The NoSleep Podcast - S21 Ep16: NoSleep Podcast S21E16

Episode Date: August 18, 2024

It’s Episode 16 of Season 21. Ride the Sleepless Express into tales about petrifying possession.“Bury Me in Borrowed Pasts” written by Alexis DuBon (Story starts around 00:03:15)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator – Linsay Rousseau, Ruby – Danielle McRae, Mother – Kristen DiMercurio, Father – Graham Rowat, Principal – Jeff Clement, Preacher – Mike DelGaudio“Murder, She Summoned” written by S. R. Kriger (Story starts around 00:26:35)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator – Erika Sanderson“The Ask” written by Treanor Wooten Baring (Story starts around 00:47:30)Produced by: Jeff ClementCast: Narrator – Sarah Thomas, Sissy – Mary Murphy, Jay-Jay – Reagen Tacker, Catty – Marie Westbrook, Mother – Erin Lillis“Spectral Energy” written by David Haynes (Story starts around 01:06:20)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Jesse CornettCast: Narrator – Ash Millman, Major Douglas – Andy Cresswell, Fettiplace – David Ault, Smith – Jake Benson, Creditor – James Cleveland, Albert Webster – Jeff Clement“The Haunting Photograph” written by M.G. Riko (Story starts around 01:45:50)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Jonathan – James Cleveland, Narrator – Jake Benson, Photographer – Andy Cresswell, Wife – Penny Scott-Andrews, Jacob – Erika Sanderson, Doctor’s Assistant – Ash Millman, Doctor – David AultThis 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/NSPShipStation - Work less and ship more with ShipStation. The innovative tool that helps turn your shipping challenges into opportunities for growth. Use promo code NOSLEEP today at shipstation.com to sign up for your FREE 60-day trial.Click here to learn more about The NoSleep Podcast teamClick here to learn more about Alexis DuBonClick here to learn more about S. R. KrigerClick here to learn more about Treanor Wooten BaringClick here to learn more about David HaynesExecutive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon Boone“Bury Me in Borrowed Pasts” illustration courtesy of Catriel TallaricoAudio 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. It's tough just being yourself these days, isn't it? We all have that big blob of goo between our ears, and we can only hope that our brain lets us be in complete control of our thoughts and feelings. No room for anyone else. But we've learned from horror through the years that the idea of a person being controlled by some other entity is a common occurrence. I guess that's why they say possession is nine-tenths of the law. And when it comes to you, it comes to you, it's a lot of

being possessed, it's not just those good old or bad old demons at work these days. No, your body, your mind, your essence is fair game for any number of potential spiritual suitors. And we can start to understand why the idea of being possessed by something else, something outside of yourself, is such a fertile source of horror stories. In days past, humanity didn't understand things like mental illness or neurodivergence. So it was easier to assume a person was possessed by a spirit rather than having a mental condition. But despite how we've progressed in the knowledge of the human psyche, sometimes it's easier and more horrifying to portray someone as being beyond their own control, living with something else within them that has undeniable influence over them.

In this episode, we delve in details which present people who are, well, like cheerleaders. They go around saying, We've got spirit. Yes, we do. We've got spirit. How about you? And now, the train is ready to depart.

Your journey into the darkness begins now. In our first tale, we meet a woman, no, a man. No, um, we meet someone who has, been both and neither many times over. You see, the fate that they've been dealt allows them to live many lives in a second-hand manner, jumping from soul to soul. And in this tale, shared with us by author

Alexis de Bonn, it's one life in particular that is remembered, not just for how it started, but also for how it ended. Performing this tale are Lindsay Russo, Danielle McCray, Kristen de Maccurio, Rayam Rowett, Jeff Clement, and Mike Delgadoio. So live a good long life. It's better than saying, bury me in borrowed pasts. Yesterday I was a ballerina. Before that, the firefighter. All these lives to dress up in, people to be.

I'd like to be a crooner one day. Sing to do-eyed girls at karaoke. Can you do Josh Turner? Swoon. But I never know until I step into the person. I become? Who will I be tomorrow? Isabel Walters, 1967 to 2022. Not the best year to have is my last. Paul Tanaka, 1923 to 2015. Too old. Everything starts to hurt after 70. I don't need two decades of that. Ruby Gray, 1964 to 1994. Well, that just has good time written all over it. A 30 is young. It was probably a dramatic death.

Maybe I'm one of those April suicides Whose world stopped turning when Kurt left it. Ruby Gray, that's who I'll be. I stand above the headstone, marble. I had money. Good. And recite the incantation. I close my eyes, cross my hands over my chest, And let myself fall.

Down, down, down. All the way to September 17th, 1964, all wet and sticky and covered in somebody else's blood. I cry before the nurse gets a chance to smack me. Ruby's infancy is plagued with illness, and at the age of two, she contracts a case of measles that almost kills her. I, possessing the knowledge that she still has another 28 years to go, no, she'll get over it.

But her parents are beside themselves. They love her completely, but they know what I do. That something changed in her when she came so close to day. death. I've been through this before, with chain-smoking businessman and war heroes, but never a baby. And it feels entirely different. Like the mirror is looking back at me, like she knows I'm here. This is no normal near-death experience. Even after returning from the brink, no one has ever become aware of me before. I've come close to death and survived it before, but this is new. Several years passed before she says anything that adults take seriously.

But she's mentioned many times that she feels crowded. Her parents think it's adorable, and she laughs along with them until she's old enough to realize that their laughter comes from a place of disbelief. Or worse, rationalization. Does someone need the potty? Oh, Ruby, are there too many blankets on you? Okay, sweetheart.

