The NoSleep Podcast - S19 Ep16: NoSleep Podcast S19E16

Episode Date: May 21, 2023

It’s Episode 16 of Season 19. We ponder weak and weary with tales about grave situations.“The Sleeper” written by Edgar Allan Poe (Story starts around 00:03:45)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator – Graham Rowat“The Fall of Father Ascher” written by René Rehn (Story starts around 00:10:00)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator – Mike DelGaudio, Father Ascher – Jesse Cornett“Block 12” written by Thomas C Mavroudis (Story starts around 00:39:00)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator – Elie Hirschman, Adrianne – Marie Westbrook, It – Erin Lillis“A Grave Truth” written by E. R. Collier (Story starts around 01:11:10)Produced & scored by: David CummingsCast: Narrator – David Cummings, Jacob – Dan Zappulla, Mr. Reed – Atticus Jackson“Learning Curve” written by Joseph Yenkavitch (Story starts around 01:37:10)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Jesse CornettCast: Todd – Jeff Clement, Narrator – Nikolle Doolin, Rich – Matthew Bradford, Seth – Kyle Akers, Woman – Erin LillisThis episode is sponsored by: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 Edgar Allan Poe from author Rene RehnClick here to learn more about Marie WestbrookExecutive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon Boone“A Grave Truth” illustration courtesy of Kelly TurnbullAudio program ©2023 – 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. The works of Edgar Allan Poe reside in the public domain.

In the dark shadows of the Rue Morg, to the rhythm of the stolen telltale heart, as the black cat swings upon the pendulum, and the cask offers its sherry, deep and dry. As you knock at our chamber door, we open and usher you. Our sleepless tales for you in store, and the terror shall be lifted. Raise yourself for the no sleep. Welcome to the No Sleep podcast. I'm your host, David Cummings. Horror has many tropes which have filled creepy tales over the millennia.

Ghosts? Yes, innumerable ghosts. Dark spirits haunting our homes or bodies. Yes, many tales about them. Nightmares which become a reality? Of course. Why do you think we work so hard to bang? vanish you from sleep. If you can't sleep, you can't have nightmares, you see. You're welcome.

But there's one horror trope near and dear to my heart. In fact, often when discussing horror stories, I use one particular setting as an example. I usually begin it like this. It was a dark night and I was walking home from work when it started to rain. I decided to get home faster by taking a shortcut through the cemetery. Yes, is there a second? Yes, is there a setting any more closely tied to horror than a cemetery, or as I like to refer to it, a graveyard. A big open space full of graves, dead bodies moldering under our feet. Maybe some of those bodies have been buried alive. Maybe some are returning to life under there.

And maybe those who wander through the graveyard will find themselves lured into a grave from which they cannot escape. Delightfully horrific, no? Well, in this episode, we will engage in this, uh, insert obligatory pun, grave undertaking, and share tales set in those places of burial. And it will come as no surprise that our muse for this season, Edgar Allan Poe wrote often about not just death,

but the act of burial and the grave. In fact, Poe wrote a number of tales and poems which centered around young beautiful women who die young. It shouldn't be surprising. Throughout his life, virtually every woman Poe loved, and who loved him, died young. You can imagine how this heartbroken, melancholic man would express his grief with his pen and to such impactful effect. Let's begin this episode with one of his poems.

It's a poem he felt was superior to his most famous work, The Raven. In it, he describes a cemetery at midnight in the month of June. He observes the moon and notes the flowers that grow about the graves, and he introduces the beautiful woman who has died and whose grave is being prepared for her internment. We'll have Graham Rowett perform this for us. And so, if you rest, may it be in peace. It's the kindest wish for the sleeper.

At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon, An opiate vapor, dewy, dim, exhales from out her golden rim, and softly dripping, drop by drop, upon the quiet mountain top, steals drowsily and musically into the universal valley. The rosemary nods upon the grave. The lily lulls upon the wave, wrapping the fog about its breast, the ruin molders,

Into rest, looking like Leith, see? The lake, a conscious slumber seems to take, and would not for the world awake. All beauty sleeps, and low, where lies Irene, with her destinies. Oh, Lady Bright, can it be right? This window open to the night, the wanton airs from the treetop, laughingly through the lattice dry, The bodiless airs, the wizard rout, click through thy chamber in and out,

and wave the curtain canopy, so fitfully, so fearfully, above the closed and fringed lid, neath which thy slumbering soul lies hid, that o'er the floor and down the wall like ghosts, the shadows rise and fall. O lady dear, hast thou no fear. Why and what art thou Dreaming here Sure thou art come o'er far off seas A wonder to these garden trees

Strange is thy pallor Strange thy dress Strange above all thy length of tress And this all solemn Silenance The lady sleeps O may her sleep Which is enduring so be deep

Heaven have her in its sacred keep. This chamber changed for one more holly, this bed for one more melancholy. I pray to God that she may lie forever with unopened eye, while the pale sheeted ghosts go by. My love, she sleeps. Oh, may her sleep, as it is lasting so be deep.

Soft may the worms about her creep. Far in the forest dim and old, For her may some tall vaults unfold, Some vault that oft hath flung its black and winged panels fluttering back, Triumphant or the crested poles of her grand family funerals, Some sepulchre, remote, alone, Against whose portals she hath thrown in childhood, many in idle stone. Some tomb from out whose sounding door she nest.

shall force an echo more. Thrilling to think, poor child of sin. It was the dead who groaned within. As one's life draws near its end, it's natural to think about where their final place of rest will be.

If religious, it will likely be important to be buried amongst people who share their faith in consecrated ground. But in this tale, shared with us by author René Rain, we meet a man

and writing to his family about his final wishes, and we learn why he no longer wants to be buried in his ancestral family plot. Performing this tale are Mike Delgado and Jesse Cornett. So listen and understand why this man feels so strongly when he tells us about the fall of Father Usher. My dear family, I hope you can find it in you to honor the wish of an old man, and indulge his silly fancies. You may think me dramatic, mad even,

but there is a reason for my wish. A reason I swore to the Lord God I'd never tell a soul for as long as I lived. And yet I know you're all wondering, even my devotion to the gospel, why I never entered a church and was opposed to being buried in the family plot.

