The NoSleep Podcast - S19 Ep4: NoSleep Podcast S19E04

Episode Date: February 26, 2023

It’s Episode 04 of Season 19. We ponder weak and weary with tales about disturbing dreams.“A Dream within a Dream” written by Edgar Allan Poe (Story starts around 00:04:15)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator – Jeff Clement“Alice Is Still Crying” written by Graeme Rosen (Story starts around 00:06:45)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator – Mike DelGaudio, Alice – Kristen DiMercurio, Shirley – Erin Lillis“Picture to Sound” written by Jack Kaide (Story starts around 00:48:40)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator – Erika Sanderson, Eric – David Ault, Susan – Penny Scott-Andrews“Try, Try Again” written by C. Rose (Story starts around 01:06:15)Produced by: Jesse CornettCast: Camille – Sarah Thomas, Alex – Kyle Akers, Ed – Jeff Clement, Firefighter – Atticus Jackson, HVAC Technician – Erin Lillis“The Shredder” written by E.S. Nocturne (Story starts around 01:57:15)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Jeff ClementCast: Narrator – Jessica McEvoyThis episode is sponsored by:HelloFresh - With HelloFresh, you get fresh, pre-measured ingredients and mouthwatering seasonal recipes delivered right to your door. Skip trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun, and affordable - and that's why it's America's #1 meal kit!. Go to HelloFresh.com/nosleep65 and use code nosleep65 for 65% off plus free shipping.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 RehnExecutive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon Boone“Alice Is Still Crying” illustration courtesy of Thea ArnmanAudio 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The No Sleep Podcast invade your dreams to bring you the nightmares you crave. And speaking of cravings and dreams, is there anything more dreamy than having all your meals made easy so your cravings can be satisfied? Well, that's why I love HelloFresh, and I bet you will too. HelloFresh's pre-portioned ingredients and easy-to-follow recipe cards means you can get a delicious home-cooked dinner on the table without all the time-consuming meal planning or prepping. It's way easier than you might feel. think to prepare their fast and fresh recipes. HelloFresh's latest line of meals features

robust flavors and filling portions, and they're ready in less than 15 minutes. Enjoy taste and quality done quick with recipes like falafel power bowls, seared steak and potatoes with bernets sauce, or southwest pork and bean burritos. See, Excellante. Now, if you're thinking that I love HelloFresh because I must be a wizard in the kitchen, let me make this clear. I am not some sort of fancy culinary guru. I usually struggle to make a simple grilled cheese sandwich, but I have no problems making delicious meals with Hello Fresh. They make it easy for me, and for you. So go to Hellofresh.com slash No Sleep 65 and use code No Sleep 65 for 65% off plus free shipping. You're not dreaming. You just go to Hellofresh.com slash no sleep 65 and use

Code No Sleep 6.5 for 65% off plus free shipping. Take advantage of this great offer and enjoy Hello Fresh, America's number one meal kit. And now, life is but a dream and we hope to make you scream. 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 it. Sherry, deep and dry. As you knock at our chamber door, we open and usher you in. Our sleepless tales for you in store, and the terror shall be lifted for the No Sleep Podcast.

Welcome to the No Sleep Podcast. I'm your host, David Cummings. In our world of No Sleep, we strive to banish sleep with horror. But sleep doesn't always allow us to escape from fear. Dreams are part of the foundation of horror stories, so much so that we have a subset of dreams specifically for those horrible nocturnal visions which wake us in terror. Yes, those dreaded nightmares.

In this episode, we feature stories where a person's strange dreams or waking visions evoke an unsettling reality. Is it real, or is it just our imagination? Do they predict what is to come, or do they remind us of times lost which will never return. It's a subject matter born of melancholy. You can awake from a wondrous dream only to realize that your life isn't what it was in the dream. You can awake from a nightmare and ponder what caused such bleak visions.

Ultimately, our dreams and nightmares force us to confront some hidden inner part of ourselves. Is it any wonder that the experience can so often be unsettling? We'll begin this episode with a short poem from this season's muse, Edgar Allan Poe, a man synonymous with melancholy and dark introspection. His tortured mind caused him to ponder what so many others before and after him have pondered. Is our life, our experiences, all that we see and feel actually real? Are we all part of some cosmic vision outside of our control? Think on these things as Jeff Clement performed.

Form's pose contemplation on these themes. Is this all a dream within a dream? Take this kiss upon brow, and imparting from you now, thus let me a vow. You are not wrong, who deem, that my days have been a dream. Yet if hope has flown away in a night or in a day, or in a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar of a surf tormented shore, and I hold within my hand grains of the golden sand. How few, yet how they creep through my fingers to the deep, while I weep while I weep. Oh God, can I not grasp them with a tighter clasp. Oh, God, can I not save one from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream.

When experiencing the trauma of loss and grief, it can be easy to escape. into a dreamlike world where the loss no longer exists, perhaps a form of therapeutic detachment. But in this tale, shared with us by author Graham Rosen, we meet a couple who want nothing more than their life to return to what it once was, and as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. Performing this tale are Mike Delgado, Kristen Di Maccurio, and Aaron Lillis. So if your grief is so profound, you may feel unable to ever change. Perhaps that's why Alice is still crying.

