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I saw a monster as a kid, now he has returned

ybt21n

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ybt21n/i_saw_a_monster_as_a_kid_now_he_has_returned/

When I was a little kid, I found that I could see a monster that no one else could. He was big and hairy. For reasons long lost to time, I decided to call him Steve. Steve could appear whenever he liked, but he usually revealed himself at night. Sometimes I would see him in the corner of my eye, he always seemed to be laughing at me. When I would try to look directly at him, he'd disappear. Other times, when walking past a mirror or something reflective, instead seeing of my reflection, I'd see Steve. Upon backtracking, I'd find myself starring back at me, not the monster. Though my glimpses of him were usually brief and unclear, I started getting the impression that he didn't look quite like a real monster, his fur and face seemed closer to that of a costume. The prospect of there being a person behind that mask made me fear him even more. One day, at recess I was playing in the sand and minding my own business when I looked up to see Steve behind the fence staring at me. I looked directly into his lifeless yellow eyes, and he did not disappear, instead he started waving at me with a big furry hand. I asked the other kids if they could see the man over there, but they could not. Then Steve began climbing over the electric fence with no problems at all. Once over, he started marching toward me with that eerie plastic smile. I ran back into the school, into the bathroom, and hide in the furthest stall from the door. I heard his padded feet enter. "Ted, you can't hide from me." He said. This was the first time I ever heard him speak. He started moving closer to my stall. "Ted, I know you're thinking about screaming for help, but no one can help you. No one can see me but you, Ted. You know that." He stopped right in front of my stall. "I won't lie to you, Ted. I'm going to hurt you. I'm going to kill you. I'm going to rip your head off and drink your blood. Then I'm going to drag your corpse home, eat your flesh, and use your bones to help build a cage for my next victims." I was shaking. "Now tell me, Ted, how does that make you feel? How does it feel to know your about to die, and there's no hope of being saved? Please, tell me, I'll never know myself." He grabbed the handle, and I kicked the door open as hard as I could. It smashed into Steve's face, knocking him backwards and causing him to fall, hitting his head against the sink. I got out of the stall to see Steve lying motionless with blood dripping from the holes in his mask. Part of me wanted to take the mask off, but I didn't. I simply left his body there, and the next day, it was gone. And that was that. No more Steve. I never told anyone of him and as I got older, I decided he must've been the spawn of a child's mind. I used the fact that he appeared to be a guy in a costume as proof of this, thinking he looked that way because my brain was incapable of constructing a real looking monster. By the time I moved into of college dorm, I had almost completely forgot about the whole thing. But then I began to see things. Little spots of brown appearing in my peripheral vision. They were so few and far between that I thought I must just be imagining it. Until last night. I awoke at twelve for seemingly no reason and went to the bathroom. Upon turning my face to the mirror, I saw him. He just stood there lifeless. I was thinking I must still be half asleep and seeing things. "Thought I was dead Ted?" He said. "Thought I was made in a dream factory of yours? No Ted, I wasn't. Just sleeping, just healing, just becoming stronger. That's all Ted." I panicked. I punched the mirror as hard as I could. It shattered. The glass ended up slicing my hand. Now I don't know what to do. I took a bat to most of the reflective objects I have, there's nothing but broken glass everywhere. Yet I'm not sure if that was even needed, maybe I have simply lost my mind. I mean, how can this even be possible? I don't know if Steve's real or not, but I know I can see him in my phone's reflection as I type this.

I went to the corn maze with my girlfriend. Don't make the same mistake I did.

ybvpxu

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ybvpxu/i_went_to_the_corn_maze_with_my_girlfriend_dont/

It's that time of the year that the annual corn maze in my town is being set up. I used to go there every year with my family as a child, and I still continue that tradition today as a 20 year old college student. We were planning to go on the 15th, but there had been a flu spreading around my younger sister's high school and she had brought it home to the rest of my family. The only reason I hadn't gotten it too was because I lived miles away in a college dorm. They would've rescheduled, but the corn maze only stayed open through Halloween and they didn't think they'd get better in time. But they still wanted me to go, which is why they suggested I ask my girlfriend, Tina, to come with me. I asked her on the 13th, and she immediately said yes. I knew she would, considering the fact that Halloween is her favorite holiday and she loves everything related to it. I left my last class on Friday at around 3:30 p.m. and texted Tina to make sure she was still up for going on Saturday. She texted back quickly and confirmed. We made plans to leave our dorms around 8:30 p.m. so we could get there by 9:00. The place was open till midnight, so we'd have plenty of time to go through the maze and hang out there. We ended up arriving at the corn maze at around 9:05, and Tina insisted we go through the maze right away. I didn't really have any plans on exactly what we were gonna do, so I followed her. Before we went in, a large man in a brown uniform stopped us. He looked me dead in the eyes for a moment before speaking. "You have 15 minutes to make it out. Or else." I had no idea what he meant, but I figured he was just in character and trying to scare us. I gave the strange guy a quick nod and walked past him. After several minutes of walking, I began joking with Tina about how I wanted to grab one of the ears of corn and just eat it right there while we were still going. I hadn't eaten anything before we left, and I was starving. I had nothing but a plastic water bottle stuffed in my pocket. We walked for another five minutes or so before we saw some strange movements through the corn. I peeked through and saw a thin black cloud of smoke lingering in the air. It disappeared within seconds, but it was still creepy. I checked the time on my phone. 9:25. We had entered the maze at 9:10, which meant our 15 minutes was up. But I wasn't afraid. I figured the worst that would happen would be a costumed person chasing us with a fake chainsaw. But what would soon come to be was far, far worse. The first strange event occurred only a minute or so after our 15 minutes expired. We saw the corn in front of us rustling a bit, before a massive spider jumped out in front of us. Probably a tarantula. It crawled towards me at full force, getting about a foot up my leg before I kicked it off. I tried running backwards away from it, but the damn thing wouldn't give up. I kicked it some more before finally getting it on its back. I was able to aggressively stomp it into the dirt several times before it stopped squirming. I poked it a few more times with my shoe to be sure, and it was dead. The occurrences only got stranger from there. Tina and I heard loud thunder rolling directly above us. When we looked up, all we saw was a black void where the sky used to be. No clouds, no stars, no airplanes. Even the moon was nowhere to be found. It took me a moment to take notice, but the darkness had begun to creep downward from the void. I was soon unable to see the trees in the distance. Eventually, I could only see several yards ahead of me. And mere moments later, it had entirely fallen. I was completely blind. I took out my phone, and the light barely did anything. I turned on my phone's flashlight, but it hardly illuminated a few inches in front of me. I carefully crept through the maze, holding Tina's hand the entire way so I wouldn't lose her in the darkness. After what felt like an eternity, I couldn't have moved more than twenty yards. I began moving slightly faster when I felt a strange feeling. It was similar to goosebumps, but it wasn't. It felt like there were dull claws gently scratching me all over. This strange feeling was accompanied by a third pair of footsteps, behind Tina. I began walking even faster, starting to jog a bit. The footsteps sped up with us. I then escalated to a full sprint. The feeling got worse, and I was sweating bullets at this point. It felt like bugs were crawling all over my face, but I never stopped. That was, until Tina was pulled out of my grasp from behind. I instantly turned around, running even faster than before in the direction of my girlfriend. I tripped on a small rock and flew into the ground at full speed, banging my head and falling unconscious. I woke up an unknown amount of time later. The darkness was gone, and so was Tina. I walked in the direction that she had been dragged in, praying that she was still there. After making several turns, I saw her. Lying on the ground, mangled. All of her limbs were broken, and she had hundreds of scratches and lacerations all over her body. I kneeled down in front of her body, feeling her wrist for a pulse. All I felt was cold, clammy skin. I looked down at my hands and knees, still bloody and raw from the fall. I wasn't going to give up. I had done so much to survive this godforsaken warped reality, and I needed to make it out alive. For Tina. Nothing else occurred for at least an hour after I found Tina. However, that didn't last for very long. After what I guessed was about an hour and forty-five minutes, the ground began to crack and break beneath me. I lost my balance and fell, scraping off a bit of dried blood and leaving it in the mud. I looked around to see the corn falling down with me. I attempted to army crawl through through the collapsing earth, pulling globs of mud out from in front of me and tossing them to the side. The ground was pulling me in like quicksand, and it was exhausting to keep going. But I pushed on. I wasn't about to let this vortex of dirt and corn swallow me whole. I wasn't about to be grabbed by some hellspawn and have my body mangled like Tina had been. But no matter how hard I tried, I continued to get pulled further and further down until the earth closed and swallowed me whole. When I woke up yet again, nothing was off. There were no strange noises, the sky looked normal, the corn looked normal. The dirt was dry as opposed to the wet mess it had been before. I carefully stood on my toes and looked above the corn. I could see people outside of the maze! I ran for freedom, turning several corners before finding the exit. Everything was normal again. I wanted to celebrate. To jump for joy, to laugh, to be happy. But all I could think about was Tina. All I had the energy to do was to fall on the ground and cry. I knew I was never gonna find somebody like Tina again. But I was alive. All of the torture I had gone through, losing the love of my life, wondering if every step I took would be my last. I had made it through. It's now the 23rd, and it's been just over a week since I escaped the maze. Nobody I've told in person has believed me, so I decided to share my story on Reddit to see if anybody on here does. I know it all sounds ridiculous, but I still have hope that people online will take my word.

Just a weird dream... or not?

yc5voc

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yc5voc/just_a_weird_dream_or_not/

It was a wonderful day for traveling. Me, my sister, and my mom decided to go to another country to spend our vacation. To be honest, it wasn't easy for me and my sister to have our schedules aligned because we were both doctors. I was feeling kind of giddy as it has been a while since I've traveled to another place. After around an hour, we managed to get to the airport. Or perhaps I was wrong? "Hey, are we in the right place?" I asked hesitantly. The place still looks like that its still under construction. It only has its structure, no windows, no furniture, nothing. "Yeah we are, that's what it says on the GPS" I would have not believed my sister if there wasn't because of an existing line on the front side of the building. Of course, in order to not be late, me and my family immediately went inside. It was strange not gonna lie. In the front most part of the line was a free teeth cleaning by a dentist. Seems like the line was for that. On the seat was an old man who seems kind of pissed. I hurriedly looked away when our eyes met. We went ahead and tried to find a place to sit while waiting for the flight. However, as I said before. It really didn't have anything inside. Just a water station. I was kind of thirsty so I grabbed a cup and got myself some water. What I didn't expect was a scream of pain that rang through the air. It was creepy. I felt the ground shook slightly. That wasn't possible. Must have been my mind playing games with me. But I guess I was wrong. This time it was real. Screams from different people reverberated through the air. They sounded like desperate cries. Me and my family ran despite not knowing what was the cause. We didn't even want to know what was the cause. We made it outside where the airplanes land and run through. There we saw a plane letting passengers in, we ran there and the flight attendant let us in immediately. She had a panicked look despite her trying to calm down other passengers. Typically, in movies, the move we made was a dumb move. Well it was a dumb move. The pilot started the engine and it started to run through the path. I sighed in relief. We were about to escape. I was wrong, again. I looked at the window, there I saw the old man from the front. His whole body was colored in red. Then he looked up and I felt the chill in my spine. It looked like he was looking at me. I looked away, believing we will be safe now. He won't be able to catch an on-going plane and moreover, it was about to fly. It was impossible. It should be. But no, the plane came to a stop. The left side of the plane was destroyed. Lub dub lub dub. My heart was pounding heavily. I held my mother's and sister's hands and was scared of what was about to happen. The old man stepped inside the plane with a creepy grin. I stood up and immediately ran with my family in tow. Soon enough, another wave of screams of "stop", "no" and "please" came. I was crying. I was scared. I don't know what to do. Me and my family jumped down to the destroyed side of the plane. It was high, but we didn't want to get killed. We landed receiving slight injuries but due to the adrenaline, we immediately stood and ran again. I looked back. The old man was looking at me. Then I fainted. I woke up with a groan. Where was I? What was I doing? Then it hit me. The Old man. I looked at my surroundings immediately. Then right there in the middle. I see the old man standing with various sizes of bloody gifts at his back. "You woke up! Glad you did, I was scared that you might have not" I stared in silence. What will he do to me? "Oh come on now. Don't be scared, I have a gift for you! You can pick anything from here to there!" He says while pointing to the gifts at his back. Gifts? Those bloodied gifts? What are inside them? "Where's my mom and sister?" Ignoring his initial offer. He stared at me for a good ten seconds and proceeded to look through his "gifts" "Anyway, I'll pick my gift for you instead cause you don't want to tell me what you want." When he did pick a gift, he looked back at me and started walking. I couldn't move, I don't know if it was because of the injuries or fear. "Here" He said with a grin. I took it because of the fear he might kill me. "Come on, open it" I slowly opened his gift and I looked at it in horror. Inside was a pair of hands. "I call it the loving touch of a mother and daughter!" He said in joy. I fainted. Then I woke up again. I was in a hospital bed. "Oh my, that's horrible" A voice said. I looked at where it came from. It was mom. She was looking at the News. There it says a mass murder was done at an airport. I looked around, there I saw my sister at the sofa. Oh. Good. It was just a dream. I looked again at the news and there I see him. The Old Man in my dream. He was looking back at the camera. As if he was looking at me.