It's because of what happened more than half a century ago, because of the fall of Father Usher. You all know I was drafted into the national militia as part of the Volkstrom, a boy no older than 16, forced to partake in the madness that was the final year of the war. During those weeks, I bore witness to the worst atrocities of man, the demons hidden deep inside every last one of us. After our surrender to the Americans, I became a prisoner of war and was subjected to the hardest labor. The only thing that gave me solace, made it all bearable, was the word of God. After more than a year, I was finally allowed to return home. But our picturesque little village was almost unrecognizable. The roads, the buildings, the wide meadows and rich forests,

They were all still there, but not the people. So many of us set out for the war were forced to, and yet so few returned. Even our village, this remote speck of the world, hadn't been left unscathed. Our small town's population had been reduced to scarcely more than the very old, the very young, and the poor widowed women. The air was heavy with misery. the war might have been over, but people had lost too much, had suffered too much, and now even their hope for the future was all but gone. Just like me, they sought solace in the gospel, the Word of God.

For that reason, every Sunday, the entire village set out to our small chapel to partake in the sermons held by our preacher, Father Usher. The chapel was a gloomy thing and stood on a lonely hill, a ways off from the village, at the edge of a dark and unruly darn. It was supposed to be a house of God, but its atmosphere was one entirely different. It was a dull, unceremonious building, a sluggish construction, one of excessive antiquity that had been erected centuries ago during the village's earliest days. Its stones were discolored, the wood paddling half-rotten, giving it an aura of near pestilence. This age, this dilapitation was most notable in a fissure that went through the bell tower and down the front of the building. The chapel's surroundings were no different. The graveyard's earth was sodden, perpetually muddy.

The ground fresh, as if constantly broken to prepare fresh graves. Most unsettling, however, was the Tarn's fog. In the earliest hours of the day, it rose from the dark waters of the lake and covered the chapel grounds like mystic vapor. After my return, I ventured forth to pay the building a visit in order to pray to our Lord God, but its interior only intensified the gloomy feelings its exterior appearance gave it.

The tapestries against the walls and the walls, the altar were colorless. The ebb on floor stained in black with the accumulated soot of ages. Whenever the father held his sermons, he only ever lit a few select candles. But their dim glow was never enough to reach the chapel's more remote angles or its high ceiling. The rows of the pews were as antiquated as the rest of the building. They were comfortless, worm-eaten things that filled the chapel's air with an almost oppressive musty odor. Similar to the village itself, the chapel too was a place heavy with sorrow, albeit of a different kind. I bonded quickly with Father Asher. He was an older man, but he too had been forced to partake in the war

and had seen his share of atrocities. Thus, after his return, the man wanted to share what little light there was left in the world with his suffering congregation. I saw how much the war had changed, Usher. When I was a young boy, the preacher had been a stout man, one full of life. Now, his complexion was wan, his lips colorless, and his gait had become a limping shuffle, caused by a crippling injury to his right leg. His features, however, were as fine as ever. He had a prominent chin, finely carved cheekbones, a delicate nose, and his eyes were always sharp and luminous. He was of peculiar character that man, a sensible sort of temperament, but I'd known no one as passionate for the word of God as him. It must have been this character that drove him to bid me for assistance of the chapel.

Given how engrossed I'd become in the Bible and aspired to become a man of the cloth. myself, I was quick to agree. Thus I became the father's altar servant, whenever my duties at the family farm allowed me to. Much like the rest of us, the father was a man with troubles of his own, namely in the form of his family, specifically his sister. She was a woman scarcely few people even remembered or had ever actually known about. I only learned of her one night when I spied an apparition wandering the graveyard during the hour of twilight. She was an ethereal thing, one entirely without complexion. I only watched from afar, frozen by the strange vision in front of me. When the father saw where upon my gaze fell, I learned that said apparition was indeed his sister, Marguerite.

She suffered, the man told me, from a strange condition, one that made her walk in her sleep, and her thoughts drift during what few brief hours she was awake. Further, it made her weak in body, and she could only stomach the smallest variety of food. For this reason, the preacher continued, she was almost always indoors in his small lodgings at the side of the church, first cared for by their parents, and now by no one other than the father himself.

I never gave it much thought, and it was months later before I saw her, again. It was the late hours of the evening, and I made my way to the chapel to consult the father on a certain passage within the gospel. That night, the tarns vapor seemed different. It was heavy enshrouding the chapel, making it seem like a thing that could only exist within a dream. And from inside, I heard the sounds of the most hideous nature, a cacophony of shrill, high-pitched voices. Cracking open the chapel's door, I felt. It found its interior entirely warped.

The feeble flames of the candles flared widely, and twisted shadows danced along the walls and the dull tapestries, as if they had a life of their own. My eyes quickly wandered to the altar where the father stood. But he wasn't alone. He was with a woman, a woman without complexion, his sister. With a horror that threatened to shatter my soul, I realized that the pair were committing a sin far worse than any other.

The sin of the flesh. The preacher's face was distorted, pained, almost delirious, as if taken by a fever of the most terrible kind. I could only watch in stunned horror. But when his sister threw her head back, I saw her face for the shortest of moments. It was a face unlike any I'd seen before, a ghastly, distorted visage.

Her eyes were wide, nothing but dark pupils, and her lips dripping with blood. In an instant I dashed from the building in sheer terror, unsure of what I just witnessed, but certain that it was a cursed, unholy thing. Even now, as an old man as I am writing this, I remember lying in bed, unable to sleep. My mind was troubled, almost fevered by what I'd seen.

By the heinous act committed by the man I respected the most. Yet, as the hours ticked by, I wasn't so sure anymore what had transpired. What if it had all been nothing but a hallucination, a trick of the mind? After all, might not it have been one of the many horrors I'd witnessed during my conscription, conjured up and altered by powers beyond my understanding? At least, that's what I told myself, convinced myself of. Come morning, I set out to consult Father Usher, to inquire what had happened the night before. But alas, I did not get the chance to do so.