Mommy and Daddy will give you some alone time with your toys. But I know what she means when she says crowded. She means me. It's not until her grandfather dies that they realize she's serious, that it's not just her kiddish way of expressing herself, that she's being literal. She's eight now, and she has full command of her language. It's harder to write off the things she says as cute little girlisms.

They hold her hand on the grassy hill and explain to her what it means that grandpa is being put into the ground, that he's gone to heaven, but a part of him will always be here for them to visit, marked with a stone that has his name on it. That death is a part of life, but only this life here on earth, and that it's okay to cry, Ruby.

If you want to cry, cry. You don't have to be brave. They give each other concerned glances when they realize she's not fighting tears the way they are, that she's distracted, not present at all during such a formative experience. Even as the preacher closes the Bible, and Ruby casts her roses into the freshly dug hole on the hill.

She's somewhere else. I think she's overwhelmed. I'm not overwhelmed. It's just that I know this place. I've been here before. Another exchange of concerned looks. Ruby, frustrated with never being taken seriously, points down the cobblestone lane to her left.

Up that hill, there's Abigail Colson. She was a ballerine. Her father drank too much and he always used to forget to pick her up from ballet class. And then when she became a professional ballerina, he tried to ask her for money because he didn't know that ballerinas don't get paid very much, even though their pictures are on buildings. More concerned looks. You think I'm making it up? Okay. Up that hill.

She points. Is Bobby Jackson. He was a fireman. He died of cancer, but he didn't have to. He just kept saying he was fine, even though everyone was worried when he lost all that weight. He didn't want to tell anybody how bad his stomach hurt until one day. He couldn't keep it a secret anymore, and it turned out he had cancer, and it was too late. His wife made really good pork chops.

Ruby, how do you know what cancer is? Her mom crouches on one knee and looks her daughter intensely in the eye. Half worry. Half threat. I know she's never heard the word cancer. I've been with her since birth, and no one has ever spoken about cancer with her. That's not why she knows it. I'm feeling very crowded, and it's all too close here.

What do you mean close, Ruby? The tears her mother fought at the burial are now pouring down her cheeks. It doesn't matter. It's just too much. I don't like it. Too many memories. They're all here now. This is bad.

I wonder if I should jump ship early. I'm here in the cemetery where I need to be and start on someone new, where I could stay undetected. But a part of me also wants to know how this plays out. I've always just been the empty space that fills the passenger seat. This will be a brand new experience.

We're back in the car and I've passed up my opportunity to return to more of the same. On we go, Ruby and I into uncharted territory. When we get home, it's straight to the kitchen table for a family discussion, which rapidly dissolves into her parents arguing with each other about how they want to handle this. Ruby, perceptive as she is, understands it's best to keep things to herself. I was only making up stories. Please, please don't worry. I'm sorry.

Ruby, honey, we know that. But how is it that you know about things like grown-ups who drink too much or what cancer is? And why would you say such inappropriate things when you should be paying your respects to Grandpa? Her mother wilts into her chair, puffy-eyed and sniffly. I don't know. But in her mind, Ruby's thinking at me, asking for advice. I don't know what to say either, and I'm in no position to offer suggestions even if I did. I don't get involved in these things.

I'm a spectator, not a participant. We need to take her to the doctor. She's been making all sorts of strange comments. This is the final straw. Gary, no, she's not sick. She just has an overactive imagination. She's not right. Something's wrong, Jane.

Why are you always so damn stubborn? Arms cross over chests, brows furrow. Mrs. Gray avoids eye contact, picking at her cuticles while Mr. Gray paces the room with his hands knitted together on top of his head. Really? I'm sorry. I was just being silly. Promise. Four incredulous eyes cut through her. I know they're worried it could be something worse than illness or creativity run amok. I've occupied religious people before, and that look is one

I recognize. But neither of them is going to say so. I had been so looking forward to reliving the 1960s and 70s, especially as a kid. To see the world around me blossom with flower power, feel the energy that came with Janice Joplin and Jimmy Hendricks, idolizing all those high school kids saturated and psychedelics, so close I could touch them, knowing I could never be them, but still hoping, to want something so badly, even though I don't quite understand it. Ruby has no such luck. She gets sent home from school for the last time when she's 11. The principal notified her parents on the first day of classes when she walked up to one of her teachers and said,

Mildred, Mildred, you are my sister, Mildred Parker. This was deeply disturbing for Miss Statler, whose sister had died decades earlier and who had taken the job at Hillside after she was widowed. Nobody knew her maiden name. That got Ruby into a lot of trouble, both at home and at school. Word travels fast in the classroom,

and before long kids were calling her a freak and throwing pencils at her in the hall. Three months in, and things have only gotten worse. We keep trying to engage her, to get her to participate, you know, be a part of the class. But she won't interact with the other students. Her attention always seemed so focused inward. We can't get her out of that shell. The conversation with the principal ends with the suggestion that maybe she try homeschooling,

at least for the rest of the year. Mr. and Mrs. Gray agree that this is the best course of action and withdraw Ruby from Hillsdale. Ruby, sweetheart, we just don't know what else to do with you. We've tried everything. Dr. Cushing couldn't find a thing wrong with you to explain all this, but sweetheart, you are sick. Your father and I both worry that...

Old familiar tears fall from her mother's eyes. It's a wonder she doesn't have channels carved into her cheeks by now with all the crying she does. It's not your body. It's not your mind. We worry that... She chokes on the words. She's kept locked away for so long.

Ruby, we worry that maybe it's your soul that's sick. But I am not a demon. Some agent of Satan. An exorcism? For me? This won't work. I can't just be evicted from her body when there's nowhere else to go.

