The NoSleep Podcast - S21 Ep13: NoSleep Podcast S21E13

Episode Date: July 28, 2024

It's Episode 13 of Season 21. Ride the Sleepless Express into tales about vile visitors. “Hoarder” written by Adam Godfrey (Story starts around 00:03:15) TRIGGER WARNING! Produced by: Phil Michalski Cast: Narrator – Mike DelGaudio, Frank – Graham Rowat, Booth Attendant – Dan Zappulla “Alien Toes” written by A.M. Symes (Story starts around 00:41:10) Produced by: Jeff Clement Cast: Narrator – Sarah Thomas, Joey – Atticus Jackson “The Man in the Garden” written by Kaitlin Menefee (Story starts around 01:01:15) TRIGGER WARNING! Produced by: Phil Michalski Cast: Narrator – Nikolle Doolin, Don – Jesse Cornett, Anna – Wafiyyah White, Michael – Dan Zappulla “The Cupboard” written by Dominic Eagle (Story starts around 01:17:30) Produced by: Phil Michalski Cast: Ciaran – James Cleveland, Anna – Ash Millman “Demented Marionette” written by Caleb M. Foster (Story starts around 01:33:30) Produced by: Jesse Cornett Cast: Cheryl – Linsay Rousseau, Magdeline – Erin Lillis, Mom – Mary Murphy, Shadow – David Cummings This episode is sponsored by: Mint Mobile – Ditch overpriced wireless with Mint Mobileís deal and get 3 months of premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. C’mon, cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/NSP Trade Coffee – Trade Coffee is a specialty coffee marketplace that matches customers with the best coffees from local roasters across the country. Give Trade a try and see how you can make better coffee at home. Youíll get a free bag of coffee, or more, when you subscribe to one of their plans at drinktrade.com/nosleep Click here to learn more about The NoSleep Podcast team Click here to learn more about Caleb M. Foster Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone “The Cupboard” illustration courtesy of Hasani Walker Audio program ©2024 – 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.

All aboard. Tickets, please. Find your seats. The train will be departing shortly. You're aboard, the sleepless Express. A direct journey into the darkness of the night. There are no sleeping cars available on this train. On this journey, you will experience the horrors found within

the dark landscapes and endless black tunnels, you will hear things which will leave you frightened and disturbed. And remember, there will be no stops until the very end of the life. Brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast. Welcome aboard the No Sleep Podcast. I'm your conductor, David Cummings. Here's a question for you. Do you like having people over to your home? When I was a kid, the folks would say, We're having company over. It didn't happen often, so it was kind of a fun night.

We'd eat, play some cards, really high-stakes games like Yucer or 31. Sharing our home with guests was a positive experience. But these days, it seems like there is less interest in social events, like company coming over. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like ever since the pandemic, we've become a little more protective of our living spaces.

Sure, close friends or family can drop by, but maybe there's less interest in actively inviting people over to socialize. We hear more and more these days about social anxiety. I wonder if that's seeped in from an outside anxiety to something within our homes, too. In the world of horror, the concept of an uninvited person or thing in our homes is a common one. And if the thought of having friends over causes some stress, what happens when you find your home infringed upon by someone entirely unwelcome? In this episode, we have tales for you which finds our homes, our most intimate living spaces, visited by things which cause us not just the stress of worrying if the place is clean enough or if we have enough plates.

No, now the only thing to worry about is how we'll survive the encounter. So, welcome to our home. Make yourself comfortable. Just don't stay too long. And now, the train is ready to depart. Your journey into the darkness begins now. In our first tale, we meet a man whose home and family were violated in a most disturbing way. He's still dealing with the aftermath of it all, and it's turned him into something.

he can't control. And in this tale, shared with us by author Adam Godfrey, the man finds his world turned upside down when his home becomes even more chaotic. Performing this tale are Mike Delgadoo, Graham Rowett, and Dan Zapula. So get the help you need before things go too far. You don't need to become a hoarder.

152 Veda Verlaine was a residential miscreant. An anomalous squat of a dwelling that cowered in a throng of well-scrubbed homes with polished drives and swollen beds, bursting kaleidoscopic. The boundary of the lot was choked by chain link, the lower half of the sagging artifact, a stitch of weeds that hemmed it to the earth. The air moved moist and hot from somewhere in the distant south, toting notes of ozone picked up from a cell of thunderstorms that stopped. the outer reaches, though the weather here was sunny, blissfully ignorant. Frank Chappell leaned in the paint-scabbed rocker, watching the pretentious taillights of Richard's Infinity QX80 recede and tuck left, disappearing behind a thicket of red buds that garnished the corner lot of a looming brick fortress at the end of his street.

Frank loved his son. He did. However, he'd come to loathe his visits, increasingly frequent over the past few weeks. A strategic play, Frank was no dummy. At 78, he knew he was of age. Richard had recently grown more vocal in his disapproval of his father's state of living. Frank knew what came next. Unsanitary conditions.

A threat to his own well-being. Incapable of self-care. Mentally, unfit. Unfit, hardly. Frank knew he was still sharp as attack, memory like a god-damned elephant. Richard hadn't exactly used the term unfit, but Frank could see it in his face,

his eyes, concern, disappointment, frustration. He'd often caught him gazing at the walls of clutter, lips cinched into a downturned sneer. Disgust, that was another one, most unmistakable of all. Utter, disgust. Frank stood and turned on the oak planks. Their once heavy enamel thinned now to the grain. Decades of foot traffic branded in the route from chair to door,

a signature of routine. An antiquated pocket radio scuffled from its station on a low table. the voices of the newscasters threading in and out of static like a journey through the heart of fall, speaking through the desiccated crack of leaves that filled the world between their words. Astronomical events at hand had dominated topics of discussion for the past two days, and range of speculation over how the largest solar flares to leap across the cosmos would affect our way of life, spanned grim to great. Though now upon their peaking hours, the faltering reception spilling from the 70s-era box

was all that Frank had witnessed, emerging like an unkept promise. He plucked the storm door from its frame, floating in the breeze. The catch, long absent, never repaired. Each time Frank entered his home, he was met with a different smell, an onion of complex construction, living layer by layer. peeled a new daily. Visitations out of time, resurrected on an infinite loop, nostalgic triggers, both saddening and uplifting,