The prior night tragedy had struck. On my way to the chapel, I learned that the preacher's long sick sister had died. However, her demise, I was informed, came not from her peculiar type of illness, but was supposedly of her own choosing. When the father returned to his lodgings after his nightly prayers, he'd found her dead in their home. Her face swollen and purple. throat covered in dark red marks. The robe she'd used to hang herself, still fastened around her neck.

It was a tragedy like no other. Death might have been ever occurring during these times, but this type of death was unheard of. Before long, a summons from the father himself reached me. He said it pained him terribly, but given his condition, his leg, he required a system. He required a distance laying her to rest. When I arrived at the chapel, the man was already waiting for me at the door. He was a terrible figure to behold, one powerless and tired. His eyes were red, his hands shaking, his lips quivering, and it seemed his leg was even worse today. Yet as I followed his shuffling gate towards his abode, his resolve, his voice, they were steadfast. She's inside, but she's been prepared.

That day I saw his lodgings for the first time. They comprised nothing but a few miserable rooms. In the center of one of them, Marguerite was propped up on a table. A white funeral gown and shrouded her body, hiding the marks of her terrible demise. I asked about the funeral, about the date and time. But the father informed me he'd take care of the required rights by himself. There's no need to make this death a public display, a celebration even. During times like this, too many people have died.

And there's so much pain already, so much death. This here, it's my fault. And my fault alone. It's no one but me who's carrying this burden. Together, the two of us put the body into a cheaply made coffin before we carried it to the sodden graveyard beyond. The father had already prepared a grave, but it was scarcely more than a small, damp hole,

one almost too small to fit Marguerite's casket. After we'd lowered it into the hole, the father approached the coffin. He opened it and tore aside the funeral gown, revealing Marguerite's face, and allowing me to see it for the first time. For a moment, I saw the previous night's ghastly visage again, and I gasped as I imagined the she-beast jumping from her grave. Then it was gone.

The memory torn aside just as the shroud which had covered her face. Marguerite's face was similar to that of the fathers, almost strikingly so. I saw the same prominent chin, the same carved cheekbones, and a similarly delicate nose. I learned then that Marguerite wasn't merely the father's sister, but his twin. Her face, however, wasn't without mark. Her condition and way of death had caused it to be purple and swollen,

making it look as if of a slight blush, and had distorted her mouth into a semblance of a perpetual half-smile, as if she'd chosen happily to part from this world, and what must have been a most miserable existence. Eventually, the father bade me leave so he could finish the rights of burial. After a moment of hesitation, I honored his wish and left him to his own devices. We all suffered and grieved in our own ways, after all. In the weeks after Marguerite's death, the father changed, markedly so.

He became an almost unrecognizable figure. While he had always possessed a wan complexion, he became even more pale of skin, and his hair grew wild and unheeded, almost as if he was to change into something barely recognizable as a human. It wasn't merely his appearance that changed, however, but also his character. Oftentimes his voice quivered, as if he was perpetually terrified of something unnamed. At other moments, he spoke energetically, rapidly, and intends. intensely excited, especially during his sermons. By that point, he almost exclusively recited from the Book of Revelation. He spoke of Armageddon, but most of all, the beast of Revelation,

the whore of Babylon. During these sermons, the man was incomparable to the trembling husky'd become. He was loud and boisterous, as if intoxicated by his own words, thundering them, ranting on feverishly, and pleading with the Lord for protection from the darkness, from sins and temptation. After these sermons, after the congregation left in a state of confusion and half terror, the father took to walking the chapel's interior without objective. Many times I saw him staring vacantly and listening to sounds not there. I thought it was the grief and suffering brought forth by the death of his only living relative.

That sometimes I wondered if there might be a more terrible secret surrounding the father, one related to the night of Marguerite's death. When I talked to him about his condition, about his changes, he played it off as nothing but a nervous affectation, a small onset of his sister's illness that seemed to have now passed on to him. It put him into a state of acuteness of sense, he said, and now he was too afflicted by various ailments. He was only able to sustain certain foods. The faintest of lights tortured his eyes, and even the odors outside were too powerful for him to endure. So he, similar to his sister, spent most of his time indoors, in either the chapel or his small lodgings. on the rare occasion he ventured outside, but it was only during the hour of twilight.

Before long, the father grew even thinner, so thin indeed that he looked gaunt, half-dead, and much older than he truly was. This got me worried, for I believed he suffered not merely from a small onset of illness, but a terrible sickness of body and mind. In these latter days, he eventually approached me, and kind of. confided in me that I was to take over the chapel. Taken aback, I inquired what he meant. And after a deep sigh, he said he knew he was to perish soon.

Yet as he said these words, shared the future he thought awaited him, a shudder went through the man. As much as he wanted to accept it, he could not give himself to the idea wholeheartedly. For, he said, he was bound to this place. to what lay outside in its hidden depths. These ramblings not only confused but scared me deeply, and I soon found myself affected by them as well.

I grew superstitious of not only the Father, but also the Chapel and its surroundings, especially the sodden graveyard and the mysterious vapor that rose from the Tarn beyond. This affectation caused me many a sleepless night. Like the Father, I found myself, pacing my home without objective, almost unconsciously stealing glances at the chapel, and its surroundings from the confines of my home. Whenever I did, I was filled with a state of deepest

alarm and constantly listened for any and all sounds that reached me from the chapel. Then one night, a night in which a terrible storm hailed down upon the village, I spied the father outside, standing in front of the chapel's doors unmoving. Worried about his health, I set out toward him. The chapel was almost entirely enshrouded by the Tarns vapors, which were intensified by the heavy rainfall. The father, however, just stood there, almost unaware of the terrible raging storm. Let's go inside, father. This weather is dangerous for your body, your condition. And thus, I led the priest inside. Only then did I notice the father was mumbling to himself.

He talked again of sounds. Sounds he said were announcing the coming of the beast, the beast and its legions. I was quick to calm the man down and to assure him it was nothing but the thunder of the storm, and we were alone and safe here in the house of God. Finally, I suggested I'd read to him from his favorite part of the Bible, the book of Revelation.