Take Ruby to see her grandpa, and I'll leave. find someone else. I don't want to be here anymore either. My presence has altered the course of her life. Maybe ruined it. I want to free her of me, to give her the miraculous recovery everyone is praying for. But I'd never make it into another life before I was lost forever. And though I've died so many hundreds of times, those deaths were never my own. They sit Ruby in a chair and call the preacher. She's crying, terrified. She hears her. She hears her. father's voice from the next room, quaking with something other than fear. She wonders if he's

at the end of his rope with concern for her well-being, or if he's just frustrated and shaken at the realization of his own powerlessness. Her mother comes into the room, cooing gentle words as sweetly as she can manage. Though Ruby knows she has already decided that the child she is comforting is something other than her daughter. I promise, Mommy, I'm not bad. I don't have the death on me. I I swear. Mrs. Gray's eyes shift back and forth, as if calculating whether the gasps between Ruby's sobs or something to sympathize with or fear. It is hours of tears before the preacher arrives. All three of them are fighting sleep when he knocks on the door. The sound jolts Ruby from her dozing, and she listens as three sets of footsteps approach the chair her parents told her she could not leave.

Sorry, I took so long. I came as soon as I could. He is fully alert, on edge. An exorcism is a terrifying experience that no man of the cloth hopes to perform, and his shaky hands and tremulous voice betray his lack of self-assuredness. His eyes are wide open, alert, and the skin of his face is taught with anxiety. He sucks his bottom lip like a pacifier. All this in extreme contrast to the yawning, half-asleep parents he has come to see. Her father sleepily goes over all the troubling events that have taken place.

Every time Ruby has mentioned the lives of people long dead and unknown to the grays, all the time she has seemed lost behind her eyes, like she was engaging with someone else in there. The preacher looks at Ruby, sitting obediently on her chair, and the tension in his face lightens. Has she been speaking in any languages that would be unfamiliar to her? No. Has she been acting out, behaving violently? No. Has she been running a fever at all? No. Ruby feels a glimmer of hope as his expression becomes one of sympathy and as posture softens. He speaks to her directly.

Hello, Ruby. Would you mind holding something for me? Okay. She holds her palms out. Close your eyes. Her parents hold each other, almost as if they wish something would happen. This must be embarrassing for them. Ruby closes her eyes. The preacher puts something heavy and cold.

her hands. She closes her fingers around it to feel the shape. Do you know what that is, Ruby? Is it your cross? Open your eyes. She opens them and sees she is holding a cross that he had brought with him from church. She knows it well. It's the one that stays at the altar. Her parents lean in, expectantly. What does it feel like when you hold it, Ruby? Like metal? Anything else? Um... She searches her mind for the right answer. Cold and heavy? Mr. and Mrs. Gray.

He leads them out of the room and lowers his voice to a whisper, though not as quiet as he meant to be. I don't think Ruby is possessed at all. But they're not convinced. They plead with him to explore more ways to coax out the demon. But he stays firm in his diagnosis that the only thing Ruby suffers from is an overactive imagination. He recommends they give her a notebook and pencil

and encourage her to put all her stories to paper. Maybe she'll be the next Mary Shelley. With that, he tells them they'd all do well to have a good night's sleep and sees himself out the door. Mr. Gray is no longer yawning. He is furious. He is determined to drive out

whatever unholy entity has taken hold of his once perfect little girl. Jane, I know that isn't our ruby. and I'm going to take care of it once and for all. He goes upstairs. Ruby hears the sounds of water rushing into the tub and her sobs become whales. She looks to her mother for help,

but her mother will no longer make eye contact. Mrs. Gray keeps her gaze to the floor. Her shoulders slumped low and her hands hard at work picking at each other. Your father knows best. Footsteps fall heavy down the staircase and her father, glowing red with rage,

returns to room. Ruby, still seated in her chair. He jerks her hard by the hand and yanks her up. Her shoulder aches, hot and throbbing, dislocated by the pull. Her father is too preoccupied to notice. Daddy, please. But his mind is made up. Mr. Gray is certain that the preacher is wrong, that Ruby is possessed by an infernal force and that it is corrupting her soul. She's in the bathroom now, and he tells her to get on her knees and face the tub. Too terrified of what my happen if she doesn't. Ruby complies. Mrs. Gray stands half inside the door, still a stone, holding her breath. With one big father-sized hand, he binds her wrists behind her back,

and with the other hand he grips the back of her head, fingers tangled in her hair. You will leave my daughter. But I can't. He can't drown me out. That won't work. Dead or alive, she has to be in the cemetery for me to leave. She has 19 years before her body is buried. Take her there. I'll go. I want to go. But he persists, dunking her head in the bathwater three, four, five more times, unfaltering through the sounds of her choking, gasping, drowning. Each push held longer than the one before. The splash of her face against the water harder each time as his frustration grows until eventually he notices how long it's been since she wriggled against his grip, since she begged garbled syllables interrupted by submersion,

since her back heaved desperately against his forearm. Ruby's eyes shut forever, but I can still hear through her ears and feel through her dead body. This is always the worst part. When I'm alone in the shell that used to house someone, feeling blood thickened with inertia, eyeballs going from slick to sticky to shriveled, tongues turning red, rough like felted wool against desiccated gums. That horrible period, withering in darkness before embalming and then burial. Until I'm deposited back in the ground of the cemetery.

Home. And I can start all over. Be someone new. It wasn't supposed to be this way. I should have left when I had the chance. More than half of her already short life lost. I hear both her parents crying now. Her mother, shaky like an engine running on two little gas, sounds hoarse and dry, and all out of tears.

