The NoSleep Podcast - S18: NoSleep Podcast - This Book Will Kill You - Part 8

Episode Date: October 30, 2022

The NoSleep Podcast presents the ten-part audio adaptation of “This Book Will Kill You” by Alexander Gordon Smith. This Book Will Kill You is the story of Tommi 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. “This Book Will Kill You – Part 8” written by Alexander Gordon Smith. TRIGGER WARNING! Adapted for audio by: Jessica McEvoy Audio production by: Phil Michalski Starring Jessica McEvoy as Tommi Bright, Jessica McEvoy as Tommi Bright, Erika Sanderson as the witch, Jesse Cornett as the man, and Penny Scott-Andrews as the woman. Click here to learn more about The NoSleep Podcast team Click here to learn more about Alexander Gordon Smith Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone This Book Will Kill You illustration courtesy of Emily Cannon Audio 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 copyright for “This Book Will Kill You” is held by Alexander Gordon Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 is. started, but be warned because this book just might kill you. Added by Unknown on 4-9, 2013. You were six years old when you first saw the witch.

You remember that moment between dreaming and waking, that moment when you're swimming up from golden dreams, crossing that liminal, magical no-man's land where two worlds collide. You remember knowing that dreams were safe, that waking was safe, but that space in the middle, where you're neither one thing nor the other, that's a bad place, a dangerous place. There's nothing to protect you there. There's nowhere to hide. And that's where I always found you. I always found you. I would wait for you, right on the edge of the world. dream, pulling a cloak of cold darkness behind me. Not me. I'm never there myself. Just a force that

would rent you up, up, over the streets, over cars and buses and people, down into the darkest parts of the city to the building where I live. And you'd see me, you'd see my window, as crooked as a mouth, getting closer and closer and closer, and there was nothing you could do but be hold through it. I bring you to a room, the floor bare wood, the walls plaster. There's nothing in here except dirt, and it's dark, but there's another door right in front of you, and through it you can see an old kitchen, the stove on, a saucepan bubbling, all of it cut into harsh lines by a single, bright bulb hanging above my table. There's meat on my table, a butcher shop's worth. And you know I'm there too, because you can hear me.

I want you to hear me, and you can hear me moving toward the door. I can move quickly, because I am younger than you think. But I choose to move slowly the way a slaughterman chooses to scare the flavor into his prey. And I'm coming, my bare feet scuffing the floor, the lump of my hand knocking against the wall. Knock, knock, Tommy. Knock, knock Tommy. I'm grinning. You can't see me, but you know I'm grinning.

You can feel it through the wall, as bright as the bulb. I'm grinning because I know you're not going anywhere. I'm right, aren't I? You might as well be wrapped in duct tape. You cannot move. You cannot breathe. You just stare at that door. Seeing my shadow flood the floor like dirty water,

seeing the eclipse of my head push itself around the sill, twisted and bent. My 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 you. And you know, you know, that if my crack-boned fingers touch you, you'll never be able to leave this place. So you fight it. You fight it like there was somebody on top of you pinning you down.

You fight it like there was a hand over your mouth and nose and you are out of air. You kick against the broken shell of your body. You punch, you open your mouth and scream and scream and scream until suddenly your body responds and you're screaming right now. You're kicking, you're hitting, and that same force suddenly sweeps you up like a pair of arms around your middle

and pulls you back out the window and back through the city and you can still see my shadowed body grunt and slide through the doorway. You can still see my eye watching you go. You can hear me laughing. Oh, how I laugh at you, Tommy. How I grin, because I know you'll be back. I know that one day you won't get out in time. Look, Tommy, look and see me grin.

To do it, because I can't move. I just stare at that piece of paper like my eyes have been glued to it. it, even when I hear the voice again, coming from my side, coming from the kitchen area, even when I hear the scuffle of bare feet there, even when I hear the stump of her arm thumping against the cabinets, even when I hear her lick her long, dry tongue over the blood in the sink. I can't look. I just can't. Look. I stare at the story, at that familiar, not familiar printout, at the words that have

have been scrawled beneath again and again and again and again in Kara's handwriting, so hard that the pen has been pushed through the paper. There are no rules. She always wins. There are no rules. She always wins. There are no rules. She always wins. There are no rules. She always wins. There are no rules. She always wins. Look. The witch is grinning. I can feel it like a heat lamp, hot enough to make the flesh of my face sizzle. 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 that nose and I was out of air. They kick against the broken shell of my body. I punch. I open my mouth and scream and scream and scream and scream until suddenly my body responds and I'm screaming and throwing myself up, turning, the room cartwheeling around me. The witch is there. but she's also not there. There's a bubble of not quite right

in the middle of the kitchen area, a patch of darkness where somebody has cut the world away. I can still see the kitchen, but I can't, because there's something standing right there, drenched in shadows, drenched in nothing, grinning, grinning, its teeth big and yellow and blunt,

horses' teeth hammered into its gums. I haven't got the strength to not move this time. I haven't got the strength to not run. Because I know those teeth are strong enough to crack my bones, and I can't be here. I can't not move as fast as my legs will carry me. Not when she's laughing at me. Not when she's grinning at me. Not when she's reaching for me with broomstick arms and hazel twig fingers.