So you can calm your mind, I whispered to him. Then I opened my Bible. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shoe unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass. I began to read. As I did, the father settled down, pushing himself against the altar, listening intently to my reading.

page by page, chapter by chapter I read on, when things of the strangest nature transpired. And there were voices, and thundering, and lightning, and earthquake. I'd read when I thought I heard a chorus of barely audible, high-pitched voices from outside, from the graveyard. I strained my ears to listen, but a roaring thunder strike cut through the air and shook the entirety of the earth. The father, however, was entirely oblivious. And there arose a smoke out of the pit as the smoke of a great furnace. As soon as the line had left my mouth, I noticed a change had come over the chapel. The tarns vapors slowly made their way inside via cracks in the back door,

and now wafted over the floors, becoming denser and denser, making them appear more smoke than anything. As this took place, I stared at the father warily, but the man wasn't agitated. His eyes were undisturbed, staring blankly ahead, absorbed by the gospel. Yet when I approached him and laid my hand on his shoulder, a shudder went through him, and a sick smile appeared on his face. He mumbled to himself again, not aware of my presence. estranged and tried to listen, but once more the same high-pitched voices from outside reached my ears.

The candles around us flared up, their fires growing stronger, stronger than should be possible. Once more shadows danced along the walls and tapestries, twisted shadows that seemed to move on their own accord. Another thunderous roar cut through the air, and with it the chapel's back door was thrown open. When I jerked around, I saw a figure standing in the doorframe, a ghastly pale figure, one entirely shrouded in white. The father's sister, alive! As she stepped into the church, the funeral gown and shrouding her, slid from her body, revealing a bloated, heavy stomach, showing that she was with child. The father, next to me, still in a trance, began to mumble anew. I don't know what was arrayed in purple and scarlet colors.

As I heard this, I couldn't help but stare at Marguerite, at her swollen purple face, and the scarlet marks on her throat, marks not from a rope, but hands. In that moment, the father snapped out of his trance. His voice changed from a whisper to a deafening scream. And upon her forehead was a name raised. Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. His voice reverberated, almost shaking the chapel itself. In terror, I stumbled away from the approaching she-beast.

Yet she ignored me. She only had eyes for the father, for her brother. When she reached him, he raised his hands again. Put them around her throat once more, but only for a few fleeting moments. Then, not flinching and not backing away, he surrendered himself to her, body and soul. Behind her, the smoke was now wafting through the chapel, heavier, thicker, crawling up the walls and over the rows of seats. In between I saw strange things, small, monstrous. shadows. I thought of Marguerite's bloated stomach, of what the father had screamed, the mother of

harlots and abominations. I thought of the perpetually fresh ground of the graveyard. I shuddered as I realized what those creatures had to be, what might have been hidden out there, buried in the sodden earth. Clutch, clutching onto my Bible, I backed away towards the chapel's entrance. I watched in a Terror-filled trance, as the she-beast threw herself at the father, driving her teeth into his throat, watched her tear the man's priestly garments off him. In that moment, all I could do to save my sanity was to recite the very next line in the book of Revelation, the one following that which the preacher had thundered through the chapel. And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of saints.

As their fornication began, as their combined moans echoed through the chapel, I snapped out of my torpor and ran, ran from the chapel, from the vaporous unholy grounds surrounding it, still clutching the Bible, the word of God in my hand. For it was the only thing which protected me from madness. In that moment, another thunderous strike of lightning descended right onto the fissure in the belt. tower tearing the chapel in two. The flames inside spread in an instant, engulfing the entire building, and all that was within. Then either side of the chapel's remains crashed into each other, and the resulting impact caused the sodden grounds to become a landslide. Thus, mere moments later, the wreck of the chapel, the graveyard, and even the small hill it had been built on, all vanished in the dark waters of the tarn below.

And as I stood there, stunned by what had just transpired, unable to move, all I could do was cling to my Bible and recite one final line. For true and righteous are his judgments. For he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood. of his servants at her hand. After what I'd witnessed that night, I gave up on becoming a preacher. It is always those closest to God, those who are the most devout, who are closest to sin and temptation, just like Father Usher. Still, I pray every night, and I still read the Bible, but I do so

alone. This tale, these events, they are the reason. I never entered a church again. That was opposed to being buried at the family plot. For sin and temptation and the creatures of the pit are always, always nearby. There's an old joke about how cemeteries are quite popular, because people wait their whole lives to get into one. But jokes aside, we know that there are many people who have a macabre fascination with graveyards. And in this tale, shared with us by author Thomas C. Mavarotus, we meet a couple who enjoy spending time among the dead,

that is, until they decide to visit a dark, decrepit part of one particular graveyard. Performing this tale are Ellie Hirschman, Aaron Lillis, and our newest voice actor, Marie Westbrook. So if you find yourself wandering among the graves, stay close to the gate. you'll want to avoid getting too close to block 12. Adrian drifted from town to town, blogging and selling her delightfully grotesque folk art. She paid her bills with freelance graphic design, and for the summer she lived rent-free in her ancestral ski condo.

I worked a monotonous day job that paid my bills. And in the evenings, for an hour or so, I'd revise a few words or lines of a manuscript I'd been toying with for several years. We became friends through a writer's group, and the two of us were bonded by morbid fascination. Her current fancy was gravestone symbolism, and I was happy to oblige her.

So, on a mostly sunny morning, she came down from the mountains, and I took her to the old cemetery along the river. I planned on making these expeditions a habit. The nearly nameless place is buried in the exact part of town you would expect the nucleus of a classic gregn of a classic zombie picture, hemmed in on three sides by factories. It was the sort of industry sprawling with red caution lights, towers wrapped with spiral iron staircases, linked by bridges and wires

and smokestacks discharging plumes of both elegant and foul emissions, acrid with cooked minerals one moment and the putrid tang of pet food being processed the next. On the remaining side, the north, the necropolis is secured by the steady confluence of a plains tributary. The Sandy bars on the far end frequented by deer and smaller wildlife, a reminder of long-gone tranquility. I had only been there once before, seeking out a pioneer relative, so it took a handful of U-turns in a couple industrial dead ends to reach the cemetery gates. Opposed to how I remembered it, the grass was green and maintained, and the dirt road was neatly graded. Some historical group must have made it their cause, as no one had been interned there for over 30 years.