Straw Men

ybu2pa

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ybu2pa/straw_men/

I’ve been cooped up in my bedroom for nearly two days now. I don’t know why they’re taking so long. I tell myself that I’m just losing my mind. That I’ve had some sort of breakdown. But I know it’s not true. I know what I saw, and I know what awaits me on the other side of the door. Let me start from the beginning. I’m a private person. I can think of a few people I enjoy being around. Margaret, for instance. I like Margaret. But, generally, I value being alone. That’s why I built my life around a job that doesn’t require me to leave my crummy basement-level apartment. The bug problem inside of it is preferable to the human problem outside of it. It all began on one of those abominable days when I needed to venture into civilization. I’d been dreading it for weeks. My virtual co-worker Natalie had been insistent about my attendance at a fundraiser for her kid. Something about raising money for some research foundation. Blowing off her relentless emails and messages eventually got too tiring. I ran a mental cost-benefit analysis and determined that a brief appearance would amass me enough goodwill to get out of it next time. As I exited my apartment building, I passed my fellow basement-dwellers’ seasonal decorations. The wreath on the door of my immediate neighbor, a repairman named Brian, included a ghost and a witch hat. A mat by the door to the adjacent apartment, in which a young couple and their small child resided, featured black cats and a full moon. The surrounding neighborhood was just as insufferable. I scowled at the displays of pumpkins and mock graveyards, skeletons, and spider webs. All plastic, fake, straight-from Wal-Mart bullshit. I knew it was only going to get worse in the lead up to Halloween. As soon as November first rolled around, they’d replace this junk with equally obnoxious holiday decorations. I yearned for January. As the highway took me past the county line, I was stopped by construction. A man in an orange vest halted me and waved for opposite traffic to go through the single open lane. Behind him, workers labored at the outskirts of a large pit. It was strikingly deep. From where I was sitting, I couldn’t even see the bottom of it. The delay made me late. When I reached the farm, its dirt lot was already packed with cars. I wedged my rusty sedan into a narrow space and climbed outside. A distant breeze swayed crops and trees. The only other sounds I heard were those of birds and insects. I reached the field. Balloons were tied to a sign that reads “Walk Against Diabetes”. I shook my head. What did walking have to do with it? Couldn’t they just have accepted my money without having to bring me all the way out here for *walking*? I looked around. The field ahead was littered with jack-o-lanterns, cornhole boards, bales of hay, some sort of pumpkin ring toss. Oh, and scarecrows. Lots of scarecrows. Whoever decorated this place went a little overboard with them. But where were the people? A sign over a small tent read “Registration”. At a table inside, a figure obscured by shadows presided over several piles of paper. I approached. “Hey there, can you help me-” I froze when I discerned the straw hat and cloth face underneath it. The scarecrow wore blue overalls on a plaid shirt. Its face consisted of a red nose, blue eyes, and a simple smile drawn with a single black, dotted line. I didn’t smile back. Where *was* everybody? I wanted to at least sign in to the event. “Hello?” I called. My voice faded into the empty ambience. I tried again, this time shouting as loudly as I could, but no one responded. I circled through the tents and the start of the one-mile course, but there was not a soul in sight. I couldn’t make any sense of it. Did everyone start walking, and then just keep going to some other location? Or was the event cancelled at the last moment, with me alone not finding out about it? But, if that were true, why was the parking lot so full? On the way back to my car, I passed the registration tent again. To my surprise, the scarecrow was gone. “What the hell?” I mumbled, perplexed and more than a bit spooked. My pace increased to a jog. I was eager to leave this place. There was something about it that just felt so off, so wrong. I pulled out in my car and didn’t look back as I returned to town. I approached the construction site. This time, no one was around to direct traffic. There were no workers at all, in fact. I could have gone, but I worried about a car approaching from the opposite side. I rolled down my window. “Hey, is anyone there?” I asked. Something caught my eye. Several bales of hay decorated the edge of the pit. They hadn’t been there before. For a moment, a brown, jagged stick emerged from the hay, reaching out like an arm before receding out of view. I resolved not to wait there any longer. I wanted to leave this cursed hole in the earth behind, just like the farm and its deserted fundraiser. I jolted the accelerator and zoomed into the open lane. As I drove, I checked the rear view mirror. What I saw sent my heart racing. In the back seat, directly behind me, was the thin smile of the scarecrow from the registration tent. “Fucking hell!” I screamed. My car skidded at an angle as I slammed on the breaks. Sirens blared in front of me. Just my luck. The first car at the other end belonged to a cop. The officer approached. I remained still, resisting the temptation to look behind me. In my state of near-panic, I accidentally rolled down one of my rear windows instead of my own. I rushed to correct my mistake as the officer neared. The officer leaned down and asked me questions. “Officer, in the back seat, there’s…there’s…” I realized that telling the truth wasn’t going to help me. So, I came up with a slightly more plausible story. “I’m driving alone, but I looked in the mirror and saw someone in the back seat. I panicked.” The officer peered behind me. There was no one there, she insisted. “Not even something that might look like a person?” I croaked. “Like a doll, or something?” She shook her head, handed me a ticket, and informed me that I’d need to go to court to address it. I thought about telling her everything else I’d seen – the desolate fundraiser, the stick reaching out of the hay – but I decided to cut my losses. I politely nodded and told her that I’d be more careful. I examined my car upon parking it in my building’s garage. Indeed, the back seat was unoccupied. Had I imagined seeing the scarecrow there? Was I losing my mind? In my apartment, I took a long shower and started to unwind. I decided to keep the inexplicable things I’d seen to myself, at least for the time being. I had Margaret to prepare for. I shaved my face and put on my nicest set of clothes. I cleaned up, stuffing my dirty laundry into a basket and moving my laptop from where I’d left it on top of my comforter to an end table by the bedroom door. I counted out five fifty-dollar bills and placed them in an envelope by the entrance to the apartment. Margaret was five minutes late. On another occasion, I’d have argued over subtracting twenty dollars from what I owed her. Twenty-one, to be more precise. But, that day, I was just happy to see her face. Margaret smiled and addressed me as her husband. She displayed a cheap replica of the engagement ring I’d given to Anne, and she wore an olive green dress like the one Anne had been wearing when I’d proposed to her. Margaret didn’t mention the children I hadn't seen in years. They weren’t a part of the script. The hour moved efficiently. We chatted over a drink and then slowly made our way to the bedroom. We screwed around. When it was over, I wrapped my arms around her bare back and held her tightly. She asked me if something was on my mind. She said that I seemed a little wound up. I started to tell her about the strange things I’d seen that morning. When I brought up the mysterious pit by the highway, she mentioned that she’d heard something about it. She said that a friend of hers worked at that site. Ever since his drilling operation tapped into some unknown substance deep underground, workers had been disappearing without a trace. “Do…do they know what the substance is?” I asked. She burst out laughing. She told me that she really had me going. I was annoyed. But Anne’s sense of humor was on the list of traits I’d given her to study. I couldn’t hold it against her. Margaret dressed and headed to the door. “See you next week,” I told her as she slipped the envelope into her purse. On Monday, I exchanged chat message with Natalie. She told me not to worry, that the participants had gathered around a hill at the end of the mile-long course for a group photo, but she appreciated the effort I made coming out there. It didn’t make sense to me. I wasn’t all *that* late. I should have seen *somebody*. But I let it go. Work resumed. Groceries arrived at my front door. My apartment building was quiet. The tedium of daily routine settled my nerves. The weird events of the weekend faded from my mind. Finally, the date on my ticket arrived. To my chagrin, I found that those obsessed with tacky Halloween props included whoever ran the general district court. Fake cobweb lined the metal detector. The officers manning it directed me to the appropriate room. I climbed the central staircase. Posing throughout it were more of those damn scarecrows. I hated their smiling faces, their straw hats, and the big red buttons that matched their small red noses. I approached the courtroom. After a short wait, an officer called the number on my ticket. “Yes, that’s me, officer,” I said. The officer instructed me on where to go. I opened the two sets of doors and stepped into the courtroom. I approached the podium, paying little attention to the handful of people scattered throughout the public benches. My eyes raised to the judge. I gasped when I finally got a look at him. I recognized the beaming face of the figure before me. It was the same one – the same goddamn scarecrow that had climbed into my car the other day, except now it sat in a black robe before a gavel. “Is this…are you…” I stuttered, dumbfounded. I glanced at the prosecutor’s table, where two scarecrows sat in suits. I looked behind me, and realized that the rest of the audience was no different. I was the only human in the entire fucking room. I stormed out. I spotted the officer who’d let me in and called out for him. When he didn’t respond, I tapped his left shoulder. I jumped back as his left arm detached. Tightly-wound straw spilled out of his empty sleeve onto the floor. I backed up. I needed to leave. The figure moved. It knelt, picked up the detached arm, and stuck it back in place. Then, it turned towards me, continuing to display the same, sick expression of perpetual bliss. A stumble sent me toppling down the first set of stairs. I banged my head. My body ached as I climbed back to my feet and ran down to the lobby, where I found the metal detector manned by two scarecrows dressed in police uniforms. Their heads tilted slightly in my direction as I sprinted to the exit. There was almost no traffic as I drove back to my apartment. I spotted no people in the early evening light. Only scarecrows, everywhere, of all shapes and sizes. They appeared still, silent, content. In the apartment garage, an elderly man hobbled over to me. He was the first human I’d seen since leaving the courthouse. He pointed to a red bruise on my temple and told me that I’m not one of them. He insisted that I not trust anyone, not even him. I left him behind as I scrambled down the basement hallway. The door to the building elevator opened, revealing three scarecrows – a man, a woman, and a small child standing between them. I passed Brian’s apartment. I looked through the open door. Inside, two figures were engaged in a scuffle. A scarecrow had Brian pressed against the wall. His panicked eyes turned towards me as he attempted, futilely, to pull the scarecrow’s hand off of his neck. With its other hand, the scarecrow pried open Brian’s mouth. The thin line that formed the scarecrow’s smile expanded until its mouth was a gaping hole that covered most of its face. Brian made a muffled scream as straw shot out of the scarecrow’s mouth into his own. He gagged and choked. The straw poured down Brian’s throat. It filled his body until it bursts through his skin. As layers of straw spread over Brian, transforming his appearance, the scarecrow turned towards me. I shut the door to my apartment and bolted it behind me. In the crack beneath the door, shadows of legs approached. The door jostled, the same way the door to my bedroom has jostled periodically for the last several hours, and the handle shook. Then the shadows departed. I didn’t know what to do. After what I’d seen at the court building, I wasn’t eager to contact the authorities. A familiar voice called for me from outside. I checked my phone to confirm that it was the correct date and time. Using the peephole, I saw that it was only Margaret, with no straw hat to be found on her. Relieved, I ushered her in. She asked me what was wrong after I frantically locked the door behind her. “I’m just so happy to see you,” I replied. “You’re the only thing that seems real to me.” She looked at me strangely. I wasn’t supposed to call her by her real name. She asked for some wine. Anne loved wine, after all. That trait was in the materials I’d provided to Margaret. I gave her a glass. She lifted it. I put my hand around hers as I poured. I thought about recent events. About how everything around me was falling apart. Yet, amidst all of that, here was Margaret, showing up at her scheduled time to pretend to be the wife who’d stormed out of our marriage years ago. Who’d taken away my kids. Who’d told me I had no heart, no soul. Who’d said I was as dull and ugly and lifeless as a- Margaret shrieked as the glass shattered. I’d been gripping it too hard, and several fragments had torn into Margaret’s hand. I apologized profusely. When I brought her a set of bandages, she opened her hand to reveal a long gash that extended across her palm. What I saw sent me darting into my bedroom, where I have been hiding – cowering – ever since. You see, no blood emerged from the wound – just the ends of thin, golden pieces of [straw](https://www.reddit.com/r/PeaceSim/).

I know you're reading this, so get ready to cough up the money, Luke

ybmhby

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ybmhby/i_know_youre_reading_this_so_get_ready_to_cough/

