The NoSleep Podcast - S24 Ep10: NoSleep Podcast S24E10

Episode Date: April 5, 2026

It's Episode 10 of Season 24. Enter the dark waters of the Cape Fear River as we present tales about fledgling fears."Phobia" by John Beardify (Story starts around 00:03:45)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by Claudius MooreCast: Brady - Atticus Jackson, Dr. Oberon - Peter Lewis, Aunt Kelly - Danielle McRae, Father - Graham Rowat"Beacons" by Beth Carpenter (Story starts around 00:46:10)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator - Ash Millman, May - Erika Sanderson, Mr. Moth - Jake Benson, Officer - Andy Cresswell"The Death of Joy" by Z.S. Orchid (Story starts around 01:11:00)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by Jeff ClementCast: Narrator - Matthew Bradford, Joy - Kyle Akers, Joy's Sister - Danielle McRae, Teacher - Sarah Ruth Thomas, Monster - Graham Rowat"The Legend of Terence Rope" by Luke Pudney (Story starts around 01:30:20)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by Jesse CornettCast: Narrator - Dan Zappulla, Ethan - James Solis, Jenny - Sarah Ruth Thomas, Travis - Jeff Clement, Teen - Elie Hirschman, Officer - Mike DelGaudioThis episode is sponsored by:Home Chef - Home Chef's meal kits are rated #1 in quality, convenience, value, taste, and recipe ease. Head to homechef.com/nosleep to get 50% off and free shipping for your first box plus free dessert for life!Click here to learn more about The NoSleep Podcast teamClick here to learn more about the Crimewave at Sea 2.0 Cruise!Click here to get your Crimewave at Sea discount code and bonus event!Check out our NEW MERCH!Click here to learn more about John Beardify Executive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon Boone"The Death of Joy" illustration courtesy of Hasani WalkerThe NoSleep Podcast is Human-made for Human Minds. No generative AI is used in any aspect of work.Audio program ©2026 - Creative Reason Media - The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media. No part of this audio program may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. All rights reserved.

Water. It gives us life. We are drawn to it. Yet it holds immense power over us. It can bring unspeakable horror to the most familiar places. Your morning shower, a tranquil riverbank, or the endless ocean. It's time to dive deep into the abyss. From the dark waters of the Cape Fear River, River. immerse yourself in horror as you. Brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast. Welcome to the No Sleep Podcast. I'm your host, David Cummings. To my fellow kids out there, I hope y'all are having a skibbitty day. Glad we have the aura to know what sigmas we are. And you know what really has the RIS?

The Crime Wave at C2.0 crews. There's still time to sign up for this amazing cruise with so many great podcasters in the world of true crime and horror. Make sure you follow the link in the show notes to get your code for $100 off and the special meet-and-greet with the no-sleep team featuring me, The Rizzler, David Cummings, Jessica McAvoy, Peter Lewis,

Lindsay Russo, and Graham Rowett. And of course, the maestro Brandon Boone will be rocking his six-seven. and all over the ship. Make February of 2027 the best time ever on the Crime Wave at Sea 2.0 Cruise. Now, you might be feeling cooked after hearing me use all the cool slang terms we young kids use these days.

And if you think I'm DeLulu, you may be right. Because, truth be told, I have very little idea what I was actually just saying. Isn't that always the case with young people and adults? The kids have their own language, and the oldies just scratch their heads and yell it clouds. Why is it we so rarely pay attention to what kids are saying, especially when they're trying to tell us about things going very wrong?

It's almost like that idea could make for great horror stories. Young people are dealing with strange circumstances and hardships, and it's usually far too late before people start listening to them and believing them. If that sounds like a good story idea to you, you're in luck, because those are the tales awaiting you this week. So take it from Unk. No cap, these stories aren't suss. They slay.

What am I actually saying? Now it's time to plunge into the horror of our sleepless tales. In our first tale, we meet a man of letters. No, not a story. scholarly man, a man who has an odd relationship with one letter in particular, an intense fear of it. You see, in this tale, shared with us by author John Beardify, we learn that Brady has a good reason to be afraid, and it will take a good hypnotherapist to help him solve the problem. Performing this tale are Atticus Jackson, Peter Lewis, Danielle McCray, and Graham Rowett.

So you might dislike some things, you might fear others, but you may need help if you have a phobia. I understand that it's frightening, but you can't keep living your life like this. You've got to try something, and Dr. Oberon is the best. The concern in my Aunt Kelly's eyes was so sweet and sincere that it made me want to puke. This was the third intervention my family had held. Yet another attempt to get me to move out of my parents' basement,

find a job, and have a normal life. We didn't want it to come to this, Brady, but this time you forced our hand. You've got to make a change. That was an easy thing to say for my father. Someone who didn't live in constant fear of the... 24th letter of the alphabet. It started sometime around my 10th birthday. I would swoon and pass out in class or be overcome by crying fits for no apparent reason.

Everyone suspected the worst, and then a pattern began to emerge. It wasn't an undetected tumor or a rare neurological disorder. It was just those two innocent crossed lines. Sick as this sounds, I think my parents were almost disappointed. My condition wasn't something that people were in marathons for. There were no TV commercials with sappy music about the fear of a letter. From the very beginning, they thought that I was the problem. I just wasn't trying hard enough to overcome my phobia.

Then my Aunt Kelly came into the picture. Aunt Kelly was the successful one. The one everyone in our family was told to emulate. She was a doctor, married with two kids, and had even been featured in the local newspaper. One talent, Aunt Kelly did not. not have, however, was keeping her mouth shut. She was constantly telling her elite medical co-workers about my condition, hoping that one of them could provide a miracle cure.