We parked near the closed office, wetted our mouths with coffee, and began our discovery. Should I lock the car? I looked across the landscape, the unmoving graveyard and billowing factories. I think so. Unconventional Adrienne was dressed in full black, including lace gloves and with three fingers of calf

exposed between the top of her boots and the hem of her dress. She made my insides roast to look at her. Her face was occluded by both a wide-brimed Parsons hat with a black lace band, and sunglasses like black river rocks. I was surprised she didn't wear a veil. We left the road, plunging immediately into the sea of granite and marble. Adrian was a kid on Christmas morning, distracted by urn, obelisk, and angel, and every chiseled decoration.

Not every grave was marked so fancifully. There were many plain stones, and several made of inexpensive blocks of poured concrete, the names and dates drawn with a stick or a finger. Some were gone entirely. the missing headstone's concrete foundation, the only sign that anyone rested below. Occasional birds alighted on the warm stones, others pecked at meat in the grass. Pollinating insects traversed wildflowers and rare perennials, generations old. Rodents scurried in the shadows of stones and shrubs,

and a train blared its crossing through the steel and smoke wasteland, but we were otherwise alone. We were on the verge of the mausoleums when we made a loose attempt to thoroughly cover one row of graves, to study the details that made them the same and different. But Adrienne couldn't do it, something else robbing her attention, a particular cut of stone or antique font catching her eye. So we jumped row after row on our way to those houses of the dead, collecting mental images of anchors, tree stumps, and winged hourglasses.

All the images cryptically more beautiful than the ubiquitous and lackluster cross. Then something else distracted us both entirely. There was no mistaking an infant's shrill cry, not the sort from hunger or need from attention, but the sound uttered from the icy hot frustration of wordlessness. I cringed at the noise, a sound I detested even in a horde of people. What is that? We craned ourselves to find the source, but it was beyond our scope, down behind the mausoleums toward the river.

The chance of a baby by itself was unlikely. We could hear no consoling voice under the wall. No shh. either gentle or frantic. We continued our course inevitably to the heated sound. A rabbit darted from an antique rose bush to its warrant dug beneath an empty concrete base. You know, rabbits were considered witches familiar

because they could mimic a baby's scream. I don't think they sound this good. We came to the hill lined with mausoleums, a necropolis skyline, and I had to help Adrian down because of the steep grade and the extreme heels of her boots. At the bottom across the road, was a meadow marked by only a few common blocks, and further on a decrepit fence, and then the river.

What we supposed was an old woman in a dusty habit, crouched over one of these markers and the inconsolable child. Hello? The woman lifted her head slightly, a curtain of gray hair obscuring her face. We walked steadily to the scene, measuring the situation. Something bad's happening. Something's wrong. The scream grew more dire and demanding, but we couldn't see what was happening for the shape of the crone. Adrienne quickened her pace, and instinctively I grasped for her hand, grabbing nothing. Are you okay? Do you need help?

I wanted to stop. I wanted to pause everything and rewind, but I stumbled up alongside Adrienne just as she reached the woman's back. I could tell she wanted to touch her, and I shook my head, don't. Hey! I said to the crouching, shape, I'd had enough of this mystery. What are you doing? What's going on here? Then it turned around and stood up, rising over seven feet, no old woman. There was no baby either, just this cadaverous and ancient man, the infant's incessant

whale flowing from the blackness of a smile that fractured in every direction across his craggy face. Of course, your instinct is to run, if you can avoid the instinct to merely fall down to collapse into insanity. My instinct was to grapple Adrian around her midsection and rest her away, far enough away to reset her so we could run together. I stumbled and fell, dropping her. She vomited, either from shock or from my squeezing. And behind us, the man continued to scream.

When I scrambled to my feet, I grabbed Adrienne by her arm, pulling her up. We ran to the hill, her boots inhibiting our best efforts. But by the time I yanked her up to the crypts, the man and his vicious sound were gone. We panted. There was a cramp in my side, and it was my turn to throw up. Fuck. Adrienne took off her sunglasses, a wild smile on her face. We walked quickly back to the car, paranoid, looking sideways and behind each other's backs.

The cemeteries seemed to stretch without end. Bright clouds converged overhead, locking in the heat of the day, enveloping the landscape with a dull white coating like gauze, and the flies and midge clouds roared with an electric mindless drone. As we finally approached the car, the stagnant air began to stir with returning freshness and color. There was an older couple in the rows near the front gate, contemplating history or an ancestor. They didn't seem to be concerned about us. We rinsed our mouths out with a warm bottle of water, rolled down the windows, and I started the car.

Should we drive down around there on our way out? Adrian's smile was fixed. Hell no. She laughed at me and put her sunglasses back on. I drove out the furthest from the river that I could. Originally, we had planned lunch, but I couldn't eat, and Adrienne was too giddy, so I drove her to her car and we made our goodbyes. Overall, it was a good day. I guess so. I smiled awkwardly and hugged her. Her ribs and spine felt exaggerated and left a gross feeling in my arms. Over the course of the following days, I tried my best to shake off the experience, but it was hard to ignore. Some might think it childish, but I kept the lights on in my apartment. I watched game shows and talent shows and read entertainment news in bed, anything to soften my anxiety.

Likewise, I was unsettled because I didn't hear from Adrian. It was not unusual. Weeks had gone by in the past where we were not in contact. But why was it happening now, after such an extraordinary event? Then a day or two later, the emails began to show up. Links to articles, blogs, images, ghost stories mostly, accounts of banshees, capas, and la Girona. All things that would have thrilled me in a pleasant way a month ago. Below each link was Adrienne's signature and a little black heart with vampires fangs.