Welp. I'm not gonna beat around the bush. I know you're still stalking me Luke, looking at my digital footprint like a real creep. That used to bother me, maybe even scare me a little, but now I'm pretty happy that I can be sure this message will reach you. My mama always said: “Look on the bright side, girly.” And I’m trying to, really, but the only optimistic thing I can come up with is that you owe me 20 bucks. Do you remember that ‘debate’ we got into freshman year? You know, one of the stupid drunken ones that involved more yelling than talking? I guess we had a lot of those, huh? Probably too many for you to guess what I’m talking about without me narrowing the scope. Well, I’ll get what satisfaction I can out of this by saying: I was right. It’s the teeth, Luke. That’s what does it. Well, specifically, it’s the upper canines, but they’re teeth all the time. You thought it was blood, didn’t you? You said it must contain some sort of toxin… or maybe you’d said a poison? But either way, nope. It’s got nothing to do with that. They aren’t running around with ‘poison blood,’ Luke. It’s all got to do with the teeth. I know this for sure because if it had to do with the blood, Paula would be changing too. Changing like me. If you’re still the same, still tracking my digital footprint, I’ll bet you think that I can’t know this. I bet you’re laughing, maybe thinking my ‘protozoan’ brain could jump to such a conclusion. Perhaps you even think I’m crazy for claiming certainty over something so absurd and fantastical. And maybe I am crazy. After all, before I decided to start typing this… um…. Let’s call it a notice of debt. Before that, I tore into the freezer, draining a delicious T-bone steak so my mind would stop insisting that Whiskers looked like a snack. Ugh. I’d apologize for that not making sense, but you don’t deserve it. You never apologized for what you said. Why should I? Anyway. 20 bucks, Luke. If you need the proof, I still have a tooth—just one. You know where I work. I don’t even care that it’ll violate the restraining order. See there. Fuck the restraining order; you can come. I put it in writing. Doesn’t that make you happy, Luke? Come to the office. I’ve got the tooth in an envelope. If you think I’m lying, fine. I’ll open it up, and you can press it into your skin and become just like me. Allergic to the sun. Craving blood. No longer able to eat garlic bread. Unless you’ve developed taste in the last year, I guess you wouldn’t care so much about that last one. But I do. I love garlic bread. And sunsets. And being able to pet Whiskers without thinking her heartbeat sounds appetizing. God. You don’t know how much you feel on a subconscious level until it’s gone. The lack of breath or blood running through my veins… Luke, dating you, and I say this with great trepidation, is no longer the biggest mistake of my life. Again, notice that I said great trepidation. You are still awful and always will be. Anyway, what I’m counting as number one now is accepting the freak patient who came in last week. I’m sure even you know that dentist offices are appointment-only (I.e., no walk-ins), but I had a last-minute cancellation. I was upfront, talking with Paula, and enjoying a break when this dude came in. His skin was sallow and jaundiced. The top of his bald head was a constellation of puss-filled heat blisters. In his hands, he held a styrofoam cup full of a pink liquid that looked vaguely like strawberry milk. I’d learn later that I only got the milk part right. “I neeth hep!” The creep shouted, and his mouth was full of blood. He spat it all over Paula, spraying her librarian-style glasses with red. His front four teeth had been knocked out. Who knows how. The man didn’t show up the entire time he was there, but I barely understood a goddamn word between his freak accent and lack of teeth. But whatever. Dr. Martin saw him and immediately rushed to the man’s aid. It was weird, but I guess it was a simple case of that philanthropic side he’s been developing rearing its head at the worst possible moment. Instead of sending the man to the ER, he took him as a patient. A knocked-out tooth is one of the few emergency procedures a dentist performs, but this man- his bubbling, yellowed skin- it was apparent he had more urgent issues that needed tending. “This way,” Dr. Martin told him. “My associate Kyra will be assisting with your procedure.” “She will?” I echoed. It should have been exciting. I was his junior, but, being fresh out of school, I really hadn’t much experience outside of cleanings and being an assistant to the lead dentist. “You’re ready,” he told me. “Glove up. It’s time to learn.” So yeah. Here’s where it goes wrong, Luke. Just like that night I took you to my parents. I didn’t expect anything to go wrong that night, either. It was supposed to be happy. That was the Thanksgiving when you thought it’d be better to silently pop a pizza in the oven rather than eat my mom’s cooking. Then you actually had the nerve to say to her face: “Sorry, I just wanted to eat something I could stomach.” You piece of shit. I swear. If I can’t fucking control this hunger, I’ll find you. I wouldn't even feel bad about it. Where was I? Oh yeah. The teeth. Dr. Martin gently took the cup from the man and handed it to me. “You’ve really done it now,” he said to the man, and I wondered how they knew each other. “Kyra, you’ll find all four teeth in there. We must move quickly before his gums begin to close.” And that didn’t make sense. He was still spitting blood as he talked with the doctor. His teeth had been knocked out recently. Obviously, this procedure needed to take place quickly, but his gums would take a while to close. Dr. Martin didn’t bother with anesthesia or even numbing the man. He just went straight in, spraying away the blood. Meanwhile, I had fished the first three teeth out of the cup. Two were… normal. Just regular old human teeth. Standard incisors, but then the third. “What the fuck?” I breathed. It was a canine as long as my pinky. I looked at the holes in the man’s mouth, disturbed to see that the weirdo’s gums were being rapidly knitted back together. I looked from the teeth to the man. His upper four teeth. That’s what was missing. There shouldn’t have been any canines included. I could see his canines from here, sharp pointy things that did look a little too long but nothing as shocking as what I held in my hand. “Have you got them?” Dr. Martin urged with a gloved hand extension. “The teeth?” Sirens went off in my head, but the man’s cries were louder. “The teeth, Kyra!” “Sorry,” I told him and placed the three I had in his hand. “Here they are.” He shuffled them carefully, holding the canine delicately. “Now, watch carefully. You’ll have to do as I do.” Before I could respond, he jammed the canine into the wrong spot… the wrong way. He sliced open the gum with the sharp end and then forced it to go nearly all the way into the gum. As he pulled it out with a wet squelch, I clearly saw the man’s gums moving, trying to repair the hole. In opposition to its healing, Dr. Martin shoved in the yellowed incisor. “There,” he told the man. “One down.” He made a pained noise of affirmation. “Now,” Dr. Martin turned to me with the teeth pointing at me like daggers. “You do the next one, Kyra.” The step I took back wasn’t a conscious one, but I felt myself moving away from him. From this nightmare scene. I always run. I run when things get tough. Get scary. You know that, Luke. I ran from you. Picked up whiskers and flew out the door like a bat from hell. And maybe if I’d been just a split second faster. Maybe if my brain and feet had had the same thought, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be at work, business as usual. Scraping plaque off teeth and earning an honest buck, but nope. I’m obviously shit at ignoring red flags. I stayed, and now the only good thing I can think to do is write this shitty debt notification, hiding beneath the covers because I bought sheer curtains for the bedroom. Fucking hell do I regret choosing this place for its goddamn natural light. Not as much as I regret you. Of course. And not as much as I regret what happened next. The man grabbed my arm, shrieking at me: “Huvwy! Huvwy!! Pleath!” Urging me to hurry up, Dr. Martin placed the remaining two teeth into my open palm. “You can do this, Kyra,” he told me. “Just like I did, you have to do it just like that.” My hands were shaking so badly. The tooth felt heavy in my hands. “Focus, Kyra!” the doctor ordered. “Take the vampire’s tooth-“ And yes. He said, vampire. “Very carefully, and make a slice into the dead center of the gum.” With a gentle grip on my wrist, he guided my hand, and it took little more than a jerk for the tooth to cut through the man’s pink flesh. Blood sprayed out. Later, I realized this meant he had just eaten. “Now! Quickly Kyra, before his regeneration reseals the wound, you need to get the incisor into the socket.” My brain, I’m ashamed to say, had basically short-circuited. I was covered in blood, a man was screaming beneath me, and Dr. Martin was being so different from the distant, bespectacled man I’d worked with for the past month. “Now, Kyra!” So yes. I did what he told me to. My body was practically on autopilot, but I remember how man trembled. I held one of his shoulders down, leaning over him for leverage, and I jammed the incisor in that gaping, bleeding socket. He screamed so loud, his body wracked with short, sharp sobs that ran through him in tremors. “Again,” Dr. Martin told me. “I’ll show you how and then you will do the next.” He took the tooth from my hand, that long dagger forged of pearl. The man below was crying. I still couldn’t fully understand him, but I think he was saying he was running out of time. Dr. Martin didn’t even look at him. “This solution, Kyra, is a proprietary blend. He swished around a beaker full of green liquid with a separation that suggested it contained both water and a lipid within. “It stings, but it’ll get the job done.” To my horror, he popped off the cap to the beaker and then poured it directly onto the man’s gum. If he was screaming before, now was different. He was wailing, shrieking. His mouth extended far beyond the boundaries of what an average human can. His chin brushed against his collarbone as he writhed in pain. I noticed for the first time that his molars were not normal. Each one was a pointed tip, looking like jagged, broken glass. His gum had turned a deep shade of black above the empty sockets. “Good,” Dr. Martin said. “Now, that’s the benefit of mixing an activator with an elixir. Think of this like the Sudan IV test. This shows us that the binding agents present in the iron can still be reattached, and the patient is already prepped. Observe.” I heard it. I can repeat what he said, but do I fucking understand? No. Do I want to? No. And if I’m losing you, Luke. Well. I’m fucking lost myself. All the way lost. Dr. Martin pulled out a golden scalpel from his pocket with what appeared to be a ruby embedded in the handle and strange runes carved everywhere, including the blade. As he moved it into the man’s mouth, those runes began to glow, and a peculiar humming sound was much louder than the usual din of machinery emitted from seemingly nowhere. “The color is changing rapidly, Kyra. That means we need to work quickly.” The gums were still dark, but they had faded from black to a deep shade of purple. The man cried silent tears, gripping the chair’s handles with white knuckles. I sucked in a deep breath, my brain finally starting to reboot. Of course, this was the worst time to come to my senses because I was about to witness what can only be described as torture. Dr. Martin gingerly placed the Golden tip of the scalpel in the center of the gap. He readjusted it a few times, poking at the spot in an almost experimental way before he made a contented sound. “Okay,” he told me. “The drill spot has been found. Now comes the hard part.” He applied pressure to the scalpel, rotating it round and round like a slow drill as he synchronized farther into the gum. The purple-black flesh shredded in a spiral pattern, like pencil shavings. “You’ve got to be precise.” He was talking through the whole thing, but I could hardly hear him above the screaming and, worse… the crunching. After sinking about an inch and a half into the man, a loud scrape, like nails on a chalkboard, resounded. My gut dropped. He was scratching against the man’s vomer bone, but unfortunately, his goal was apparently to go beyond it. He kept rotating the scalpel, applying more pressure, and then the cracking and the crunching started—that sickening splintering of bone. It feels like that moment went on forever. In every moment of silence since, I’ve heard that awful sound repeating, echoing through my head. I’ve been trying to drown it out with music, but… God. It was horrible. I thought the darkest period of my life was you. I didn’t think I could ever go beyond rock bottom, but that. That brought me lower. Again. I just don’t know how long that scalpel drilling lasted, but after Dr. Martin was satisfied with the hole he’d made, he took the ‘vampire’ tooth and, much more carefully than he’d treated the incisor, placed it into the heathen socket. The man was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling like it was trying to keep up with an upbeat dubstep song. “Perfect,” Dr. Martin smiled. “We should be able to get the other one too.” The gum with the tooth planted firmly inside was back to an irritated shade of pink, but the empty socket was a deep shade of lavender. “Of course, we’ll need to start now.” He gave the scalpel a hard flick, and a visceral mess of pink and red plopped inches away from my feet. “Kyra, get the other tooth. I’ll begin the initial incision and show you how to finish it.” I could barely tear my eyes away as he poked and prodded at the pink with his scalpel, just as he had done before. Guess I’ve always had a thing for watching disasters, huh? I mean, why else would I willingly look at you for as long as I did? Anyway. I got the milk cup. It still looked like it was strawberry-flavored, but now I was pretty sure it wasn’t. I stuck my hand in and- “Ow!” I shrieked. My blue gloves were sliced open. There was a long, deep gash on my middle three fingers. “Fuck!” It really didn’t hurt that bad. There was an initial sting, but it was like… Do you remember when you were throwing beer bottles, and one of the shards bounced back? How the glass cut your cheek deep, but you didn’t even feel it? You yelled at me when I ran out, crying about the blood, but you didn’t even realize you had been injured. Well, that’s probably partially because your dumb ass head is so dense but also because the glass was so sharp you didn’t feel it. That’s what this was like. It was so sharp that I hardly even felt it. I saw the blood filling the fingertips of my gloves, dripping onto the white linoleum floor, but I didn’t really feel it. “Kyra!” Dr. Martin yelled. “Oh my god! Please tell me you didn’t cut yourself on the tooth.” The scalpel clattered to the ground, and he snatched the milk cup from my hand. He dumped its contents onto the writhing man’s chest. The tooth was just as long and white as the first. The blood splashed onto the floor. I was bleeding so much. Too much, even for the deep gash. The blood was literally spraying out of me. The man sat up, horror shining in his eyes. I barely had time to register his gums-all the way pink now- before the world went black. Distantly, I could hear Dr. Martin yelling at me, giving instructions that my heavy body could not follow. The following day I woke up in Dr. Martin’s basement. And yeah, I’ll get to that, but one thing has been bothering me. How the fuck did they get me out, past Paula, and to his home? Like, what the fuck did Paula think? I haven’t asked cause… Well, it feels weird but damn. She didn’t stop them. The businesses surrounding the office didn’t try to call the cops. Like, I know there’s a slight family resemblance between Dr. Martin and me, but no one had an issue with a bloody girl being carried away by the single most disturbing individual I’ve seen in my life and my short, hobbling uncle? It really makes you wonder what’s wrong with people. And, just so you know, I have lowered my viewpoint on how bad the average person is, but that doesn’t change what I think of you. Everyone sucks, but you suck most of all. Yeah, I get the irony. Me saying people suck. Anyway, Uncle Bill- I only think of him as Dr. Martin in office- literally went the whole nine yards. Fricking chains on my ankles. Called my parents. Made my grandma cry cause now I’m… You know. Changed. Everyone came over dressed in black and I swear it felt like attending my own funeral. I was still pretty in the dark and growing agitated at the chains. I tried being polite, pretending everything was normal, but my stomach felt emptier than ever. “Fucking get me some food!” I shrieked, and I hardly recognized my voice. It echoed so much deeper than I was used to. “Heavens, It’s true! You’re a vampire now,” Mom sobbed. “My little girl!” And my Uncle Bill presented me with the tooth. The dumb tooth that started this. I noticed at the root of it was a strange symbol. “This is what made you like this, Kyra.” He placed it in my hand. There was no sound where I had been cut. “You’ll soon grow fangs of your own and have to feed on blood. Your teeth will be just as capable of initiating the same change in other organisms. This is why you must be taught to control your urges….” And he kept going. On and on and on. Uncle Bill droned about vampires, then Aunt Linda or mom or grandma would cut in, and they’d keep it going. Apparently, my family has been taking care of vampire teeth for years. Like as far back as we can trace our heritage, generation after generation of Martins have been vampire dentists. Isn’t that fucking stupid? And why the fuck did no one tell me? Yeah, you can bet I voiced these concerns. I yelled and cursed and threw a tantrum like I was 17. Like I’d just met a dumbass named Luke and wanted to devote every single aspect of my life to his out-of-date, boy-band-styled hair. The screaming didn’t do anything other than make me feel silly. What’s done is done. I was changed, and the changes kept churning out from there. Everything has been turned around, and my jaw has been aching worse than it did when I got spacers. The teeth are finally in. I’m thoroughly inhuman. I’m something different than J was before. I look in the mirror, and I hardly recognize the thing looking back at me. I almost wish that reflection part of the myth was genuine; then, I wouldn’t have to face those hollow eyes. So, yeah… 20 dollars. You were wrong, Luke. I didn’t know it would be the teeth, but I knew it wasn’t poison or whatever. That means I won the bet—the stupid bet over one of those shitty twilight movies. I win. It’s the teeth. There’s power in the teeth. I hope you don’t believe me. I really do. I bet you think this is all a desperate cry to get your attention, don’t you? You think you’re that important. Well, I’ll let you believe what you want. See me, Luke. Let me show you my teeth and prove I won. Don’t believe me still? Well, I wouldn’t mind performing a demonstration one goddamn bit.

People Keep Dying in my Backyard

yb1f31

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yb1f31/people_keep_dying_in_my_backyard/

The first death happened a few months ago. I heard a noise behind my house, and when I looked out the back window, I was surprised to see a disheveled man walking around one of the big oak trees in the middle of my yard. He looked rather dazed and was half shouting something to himself. Foolishly, I rushed outside to see if he was okay. “I’ll find it. I’ll find it. I’ll find it,” he kept rambling over and over, and he glanced at me with eyes that didn’t seem to see me, before turning back to the tree. “Have you found it?” I held up my hands, wishing I’d thought ahead before rushing outside. This guy was clearly unhinged. “Easy, buddy. There’s nothing here for you. What are you looking for?” His head snapped around, and he locked eyes with me. “But…it has to be here…” I was startled to see blood suddenly spurt from his nose. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed. I cursed and dove to catch him before he hit the ground, and we both tumbled in a heap on the grass. I pulled out my cell phone, then growled in frustration as I tried to dial 911. For some reason, I had no signal, and my call immediately dropped. I tried again, and when the call hung up without even ringing, I put my phone back in my pocket and checked the man’s pulse. There was nothing. I hesitated for a moment, then decided to try to drag him to my front lawn. Maybe I could catch someone’s attention and get help. He was fairly light, but it still took several frantic moments of half carrying, half dragging him to get there. As soon as I plopped him down on the lawn, I checked his pulse again, then started CPR. A car soon drove by, and the driver saw my frantic struggles and jumped out to help. His phone didn’t work either, so he drove up the road until he got enough service to call 911, then raced back to join me and try to help the man. Soon, an ambulance was peeling into my driveway, lights and sirens wailing. But they were far too late. I think the man had been dead the moment he collapsed. I told my story to the police when they arrived, and I eventually heard from the coroner that they thought the cause of death was some sort of brain aneurism, possibly drug-induced. I decided to visit the man’s funeral, and was sad to see few family members and even fewer friends there. I wondered what had put him on the path that eventually led to him dying on my lawn. The next several months were quiet, and I was actually out of town when the second person died. I returned from my trip to find police tape outside my home and a full team of detectives investigating my house. They peppered me with a barrage of questions, but I was just as confused as they were. I never did learn the identity of that victim, but they had apparently also died in my backyard. The police were convinced I was dealing drugs or something that was killing folks. But they didn’t find anything, and after days of searching and investigating, they finally decided to leave me be. After that, I decided to put a lock on my gate to prevent anyone else from getting into my yard. I hoped that would be the end of…whatever this was. I also changed my cell phone provider, as I really didn’t want to be in another situation where I couldn’t make a call. The next person died two weeks later. I was actually out back when it happened, and the first indication that something was wrong was the squealing of car tires from out on the street. A moment later, I heard someone frantically yanking and pounding on the gate to my backyard, followed by a high-pitched scream of rage. A moment later, a middle-aged woman leaped up and grabbed the top of my fence, scrabbling over it frantically. She rolled over the top and fell with a thump to the grass below, but quickly sprang up and started scanning my yard. She eyed me briefly. “Do you know where it is? Never mind, don’t worry. I’ll find it myself. I have to find it!” I shook my head, wondering if I could get past her to the house. I didn’t have my phone with me, of course. Suddenly, the woman dove forward and started tearing at the sod. “It’s here! I know it, it has to be!” She ripped up big clumps of grass, and her shrieks grew louder and louder. I made a break for it and dashed inside to grab my phone. Strangely enough, I had no service once again, even though I’d just called my brother not two hours prior. Yelling in frustration and panic, I ran back out to her and pulled her away from the grass, hoping I could calm her down. She struggled frantically for a moment, then went limp and started sobbing. When I laid her down on her back, she looked up at me with teary eyes. “Please. I need to find it. Help me find it, I must – ” and she suddenly collapsed backwards, her head lolling crazily to the side. Old Mrs. Jones, my next-door neighbor, must’ve heard the commotion, because a moment later, she poked her head over the fence and motioned to me that she was on the phone. At least she had a working phone. The police and EMTs arrived a few minutes later. This time, I was taken to the station for questioning. Angry officers grilled me with questions and accusations for hours, and they even held me overnight on suspicion of murder. However, they eventually had to let me go, even though I was as confused as they were. I told them that my theory was either that there was a cult in town that had become obsessed with my yard, or people were on some drug that drew them to it. I had no other explanations. The nightmare didn’t end though. In fact, it got worse. I bought cameras, floodlights, a landline phone, and an extra cell phone. It didn’t matter. They would all work fine until someone crazy ended up in my yard, and then it was like I was cut off from the rest of the world. The camera footage would short out, my landline would go dead, and if someone showed up at night, even the outdoor lights wouldn’t work. The people started showing up every week, and then every few days. I put razor wire across the top of my fence, and one poor fellow sliced himself up terribly just trying to get in. One old cowboy rammed his pickup straight through my fence, then hopped out and began digging up my flowerbed frantically. He actually talked with me for a moment or two before suddenly collapsing, but I didn’t get much more than that he was looking for something, and he thought he knew where it was. I spent all my savings and rebuilt the fence with a reinforced concrete wall, with double strands of razor wire on top. The city started sending me zoning violations and letters, but I didn’t care. Whatever it took to keep people out of my yard, I’d do it. I was constantly on the edge of a panic attack, wondering when the next body would show up, and knowing there was little I could do to stop it. And people kept coming through and dying, day and night. When old Mrs. Jones tunneled under my wall, I was too numb to be more than amazed. She’d apparently been working on the tunnel for days or weeks, and had done a lot of work with just a shovel and a pickaxe. I found her collapsed next to the tunnel early one morning, her lips blue and her body cold. She’d dug quite a bit of the yard up, and had even hacked at one of the bushes in the corner of the yard before collapsing. I had stopped going to peoples’ funerals, but I made an exception for her funeral last week. Even though I didn’t know her very well, she was my neighbor, and she was always nice to me. Since then, nobody else has come into my backyard these last few days. I’ve been studying the situation though, and I think I’ve figured out what everyone else has missed. I think I know where the thing is. There’s a little patch of yard between two oak trees that nobody has touched. It has to be there. I wanted to share this with everyone before I go out and look for it. My internet has started getting really spotty these last few minutes, so I don’t know if this update will go through, but I don’t really care. I will find it. It has to be there. I will find it. They just didn’t know where to look. I will find it. I will find it. [x](https://ryanbushwriting.com/home/)

My computer is haunted.

ybikbh

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ybikbh/my_computer_is_haunted/