Thanks to Aunt Kelly, I had tried everything from cognitive behavioral therapy to designer drugs that weren't even on the market. None of it had helped, and Aunt Kelly was getting desperate, maybe even more so than my own parents. My phobia was the one problem she wasn't able to solve. The one puzzle piece in her life that she just couldn't force into place. As a result, her suggestions grew successively. Stranger. According to Aunt Kelly, Dr. Oberon was one of the best hypnotherapists on the East Coast.

When she told him about my case, he had taken a personal interest in it. He was willing to see me for a fraction of his usual fee. My parents were overjoyed by the news, but I was skeptical. Then and there, I made up my mind to secretly record the session on my phone before this doctor put me under hypnosis. After all the false promises and snake oil treatments that Aunt Kelly's last round of experts had promised me, I wanted to have some evidence of my own, something that I could use to get out of being sent to some wacky meditation retreat or forced into a cranberry juice detox.

More than that, however, I wanted to know the truth. I wanted to hear in my own history. hypnotized words, why? I was so afraid of something so absurd. Dr. Oberon's office didn't have the fancy facade or smiling robot-like receptionists that I was used to. There wasn't any marble lobby, tropical plants, or ambient music. It was located in an ugly 70s-era strip mall with Nothing nearby but a few apartments and an overgrown park. The stained carpet was mustard-colored. The fluorescent lights hummed and flickered.

The waiting area featured two thrift store chairs and a coffee table whose laminate wood coating was beginning to peel off. It wasn't a promising start. Just as my parents were swapping a glance, the office door opened and Dr. Oberon himself stepped out to greet. us. The atmosphere in the room changed immediately. Even I felt the tension go out of my shoulders. Dr. Oberon looked just how I imagined a hypnotherapist should look. Earth-tone clothes, neatly trimmed goatee, tortoise-shell glasses. His handshake was warm, but not pushy. It almost felt like we

knew each other already. He talked to me, not only to my parents, and made it clear what was going to happen. We would start by practicing a few hypnosis techniques to see which worked best for me. From there, we would begin to investigate my memories from around the time when my phobia had begun. Dr. Oberon doubted that we would finish in a single session,

but it all depended on how much progress we made. When I told him that I'd never been hypnotized before, he just laughed. Well, there's a door into everybody's mind. All you have to do is find it. My parents weren't thrilled about spending an hour in the grimy waiting room and decided to do some shopping before picking me up after the session. My condition had put a strain on my relationship, with my parents, and ordinarily, parting was a relief, but not that day. As Dr. Oberon led me inside,

I felt a sudden urge to grab my father's hand and beg him to let me leave with them. Then the moment passed. The door closed on my parents' concerned faces, and I followed Dr. Oberon into his office. There was something comfortable. about the sparse and shabby furniture. I don't need to rely on appearances, it seemed to say. I rely on results. As I sat on the lumpy plaid couch, I realized that, for the first time in a long time,

I actually had hope that a treatment could work. I might actually be able to live a normal life again. It made me feel guilty about recording the session without Dr. Oberine. knowledge, but I had promised myself that I would. And a promise is a promise. Before I lay down and closed my eyes, I reached into my pocket and hit the record button on my phone. 45 minutes later, I opened my eyes to Dr. Oberon's smiling face. All done.

I scratched my head. I didn't feel any different. It was just like waking up from a long, restful nap. I barely remembered to reach into my pocket and furtively turn off the recording. When my parents arrived, Dr. Oberon greeted them with optimism. It might take some time for the treatment to show results, but I'm confident in the outcome. I couldn't help but agree. As I walked out of the office, I no longer felt that crushing helplessness that I usually did when circumstances.

forces me to go outside. I was no longer dreading that a sudden, unanticipated encounter with that letter would send me into a panic attack. There was a new spring in my step when I followed my parents into the house, and I went directly to my room to listen to my recording. I wanted to see what Dr. Oberon had done. The first few minutes were so warped and distorted that I almost gave up on the whole thing. It was as though the pitch of whatever was happening was beyond the range of what my cell phone could record. Then, things stabilized, and Dr. Oberon began to speak. Can you hear me?

A shiver went up my spine. I barely recognized my own voice. It was toneless, dead, mechanical, hypnotized. There's a letter you're afraid of, Brady. Would you mind telling me which one it is? The letter. Even in the safety of my bedroom, just hearing it made my heart race. I wanted to scream.

Why me? I wondered. Why did I have to be so frightened of such a ridiculous thing? Now, Brady, I want you to think back to the week. before your phobia began. Can you do that for me? Yes. What do you see? A playground. I'm looking out a car window.

There's a lot of leaves on the trees. It's summer. My parents are taking me to the park to play with my friends. The radio was on. It's talking about a kid. who went missing in town. My mother switches it off. Who were you meeting at the park that day, Brady? My friends, Alec and Jocelyn. Tell me about them.

Alec and I became friends in kindergarten. He was on the bigger side and got bullied a lot for it. Most of the kids in our class never knew what a funny... Talented guy he was. Jocelyn had just transferred to our school earlier that week, and she was the only girl I'd ever met who liked to skateboard. We didn't really have a plan for what we wanted to do that day. Swing from the monkey bars, toss a ball around,

stomp around in the woods beside the park. What happened next? I get out of the car. I wave goodbye to my parents and hello to Alex's mom. She's sitting on a bench smoking a cigarette. I'm relieved that she's the one watching us. Because she usually lets us do pretty much whatever we want. Alec is sitting on top of the monkey bars.