Alice is still crying. I feel as if I could explode any minute, not out of sadness, fury. Ollie's death was gruesome and fresh enough to throw her into fits. But I'm still angry. I want to punch something. I've heard about how marriages can follow. apart when a child dies. Sometimes somebody does get punched. Sometimes somebody goes and gets fucked, but most of the time they both end up leaving. We don't want that. We know that when we

promised each other forever, we meant it. For better or worse, I have my fits of rage and shakes to get through. Alice has past that. She, at least, has her crying. Alice is no stranger to it. Her younger sister Laurie died when she was only seven after being hit by a car. Alice once told me she'd promised herself no more death after that, but she has broken that promise for Ali, the things we do for our children. This evening, it is in the attic. Our upstairs room has one of those small doorways that leads to the attic, small enough for a child to open and walk in, small enough that an adult has to get down on their knees to enter. Only the penitent, man will pass. We've been reorganizing after selling off Ollie's things. Something we were told

would help heal. But if the checks in the mail, it hasn't arrived yet. I find myself curious why it's supposed to be healing to get rid of it all. Clothes, the toys, the sheets, the little bed. But, and I find myself curious as to why anybody could want the constant reminder. It's been four and a half months. And no matter what we try, we fail. We failed. He's dead. I don't heal. I look at the pictures. That's all I do for hours. I drown myself in the past. At some point, the pictures are more real than any memories I have. Photographs and selfies of a family feeling whole. Whole. Until something comes and cuts you apart. Here comes that anger again. We haven't healed.

And Alice, still crying. I tell her that I'll stay here for as long as she'll have me. That we can get through this. She's heard it all before. She usually appreciates them, which is more than I can say from my words. They pass through, leaving no evidence she heard them. I feel her tears drop on me for a few more minutes.

Before I tell her, she should rest while I make her dinner. I tell her that I love her. These words do leave a mark as her face moves to mine, and she hugs me, but does not say it back. I take her to the bed and help to tuck her in, expecting to see her eyes. But she's already facing the window. She does that lately, just looks out. Whatever she's expecting to see, I'm not sure. But I would be lying if I didn't find myself occasionally staring out at the world.

Expecting to see him again? No. I think it's the same feeling you have when you read an engaging story or play a thrilling game. Escape. Great adventure. Those things don't happen for us with books or movies anymore. But to look out and away, to let the light fall on your skin, to become one with the out there, it's the only way. I open the bedroom door and step out to me. I open the bedroom door and step out to me. make dinner. I turn back and see she is still facing the window. She is thinking of Ollie. She's thinking of Lori, allowing the final strokes of daylight to take her on her only chance for a great adventure. I will look back on this moment and wonder if, by now, he was already behind the attic door watching and waiting for us and collapses. Our window holds darkness. We don't eat dinner. After three bites, I put it up in the fridge and step back into the bedroom, hoping to sleep. Alice is starting to fall asleep already.

So I turn off the overhead and use my bedside lamp to read. It's a good book. I still haven't finished it. It makes the loneliness better. I finish another chapter when I hear a knock at the attic door. Not a bang, mind you. A gentle, two-piece, knock-knock. I turned toward the attic door.

Silas. I turned toward Alice. She is awake and looks up at me. I had a dream. It happens again. We both jump up. I reach for the bat my father gave me, and immediately she rises off the bed, leading me to the attic door.

I turn on the overhead, and we look at each other. We don't speak. We don't ask each other what we think it is, be it something terrifying or ridiculous. Our fears of what it could be ride along with our doubt that it even exists in a two-seat car to the truth to see which one of them is right. This time is different, faster, not just peaceful, excited. She opens the door, immediately moving to the side as I ready the bat. A child excitedly climbs in, rising up from where it was sitting.

It is wearing a burlap sack over its head, above a dark blue shirt and torn dirty kirt. khakis. It looks at me, happy but curiously. It tilts its head, and I know it's wondering where Alice is. She is completely awestruck, seemingly scared but clearly worried. Once it feels her presence, it turns toward her. Seeing her delights it. No sound follows but the clapping of his hands as it leaps up and down from the carpeted floor. I kneel down, as Alice makes her way past it to me and follows suit. We see as it sees. And the questions begin. Alice starts. Who are you? I follow up. What are you doing up here? It rushes at Alice and makes her jump when it throws its arms around her and buries its face into her neck, snuggling up. I see her face completely change as a tidal wave

hits her chest. She is leveled as the bare minimum of motherhood rushes back to her. She is crying. It lets go of her and immediately turns to me. Its small hands wrap around my neck as the word boy finds its way into my head. It's a boy. He buries his face, shielding it, using me as protective film. In this moment, I remember the day Ollie was born. Three years ago, he was seven pounds, eight ounces. When I held him, it felt. It fell. felt like an extension of myself, a part of me that couldn't be lost. But alas, here I am with a small child from the attic holding me. Instead of my own son, Alice turns to me, a look I haven't seen in months. The same look she gives me when we were 19, and she told me she always wanted to be a mother. It's what there is for me. I feel it in my bones. Before we can begin to figure out what is happening, he rises and stands in front of us. He dances around, he lated.

He claps his hands again. The question hits both of us, but only she starts to ask it. Are you? He stops dancing. Facing us, he tilts his head. Then he begins to back away, toward the attic door. Alice moves first, but I can't help myself as I'm. move with her. She reaches out. Don't go. He stops, raising his hand up and waving it to himself.