So with slight loathing, I read them all. The second batch was a cache of peculiar information hardly connected to our incident. Spirit boards, automatic writing, Grammamancy, all music articles about obscure, out-of-print neo-folk and death jazz records. Because of the general lack in common associations, I was able to appreciate the details as though I was an uncommitted party. Gradually, I was able to relax once more with a single lamp on in the living room. The weekend returned, and Adrienne texted me, in town, coffee? I knew she wanted to go back. There was no stopping her, so the only thing.

I could do was to try and stop myself. She was already at the coffee shop, Mohawk tied into a ponytail, gargantuan eyes and smile, her fingers tapping away at the table as if playing some invisible keyboard. What? I said, easing into the chair opposite her. I couldn't email this stuff to you. She pulled a composition book from her bag and flipped over leaves blackened with her heavy script to a middle page. Block 12.

The designation was written prominently on the top margin. Below it I could see questions she'd written, lines of bulleted points, the words bolded or underlined. On the opposite page was a rough but detailed sketch of the graveyard, and on the side, the shrieking figure. Her diligence dried out my mouth and throat. You've been busy. It's all I can think about. You? No, not really.

I've actually been trying to think about it as little as possible. She smacked me in the shoulder, as she might her brother. This is pretty amazing. I'm surprised you're being so reserved about it. Reserved? It scared the shit out of me, Adrienne. It really did. I didn't like it.

She closed her book, marking the page with a finger I noticed was newly raw with fidgety chewing. Her mouth went straight. Don't be scared. Look, we share this experience, and I need you to help me work it out. Although Adrienne was more than just a creative acquaintance,

the rawness of the cemetery had bared a new vulnerability between us. Were you scared? It was the most sincere thing I'd asked anyone since I was a child. Yeah, it was. Of course. But I'm not now. It was a show, right? A clever, secret message.

That's what we went looking for. Secrets. Hidden, forgotten things. So don't be afraid. Be excited. We're on to something. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and I struggled to cling to my immunity.

Okay, tell me a little about Block 12. Okay. She smiled, and her teeth reminded me of those age-worn blocks of marble. Traditionally, Block 12 was the Pottersfield, although a few memorialized remains were laid therein, a dozen Japanese frontiersmen and some others. Adrienne relayed a short list of ordinary historical facts, which I was content to hear.

But here's the payoff. Most of Block 12 is occupied. by babies, mostly newborns. Some days are only hours old. A change in my expression must have mirrored my dreadful turn of thought. Come on. This is cool. In fact, if it had not happened to us, or even me, it would have been very cool. I was, after all, the instigator of the exploration. But a mentor of mine, another comrade in the curious, had warned me long ago that when you deliberately seek out the weird, it tends to notice you back, attach itself, and never let go. In our case, the line between thinking and doing were not necessarily solid or static. I didn't believe

Adrienne and I had actually done anything, but I could tell she was driven to do something. So, I didn't know if continuing the conversation would encourage her more, or if there was a chance I could keep her from doing whatever possibilities she was formulating. She tapped the sketch of the man. So, what about him? What's your theory? It's got to be a baby, right? I couldn't help but think how much better this would be if we were in a collaborative writer's workshop, someplace where we were the gods deciding what was and was not possible or any situation where we were in control.

Or the whole mass grave. I nodded slowly. She kept the conversation going with herself, asking questions and answering them, posing an idea than building on it or debating it. I was quiet, and nodded, erased eyebrow, tested a smile if it seemed safe. It all led to the declaration I was dreading to hear. We need to go back. I'm not superstitious.

As far as I'm concerned, black cats and broken mirrors are not catalysts of doom. Not sure what I would call the incident at Block 12. On one hand, it defied reason. And therefore, within reason, there was nothing to fear. Yet as impossible as the occurrence was, it happened. And what does that do to one's definition of reason? I guess, ultimately, that was what Adrian sought. I wanted to abandon the whole pursuit, change my interests, change her.

I'm also not a guilty person, but wherever this was leading, I couldn't humanely allow her to be a part of it alone. Okay, I yielded. But not today. This is only coffee. I wasn't ready. No, not today. We need to do some more thinking.

The web links Adrienne sent next turned darker. A video about a medium who admitted to being a fraud and a follow-up article about the man who murdered him. Then there was a bulletin board discussing enigmas in closed circuit television feeds. It was tolerable as long as I never clicked links to any of the actual footage. The index of haunted dolls I had to completely ignore. I adjusted the routine of late evening. by settling into bed with a volume of straight fiction.

Nothing supernatural, nothing uncanny. I resisted the urge to skip a story about a couple's miscarriage, and the subsequent tale about a teenage Dominican philanderer made me drowsy. Lamp off and turned on my side, I was fast to sleep. Then just as suddenly, or seemingly so, my phone buzzed with a message. I'd been out for at least four hours, according to the clock on the screen, which was bright and washed the room with a sanitized whiteness. The text from Adrienne read,

Hi, are you okay? I fumbled with drowsy thumbs, although my heart hammered at my sternum. Do you know who this is? My comfort dried out, crumbled. I turned the bedlamp on. I typed, Adrienne. This is an anagram of Adrian.

Anagram. Or amalgam? Neither made rational sense, and whatever it meant, it didn't come from Adrienne as I knew her. I powered down my phone, trying to think of what to do for the remaining hour until dawn, trying to think of nothing at all. The workday that followed was consumed by thoughts of Adrienne and the non-adrian.

I hesitated to check my personal email for fear of what puzzles might have been left there. Around midday, I relented to turn my phone back on to find a scroll of messages, none from Adrienne, all of them from meaningless five or eight-digit numbers. I deleted them all without reading a single one. but in the courage of my workstation, I called her. Hey, can you hear me? Something's wrong with my phone. I know.

Have you been calling me? She sounded on the far end of a profound gulf. No. Have you been texting me? She paused, or the phone cut out. Are you all right? What's the matter? I'm glad you answered.