Jocelyn is kicking a ball as hard as she can. against a cinder block wall. She aims at me next. I duck the ball and laugh. It rolls to a stop against the wooden tower beside the monkey bars. There's... Go on, Brady. There's one of them carved into the ground, an X.

Like someone dragged their... feet through the mulch again and again to make it. I pointed out to Alec. He laughs and says that maybe we should dig for buried treasure. I tell him, I don't think that's a good idea, not at all. I feel cold all of a sudden. There's something wrong. about that letter.

Like, it doesn't belong there. And I'm not the only one who feels that way. Jocelyn changes the subject right away. She says something about how she saw a deer's skull by the entrance to the park. And how we should go check it out. We leave the X behind. scratched my head. I could recall Alec and Jocelyn well enough, even if I hadn't seen them in years. And everyone in town remembered the rash of disappearances that happened in the early 2000s.

But I had no memory of the afternoon that I had just described to Dr. Oberon. Are you saying you saw that letter again on a different day, Brady? At the park again a week later. It's a holiday, the 4th of July, I think. I'm excited about the fireworks and the hamburgers that my dad's going to grill later. This time, Jocelyn's dad is keeping an eye on us. He's a tall bald guy who wears his polo shirt tucked in, and his pants buckled up so high that I can see his socks.

He's the polar opposite. of Alex's mom, always yelling at us to get down from that tree or don't run so fast. The whole afternoon is sort of lame, and I can tell that Jocelyn's embarrassed. Alex's mom shows up at sunset, and he hops into her truck like he can't wait to be gone. My own parents are late. Jocelyn's dad keeps checking his watch. and scowling at me. He clearly has some place to be, but he doesn't want the guilt of leaving a child alone.

I tell him not to worry that there are plenty of people in the park, and I'm sure my own parents will show up any minute. With one last look at his watch, he grabs Jocelyn by the wrist and practically drags her to their minivan. Twilight now. And the sky has clouded over. There aren't many streetlights in the park, and the happy couples and dog walkers are all long gone.

I'm starting to get genuinely worried. My parents have been late before, but never like this. On the other side of the man-made lake at the center of the park, someone is setting off fireworks. The bright reds and greens and purples light up the sky. And I see that I'm not the only kid left in the park. There's a blonde boy about my age coming down the paved trail by the woods. Dancing.

It's like a waltz, except he's all alone. And if there's any music, I can't hear it over the noise of the fireworks. Something wrong with the smile on his. face. It almost looks in place. A younger boy is running after him, tugging at his sleeves, trying to get him to stop. When they reach the tree line, the blonde boy stops. The smaller kid, who looks like he's probably his brother, suddenly seems afraid. Cameron, he starts yelling. What's wrong with you? The kid called Cameron picks. up the smaller boy, throws him over his shoulder and starts dancing off with him, twirling away

into the woods. The smaller kid is screaming, but the fireworks drowned it out. I take one last look around for my parents. Their car is nowhere in sight, so I jogged down the hill. By the time I get there. The pair have already gone into the trees. I hesitate. I've never been so far into the forest that I couldn't see the playground on the hill, and especially not at night. Then I hear the smaller kids scream again. I push aside the bushes and go into the woods, shouting after him. It's dark. I can only see by the colorful experience. explosions of the fireworks. I catch a flash of Cameron's yellow hair or the smaller kids' pale legs sticking up in the air.

Then they're gone. I hear a sort of clicking noise, like a wooden box being latched shut. I'm suddenly afraid that this was all some kind of trap. For some reason I imagine the blonde boy creeping up behind me with an insane smile on his face. But it's quiet. Wherever the pair have gone, they're beyond my reach now. The fireworks have stopped. It's starting to rain.

From the park behind me, I can hear my parents frantically calling my name. I follow the sound of their voices out to the parking lot, where both of them throw their arms around me. Their car had broken down while they were shopping on the other side of town. It had taken them hours to get moving again. As they hug me and walk me back to the car, I look over my shoulder at the forest. The blonde boy Cameron comes out of the trees. He's still doing that weird. sick dance.

He moves up to the playground and uses his foot to draw that letter in the mulch right beside the first one. He waltzes off. I want to tell my parents, but he's already gone.

And the whole experience was just too strange. In the car, I start to sniffle. I can feel myself coming down with something. This time, I remembered what I had told Dr. Oberon, mostly. Jocelyn's kill-joy father, waiting around the park until after dark, and having a fever for the next couple days. The kids in the woods, though. That was new.

I continued listening. Whoever tell anyone else about what you saw? Yes, at July, at Alex's house. It's his birthday, in his basement, eating pizza and playing Sonic the Hedgehog on Alex's Dreamcast. Upstairs, the TV is on. And I can hear Alex's mom cracking open. beers for the adults. During a moment when the three of us are alone, I told them both about what happened in the park after they left. Like things I'm bullshitting them. Jocelyn isn't so sure.

They both want to meet at the park that Saturday and investigate the woods. Discussing the experience again is nerve-wracking, and my throat has gone dry. I go upstairs for some more mountain dew. As I'm on my way back, the football game on the adult's television is interrupted by an update on the search for the two missing children in our area. The newscaster is interviewing a middle-aged woman and her son.

The boy's little brother is missing. Cameron. The blonde boy I saw in the woods, some other kids have shown up, and I have to go home before I get a chance to tell Alec and Jocelyn what I just learned. Did you meet your friends at the park that Saturday? I don't think so. Not exactly. My parents were concerned about the disappearances. Better safe than sorry, they're saying. They're making me stay home.