occasionally maddening, always captivating. To anyone else, it was no more than a musty old box, dust caked, steeped and dry decay of man-made relics heaped within. To Frank, they were memories. His senses were keen, discriminating. Today, the dirt-stained leather of his baseball collection cut through the noise from its position at the opposite end of the guest room, two walls back from where he presently stood in the foyer. Even from its home behind a wall of newspapers, nested still behind a barrier of wooden dining chairs,

no two alike, turned upon one another, stacked with a multi-angular protrusion of legs, vengeful thorns. He followed the path through the living room. A sea of miscellany parted just enough for one. The carpet, thread bare, dirt-stained. He moved past stacks of paper grocery bags, sourced from a roster of stores long shuttered. A table, its undercarriage housing dog-eared sleeves of VHS tapes, a scarred surface hosting a collection of lamps, 80s brass of various heights, shades age yellowed, dressed in a gray suit of dust, a tonal collision that paid homage to the nicotine and beer-stained whiskers of grandfatherly vagabonds. In the kitchen, Frank navigated the bonyard of derelict appliances that huddled tightly edge to center, crowned

with empty bird cages, stacks of books, jars of sea glass, crates of soda bottles, 70s era lawn decor, plastic bins of toothbrushes, fishing gear, dishes, soaps, and assorted tools. He bridged his torso over two stacked microwaves and lifted a mug from the counter, dumping the last spit of cold coffee from the carafe. He sank his upper lip into the tariff, brew and lodged his sights amid the greasy murk of the kitchen window. Details of forgotten landscape beyond it impossibly smudged, features indistinguishable. He turned the mug inside his palm and stopped to read the statement inked beneath the spider split of glaze. I am a police officer. I fear God and my wife. You are neither. Frank pushed his lips into a

minor shelf and breathed the thought across their edge. The time. He ratcheted down, palms slick against the ceramic. So long ago, so long. Had to have been 30 years or more now. Yes, 32 to be exact. Jesus Christ, 32 years. Frank receded, braced himself against the edge of a rearward oven,

bothered, slightly guilted by the realization that so much time had lapsed since he'd last entertained thoughts of Anna, his diaphragm buckled, feeble, ever unfortified with the passing years, a man's curse of old age. Sometimes she'd surface, reeled from the deep, blindsiding him with the sudden note of pond's cold cream in the air. Just as quickly, it would vanish. Never there. A sensory ghost. He could have done something. If only he'd been there sooner, he could have stopped them. He'd hit Maxwell's with some cop friends that night, post-shift, an unnecessary trivial detour.

Anna and Richard, 14 then, had been home alone. Richard's room was at the far end of the house, too far away to respond, perhaps to even hear when she screamed. But Frank had heard it. Detangling his keys at the front lock, Piss drunk on PBR at an ignorant hour, the sound had pierced him like a blade, sharp, eviscerating. God, the memory was so clear, fresh,

its imprint still tacky in his mind. Sobriety reached him like a sudden light, senses razored, bleached clean. He threw the bolt, barreled into the hallway, then to their bedroom, palms strangling the cold grip of his service revolver. Lionel Richie crooned from the record player. He called to her, vision hobbled, light-stained in the darkness. Frank Wrighted himself, sat the mug down on the kitchen counter. He plunged his palms into his eye sockets, urged the memory back to hiding. The picture stuttered, unfazed, ancient footage

burning forward with absolute momentum. The room was still. He stood there in the entry, weapon drawn, eyes and ears devouring the nothingness. The window, suddenly visible, yawned wide, curtains hovering on a cold breath, spilling over chapped wood. There was movement in the pitch, a black mass, edging close. A man, dog-eyed, desperate in the dilution of hallway, light, wrenched for him. Frank squeezed once, the scene illuminating in the muzzle flash, capturing the pointed brand of the slug as it struck bone, punching the intruder back against

the far wall. He squeezed again. Richard loomed behind him in the doorway. The boy's hysterics unregistered beneath the shrill note plugging Frank's cranium like a tin whistle, moving past his own ears, filling the space around him. They never found her, never found the others involved. Gone. Just like that. The years had not passed easily after. Richard blamed him, despised him for it. He knew this, not openly, but it was there. Locked tight, buried deep, cloaked beneath the subconscious muck of things best forgotten. It was not a subject. they discussed. Ever. Anna's disappearance had digested both with patience, its enzymatic effect different between the two. Frank began collecting things, clinging to the material world around him,

refusing release of anything and everything. It started small, maybe pieces of furniture first, adding one to the next. Everything found its place in his home, so everything, had its place, until it didn't. That's when the stacking began, items on items, vertical constructs of non-essential trinkets, infinite in variety. Richard was still living at home for the first of it, moving out shortly after his 18th birthday. The now vacant room was open for business, quickly stuffed to discomfort, force-fed thereafter, until fully clotted from floor to ceiling, back to front. Neglect ruled, outside mirroring inside, dilapitation of house and soul, bound at the source. Richard thrived, at least professionally. Four marriages down,

buried in work, rarely surfacing for air. Emotions ran thin, massed. now nourished, immature in their development, terminally neglected. This he leveraged toward his practice, one of Chicago's most prominent defense attorneys, a profession with which feelings will quickly lead one to slaughter. Lack thereof ensured his success. Frank shuffled from the slick linoleum to a flatten knit of carpet, escaping the kitchen to the sofa's single cushion vacancy. He collapsed into the cream-brown weave, coarsely textured skin over cheap foam,

bottomed out amid the wooden bones that framed his pelvis. An anemic orange glow doused the cluttered space. The final light of day strained through the distant ridge of trees, discharged across the town. Through the front windows, an exhausted coal faltered on the horizon, cooked off, depleted. Frank drew a breath and watched the dragonflies, superimposed against the twilight, violating a congregation of mosquitoes that gathered there in evening worship. He followed their flight, erratic pendulums in the dying light, leaching consciousness as he stalled and drifted. Frank jumped, mouth dry, mind lagging. It was nighttime, the living room.

Something had woken him. Laughter, that of children, a dream. He arched, stretched his muscles in the darkness. Somewhere in the room, a child giggled. Frank sat erect, flesh puckered, heart knocking. He reached out left and snapped a lamp to life. Alone, he moved among the foothills of clutter. The light cast lengthy shadows over valleys in between,

burying finer details under cover. If someone were in the room, Frank wouldn't readily know. A giggle. Music. He stopped and dumped his breath and listened in the silence of deflated lungs. The noises were constant now. Low, seeping from some far edge of the room. Frank crept close.