But then the call really did fail. By evening, the dread increased with greater weight. Quiet light fading, I pulled the switch on my living room lamp, and the dated tungsten bulb popped, cradling the space in Merck. I fumbled with the television remote, eventually generating some moody light with Alex Trebek and the blue Jeopardy Board. The lead contestant burned through the category's superstitions. I knew every macabre answer. The category should have been called portents of death and doom.

At the commercial break, I sensed the presence of a bird or some other unwanted guest. The only logical think would have been an insect. I watched the spaces between the wall and couch, the corners where the wall meet the ceiling. I looked into the shadows. No rodents, bugs, hint of anything. Category for Final Jeopardy was morbid curiosity, so I flipped channels until I hit a baseball game. It might have been soccer. All I believed was that some sport would be normal, non-threatening, and uncreepy.

Still, the sensation persisted, like a rash on one sixth sense. I glanced over to the corner again, the dim crack of shadow, and looking directly at the angle saw nothing. But from the rim of my eye, the space continued to twitch. It flickered and fluttered, and I tried to ignore it as you would try to ignore an itch or a throbbing pulse of blood, until the crack moved. It scuttled from the corner across the wall to a place within, spilling from my peripheral vision into full view. My bowels cramped with a sharp heat. I edged slowly but deliberately away from the scuttling until I was off the couch, reaching for the ceiling light switch,

never trying to look at the thing because I wouldn't see it anyway. It dissipated in the light, as shadows do. I kept the light on, kept the kitchen light on too, and somehow, through a half bottle of gin I hadn't even realized I had, I was able to sleep in my darkened bedroom, light from the rest of the apartment, seeping under the door. On Thursday, Adrienne sent me an email with the subject, heading breakthrough of sorts.

Her message stated that her phone was dead, and she asked if she could stay with me through the weekend. Her closing remark was, we have to do this now. The tone, however, was not of terror, and that horrified me even more. It all happened so quickly, no insidious glacial lurking, the type of pace crafted in manuscripts of mystery and horror. The urgency itself was unsettling, as we found ourselves tilting sharply above a complete unknown, virtually unarmed in both knowledge and practicality.

Friday night, Adrienne showed up in black shorts and tank top with everything in a cobalt blue sports duffel, and I teased her about its contrast with her usual ensemble. Hmm, wait until you see my pajamas. We could still banter like paranormal investigators, whose highlight of their career was a garbled EVP, the perceived vocalization and anticipated name or phrase, or anything they were hoping to hear, make real. At least she could still act that way. I, on the other hand, was merely a puppet and completely terrified beneath my casing.

She set up her laptop and composition books, there were two now, at my bachelor's dining table. It's a spirit. Just not a human spirit. Hold on, I've got to eat something, nervous stomach. But really, I was trying to postpone everything. We ordered delivery that arrived faster than I hoped, and I couldn't eat it. something more than a nervous stomach. I opened a bottle of wine I'd been saving for a special occasion, unknown,

and started receiving its sustenance. Adrienne didn't drink. I'm exhausted. She didn't look it. She looked wired. Remember when I told you Block 12 is all I can think about? It's true. I haven't been sleeping.

What happens when you try to sleep? Oh, I don't try to sleep. Really. I've had this drive pushing me through the night. and in the day, I don't know. Not sleeping, I don't think. All the while, she typed away on her computer. Both notebooks open on either side.

She tapped a note into one book with her pen, cross-checked it with the other book. Some awareness would unveil in her mind and she would type away again at the keyboard. I watched her work this way, manic for a few minutes. Then I said, you have to be sleeping. The wine helped, help me. Half the bottle was gone,

and I tried to think how I could get it. Adrienne to have some. I haven't been sleeping. I know this. She smiled that broad, increasingly vacuous smile. You know how it goes. One thing leads to another, to another, to another. An endless catalog of ideas and have ideas.

The apocalyptic Google hole. Like cramming for a test. What is it? The test. I don't know. When is the test, Adrienne? Soon I hope. Tomorrow, it has to stop.

I can't. I can't stay awake much longer. I mean, I can. I don't have a choice, is what I'm saying. If I grabbed her hands, would they stop? If I held them gently, if I guided her away from her work, would she take a rest or would she break? Look at all this.

Sugumagami, Usalka, Drakavak, unclean spirits. It's none of these or all of these. We don't know. No one knows the right answer. See? That's the problem. That's the big problem right there.

This conglomerate spirit. I moved my chair beside her and looked at the screen. There must have been at least 40 tabs open along the toolbar at the bottom of the screen, as though the machine had a virus activating infinite pop-ups. She went from one tab to another, cycling mechanically, so the screen images were viewable for a handful of seconds, gleaning bits of information or nothing at all, trapped in a circuit of monstrous visuals and sinister knowledge.

Adrienne. I said her name again. I was afraid to touch her. Instead, I took a risk and folded her laptop closed. She stared at the empty space, then her eyes rolled around, maybe reading the after image, or looking for them,

or reading something only she could see. When her expression went flat, she turned to me. Thank you. She at last appeared tired and hoary. What I mistook for eye shadow was fatigue, and her lips were bloodless. Her large eyeshadowed.

eyes themselves had collapsed into dark, cheap replicas of eyes. We ate some, talked little. Adrienne tried the wine, and we joked about it. I finished it off while she washed her face. I could hear her sigh and groan over the water. It was warm in the apartment, so I opened the bedroom windows. I'm not sure I would have done that if I hadn't drunk most of another bottle of forgotten wine. We lay on the covers of the bed in the night breeze, and soon Adrienne's body shuddered with sleep. Dizzy, but not tired, appeared at the whorls of paint on the ceiling, hoping they would stay still. I tried to compare the anticipation for the next day with some other experience. This was neither a holiday nor vacation, closer to a medical exam, or the results of one,

and still not like that at all. Adrienne shifted around and exhaled with fitful huffs, but I was too shy to watch her. As I began to drift off, she settled down. I had the sense she was looking at me. She had rolled onto her side, but when I turned my head to look at her, her eyes were shut. The trick of the lamplight and the fatigue of her face. I looked back to the ceiling and could see from the corner of my eye that her eyes were indeed open, wide and moist. Again, they were closed when I looked at her directly. I resolved to lay on the couch before that hideous smile emerged and joined those abyssal pits for eyes.