I'm tearing up and getting red-faced. I slammed the door to my bedroom and try to call Alex's house, but it's too late. All I can do is look out the window at the power lines and tree tops, knowing that Alec and Jocelyn are out there. Solving the mystery without me. It's not fair. It was eerie, hearing my 20-year-old mouth replicate so perfectly the tone of voice I'd had as a child. On stairs, I can hear that my parents are having some friends over the nasty, fancy foods that adults eat when they have parties.

They've forgotten. all about me. The parents locked my bedroom door, but not the window. It's easy to climb out onto the roof above the kitchen and shimmy down the drain pipe. And the park can't be more than a few miles away. I know the way there. I think ours are whizzing by. A few miles is a lot further than I thought.

I've never gone so far, but... myself before and the sheer bigness of the world is suddenly overwhelming. I wonder if maybe my parents were right to worry about those missing kids. Upon reaching the park, I discover that they aren't the only ones. The playground is deserted. Ever since the news of the third disappearance hit, no one is letting their children out to play. Well, almost no one. There's one truck in the parking lot, and it belongs to Alec's mom.

She was probably supposed to be watching Alec and Jocelyn while they played. But she's sitting behind the wheel with her hangover shades on, and she's fast asleep. I figure that my friends must be in the woods already. It isn't hard to see where they've gone. Alex basketball and Jocelyn's skateboard are leaning up against a big shagbark hickory at the tree line. It looks to be the same place that I saw Cameron walk out of the woods on the 4th of July. There's even a faint path through the undergrowth. I follow it.

Jocelyn and I have been back here before. There's a half-collapse. tree house that Alec found last year up ahead and past that an enormous moldy tire it's the border between the part of the woods we know and whatever lies beyond the day is hotter than usual even for summer the sweat running down my face and back and I can hear the cicadas humming in the Trees. Keep following the path. Branches several times, and I take the biggest fork each time. I'm starting to think I'm going in circles when I finally hear voices up ahead. It's Alec and Jocelyn. They're stooping by the edge of a dark, scummy pond. Jocelyn is speculating that the missing kids might be dead.

and that maybe their bodies are hidden inside. Alec throws a stone. It sends ripples racing across the dark water. I decide to give them a scare. There's an old fence and some overgrown concrete blocks beside the pond. I use them to sneak up on my unsuspecting friends. Just as I'm about to jump out from behind them, I hear that clicking noise again, the one that sounded like a wooden box being unlatched.

It is very, very close to me. Like in Jocelyn hear it too. They look at each other and are about to start searching around the pond when the music starts. Music? Someone is playing a flute, A slow, haunting melody that makes my eyes glaze over. As the beat picks up, I notice that my legs are beginning to move. They're dancing on their own is affecting Alec and Jocelyn too.

Their faces have gone slack, just like a shopping mall mannequins. And Alec is starting to shuffle his feet. I cover my ears. Whatever the song is doing, it affects Jocelyn the least. She turns and tries to run, but Alec grabs her wrist, kicks and scratches. But something about the music is making him stronger than usual, able to push his body past its ordinary limits. But Jocelyn is fighting.

Then the others began to come out of the woods. The others? The other missing kids. They're all there. Cameron's little brother. A tall girl with braces who was the first one to go missing. Dancing. Grab Jocelyn and twirl off with her.

I can't see where they're going. Alec doesn't want to be participating in any of this, but he's a prisoner. in his own body. I follow him as he waltzes back out of the woods and up to the playground, where he uses his foot to carve another one of those letters in the mulch. Now, someone else is watching too. Behind me, I hear that clacking sound again, probably the flute being put back in its box. Now that the music has stopped, it feels like we're both. We're both waking up from a dream. Alec walks down the hill, rubbing his shoulder. He asks me what I'm

doing there. I don't know what to say. I can't remember. The lingering effects of the music caused everything that happened in the last several hours to slip into the deepest depths of my memory. Ask where Jocelyn is. I tell him that her first father probably picked her up early again. To both of us, that seems like a reasonable enough explanation. I go home, climb back up the drain pipe, and crawl into bed. From the sounds of the party downstairs, the adults never even suspected that I was gone. I sleep until the next morning.

Over 17 hours, I wake up. The supper my mother left for me has gone cold outside my door. When I wake up, I've completely forgotten about what happened in the woods. I wake up. I see that letter scrawled on a wall or spray painted on a sidewalk or dug into the mulch of a playground. Some part of me knows what it might mean. And the police never asked you about Jocelyn's disappearance? No, why would they?

Like was the only one who knew I was at the park that day. And his memories had also been wiped clean by that weird music. I'm sure the police spoke to him and his mom, but there was nothing he could tell. And you never saw the person playing the flute in the woods that day. You wouldn't recognize them, even if you saw them. again? No. I only heard the music.

I see. Well, that settles it. Then I'm going to start the process of waking you up now, Brady. When you open your eyes, you're going to forget about this entire conversation. And you will no longer be afraid of the letter X. That distorting noise began again. I realized that whatever it was, it was the key to Dr. Oberon's hypnosis technique. I listened until it finished.

At any time, I expected to hear Dr. Oberon saying, all done, announcing that the recording was coming to an end. But instead, I heard a different sound. The clack of a wooden box snapping shut. The police didn't want to listen to some mentally ill 20-somethings rant about his new psychologist. They didn't understand what the noise at the end of my recording might signify. Not being in education, employment, or training, however, I had all the time in the world. I was persistent. and in the end, they sent the token patrol to interview Dr. Oberon.