Come with me, his gesture says. Follow. We look at each other. There is a moment where I consider the strangeness, the queerness, the complete understanding that logic has gone out the window and insanity or death might be behind that door. But as I look at Alice, as I look at, as I look, at us. I see what happens if we stay here. I see how we succumb to our grief, how we fight each other until we give. I see that we never recover from this. I see how we die. So I reach my hand out and I wait for her to place hers there. When she does, I raise us both up and we follow the boy through the door. So, in a way, I suppose. pose. This is, all my fault. And so the small boy with the burlap sack is leading two childless

parents into a dark attic as the fairy tale begins. The light is off. I reach for the light switch. A hand touches me. It is Alice. She guides my hand away from the light switch as a mother guides her son from the outlet. Don't touch that hun bun. Too dangerous. You'll fall. She turns me toward our little friend, who is now in the corner of the attic with a nightlight hovering over him. He looks up at us, and with all the fierce innocence of a newborn's sleepy gaze, he holds out a book to us. For the first time in minutes, Alice speaks. I think he wants us to read to him.

Silence deafens. There is no dose of reality for me to hold on to it this moment. with our attic in darkness and this covered child beckoning us. I feel I should wonder if my sanity had broken. Our sanity. Ali died and he took our minds with him. Well, let's read to him then. I am amazed at my confidence.

Leftover dadisms that finally have an outlet. I never got to read to him. I never got to read to my boy. We sit down on either side of him. He snuggles in between us, and I find myself feeling comfortable. Alice begins to read. The book is where the wild things are, and I stumble into the potential irony of the title. This wild thing has found us.

Is he wild? No. Simply a child, ready to be loved. Speaking of that love, I find my sense. loving Alice more than I ever have before, watching her read so carefully, making sure the child followed along with the words. She looks at her new boy with such pride. As the wild things begin to dance, so does he, bouncing up and moving his arms. He makes no noise, but the silence is still deafening. The joy is so palpable. We feel it in our own.

bones. She continues the story. Everything happens so fast. After the dancing, the boy is tired. He moves towards us and lays on my lap, putting his thumb through the small slit in the sack he wears. Sucking his thumb, I feel his body move, weightless. Sleep is carrying him off. For the first time in months, I am crying. I feel fatherhood coursing. for my veins. I feel every unsaid and undone thing in my life coming back. Here it is. A chance, a chance to be a father. This young boy is ours. It's clear, isn't it? It's clear as a window. Day, I know that whoever this child is, he needs to be loved. He needs a father, a mother. A mom. mother. He needs us. I hold him in my arms as Alice finishes the story. She looks at me,

and for the first time in months, we are whole again. I begin to stand up, putting our boy around my shoulders, letting him sleep. I move towards the attic door and step out, still carrying him. As soon as he passes the threshold, he is awakened. He is gentle, but he unhooks himself from me and lets himself down. He shakes his head, no, and points to himself, then to the attic. I lean down and say, Wouldn't you like to sleep in here with us? I am crying again, but Alice is not.

She is still not crying. She is smiling. Don't leave, I'm thinking, don't leave, please. He looks down. down, seeming to be sad. Then he looks at the attic again and points, following it up with another point at himself. He has to stay here. He can't leave. Alice is no longer smiling. Then, in one second, everything changes. He pops up and waves at both of us before running back into the attic, shutting the door behind him. We both charge at the door. I hear Alice before me. I hear Alice before

me. Wait, please! She opens the door first and rushes in. I follow suit. It's okay. Please, just stay. In the attic, you find nothing. No light, no book, no evidence of anything. I turn the light switch on to see clearer, and Alice turns to me with fury, as if I drove him away with the light, as if only the darkness held her dreams. I turn it back off as it's clear. We are alone again. I feel it again the same way I felt when Ali died. Something beautiful, something life-changing, something gone, so quickly that you can't

even process. Were we dreaming? Was he even real? We step back into our bedroom, crouching under the attic door like children ourselves. If only we were still. Back when things were simpler when crying was no large encumbrance. What if he never comes back? What if he gave us this light only to take it away? At this moment with her, I wish it was a dream. I wish it all gone. I wish it never happened. It didn't help us. It made it worse. We were on the bed like before. Childless, broken, angry. Alice is still crying. Sometimes I catch Alice in the attic. She is sitting and reading.

I try to get her to come out. She refuses. She says she can hear him. If she listens closely, he is dancing. He is still dancing, waiting for her. We do nothing but the same routines. Anger, chores, fielding calls from loved ones checking in, cancelling plans because we can't see anything.

any way to enjoy being out. We have to stay inside. What if he comes back? I am laying in bed at the end of the week, half remembering what happened and going back into my book. I haven't thought about Ali in a few minutes. A few minutes of solace disappeared into some great other world. Alice is sleeping next to me. She has spent most of the day looking out of the window again. I know she is wishing. I hope for something truly good. Alice bolts up. She has been waiting.

I know in my own small way that I have too. Can it be true? We both move over quickly to the door and open it. He is there. Thank God Almighty, he is there. He rushes into the room and hugs us both dancing and rousing up a party with himself around the room before running back over to us

hugging us again. I feel it again. The rush, the love. But something is different this time. Something is wrong. I look down and pat his head. I tell him how much we missed him. I ask him if he is okay. He nods. Alice pulls him away from me and holds him close. Then she says it. I love you so much, Ali. I am frozen. No, no, it can't be. I expect the boy to look confused. I expect him to step back and wonder at the new name. Instead, he moves his head back and kisses her cheek through the small slit in the sack that covers his face.

The same face that we looked at every day until he was gone. I fall to my knees. The ground is heavy now that my weight is a time. The tears, they fall further than my knees. I look at him. When Ali was born, he had two fingers missing, his ring finger and his pinky. I must not have looked last time, but I see his hands now, just as I remember. Ah, Ali? He looks at me, and I can see a small smile through the slit. It is only now that I notice his lips big and purple, blackened teeth with heavenly shades of white, falling. He moves towards me and hugs me, but I can't describe it.

