The NoSleep Podcast - S24 Ep4: NoSleep Podcast S24E04

Episode Date: February 22, 2026

It's Episode 04 of Season 24. Enter the dark waters of the Cape Fear River as we present tales that will consume your minds."My Wife Keeps Feeding the Thing that Comes at Night" by Marcus Whalbring (Story starts around 00:03:30)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by Jeff ClementCast: Narrator - Peter Lewis, Joan - Sarah Ruth Thomas"Residue" by Simon Bleaken (Story starts around 00:25:50)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator - Nikolle Doolin, Boy - Danielle McRae, Nick - Matthew Bradford, Steve - Jesse Cornett, Tom - Kyle Akers"Bring Your Slaughter to Work Day" by Abby Vail (Story starts around 01:01:10)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by Phil MichalskiCast: Barnaby - Graham Rowat, Teller - Wafiyyah White, Liza - Sarah Ruth Thomas, Claire - Nichole Goodnight, Susan - Danielle McRae, Peter - Jeff Clement, Boy - Kyle Akers, Johnathan - Dan Zappulla"The Next Stage" by Beth Carpenter (Story starts around 01:13:25)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by Claudius MooreCast: Jane - Erin Lillis, Daniel - Dan Zappulla, Mr. Ashe - Atticus Jackson, Mr. Pomp - Atticus Jackson, Mark - Jeff Clement"Fish Hook" by Rye Clarke (Story starts around 01:36:15)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by Jesse CornettCast: Mike - Mike DelGaudio, Phil - Jesse Cornett, Danny - Matthew BradfordThis episode is sponsored by:Quince - Get cozy in Quince's high-quality wardrobe essentials highlighted by quality, sustainability, and affordability. Go to Quince.com/nosleep to get free shipping and a 365-day return period.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!Click here to learn more about the anthology novel, "Hospital of Haunts"Click here to learn more about Abby VailExecutive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon Boone"Fish Hook" illustration courtesy of JörnThe 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, 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. Have you ever considered the word consume? It recently dawned on me that it's a word not often used in a positive sense.

We get consumed by something, which means we're so fully focused on it at the expense. sense of other things. In the old timey days, the disease of tuberculosis was called consumption because it consumed your body as you withered away into death. We acknowledge that our consumer society, the ongoing desire to buy things, to consume products, is doing a lot of damage to our culture, our environment, and our financial well-being. Anywhere we look, the act of consuming things, or being consumed, is something that rarely has a positive outcome. Perhaps that's why the concept of consumption is so well suited to horror.

We know of stories where a person is consumed by some sort of beast, like a great white shark chomping someone to death with a few quick bites. There are ghosts and spirits which seek to consume your energy, your life force from you, so they can gain more malevolent power. There are serial killers who are consumed with killing to the point where they not only can't stop their heinous acts, but they in turn are empowered to kill more and more due to their all-consuming evil desires.

On this episode, we have stories for you, which we hope will consume your attention and make you good consumers of horror. Because in them, you'll hear about people and things that are striving to consume all they can. So settle in and fill your mind with this all-consuming horror. Now it's time to plunge into the horror of our sleepless tales. In our first tale, we meet a man and his wife, Joan.

The man assumes Joan is consumed by anger, considering he confessed to having an affair. But in this tale, shared with us by author Marcus Walbring, Joan seems to be preoccupied with other things, like making sure the leftovers don't go to waste. Performing this tale are Peter Lewis and Sarah Thomas. So let's hear the man explain why he tells us, my wife keeps feeding the thing that comes at night. It started a few weeks ago.

One night, my wife, Joan, and I had just finished dinner when suddenly she pointed at the scraps on my plate. Are you all finished with that? I shrugged. I guess so, thanks. But she grabbed my plate, and instead of taking it to the sink, as she would have normally done, she turned toward the back door and walked out into the night sounds of crickets and windy trees. On the back stoop, she set both of our scrap-covered plates on the bottom step.

I wouldn't do that. You're going to attract possums and raccoons or something. I don't think we have anything to worry about. like there was some kind of veiled threat behind the words. But I didn't think much of it. I was just happy she was talking to me at all. It was big of her, I thought. I'd recently told her about a woman at work. When I told Joan that I'd been with her only once,

which wasn't necessarily true per se, she didn't say much. She just kind of stared straight ahead, fiddling with the napkin she'd had in her hand. Look, I'm not proud of it. Needless to say, I'm not husband of the year. I admit that, and I mean, I'd be lying if I said it was the first time. As far as Joan knew, it was. But there's been a rift between her and me for a long time.

The affairs started around year five of our marriage, which was when Joan suddenly decided she wanted to have kids. But she knew from the start that that's not what I wanted. I don't know, kids are just complicated, I guess. Complicated and messy, not to mention time-consuming. See, I'd had a screwed-up childhood. I didn't have the best parents. With dad, you never knew what mood you were going to get,

though usually it was the bad one, the back of the hand, you know, sting of the belt, one. And with mom, she just didn't care. Moms are supposed to instinctively know where you are, so I've been told. But it seemed like the only thing she could ever locate with assured accuracy was her most recent bottle of vodka. To put it mildly, I knew I wasn't equipped to be a father. I barely knew how to be a husband. But suddenly it was all Joan talked about day and night.

Can we just try, you know, just for a month or so? See what happens? I had to put my foot down then. Tell her there was no way we were going to have kids. She cried herself to sleep that night. And the next day a dark cloud hung over. I wish I could say I felt bad, but I wasn't telling her. anything she didn't already know, right? She'd signed up for a marriage, San's kids. As far as I was

concerned, she was the one moving the goal line, or however you want to put it. What I mean is, when it comes to marriage, you should get what you pay for, and Joan was trying to change the terms of the contract. After that, every time we started to get intimate, she'd give me this hopeful look, and then I'd reach into my drawer. for a condom, her eyes would sink. I got so tired of that look and make you feel. And when you feel empty, you know, you try to find ways to fill the void. That's when the affairs started.