Her father sounds regretful, full of remorse. That won't do any good now. The time for regret to serve any function has expired. He apologizes over and over. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Sniffling through stifled sobs, he exits the bathroom. leaving Ruby with her mother, who confesses all the things she should have done to stop it,

repeating, I love you, into dead ears. He returns sometime later, after Mrs. Gray has fallen asleep on the bathroom floor. Ruby's head cradled in her lap. Two big hands grip Ruby's ankles, and Mrs. Gray stirs beneath her. Gary, no. We have to. We can't bring her body in and have her buried in the cemetery. I get the chair, Jane.

Is that where you want to lose us both? No, you can't. Opposing forces pull at Ruby's limp body, mother at the wrists, father at the legs. What do you want to say? She drowned herself in the bathtub? That's not physically possible, Jane.

Ruby's mother screams one last time as her grip loosens, as the corpse gets heaved up from the tile floor, into daddy's arms and carry you. downstairs into the night. He whispers, shh, it's going to be okay. To the daughter whose life he stole and drops her into a freshly dug hole in the backyard. One shovel at a time, soil showers over Ruby's body, muffling the noise from the world above until all that remains is silence.

Miniscule creatures come to feast, burrowing into skin and rigor-mortisid muscle. I've never stayed for this part, but I have never stayed for this part, but I have nowhere else to go. You know how it goes. In a small town there are murders taking place on a regular basis. Good thing, the town has a local busybody who is keen to investigate and solve the murders. But in this tale, shared with us by author S. R. Krieger, we learn a lot more about how and why the murders are committed and why said busybody is so keen on them. Performing this tale is Erica Sanderson. So with apologies to Jessica Fletcher, we'll be a bit devilish in calling this one.

Murder, she summoned. I, as you may, Inspector. You can't take your eyes off me. Well, off yourself, I suppose. The reflected lips that speak with my voice still belong to you. Come now. Don't gape? If you didn't want this to happen, then why did you sneak into her writing room?

Clever of you to choose the night she plays bridge with the neighbours, and speak those words into this mirror. There now, doesn't it feel better to let your jaw relax? You are a practical man, I know. To business then. Interrogate away. Did Elspeth call me on purpose? What a question to begin with. Mine are known for hair splitting,

but I wager even you'd agree the situation is difficult to dissect. Did she recite the vocation and bind my name? Yes. Was it an accident? No. Did she believe anything would come of it? I can't say for certain. But I ask you, a man of no small experience.

What four giggling sixteen-year-olds at a well-regarded finishing school dare each other to one holy ceremonies if they really believed we would answer? I wasn't the only one so solicited. Elspers' three friends had fabricated their own sinister-sounding appellations, and so spawned three mulling newborns of my kind. However, even at that age, Elspeth was meticulous. She had researched the subject in the rectory in order to avoid making a fool of herself in front of the more popular girls, and in doing so, she chanced upon my time-worn name.

And so there I was. The lone voice of age and experience among eager infants. Patience, I warned them may be a virtue, but that doesn't mean one can't apply it towards proper vice. Sadly, the imps did not heed my astute words, went straight to work, possessing their oblivious young hosts, tugging greedily at every temptation born to those girlish hearts. The neophytes had barely induced their prey to talk back to the headmistress

before Father Mackay cottoned on and privately exercised them back to the nothingness from which they sprang. What surprises you, Inspector? That I speak so candidly of my companion's complete obliteration. Ah, no, I see. Well, they've certainly let themselves go, but back in those days the clergy knew what they were doing, at least when it came to us.

Being as I intimated knowledgeable of the ways of mortals, I resolved for this reason to wait. I was determined to make the most of young Elspeth's unexpected invitation, and so I settled unperceived into her life. What? Ritual incense. My dear no, that'll be the potpourri sachets. Inspector, I am embarrassed for your ignorance.

Elspeth keeps them in the closet to freshen her winter wardrobe. Now, do pay attention. Vain-glory is. no longer considered a deadly sin, but one does like to feel as though one is being listened to. As I was saying, I did my best to stay inobtrusive as Elspeth grew, though you mustn't think I went hungry all those years. When left to its own devices, your kind ensured and ensures no shortage of evil in the world. Elspeth's natural cleverness, independence, and lack of what you mortals consider beauty, incited the anemic, but still nourishing everyday iniquities of

opportunity denied, talent suppress, and potential squandered. I encouraged Elspot's own weaknesses, her puriance and judgment of her neighbors, but only inconspicuously, although truly I had very little to do. It was not I who made her lonely and suspicious and envious of others' love. That was she. and also the rest of you. What's that? Fond of Elspeth. Not in any sense you would understand. Perhaps you think so,

because even when those such as Father MacI began to die out, their spiritual knowledge eclipsed by art and science, I never sought to corrupt her. But that's the short-sighted view of a mortal. Have you forgotten already that one of the pillars of our dominion is sloth? As you know from even your brief acquaintance, Elspeth is obdurate. Afraid both of pleasure and of not being able to obtain it, she spent a lifetime persuading herself that its pursuit is folly.

I, on the other hand, consider that true foolishness is expending momentous effort when minimal exertion will do. As Elspeth advanced towards old age and death, I weighed the expected sum of the steady trickle of sustenance over her remorse. remaining years, against what I could hope for from a final conspicuous act of ruination that would force me to flee. As soon as I determined the latter to be greater than the former, I moved. I sent rage and despair and fear as keenly as a hound does its prey, and even in a small

village such as this, I was less lacking for opportunity than overwhelmed by it. It is your common misconception that we impose upon our chosen instruments the urge to violence. More distant from the truth this could not be. We do not instill bloodlust in you. No, nor even strengthen it where it already exists. Oh, I can distort the minds of mortals. But why would I? When all I need do is whisper, no one will ever know.