Listening. Listening. A rushing sound. Distant screams, joyful, exhilarating, music. Frank stepped through the clutter, legs extending over stacks of magazines, boxes of computer obsolescence. He knelt, applied his ear to seek the source, stuffed animals concealed in the corner of the room, heaped high and tangled without purpose, nesting there in secret. He didn't recall having them.

Then again, he didn't recall having the vast majority of his collection. if ever so pressed. The sounds bled through, muffled under cotton depths. He brushed a few aside, the noises underneath a clearer presence now, rising like a leaking dream that found escape and rushed to greet it. Frank stretched an arm into the mass and plunged it deep into the void. He recoiled, bewildered. Sweat lined his brow. Reaching into the jumble again, his hand disappeared once more into utter nothingness, cool, refreshing in the senseless depths. He dug deeper, parting the animals widely, peering deep into the cavity. Blackness, laughter, music, popcorn, cigarette smoke.

Frank laid his body to the void and pushed his way inside, feeding his head, shoulders, torso, into the vacuum. His brow then touched the cold of night that pressed his face suddenly outside, and he could see the dusty earth below. Frank pulled his body through the hole in full and crumpled to the dirt, for a moment stunned by what had been and fearful of the next to come. The hell you come from? Frank sprang back and stared up at the cragged, sun-roasted face of a man wearing an expression equally dumbfound. as his own. He spun rearward, facing a wall of stuffed prizes, then front, toward the line of people and their downcast eyes, laying judgment on him like some wayward dog. Sweet confection filled the air, and found him there interlaced with bells and chimes of games, of rides

surrounding him. He rose to take his feet and held his gaze against the stranger's faces, pivoting to the scowling a tendon that had since stepped forward. Arms, taught like ropes of Cyprus at his sides. I'm not. Frank looked around again, legs reversing. I'm not supposed to be here. Leaving now. You're goddamn right.

I'm both counts, asshole. Frank turned and slipped through the corner folds of canvas at the booth's rear. Then stumbled from minor alley, out onto the fairgrounds. It all looked so familiar, as mine still grappling with how any of this was possible. I'm in my house.

I'm only in my living room. He swiveled, staggered on his feet, carved his scalp five ways beneath splayed fingers as the creeping shock advanced and sparked across his body. The scrambler, the bullet, terror on the rails. Shit.

He hadn't seen. any of these rides since he was a kid, since he was eight years old. It was the last he'd hit the fair grounds with his buddies. Ever since, he looked around, processed the entirety of the surrounding crowd, the outdated attire, hairstyles. It was the first year terror on the rails had come to the place that year, eight years old. That was 1950. Frank walked the grounds. mind reeling, the smells, sights, sounds. If he was dreaming, it was the most god-dammed realistic dream he'd ever had. He smiled, spinning, a convergence of the senses, consuming him whole. And then he saw the boy, a likeness of his youth, walking with his friends.

Frank held his weathered hands up to his mouth, paper thin, eyes wide, stomach low, heavy on his pelvis. Tom Garrity, Scott Mackie, Bill Grimes. It couldn't be. He kicked a path across the dirt, slowly first, then fast, converting to a half-jog over powdered turf to keep their pace, lagging just enough behind to avoid discovery. Discovery. He scoffed at himself for the concern even having crossed his mind. He was an old man now. There would be no discovery, not like that at least, not in terms of recognition, just an old man,

a creeping stranger, equally undesirable as circumstances go. Frank hung back and watched them from the far end of a food stand. He watched himself enter the ride, mounting the rail car with his friends, splitting off across three conjoined buckets, rust scarred, dented. Frank smiled, appreciating the moment, one he still remembered fondly, all the sweeter, preceding the subsequent encounter at Ride's end, one which deterred him from all future ventures to the annual fair thereafter, his last known joy at this beloved place. In a span of seconds, the ride had ended. Frank watched from where he stood.

Wide-eyed, expectant, nerves igniting. He watched himself dismount, starred off from the attraction with the other three. Bill led, jogging backwards, hands dancing in the air to illustrate some story as he spoke. The fun they'd shared remained so pure, so vivid, how excited they'd all been, especially Bill.

Then they came. Two boys, slightly older around 12, 13, jogged over blocking their path, obscured from crowd's sight. They seemed so much older at the time, Frank thought, still watching all the scenes unfold, all the more unsettling from this vantage point. A living memory, opening wide before him. History in the making, like some private showing. Frank was frozen where he stood. iced to the earth, unable to move to help his younger self, warn him.

He saw the glimmer of the knife in one boy's grasp, money handed over the few remaining dollars that he'd earned from selling vegetables door to door that summer. Next, Bill's turn, a deer in the headlights as they nudged and taunted. Bill began to cry. He watched himself move between them, take the knife in the gut, fold in half. Frank then found himself clearing the space between,

oblivious to the remaining threat that faced his younger self as he knew that story's end. Six stitches, no major organs hit. Physically, he'd be just fine. The two boys broke off, heading straight for him. Their divide, a track which narrowed by the second as he ran on elderly legs, precariously swift, suddenly stronger in that moment.

Frank's pupils yawned wide, black devouring blue as he pulled back and drove his fist into the boy's face, lifting his small body from the ground below. The impact sent him flat, knife scattering. Frank knelt and pulled the young man's head from where he lay, captured in a knot of hair exploding from his clutch. Frank threw another jab into the kid's nose, feeling it flattened, crunch beneath his knuckle. as his body went to jelly, falling slack against the dirt. What seemed like all the blood in his small form burst free as the seal broke open, painting the boy's upper body a jubilant shade of red.