If you have a weak stomach, I’d advise you not to read through this, as I’m going to recall a pretty detailed and graphic memory. Now, I’m not the most tech-savvy individual out there, but I do know for sure that what happened tonight isn’t due to an error or glitch. For context, this all started around July. I’d come home from work at around 4:30, and I’d hop on my computer for an hour or so to briefly check some emails amongst other things. I’m not on the computer much, since I only really use it for work purposes, but I still make sure to maintain the software and keep it updated. I’ve never had any problems with it before, until one particular evening where I came home a little later than usual. I arrived home at around 6:00 that evening, and to my surprise the computer was already on. I knew I hadn’t left it on, but I made the assumption that it might have been from the update the previous night. The weird business started becoming apparent once I’d hopped on it, though. It felt a lot slower, as if the computer was lagging due to something running in the background. I made sure nothing else was open besides my emails, and sure enough it was just my emails. I carried on, but right before I hopped off, I noticed a text file on my desktop. I clicked to open it, and nothing happened. I waited for a while as I assumed it had to do with my computer’s sluggishness, but it never opened, so I deleted it then turned off my PC. For a few days after this, everything seemed normal, albeit my computer was still running slightly slower but nothing too troublesome to deal with. That was until I started noticing strange emails popping up in my inbox every few minutes from what seemed to be the same sender. None of them had a subject, only a date, which read: 26/03/2009 I didn’t know what the date meant, as it had no significance to me— not a birthday, anniversary or any other particular event I could think of. After a while the constant emails started to get annoying, so I blocked the sender. Immediately after this, another email from an unknown sender came through, and the image I saw when I clicked on the file attached will be forever burnt into my brain. A young girl, who looked no older than her early teens, sliced almost entirely in half and hanging from the ceiling by her large intestine and a few nails that pinned her hands to two large pillars on either side of her body. Her bottom half was barely attached to her, only held together by what looked like some duct tape. I was horrified but I couldn’t look away. I was in a trance for a few seconds until a loud garble and screech echoed from my computer, snapping me back to reality. I tried everything to stop the noise but no matter what, it kept going. It seemed to get louder and louder, and I began to panic. I ran outside in pure fear and watched from my window as the computer screen started to get brighter. I could still hear the warped garbling from outside, and as I continued looking into my house, I saw the computer start to flicker and flash, and emerging from the screen I saw what looked like a hand. I ran straight down the driveway and hopped into my car which I had parked on the curb, then drove all the way to my town’s local church. Miraculously, I made it in time to find the Priest, Father Angelo. I got out of my car and practically jumped at him to explain my situation, speaking so quickly I could barely understand myself— it’s a miracle he could translate what I was saying. He took me inside the church and sat me down, then asked me to calmly re-explain the situation. I told him everything, and I watched his expression become somber the more I spoke. After I finished speaking, we both went quiet. We sat in silence for a moment before he sighed, then started to speak. “I believe you have a demonic entity in your home. I don’t know what you’ve done to summon it, or how it has become attached to you, but whatever it is, we must stop it. If she’s already made it this far then…” He stopped there, then got up and began walking for the door. I followed him, and we got into my car and drove back to my house. The second we arrived, unease washed over me. All the lights were now off, and we could no longer see in. The computer screen was off as well, but the front door was still open as I’d left it. I was as nervous as one could imagine, but I followed the priest inside as he led the way with his candle and Holy Cross. The house was so still, it was almost sickening. We walked to the office, where it was still the same as I’d left it— no signs of disruption or an entity anywhere. I looked to my left to see Father Angelo, the expression on his face remaining composed. Suddenly, there was a loud crash behind us, and I whipped my head around to see nothing but darkness. The computer which was now behind me lit up again, with the garbling and screeching practically stunning me. I covered my ears and looked back at Father Angelo, who was now holding his Cross up at the screen and shouting something in Latin. From the screen emerged the hand again, this time followed by a decaying head and half a torso. I fell back, and watched as Father Angelo continued to shout. The lights in my house were now flashing and buzzing, and the floor beneath me felt like it was going to crumble apart. Father Angelo screamed out, no longer chanting Latin, instead begging to the creature. “Please! Stop this!” He shouted. “I’m so sorry, I never should have left you there. I’m sorry!” The screeching got louder, and just when I thought it was the end for us, Father Angelo reached into his pocket and grabbed a vile of Holy Water. He doused the creature as well as my computer in it, and the creature let out an unholy cry before disintegrating and vanishing. Father Angelo didn’t hesitate to douse my computer in the Holy Water shortly after. He slumped to the floor, huffing and puffing. His face was sweating and his eyes watering— I didn’t dare to ask questions. After a few moments, we both got up, and I thanked him. He left, and I called my brother and asked if I could stay with him for a few nights to recollect myself. Since that happened, I’ve found a new place, and moved far from where it all happened. I burnt all the belongings in that office before I left, and bought myself a new computer. I never heard from or saw Father Angelo again, and for a few months, everything seemed to be going okay. But tonight on the news, they reported the death of a well known and beloved priest; Father Angelo had died at age 57 of seemingly natural causes. The report went on to say that he was buried in the same cemetery that honoured his late wife and daughter, who both died in March of 2009. When the date flashed across the screen, a chill ran down my spine. I’ve been feeling uneasy, and I know I won’t be able to sleep well. My mind is racing, hundreds of thoughts rushing through at the same time. It’s now 11 PM as I’ve finished typing this, and I’ve been distracted again by the dim light and low hum of my computer in the other room.

I saw a ghost and I want to know if my experience is a common one

yc1nev

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yc1nev/i_saw_a_ghost_and_i_want_to_know_if_my_experience/

This was 4 years ago when I (22f) was 18 years old. I was in my first semester of university (in Canada) and my roommate's parents' cattle farm and home was a couple hours from school. For our fall break my roommate (18f) invited me and two of our close friends (18 f&m) at the time to stay at her house for the week. Her parents recently moved into this farmhouse, I'm not exactly how old it was but I think about 100 years, give or take. We all expected a week of good home cooked meals, studying, hanging out, and checking out her parents' cattle farm. A few days in and were having a great time relaxing and getting some work done. One night her parents tell us they're going down the road for a party at a neighbour's place and they ask us to watch her younger siblings. Us four take this opportunity to have a few drinks and enjoy the night on our own. My roommate put her siblings to bed, we helped with some bedtime reading, and we all went downstairs to the kitchen afterwards and waited about an hour so that we knew the kids were fully asleep before we start having drinks. Now, this is where I need to know if what I saw was legit, I am so sure it is what I think. We were all a couple drinks in, I was tippsy, but not *drunk*. Fully functional and aware of my surroundings. I was standing on one side of the kitchen, leaning on the counter when I looked from the kitchen table where the other 3 were sitting (directly in front of me) towards to door to the mudroom (where the staircase to upstairs is). I saw a pitch black 3 foot-ish shadow in the doorway, it was there for about a full 2 seconds before it darted into the mudroom. And by darted, I mean DARTED, it was like a blink, but I never took my eyes off it once I saw it in the doorway. And this wasn't something I saw out of the corner of my eye. I was looking directly at it and saw it move from the doorway, out of view into the mudroom. My first thought is "oops we've been too loud and woken up one of the kids." So, I walked over to the door and look into the mudroom and there is no one there. And this house is old, the stairs would have made one hell of a noise even if one of the kids tried to run up the stairs and down the hall to get back to bed. So, I'm standing there with this odd gut feeling like "this is really weird." I'm standing in the middle of the mudroom looking around and I yell to my roommate in the kitchen "Hey where's the dog." Her parents had this huge black farm dog whose head is at 3 feet tall, but he is an outside only dog. My roommate of course says back to me "he's outside in the barn." That could have been the only real explanation. Something in me told me to turn on my heel and I ran the few steps back into the kitchen and across the room. I was full on freaking out. My friends were asking me what's wrong and I told them exactly what I saw, thinking it was one of the kids, and if it couldn't be the kids or the dog then what the hell was that. I KNOW what I saw, and I looked directly at it. It wasn't a flash, and it wasn't out of the corner of my eye, it was the shape of a small kid and there for a full 2-count. I told them I saw something but I dont know what it was. Before we got to her place for the week, my roommate told us half-jokingly that the grandson of the man who used to live here told her that the place was haunted. My roommate didn't know whether to believe him or not because she had walked in on her little siblings (6f & 4m) talking to "imaginary friends" and one had drawn a black shadow thing and told her that it was this imaginary friend (she told us this after I told her what I saw). We're all freaking out when we start connecting the dots like, oh shit that could have been a ghost. She ends up texting the grandson guy what I saw, and he texts back to us in the morning say he'd seen a shadowy figure just like I'd seen a couple of times growing up around the house and what I saw is probably "Justin." Apparently, his grandfather helped out this single mother with a little boy and girl, giving them a play to stay. Justin was the little boy who lived on the farm and was killed in an accident involving being pulled into a big spinning generator thing (??? i have no idea). We were too spooked to ask follow-up questions, but the grandson was fully like "oh yea I've seen that before, its Justin, I think he's harmless and just checking things out." So, we also ending up thinking he was talking to her younger siblings because he just wanted friends. So, does anyone have any input about ghosts, or could anyone justify what I saw?

Every night something comes by my cabin.

ybkk59

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ybkk59/every_night_something_comes_by_my_cabin/

​ The noises started about a week ago. I used to think it was just an animal, but now I’m getting a bit more concerned. For some backup information, I live alone out in the countryside in Mississippi where I have an average-sized, cozy cabin that I stay in during the winter when I want to get away from the city. My nearest neighbor, Bill, lives two miles away from my cabin, leaving lots of untouched land in my favor. I am a stay-at-home book editor so I don’t usually need to leave my cabin unless it's to get groceries or occasionally visit friends and family. I live a rather quiet life out here, and I have limited human contact other than through my work laptop and my phone, although the Wifi out here is rather spotty and a bit hard to use. Ever since a week ago, I have been having trouble sleeping. My bedroom is the largest room in the cabin, and the comfiest. The walls are made of dark brown creaky oak wood and the floor is composed of worn down carpet. My desk sits right by a huge window that overlooks the forest and gives me a pretty good view of the front of my house. My bed is placed right beside my desk and a small bathroom and closet face opposite to it. Usually, I would keep the curtains open when I went to bed because I enjoyed the feeling of waking up with the sun shining on me and the birds chirping. Now I am more hesitant about doing that. The night it started, everything was seemingly normal. I had just finished reading over a client’s manuscript at about 12:30 AM, and was shutting my laptop. I stood up, stretching as I had been sitting there for hours on end. I walked over to my nightstand by my bed and placed my phone down and began to head towards the bathroom. It was a small room, barely enough to fit four people, and my hygienic items were all cluttered messily on the bathroom counter beside my sink. Just as I had been reaching for my toothbrush, a small *thump* echoed throughout my cabin. Raising an eyebrow, I looked around. The following seconds consisted of silence excluding the soft rumble of wind on the cabin windows. I shrugged, putting it off and deciding it must’ve been the old bedroom walls as I was used to a lot of random noises coming from them. I turned on the sink to wash my toothbrush, frowning at the murky tap water. The man I bought the cabin from had repeatedly insisted that the water was safe to drink, it just looked odd and that was what all water looked like out here. It still had been quite hard to get used to, as I had always been a bit of a germaphobe. Oddly enough, when I first bought the cabin, the man had also handed me survival gear and a motion sensing camera claiming that it was “just in case”, which had weirded me out quite a lot when I came here for the first time, although I never really thought about it. When I finished brushing my teeth and washing my face, I turned out the bathroom light and headed back towards my bed. The bedroom light had already been turned off so the only source of light was from the bright white crescent moon that was peeking out at me from behind the pine trees. Slipping into bed and pulling my blanket over me, it didn’t take long for me to drift to sleep. A few hours later, I awoke suddenly to that same thumping noise. I wiped my eyes groggily and rolled over to face my nightstand. Still half asleep I turned on my phone to check what time it was. The bright light illuminated my room and shined directly into my eyes, making them water. *Thump.* The noise began again, I hadn’t even realized it had stopped. It was a quite odd pattern, every now and then the sound would begin for a few seconds and then stop for a minute or two. I made out the time on my phone to be 2:47 AM. I sat up in bed, placing my phone back down. I looked sideways to glance out of the window, and was greeted by almost pitch darkness. I could just barely make out the tall figures of the trees. As the thumping noise came to a halt again, I came to the conclusion that it was probably some animal rummaging around the sides of my house. There have been a lot of black bear problems out here since campers have been feeding them and making them more hostile, and we also do have quite a bit of raccoons and deer. Hoping it wasn’t a bear, I rolled back over and placed my pillow on top of my head in an attempt to block out the noise. I believe a few minutes passed again before the sound began again. Yet, this time it seemed to be much louder.. or closer. I sighed and tried to dismiss the noise, annoyed. As the thumping noise continued it seemed to break off from its previous pattern. It would pause for a few seconds and then start again instead of waiting a few minutes. I tried to ignore the sound, wanting to sleep. As a few more minutes went by the sound quieted down and I ended up falling into a restless sleep. That was the first time the noises started. Ever since then, the same thing has happened every single night. I will wake up near 2:30 AM and the noises will get louder and louder until they stop completely. Last night, when I woke up to the noises I began to get a little nervous. Instead of a thumping noise it had been tapping on the window. Whatever it was must’ve been looking in at me. Chills crawled down my spine as I imagined a bear by the window, trying to get in. I had woken up that next morning with a terrible headache which I assumed was from my now constant lack of sleep. Late in the afternoon I had been planning on how to get rid of the noise, I had decided to close the curtains and leave my porch light on. Determined to figure out the source of the sound, I rummaged through the package the cabin’s former owner had given me and fished out the motion sensing camera. I laughed to myself, finding it quite amusing that I had found a use for it after all. I made my way to my front door and headed towards my bedroom window. I hoisted the camera up and attached it to the bottom of the cabin roof and made it so that I had a perfect view of my window and most of my front yard. I headed back into my room and grabbed my phone so I could set it up there so when there was motion I would be alerted. I smiled to myself, glad I had found a way to figure out what had been making the noise. For the rest of the day, I worked at my desk with great ease, feeling like a heavy weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Soon, the sun began to set and the sky was painted beautifully with red, orange and yellow. I made myself a cup of hot tea and sat down in my living room with a book in order to pass the time. I finally felt at peace knowing that I would figure out what this sound is soon and I would stop it and go back to my normal cabin life. The comforting sound of birds singing faded slowly after about 30 minutes of reading and I sat up, bookmarking my page and placing it back on the dresser it sat on. I made sure I left the porch light on and headed towards my bedroom where I got ready for bed and then made my way under my blankets, double checking that my curtains were closed before I went to sleep. *Ding.* I was suddenly shaken awake by a loud notification from my phone. I sat up quickly, reaching for my phone wearily. My eyes adjusted to the sudden bright light after a few seconds and the time, of course, read 2:28 AM and I had one unread notification from the motion camera app I had downloaded earlier before. I hesitantly entered my phone passcode and then began to open the app. As it opened, a faint thumping noise began once again. When the app did open I hurriedly opened the camera, desperate to see what the reason behind my suffering was. I didn’t have much of a reaction at first. Thanks to the porch light, I could make out a figure huddled near the bottom of the cabin, making weird back and forth motions which caused the thumping noise, its small frame resembling a somewhat distorted raccoon. I chuckled quietly, I found it comical that this entire time it had been a mere raccoon tapping on my window. Though I regretted that in an instant. The thing I thought was a raccoon suddenly shot up at what I believe to be my laugh. It definitely wasn’t a raccoon. I gasped and my hand shot to my mouth. A large human-like figure stood by the window. Its entire body looked to be stretched and I could make out the outlines of its bones just by looking closely. Its bones looked to be cramped inside its build, almost as if they were screaming to get out of it. It had matted long hair falling from the back of its head and it was staring intently at my window. My entire body was trembling as it reached up one of what I think were its hands and started tapping. *Tap. Tap. Tap*. I let out a screech and glued my eyes to the camera. I felt as if I looked away for a split second it would get away. Its eyes suddenly darted towards the camera and I stifled a sob of terror when I saw its face. It looked human-like, though its eyes were terribly small and looked like black beads. Its arms looked like they were backwards and every movement it made seemed painful or forced, I couldn’t really make it out. Its lips were twisted in an awful, gut-wrenching smile that seemed to go from one side of its face to the other. It just smiled at me. And smiled. Its expression didn’t change though whatever it was seemed to be twitching. I didn’t know what to do. I was completely frozen in place and my heart hammered in my throat. I was convinced whatever the thing was outside of my window could hear my heartbeat it was so loud. The silence was deafening as it seemed to be staring back at me through the camera. My hands were cold and clammy as I finally let the camera go, trying to calm myself down and deciding that this can’t be real. Almost as soon as I looked away from the camera, the tapping began again. I was sick with fear and tired of just sitting there. “LEAVE!” I shouted as loud as I could, raw panic filling my voice. I was met with silence and I quickly grabbed the camera once again and checked, holding my breath. It was staring intently at the camera still, though its expression looked sad. What I thought were its eyebrows were furrowed down against each other and its grin had turned into a very long frown. Fear throbbed inside me. Again, I shouted at it. Its head lashed to face the window instead of the camera. It shriveled backwards and began to stand on all fours. A strange hissing sound came from my window. It hastily slid off into the forest, its limbs bending and crumpling out of shape in a way that made me feel sick. I could see its head bobbing as it gained more distance and eventually it disappeared from sight. My heart was still pounding and I was sweating like crazy and I checked the time once again. 3:58 AM. The time had gone by so quickly and I hadn’t even realized. I sighed in relief, knowing it wasn’t near my window anymore. Carefully, I slid out of bed and turned my lights on knowing I wasn’t going to sleep again. I opened my laptop and began typing this on an empty sheet because writing about traumatic events had always helped me calm down in the past. But no matter how much I wrote on here, I still felt terrible. Like I’d never recover. I’ve been writing this for about an hour now, and the sun is going to come up pretty soon but it is still very dark out. I really do hope the sun rises soon, though. I haven’t checked the camera once since I saw that thing, and now I’m regretting that decision. Because now I hear something trying to open my front door. And I just remembered I left it unlocked.