I hug back, but can't believe it. It can't be. It simply can't be. And yet, it is. Funny how tears come for every occasion. She has exactly what she wants. But Alice is still crying. We read to Ali again.

After taking us back into the attic, he sits us down under his nightlight. This time the book is in the night kitchen, a classic from my childhood. We are halfway through the book, and he is snuggling up to both of us when behind us. We hear it. We look at each other in confusion. Alice has stopped reading. We look down at Ali. is still with us. Ollie never left. Did he ever die? Who's that? Ali pops up, the sack almost flying

off his head. He claps his hands and dances over to the attic space behind us. Deep in the corner, he takes his nightlight with him and reveals a new door, a door in the back corner of our attic, smaller than the houses, a door that was not here when we moved in. He only only was. He only was opens it. Another child rushes in, excited to see her friend. She hugs Ollie. She is wearing a bright silver mask, the kind that a masquerade ball would crown as the queen of the contest. It has horns and a long chin, all of it held by her long brown hair. Her hair is like Alice's. They dance and clap as Ali points to us and nods to her. She nods back and they both rush over. The way he stands in front of us next to her, awkwardly fidgeting. He wants to introduce her. She stands behind him,

looking nervous and frail. She wants to be liked. As soon as he moves aside, pointing his arms out to his friend in a grand welcome, she steps forward. Alice flies back to me, landing in my arms. Alice is breathing so heavily. I fear she's having a heart attack. She manages to speak. The girl bounces up into the air, excited and loving. She finally rushes to Alice and hugs her, putting her arms around me in the process.

It is then that I realize they're here for her. They want Alice back. Alice sobs, holding. her dead sister in her arms. I love you so much. Oh my God, how? He moves himself in, hugging all of us. All four of us are linked.

In that moment, death and life and grief and anger, all of it is gone. All that matters is love. I think that was the best, the best moment of it all. We read to both of them. They both fall asleep in our arms. For the first time, we sleep in the attic. They are gone in the morning, but that's just fine. We know they'll be back.

We go out for the first time in weeks. We buy food, small mattresses and pillows and sheets. We buy more children's books. We run into Alice's friend Shirley at the store, and she is concerned, but overjoyed, seeing us buy new children's things. I'm so glad to see you trying again. I cannot smile. I cannot be honest.

Alice does not miss a beat. Thank you so much. I think we really found what we needed. What we needed. Is this what we need? But I do know that as soon as we saw another child, it changed. It's never been the same.

After we make it back home, we move everything into the attic. And I ask Alice a question that's been aching at me all day. Is this right? Can we explain what is happening? It's so insane. All of it. She ignores me and continues making a bed for dead children. Honey, look at me.

We've got to understand that whatever is happening here, it isn't meant to be. God help me. I love seeing them too. But this is wrong. She looks at me. Half of her face lit by the open attic door. She finally speaks. It's wrong for God to take a child from loving arms. I've never had much patience for God, certainly not of late. I can't deny the irony of a believer thinking God's arms as taking, not loving. Alice, our purpose is not to... The attic door slams next to us, shrouding us in a cocoon of black. In the darkness, I hear another attic door open, the one in the corner. I hear footsteps, many small footsteps.

My heart feels as if it's stopped. I am waiting for the footsteps to stop as well. They draw closer. Eventually a nightlight comes on. Ali, in his sack, is holding his nightlight above him. Lori is next to him. So are a dozen other children. They all gather around Alice,

clapping and dancing and hugging. She smiles so widely, so perfectly that it looks like a Picasso. She is tilted in a wave of motherhood. These dozen children are waiting, faces hidden under masks, clothing, paintings, and blood. waiting for a story, waiting to be loved. Alice looks back at me.

Our purpose is to be good parents. It's what there is for me. I feel it in my bones. Ollie is dead, I think to myself, but I can't say it. Not with him here. I feel miles away. So I simply sit and listen as she begins to read. to the dead babies in desperate need of a mother. At that moment, I became one of them, wanting for Alice, wanting for my love, back of this. I come out of the attic occasionally to bring food in, to bring more books. Every time I come out, I am fielding more questions from loved ones. Why haven't you gone out? Why haven't you gone back to work? I know I can't tell them the truth.

So I tell them we're working on a book and staying inside, rediscovering life, rediscovering our purpose. Sometimes I bring the phone in to Alice so that her family does not suspect she is in danger. She is so cheerful, so happy when she talks. It's wonderful to hear it in her voice. But you should see her face, sunken, gray, frathing. Angel, bony. The dark circles under her eyes have moved so far down they may as well be her cheeks. Yet, through all of it, she smiles.

She laughs. She is happier than I ever made her. She reads to them every night. They come through the back attic door and they gather round and they listen. They snack, they hug, they dance. They love. I sit and I try. I try to take part. In the morning they are always gone and we spend all day waiting, waiting for our purpose to come back to us. It gets harder and harder as the months go by. I wonder just what's behind that other attic door they come through. Where are they coming from? Now, occasionally, a child will come up to me, looking for comfort. and hoping I'll play with them.

On my best nights, I will cry, but I will still get up and play. When my worst nights, my angriest nights, I will softly scowl or even whisper, the look in their eyes, the fear, the innocence, not help me. It is so devastating. All they want is love. All they want is parents. but I can't help myself. This is evil.

All of it. I have to tell her I'll have no part of it anymore. Tonight, I will tell her. The children are around her again. Lori and Ali are always at her side. They are especially excited tonight. They have had Alice read her many books, always bringing them through that door in their little hands.