Don't furrow your brow in judgment, Inspector. You think that you wouldn't dream and never could, but you've merely imagined not being discovered with the pitiful capabilities of your flesh and blood brain. I have never gifted you with the bone-deep certainty that you are unaccountable before heaven, hell, and all who walk this earthly road underway to one or the other. I chose Sir Henry, primarily because Elsie,

Spath passed often through his sphere, bringing her and me close enough to him to exert my influence without unbecoming effort. And secondarily, because I judged his life of entitlement and power to have trained the vines of his disposition to climb wrath. We are not omniscient, and I did not, at the time, know about the affair, or the will. But I can't say I was surprised when Lady Codwald turned up strangled in the library. Nor was I surprised at the glorious banquet of pain, fear and suspicion that erupted in the wake of the deed. What did very much surprise me was Elspeth. I was of course familiar with her officiousness, but I had thought that revulsion would keep her away. In this, I was mistaken. At first, I was vexed at her investigation, as in my

experience, once a mortal resolves to examine my machinations in earnest, it is only a short time before I must abandon my host in a last great rending of blood and flesh, lest I risk obliteration. I had intended to savour Sir Henry's handiwork for some time yet, but resigned myself to early flight. But here, Elspeth surprised me once again. The earth-bound sensibilities that had made it no great trial to ride her mind, even into Sunday services,

kept her fixated not on the more profound question of why one human being, Until now flawed, but whole of soul, might inflict such carnage. But on the mundane details of how and who, and for what material purpose. This was the first reason I did not immediately truncate my investment and tear her to shreds. The second was how, to my delight, as Sir Henry felt Elspeth's inductive noose cinch round his throat, he compounded his first killing with additional slaughter. Now the conviction I had gifted him was gone. Now each witness or busybody who spoke to Elspeth was a deadly threat.

The paranoia, the anguish, and most delicious of all, the futility. For I had no doubt then that Elspeth would see the thing through, no matter how many corpses Sir Henry strewed in her path. By the time she caught up with him, he could see no solution to a problem save murdering it away, and with no other avenue of escape, he determined the only problem left to solve was his own continued existence. I doubt you can properly understand the profundity of my pleasure in these vents. No, I don't mean the joy in human suffering. That is well within your experience. Compared to my agelessness, however, your 30-odd years make you an infant,

and thus incapable of truly appreciating, as I do, novelty. The last time I dwelt among mortals, if death shadowed an individual, especially one as overlooked and alone as Elspers, they would have drowned her for witchcraft. More so if she further involved herself in the matter. But instead, well, I cannot say the local constabulary lorded her, but they did not denounce her either. And when, out of curiosity more than hunger, I whispered impunity into another mind. that of the vicar's brother, the police welcomed her interference. Out of everything I've told you, this disturbs you the most. Deny it all you like, I can sense the kindled outrage, the cold and oozing jealousy.

That is why I get ahead of myself, do I not? I suppose you know what followed the affair at the vicarage. St. Tagnus on the Heath and the nearby populations is, especially those in which Elspeth enjoys social or familial ties, have experienced an epidemic of poisonings, hunting accidents, and staged suicides. Elspeth has, of course, multiplied the suffering of those affected by doggedly investigating each tragic event. I cannot take credit for her successes.

Give the devil his due is your phrase, not ours. But her string of triumphs indulged my appetite. All the more as each wrong-headed theory and mistaken assumption on the paths to those triumphs sated infinitesimally more of my insatiable nature. Imagine then, my dismay, when Elspeth began to learn. Your kind prides itself on its imagination, and yet after the first score of murders, the same tedious methods of homicide cropped up again and again. Elspeth's work began to occupy a matter of hours rather than days.

giving hardly any time for collateral corpses. You must see by now that this simply wouldn't do. Gluttony and greed spurred me to that which I'd ordinarily abhor. Invention. At first I thought a change of scenery might suffice. I therefore spread my influence farther afield, to acquaintances off to tourist in foreign lands, which Elspeth would then have to visit.

And old schoolmates' prestigious places of employment, which Elspeth would then have to explore. I couldn't do much to alter the tired old motives of lust thwarted, covetousness and rage, but at least new environments meant new means. This engaged her for some time, but not long enough. After another half-dozen killings, she began once more to adapt.

The predictable motives I determined were the problem. What remedy was then left to me, but meddling more directly with mines. At first, I stayed alert to mines already balanced on the edge. Again, this was not difficult. You long ago invented your own tools for breaking the human spirit, calling them civilisation to obscure their terrible price. Without a concrete plan, I expanded my whisper.

You are too clever and too strong to be caught. You deserve better. No one else is as real as you. The results were most satisfactory, as you will remember from my latest experiment, who drew your attention to Elspeth. It was you, I believe, who christened him the brother John killer, but it was she who stopped him after only two deaths. The problem should be obvious. Two is not very many, not compared to him.

to my previous protegees, who reached at least four each. I fear that soon Elspeth will once again be nimbler than my handiwork can render her challenges. So, I've decided to do something I've never done before. I know, I know. How appalling that I'd put effort into constructing a situation when there is yet low-hanging fruit ripe for plucking. Still, with the substantial remuneration ever in my same, thoughts, I did all I could to keep my labours minimal. For example, I chose a subject already seething with resentment. You begin to see now, don't you? To be frank, Inspector, even without direct

perception of your soul, I would have known how you felt from the moment you stepped off the London train two weeks ago. Your lips cannot shape the word miss without wet disdain. Your spine stiffens every time you remember you require her presence. Not for her skills, you think, but to appease the superiors she seems to have bewitched. Your sneer curls when you think she isn't looking. She isn't, but I am. Of course, you too have been frightfully observant. I knew you would be. I knew you couldn't possibly believe that, let's see, how would you put it? An unmarried old bitch was more discerning than you. She is, by the way, that you would know to the depths of you that somehow she had to be cheating. You were desperate for the evidence of her deep, dark secret.