I'm not going to make excuses, but I will say I just didn't know what to do with Joan anymore. I guess maybe I missed the old days. We met at a furniture store, of all places. I had just moved into a new place, and I needed pillows, downy pillows. I'd grown up with those, and that's what I was used to. I was walking out with my arms full, and the pillows snagged on the door, ripping them open, covering me in feathers. Behind me, I heard someone just dying of laughter.

I turned around, and there was Joan tears in her eyes from laughing so hard. Very funny. There was so much possibility in her eyes back then. They made the whole world brighter. I took her out to dinner that night. We laughed the whole evening. We liked the same music, the same movies. At the end of the evening, I walked her to her apartment door and kissed her good night.

She walked through the door into her living room and then stopped, turned around, and waved me in. I don't know where she got the little part of that. You know, she hadn't seen me below the waist yet, so it wasn't, whatever the case. I didn't mind the nickname, and from that day forward, she called me a little bird. But things didn't stay that way. Things rarely do, I've found. Especially people. When people spend a long time together, they can't help changing each other, like some kind of chemical reaction.

But back to that first night a few weeks ago, as we were getting ready for bed, I asked Joan if she'd brought those plates in from the back stoop. I'll get them in the morning. She was lotioning her face. Don't worry about it. It was hot, so we slept with the windows open. I woke in the middle of the night because I'd heard something outside. From what I could tell, it had heavy footsteps that scratched the pavement with

large claws. I could hear it Brunsaw that wouldn't start. It wasn't a bear. We don't have bears around here. And this, this sounded larger, stranger. Also, bears, they don't laugh. Honest to God, when that thing scraped its heavy body up to the plates, it let out a low, gravelly laugh that made my spine. shiver. I shot up in bed. What the hell is that, Joan? She shushed me and told me to go back to bed, but I got up anyway and I ran down to the kitchen, almost breaking my shin on one of the chairs I was running so fast. But by the time I peeked out the back window, the thing was already gone, and the plate, my whole body felt so weak. My eyes hurt. I felt cold. Somehow I managed to roll myself off the mattress, stand up, and saunter downstairs to find Joan sitting at the table.

She looked probably the happiest I'd seen her in years. Good morning. How'd you sleep, honey? Honey? She never used that word. Slept. I slept okay, I think, but I don't know. I don't feel right. I can barely. move. Probably caught that flu that's been going around. Why don't you call into work and go back to bed? Maybe you'll be better by tomorrow. Flu in the summer. It was possible, but not likely. Besides, I barely ever got sick. I figured she was right, though. I crawled back into bed and slept the rest of the day. Joan shook me awake that evening. Do you want some dinner? I don't know. I don't

No, I don't have much of an appetite. Maybe I could come down and try to eat a bit. Spaghetti, my favorite. And Joan knows just how to make it. She sautees mushrooms in garlic and puts them in the sauce. My stomach growled at first, but I could only choke down a few bites. Suddenly I felt nauseated. I told her I was sorry, but I didn't think I could finish.

That's no problem. She was still in her sprightly mood. She picked up my plate and walked once again to the back stoop and set it down on the bottom step, and after having a few glasses of water and some vitamins. Before bed, I took my temperature and was shocked to find it was normal. 98.2. Only this time there was this loud, leathery, flapping noise

and a loud thud before. I heard the thing clamoring up the steps, breathing like an engine. It chuckled to itself again as it climbed the porch, scraping its claws across the pavement. I wanted to get up and try to catch it this time, but I was just too weak. Suddenly, I heard something else. A familiar creaking sound. The back door opening. I didn't get out of bed at all the next day.

Just moving a little made a sharp, unbearable. pain shoot through my arms and legs. That evening, Joan asked if I wanted some dinner. She'd made meatloaf. I said I just wanted a glass of juice, maybe, which she brought me. I'll save your plate. I thanked her, forgetting that, of course, you know, she didn't mean she'd save it from me. I got worse. For a while, I could manage to maybe get out of bed once or twice to use the bathroom Every night Joan would set the portions of my dinner I didn't eat on the back stoop. At first, I thought maybe Joan had been poisoning me,

but that didn't make sense because I wasn't eating anything. All I can conclude is that it has something to do with that thing. It's like the more she feeds it the dinner intended for me, the more it drains me of life. The last time I was able to get out of bed, I looked at myself in the mirror, and I nearly screamed, a skeleton. My face and eyes were sunken in, or deep shadows formed. I lifted my shirt and looked at my ribs that were sticking out like bars in a cage. Or life has been for the past few weeks.

Mostly stare at the ceiling when I'm awake. and I trace the crap for some kind of answer. But even doing that makes me so exhausted I eventually pass out. I wake up again in them not because I hear the thing outside this time. It's because I've been pulled out of bed. On to the floor, someone in the shadows has me by the ankles and starts to pull me. It's Joan. I'm so light now.

She barely struggles to drag me all the way downstairs. Scream, dies, and comes out as a low, pathetic, Garp. Joan stops dropping my ankles. She leans into my face, her once bright eyes that could dissolve all the darkness in the world, or suddenly, I keep thinking she's not Joan anymore, but whoever she is, whatever she is. I'm the one who changed her, but she is now. What's that, darling? Did you need something?

I move my lips into some kind of configuration, so they can produce a single word. I push out just enough air through my vocal call. Please what? You want me to call the police, darling? Is that it? You want someone to come save you? But I don't think so.