Gifts From The Sea

ybocwb

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ybocwb/gifts_from_the_sea/

"Traditions. Our survival, as a species, depends entirely on our collective behavior. Traditions are collections of behavior that time has proven are good for our species survival." Mr. Hisomeru told me before he ate some of the raw seafood between us. I stared at him until my eyes burned. Meg and her mother were still in the bathroom. The whole restaurant seemed to be watching us. I felt like that moment was the crossroad of my life. If I had gotten up and dropped my napkin and left, then nothing would have changed. I realized I could go back to school and leave Meg with her parents, and we would not get married. It would all be over. "You do not approve of me, because I am not like you?" I asked him. I heard myself speaking, unsure how I had the boldness to speak so plainly to him. Perhaps it was the realization that I could walk away or else he would make me walk away. I wasn't going to marry his daughter; Mr. Hisomeru was a powerful man and he had said 'no'. Except he hadn't actually said 'no' yet. I felt like he had, but he hadn't. He had something on his mind. He wanted to confide something deep and dark and horrible in me. He saw me very differently than I thought he did, in that moment, in the restaurant. "Sushi is uncooked fish." He seemed to be ruminating something else while he spoke. I attempted to engage while some caprice of frustration made my choice of words facetious sounding: "Sushi is half-assed and homophobic. The *Red Hot Chili Peppers* say: 'I like the sushi 'cause it's never touched a frying pan' and that's that." I snapped. Mr. Hisomeru slowly raised one eyebrow and sipped his water. He cleared his throat, a satisfied 'ah'. He looked intently at me and spoke: "You remind me of someone I have learned to fear and respect. You are defiant and a little crazy - inspired. An artist - no doubt." Mr. Hisomeru spoke carefully to articulate himself with precision in his third language of English. "And I like you very much. I understand my daughter's passion. I am not angry with you about the pregnancy. I am looking forward to having you for a son, David." Mr. Hisomeru sounded sincere and strangely so, after my little outburst. "Then what is it? What is this?" I gestured at his demeanor, his coldness, his distance. Mr. Hisomeru had calculatedly put me down since we had met an hour earlier and relentlessly observed me, as though he were inspecting me for flaws and finding them in abundance. "I need your help. I have searched for someone like you and my greater quest is at a standstill. I find it ironic that I did not consider the man Meg described as anything but a reflection. Yet here you are: perfect. I do not know what to think or say. I feel embarrassed that I have so much to say to you and I am so impatient to get to know you. I am proud of Meg and I am...I am...I am proud of you." Mr. Hisomeru was not bothered by my insolence. He contradicted himself by telling me that his real feelings were positive. I felt my face go red and hot. I did not know how to take his sudden departure from his formalized degradations. "I misunderstood you." I said quietly to him. "Don't." Mr. Hisomeru said sternly. "I was precisely like you are - when I was a student. I also found myself distracted and my studies halted by finding a woman that I loved as dearly as you love Meg. I also had the same initial goal of finding the last great secret of this world. I also knew where to look. Most of all, you are just like me, you do not know how to apologize." "I was going to marry her despite you." I admitted. "I knew I should go, but I couldn't." "I know." Mr. Hisomeru had a strange, almost imperceptible smile. "You do not know when it is time to give up, you do not realize when you are caught, trapped." "What is your greater quest?" I asked him. "To my business partners I am a happily married fisherman with one child: a grown daughter. I have humbly elevated myself to the owner of a small fleet and a facility where we now attempt to breed captive Pacific eels." "Attempt?" I wondered. "Eels do not breed in captivity?" "Eels do not breed." Mr. Hisomeru stated. "The quest." I realized. "It is an old one. The Holy Grail of Science." "To my son I am King Arthur. A man only really cares about what his son sees in him, not the rest of the world." Mr. Hisomeru's eyes watered slightly. He was being sincere with me. "I feel like I've known you much longer than this dinner." I nodded. "We share a truth, and it is only the first." Mr. Hisomeru made a smile and in that gaze: I saw a glimpse of the horrors to come. The women returned to the table and seemed grave. They had discussed the bleak interaction between me and Dad and decided things were not going well. We (Dad and I) surprised and delighted them when we reached across the table to feed each other a piece of sushi with our chopsticks. Then Mr. Hisomeru ordered the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu and told the waiter that we were celebrating an engagement. I thought about that dinner many times. I thought about how that was the moment when everything changed for me. I had begun a path of destiny, one that would lead to my fate and the discovery of a lifetime. It was a memory of my first step on a path towards ultimate horror. While I sat in Venya Industries fishing fleet administration with my application: I felt strangely nervous. I couldn't speak Japanese or Hindi and I felt like I had no relevant skills or education. I questioned what I was doing there and how I had arrived. I wanted the job, I wanted to join Mr. Hisomeru on his quest, that is all I knew. I knew I loved Meg and that she was even more nervous about my interview. If I didn't get the job, what would I tell her? What would her parents say? "David Whitemoon?" The heavily accented recruiter called me into her office. I looked around, wondering about the size of the international organization. She had my file in front of her and had read it. I waited for her to ask me something but instead she just sat filing her nails. I cleared my throat and stopped waiting when I asked: "Did I get the job?" I asked. "Nepotism is alive and well, Mr. Whitemoon." She looked away from me to gaze at a giant crab claw taxidermied and mounted on a board on her wall. "Jokes aside, what exactly are the qualifications for the job?" I asked. She pondered my English and responded: "You are incomplete of many skills: swimmer, scientist, diver, biologist. Son of important business partner. You have the job. Paid internship for student. That is job I have for you." She didn't look at me. "Details printed out for you. Staying at company apartment. You leave with expedition in three weeks." When she stopped talking and began humming to herself: I got up and took the printout and left. I spent the last of my money on the taxi back to the company apartment. Twelve other employees from Venya and Nippon were already staying there, with room for more. I became acquainted with all of them, although none of them spoke English. While the weeks went on, I studied my classes online and met more sailors and scientists gathered for the expedition. Our vessel, *Miyamoto*, was owned by my future father-in-law. As we all went from the shuttle up the gangplank with our bags, I saw him there: Mr. Hisomeru. I looked at him watching his expedition team boarding. He looked very proud and regal. Later, alone, Mr. Hisomeru told me the most vital details of our mission. Only he and I knew the exact scope of our search. Each of the other team members all knew what they needed to know to do their part and Captain Ishikawa and his crew were competent enough to get us to the expedition site. "You must know we are going after the Atlantic eel, in the Sargasso Sea. The mythology, the facts, these are just the tip of the iceberg. We will find out the truth." Mr. Hisomeru began. "Years ago, there were researchers that tried to watch eels breeding under the sargassum using cages suspended from buoys. If all we had left to do to solve the great mystery is that, then it would have worked. Unfortunately, the cages were all destroyed by something unknown and unseen. Since the beginning this is always what happens, anyone who seeks the secrets of the eel only finds deeper mysteries. Maddening mysteries." "Something is down there." I deducted. "Is there?" Mr. Hisomeru gestured for me to elaborate. "The eels are born there and return there. They do not breed. Somehow, they find their way from fresh water back to the darkness and horror of their birth. What is down there, that is nowhere else?" I thought-out-loud. "Questions I have asked. Consider that the count of mature eels does not change from season to season. How do the eels know when they will arrive, if they all leave from different places and at different times to return home? The seasonal fishing of eels, traditional harvests, only anticipate where and when the eels will migrate. Greatly curious scientists have spent their lives and funding at sea, narrowing it down. Such knowledge is still missing the big picture." Mr. Hisomeru walked slowly to a hand drawn map of the coasts where eels were fished for, colored to match the seasonal fishing and the maturity of the eels in the waters. "We've known for a long time that they return to the Sargasso and never leave." My voice trailed after his, following his thoughts to their conclusion. "And that young eels come from there." Mr. Hisomeru sighed and reverted his thoughts to dismiss what we thought we knew already: "Yet they do not go there and nest in the sargassum and they do not breed. Aristotle thought that eels must spawn from mud, Freud that they are sexless. Svennson wrote that Eel is, for lack of scientific quantification, truly mystical." Mr. Hisomeru looked at me, from his map, over his shoulder. A strange and alien sensation of horror began to rise up inside me as I imagined the shaded sea under the green umbrage full of writhing eels. I knew then what I was expected to do. There was something beneath the mass of knotted serpents that watched them and knew them. Something that lived always in darkness and felt worshipped. A pillar of the oceans, a monster, something beyond what I could imagine, something truly beyond comprehension. I must have looked pale as my mind's eye anticipated the world I would see down there. "If you do not wish to discover it, if you are too afraid..." Mr. Hisomeru turned and looked at me, concern, disappointment and relief all evident on his unmasked expression towards me. "This is what you have chosen me for." I said with my voice trembling. "I chose you?" Mr. Hisomeru denied it with his tone-of-voice. "This is greater than you or I. This quest started thousands of years ago. It is more important than visiting the moon or splitting the atom. The secret, the last secret, is also the first." Mr. Hisomeru sounded like he found Eel to be mystical. "My fears and my wishes are in conflict. I want to see my child born." I realized there was certain danger, even from imaginary sea monsters. "My grandchild will be born into one of two worlds." Mr. Hisomeru spelled it out for me. "This old world or one that the father has made whole." "I see." I agreed. I intended to conquer my fears. I was an expert swimmer, a diver, a student of biology and I was a scientist; I had a job to do. The weather held up during the first four days of the expedition. We collected the buoys set out in the previous weeks by *Vimana* on the company's precursor expedition. The cages under them were all missing or mangled. "The underwater trail cameras show the eels in the light. We uploaded as many pictures to satellite as we could and then we tried to recover the cameras. As you can see by the condition of the cages: the cameras did not survive." Dr. Ryu reported what her team had found. "These images show that the cages were destroyed while the eels were inside. When the cages were badly damaged enough, the eels escaped." "What destroyed the cages?" I asked after there was a pause in the report. It was what everyone was wondering. "Exactly." Dr. Ryu pointed at me and then shrugged. "Who takes it from here?" "Thank you, Dr. Ryu and Team A. Your work will be handed over to my research laboratories at Nippon and also to Venya. We have to keep the investors informed of our progress out here. You all may go back to your cabins; Team B will be briefed independently." Mr. Hisomeru told Dr. Ryu and the rest of Team A. When only Team B remained, he looked at me and the others. "You all have your orders when you go down there. You are there to support Whitemoon, your dive leader. The difficulties of this dive rate it as extremely hazardous, dangerous even. Nobody has attempted this before and if you fail, if we have any casualties, I mean, it will probably be the last. That is why I am going to say that we only have one chance. That is why only Whitemoon will complete the dive. David is the only one among you that I trust with our future." "Sir, may I ask?" Riddin raised his hand. The whole dive team was required to speak English for my benefit and Riddin and Neveah were both Americans, like me. "You may ask, but I doubt I could answer and if I could, I probably wouldn't." Mr. Hisomeru disclaimed. "What do you expect to find down there?" Riddin seemed boyish and jocular as he smirked. "The truth." Mr. Hisomeru said honestly. We prepared for our first and possibly our only dive. I felt like we should be getting prayed over by a chaplain or something, even though I had no beliefs. We all felt nervous and made our preparations in a kind of uneasy silence. Riddin kept telling inappropriate jokes that ended with him asking us "Get it?" until Neveah said to him: "Nobody is laughing except you. Get it?" I inspected everyone's gear and then I said: "It is time." Neveah was to go first into the water, and I was to be next. After her and me the rest of the team followed. They remained in position, filming, holding lights and communicating with *Miyamoto*. I descended into the darkness. The light quickly faded. The chatter became more scrambled. I was approaching my maximum depth and I had never felt so alone and helpless in all my life. Then the silence and the cold and the darkness were absolute. I was in another world. The seafloor was below me somewhere. Down there, beyond my limits, an even darker and more terrifying landscape lay as a wasteland that had never known daylight. Down there something lurked, waited and knew the answers I was there to learn. I could not control my imagination. Fear began to take hold of me as I hovered at my maximum depth, noting that I was surrounded by living creatures, all of them eels. They swam lazily, waiting for something as I did. They knew what we were there for, and I did not. "What am I doing here?" I asked. "Unclear, repeat. Over." Neveah's voice was digitally reconstructed by the communication equipment. She sounded robotic and far away. It only added to the surreal dread I was feeling. The eels seemed to hesitate. It felt like the moment between a flash of lightning and a thunderclap. Then some massive thing I could not identify rose just past me and took them. It was there, taking them, then it was gone, swiftly descending back into the world of night everlasting. "There's something down here." I choked on the words, trying to whisper them quietly. I felt exposed, surrounded and watched. The eels were gone, would I be next? Terror was growing inside of me; I could not say when it began or how it blossomed. I felt the edge of panic and fought it down, knowing that such hysteria would certainly get me killed. Whatever was there should strike if I tried any sudden movement. Even if I escaped and swam back up as fast as I could then the nitrogen in my body could boil and I would die even more horribly. Two of my dive team moved into a closer position, thinking I wanted them to. They shone lights down on me and I gestured to them that I was alright and to hold their position. With the lights on me I somehow felt even more exposed than I did in the darkness. I still couldn't see anything. I moved forward at my depth, slowly, while they followed me from above with the underwater lights. I found another swarm of eels congregating and I watched and waited. "Is the camera getting this?" I pointed. I was trembling in dread and barely able to maintain my composure. I fantasized about being safe at home and holding my newborn. My mind rejected the peaceful anticipation and insisted I was in serious danger. "The cameras are rolling on Whitemoon. Over." Riddin's voice assured me. I checked my diver's watch and sighed. There was no more time to wait as well as the fact that my nerves were gone. I feared the part of me that was doing the job despite the obvious morbidity. I heard the voice saying, in my thoughts: *'Someone I learned to fear and respect'*. I had to begin my gradual ascent. It was when I left my position that the nightmares became reality. At that moment I was trapped, caught, unable to escape. Between two worlds, one of light and one of dark, one that I belonged to and the other my bane, I was held. I did not see what happened to Riddin. There was a camera that he had which would show what happened, if it were ever recovered. Perhaps it will someday wash up on a beach; but judging on the capacity of the thing that took him, that would be unlikely. After we listened to his screams of insane horror in our communications, all of us were pushed over the precipice of fathomless scare. I don't remember what I said, the recording failed to catch my voice. My team opted to take their chances with a rapid ascent. They wanted out of the water. I couldn't blame them. I had reached a level of panic that I could not function within. I had frozen in hesitation, unable to see or know from which direction the greater danger was coming. Should I kill myself with a rapid ascent or feed myself to whatever had gone for Riddin? Like a drunk I blacked out. My mind was gone somewhere else while my internal amphibian gave the commands from the reptile-layer in my brain. While my skull became the bedlam of an insane asylum my body gently hovered, taking calculated steps towards the surface until I was retrieved. I was aboard *Miyamoto* in the sick bay. Only our nurse Yui and Mr. Hisomeru were with me. I blinked and recalled, like the black fog of an evil dream, the sound of Riddin being taken, as his cries explained that the horror was real. "Riddin?" I sounded hoarse. I sat up and cleared my throat. "We have lost Riddin. The mission is over. We had to report his death and now we are done. They are shutting us down." Mr. Hisomeru sounded bitter. "It's down there. We found something. It was huge, taking eels." I told him. He looked up and the spark of King Arthur was in his eyes for just one instant. Then he remembered the quest was at an end. We had failed. "Leave us." Mr. Hisomeru told Yui. She obeyed and silently left us alone. "What is it?" I asked. "I cannot send the team back down there. We only have six hours until we must be underway. Captain Ishikawa insists on honoring our orders." Mr. Hisomeru explained. "That's plenty of time." I heard myself saying. I couldn't believe I was tempted to return to the realm of inescapable night. Then I could feel the crawl on my skin of the nearby lunging thing, taking whole swarms of eels in a bite, or even a diver. "I'm not losing you down there." Mr. Hisomeru objected. "We lose everything, then?" I asked. He sighed and realized I was right. "Let me speak to Captain Ishikawa. I do own this ship, should have some say in our departure schedule." Mr. Hisomeru stood to go. "Get some rest. Yui will have to approve of your condition before you dive." "She isn't a doctor." I noted. "For my own worries, son, for me." He put his hand on my right shoulder before he left me alone. When I was alone in the dark, I was back there, in the dark and all alone, the world above was far away. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine being home. It wasn't easy. Instead, my thoughts reassembled themselves in a dream, a memory, an epiphany. I knew what was down there. I realized: *Everyone does, we just choose to believe that it isn't real*. That is the eels' secret: Eel accepts it. It is their destroyer - their creator. Captain Ishikawa wanted to see me before I dived. He couldn't speak English, so Mr. Hisomeru translated. "He is telling you that he does not want you to go into the water. Losing one man is bad enough, he does not believe you will survive. He says that today he has come to believe in sea monsters." "The real monster we face is not in the water. The real monster is the monster of ignorance." I told him. Mr. Hisomeru translated my words as the captain shook his head and looked at the two of us in comparison before he left us alone. "There is a storm coming. We cannot hold back the weather." Mr. Hisomeru plotted. "Activity down there precedes the violent seas." I hypothesized. "We will find what we are looking for." Mr. Hisomeru anticipated. He agreed that the approach of the weather was fortunate for our efforts, even while it limited them. "I will dive alone, without support. I will have to take the camera and light with me." I understood, with anxiety. Even without the danger the difficulty alone presented potential hazards. "I don't know how I will do it." "I will go." Neveah was there, in the portal. "I don't think so." Mr. Hisomeru told her without looking at her. "Cameras rolling on Whitemoon, get it?" Neveah argued strangely. "Let me finish this." Mr. Hisomeru sighed as he saw the look on my face. "Very well. Be ready to dive in one hour." "I'm ready now." Neveah held herself akimbo. "Let me suit up." I got up, fatigue washing over me briefly, despite the rest I'd had. It was the fear, rooted deeply in me, that took my energy like the creature had taken the eels. "It comes from below. So, we film from below, instead of the strike zone." Neveah added her thoughts. Our eyes widened as we realized she was right. "You are right. We both complete the dive. It is how we will find the Grail." I smiled at her plan. The time it took to get back into the water was spent in morbid illumination. Then we were in the holy black seas, waters filled with living things. "I am afraid." Neveah confessed. "So too am I. Over." I told her. I felt nothing. The fear had become so familiar that it had somehow become a comfort, assuring me I had not met a most horrendous fate. We found a swarm of praying eels as they slowly circled in sacred holding patterns. Together they formed a mouthful for their god. We were filming, waiting while every second seemed eternal. At any moment the strike would happen, instantly and unavoidable. We were beneath the swarm and our light shone upward. I felt safer, outside the buffet line. We were not safe, it was only a good camera angle. The eels slowed, coming together and holding perfectly still. I sensed it in the water beneath us, I felt what they felt. Neveah said "Whitemoon." and then she was gone, or rather, I was. It had come from below and taken me in a single gulp. I was disoriented, engulfed and pressed. I was inside the Grail, as it retracted to the depths that were its home. Something slick was wriggling along the lining inside of it. I took a handful of it and felt a strange push from below. Inspired by the reaction I pushed my hand into the soft interior. Every time I did, I was drawn deeper into it and crushed more. I was able to get my dive knife in my other hand. I cut into the Grail, and I saw light as it launched towards Neveah for a second attack. In a cloud of blood: I was ejected from it, still alive. "You're alive!" Neveah called me, shining her light into the murky crimson. All around me were newborn eels. I still grasped what I had taken from inside. We made our ascent, our horrible fears manifesting as manic laughter. Perhaps something was wrong with our mixture. "Get it?" Neveah kept saying. The weather had begun to menace *Miyamoto*. In the diver's prep room I finally ungrasped my prize. They lay there wriggling on the table while Neveah, Mr. Hisomeru and I stared and smiled like lunatics. Living eels, freshly born. Mr. Hisomeru hugged me and said into my ear quietly, so the monsters could not hear: "While you were down there, I got a call from home. Just a few weeks premature, they will be fine. Twins." "I guess that is two good reasons to marry Meg." I laughed and grinned. "Well, son, it is tradition."