And so I gave it to you. I gave it in the flash of something the color of dried blood in her cataract clouded eyes. In the faint guttural whispering, so soft it was barely there when she passed too close. The cockerel entrails spread across the henyard were regrettably heavy-handed, but then, as I have said, you are not the most discerning... Oh, you can move your right hand after all. Not very much, it seems. Still, that was quite good aim for such limited mobility. If those really were splinters from the true cross and not souvenir trinkets from your sister's holiday in Rome, I expect I'd be, well, probably not in agony. You're no Father Mackay, and his exorcistic secrets have, thankfully, followed him to the grave. There, that ought to

keep you nice and compliant. I don't risk a scream, after all. Please don't consider this revenge. Your attempt to have the doctor from your club declare Elspeth mentally unfit could certainly be grounds for retaliation for one who cares for her. But in case I haven't yet made myself clear, I bear no will, good, ill, or otherwise, towards you, her, or any other mortal being. This will, however, hurt. It can't really be otherwise, splitting your mind in two. You see, upon reflection, I've realised that in every case, Elspeth relies on the behaviour of the killers afterwards. Their knowledge of the crimes they have committed, and the punishment that follows discovery, shapes their actions. But how quickly I wonder, could she trace a murderer who doesn't know he is one?

I'll compress the gut-deep thrill of fear that prickles your neck in a dark wood at night, and the blood-hot rage that wells up the slightest scratch to you. your ego. A dash of animal slyness, the instinct for deception in the name of survival squeezed in. Altogether, quite small compared to the rest of you. This part, the part that thinks, the part that I am addressing, will remember none of this, or of what my tiny tempestuous creation does when it takes control. Now hold still. Elspeth and I, are going to have so much fun. When a family celebrates a special event,

it's nice to have everyone in attendance. There really should be no reason for anyone to miss it. But in this tale, shared with us by author Trana Wooten Barring, the siblings are all there, and they all know about the plan and what has to happen. Performing this tale are Sarah Thomas, Mary Murphy,

Reagan Tacker, Marie Westbrook, and Aaron Lillis. So some things are too important not to request. That's why you have to say it. The ask. Caddy came home for JJ's graduation party. Straight out of Memphis Society.

Appearing smooth and celebrity-like. Sleak hair swept up in a roll at the back of her head. Her face, a powdery alabaster. The tiny sliver of a scar above her eyebrow blotted out with foundation. Her beige suit and matching pillbox hat were wholly unwrinkled, even as she stepped out of two hours confinement in her newly minted 1965 Buick. I was Delta Farm Fuzzy, fluffy around the edges from my hair blowing in the wind whipping off the land. My party dress, with its little pink and white tufts bobbing between organza folds,

only made me look like a shed in mimosa tree. It's not that at the age of 16 I aspired to be a doctor's wife, all polished and poised in white-belt gloves and crisp white kitten heels. But at that moment, when I saw her ascend the porch stairs, the fact that Caddy had pulled off her escape so well seemed like a family triumph. One of us at least had made it out. JJ, who while he was away at Ole Miss, had grown long arms and legs that had outpaced the width of his shoulders, stood on the front porch like an upside-down exclamation point. He greeted everyone dutifully as they arrived, daddy at his side holding him hostage. I had no official role in the party, being merely the surviving little sister. I wandered aimlessly between the silver trays of canopays and coop-shaped champagne grueless.

glasses until, inevitably, someone asked me to fetch something from the kitchen. I was still young enough to be allowed behind the swinging door into the kitchen without being chewed out by our cook, Flavia. Sissy followed me in. I was pretty sure no one else knew she'd come back for the party. They were far too happy and calm. Why is she here without him? She was talking about Caddy and the doctor husband.

But I couldn't answer until we were alone. It wouldn't do. They all thought I was crazy enough as it was. Fearful, I was heading down the path that Aunt Emma Kate had taken. She had checked out of reality altogether. But in my case, Sissy was reality. She was the only reality. The rest of it was all stagecraft.

I fetched whatever it was Mama had sent me for, another tray of shrimp cocktail or pedophores or some such, and motioned for Sissy to follow me out. There were a surprising number of townspeople, as the plays program would call him, standing in clusters on the ancient Persian rug in the living room, leaning against the mantelpiece, perched on the arms of overstuffed chairs,

or backs to the walls, stiffly making small talk. JJ was not the center of attention. He could not command the lamelight. Caddy, in all her Memphis glory, held the spotlight, metaphorically speaking, with no sense whatsoever that she should relinquish it to her younger brother on his big day.

She stood with her lips tight and her hand on the arm of whatever man was near her in casual conversation, as though nothing bad had ever happened to her, as if nothing bad had ever happened to any of us. Who does she think she is? Please, anyway. Let's go.

I knew nobody would hear me above the amiable chatter. I was irrelevant. I could dance on the dining room tabletop and no one would notice. Not when Caddy was in the house. Unless, of course, they could see Sissy. She would take their breath away. She would pull the air out of their lungs and reduce them to gawking, silent, helplessly quivering shells of themselves.