You see, the police already came because, I guess people at your work hadn't heard from you, and they were worried. But I told them you'd skip town, that we'd grown apart, and you told me you didn't want to be married anymore. I guess the second half of that is true, though, right? She's about to grab my ankles again, but she stops and turns around to face me once more. Oh, you know what, though? You know who I think you should call?

She gets in my face again. Eyes are like dark, volcanic glass, like something from the depths of the planet. Maybe you should call Claire. She nearly falling so hard, drags me through the kitchen. I don't know where she's taking me. But she opens the back door and pulls me down the stupry step. She takes a long, content breath. as she leaves me on the porch.

Come on. Dinner's ready. And then I see it. Dropping out of the darkness. Its wings flapping like tents made of flesh. It lands in the yard in front of me, still hidden by the shadows. When it finally steps into the glow of the porch light, I make a small, trembling scream in my throat.

throat. It's almost nine feet tall. It's weak, if you want to call it that, and its wings are wrapped in a pale, almost yellow skin. Its eyes are as black as the night from which it came. It laughs again when it finds me lying here. I hear Joan call from behind me. That's it, little bird. Not a lot of muscle left on him, but there's plenty of old. organ meat inside. It just might be a little cold. Dance over me. Inside, there are teeth the size of kitchen knives. They tear me open a pillow. I can't move, but I feel everything. It's like someone has lit my body on fire. I weep. I try to cry out, but the last of my strength is gone.

It starts to... It gobbles up everything in my abdomen. It bites off one of my legs and swallows it. Then it, the other. Soon, there will be nothing left. Until then, all I can feel is the pain and the absence to be me.

I don't know how, but through all of this. My heart is still beating. It sits in the cold cage of my protruding ribs like a starved bird that though it's nearly dead on singing. When we think of old abandoned hospitals, we find them creepy and horrifying because of the pain, the suffering, and the death experience therein. The entire building can feel consumed by dark energy.

And in this tale, shared with us by author Simon Bleakin, a tale, I might add, featured in the Hospital of Haunts Anthology. Check the show notes for more details. We learn about a particular hospital and how it may be abandoned, but it's certainly not barren. Performing this tale are Nicole Doolin, Danielle McCrae, Matthew Bradford, Jesse Cornett, and Kyle Akers.

So be forewarned about entering those dark halls. There are remains inside, and it feels like residue. In the last dwindling decades of its active operational life, Lichhurst Hospital, a place that had seen more than its fair share of births over its long and troubled history, gave one final and unexpected existence to the world. Although constructed as a sanctuary of healing, scandals and tragedy had clustered around Lichhurst since its founding in 1840s. 44, most who came through its doors felt a shiver, as if aware on some deeply subconscious

level that something was terribly wrong with the place, even if they couldn't say why. All hospitals were haunted, of course, being transitional portals where souls entered and left the world each day, and where grief and trauma, joy and hope were focused within a single structure like nowhere else. But still, few hospitals felt like Lich. The scent of death lingered in every breath taken by the living, and visitors and patients alike reported feeling watched constantly. Voices could be heard drifting faintly through the vents from within empty rooms, or down the long, gloomy stairwells. Locked doors had a frequent habit of swinging open. People dressed in clothing styles decades out of date were frequently

seen getting into elevators, only to never exit on any of the floors. Objects and equipment rarely remained where they had been left, sometimes even disappearing entirely, and hollow echoes of disembodied souls whispered along the dark hallways each night, or were glimpsed as curious shadow figures caught by the flicker of the lights as they flitted through the wards. The hospital had been an abnormal thing from its beginning. Set out in a basic cross-shaped floor plan, it should have been easy to navigate, but somehow, once inside those doors, everything seemed to shift and warp, becoming a confusing warren of rooms and hallways,

as if the internal structure existed in open defiance of any outward plan. It soon acquired a sinister reputation among those living nearby. But few could have suspected what lay within the mile. of tunnels, there ran like a dense warren beneath it all. In that gloomy maze, far from the bright lights and sterile rooms where the miracle of birth and the release of death occurred so often another secret miracle had taken place, albeit a darkly twisted one. It was a newborn of sorts, not actually a life, nor created in the darkness of the womb, but something conscious that was born out of the shadows beneath the ground. It was the only thing the hospital had truly given to

the world. It began as a residue, gathering for decades down in the darkness. There had been no midwife to oversee the arrival of this new entity. Its soul was still born. It had floated aimlessly for decades, not a physical thing, but a festering accumulation of dark emotion, lost and confused. rats and roaches scuttling in terror as it traveled to tunnels. It had no former life to recall, nor any true understanding of the feelings and thoughts flowing through it. The lessons and experiences of childhood, and those learned through interactions with others,

were utterly alien to this entity. It operated solely on instinct. It gathered and rested in the cracks between the bricks, lurked behind the boards, and coiled greasily about the cables that riddled its hidden domain, though it spent most of its time around the old death shoot that had once ferried bodies down to the herses in times gone by. It took the energy it needed from its environment,

absorbing everything that came close to it, even pulling the heat from the air and drawing power from the cables and emergency lights, often burning them out. It didn't grow, not exactly, but it used the energy to become strong, and to manipulate the world around it in lieu of a physical body. Eventually, almost imperceptibly, it became aware of itself,

consciousness awakening like a smoldering ember, gradually being stoked into a flame. It spoke with the wheezing cough of the tuberculosis victim and chuckled with the wild-thrody gurgle of a restrained lunatic. It stretched out, reaching through the tiny, spaces and forgotten gaps of the tunnels. Brooding in shadow, it began to think and then finally to hunger for more. Here it had gathered, stitched and sutured into itself, all the broken and diseased fragments