The Friendly Little Hamster

ybalfk

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ybalfk/the_friendly_little_hamster/

Alright, look. I’m aware of what people are going to say: *‘If you weren’t looking for trouble, then you shouldn’t have broken into that guys house.’* Let me just address this right off the bat with a simple ‘*Fuck you.*’ ​ You don’t know the kind of life I’ve lived and you don’t know the circumstances that led me here! I’m not gonna fucking tell you either. Firstly, I don’t have to fucking justify myself to you, some asshole reading this on the internet! And secondly, because I don’t want anyone tracking my ass down and arresting me! Yeah. Sorry. You’re not getting my life story here. I’m not even gonna tell you my real name. You can just call me Joe, and all you need to know about me is that I need more money than I’m gonna get from just my 9-5 job, and I’ll do whatever I have to do, to get that money. If sometimes, that means robbing some rich asshole's house, then so be it. ​ Now - I’m not gonna pretend I’m the world's most experienced burglar and I’m no criminal genius either. Every now and then, me and a guy I knew (let’s call him Tim). would run a job on a house that we thought might have some good shit in it. We’d scout the place out, plan the whole operation and when the time was right, we’d make our move. ​ We weren’t really so reckless as to pull a smash and grab. The name of the game here was stealth. I’m not gonna give away all of our secrets here, but I will say that it’s a lot easier than you might think for someone to make a copy of your housekey. *A lot easier.* Saying too much might give me away, but you could probably figure out how to do it with a quick Google search. ​ Anyways, once we had our copy of the key, we’d wait until the homeowners were away on vacation, or if we were really desperate wait until everyone seemed to be in bed. Then we’d just walk in through the front door. I had a truck I always parked out front, and we could just grab whatever was easy to take and be gone within the hour. The lighter and easier to carry something was, the more likely we were to take it. Laptops, phones, video game consoles, shit we could sell for some money. We didn’t usually take anything that big, like televisions or shit like that. Just small shit we could easily carry. ​ We only ever went upstairs if we knew the house was empty, but the houses where we could do that usually netted us a bigger payday. Jewelry, cash, watches. A few times, we even found some of those fireproof safes, people tend to keep their valuables in. I always thought that it wasn’t very safe if I could just pick it up and walk off with it, but what the fuck did I know? It was hit and miss as to whether there was anything actually important in those safes or not. Usually it was just crap like passports, birth certificates, and shit like that. I actually did have a few buyers interested in those things, and I never asked too many questions about what they did with them, but they didn’t net me that much money. ​ Anyways, I’m getting off topic… I’m not here to talk about my little side hustle. I’m here to talk about the recent job. ​ See, I’ve been doing this for a few years now. I’ve had some jobs go bad. That’s normal. People wake up. Neighbors come to investigate. The police get called. I’ve had some close calls. But I’ve never had anything like this happen before. ​ What happened the other night… That shit *scared me*. Not in the same way a close call does. This was something else. Something truly and deeply fucked up. ​ And it all happened because Tim found a fucking hamster. ​ We’d been watching this house for the better part of two weeks now. We knew the owner, some middle aged lady, was going on a vacation. We knew that we’d have a three day window to hit that house. We knew she had pets and we waited until someone came to feed them. Once they’d left, we made our move. ​ I had a key to the house, so as per usual we just walked in through the front door. Now, the moment we walked in, I got a slight scare when I heard this voice saying: ​ *“Hello!”* although that fear quickly went away when I noticed the gray parrot, caged in the living room. It just sorta bobbed and made some noises, occasionally saying: *“Hello.”* But that was it. I also noticed a couple of bowls of cat food in the kitchen but didn’t ever actually see the cat. ​ After taking a moment to orient ourselves with the house, me and Tim set to clearing it out. On the main floor, we found a couple of laptops, a tablet computer, and some other goodies. ​ Tim had eventually taken off to explore the office while I’d gone upstairs to check the bedroom. I’d been in the middle of clearing out this ladys jewelry, and checking her bedside table for any goodies when Tim interrupted me. It’s best to always check any drawer you see. Bedside tables especially. They can be a little… Well. That’s where people usually store their sex toys, and it’s always a little awkward finding one of those. One lady had $500 in cash stored in the same shoebox she kept her toys in. Not sure if she thought it would deter someone like me or not, but I took the money anyways. But the bedside table drawers of the lady who owned this house were fairly empty. She had some extra masks for a CPAP machine and that was about it. ​ Anyways… Where was I? Right… Tim. ​ He came in, with something in his hands and big, goo goo eyes that weren’t that out of place on him. One thing I’ve got to say about Tim is that he’s a big fucking softie… This is a guy who tries to pet the dogs who bark at us when we rob a place. He fucking loves animals. So I wasn’t that surprised to find him holding one. ​ What he was carrying in his hands was a tiny, fluffy white hamster. Like, this thing was literally just a ball of fluff with a tiny hamster face on it, and Tim was cradling this thing like it was his own goddamn child. ​ “Joe, take a look! Found this little one in the living room!” He’d said, “Looks like she got out!” “Alright, and?” I asked, “You wanna take it with you?” “Nah, I’m gonna put it back.” He said, “You see a cage anywhere?” ​ I just sighed and rolled my eyes at him. “Tim, I’m up-fucking stairs. You found the hamster on the main floor. What, did you think the hamster climbed down the goddamn stairs?” “She might’ve.” Tim said, sounding all indignant, “Come on… You’re not gonna tell me you don’t find her a little bit cute?” “It’s a giant mouse. No. It’s not cute. It’s probably full of disease or something.” I said. “Joe… Come on. Look at its face.” “Tim, I’m busy.” “Look at its face, Joe.” “For Christ's sake, Tim I-” “Look at its face.” ​ I sighed and looked over. Tim had been slowly bringing the hamster closer to me, and I looked into its black, beady little eyes as it regarded me with that one dopey expression all hamsters have. “It’s very cute, Tim.” I said, “Now put it down.” “In a minute… Gotta find its home. Make sure it can’t get back out.” He said, before turning to take it back downstairs. I was done with the bedroom, so I just sighed and followed him. ​ Tim was holding the hamster close to his chest and petting it, cooing at it all the while as he took it back downstairs. “Aww, you’re a sweetie, aren’t you? Yes you are! You’re such a friendly little hamster, yes you are!” ​ He wandered off towards the kitchen, while I went in the other direction towards what looked to be the office. ​ There was some docking equipment and shit that must’ve gone with one of the laptops we took, and a large wooden desk that looked like it was probably full of goodies. One wall was dominated with bookshelves, and the other one was dominated by something that sort of resembled a large glass terrarium. It rested on the floor, but stood about 4 feet high. It was mostly filled with what looked like paper bedding, and had a fuckton of little logs to hide in and other shit. There was a hamster wheel against one side of it. The top was covered in hardware cloth, although looking at it closely, it looked like something had chewed through it. ​ The whole thing also had something of a faint stink to it… And I got the feeling that this was where the hamster had lived up until recently. “Hey Tim!” I called, “Found your hamsters house.” ​ He came into the office, while I started poking through the desk drawers. “Damn… That’s a big house.” He’d said, then cooed to the hamster:“Why would you ever wanna leave a place like this, huh?” “Thought they just needed like, a little plastic dollhouse or something,” I said, as I picked through the drawers. ​ “Nah. Those things are cruel. The bigger the cage, the better.” Tim said. I looked back and could see him looking at the spot where the hamster had chewed through the hardware cloth. “Jesus… This little one’s got some chompers… Didn’t think rodents could chew through that…” “Well, this one did.” I said, “You putting it back or what? I could use a hand here!” “You gonna help me?” Tim asked, “My hands are kinda full here.” ​ I looked over to see him cradling the fucking hamster like a baby, and he kicked at the lid of the cage. He was right. It looked like he’d need both hands to open it. I put raiding the desk on hold while I lifted up the lid of the hamster cage. “Christ… This thing stinks…” I murmured, “Does this lady ever clean up after this fucking thing?” “You’re supposed to clean it every few days.” Tim said. “Yeah, well she didn’t.” I said, “Come on, just put the fucking thing back, and let’s get a move on!” ​ “Yeah, yeah. I will.” He murmured, before holding up the hamster to his face, “I’m gonna say goodbye for now, little one. But you be good, alright? Gonna fix up your cage so you can’t get out again and get hurt! Yes I will! Do you want a little kissy? Yes you do! Yes you do!” “Could you not kiss the stranger's hamster?” I sighed. ​ Tim ignored me and went in to give the fucking hamster a kiss on the back… And this was where everything went horribly wrong. ​ Up until then, the hamster had just sorta sat patiently in his hands. I’d noticed it trying to climb up his arm a few times, but he’d always moved it back to his hand. But the moment he brought it close to his lips, the goddamn thing lunged at him. It didn’t go for his mouth. ​ It went for his throat… And the next thing I knew, Tim was screaming. *“JESUS FUCK!”* ​ I watched him stumble back a step, clawing at the hamster as it chewed at his throat. But he didn’t seem to be able to get it off of him. *“JOE, GET IT THE FUCK OFF! JOE!”* ​ Suddenly all the love he’d had for this oversized rat was gone. He was slapping at it hard enough that he should’ve killed the damn thing, but it just kept biting him. He collapsed to the ground as I ran to try and pull it off of him. The fucking hamster just squirmed out of my grasp, and the blood now gushing from Tim’s neck made it all the harder to grab it. *“Joe… Joe… Joe!”* ​ Tim sounded *scared*, genuinely fucking *scared*… And you wanna know something? I was fucking scared too! I watched as that hamster seemed to wiggle past the gushing blood that now flowed from his throat… I heard Tim choke and gasp as it seemed to… ​ Christ… ​ As it seemed to worm its way through the hole it had torn in his throat… And make its way deeper into his neck… ​ Christ… ​ If I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes, I never would have thought it possible… ​ Tim kept trying to grab at it. But by that point, all I saw was a little tuft of fur sticking out of his wound and even that was gone within a few moments. His throat bulged outwards, his body jerked and convulsed as his eyes bulged out of his skull. His mouth hung open in a silent scream as he twitched. I knew there was no saving him… ​ I took a step back from my dying friend, trying to make sense of whatever the fuck I had just seen, and as I did my eyes shifted over to the terrarium. Tim had kicked it with his dying thrashes, and he’d kicked it hard enough to cause some of the bedding to shift. I could see what looked like black, rotting fingertips sticking out of the hamster bedding. ​ Human fingertips, in case that wasn’t fucking clear… ​ I stared at the terrarium, unsure just what the hell to say as it occurred to me for the first time that it was probably long enough, and deep enough to keep a human body in there… Tim twitched and rasped as he struggled to breathe. His throat still bulged outwards. His eyes were fixated on me, silently begging me for help. ​ But he was past saving. ​ I did the only thing I could do, and I fucking ran. I left Tim, I left the contents of the office. I just took what I already had and got the hell out of that house. I didn’t dare look back. ​ I never heard anything about the break in or Tim’s death on the news. I’m not sure if I just missed it, or if they just didn’t report it… ​ I haven’t slept much lately. Every time I try, I dream about Tim, writhing on the fucking floor as that ‘friendly little hamster’ eats its way into his throat. And I dream about seeing that terrarium again, and seeing Tim underneath all that bedding, rotting with holes in his body, where the hamster has made its nest… ​ Jesus… ​ Needless to say, I’m pretty sure that I’m done with burglary. I sold the shit I took from that house as quickly as I could, just to get rid of it. Sure, maybe I could’ve learned something about what the fuck had happened if I had the patience to get somebody to crack those laptops for me, but to be completely honest, I don’t think I want to know. I’m already paranoid enough about this fucking lady somehow tracking me down and finding me… I don’t need anything else to be afraid of.