I run from the room, bag in hand. No noise leaving me because there's no space for it to escape from. My teeth clamped. my lips clamped as I run past the kitchen area, finding the door, opening it, seeing the corridor ahead of me and knowing she won't let me leave, knowing she's going to hook a finger in me and reel me back inside, throwing myself out, into the hallway and looking back to see nothing, nothing except not me sitting on the sofa, a hole where my face should be as I pick up the story I left there. And it's in my hand again, clenched tight as I stumble away from Kara's apartment.

I toss it to the floor, clattering down the stairs, slipping on loose teeth, reaching for the handle of the lobby door only to see my hands are full of paper again. I throw it away, but I know that the knot me is picking it up again in my knot hands. And sure enough, it's back, slick with my blood, refusing to be let go. Fuck you! I'm so exhausted I can't even keep a straight line as I walk down the street. The day is broken because there are people everywhere. People just going about their lives like the night isn't hanging over them.

I see kids getting into cars, yelling at their parents. I see business people in suits, speaking on their cell phones. I see a mailman running up the steps of another apartment block. I checked my phone to see that it's past eight in the morning, which is impossible, of course, because I can still see the same. stars. I duck into a corner store, grabbing a bottle of water into Babe Ruth because I'm so dizzy and faint I'm going to keel over and fall right out of this world. The man behind the counters grinning at me like a loon, his moon eyes, the brightest thing in the store.

I fish my purse out of my back. I finger throbbing so much, I almost drop it. Nice morning. I nod, fishing out a couple of bucks. He pushes them back to me. And I noticed that he's missing the tip of his middle finger, the one on his right hand, an old wound. On the house, he's hungry. I don't question it. I just grab the goods and back away, back through the door, out onto the dark day street. What's it? A woman pushes past me with a stroller.

I don't get where she's going, where any of them are going, because the sun isn't there. it just hasn't risen. The streetlights are still blazing and the birds are quiet because the sun isn't there. I open the water, put it to my lips, drink deep.

I finish the whole thing, tossing the bottle into the trash and opening the bay broth. I'm putting it to my mouth when a hand pushes through the gap between my arm and my chest. Something standing right behind me. It grabs the candy before I can move,

before I can stop it, and I stagger, spin. There's a man there, a man so obese he squats on his giant haunches like a toad. His head is a pimple on a cushion of flesh, his piggy eyes gleaming as he stuffs the Babe Ruth into the cavern of his mouth. He turns to me, duck walks a little closer, his whole body trembling. Only his arms are thin, only his fingers as he pokes me in the gut, grunting. Tubby. But I can see that. Even though his face is disfigured, I can see who this is.

I was looking at his photograph a few minutes ago on Kara's computer. And if he remembers himself, he shows no sign of it, pushing me, prodding me, trying to get me to feed him. I'm numb as I turn away from him, numb as I stare up at the stars. The world has started turning on a new axis. There's nothing I can do. Nothing I can do. Except there is. Isn't there? There is something I can do.

I'm playing her game. I accept that now. There are no rules. Sooner or later, I'm going to end up like Kara, like George, like the cross girl, like Tanner, like Flint, like however many other kids who clicked on one of her stories and started to read.

There's no escaping it. The world is already rotting around me. It's decaying, festering, dissolving. Soon there's going to be nothing left of it to hold me. And that's what truly scares me, because where do I go when I fall through the crack? Kara was onto something, I'm sure of it. The stories she printed out, the one she wrote on,

they were clues. She never had a chance to use them, but she knew what they were. She knew what they were telling her. And I think I know what they mean. I think I know how to use them. I'm back at the subway station. There's a busker playing a saxophone by the steps, a woman throwing money at him,

kids shouting abuse as they emerge from underground. I wonder if they see what I see, the immense black firmament overhead. I wonder if they know what I know, that if I don't do this, the sun might never rise again. I opened my bag, see the folder of stories inside. Maybe there are not so much clues as a map, I think, sliding out the one I need.

The tube game. Yes, a map. I check to make sure the knife is still there, then zip the bag closed, looping it back on my shoulder. A map to where she lives. The witch is here. in this world, but at the same time she isn't, not really. I don't think she can be here, not for longer than it takes to push herself inside your mind for a moment, not for longer than it takes to chew off a finger.

No, she's somewhere else, somewhere with bare floorboards, somewhere with a table full of meat. She can't be hurt here, I don't think, but there. If Kara was right, these stories are away. inside her building, away inside her world. Don't ask me how she knew, or how these stories got out into the world. But they did get out, and they found me, and I'm going to use them. I drop onto the first step, reading through the instructions of the game. Instructions start at the northernmost station.

I'm going to use them. I'm going to find the witch. I'm going to kill her. 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. This book will kill you.

The eighth part. Stard Jessica McAvoy as Tommy Bright. Erica Sanderson as the witch. Jesse Cornett as the man. and Penny Scott Andrews as the woman. Join us next week for This Book Will Kill You, The Ninth part. This audio program is copyright 2022 by Creative Reason Media, Inc.

All rights reserved. No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the expressed written consent of Creative Reason Media, Inc. The copyright for This Book Will Kill You is held by Alexander, Gordon Smith.