When they arrived, however, they discovered something strange. The famous hypnotist was not in his office, and apparently had not been for some time. The space wasn't even rented out in his name. It had been leased using the identity of a homeless man who had hung himself a few days earlier. As famous and well regarded as Dr. Oberon had apparently been, no one could remember attending university

or undergoing their hospital residency with him. His certifications, apparently, were fakes, and the man himself was gone. He took my phobia with him, but he left me with a different kind of, fear. I often wonder if I was better off being afraid without knowing why. What happened to Jocelyn and the other missing children? How many other towns, parks, schools, and playgrounds have had their own little row of

exes without anyone there to uncover their secret? Why does this man who called himself Dr. Oberon mark his crimes at all? Is it a ritual? Or just his calling card? I don't have any answers. Except the ones that come to me in my nightmares. I sometimes dream of a massive, barren room. It's windowless, maybe underground.

And it isn't quite clear where light is coming from. The room is full of dancing children. I recognize Jocelyn and Cameron's little brother, the girl with braces from the woods. They haven't aged. Haven't changed a bit. Apart from their eyes, their eyes are inky black in my dreams. They all turned to me, grinning from each. ear to ear inviting me to join in their dance.

Let's take a short break for our sponsors who help us keep our heads above water. For waves of ad-free horror content, join our sleepless universe by going to sleepless.com. Did you fall for any April Fool's Pranks last week? They're getting kind of lame, right? Like there were actually some companies out there pretending to be as good of a meal service as Home Chef. They're definitely fools because nothing is as good as Home Chef, the company that makes cooking simple, fresh food delivered,

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Come on, folks. Homechef.com slash no sleep. Must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert. Now let's plunge back into the deep. Waters of horror. Kids can do some crazy things. Crayon art on the walls, seeing if your phone can be flushed down the toilet,

letting strange things in through the bedroom window at night. And if that last one caught your attention, you'll want to hear this story, shared with us by author Beth Carpenter. You see, Little May wants to let in an insect outside her bedroom. That's sweet, right? Well, not so sweet for May's mall. Performing this tale are Ash Millman, Erica Sanderson, Jake Benson, and Andy Cresswell.

So when things are drawn to the light, you can always shut off the lights so they don't become beacons. The sound of clanking from a five-year-old's bedroom is an unmistakable portent of trouble, especially after midnight. I was half asleep and on my way to my own bed, but as I walked past my daughter's door, I heard the metallic clank, and worse, The giggle, and alarm shot my tired brain full of home-brewed espresso. I wheeled around and threw the door open. May was kneeling on her window sill, one foot still resting on top of the boxy old radiator, which she'd clearly used to climb up.

There was a keyed lock on the window, and her fat little fingers were busy turning the key I had left in it. Why had I imagined that it was high enough to be out of her reach? If she pushed her weight against the glass, she would pitch out head first. I could see it happening in my mind's eye. Every little cinematic detail exaggerated, rendered in graceful slow motion. I must have crossed that room in one bound. I grabbed her by the back of her pyjama shirt, hooked my other arm around her waist, and hauled her backwards.

What do you think you're doing? Sweetie. She gazed up at me with surprised, sleepy innocence. I'm letting him in. He wants to come in. He says it's too cold outside. May is five. Deeply worrying things tumble out of her mouth all the time, and they almost always match up to boring realities. Still, a chill did skitter down my spine at that announcement,

until I looked over at the window and had to laugh. There was a massive moth just outside, hammering shadowy wings into the glass. I guessed it was being drawn in by the little nightlight set up in one corner, which kept the darkness in May's room as an unthreatening sepia colour. Oh, sweetheart. For one thing, never try to open the window that way again. You know what could have happened?

With you upon the edge like that, you could have fallen right out and hurt yourself, okay? Secondly, moths don't belong inside. Our visitor is just confused by the light. He thinks it's nice in here, but actually he wouldn't like it at all, and he'd want to go right back out again. Okay.

That's right. Now then. I dropped her onto her bed and the springs eeked. No more nighttime adventures, okay? You belong in here and Mr. Moth belongs out there. And that's the way it's going to stay until morning. Go back to sleep. Her eyelashes were already fluttering down.

I gently smoothed the duvet up across her. The moth was still bumping at the window. He was very large and the sound he made was oddly loud and sharp, as if someone was wrapping their knuckles on the glass over and over. Give it up. I took the key out of the lock and dropped it into my pocket. You can't come in. I went on out of the room and listened for a moment at the door.

Sorry, I'm not loud. I smiled again and took myself to bed. No more strange sounds in the night, everything on the right side of the glass. The next morning, May drooped a little over her cornflakes, but she vacuumed them down just as fast as she normally did. She wanted to draw with their crayons after that, so I gave her a few pieces of paper and watched fondly as she scribbled all over.

over them. Once she'd used up all the space on one page, she'd hold it up to show me until I made the appropriate cooing noises, and then flip the sheet over and start on the back as well. Right then, she was working with the intensity she usually say for drawing pictures of Daddy. She liked to do that. Maybe because when she showed them to me, I always told her how proud of her he'd be. How much she would have loved her, how much she'd wanted to be with us. Watching her tongue peek out the corner of her mouth and her brow furrow, I got myself ready to repeat it all again. None of it was true. I'd believed it was when I told him I was pregnant and watched his face light up with joy. When we'd made plans together, our voices overlapping in enthusiasm so delighted with our future.