of spiritual energy filtering down into this neglected recess deep below the hospital. Like some Frankenstein's monster, cobbled together from the energies of dozens of different beings, it had slowly formed an amalgamated whole, not a true gestalt. It had only one consciousness, and like an infant, it had taken time to grow, learn, and absorb knowledge of the world and its place within it. Gradually, as it explored its subterranean domain, it learned to better interact with the physical environment around it, discovering how to move and collect objects, drawing them around itself like armor. Within months, it had created. crafted a crude physical shell to hide within,

a nightmare conglomeration scraped together from the discarded pieces it encountered. As with any infant, its first steps were slow, clumsy, and faltering. But it soon learned to master this new form and reveled in it. Its hypodermic fingers scratched the walls as it patrolled, and its mouth bristled with discarded scalpel blade teeth. It lumbered on constructs of old crutches, broken wheelchairs, and twisted fragments of rusting beds. It could abandon this artificial body at will if it needed to be quick or silent,

or wanted to hide, but it liked the feel and weight of the metal limbs as they scraped and clanked and dragged. It also used them to crush the rats that weren't fast enough. It didn't eat them, of course. It felt no physical hunger. That impulse belonged to the realm of the living, but it understood the need for energy. So instead, it absorbed something from the rats, some sort of life essence that gave it renewed vitality. It was different from the power it stole from the lights and the cables.

It was delicious and far more satisfying. The rats soon grew wise and became cautious, but it was patient. It had learned to wait, to listen. It knew all of the tunnels in its network. every corner in alcove, every crevice and hiding space, but it never left this area for the strange, clean lights above. Its empire ended at the long, narrow staircases that stretched up toward an alien world of muffled sounds and constant activity.

That was unknown territory and filled with uncertain dangers. Down here, hidden alone in the dark, or wrapped in its armor of discarded junk, it was safe. or so it thought until a stranger entered its world. It had been the pale spirit of a small boy, lost and lonely, dressed in a hospital gown of a style from several decades past. In one hand the boy clutched a yellow ball. His other arm was gone, lost to injury and amputation.

This ghostly child had just wandered quietly into the tunnels one evening, as if exploring. The echoing patter of his bare feet announcing his presence seconds before his willowy frame turned the corner near the top of the death shoot. It had screamed at the sight of him, recoiled and startled terror from this tiny specter, shedding its accumulated armor across the tunnel floor

like leaves in a fall breeze as it fled down the hallway in panic. Hello? The boy had followed. his hollow eyes filled with curiosity. He found it curled in the darkness trying to hide. Do you live down here? Don't be scared. I won't hurt you.

It had quivered, curling itself up tighter into a dense pool of shadow. My name's Tom. The boy sat next to it, watching with hopeful interest. I got so bored up there. I've been waiting for ages. for someone to talk to. I've been here so long, but nobody ever talks to me.

Slowly it began to relax, to listen and uncoil. The darkness spread itself out a little more. Do you want to be my friend? Nobody upstairs does. Well, none of the good ones, I mean. Some of them are scary and bad. I stay away from them.

The boys' end up. was weak and shimmered like sunlight through the water, smelling of residual life, an echo of existence. Can you talk? It extended a slender black arm, spread inky talons wide and cocked its head, appraising this curious being that was smiling so innocently at it. Do you have a name?

It wondered how this one would taste. It pounced, drawing the terrified, and screaming child into itself, absorbing the boy's energy just as it fed on the rats and the power cables. But if it had hoped for some marvelous new source of sustenance, it was sorely disappointed. The boy's energy was weak,

as insubstantial as the child itself had been, an echo of life rather than something that held any vitality. It let the rest of the essence dissipate into the environment, unsatisfied, and went back to drawing on the energy. from the rats and cables. It retained one valuable thing from the encounter, though. It took the boy's name and kept it for itself.

It practiced saying it over and over for months, a rasping wheeze in the darkness. Over the following decades, several more spirits found their way down into the tunnels. Tom had stalked and hunted them, observing them with interest before drawing them in, too, hoping they would provide better nourishment than the boy had. But again, it felt hollow and unsatisfied by the weak residual energy they provided,

and vowed to leave any other spirits well alone in future. Even so, there were many voices crowding inside it now, but Tom learned to strangle them into silence, to shape and funnel the chaos of its creation into a single thought, a single mind crafted from half-remembered impulses and shards of stolen memory. Tom had grown so much over the human, years and had expanded through the darkness of the tunnels. But that wasn't enough to satiate it.

It always wanted more. It lay in the dark listening to the noises from the world above, feeling the life and death energies that rippled through the hospital, some ebbing, some growing, and it wondered what was up there, though it was too afraid to explore. From time to time, different invaders entered its realm. These were physical creatures, clad in hard hats and dirty clothing.

They smelled of sweat and life and substance. Tom came to learn these were people, sent down from the unknown above to check on the pipes and wiring. For a long time, Tom hid whenever these strangers appeared, studying them from the cracks and nooks. But just as with the dead child, so many years earlier, it gradually grew bolder and curious about these fleshy beings. It began to wonder what these new entities would taste like.

They seemed far more vibrant than the specters infesting the hospital. Closer in nature to the rats on which it fed as often as it could, only these creatures were far larger. Curiosity finally beating its fear, Tom decided the next time these humans entered the tunnels, it would find out. That day came several weeks later. It's a real maze down here.

The voice echoed through the darkness, followed by the sweeping beam of a flashlight in the sound of approaching footfalls. And watch your step, Nick. Not all these lights work. Intrigued by the new voices in its domain, Tom stirred and moved closer, readying claws of inky blackness lest it need to defend itself. It thought about dawning its armor, but decided stealth was better than forced to assess these new arrivals. Thanks for the warning, Steve. This would be a hell of a place to get lost in. Always carry spare batteries or a backup flashlight.