The morning approaches. I am waiting for it to end, so I can tell her I am done, that we have to be done. This is goodbye. It must be. But as the final story is completed, Alice is still crying. She knows the night is coming to an end. She knows she'll have to wait again. She hates waiting.

It's like losing her love all over again. She reaches out to all of them. I love you so much, you know. I love you so much. Then she says it. I want to go with you. I stand up. I am ready to stop this.

I move toward them all. But then I see them hug her. I see their little hands hold each other together. I focus on Ali. I focus on my child's hands just as I remember them. just as I saw him in pictures for months, with all of his birth marks and his ring and pinky missing on his right hand. Pause. Ollie's fingers were missing on his left hand, not his right.

I look closely. I need to be sure. I am sure. His missing fingers are on the wrong hand. I dart towards the children. I pull at Alice. Come on, now. She forces my hand back and screams.

Let go of me. What are you doing? I point at the child. That is not Ali. Honey, look at me. Whatever is happening here, we have to go. She looks at me with all the fury of a volcano, finally erupting after months of seething hatred. How dare you? How dare you try and take this away? I grabbed the boy as he tries to fight me off of him.

I hold out his hand. Look at it, honey. Look, Ali's fingers were missing on his other hand. Whatever this thing is, it's not Ali. All of these things. I put the boy down hard and he cries, a terrible breaking sound that penetrates our ears. I have to scream. I have to scream to be heard.

These things are not what we think. These things are sucking out everything good in you. Everything that you used to be. Alice is comforting the boy, holding him close. She is whispering. I hear words like worry and everything, okay, and never hurt. And again, I am weeping now. Honey, I know. Believe me, I want him back too.

I want all of them back. I want every dead child taken from a loving place to be back here and safe with people who love them. But I want you back. I want the woman I love back. I want to have a real child. I want to have a real life. Not this. Christ, Alice, not this.

Not these things. She turns to face me. The Ali thing. has stopped crying. She stands up, holding his lying hand. The lorry thing moves to her side. The childlike things gather around my wife, protecting her from me. She is looking at me as if I were a stranger. Before I know it, in my heart, I see I have lost everything. She speaks calmly, purposefully. These things are my children.

They are real. They are my heart. This is a real life. The best I've ever had. I move to the Olly thing and I ripped the sack off its head. What I see makes me fly back in terror. A mangled, smashed face, purple and blackened, dried blood covering it, bone shards sticking out of its temple, a mangled eye falling down onto its cheek,

tears streaming down its face, falling past a quivering purple lip. The face of a young boy whose parents left the window open, the young boy who fell to his death and smashed himself on the concrete. The young boy who found a way back to the parents he so loved. watching one parent love him and another completely reject him. It was the mangled, broken face of my dead Ollie. I scream. I don't know if it is fear or sadness.

I think it's a mix of both. I love him so. I love him so much. The other children things took their covers off. Lori's face contorted by the car. that hit her. Another whose throat had been cut, one covered in bruises, all of them children met with things children should never be met with. In the middle of a group of mangled, dead children, stood my wife, Alice, not crying, but most assuredly broken as she looked into my eyes.

The hidden back attic door opens. Hundreds of small. All outstretched hands reach inside from the darkness as the children move towards it. They all step inside until all that is left is Ollie, Lori, Alice speaks. This is my purpose. I'm not going to let you take it away from me. To stare. Stare as everything I love. Broken or not walks away from me.

Lori leads Alice into the door and they fall. into the outstretched hands of something resembling children. Ollie looks back at me. It seems as if he is wishing I could go with him. I think he forgave me. God help me. I hope he did. Terrible to say, but I hope he did.

I am not sure if it really is him. I do know one thing. Those tears are real. He finally turns away from me. A quivering purple lip leading his head. down, he steps into the door, and he closes it behind him. As soon as he does that, the door disappears. I am still alone. I have not gone anywhere. Authorities have tried to look for Alice. No doubt I am the prime suspect. They still believe I'm hiding something, both the cops and her

family, but with no evidence linking me to any sort of violence, they have nothing to charge me with. They seem to believe my tears when I weep and say I want her back. One day I go through Ollie's things. I'm feeling nostalgic. Eventually I fall back into looking at pictures on my phone. I find a picture of him. A selfie the three of us took together. So beautiful.

His fingers are missing on his left hand. As I remembered. I was right. Then I noticed something on Alice. Her necklace. Alice's necklace in the picture is reversed. The picture is mirrored. All of the selfie pictures on my phone are mirrored.

His missing fingers. I looked at the pictures for so long they invaded my memories. His right hand, those were the missing fingers. I weep again. I've moved far past anger. At least I have my crying. At least I have that. I lay on the bed and stare out the window now mostly.

There is nowhere for me to go. I try to read. Sometimes I'll read aloud. If I'm feeling up for it, sometimes I'll go into the attic and sit and read. Sometimes I'll sleep there. I am waiting. I am hoping for them to come back. But I know they won't.

The worst of it is, I don't think it's a good place they went to. because you see when I am in the attic I can hear them I hear the clapping the dancing I hear Alice reading I hear her voice and I search I search for the back attic door but it's not there it never will be I am left alone only to hear that's just it I hear other things too I feel them pain anguish, hate, a window that stares back with only darkness. I know it has to be bad, you see. The place they're in, the place they took her. Because if I listen close enough, I can hear it, is still crying.