The sight evoked a smile of long yellow teeth beneath the shadows. He hovered there like some ethereal being, a blinding wreaths of fairground incandescence at his back. And then Frank clamored to his feet, suddenly aware. A throng of people pulled around his younger self at the far end of the lot. Meanwhile, he'd attracted his own crowd, steadily accumulating. Horrified, several bystanders started to advance on him. He turned, ran, dissolving into the chaos, raking through the people,

fleeing toward the booth from which he'd come. Frank blasted into the enclosure, knocking the shouting. attendant to the ground. He scrabbled over dusty earth before the rack of stuffed animals, ran his hands about the construct, feeling for the void. God damn it. Come on. Frank crawled the panel, knocking prizes to the dirt, hammering at the solid underlayment,

wondering if this is what dementia felt like, if he'd imagine the whole damn thing. The attendant grappled for him, taking Frank's right leg between his arms, clawing for his torso. Frank plunged his hand into another mass of animals, losing his arm completely as he fell forward. Sanity confirmed. He scrambled, kicked and knocked the grasping man onto his back. Frank hauled himself into the vacuum. Further, further, torso gone, then thighs, calves, absorbed into the throng of stuffed animals. Emerging into his home on the other end, half suburbable. merged in the past, a hand gripped his ankle. He screamed and yanked it free as the last of his body arrived, passing through the plush heap at the corner of the room. He rose, stumbled back,

tripping over piles of rubbish, tumbling to the floor again. He sat upright, body tight, panting, waiting, his breath slowing only when he listened, hearing nothing, and once more found his home, a silent space. He sat and wept a moment, an arid squeal emerging from his throat where normal breath had passed just moments prior. He looked around, fact-checking sanity once more. Frank eyed the plush array about the floor, the divot in the mass puckered over the wormhole. He pressed his denim thighs to wick the moisture from his palms, noting remnants of the fairground soil caked within its fibers. Muddy now beneath his hands. Uncertainty waned. His pale lips twitched and spread. An ancient weight now hoisted from his soul. He stood and paced the path of carpet, kitchen and back,

kitchen and back. He'd been sent back for a reason. To that life-altering moment, its taproot inextricably plunged, fueling the matrix of insecurities and fears that blossomed from its toxic nourishment. He hadn't prevented the event altogether, but he had done something, proved he could. Therapeutic would be too mild a word for what had happened. All that cancerous fear, insecurity, years, decades of it, gone. Again, Frank thought, back to Anna, to that night, to the bottomless shame that he'd once known for not having been there, not having protected her, so distant now, fading, almost never there. Jesus, he sat there, grinding eyelids under fingers. That one night at the carnival, that first hit of terror, shame,

running out across the future, defining expectations, fueling regret, fear, sorrow, insecurity. Even Anna's night, an inevitable extension of that founding fear, tethered to it, birthed to remind him what an ineffective chicken shit he was then, at eight years old, had grown to become, always would be. Fading now. treated at the source. Shame, fear, insecurity, the profound sorrow, regret? Those remained. Cold air licked his exposed ankles, moving low across his feet. Frank shuddered, his skin reduced

to goose flesh. Music again. Different now. Muffled lyrics whispered from the shadows. Frank brought his hands down from his face, suddenly cold. All the blood now stilled within them. I've been alone with you inside my mind. He stood there, listening to the words that played out like a ghost. Bones flaccid in the moment, suddenly insufficient beneath the weight of flesh that fought to pull him to the ground. And in my dreams, I've kissed your lips. a thousand times.

Frank's vision swam the room and worked against the world that swept and spun around him, tried to take him whole and sink his mind to a certain darkness. He moved across the floor, cautiously, ear fixed right, held fast to the notes as he sought the source of music in the shadows. I sometimes see you pass outside my door. Frank already knew before he saw it. That song, that same song, cast from the player in the room the night she disappeared.

It was only ending at the moment she'd been taken. He pushed into the clutter, toppling towers to the floor. Hello? Is it me you're looking for? Frank was on his knees now. He burrowed following the sound. Time was running out, and when he shoved aside a weathered nightstand, he saw it. The windows battered carcass faced him, cold breath huffing from its partially opened mouth.

The music carried with it, sharp and cutting as it found his ears, opened wide his memories of that night. I can see it in your eyes. I can see it in your smile. You're all I've ever wanted. and my arms are open wide. Joy and horror fought for dominance, a madman's grin sliced cheek to cheek.

His face was wild and void of logic, mildly twitching, as if shorting out beneath wet cheeks. He pushed against the frozen sash, gripped the window's outer edge, pressed against it as the song continued, careening toward the inevitable. because you know just what to say, and you know just what to do.

And I want to tell you so much, I love you. Its hold snapped free, and the window rushed along the warped track till it met its limit. The air was ice cold, otherworldly, charged with nostalgia, the scent of Pond's cold cream filling the room as past met present. Frank clambered past the sill and disappeared into the orifice, taken whole into the darkness. When Frank hit ground, the impact fired sparks before his eyes, his body landing head first as he spilled across the wooden planks. The remainder of his body tumbled down and over, and blackness of the foreign space embraced him as he lay in silence, breathing, aching, processing. processing.

Disoriented, he rolled and came up to his knees, then feet, now standing to face her. His young wife, eyes wild, clutched the sheets against her breast, heaving in the terror of the moment. Anna! Frank edged closer, hand out. It's me. Frank. It's me. I'm here for you. I'm here to save you. He smiled, tears spattering the planks at his feet.

Don't be scared, Anna. Oh, God, please don't be scared. It's me. Frank reached out, touched her leg, buried beneath the sheets. Anna screamed. The sound of crushing force between the papered walls. She threw the covers from her body. Frank staggered back, wounded by the reaction.

She spilled from mattress to fall. floor, moved left, backing toward the window. Anna, you don't understand. He lunged for her. She reeled away, colliding with the sill, falling backward through the void. Frank cried out, then turned, a sound in the doorway. He shrank away, suddenly ill as all the pieces came together. Sanity crushed beneath the moment's weight.

Logic now abandoned. He crossed the darkness for his younger self, arms extended, mouth open, breath unshackled through the center of his chest when the first slug hit him. Then the second. From the coated floorboards, Frank stared up into his youthful face, witnessing the transformation through the eyes of an outsider, an insider still understanding completely, yet not at all. Through collapsing consciousness, he watched himself race to the window, frantic, scoping the yard beyond.

But he knew she wasn't there. He understood now, knew where she'd gone. The world fell off, drawing silent, distant, a welcome reprieve to the bustling madness that now infected his mind. There, in the darkness, the record player called from the corner table, the only remaining sound, hardly registered. Tell me how to win your heart, for I haven't got a clue. But let me start by saying, I love you. Anna Chapel awoke in a heap on the living room floor of 152 Veda Verlaine. Same house, different time. She rose on cautious legs, nightgown clutched, surrounded by framed photos of a life not lived.