That's my motto. Nick swallowed nervously as he shown his beam down the seemingly endless stretches of tunnel. Jeez, yeah. Can you imagine being down here in the dark? Don't even joke about that. These tunnels go quite a ways. Nick tapped a dead light bulb attached to the wall. Isn't this something we see?

should be fixing. I mean, isn't it dangerous having so many of these out? With our budget, you're kidding, right? Look, we replace them as often as we can. Damn things just keep burning out. There's a limit to what we can spend on these non-essential areas. Seems pretty essential right now. Hey, don't let this place get to you. Steve swept his flashlight across the old walls. Oh, sure, it's creepy, but... That's all. I've never once seen anything odd down here. Well, that's more than I can save with a hospital. What do you mean?

Steve stared at Nick in surprise. You don't know Lynchhurst's reputation? What reputation? I forgot. You're new in town. Well, let's just say that stuff goes on up there. You wouldn't believe. Like what? Steve shrugged, feigning nonchalance. but kept a careful eye on his colleague to gauge the reaction to his words. Oh, you know, strange noises and stuff moving around by itself. You name it. There's some really messed up stories connected to this place.

Some odd deaths, too. Seriously? Give it a few months. You'll have plenty of stories of your own. Everyone does. Yeah, but have you ever actually seen a ghost? Tell you what. You free later?

We'll grab a beer after work and talk then, but not down here, okay? Why? Do you think someone's listening? No. Jeez. And at least I hope not. Look, it's bad enough having to come down here in the first place. I don't want us getting spooked and distracted,

because then I have to come back again to fix your mistakes. And I hate coming down here. I'm already spooked. How can you not be? I mean, look at this place. Don't go doing a half-ass job. I'll send you down here all the time if you do. Tom approached the men, invisible in the gloom, needle fingers clicking in anticipation, and a thin wheeze echoing from its throat. Nick tensed and glanced around.

Did you hear that? Ah, see, that's what I'm talking about. Don't let your imagination get the better of you, kid. We've still got a half dozen cables. to check and I want to be done by five. Yeah, but I... Tell you what. You go take the East Tunnel and I'll check south.

You better be kidding me. You want to get this done faster? We need to find the faults quickly. Yeah, but splitting up is always a bad idea. I knew I shouldn't have told you about the ghost stories. Go on. You'll be fine. There's never been anything down here.

You sure? I swear, I just... It's probably just rats. We get them down here. But don't worry. They're more scared of you. Just watch yourself, okay? The lights are real bad down here. Wait, are you giving me the short straw? Steve nodded. You're the newbie. It's the rules. Nick moved off down the tunnel, muttering under his breath. The flashlight beam sweeping quickly left to right as he went. The light played across the walls and danced through the forests of old pipes, sometimes plunging into the hearts of abandoned storerooms and forgotten spaces,

filled with sinister hulks of broken equipment and furniture. Thick, black-gray veils of ancient cobwebs hung from the wires overhead, tickling his hair as he passed. The floor beneath his feet was heavy with grime that had accumulated over the ears. In places, broken glass crunched. underfoot, and there was a foul rankness to the stale air. I can't believe they can't even get the fucking lights working. He turned off down a side passage and passed a thick cluster of dusty pipes that loomed

out of the blackness. Tom followed him curiously, noting the way the man's smell grew stronger. He was perspiring, nervous. His breathing was faster too. Tom waited until the man had gone far enough down the tunnel to be suitably separated from his colleague before drawing closer. The lights here were broken. The shadows deep enough to conceal its inky manifestation. It was interested to see how this one would behave, how it might react. In places, parts of the walls had crumbled slightly, and it seized a small fragment of stone and threw it along the passageway.

The man tensed, the flashlight snapping around as the debris skittered past his foot. Steve? His voice sounded choked as he stared down the empty tunnel. Are that you messing around? The sweat stench grew stronger. Tom smiled. It enjoyed toying with the rats. They tasted better when they were scared and gave off more energy, too.

It hoped this human would be the same. Playfully, it edged closer and whispered its name in a drawn-out guttural wheeze. Steve, I swear to God if that's you. The man glanced around anxiously, light flicking across walls the floor, momentarily passing over a darker shadow that seemed to be clinging to the pipes, a shadow that the light didn't banish. The flashlight beam snapped back on the spot, but the shadow had already moved, not ready to give the game away just yet.

No, no, there's just those stupid ghost stories. Get a great, there's nothing here. Tom held back, watching as the man carried on, his pace a little faster, the flashlight being moving quicker too, as if he were trying to light every part of the corridor simultaneously. Then Tom rushed past him, going deeper into the tunnels. It was time to dawn the armor. The first Nick knew of this was a heavy clanging from up ahead,

as if a dozen metal bed frames were being beaten against the ground, like oversized drumsticks. It was a sound that drew rapidly closer and sent a cold shudder of alarm through him. Steve? He took an unsteady step backward, tripped over a pile of old bricks, and landed heavily on his backside,

eyes wide and a thin, whimpering wail escaping his lips. His flashlight rattled as it rolled on the stone floor, the light glinting on something metallic for a second before darkness took it again, leaving him with the impression that there was some kind of twisted metal skeleton looming in the blackness ahead. Steve?

Tom lurched out of the darkness and into the beam of the flashlight, clanking clumsily forward, needles and blades glinting as they swept through the air, excitement and hunger for living energy, stripping away decades of careful control. Nick sprang to his feet and tried to bolt down the hallway. The metal shape lashed out with its arm and swept his legs from under him.

