleep well, child. Sleep well, dead thing. I know you. I see you. This book will kill you. Written by Alexander Gordon Smith.

Adapted for audio by Jessica McAvoy. Produced for the No Sleep podcast by Phil Mikulski. Musical score composed by Brandon Boone. The final part starred Jessica McAvoy as Tommy Bright. Jake Benson as the feathered thing And Erica Sanderson as the witch This concludes the No Sleep Podcast production of This book will kill you

Tales have ended, are you feeling all right? We did our best to give you a fright. You may feel safe in the bright sunlight, but soon once again, you'll be sleepless. tonight. The No Sleep podcast is presented by Creative Reason Media. The musical score was composed by Brandon Boone. Our production team is Phil Mikulski, Jeff Clement, and Jesse Cornett.

Our creative content manager is Olivia White. Our editor-in-chief is Jessica McAvoy. If you would like to find out how you can hear the extended editions of our 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 $25. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for joining us and for being sleepless tonight.

This program is copyright 2022 by Creative Reason Media Inc. 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.