Her husband, her son aged well beyond the boundaries of her known reality. Backing to the sofa, she sat, swallowing fear, slow and hard. She'd wait here, wait till Frank came home, till she woke up, whichever came for her. Only a dream. It's only a dream. Somewhere in the distance, fading out, a record player crooned.

If there's one thing you don't want, it's guests dropping by when you and your loved one are naked. Don't come a-knocken if you're in the shower. Naked in bed, wink-wink, or soaking sans swimsuits in the hot tub. And in this tale,

shared with us by author, M. Sims. We meet a husband and wife who are indeed naked in the hot tub, and they can confirm that's the worst place to be when others decide to drop in. Performing this tale are Sarah Thomas and Atticus Jackson. So don't stay too long or you'll be in hot water. You'll end up with shrivelled fingers and alien toes. Joey and I decided to go skinny dipping in our hot tub. It was a Perfect March night. 30 degrees and that thick, fluffy snow just starting to fall. The lilac bushes surrounding our yard blocked the wind,

which was blowing in the blizzard from South Dakota. Not that we knew about the storm, or about the strange light spotted over the Twin Cities. We hadn't turned on the TV today, and we took the month off of social media for Lent. We're not Catholic, but we like the practice of giving up something you think you need, to see if you really do need it.

You have alien toes. I wiggled my toes and told them they were beautifully perfect toes. Nope, they're alien toes. Fat on top, skinny on bottom. Alien toes. I pulled my foot towards my face to study my toes. They looked like normal toes. Nothing spectacular.

Happy anniversary to you too. How would you know what alien toes look like? He squeezed his own toes over mine, and we sat like that, until the snow started to accumulate on our legs. We hadn't turned any lights on, but we could see the tops of the lilac bushes dipping forward with the weight. I always loved that part of winter, that it's never really dark,

because the snow always has a soft white glow. I don't need to meet an alien to know aliens look like your toes. They look like your toes. Just green. Aliens are not green. They are black with green and red clothing, like Marvin the Martian. Joey shook his head and grabbed my toes with his own toes again. Aliens are green, one big eye in the middle.

Like your alien toenails. Before I could grab Joey's head to dunk him underwater for insulting my toenails, a pile of snow fell on my head. We both started laughing as the snow melted and dripped down my face. Then a tree limb broke off and smashed into the hot tub. Joey and I were sliced across our face, neck and chest from the frozen branches protruding from the limb. The owl that lived in our tree let out a series of low hoots before it was cut off with a thundering wind that knocked us down into the water. Another pile of frozen snow hit the hot tub.

This time with a solid ice center that connected with the back of my head. The branch holding the owl's nest broke off next and shot straight through the death. Get out! Get out! He pulled the branch back so I could untangle myself and get out of the water. Joey jumped up next, but slipped and went down hard on his knee. I dragged him up and onto the porch. The wind stopped as suddenly as it started, as if a single car train drove through our backyard. I started to ask what the hell happened, but my mouth filled with blood and I gagged.

The first branch tore my lip and I could feel an icy pain across my chest. The hot tub motor kicked on, breaking the silence as the jets switched to high to regulate the water temperature. The white light inside the tub was glowing pink from our blood. The water and blood that was dripping from our bodies froze to the wood beneath our feet and we slipped as we made our way to the back door. I managed to get it open while still holding Joey up, who wasn't speaking. My brain was whirling through emergency precautions we learned last month that emergency week at work. Check for concussion. Check for severed arteries. Did we go unconscious? Stop the bleeding.

Pull bark out of our cuts. That wind. What was that? Is it a winter tornado? Call the police. We're fine. Joey knew my brain was in full panic. mode. Just grab the towels so we don't drip on the floor. We tiled off best we could, then carefully made our way to the bathroom without getting blood on the new wood flooring. We took a year off from traveling to save up money for that flooring. To hell with pain from a fallen branch, we were not about to stain that new floor.

Miss Whiskers trailed behind us, meowing loudly for attention. Siamese cats are talkers. And Miss Whiskers is a serious talker since she's. been spoiled from day one. We never had kids. We had a cat. Holy shit. The reflections in the mirror were horrific versions of ourselves.

Our hair was black with wetness, but frosted on top with snow. Joey's eye was swollen shut and bark stuck out of his cheek. His chest looked like he'd lost a fight with Freddy Kruger. You look terrible, hon. He said it with a smile,

attempting to like. in the mood. We've never been the lovy-dovey couple that compliments each other. Most people who met us didn't even realize we were married. And more than once, the person has made a comment about the way we talk to each other, not knowing our snarky comments are just our favorite movie quotes. Another thunderous wind hit the house, and our lights flickered up. I held my breath until they turned back on, sighed in relief. Then noticed Miss Whiskers was eyeing the attic door. Jeez, I branched a number on my face.

I looked back at the mirror and saw my own eyes were at an early stage of turning black and blue, and my bottom lip was split in half, right through to the gums. I closed my lips and I could see my front teeth. Both teeth felt loose. My neck and chest had a long, white gash that was only then beginning to prickle red with blood. I told Joey that it didn't hurt, and that we keep the hot tub clean so there shouldn't be any threat of infection. We need to go to the hospital. I nodded.

We were both in need of multiple stitches. He hadn't seen the gash on the back of my head yet, but I could feel it throbbing. We need to rinse off and clean the wounds with peroxide. Then we'll dress and drive to the hospital. Twice I dropped the bottle of peroxide because my hands were shaking so bad. The house groaned, bearing down against whatever the storm was throwing at it. I waited for a blast of cold wind, mentioning that the last gust sounded more like something came through the roof.

Miss Whiskers had been calmly watching us up to this point, but her normal, I don't give a shit, catitude, switched. She fluffed her hair until it was standing straight up. Then she growled. Did she just growl? What's going on? I leaned into the hallway to look at what she'd locked her eyes on. In the 11 years we'd had Miss Whiskers, she'd only growled twice.