Nick landed heavily, knees and nose cracking against the stone floor. As the shape lumbered near, Nick forced himself upward with a warbling shriek. His lower face a mask of blood. He staggered down the passage, confused and shocked, plunging into half-darkness where lights flickered and fizzed. The impossible conglomeration of broken parts crashed after him, gaining speed as it went. Its heavy bedposts for it stuck the flashlight as it gave chase, sending its spinning in a circular motion, turning the stretch of hallway into a wild dance of light and shadow,

and further enhancing the disorienting nightmare quality of the moment. This was better than hunting rats, Tom decided. It channeled the effort with which it maintained its physical armor into increasing its speed, causing parts of its shell of rusting debris to fall away as it bore down upon the fleeing man, scattering twisted pieces of metal, glass, and equipment behind it in a clattering riot of sound.

Nick stumbled through the darkness, aiming for the distant glow of lights up ahead that still worked. His lungs burned and his broken nose was a white-hot mass of pain, but he barely felt any of it in the adrenaline-fueled race for survival. The clanging of the monstrosity behind him rang in his ears above the frantic pounding of his own pulse. But he didn't dare look back. He didn't even waste time screaming,

pushing every ounce of energy into moving as fast as possible. He knew the stairs were nearby, but where? There were no discernible landmarks to guide him, and he could only guess at how many branching tunnels he'd blundered past already. He turned to the left and found himself emerging into a well-lit section of tunnel, hesitating for a moment at an intersection.

It took far longer than it should have to spot the sign on the wall, ancient and dirty, but just still legible. The nearest stairs were off to the right. He could still hear the entity pursuing him, a hellish scraping and clattering, the pained squeal of metal grinding against metal and dragging against stone. It seemed so loud in the enclosed space. Nick wondered why the entire hospital hadn't come pouring down here to see what all the noise was. but then he remembered how thick the tunnel walls were and how deep. He had never felt so isolated before. Up ahead a beam of light flashed down the hallway.

Steve came hurrying into view, red-faced and out of breath. Nick, what the hell? What's all the... His voice trailed off, his eyes widening at the sight of the impossible mass of accumulated items, moving like a living body as it thundered along the... hallway. Run! Nick barreled past him without slowing. But Steve didn't move. He just stared, slack-jawed and frozen, flashlight locked in a

trembling grip. That was when Tom shed the rest of its armor, the massive objects tumbling away in a clamor's crash, as icy shadows seeped like black fog from around those collapsing artificial limbs. It kept a hold on the scalpel blades that the though, it would need claws for what was to come. Steve's eyes were wide, and a squeezing pressure was spreading painfully across his shoulder and neck, clenching like a clamp across his upper belly. He didn't realize it was his heart giving out. He gave a gasping wheeze, and then that inky mess descended upon him like a dark wave,

sweeping him into oblivion before the heart attack could finish the job. Metal savagely parted flesh and cloth and frenzied and violent strokes As Tom ripped into the man's physical form with its scalpel blades And burrowed inside those bleeding lacerations It coiled within that still warm shell, drinking deeply This was what Tom had been craving for so long, living energy It swallowed it all like a rich and nourishing elixir, A burst of pure energy far more satisfying than anything ever leached from the cables and pipes and rats.

Energy filled with the glorious vibrancy of life. Took what it needed, leaving behind the desiccated and torn remnants of anything that was of no use to it. Then, sloffing off the rest of that shredded meat, Tom turned its attention to the other man. It could still hear him crashing and lumbering through his. its domain, lost in the semi-dark maze of flickering lights. Nick staggered down the passageway, aware on some distant level that Steve hadn't followed, but too terrified to look back. Everything down here felt endless, as if every path to the world above had simply vanished. Then up ahead he saw the door to a stairwell. A glimmer of hope

flared in his heart, and he forced himself onward, heels stinging as he coaxed more speed out of his legs than he ever had before. His body, more accustomed to delivery pizzas and blockbuster rentals than running, protested painfully, and he blinked sweat from his eyes as he gasped for air in the suffocating confines of the tunnel that now seemed chokingly hot and narrow. His racing pulse flooded his ears, blocking out all other sounds. He almost cried out as his fingers closed around the cold handle of the door. He tugged it open and raced through, a faint smile forming on his bloody face. He could see the exit door high above, the one that opened into the staff corridor, where the storerooms, mailroom, and facilities offices were housed. With another uncharacteristic

burst of speed, he started up the steps. That was when the door behind him crashed open. Something black and icy slammed into him, driving him against the door. the wall and slugging the air from his lungs. He gave a gasping reedy shriek as a jagged shard of rusted metal pierced his shoulder like a knife blade. Then he slipped, tumbling down the stairs to land in a heap at the bottom. Painfully, grogly, Nick lifted his head over the frantic pulse of his heart and the coppery taint of blood where he had bitten his tongue. He could feel a coldness spreading through his limbs and torso. His shoulder was a mass of hot agony,

more painful than his broken nose. The fall had plunged the shard more deeply into his flesh, and blood was trickling down his chest. In a panic he touched the end of the metal with shaking fingers, trying to decide if he should pull it out or not. Then, too late, he remembered the inky shape that had pursued him. He turned and it was upon him.

Tom pressed its cold ethereal claws against Nick's skull. The man trembled as he tried to scream, but Tom didn't allow him to waste any of that energy. It plunged down his throat, seeping through his nose and ears, flowing inside his warm, living body. Nick clawed weakly at the bottom step as the alien presence effused him. He wanted to cry out, to scream.

but something was blocking his throat, cutting off his air. He felt weak and giddy, and the world around him was getting darker. At first he thought the few remaining lights were going out. But somewhere deep in his spinning, confused consciousness, came the shocking realization that he was the one that was going out. Inside its victim, Tom explored every inch of this incredible feast. feeling the fast pulse of the human's heart, the warm rush of blood, and the sparking impulses that danced along nerves and flickered in the brain.