Jenny Two Pennies

ybqdis

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ybqdis/jenny_two_pennies/

Previous story:[https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/x2h1qb/the\_school\_with\_the\_boy\_in\_its\_wall/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/x2h1qb/the_school_with_the_boy_in_its_wall/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Don’t play Jenny Two Pennies. Marcy and I did, and now she’s dead. And I’m being haunted by the ghost of a cheerleader named Jenny, and she’s awful. She insults me, my clothes, weight, haircut, room decor, everything. She wants me to acknowledge her. That’s her schtick. She can’t do anything unless I look at or talk to her. She’s stuck haunting me, and she’s a raging B about it. It’s been a week since Marcy died, right after homecoming. Every year we crash at each other’s house after the football game, then spend Saturday preparing for the dance. This was our thing, and this year it was Marcy’s turn to host. I preferred her place since she had a bigger TV, plus her dad was a fellow licorice fiend and always kept a tub on hand that I’d raid late at night. I know I have a problem. But lately, she’d gotten into weird stuff. Ghosts, UFOs, hocus pocus. It wasn’t my scene, but I’mwasn’t a supportive friend. Besides, Marcy kinda went off the deep end when her brother Blair disappeared from his school. He was into weird stuff, too. He kept stacks of notebooks filled with stories about how weird our town is, which is how Marcy learned of Jenny Two Pennies. According to Blair’s notebooks, Jenny was a cheerleader who loved to gossip, and one day, in science class, she got too involved in her whisper campaign and stopped paying attention to what she was doing, and melted her face off. Bunsen burners are a menace. Now she’s a goopy-faced ghost with a habit of eavesdropping. The coppery glow of the bunsen burner, forever reflected in her sunken eyes, barely visible beneath her swollen flesh — that’s the Two Pennies part. I guess that adds a little flair. I mean, Two Pennies is better than Pizza Shit Face, or Jenny the Crispy Cheerleader. You can’t hear her, but she’s screaming obscenities at the back of my head. She’s sensitive about her nickname. Anyway, if you summon Jenny, she’ll answer whatever question you ask. That’s her gimmick, and Marcy figured this was her best shot to learn what happened to her brother, so I don’t blame her. However, I might have reconsidered had I known the price for breaking the rules of Jenny’s invocation. After the football game, we went to Marcy’s house, which I assumed meant a night of merriment, so I brought my DVD of the American classic *Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion*. Great movie. Phenomenal. I recommend. We didn’t get to watch it, and Marcy never will because she’s dead. Another of Jenny Fondue Face’s crimes against humanity. Instead, we stood in Marcy’s bathroom facing the mirror with the lights off and a lit candle. Now, I’m about to explain the rules to summon Jenny Two Pennies — for educational reasons. Like a *More You Know* type thing. An interesting fact, but you’ll never use the knowledge. **HOW TO PLAY JENNY TWO PENNIES:** Stand in the bathroom with the lights out, light a candle and say, “Jenny Two Pennies, Jenny Two Pennies — insert question here.” Then set your timer for five minutes, and stare into the eyes of your reflection. If you do it right and keep eye contact with your reflection, your face will look weird, like seriously messed up. It’s gross, but don’t look away. Don’t break eye contact, smile, frown, or even twitch your lip, or Jenny will latch onto you and haunt your ass, and you don’t want that. You must last the full five minutes. We did not. Instead, the moment our reflection changed, we screamed. We screamed so loud; I’m sure they heard us two counties over and ran out of the bathroom. I couldn’t pee until it was light outside. My bladder still hasn’t recovered. Nothing happened, and by morning, we were laughing about the whole thing. It wasn’t until the dance that we realized our situation was serious. They held the Homecoming dance in our school’s cafeteria. A circular commons area bordered by lockers and vending machines on one side and massive floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto the courtyard. We were having fun. Marcy and I looked extra cute in our outfits, our ghostly adventure the farthest thing from my mind until the second song, when Marcy started screaming. Like song stopping, everyone turns to look at you type screaming. Hysterics. I rushed her outside to the courtyard. It was October and the night air was colder than I expected. The mini skirt was a poor choice. “I saw her. In the window’s reflection. I saw her,” Marcy said. I wasn’t following, “Who?” “Jenny. She was standing behind me.” “What?” “Standing behind me, cheerleader outfit and everything. I saw her face. It was all messed up.” “You didn’t see nothing. It’s dark, and everyone’s cramped together and jumping around. Your mind’s playing tricks on you. Hell, Marcy, that dumb game scared you this bad?” She leaned in and looked me in the eye. “I’m telling you, I saw her. Sure as shit, I saw her.” Y’know that wide-eye, tiny-pupil look some crazy people have? Like, runaway bride crazy, or drive cross-country in a diaper to surprise marry an astronaut crazy? Marcy had that look. I’m a high schooler, nowhere near capable of dealing with that. I didn’t know how to respond, so I shrugged, “Ok.” “Ok?” “Well, you saw a ghost. That’s cool, I guess.” “No, you don’t understand. We messed up, and now she’s haunting us. Now she’ll kill us if we look or talk to her. It said so in Blair’s notebook, an — oh God, I looked right into her eyes.” Marcy leaned into my shoulder and sobbed. Not going to lie; this messed me up a little. I tried to reassure her, but I’m not the best at comforting people or people-ing in general. I flat-out suck at it. “We should go home,” I said and got up, but Marcy stopped me. “I can’t be alone tonight.” “Ok, I’ll get the car.” The car ride home was quiet. Marcy mentally checked out and spent the drive looking at her feet, refusing to make eye contact with any reflective surfaces. On the drive home, I caught the vague shape of a girl in what might have been a yellow and blue cheerleading uniform on the side of the road. I wasn’t sure and was too afraid to check my rearview mirror. Marcy’s paranoia was infectious. Her parent’s car sat in the driveway, so I parked next to the curb and helped Marcy out of the car, leading her across the lawn to the front door. She fumbled with the keys and let us inside. The house was dark, and the sound of her parents, probably her dad, softly snoring echoed behind their bedroom door. “Your parents have the right idea,” I said and led Marcy, still looking at her feet, to her bedroom, sitting with her until she fell asleep, which, thank God, didn’t take long. I was starving and raided the fridge for any remaining pizza. The slice of pizza sizzled in the toaster oven, and I thought about the junk Marcy said at the dance, the cheerleader I thought I saw, and considered the possibility Jenny Two Pennies was after us. The house was quiet, and my senses heightened from spooky thoughts, so I immediately noticed the sounds of what I thought were footsteps coming from the hall. I looked down the hallway. As Marcy’s door closed, I glimpsed the back of someone dressed in a blue and yellow outfit. The door clicked shut, and Marcy screamed. I ran to her bedroom and tried the handle. The door opened, then slammed shut, throwing me backward. Her parents were awake now, joining me in the hallway and helping me to my feet. Her mom and dad tried to force their way into her room. Their voices mixed with the sounds of a struggle, things breaking, and a strange girl’s voice yelling obscenities from inside her room. The door shook as something heavy struck it. Marcy’s screams of pain rose above it all. Then it stopped. The door opened. Her mattress and bedframe slumped against the wall. The closet doors were open, with her clothes strewn across the floor. Splashes of what looked like black paint decorated her wall like a Pollock painting. Marcy lay in the middle of the room with her back bent the wrong way across the dresser and her broken legs resembling a W. Her head was upside down and propped up by an open drawer. That was a week ago. Since then, Little Miss Sludge Face has been trying to trick me into looking at her. Sucks for her. I’m the queen of ignoring people. I think she’s getting desperate, though. On my last visit to Marcy’s parent’s house, I snuck Blair’s notebooks out of Marcy’s room, and for a middle schooler, the kid kept detailed notes. Once I’m done dealing with Jenny, I’ve got a whole town’s worth of ghosts to exorcise. I’ll make sure no one else suffers like Marcy did.

You should never enter a maze during a full moon

ybfpc5

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ybfpc5/you_should_never_enter_a_maze_during_a_full_moon/

This happened last year and I am still suffering the consequences of what happened. People in my hometown are always giving me odd looks and refuse to speak to me. Even my own parents have been treating me differently. My friends and I were the sort of teenagers who would do stupid stuff and not care if we got in trouble afterwards. We used to steal alcohol from my father's fridge and then sit outside drinking away. My father never commented on the missing alcohol so I assumed he never noticed or just didn't care. We were all sitting there drinking away when someone casually mentioned the old maze that had been abandoned by its owners years ago. I could see a weird gleam in my boyfriend's eyes as he stood up and dared us all to complete the maze. Everyone quickly agreed as it sounded like something fun to do on a Sunday night. We agreed to leave our phones as some of our parents had put tracking apps on them to keep an eye on us. We walked the short distance to the maze while laughing and joking away. We stood outside the maze and the moonlight made the entrance look like a giant maw waiting to consume us. My brain was screaming at me to turn and run away but the alcohol in my system was telling me to go inside. Unfortunately for me and my friends the alcohol won the argument. We walked inside while taking swigs of our drinks. I gazed back at the entrance as we turned the first corner and had a premonition that most of us wouldn't leave here alive. We started making twists and turns and I quickly began disoriented as we kept reaching dead ends. The atmosphere in the group had changed as we were all getting a little annoyed at how badly we were doing. The only light available was from the moon as none of us had thought to bring any torches with us. We tried to force our way between the walls of the maze but it was impossible due to how close together the branches were. I gazed back at the way we had just come and let out a scream as two yellow eyes were peering at me from around the corner. I could see very little else about whatever was standing there, but the eyes seemed to be burning into my skull. My scream alerted the others and we began to clump together out of fear. My boyfriend took a long swig of his drink and then began marching towards the eyes with a cocky swagger in his step. He had just reached the corner when the moon went behind some clouds and we were left in utter darkness. I thought about reaching for the lighter I had in my pocket but knew the moon should be back within a few seconds. Someone else's hand latched onto mine and I squeezed their hand in comfort. The moon reappeared and I breathed a sigh of relief as my boyfriend began making his way back to us with the same drunken swagger. I rushed forward and gave him a hug and began chastising him for doing something so stupid. I felt a cold liquid against my flesh and was instantly annoyed as I assumed that he had gotten sick on himself. I quickly disengaged from him and felt my blood run cold as I got a proper look at him. His eye sockets now lay empty and I could see scarring on the sides as if someone had reached in and then ripped out his eyes. His throat was slashed to pieces and blood was flowing down his clothes. He opened his mouth to say something and a spray of blood splashed across my face. His body then collapsed to the ground and lay deathly still. We all stood there frozen in shock for a couple of seconds as we tried to comprehend what we had just witnessed. We heard two popping noises coming from behind us, and I was convinced they were the sounds of whatever was in here with us, eating my boyfriend's eyes. One of the girls let out a shriek and everyone just started running in the opposite direction. We bumped into each other numerous times in our desperate attempt to escape. One of the girls was knocked to the ground and was trampled as we ran past her. I heard the unmistakable sound of a bone snapping as one of the guys unintentionally smashed their foot down on her leg. I moved along a short distance and realised I couldn't leave her behind like that. I carefully made my way back while peering around each corner to make sure I wouldn't bump into something sinister. I spotted her lying unmoving in a pile of shadows and began calling her name but she didn't answer. I could see her body moving and crept towards her while looking out for whatever killed my boyfriend. She was letting out an occasional whimper so I knew she was alive. I was less than a meter away from her, when what I had assumed were shadows began to solidify. The eyes seemed to taunt me as it reached across and tore into her face. It picked up what it had torn off and then threw it in the air and then caught it into its mouth. I began to back away and it matched me step for step. The only part of its body that I could properly see were its eyes as the rest of the body was still clouded in shadows. I almost screamed as I backed up into the wall of the maze and quickly peered to both sides. The left side led to a dead end while the right led down a long passageway. I sprinted down the right passageway as fast as I could. I reached the end and turned left and ran into the rest of my friends who were standing there. I ended up flat on the ground on top of one of them as neither of us had time to move out of the way. I didn't have time to apologise when I was hauled to my feet and dragged backwards. I swung my elbow and felt ecstatic as it connected with someone. I then managed to get out of their grasp and swung them over my shoulder. I was pleased with myself until I saw my friend Mark stagger to his feet with blood pouring from the nose that I had just broken. His face looked confused for a few seconds as shadows surrounded his head. I will always remember the sickening crunch as his skull was crushed beyond recognition. The shadows then began lashing out in all directions and I was soon surrounded by dismembered body parts. The eyes reappeared in front of me and it felt like they were willing me to run away. It picked up one of the arms and then began to swing it from side as if it was waving at me. I didn't even think twice about it and began running as fast as I could. I almost jumped for joy when I saw a sign ahead pointing towards the left saying exit. I rushed around the corner at full sprint and ran into the wall of the maze. I spun around to discover that the exit was in the opposite direction. The eyes now stood between me and freedom. The shadows around it began to thicken and I could see that it was smiling at me. I waited to see what it would do but it seemed content to wait for me to make the first move. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my lighter. Its smile got even bigger as it saw me flick the lighter on. I placed the lighter against the wall of the maze and watched the flame quickly begin to spread. Within moments the entire wall was aflame and I could see its eyes darting from side to side as it tried to decide what to do. The hairs on my arms were beginning to burn as the heat was suffocating. I tried to take some deep breaths but ended up inhaling smoke and started having a choking fit. I knew I only had one chance to escape and ran straight ahead. I caught it by surprise as it lashed out at me and managed to tear off the skin off my arm. I reached the exit and stumbled outside before collapsing unconscious on the ground. I was discovered lying like this when the fire trucks arrived. I tried to explain what had happened but no one believed me. Everyone thinks that I killed my friends and then burned the maze down to cover my tracks. Every night I see a pair of yellow eyes looking in my window and know that it hasn't forgotten about me.