Once, when a raccoon was trying to open this green door to get into our house. The second, when a would-be burglar was trying to break the lock on the back door. Her growling woke Joey from a dead sleep, and he turned on the light, which scared away the burglar. I tried to see what she'd locked her eyes on, but could only see the darkness at the end of the hall. hallway. No, not the end of the hallway. The darkness was too close to be the end of the hallway. What's wrong? He always knew when something was wrong. I hadn't had time to process the wrong

ending hallway, and he already knew something wasn't right. I reached for the light switch, and as I flipped it, Miss Whisker sprinted away. The lights came on. My heart melted to the floor, and I fell back into Joey. The darkness blocking the hallway stepped forward. I was right. Aliens are black, large black masses, shaped kind of like a walrus standing on its bin, but a seethru black that swirls like trapped smoke.

Joey pulled me into him and we retreated into the bathroom. But the blackness swirled through the wall, and we were hit with a blast of sour wind that threw us into the hallway, then threw us into the living room. We crashed into each other and fell on the couch. There's two of them. A second black mass swirled into a semi-human shape

in front of our gas fireplace. I wondered if the smoke was poisonous or flammable. If I could light the fire, maybe both things would ignite and die. I said this much to Joey in a whisper, although at this point, Neither thing had spoken, so maybe they couldn't speak or hear, or maybe they could read our thoughts.

The storm outside was growing. The pressure in the house shifted as the snow hit the south side. Multiple branches fell at the same time. Slamming into the roof and breaking through the skylight in the kitchen. Glass sprayed our new floor and wind whipped around us. Joey and I reflexively ducked. We were still naked. and bleeding. We hadn't gotten a chance to clean off. Joey's gashes were deep on his chest,

and my head was filled with electric jolts of pain. We heard Miss Whiskers growl from the kitchen, and I hoped she wouldn't step on any glass. The first black mass joined the second in front of the fireplace. They didn't have eyes, but there was a spot that could be a face near the top. I wondered if the neighbor saw anything. No, probably not around the lilac bush. Even in winter, when the bushes didn't have any leaves and flowers, the lilacs are thick. The neighbors wouldn't see anything. What do you want? I never heard fear in his voice before.

Joey's an alpha. Not a jock alpha that thinks he's tough. An actual alpha. He's not a bully by any needs. He's just that guy that doesn't seem to give a shit until you pick on the underdog. Then Joey makes you wish you'd never pick him. picked on that underdog. It's one of the reasons I love him.

Loved him. What do you want? The things looked at each other, or at least turned towards each other, communicating telepathically. I'm surprised at how much I thought I knew about these creatures, knowledge based solely on movies like Independence Day and Mars attacks and Marvin the Martian.

Joey was right. Neither creature had said or done. anything hostile towards us, other than the wind throwing us into the living room. But there was no doubt these creatures were evil. Most of us are raised on the premise you don't judge a book by its cover, but sometimes you get that twist in your gut that a person wants to stab you, literally or figuratively. I'm a good judge of a person's stabability, and Joey was never wrong. These things, they would stab. Joey leaned heavy on my shoulder.

His skin was gray, and the floor had so much blood beneath him. I thought I was cut worse, but Joey was bleeding bad from somewhere I couldn't see. He slumped onto my lap and wrapped his arms around my thigh. He shuddered, and we heard Miss Whiskers growl from somewhere in the kitchen. God damn it, we need help! We need a doctor! We can't sit here all night bleeding.

Don't you see the blood? I told you, your toes. You look like the aliens. He laughed. Not his usual belly-rolling, eye-watering laugh, but a laugh all the same. You have alien tongue. The storm somehow knocked itself up another level

and a window shattered from one of the bedrooms. It was my turn to shudder. The temperature in the house had to be down to 40 degrees. Snow was accumulating on Joey's back. I brushed it away as softly as I could. Suddenly, an energy burst through the house. Every light bulb shattered, and the TV blew off the mantel

straight through the black smoke alien. They didn't notice, or didn't seem to notice. I actually gasped at the broken TV, as if that was the worst thing to happen tonight. Joey had just bought that TV after researching televisions for almost a year, so we would get just the right one. Then Joey sank into me. Not sank. Flattened.

Like when you let the air out of a balloon, he made an awful sound. Blood. So much blood. Blood doesn't spill out like a dropped glass of water, by the way. Blood chugs and splatters like a dropped gallon of egg. dog. I think he said my name. There was nothing to push the words out. He was empty. Miss Whiskers moaned from behind the couch. They took my words literally. I didn't want Joey to bleed out all night, so they bled him out instantly. On the couch. Miss Whiskers must have been

so terrified, and I wanted to grab her and hug her and tell her Joey was okay. And this was all of that dream and we'd wake up and it would just be a snowstorm that broke the windows. But that's okay because Joey builds houses and help fix things and we'll wait in front of the fire until he wakes up. Up to this point, Miss Whiskers had been out of sight. She didn't know what was going on. I didn't know what was going on. But the moment Joey was gone, Miss Whiskers sprang from behind the couch and latched on to what seemed like the aliens put with a locked jaw. A banshee scream came out of my fluffy white cat, and she bit down harder. Miss Whisker screamed again, and bit and screamed, and bit, and screamed, and bit, and screamed.

But this time, screamed at the same time the aliens screamed. They matched her tone, so at first I thought my cat's screams were echoing through the distorted world my brain was trying to focus. on. They writhed as a tornado into one blackness. Miss Whiskers were still biting into something, maybe an alien toe. They pulsed with the beat of their screaming. Miss Whiskers unclinched her jaw and hissed, which was such a pathetic sound to follow the screaming that I almost laughed, but cried instead. A lilac sledge broke through the living room window and landed on Joey. There was a tiny green bud on the branch, a premature growth from last week's warm snap. The bud was resting on Joey's ear, his ear, with the tiny lilac bud. I could feel shards of glass in my leg, and my hair whipped at my

face from the imploding storm of black alien smoke in front of me. But I couldn't look away from that tiny green bud. Somehow, that bud, that bud that was already dead and would be browned before long. made my heart pound so painfully hard that my chest cracked open. Miss Whiskers backed up until she was standing on my feet, her eyes never leaving the things spinning into themselves in front of the fireplace, and the remote to turn on the fireplace, the remote that hangs off the side of the couch.