Why had it waited so long before hunting these creatures? This was ecstasy. Tom closed its eyes, bathing in the rich sensations. And then it drank deeply. The body bucked and threshed, muscles twitching and limbs treacher. fists and feet beating a final drumbeat against the stone. But Tom kept a tight rain on his prize. Nothing must be wasted. Within moments, it was all over. Nick lay dead and cold on the floor. All life and heat absorbed by the spectral shadows now pouring from his mouth and nose like

some ghostly death veil. Tom stretched and smiled as it left the body. Its hunger sated. Then it quickly dragged both of the bodies away and hid them down in the deepest parts of its domain. It knew that these creatures would be missed, that other people would come looking for them, and it didn't want to give itself away. But Tom knew all the best hiding places. After carefully disposing of the remains, Tom crept back to the stairwell, drawn by an insatiable curiosity to that distant door so far above. This was entirely new territory, further than a new territory.

it had ever dared go before, closer to the lowest level of the hospital. It listened and marveled at the sounds from up there. There was a new world just waiting for it to explore at the top of that staircase. A rich cornucopia of energy to be savored. There would likely be even more delicious humans to feed upon, and who knew what else? Curiously, hungrily, it studied. those stairs and cautiously growing braver. Tom began to creep upward. Did you ever go to work with one of your parents for those bring your kids to work days? Or did you ever take your child with

you to work? If so, you'll have a better understanding about this tale, shared with us by author Abby Vale. You see, Barnaby is bringing his daughter to work for the special day. And since he's the custodian, he always has a mess to clean up. Performing this tale are Graham Rowett, Wafia White, Sarah Thomas, Nicole Goodnight, Danielle McCray, Jeff Clement, Kyle Akers, and Dan Zapula. So get ready for the special day. One we're calling, Bring Your Slaughter to Work Day. Whispers abden flowed in the lobby as I scanned the children of various heights. I'd been dreading. today's event. It's impending arrival casting a shadow on each day. I'd been debating whether to bring Claire now that she was five. No one at the bank ever had the pleasure of meeting her. In fact,

no one here knew I had a daughter. A blessing and a curse in equal measure due to both Claire and my private nature. I'd never felt I'd met anyone deserving to know me, but Claire, she deserved to be known. No more debating. She weighed me down, tugging at my arm in that moment just the same as she did whenever she wanted to be picked up. I was always carrying her now. Morning, Barnaby. Ready for chaos? The teller gestured at the employee's kids filing in a line and laughed. I'm sure they'll give you more work, like you don't already have enough to do. Candy wrappers and pizza party plates and rolling crayons were a bigger part of my job the fourth Thursday and every April. It was clear which kids cared and which ones would rather be flicking boogers on their desks during a mat test. Some dressed up

in fancy attire while others dressed themselves in the dark. Some beamed with pride at the sight of their parent, planted in the chair, keeping them away from home each day, while others pulled out their phones and numbly scrolled. Most of them were too young for phones in the my opinion. What started as Bring Your Daughter to Work Day turned into Bring Your Child to Work Day for the sake of inclusion. Their shoes always squeaked, threatened extra scuffs on the lobby floor. Their fingertips relentlessly touched, pressing prints to the glass. It hadn't bothered me much before, but now Claire gave me more to do than any of them. She tugged at my arm again. I don't mind the extra work.

I brought my daughter today, too. She's a bit of a mess. Really? You have a daughter? Geez, you think you know a person. Which one is she? You think you know a person. The word stuck to the wax in my ears,

and I wanted to dig them out. The big black maintenance bag in my hand shifted. I white knuckle gripped it, making eye contact with a little blonde, girl in line jumping up and down. She caught my stare, held it, and kept bouncing on the balls of her feet. From her parted lips, thick orange goo poured, trailing down her chin. It raced down her unicorn shirt, the mystical sparkly horn hidden behind a landslide, an orange, syrupy puddle gathered at her feet. The first spill of the day I'd be cleaning. I shook the

my head, already a mess. I mozied toward the elevator, relying on it to take me away. The teller's eyes pierced my back as Liza from H.R. spoke to the children. Our theme today is aspire higher. We're instilling a mindset that you can choose your own future. Claire galloped over my heart on her stick horse with yarn for a mane. I'm going to be just like you, She'd said, no, you can't. I scolded her under my breath. We've talked about this. Liza announced they'd be doing a scavenger hunt for people and things throughout the building.

That was new. She listed off things like conference rooms, the loan officer, the vault, the peppermint dish on floor three, so on and so forth, stressing the importance of staying with their group leaders and not running off. off. I imagined it was to avoid getting hurt. We didn't need a lawsuit on our hands. Coloring the logo was a far safer activity, both for the bank and the children. But it wasn't my call. No one had asked me for input. I tried letting my arm rest as the elevator doors closed us off to the busy world, and we lowered underground, Claire and me. But Claire begged to be carried even then. It was as if she felt the ground above our heads and panicked. She really thought I'd bury her.

The bag weighed twice as much on the way down. She never let me rest. Not when we were apart, not when we were together. Then she was right not to. She deserved rest far more than I, but she didn't want to find it in the dirt. Aspire, higher. I slung the bag over my shoulder, kinking to the right. We entered the maintenance tunnel to gather supplies for the orange festering in the lobby, working its way from puddle to stain. I couldn't tell if I hoped the children would be gone when I returned or if I fed off their presence. Claire certainly seemed to.

From the other end of the room, the vault called my name in Sing Song. It used Claire's voice, our bedtime melody. Barnaby, a bee a born, a lot to clean, a cleans a lot. The night Claire had learned my name, not Daddy, but my real name, because Claire did deserve to know something of me. She'd found it funny to play with, saying, Be a Barn rather than Barnaby, was comedy gold to a four-year-old. One night when reading a book about dinosaur fossils,

she'd interrupted to ask what I do for work. I'm a custodian, I told her. I clean a lot of things. I want to clean a lot, too. She sang. Born a bee, a be a barn, a lot to clean, a cleans a lot. The lava lamp on the dresser danced. That's how it started, the melody.