Difficult emotions can have a tight hold on us. So let's take a break from this darkness and consider how we can look after our own mental health. And with this episode delving into the ways our dreams can haunt us, we're thankful that this show is sponsored by BetterHelp. It probably doesn't take stories about despair and bad dreams to be reminded of the struggles we face in life. It feels even tougher these days. There is so much to make us feel overwhelmed and powerless.

If we're stuck in a cycle of social media and doom scrolling, we're not making things easier for us. That's why I'm thankful for services like BetterHelp Online Therapy. Therapy has helped me tremendously. I've learned ways to cope with feelings of hopelessness. I've been able to see the ways in which I can be empowered to control my emotions so they don't bog me down in the dark despair. So if you're thinking of giving therapy a try, better help is a great option.

It's convenient, flexible, affordable, and entirely online. You just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. If you want to live a more empowered life, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com slash no sleep today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com slash no sleep. Thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. Now let's return to our childhood home.

Surely there's nothing to fear in the attic. Is there? When we look to the past, we can so often fall into the mistaken belief that those were the good old times, times when things seemed easier and simply better than they are now. And as we'll learn in this tale, shared with us by author Jack Cade, reminders in the form of old family movies spur one man to long for the good old times, a longing most profound. Performing this tale are Erica Sanderson, David Alt, and Penny Scott Andrews. So try not to get lost in the past.

Those feelings are fleeting, especially when you transform picture to sound. The attic was cold and dark, as they had expected it to be. The creeping damp that had started in the downstairs bathroom had clearly worked its way up here, and the air was pungent with it, like the smell of wet newspapers. As for the lights, the bulbs must have blown out years ago. In their mother's little semi-detached house on the edge of Upminster, Eric and his sister were tidying up the place before a visit from the surveyors the following week. Cleaning out the house had been slow going, and sometimes it felt like they'd barely

scratched the surface. Their mum had clearly become a hoarder before she'd been moved to a care home, and they'd had to hire an extra bin from the council to accommodate all the rubbish. Now all that was left to clear out was the attic. As Eric fiddled with the electric torch, he called to his sister, who was downstairs sorting through a pile of unopened letters in the sitting room. Are you sure, she said she kept them up here? Or was it? Or was it? sit on top of the wardrobe next to the hat boxes. Eric waited, perched precariously on the ladder that led up to the attic door. He sneezed as clouds of dust that had lain undisturbed for decades began to stir above his

head, cascading out of the gloom in shimmering grey clouds. Steadying himself, he wiped a grimy shirt across his nose. His sister, leaning over the banister, called back up to him. It's definitely there, she said. Then again, you can't quite take a word for anything these days. If you can't find them, it might have been chucked out with the rest of the clutter. His sister had driven over from Oxford, as she had done every Saturday for the past eight months while their mother was in care. Being away from her partner and their two small children every weekend was beginning to wear her out,

but she tried not to let it show. Eric lived in Elm Park, just a brisk walk away from the house they had grown up in. Still, it was his sister who made the most effort to visit their mother as often as she could. though nowadays the old woman's memory was so distant and elusive, she regarded Eric and his sister as complete strangers. Eric muttered irritably, and stuck his head up into the open cavity of the attic, shining the beam of the torch over heaps of detritus. All this junk that had been stowed away in the hopes of what exactly, that one day they'd find a use for it all? Their parents' divorce had been over 30 years ago, but still their shared past managed to go habit this space. Their mum had kept the house after Dad ran off with his bit on the side,

but clearly she could never bring herself to open the attic full of memories. After a bit of digging around, it didn't take Eric too long to find the box he'd been looking for. It was marked family memories, and lay underneath an old raincoat and a box of Christmas decorations from several decades ago. It had been labelled in his mother's handwriting, her sensible yet oddly comforting penmanship unmistakable in the light of his torch. Eric felt a single tingle of remorse flow through him as he stared at the box. Its cardboard chewed away at the edges by time and neglect.

He almost wanted to leave it here, to keep it hidden away with the rest of these broken artifacts. Telling himself it was the dust that made his eyes start to water, Eric gripped the little electric torch between his teeth, lifted the box, and carried it back towards the attic door. When he finally appeared downstairs, his sister Susan was sitting on the sofa next to a mound of open envelopes and reads of months-old letters. These bills must have been sitting here since last year. No wonder they switched the heating and the leky off after that.

Well, did you find them? Susan looked up expectantly at Eric. Though they were both now middle-aged, she still took on the role of Big Sister, and the tone in her voice was one of gentle yet firm authority. She rolled up the sleeves of her fleece jumper and sat back into the soft embrace of the couch. waiting for Eric's reply.

Eric put the old box on top of the coffee table, its grey film of dust smudging the edges of the wood. The sitting room, like the rest of the house, was a time capsule from their early childhood, with its faded shag carpet the colour of a sunset and the old analogue television that was housed in a wooden stand. It appeared that while the outside world had moved on, the inside of their mother's house had stayed resolutely in place.

Eric wiped his hands on the back of his jeans and leant against the doorframe. I think so. I couldn't bring myself to have a look. Do you mind? Always the big sister then, I suppose. Susan leant over towards the box. She peeled back folds of musty cardboard and packing tape dry as snake skin and peered inside.

Reaching in, she came up with a handful of brittle brown ribbons. Eric gasped. Whoa. Is that the old Super 8 film Dad used? Bloody hell. I'm amazed it's still in one piece. Susan dug deeper, pulling up handfuls of the stuff. Some attached to plastic spools marked with faded, spidery lettering. Summer in Wales, 76.