He'd put his hands on my belly, though I was nowhere close to showing, and told me we'd do this together every step of the way. Butterflies had danced inside me, but I hadn't felt nervous, only eager. Once she was born, though, things changed. I was so glad she didn't remember him. Deep down, guiltily, I was even glad he was dead. I was doing some washing up when she finished her masterpiece and called me over to look at it. I went back to the table, twisting the dish towel between my sudsy hands,

ready to tell her she was a prodigy of art. But I hesitated when I saw what she was holding up. It didn't seem to be a picture of her father at all. She always draws him in green because I told her that was his favourite colour and it's her favourite too. No, this was a different vaguely human figure

in blue. It was positioned against a boxy house with a five-year-old's grasp of positioning and perspective making it look as if it was floating outside the upstairs window. The proportions were off, of course, but that wasn't surprising. I had a few pictures she'd drawn of me and her father in my room and in almost all of them my arms came down below my feet

and his smile extended off his face. Who's that, sweetheart? Mr. Moth. He's blue because he's cold because he's outside. Oh. Where are his wings? He doesn't have any. He can get up high without them.

Oh, I'm pretty sure he did have wings when I saw him last night. Her face scrunched into a look of contemplation. Okay, Mommy. She picked up a black crayon and drew two large loops on her figure's back. Like this? I shook off my own ease as I responded. That's right. Very pretty, May. She beamed at me.

She had a vivid imagination, of course. That was all. That, or Mothman, was out of his usual jurisdiction. And honestly, I thought maybe the flying imaginary friend was less creepy than the fictional version of her father I kept present with us. The real hymn would have seethed with jealousy over such a replacement, and it would have liked to feel spiteful about getting to write the reality of him out of our lives, but instead it made me anxious, guilty.

But it made her happy. I sat her down in front of the telly for a while and opened up my laptop to go over some spreadsheets as I perched next to her on the sofa. Her favourite shows are lively and loud, but I've had a lot of practice at tuning them out, and I was pretty deeply absorbed in my work. I didn't even notice the quiet knocking coming from our front of the music. front door until May hopped up.

Someone's there. Someone's knocking. She always gets excited about people at the door. She loves delivery guys. Getting to give them tips is the ultimate delight for her. I hand her the notes and she holds her breath as she passes them on, imbueing the social ritual with all the gravitas of a druid performing a mystical ceremony. So she runs to the door whenever she hears knocking. I followed her as fast as I could, becoming more unsettled as I went. I wasn't expecting anybody today.

More than that, something was odd about the sound from the door. It was perfectly regular, almost mechanically so, and continuous. Most people banged a few times and then waited for an answer. Whoever was outside now kept on and on as I came up the hall. When I reached the door, I'd gently nudged my aside and put my eye to the peephole. The glass was grimeier than I remembered it being, so my view was dim and smudged. But I could just about make out a figure standing there. It was big, kind of hunched over.

It was still knocking. None of the neighbours had that shape. May, can you go back into the living room? I wasn't sure I wanted her to be standing by me when I confronted whoever was out there, even with the security chain holding the door half shut. Okay, mummy. I waited until she'd gone before turning the door handle,

feeling of final knock shudder through my hand as I did. The moment the door opened a crack, a whisper of a voice slipped through. The word sounded like they'd been breathed directly into my ear, ending with a dry sob. I flinched and let go of the handle, and the door swung until the chain jerked it back, giving me a clear view outside. No one was there. There was a single rows sitting on the front step, and that was all.

For a second, I stood still, frozen by surprise, before I started to scan up and down the street. No one. Maybe the visitor was hiding against the wall? I craned my neck. No one. Against my own better judgment, I undid the chain and pushed the door fully open. Nothing.

It didn't seem possible, but somehow the person who'd been knocking had just vanished. I swallowed. I was just about to close and lock everything again when May shoved past my hip and stooped to the front step with her hand outstretched. She must have gone into the living room and then immediately come right back,

the little rules lawyer. May, what? I reached for her wrist, but I was too slow to catch her. Look, mummy! She ducked my arm, taking a step inside, and then held up the rose. I stared at it. It was in full bloom, perfectly shaped, vividly red. Some kind of rust-coloured liquid had splashed over the petals and was dripping off the long stem,

over May's fingers and onto the mat just inside. The fluid soaked into the dark letters printed there, which spelled out, welcome. them. I tried not to flinch backwards. I wanted to swipe the rose away as violently as possible, but there were prickles sitting against May's tender skin. Instead, I was careful. I curled my left hand around her fist, keeping it steady, and with my right, I pinched the stem between thumb and forefinger. It's so pretty! Once I'd extracted it from her grip, I turned and threw it back outside. She let out a startled squeak of protest. The residue was on my fingers now too, thin and gritty. It smelled bad, like someone had mixed in blood with dirt and salt water and

too strong cologne. And it was warm. I wanted to claw it off me with my fingernails. I swung the door shut instead, put the chain back on it, locked it, and grabbed May's hand again. We need to go wash this off. She was looking up at me with baffled. sadness. She couldn't imagine rejecting flowers. She was five. She'd never been given flowers with an ulterior motive. Kindness hadn't been used as a weapon against her. I towed her into the bathroom and made sure she washed her hands as thoroughly as possible, ignoring her complaints. The smell lingered anyway, following me into every room even after I'd scrubbed under my nails. Silly mummy. May was following me around too, to make sure I noticed she was offended by my

ruthless rose disposal. Maybe she was right. It was my flower too. I had experience second-guessing myself. Had I imagined the weirder aspects of the incident? Maybe I hadn't really seen anyone through the peephole, just dark smudges and grime. The knocking had been something blowing into the door. The voice was just something carried on the wind, and the rose had been knocked off a neighbour's bush and blown through a puddle on the way to the front step. There. There. The The mystery neatly solved. Silly mummy. I was scared, though. I was alone with May, and it had been weird, and the combination of the rose with the figure I thought I'd seen and the whisper I was almost sure I'd heard would freak me out. There was no one I could call with stories of huge figments

wanting to come inside, figments who left slimy tokens on my doorstep and vanished afterwards. The police would laugh me off the phone. My mother would think I was losing it. She already thought I was prone to overreactions, that nothing was ever really as bad as I made it out to be. The nice lady next door would tell me every calming explanation I'd already given myself. What I had was my own strength, and that had been, historically, worthless. I spoke to May that evening before bedtime. Remember, no opening any windows, no answering any knocking. She looked gravely up at me for a moment.