No, you don't. I said, you can do anything in the world. Pick anything. I want to be wherever you are, Daddy, but you're born. I looked down at the fossils on the page and asked, What if I was a paleontologist? I sang, Barn, a bee, a barn, a bunch of bones, a bones a bunch.

I bounced her on my knees with each syllable. A toothy bridge spanned from cheek to cheek. Or what if I was a dentist? I sang, Barnaby, a bee, a barn, a slew, a smiles, a slew. It had become our favorite game. But now, I didn't like the way the tune came to me when we weren't playing. It followed me wherever I went.

No rest. I wheeled my supply cart to the vault, following its call. Susan lifted her head from the security desk. Hi, Barney. Buzz you in. Yes, please. I handcuffed the sign-in sheet and entered the cage. Susan unlocked the left side while I unlocked the right.

Dual control. The black bag jiggled on the cleaning cart as I pushed it into the vault. I hovered in front of the safety deposit boxes. Number 109 was ours. It was mine as much as it was Clares, a mess as much as she was. Barnaby, a bee, up. Barn, a ton to hide, a hides a ton. Orange, liquefied parathin wax,

leaked through the cracks on the top, bottom and sides of the locked box. It ran in impossible directions, gravity never agreed to. Thick and slow, the goo spread like butter, climbing like veins, trickled like rain, and dripped like blood. I grabbed a sponge and spray from the car,

and got to work. The regurgitation in the lobby would have to wait. I wrung my goose-oaked sponge in a bucket and watched the substance rise, watched it push and pull, a living, haunting matter, restless and wanting. And here is the vault. I poked my head out to discover who spoke. Peter, from Loans, stood with a group of kids outside the cage. He told the group briefly about vault policy. No person in the building knew the code to both sides, and you always needed a buddy to open it. Their faces varied in interest,

some having been there every single year since they started school. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they'd seen the vault. Nothing impressive. That's even bigger than I thought. Pretty cool, huh? And there's the custodian, Barnaby. He's on our list. We can mark both.

Barnaby. Peter's son covered his mouth, chuckling. With his dad as their group leader, he was the most comfortable, most likely to try to impress. What kind of name is that? The group followed his lead with laughter. Claire sang. A bunch of boys, a boys a bunch. She liked my name.

Jonathan, enough. I remembered Jonathan from last year. He ripped up Rashida's son's picture in the last year. logo coloring contest. I squeezed the sponge without knowing my mind on the song, on the dancing lava in Claire's room. Mocking my name was mocking our melody. Goo dripped on my shoes. No rest. As the group left for the elevator and waved goodbye to Susan, the urge to follow them overcame me. It filled me the way anger did that night in January when I'd added bubbles to Claire's warm bath, and she told me about the kid at daycare who'd pulled her hair and pushed her into the snow.

Tears streamed down her face as she told the story, and I couldn't clean them quick enough. They kept sliding and sliding. They didn't so much as slow when I'd called upon her stick horse, trotting in and out of the sorrowful bathroom on the toy, saying, Nay, more tears! I had to take a breather in her bedroom, retiring the horse in a corner, and plug in the lava lamp to watch it dance. It had always calmed me, calmed us.

But when I'd seen it glow that night, it reminded me of our melody. Her smile bridging cheek to cheek. It angered me how anyone would take my Claire's smile away. It boiled over and saw red, then black. Then in the next minute, I saw orange, a sea of it. I'd thrown the lamp at the doorframe. I didn't know she was there. No idea her bubbly body had left the tub to check on Daddy Bea B a barn.

And then she was gone, covered in shattered glass and hot paraffin wax. Her future, chosen. No paleontologist in my arms. No dentist, no doctor, no artist or chef. No banker, no waitress, nor pilot. I'd held her all through the night, tears streaming and wax-hardening. A shell encasing my cruelty. It created a coating for my anger, heavy enough to pin it down for a while.

But I never stopped seeing it. Never stopped cleaning it. Never stopped learning what I'm capable of. Claire learned a lot about me, too. I scooped the weighty black bag with both arms, holding it tight against my chest. A light scent of decay seeped through the zipper. A bunch of bones. A bones a bunch.

All done, Bernie? I didn't answer. Floor numbers cycled through my head. Two, four, five. I left the cage, glancing back at the broken lava lamp in 109, gripping Claire. Five. I went with five, because that's how old she should have been by now. The number lit up yellow, and the elevator lifted us above the ground where Claire belonged.

aspire higher. The higher we rose, the stronger the smell of pizza. Gou soaked the bottom of the bag, the sleeves of my jumpsuit, stickier and stickier. I laid her gently down in the corner of the cramped elevator and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. As Claire lay there a bag of bones, I towered over her, a monster. I want to be wherever you are, Daddy by your barn.

A load, a guilt, a load. As soon as the doors parted, a river of orange burst out. And so did I. I waited through the wax, no longer hardened or holding back my rage. I'd been hot enough to melt all the wax today. It was time to clean with Claire. Teach her how to be like me, as she insisted. An angry little bag of bones.

First, the blonde girl with a mouthful of goo. I saw the orange. Of course I saw the orange. Then red. In the next moment, I saw black. A welcome color. The color of rest. I sang.

Born a bee. A bee a barn. A lot to slaughter. To slaughter. A lot. 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 Mikulski, Jeff Clemson, Jeff Clemson, Jesse Cornett and Claudius Moore. Our editorial team is Jessica McAvoy, Ashley McAnally, Ollie 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. This audio program is copyright 2026 by 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.