Grand and Grandad anniversary, 79, Birmingham. Eric joined his sister on the sofa, picking through this bird's nest of faint recollections. Holding a few lengths of the film up to the sitting-room light, he saw the dark after image of the very house they were sitting in now. It had been preserved, frame by frame like an insect in amber. There was the figure of Susan, back when she was in nursery school, toddling across the garden path towards their mother's outstretched arms. Such soft, warm days they had been once.

Back in the present, Susan settled back into the sofa and rubbed her fingers under tired eyes. There were flecks of grain amongst the mousy brown of her hair, and much like their father, she had begun to develop a small knot of worry lines across her forehead as she crept closer to turning 50. Eric was only six years behind her, and the ever-expanding bald patch at the back of his head reminded him that those golden days of summer were far behind them. Well, that settles it then.

None must have chucked out the wedding photos after Dad left. I guess we don't even have a record of that anymore. Susan yawned and looked up at her brother. His jeans stained grey with dust. Well then, what are we going to do with the? all this rubbish. I can't take it home with me, and I doubt the charity shop will have it. Eric scratched at the patch of stubble on his chin and shrugged. I don't know, but I'm sure I can find a use for it.

Eric finally set the projector up in the living room, like they had done in the old days, back when the family was still in one piece. He had found it under a pile of bed linen in the airing cupboard, a little worse for wear but still working. Clearly something had saved the projector from being banished to the attic, the rest of the rubbish, though Eric couldn't see his mum being too sentimental about this clunky beast of obsolete technology. After all, the projector had always been their dad's pride and joy. Who would have thought she would hang on to it after everything they had been through? The memories of the divorce was still a painful, suffocating weight in the back of Eric's mind.

He'd always wanted to go with his dad after the separation, but the new girlfriend wasn't interested in looking after kids. So he'd had to settle for awkward phone calls on his birthday. Christmas and the occasional New Year's Eve until he'd left for university. Perhaps with these newly discovered films, Eric could return to a time before life became messy and distant. Susan left him to it, dropping the house keys in a glass bowl beside the door as she went. I'm going to see mum at the care home next weekend. Will you be making an appearance, or shall I make the use of excuses? He replied noncommittally, which surprised neither of them.

He only ever met with their mum under duress, and even at the best of times, they were total strangers to one another. Eric heard his sister sigh, shutting the front door behind her. As he heard Susan's footsteps down the path, Eric leant over to the projector and flicked a lever marked play. A pool of light began to flicker on the dimpled off-white surface of the sitting-room wall. The numbers one, two, three, four scuttled past marked the beginning of the reel, and in an instant, Eric was pulled right back to early childhood.

There was his first Christmas, played back with muted reds and emerald green flashes of blinking fairy lights. His grandparents' anniversary party, summer holidays in Wales and picnics on the beach. In these blissful reminiscences, the sun was always shining and the people always smiling. In fact, what struck Eric most of all was just how happy everyone looked, how young his parents were, how carefree and unaware of events that lay in the not-so-distant future, events that would schism this happy family forever. Eric sat through the night, feeding loop after loop of film into the projector's aperture. Some of the film stock was damaged beyond repair, but he played it anyway, as events from his life returned to him in waves.

Eric hadn't been this happy in quite some time. He hadn't found the need or inclination to build much of a life for him. since he'd left college, staying more or less in one place, geographically and emotionally, for all of his 44 years. Working in the student admin block at the college in Dagnum was just that, work, and the few friends he'd made in his time at school had all gone off and started families of their own. Some of his friends' kids had been having kids of their own. All in all, he lived a quiet, hollow life. Eric had always had a melancholy side to him. He'd been accused of living in the past too often, always trying to imagine what might have been. He had dwelt endlessly over his parents'

divorce when he was 14, and later their father's death from lung cancer, though in some ways the past was a safer place to inhabit. At least you knew what was going to happen next. As he watched the images dance across the projector's lens, Eric recalled someone once saying that movies were a kind of haunting. These were the ghosts of our past, trapped forever in an artificial yet slowly degrading feedback loop. The people and places we recall in dreams, brought back by an alchemical equation of light and celluloid. Still, he let it all wash over him, this salve of nostalgia and comfort, playing and rewinding repeatedly. The following day, Eric played the films to his sister. She arrived early to sort through the last of their mother's

unpaid bills and was shocked to see him still sitting where she'd left him. With the sitting-room curtains drawn shut to block out the early morning light. Eric heard her sniffle into a tissue once he'd played it all through for her. As the last reel ended, Susan flicked on the lights and put her hand tentatively on Eric's shoulder. He reached up and held it in a clumsy embrace as the gentle whirl of the finished film reel slowly wound itself to a stop. You know, you really should come and visit her, even if she isn't all there anymore. She'd instead appreciate the company? Eric paused, slowly pulled his hand away from Susan's reassuring touch. There's no point. She wouldn't recognize me and she barely knows who you are either.

I really don't know why you punish yourself like that, seeing her every weekend. It's like visiting the grave of someone who's still alive. Susan fought back the tears as she slapped Eric across his broad sullen shoulders. I do it because you won't do it with me. Because I don't blame. I don't her for dad leaving us. And this? She gestured to the dusty box of Super 8 Reels beside the sofa. Won't bring him back to life. It won't fix what happened to their marriage and it can't rewrite history. She slammed the front door as she left. In the gloom of the sitting room, Eric sat there, his shoulders sagging and his eyes feeling cracked and dry from lack of sleep.