She'd forgotten her sulk by then, but not the events which had caused it. He really wants to come in, Mummy. He even gave us a flower. She sounded so certain, and a chill went chasing down through my veins. I dropped my knees and grasped her shoulders. May, have you been talking to someone? Was he the one at your window? Did you see him? She furrowed her brow. Of course. You knew him. You said his name was Mr. Moth. When you were trying to let someone in, I had to consciously try to keep my hands from clenching. I didn't want to hurt her or to make her afraid.

That was the thing I wanted least in the world. Was it a man? He was a person. He said he was cold outside. I remembered her fingers twisting at the key to her window. Ice churned in my gut. Did you ever talk to him before that night? No.

Okay. I pulled her gently against my chest and wrapped my arms around her. How about you sleep in mummy's room tonight? She lit up at the thought. Yeah, come brush your teeth first. I did end up calling the police on the non-emergency number. I told them I thought a man had been trying to get into my house, in with my daughter. No, I couldn't describe him, but big.

I'd only glimpsed him. He'd been talking to my five-year-old through a window at night. No, I didn't think she was imagining it. They said they'd have an officer patrolling nearby. No. Her father died before she was a year old. My voice caught as I said it, the sharp edge of grief still audible, which was stupid, stupid, stupid, I'd hated him almost before the end. I bit my lip and shook my head and remembered. I'd told him to leave, slammed the door in his face and yelled out for him to never come back. He cried. He'd always been so convincing whenever he cried. It gushed out of him, a great cracking open. of vulnerability. No one could feel more than he did about the mistakes he made. So it was all right to let him back in then, wasn't it? He'd changed from the man he was an hour before, the one who'd held his own infant daughter in the air and shook her, his face unrecognisable with rage.

He cried that man away. And when it didn't work for once, when I'd clenched my jaw and refused to give ground, when I told him, if we bother you so much, just leave and don't come back. He'd sworn and threatened and pleaded and threatened again, crying through all of it. Each of those selves also lost in the flood as they failed to win me over. He'd banged hard on the door for maybe half an hour, screaming at me to open it, to make things all right again, that he loved us. Then he'd left. Then he'd died before he'd even finish marshalling his lawyers.

The cops didn't need to know about any of that. I tried not to think about it. Brand to see you, maybe casually? No, no one. I'd always been too afraid, I didn't say. They told me that an officer would be patrolling and to call again if anything else happened. I wasn't comforted much. I put May to bed. Some of my fear and anxiety must have gotten through to her because she didn't drop immediately off to sleep the way she usually would. She rolled and squirmed under the blankets next to me as I read her a bedtime story. Mr Bunny hopped through a whole series of milk-a-toast adventures before she started to drift. Usually, he barely made it through one. I hoped she'd be fully asleep by the time it got dark, and I needed to turn on a bedside lamp to continue reading on my phone. It was only about 8pm,

and I had a half-formed plan to force myself to stay awake all night, at vigil. It didn't stick. I must have passed out several hours before I typically did, my phone resting on my chest and my reading glasses still perched on the tip of my nose. May woke me up by smacking her palm down on my forehead a few times. I fought to blink awake. I need the toilet, mummy. With resignation, I rolled out of bed.

My phone slid into the crevasse between the mattress and the wall, and I was too busy making a grab for my glasses as they fell off my nose to try and catch it. Come on then. Our upstairs bathroom was right at the top of the staircase, so as I stood outside it, waiting for May to come back out, I was looking down the steps into the dark. I'd stopped noticing the lingering smell of the, foul liquid, but I realised then that it was starting to thicken around me again. I sniffed at my

fingers, trying to work out if it was coming from my hands, and then remembered that I had never cleaned up the splashes just inside the door on the mat. Could it be wafting up to me from there? I'd made sure all the windows were shut, so it surely wasn't coming in from outside. In the bathroom, May was enthusiastically washing her hands, humming to herself and splashing the water about. I had just opened my mouth to call to her to hurry up when I heard. the creak of the stairs. My shoulder blades bumped into the door behind me. I didn't even have time to tell myself that houses made strange noises all the time. The first flicker of denial had barely ignited before there was the groan of another footstep, then another ascending. Fast. With them came the

soft sound of weeping. I could see all the way downstairs and there was no one there, except I look closer. Puddles of dark liquid pooled on the bare wood of the bottom step. dripping from something invisible, the stink of blood, dirt, clone, burning in my nose. I kept a baseball bat propped against the wardrobe in my bedroom. May? Don't open the door. Do you hear? Mommy! Keep the door locked, okay? Okay.

A wet footprint formed two steps from the top of the stairs. I bolted for the bedroom, catching the door accidentally on my way past so that it slammed shut behind me. My desperate hands were clumsy, and I knocked the bat over with my first grab. This was a mistake, I thought as I scrambled it back. I should never have left May out there. What if she doesn't listen? What if she opens the door? What if he, it, whatever, breaks it down?