Come with me. We knelt beside the front staircase. I unlatched the planked closet door, and we crawled in beneath the steps. She pulled the door closed, because she could. She could move things. I accepted that she could still do that, in spite of being dead. Only a tiny sliver of daylight framed the angled cupboard door. The rest was darkness.

I hate her. Oh, she. He's all right. I handed her a tea sandwich I had swapped. I'd forgotten that she didn't need to eat. I was always hungry. I wondered what it would be like to never be hungry again. For the ravenous gnaw and I always felt to be replaced by a different kind of emptiness.

No, you don't understand. There was something she wanted to tell me. Just then, the Doroo, and we were momentarily blind. by the light. What are you doing under here? It was JJ. What are you doing, snooping in closets? Are you hiding?

Hey, JJ. Hey, Sissy. Damn it. He bent down and made himself as small as he possibly could, folding his limbs in and shoving a tangle of tennis rackets out of the way. He sat down on top of some old tablecloths at the tall end of the closet. He produced a tenth of bourbon and sloshed it towards Sissy. She screwed up her face.

I reached out and grabbed it and took Swig. It went down sharp. Was it still awful for you in Oxford until the last? I hadn't known it had ever been awful for him. But then it made sense that it was, the way he was. Oh, you get used to it. He shrugged. Going to Ole Miss didn't really count as escaping.

It wasn't really good. getting out, not like Caddy had. You want to come with me to the Hollywood later? The Hollywood was a steakhouse, music joint, and bar, up by Moon Lake on the way to Memphis, where JJ intended to have a real party after this fake one. Sure, if Mama and Daddy let me. They won't. You could go, I said to her helpfully, offering her up to JJ as compensation.

Go anyway. How long have you been under here? Why do you need to know? I was prickly at 16. I hadn't found a way to like JJ yet. It was almost as if I loved him too much. And Sissy. Sissy was an ache in my heart that wouldn't quit.

She would lie with me in bed at night with her head against my shoulder. And we would both weep. She for me and I for her. And then, after hours of this, the bright pain of it ripping my sleep apart. She would be gone, and I would calm down. J.J. leaned back against the inner wall of the staircase, and took a very long, deep draught of bourbon. Is that a sandwich?

Here. I brought it for Sissy, but, you know. He shoved the triangle of bread and potted meat into his mouth. I want you to kill her. We both looked at Sissy, our eyes wide. Who? But he knew. I knew. I wasn't sure which question to ask next.

Why, how, where, or when? Why don't you do it? I'd never been this confrontational with Sissy before. It didn't feel good, but it felt necessary. You could, I think. I mean, it's been done. I want you to do it. It was like at this point she knew that we owed her.

We were alive. We were growing up. JJ was graduating even. Mama and Daddy were throwing a party for him. A happy party. A celebration where glasses clinked together and congratulations. And it was acceptable to laugh at someone's bad joke. Not like Sissy's going away party, as she called it,

where if you smiled, you had to cover it up with your hand. This fundamental unfairness, this tragedy of all of our, our lives, meant that whatever she asked us to do, we would do. I need you to do it. But by this time, both JJ and I understood our fate. Life presents you sometimes with these moments, when the next thing you do is no longer a choice, but a direction. The other path, the one you could have chosen if you'd had your wits about you, closes off under a castle of sleeping beauty-like bramble. and you no longer even look down it.

It seems so impossible. JJ asked the question that was on the tip of my tongue. How? Did you pick out that dress? Sissy fingered the Wilton pink snowballs on my skirt. Of course not. How could I even think of wearing such an outfit? Her bloodied, battered body right there in front of me,

broken in two and shrouded in misery? and me, daring to float through the afternoon in pink chiffon. Are you in pain? Sissy turned to JJ. It doesn't have to be bloody. He nodded. But it could be if that's the way it turns out. We'll need your help, I blurted out, a bit desperately.

But she was having none of it. I heard Mama's voice above us. She was standing on the staircase land in. calling up to JJ thinking he'd gone upstairs. Then her shoe heels thudded on each step as she descended them one by one. Soft, grief-stricken beats on the staircase runner, until she reached the front hall and she paused, fallen silent. Had she turned to look back upstairs, hoping to catch a side of JJ?

Or Sissy? I thought I might throw up, hearing the sadness in that quiet pause. I should go. JJ adjusted his white collar and dress slacks. The bottle of bourbon tipped over and clanked against the wooden floor. Sissy picked it up and brought it to her lips, but I knew she couldn't taste it, couldn't swallow it, couldn't feel its slow burn down her throat, as I had. J.J. reached up to the oval doorknob and twisted it, and light flooded over us.

I picked up the bourbon and took another swill for courage. J.J. went out into the light first, then bent down to lift me up from under the steps and out into the fresh air of the house. Sissy leant back against the inner wall of the closet and waved us away. I'll stay here until it's done. She shrank back until she disappeared into the darkness. J.J. closed the cupboard door. I grabbed him by the arm. Are we really going to do this?

What do you think? He stared at me, and then I saw his face change. She didn't tell you, did she? So Sissy had told him something she hadn't told me. Damn him. Then, I remembered that she was about to tell me something earlier, and my heartbeat slowed again. It was all a lie, you know.

What are you doing? Caddy's voice was far from its usual purr. Our catty, Cathay, as was a. her full name, had been behind him the whole time, leaning against the hall bathroom door. Her face was wild. She's lying about me, isn't she? I thought she meant me, but she shoved me aside and leant down to the slanted closet door. She reached to open it, but something made her stop.