He hadn't showered since they got there last Friday and his hair was becoming lank from sweat. He was hungry, too, and his throat felt parched. Despite this, he leant over towards the old box of memories, and with careful hands fed the tape back into the machine. He hit the switchmarked play and resumed his glorious seance. He stayed in the house for another week, which became two, then a month. He cancelled the visit from the surveyors and the estate agents. He called in sick to work and left no forwarding details.

Susan began visiting less now, preoccupied enough with work and family to be looking after him as well. Eric preferred it this way. Alone in the house, he had time to appreciate and savour the past. He found ten more models of the same maker projector on an online auction site, and within an hour he'd bought them all. He ordered them to be delivered to the house the next day, and was almost sick with nerves while he waited for their arrival. Once they were correctly set up, he had every room.

wired up to act as a viewing area, using old bed linens taped over walls at odd angles to accommodate the bends and curves of the house. If the curtains let in too much glare, he painted over the windows in emulsion. If the furniture was in the way of the beam, he tossed it in the garden. It had to be perfect, all of it. Light soon flickered on every bare patch of wall, as the golden years of Eric's childhood were played again and again, like burning windows into his past. He would walk from room to room, out into one day and into another, past year to year, season to season, always the same and never growing old. It was not long after that that he began to hear the voices. Susan had been dumbstruck when she returned from her bank holiday weekend with her partner and their kids.

What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you diseased? She tried to peel off the bed sheets from the wall and tear up wires that criss-crossed floors like lee lines. Eric tried to reason with her. You don't understand. Just stop and listen. Can you hear it? Just listen. Eric held his sister's trembling shoulders with both hands. His eyes looked like they had been burrowed into his head, and his skin was almost grey from lack of sunlight. He stared into her, trying to make her understand. He could hear it. Why couldn't she? Upstairs in the bedroom. was the sound of his mother's laughter.

Her birthday, 1967. In the kitchen, the murmur of an audience watching their nativity play at the old school, 1979, and amid it all, his father's voice, punctuated by the smoker's laugh that had been his uncanny vocal signature. The family always said that he'd been too fond of his woodbines, and it was what had taken him from them in the end. Susan stared in disbelief for what felt like an age. She shrugged him off and began backing towards the front door. You're cracking up, Eric. All I can hear is those bloody projectors spinning away in every room.

I'm going to ring up the local hospital, see if they can get an intervention team out or something. Susan felt lost, unsure how to reason with this pale wraith that her brother had become. This isn't healthy. When was the last time you slept? Your skin is... She looked curiously at Eric for a beat, and gasped. She turned and ran out the open front door, not stopping until she reached her car parked outside.

Eric reached out weakly to her. His voice barely a whisper. Wait. Come back. If you just stay... The hall was silent. The light that poured through the open front door was too bright, burning through the house's shadows like pale. fire. Eric shuffled forward to close it. He noticed that his hand passed through the daylight,

grey and indistinct as if all the colour was fading through his skin. He chose to ignore it and shut the front door behind him. In his last few hours, the sensations he felt were blissful. Endorphins flooded him as he walked through the empty house. No, not empty, not really. He felt that light was beginning to pass through him, barely refracting as a little. Barely refracting as a little. He was a little. it went. He left no shadow on the walls. Perhaps he was part of the lantern show now, his soul bound in its celluloid. He looked at the sitting-room wall, at a scene he knew all too well. He watched, eyes blank and white as bone, as his family crowded together around a picnic table in a field near Potheli. It must have been when Susan started secondary school, four years before their

dad left them. God, they all looked so happy. He wished he could join them. He could smell the fresh country air, the sound of wind through trees and children's laughter, a radio playing from a car somewhere. His mother had a young child balanced on her knee and fussed over its dark, curly hair shock. Eric recognized the child had been him once. Perhaps. Eric took a step into the flickering rainbow of light. He could feel the warmth of midsummer on his skin, and his bare feet touched cool grass.

It would only take a second if he could just disappear. if he could walk through the image and join them. He reached out to touch the past, and the light slowly embraced him. The projectors soon wound down, one by one, as the films reached their end with no one to reset them. The beams flickered out and died. It was cool, dark and quiet in the house at long last,

and in the sitting-room, where it had all started, a twitching shadow the size of a man stirred on the wall before dissipating out of existence like an ink-smudge in water. There was a flutter of brief happy laughter, as if heard from a place far away. Then silence. Susan sat in her car, just outside a service station on the motorway. Her mobile phone clasped in one hand and the steering wheel in the other. The hospital had put her on hold for over 45 minutes now, and she was considering phoning

the police soon. Eric was sick, and maybe even a danger to himself. He'd been depressed for a while, she'd known that well enough. But this was different. It seemed to hang over him like a heavy leaden cloud. The only thing she couldn't rationalise, the thing that had made her stomach turn, was how heartbreakingly frail he had appeared to be.

His skin seemed almost transparent. It must have been the light in the house that made it look like that. She was tired, lonely, and she missed her brother, wherever he was now. The phone line to the hospital still beeped interminably, and she eventually put it on the dashboard. the hope slowly draining out of her. Susan rested her head on the steering wheel, resisting the urge to scream. She had heard something in the house when Eric held her in his thin, cold arms.

It had only been for a moment and was almost barely audible over Eric's heavy breathing. But it was there. Just one brief shallow sigh that seemed to be coming from the house itself, like the last dying breaths of someone you once loved. 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 Michael Hulse. Jeff Clement and Jesse Cornett. Our creative content manager is Ollie White. Our editor-in-chief is Jessica McAvoy. Please visit the nosleeppodcast.com for show notes and more details about the people who bring you this show.

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