What if she lets him in? The sweat on my palm made the grip of the bat slick, but my fist was locked so tight around it that it didn't slide as I ran back to the door. Just as I reached for the handle, I heard May's voice. Mommy? I was so terrified by that point that her tone of mild concern seemed surreal. Can I come out?

No, stay where you are. But my voice was drowned out by the knocking which crashed against my bedroom door. Hand me in. Mommy! Now she was properly afraid, like me. Shit! I pushed my weight against the door to keep it closed.

It was shuddering from the strength of the knocks, but I noticed that the handle hadn't turned. Maybe the thing outside couldn't get in by itself. Maybe it needed some kind of opening. But I didn't feel like I had any control. The voice was begging, and at another time and another situation I might have been moved to pity. As it was, I was sickened with fear. My phone was still down the side of the bed, out of easy reach.

Tears were starting to blur my vision. I had no idea what to do. She sounded so scared. But not the writer kind of scared, not the kind of scared, not the kind in retreat, not the kind that curled up under the bed until the storm was over. She was frantic with fear. I knew my daughter, and I knew that when she felt like that, she'd run into traffic to get back to my side. She'd open the door, she'd try to make it down the corridor past it.

The knocking on my door stopped, those heavy, distinct footsteps leading away, leading back towards the bathroom, leading to where she'd be standing, her tiny hands curving around the doorknob, turning. No. The idea of my daughter getting hurt screamed over any hesitation I might have felt, and I threw my door open with the baseball bat swung up over my shoulder, ready to attack. I did see the figure this time, if only for a moment. It was huge, its back bent along the ceiling, facing away from me.

It turned the moment I stepped out, its face and hands both at eye level, and I got a blurred impression of long, reaching fingers and a blazing desperate eye, a halo of fluttering moths around its head. Then I swung the bat down. It didn't hit anything, and I staggered forwards through empty air, almost falling. The stink of dirt and blood made my head swim. But I realised almost at once that the bathroom door was, after all, still closed. May's voice was calling from behind it.

No! She was still safe for now. I had no time to wait. I ran forward, desperately looking for the hulking outline of the invader. Where was it? What was it? Something heavy slammed into my left side, throwing me against the wall and pinning me there. I jerked the bat around in front of me reflexively and felt a slight resistance, as though I just dragged it through water.

The pressure on my side disappeared, and I stumbled another few steps closer to the bathroom before I saw my attacker flicker back into view at the corner of my eye. This time something inside me crunched, as I was rammed hard onto the ground on my back and vomit burned at my throat. I couldn't see anything through my watering eyes, but I could feel the weight of the thing pressing down on my chest. Its fingers were scrabbling at my mouth, scraping at my clenched teeth. Head me in.

Now the voice was triumphant. Something wet was splattering into my face, but I couldn't smell it, Not while I was choking on vomit and the weight on top of me was crushing my lungs. I fought instinctively to keep my teeth clamped together, tossing my head from side to side, trying to dislodge the fingers that were hooked between my lips. They curled tighter. I could feel points of sharpness pressing against my gums. A thousand miles away.

My daughter was crying. I couldn't keep it up. The burning in my throat finally burst into a cough and a gasp, and then I was twisting so that I could wreck. onto the carpet. The fingers clawed deeper into my mouth the second it opened fully. For a blurred second of pain and panic, I felt a claw drag against the back of my throat. And then I bit down as hard as I could. There was a crunch of something solid and a flood of bitter, rancid liquid, and the creature howled. The note of triumph in its voice hadn't entirely faded, but I could hear agony in it

too. And then the hand was yanked back out of my bite range, and the hall was full of sight. silence again. I blinked the blur out of my eyes. I could feel the liquid as it slid down my esophagus, thin and oily and revolting, with a sting of salt. But I was too busy sucking air back in to worry about it much. The thing was gone. I heard the creak of the bathroom door hinges and felt so hollowed out that I could barely even summon any new fear when May came over to me. She dropped to her knees and threw her arms around my neck. It hurt, but I got her. gathered her in close. She was whispering over and over again. Go away, go away, go away, go away.

Maybe that fervent whisper worked. The thing that wanted so badly to be inside with us didn't reappear that night. It, he hasn't come back yet. Neither of us feel safe, though. I think about the rose that May bought inside and the way it dripped Icour onto the welcome mat. I wonder if that let him into the house. Then I think about the flow of his blood down my throat. I wonder if that let him in deeper still. I've been dreaming of his voice, no longer desolate but laughing, still saying, let me in. Every time I jerk awake, something twists in my belly, like a hand scratching into the meat inside me,

like moths replacing the proverbial butterflies, fluttering towards the light. Every time I look at May, their wings start to beat, and I can fill my face twisting into something unrecognizable. Something angry, avaricious, pleading. I wonder how much deeper you can go. As our stories sink beneath the waves, we claw our way back onto dry land. Join us again next time when we plunge into the chilling depths where water hides its darkest secrets. The No Sleep podcast is presented by Creative Reason Media. The musical scores are composed by Brandon Boone. Our production team is Phil Michalski, Jeff Clement, Jesse Cornett, and Claudius Moore.

Our editorial team is Jessica McAvoy, Ashley McAnally, Olly A. White, and Kristen Samito. I'm your host and executive producer, David Cummings. To discover how you can get even more sleepless horror stories from us, just visit sleepless.com to learn about the sleepless universe. Add free extended episodes each week and lots of bonus content for the dark hours, all for one low monthly price. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for taking the plunge into our dark. Waters.

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