I picked up my cat, carefully tucking her between Joey's head and my broken chest. Joey always said he wasn't sure he could live without me and our fur child had his side. I wrapped my arms around Joey and Miss Whiskers and prayed to whoever was listening that the aliens were made of something flammable. Then I pressed the on button,

igniting our fireplace. After a tragic event, it can be helpful to engage in therapy to help you deal with intense and complex emotions. Dawn can attest to that, especially after what happens to some close friends. And as we'll learn in this tale, shared with us by author Caitlin Menifee.

Dawn is confronted by something their friend's daughter is experiencing. Is it just imaginary, or is there a genuine threat to both their homes? Performing this tale are Nicole Doolin, Jesse Cornett, Wafia White, and Dan Zabula. So if you decide to grow your own food, be aware of The Man in the Garden. Don shifted in his seat. Anna knew men of his type. He wasn't from a generation that opened up. They tended to shuffle around things, tightened up if any subject strayed too close to the heart. She suspected her patient would be more comfortable if they sat next to one another at a dingy bar, each slinging back their third beer. Instead, they sat across from each other in a well-lit,

thoughtfully manicured room. The sophisticated does. dusty blue accents in mid-century modern design had nothing on dawn. Fortunately, bit by bit, he relaxed. Once Anna revealed she grew up in Whitefish Montana, within miles of his own childhood home, something in him eased. Yet the subjects he tended to fixate on were not the ones he came to address.

Oh, yeah, I'd say I'd miss that river, but best job took her right on out to Fort Collins, and we found some great spots along the poodle. Don, how is your wife? He shrugged, took a sip of his coffee. A nervous habit he demonstrated whenever Anna snapped him out of the mundane. He broke eye contact. She's, you know, keeping herself busy.

She tends at shop, keeps up with the appointments, takes good care of the place and animals, and she meets up with the girls from her teaching days every now and again. and, you know, staying busy. Beth seemed very concerned in March. She's the reason you came to see me, correct? Well, she thought it'd be good for me, too, you know? Talk through things and that. Have you been talking to her at home?

Yes and no. Although I think I finally convinced her it's not, you know, her. And it isn't. I'm still sleeping in the spare because I'd rather not keep her up all night. I figured it wouldn't be too different from my days at the station. The fire department probably got you accustomed to having some days with her and some days away. Have you noticed a difference since we started the metazepine? I slip off fast, but there's dreams that keep waking me up.

Do you remember your dreams? Well, it's essentially the same one. Dawn frowned. Anna decided it was time to broach the subject. The one about Janie? Yes. Janie. Beth brought her up during their introductory session,

a joint affair at Don's request. Unlike her husband, Beth did not struggle at filling the silence. She described their personal history, how they met back in Montana 18 years earlier, where Don's booming confidence grabbed her attention during a friend's barbecue, and his jokes kept her laughing ever since. Her husband sat by with a guilty-looking simper on his face. Beth held his hand all throughout the session,

and Anna remembered being touched by the genuine love they showed one another. His wife was likely the only person in Don's life capable of convincing him to try therapy. Don's face reddened. He covered his mouth with his hand briefly, as if he was trying to physically keep the words from emerging. He sighed, coughed, began. Janie was the daughter of a couple good friends of ours, Evan and Dawn. Like my wife said, our name's kind of match.

Don was another teacher at the school that Beth got on with, and since Don's husband worked in contracting, he came around a lot to help me fix things up on the property. Janie must have been around two at the time. Naturally, we helped them move. and they found a ranch with decent acreage for a hell of a price down in the Wellington area. Dawn paused, Anna waited. A hell of a price.

Dawn enjoyed gardening and heaven-wanted critters running around, so this house accommodated them both pretty good. They got to planting rows of vegetables. They got a pop-bellied pig, goats, working cats. Janie got her own room, and they fixed up to plant. really nice. Those first few months were fine. And then the charred man came up. The charred man? Dawn grimaced. Well, Janie, she's about four, I think, at this point. She comes into the kitchen one morning announcing she met the charred man in the garden. Dawn and Evan figure it's another

imaginary friend situation. I guess she had a tough it not long before that. A little person she could fit in her hand and keeping her pocket at school. She says the charred man as a giant compared to Tuffet, that he has a family with a little daughter just like her. Dawn asked her if the charred man arrived with the chard in the garden, and Janie says he came on up out of the ground. Was he sweating? Anna pushed the tissue closer towards him.

Don took one but didn't use it. Janie, well, she starts changing when the charred man comes around. Evan and Dawn don't think much of it at first. Kids get onry sometimes. But she starts obsessing. She starts playing with this invisible friend of hers every day, every time she goes out. She gradually loses interest in other kids, even some of her best friends, the real ones. and she gets all secretive too.

Like before she'd want to include her parents and everything, but now she wants to play her pretend games privately, scowling and fussing if they interrupt her and whatever she's up to. They even hear her talking to the charred man in her room at night. It got real bad when they found she had slipped right on out of her room into the garden in the dead of night. That's when they put her. their foot down and told Janie she wasn't allowed to play with the charred man anymore.

Boy, did she throw a fit. She told her parents that the charred man hated them. And when Dawn suggested she played with Tuffet instead, she said he ate him. Anna suddenly realized she was sweating a bit as well. She glanced at the thermostat to find it glow to perfect 70 degrees Fahrenheit. She took a mental note to look into it later. After a moment, Don continued. That's when things got weird. Worse.

Dawn called up Beth, crying one day over her garden. I guess most of the produce they pulled was rancid. We watched her cut into a decent-looking cantaloupe only to find it filled with maggots. I'll admit, I haven't been able to touch cats. cantaloupe since. And there really wasn't anything accounting for it. Dawn's been an avid gardener all her life. Little Janie joined us in the kitchen this time and said something along the lines that the charred man would feed us. He was a butcher and fed his family. That he would take care of his daughter. Creepy, creepy shit. Uh, my language, ma'am. Footsteps followed after that.

"'Mind you, I wouldn't have been so quick to accept it if I hadn't heard them myself. "'We were all enjoying dinner one night when we heard these heavy-sounding footsteps on the floor above. "'And neither of the adults seemed as startled as me and Beth, "'considering no one else was supposed to be in the house. "'They just looked kind of defeated. "'Janey got a big smile on her face and told us the charred man was exploring. Eventually, Evan got up and we had a look. Nobody was there.