Adrian woke me in the dreary morning. The apartment was humid and the sky outside was the color of dead skin. I hoped some cheerful sunshine would accompany us again, but the forecast for the day predicted worse. Adrienne had not improved either. Since I had so easily broken her connection to the apparition, entity, whatever it was, her body quickly succumbed to the effects of starvation and insomnia. Let me make some coffee.

I'd slept just as bad and could have used the caffeine, but really I was stalling, hunting for an alternative. No, we better just figure this out. Try to anyway. I didn't like the hopelessness in her voice. Could a doctor or priest help? A shaman or obey a man? Physicist or an astronaut were just as likely to offer solutions. It could very well have been that the experience was the message.

Regardless, I was committed to following through, rigid with the common sense I was near to abandoning, and courage from an arrowhead water bottle filled with Irish whiskey. Considering the booze I'd been consuming recently, I recognized I hadn't escaped total bodily harm myself. This time we found our way to the Riverside Cemetery as easily as its patrons, or perhaps its occupants. We drove in silence on uncannily empty streets. The few pedestrians and motorists we passed appeared oddly shrouded with obscured faces. Not rain, but heavy damp air collected on the windshield, beating in thick droplets. We turned on to the service road along the highway and passed under the railway bridge

that represented the gateway to the industrial wasteland. The whole landscape was a dead alien city. I took a long sip of whiskey, then reached over for Adrienne's hand. I imagined touching fragile bones, but what I grasped instead was repulsive, a mass combined of roots and tallow. She pulled her hand away first. I didn't want to look at her. I pulled the car to the side of the road by the open postern as the main gate was barred.

Adrian got out before me and passed through the poster, drifting between the gravestones like a blackened spirit. I wasn't sure I could get out of the car. My hand's still and solid on the door handle as I watched her. I took a deep breath, drank the rest of the whiskey, and caught up with her before she was lost. What are we doing? Finding out what it wants. I suspected what it wanted it already had. I stopped, hoping she would halt with me.

I mean, do we have a plan? A smudged stick or something? She looked back at me with a tiny grin. Yeah, smudged stick. She kept slowly walking. I'm thinking, if we allow it to present itself again in its own space, we need to stand it out. I think we disrespected it.

We need to let it finish its message. That sounds right. But I didn't believe it. The rules of movies and fairy tales did not apply to this world. This was a snag, an unraveling in the weave of human order. Who knew it was so delicate? Look at this place. It's a world outside of order.

Adrienne waved her skeletal arms, conjuring. The chemical pollution of the factories in the air and ground. Nature unbounded, the river continuing its millennial course, aware or unaware. and this hallowed ground filled with crossing cultures. All of it forced together. Taking to account the nameless dead of Block 12. Think about it. There have got to be pockets like this all around the world.

Strange things happen, they really do, but only in these little concentrated spaces. And these stories leach out. They decay and change. Become myths and urban legends and campfire stories. This thing is one of those roots. See? Conglomerate spirit. She named it.

And I knew it was true. Yet naming something didn't define it at all. We approached the hill of mausoleums. If we watched ourselves on a black and white drive-in theater screen, we would have rolled our eyes and laughed at the hackneyed scene, expecting Tor Johnson to stumble out from behind a wooden crypt facade. Instead, we stood above Block 12 beside a gray mausoleum that, resembled the Slavic Cathedral. Adrian's face was all eyes and mouth. As for me, the Irish

whiskey was ready to crawl from my guts and throat. I scanned the long potter's field, but her gaze seemed fixed on a particular spot that appeared vacant to me. Then I peered through the bars of the crypt, seeking something to manifest in the darkness. Where is he? Thinking of it as he made the thing practical. I irritably rolled chunks of old concrete from the foundation under my shoe. The whole platform was webbed with cracks and pocked with animal burrows left unchecked. Just wait. Wait. Instantaneously, the black line of her mouth drew up into a smile and expanded as before, unlike the old towering man and unlike her, like something new.

I could have called her name. I could have grabbed her. I could have pushed her down the hill. I stepped back away from her and the sound that never came, the sound I never wanted to hear again. I stepped away from the growing disorder, stepped into soft earth and worn cement, my feet shifting to maintain balance and traction. Each graceless step hammering the frail base, the loose earth, until it gave way, swallowed me. I awoke, crumpled in dirt, and decomposed vegetation.

Minutes or seconds passed. I recall looking at the walls of the crypt confused, and at the too bright spot the hole in the crumbled concrete and dirt where I had apparently fallen. through. The brightness made my stomach churn, the side of my head where it smacked the vault throbbed, and a red glare pulsed at the side of that eye. I've had concussions before, so I remembered not to stand up too fast. I called for Adrienne, but the sound was whispered, mumbled, could have been imagined. I thought I was pissing myself, but it was my phone buzzing. Adrian is here and no longer here. I looked back at the hole, watched it, slide down a long shadow-crouted tunnel.

The next time I woke up, I was slumped with my back against the vault. It was night, or simply dark. What I guessed at first was blood trickling from my head, felt more like a finger, drawing designs on my scalp, which it was. I came fully awake when the whole hand clutched a patch of my hair. I felt the space of a wide mouth descend by the swelling at my right temple. It snickered. Its slimy hair lapping my ear.

I hyperventilated in sync with its display of amusement. It slithered from its perch on the vault into my lap, holding my face in its muddy, desiccated hands. Its face was a richer black in the darkness. Its breath, dirt, and spoiled milk. Adrian said you can leave now. and dreams to tell

her story sleepless tales have dispersed this night poetic works from darkness alight we leave you with this a question on a theme

is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream 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 Ollie White. Our editor-in-chief is Jessica McAvoy. Please visit the no-sleeppodcast.com for show notes and more details about the

people who bring you this show. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast. We thank you for being a supportive season past member and for joining us within the exquisite horror of our reality. This audio program is copyright 2023 by Creative Reason Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media, Inc.