JJ lay his hand gently on her shoulder, so gently that I knew he had a plan. She stood, and her whole body began to shake. Don't spoil my party, Caddy. Caddy whipped around to face him, and I saw in her eyes she had already writ her own fate out in fearful detail, probably over and over again. There you are. From the front hall, my mother looked down at the crack in the closet door, and her pupils darkened. What are you three up to? I may have imagined that she said the word three

A little too loudly A little too forcefully We're going to the Hollywood The gang's meeting us there Not yet, dear, not until this She waved at the sea of extras posing as guests in her house Is over Caddy began to stutter an excuse

She was resistant But it was futile The neighbors, the townspeople our parents' friends, all left one by one. Their graduation gifts to JJ piled on the side table in the dining room. It grew dark outside. The stair closet door remained closed. Caddy started toward her car, but JJ curved around to the driver's seat and bounded in.

I saw the fear in Caddy's eyes, and then it shifted with a dying flare to resignation. Get in. We both complied. We waved cheerfully goodbye as JJ pulled Caddy's brand new Buick out across the gravel driveway. He turned north on Highway 61, the straight, long two-lane road to Memphis, on our way to the North Delta and supposedly to the Hollywood Cafe. But we never got there. He pulled off the highway and made his way Riverside along a muddy track by Moon Lake, curling almost to the Mississippi itself, deep into the woods. There was no one there, not a stir.

No lovers, no fishermen, no hunters sitting on their tailgates drinking beer. It was a sign, I thought. The moon was trying to be fooled, but hadn't quite made it, struggling to top the swaying trees. The ground was littered with stones and driftwood from the river, as if they were migrating with the spring floods toward Moon Lake and its stagnant waters. J.J. cut the engine and we all climbed. out. All no in our parts. No rehearsal needed. She's lying. I don't think she is. JJ turned to me. Caddy was driving. It was that boy from Clarksdale, wasn't it? He'd been

drinking. I was confused. He was too drunk to drive. She was drunk too, making out with him so drunk and careless she couldn't even steer. But he drove off the road. But he drove off the road. That's what Caddy said happened. It was all a lot. He was dead. Sissy was dead. So she pushed him over behind the wheel. He turned to Caddy,

expecting her to confess, I suppose. I could see them both take a deep, hopeless breath. Sissy told me all this. She was going to tell you, too. She's only angry because I survived. Caddy sank to her knees. The truth crept over me like a wet mist up from the ground, pulling me downward toward the earth. I looked at JJ, and we understood everything.

Why, at this point, didn't Caddy run away? Why didn't she try to flee? She knew what we were bound to do. Sissy had come to her as well, it seemed. So she must have understood everything, too. I can only think that. There, in her cream-colored suit, she wished for it as much as Sissy did. We set upon her like wolves upon a dying rabbit.

It was not bloodless. When it was done, we were sweaty and bloodied ourselves, our hands cut and bleeding. At first, Caddy didn't fight, and then she did. And then she fell to the ground, fondly tranquil, barely breathing. and then not breathing at all. Her face and her limbs darkened by mud. But she was still so beautiful that, I must say, seeing her like that, I loved her as much as I loved Sissy.

But there was no time for reverie. We had work to do. We tore our own clothes and clawed at each other, all part of the plan. We broke Caddy's Buick side windows and scratched the leather seats with the sharp points of rocks. JJ smacked me across the face and I swung a heavy piece of driftwood into the back of his head. JJ lifted caddy and staggered with her through the woods to the edge of Moon Lake,

found in a place where multiple car tracks criss-crossed so we could say another car had been there. Together we gently, ever so gently, lowered her face down beneath the lap and waves. Her pillbox hat floated away from us, a disc upon the lake's surface. Then we lay down ourselves, sinking our backs into the mud and grass.

We held each other's hands and fell into a deep and guilty sleep. Sissy was standing above us when we opened our eyes, the moon high over the trees. You are my unlived lap. I release you now. Don't look back. And that is when I realized

that what we had done for her meant that she was leaving us. I had truly lost her now. Don't go! But she was already gone. Oh! JJ led out a long and mournful wail that drifted up to the sky,

as far as the arc and moon, into the emptiness that surrounded us. How long did we have to wait? Go back to sleep. Eventually, the moon slid low, shimmering across the lake. The reeds tickling Caddy's arms, her hands curled into a fist. Her clothes weighing her down until she mostly sank. Only a small corner of her shoulder visible.

Stay with me, JJ. I had not learned to like him, but I did not think I could do without. We clasped one another's hands a little tighter, and waited for the morning and someone to find us. And her. Our story was a bit garbled, but after what we'd been through, no one blamed us.

I said there were three men. JJ said there were only two. We'd driven out to the woods, we admitted, to drink. We both said the other car had an Arkansas license plate, but we disagreed about the color. The police said that was evidence we were telling the truth. people were all too ready at that time to believe the two of us. The sheriff knew Daddy.

Everyone felt for us. It was just too much pain for one family to endure, they said. Caddy was buried without ever given up her secrets to the world. That is the thing about the dead. They cannot bear witness against you, unless you love them or hate them so much that they cannot let go of you. In the autumn, We were sitting on the front porch.

Our physical wounds almost healed. When Kethe sat down between us on the swing, as broken and bloody as we had left her in Moon Lake. And we both knew this was true. 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. To discover how you can get even more sleepless horror stories from us, just visit sleepless.com to learn about the sleepless sanctuary. Add free, extended episodes each week, and lots of bonus content for the dark hours, all for only one low monthly price.

On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep podcast, we thank you for traveling the rails with us for our 21st season.