He mentioned they were talking about putting the place up, taking the loss maybe, or renting it out if they could. He said there had been no other things going on in the night. They were waking up to the smell of burning. Anna could tell this hit an emotional note in dawn. She allowed him to recollect himself and continue. I suggest it getting the electrical checked out. Evan said they'd already had it looked into.

Everything supposedly in good condition. But the burning smell woke them both in the night. It seemed to be coming from Janie's room. Dawn asked Janie if she wanted to start sleeping in their room, like she used to insist, but Janie seemed perfectly content to stay. Neither of them slept well those nights. Dawn got the worst of it. So she was the first to hear the scratching.

Anna gently filled his silence with her own observation. It sounds like these disturbances were escalating for them. Don looked at her fully. And did it ever? Dawn described the sounds like someone with long fingernail scratching rapidly against the sides of Janie's bed, sometimes against the wall. They were pretty quiet at first, barely noticeable, unless you were standing right in her room.

But they started getting louder, especially when the burning smell got bad. And then there was the pig. Yes, you mentioned they had animals. Mm-hmm. Don't think I mentioned that a couple of the cats had run away by now. Well, their pig, Bessie, she was a sweet little thing. And they weren't able to own a dog due to Evan's olig,

so they got a pig instead, and with the temperament of a dog. She'd wag her tail and roll over for belly rubs. She hadn't been doing too good those weeks either. Very lethargic. The vet didn't find anything out of sorts. But that night, both Evan and Dawn woke up to screaming. There was the burning and the scratching, too, louder than ever, But the screaming was coming from outside, from Bessie's enclosure.

They got out there as fast as they could and found her lying in the stall, screaming and kicking her legs out. Evan noticed she was bleeding from her mouth. He called me, probably because me and Beth had been privy to the strange events, and also probably he didn't know who else to call at the time. I was on the tail end of my 48 hours off duty at the department, so I was free to come by. First thing I hear on the line is Bessie screaming and Evan trying to hold it together.

But by the time I got there, the pig was dead and not only dead, but burnt. Her whole pin smelled like pork. The vet was, quite frankly, flummoxed to find she had burnt. From the inside, dawn got sick from it all. come to find Janie had slept through everything. Only when she woke, the first thing she said was that she and Bessie were hungry for bacon. It was Anna's turn to shift uncomfortably. She pulled a collar of her blouse slightly away from her neck, feeling stifled.

She wanted to open the window but opted not to disrupt Don's story, strange and engrossing as it was. That pig. That was the final straw, so to speak. Don called her folks in Sacramento the very same morning, looking to arrange a stay for Janie until they could figure out what to do with the house. Neither of them wanted her there another night. We offered our place, of course, so none of them had to stick around.

And as much as I can tell, they were going to take us up on it. I had to go into my shift pretty soon after it all went down. And typically, I'm on for. for 24 hours at the station after 48 hours off. Didn't expect to see them or that house again till I was off. Normally at this time, Anna wrapped up the session with a brief conclusion, confirmation of their next scheduled date and payment. She remained silent, however.

Don sat rigid, his head hung. When he continued, his voice was tinged with emotion. That call? the third one of the day. Of course, I recognized the address. And when we arrived, I saw Evan and Dawn being physically restrained by their neighbors. They were screaming that Janie was in the house. I guess they'd return to pack up when the fire started and Janie had slipped off somewhere she wasn't supposed to be. I acted quickly. I read the fire the best I could, figuring the best way we could approach it and extinguish it.

In those positions, you're not supposed to let your heart get ahead of you. You're not supposed to make rash decisions. You're not supposed to. At least one of us had to enter the building before fully extinguishing it with Janie inside. We took note of the smoke movement, detected hot zones. People who want to re-enter don't always know how to anticipate flashes. I entered by the back door. Somehow I knew Janie was going to be in her room.

It was strange straight away, entering the house. Man, I fought countless house fires before, some doozies, and never one like this. It was almost like the flames were burning in just a way to allow someone to follow a path to her room. Not like it spread from what. one end to another, but burned from different ends of the house. And the second seemed to be different, too.

I know it sounds crazy, but I guess that's why I'm fucking here. Don's sudden cursing jarred Anna. It came from a vicious place, very unlike his usual polite Midwestern persona. The sound of a fire burning is supposed to be loud, but it's like the volume lower. I turned on my helmet light. and the flames looked more distorted as I walked along. And I swear, I started to hear my name. None of it stopped me until I got the Janie's room.

A part of the fire raged in her parents' room just beside us, and she was there, sure enough, in her own room. Her stuffies were scattered about the floor. First thing I saw was the lower half of her lying with them. She had on a black dress with these, These big, bright sunflowers. Dawn's cheeks streaked with tears. Anna felt somewhat frozen to her spot.

First, I thought at least she's laying on the floor below the fumes. I stepped into her room and froze fucking solid. She was lying there next to her bed. Breathing sure enough, but her eyes were open wide and her arms were raised. Do you know what the boxer poses? Anna nodded. Yeah. Well, she was lying like that.

And on the bed, sitting right there on the bed, there was the charred man. I can't believe it took us that goddamn long. She wasn't saying the charred man. It was the charred man, all. along. C-H-A-R-R-E-F-E-F-ING D. Dawn was standing now, face reddening. Anna heard noises just beyond her office door. Michael or Elaine were bound to appear any second now, drawn to take action by the chaos.

It, it... It... it smiled at me. It... it... move. towards me. You ever see a body with its skin burnt to hell? No. Well, I have. You smile a bit wider

without lips. Michael opened the door. Excuse me, everything okay in here. Don didn't even glance his way. I left her there. I left and I tailed it out of that room like the fucking coward I am.

I didn't even know what I was doing until I got outside and heard the roof cave in behind me. Anna started gasping, feeling like she couldn't get enough air. Vaguely, she saw Michael trying to lead her patient out of the room, trying to calm him. Dawn went on, something about the investigation that followed. Finally, her associate succeeded in getting him out of the office. Her breathing calmed. The temperature seemed to settle. Nothing remained but a faint whiff of smoke.

As the train pulls into the terminal, we ask that you gather what's left of your sanity and depart the train. Thank you for traveling with us on the sleepless Express. 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 editorial team is Jessica McAvoy and Ashley McAnally.

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