Followed home on a dimly lit street by a shadow

yc0mc7

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yc0mc7/followed_home_on_a_dimly_lit_street_by_a_shadow/

I haven’t posted here yet, i have a few stories i could tell but this one from a couple weeks ago takes the cake for most recent. I live next to a busy bar/ clubby street. Outside of that its a pretty quiet town. It almost goes from loud and fun and diners to quiet neighborhoods pretty quickly. My friend was walking me partially home after a couple drinks, he lives in all of that madness and I prefer the outskirts. There was a shortcut to walking back to my house which was about a 12 minute walk down the road from one of the bars and through a quiet street. As he was walking me down to that street, I had a weird feeling to look behind me, my instincts have usually always been sharp and I see a man with a strong limp down the ways. Mind you at this point were a ways behind a couple of the bars and its very dark the only light coming from the street lights off of the main drive. I couldnt make out what this man looked like? The lights behind him creating just a shadow silhouette. We walked further down to the back street i was going to follow home and he just said be careful text me when you’re home to which i said ok. I stopped and turned around after a second and saw my friend walk right past this man who stopped and stared him dead in the face the entire time. I thought that was odd… the man then turned back towards me and started limping my way… I decided to go an extra street down assuming this man cant possibly be walking that far, but the further from the drive i got.. the darker it got. Mind you it was 1am so these streets were quiet as could be. The street lights seemed so far apart but with how dark it was they barely lit up the street at all. I turned and began walking down one of the streets. I made it alittle ways down, a couple houses on either side of the street but none with their lights on. Quiet as a mouse. I looked back behind me and saw the limping man about to walk past the street i was on but then He makes a full stop, his silhouette still just a dark shadow with baggy jeans and a loose jacket that seems to have only one sleeve. I cant see any facial features, but i saw his head turn. He was looking at me as i stood under a streetlight. A chill ran up my spine as he began limping towards me. I turned and began walking, quickly. It was a very long ways to reach the end. After about 15 seconds i turned and looked behind me. I couldnt see him… maybe he lived at one of the houses i thought for a second. But about 3 street lights down from me if you really focused you could see him just on the outside of the light. It was so dark i could barely see the outline of his body he stopped and was looking at me. Maybe hoping i didnt see him. I turned and began walking. Surely with his limp im faster i told myself. Every now and again id turn and make sure he was far behind, but again i could only see him when he stepped in the light it was simply that dark. So sometimes i wouldnt see him. Until… I did, he was somehow closer now he was about 2 lights down from me. So i ran down some now about 3/4 down the street. I turned behind me and saw him limping but not as far as he should of been, i kept trying to focus on him and see any part of his features but I couldn’t its like he didnt have any. Not even under the streetlights… I went back to walking and as i walked id turn and make sure he was still a ways behind me… but he was gaining ground somehow… then i realized… when he wasn’t under the streetlights… this man was running. He was faking a limp for when i turned around. I froze for a second… he disappeared from under the light and as soon as he was enveloped in the dark u could hear it… the sound of his feet running. I turned and ran as fast as i could. To the right was another quiet street that lead to my house and to the left was the long way but it was the main streets. I ran to the main street down the road. I turned and saw him at the end of the street we were on… he was barely in the light of the main street i was near. We looked at eachother and he turned around and just vanished. The strangest part is my friend is a very particular person who would of remembered some strange man staring him down as he walked past but when i told him that man he passed followed me home he proceeded to ask “what man?” He didn’t have any recollection of him. Then it hit me that maybe he didn’t notice him because he didn’t see him? Just weird…

The day my daughter decided to kill her sister

ybqszh

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ybqszh/the_day_my_daughter_decided_to_kill_her_sister/

My name is sara and ive been married with josh for 5 years. We have twins, mara and lily, they are only 4 years Since they were born the doctors said that one of them may experiment some mental problems, but nothing so bad that we would need to look for professional help until they were old enought to see it We never knew wich one of them was the one that was supposed to have proplems so we treat them both the same A week ago mara started to have this kind of rage attaks were she hurted us or her sister, usually screaming or punching us. We decided to take her to the doctor to see what was happening. They ran some tests on her but everything came up normal. We forgot it and continued with our lives till one day the school called and told us that mara had started a fight and a kid ended up going to the hospital because he fell on his head When josh and i got to the school they took us to the principals office and we saw our daughter sat on a chair. It wasn’t mara, it was lily. You know, when you have twins you learn to tell them apart but people usually confuse them I tell the director that it was lily the one sitting in his office and he looked at her and then said “Oh, im sorry, she havent said a word so i just assumed that she was mara for the recent problem” I didn’tlike how he just assumed who she was but i let it go. We talked to the principal and then went to the hospital to talk to the other child’s mom Whe accorded that we would pay the hospital bill if they didnt press charges and then left to go home with our two daughters When we arrived we talked to lily about what happened and she said that she didn’t mean to send that kid to the hospital, they were just playing when he did something she didn’t like and she pushed him and he fell Whe believed her but told to be more careful with others. We went to see mara but she was asleep so we went to sleep I woke to screams in lilys room “Mara what are you doing” “I cant let you say what happened today, you have to die” Hmmmm what? I woke josh and we both went to lilys room and saw that mara was sitting on lily and had a knife in hand “Mara! What are you doing” “Mom, im just playing” I took the knife from her and asked her to go wait on her room. When she left with josh i asked lily “What just happened” “I don’t know, she came here and told me that she was going to kill me” I told her that she was being ridiculous, they were sisters, why would she try to kill her? I told lily to go back to sleep and went to talk to mara “Why did you have a knife?” “I forgot to take it back to the kitchen and lily found it and told me she was going to tell you so you would punish me so i said I couldn’t let her and maybe said something about killing her but i was joking,mom, I swear” Oh god, this girls were going to kill me. I said good bye and also told her to go back to sleep. When josh and i were on our room he said “I dont know honey, there is something wrong with mara” “I know we’ll take her to the doctor tomorrow morning” “Good, now lets sleep, its 2 am” When i woke up i was going to wake up mara to take her to the doctor but when i got to her room i saw the most terrible thing i have ever seen She had a knife in her chest, i screamed and called josh and when he appeared on the door way he was pale, he hugged me and called the police. Lily was in shock, she didnt say a word while the police looked for some clues of what had happenes I spent 3 weeks in bed, i didnt eat, didn’t shower or eat enough. One day i decided i needed to be strong for my other daugher so i went to her room to talk to her I found a knife under her bed, i also found her diary and decided i wanted to take a look, just to see how was she after her sisters death There was a page with her sisters death date, it said “I cant let mara say the truth and i dont trust her anymore, i think is time to make something permanent” I was stunned, it seemed like my daughter killed her sister. I went looking for josh and when i got to him i showed him the diary and he told me we needed to talk to lily before making conclusions What happened next made me sick

My Killer Funko Collection, No really, I Mean it.

ybqb3i

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ybqb3i/my_killer_funko_collection_no_really_i_mean_it/

Two years back I was sitting in my apartment alone and slowly going stir crazy with boredom. Then true insanity hit as one day my eyes rested on this small piece of plastic that’s been sitting on my desk for years. . I don’t know how it happened. It’s like I blinked and suddenly that one funko figure became an entire shelf, then a small bookcase and now, somehow, I ended up with a collection that can double as wallpaper that covers every inch and possibly half the passageway outside as well. Hell I even kept track of my “investment” watching the prices of some soar while others dropped like lead, it always gave me such a rush to order the new flavor of the month or go hunting through yard sales and clearances for hidden treasures. . That’s where I found *it*. Towering over everything else and dominating the table was an eighteen inch, green haired with a yellow toothed smile, was a MEGA pop Joker. You know how you never make a beeline to the thing you really want in a yard sale, dance around it a bit before off handedly asking about the thing so as to get a better deal? Yeah…. No, I practically threw my wallet at the guy to get it. Waved away the warning of “Don’t take him out of the box unless he’s the only figure in the room! Don’t leave him there with others like him.” As I rushed home to decide where to place him and if I needed to change the décor to highlight my new treasure. . I’ll be honest, as a collector I am a bit of a snob. Just a little, I do like nice things and when I see something going up in price or given “grail” status I start liking it more. Which is why my new treasure puzzled me, I couldn’t find it on the official app or any reference to it anywhere on-line. I took some pictures to ask on reddit but somehow messed up and they ended up blurry. Not a surprise since my phone was getting on and almost every recent funko picture I took turned out a bit blurry, like those old photos of something moving too fast for the camera to catch. Yeah, yeah, I know, my phone is a potato but whatever. After some research I came to the only possible conclusion. It’s a fake, it looked real and everything but was a knockoff to dupe idiots like me. After that I thought, whatever, he’s worthless, took him out of the box and placed him in the far corner of the room. He can be my clothes hanger or something. . From that day things started to change. The figures out of the boxes were toppled over or moved around, then there were figures I didn’t remember taking out of the box just standing there as if caught in the act. Sometimes I would eye the huge Joker and think he moved just a little closer when I wasn’t looking. All imagination of course, probably guilt about my own snobbery. So, from time to time, I’d give him a little head pat and assure him that it didn’t matter, he was still impressive and I was glad to have something so unique guarding my apartment. . More and more of my collection was out of box now, seems a shame to spend so much money on something and then not enjoy it but… I don’t remember taking some of these out. I discussed this with one of my co-workers when I noticed some older funkos decorating his desk. Then our talk went more in-depth into our hobby and I discovered he targeted the rare figures, the ones that went for hundreds and sometimes thousands. I had a few on the lower tier of rare so invited him over to show off my collection. . People think that if you own a lot of something you wouldn’t miss one or two. It’s actually the other way around, someone with four hundred figures is more likely to notice one of their carefully arranged collection pieces missing than someone that has four figures collecting dust in a corner unseen for years. . The Funkos descended on the thief with pins and needles, before I could even say or do anything the final blow was dealt and the Jokers frozen smile was splattered with blood. . I finally figured out what happened to that kitchen knife that went missing a few weeks back, the same day I had a change of heart and started complementing my new Funko guardian…

Means of sustenance

yb3d74

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yb3d74/means_of_sustenance/

I've ceased to be a human being. I'm nothing more than sustenance to this accursed piece of wood. Resistance is futile, as it keeps me in sturdy shackles of obedience through its nefarious ways. I serve myself to it about three times a day, sometimes more. You can tell it is hungry by the sound of hissing and growling that envelops the entire flat. If you fail to acknowledge it, it will see it fit that your closet doors open and all of its entrails fly off in various directions. It will somehow stuff your sink with dead, mangled rats. It will only let you outside for an hour or two a day, and do not even think about escaping. You will pass out and find yourself back home. Try to warn other people about your ordeal? They will not even acknowledge you. If you were to record the conversation and play it again, you’d find out that you were merely complaining about the weather, or economy, or fucking politics. It will not leave you alone. It won’t rest until you feed it. That fucking whore set me up good, didn’t she? Even then, the only reason I am able to send this message out is because of her advice. Doubt besets me and I do not think that this will do me any good, but I am hell bent on revealing this nightmare in its entirety. That unfortunate text message that played on my curiosity and trapped me in this limbo arrived two months ago, give or take. I could fetch my phone and transcribe it here, yet it is unnecessary, as it is already chiseled in my mind. *“Help me. Please, I don’t have anyone else to turn to. Come visit as soon as you read this. It’s gonna wake up soon.”* It was precisely that last sentence that intrigued me. For as long as I knew Delilah she was always direct and concise. This message was not at all like her, and I knew it was something serious if she was contacting me, because both of us were closed chapters to each other. The car ride to her house was silent and idyllic, the radio was on and I was humming along to the tunes. I wish I found more enjoyment in these last serene moments before I was ensnared. Before I even parked my car in front of her house, the scent of uncanniness spread around me. Trash was littered all across her front porch, the grass was knee high and a dried up black puddle was splattered all across the front steps. Stepping over it, I briskly walked to the door. The fact that the blinds on both of her windows did not elude me, but it made me none the wiser. Having announced my arrival with three strong knocks, I waited with some sort of looming uneasiness accompanying my deep, worried breaths. No response came, prompting me to knock again. The second attempt also failed to yield any results. More out of frustration than anything else, I clutched on the doorknob and pulled downward, expecting resistance. The door opened without any whatsoever. Before I even stepped into that dimly lit, yet familiar hallway, my senses were mercilessly assaulted by a strong scent of decay. Covering my airways with one hand and clutching a lit flashlight in another, I laid my disgust aside and trudged through. The source of that viscous smell came into light at the end of a hallway, in front of a bathroom door. That poor cat was Delilah’s soul, and I shuddered to think what happened to Delilah to allow her cat to lay here with blood and maggots pouring out of her sprung open jaw. I turned left and found myself in the living room. The bookshelf was smashed and was partly being propped up by a coffee table upon which it crashed, cracking its glass paneling in the process. Books themselves were strewn across the room, both intact and torn apart. I walked across the room and called out her name a few times, yet nothing but silence answered me. I wish it remained so. Crossing the hallway again, I wound up in the bedroom. The bed was unmade and there were some splinters covering it, which I determined were glass. Taking care not to look or to step on the animal remains, I cautiously walked into the kitchen. Kitchen utensils were strewn all across the floor. Upon further inspection, I realized that most knives and forks had reddish, dried up substance on it. The sink was overflowing with dishes and filthy water which dripped down the kitchen elements and onto the tiled floor in a rhythmic manner. The refrigerator was empty, save for a few cans and water bottles. I turned to the door and was just about to walk back into the hallway, when a sudden realization made me stop dead in my tracks. The utensils that were littered all across the tiled floor now formed a neat and tidy pile. I pretended not to notice the horror creeping up inside of me as I made my way out of the kitchen and shut the door behind me. By this point, I had explored all the rooms except for one. The bathroom. I crept up to the closed door and raised my hand up to knock. Before I had the chance to do so, the doors flung open, knocking me to the ground. You can imagine my absolute disgust as the realization that I have fallen on a furry, rotting corpse dawned on me. I sprung back up, my eyes wide and fists raised, expecting something to lunge at me through the open door. Just as I was about to look around for my flashlight, the lightbulb in the bathroom lit up. Cautiously, I crept up to the door and peered inside. There was a person in the bathtub. It was curled up in the fetal position, covering its face and mutilated body, entirely covered by fresh and dried up cutting wounds. The dirty, tangled rag obscured her face, yet by the tattoo of an ace and a jack on the back of it’s hand unmistakably confirmed what I already knew. This was no one else but Delilah. I called out to her and approached, putting my arm on her shoulder. “Delilah. What… I’ll call the ambulance right aw…” She unfastened her hands from her face and screeched. Blood shot out of her mouth along with that ear piercing sound. Then, she took a couple of short, raspy breaths. *“Listen. You. Listen. Take it. Just…”* She coughed, spilling some more blood in the process. *“Take it… And go away… Please…”* She concluded, pointing her bony index finger behind me. Across the room, on top of a washing machine stood a wooden statue. It was a depiction of a traditional African woman carrying a wide brimmed cup on the top of her head, firmly grasping it with both of her slim arched hands. The other two characteristics that stood out were three lines etched out just below her eyes, as well as unnaturally sharp, pointed and hostile breasts. “We don’t have time for this. You need help.” I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket. I typed in 911 and just as I was about to dial it, the phone leapt out of my hand and towards the wooden woman. It landed neatly and precisely in the cup on her head. “What the fuck!” I muttered, turning my attention back to Delilah. *“It’s… Too late. Please. If you don’t take it, I’ll… I’ll…”* She threatened, raising a shard of broken glass and pressing it against her neck. “I’ll fucking take it. I’ll take it. OK? Calm the fuck down and listen to me. You need urgent medical care, Delilah.” I snapped, walking over to that accursed statue, fishing my phone back out of the cup. The lower edge of my phone was coated in blood. I stuffed it into my pocket and picked the thing up before turning to Delilah. “Okay. I need you to stay right here. Help is on the way. Do you understand?” I implored. *“It gets drunk on us. It gets drunk on our blood.”* “God fucking…” Something soft and furry brushed against my leg and let out a gentle meow. That was the last straw. I fled the house, still holding onto that thing. I got in my car and threw it in the passenger's seat. As I was hurriedly driving away, I managed to phone the ambulance and give them her address and a brief description of her wounds. Stopping next to a body of water, I decided to throw the statue, yet despite my best efforts, I could not lift it from its place. Then again, the statue seemed frighteningly light when I made the foolish mistake of carrying it into my home. Later that day, I got a call back from the ambulance. They politely told me that they would appreciate it if I stopped wasting their time and using their extremely important and essential services to try and contact my ex-girlfriend, who was absolutely fine and in no danger whatsoever, as per their words. So that’s how I got myself into this mess. I was set up. I now realize that the only way out is to set someone else up. I refuse. I am still holding out some faith glimmers of hope that somehow this will all blow over. Then I will give Delilah a call and we will have a laugh about how absurd this was. I’m not holding my breath. That’s why I gave it a triple dose of blood than usual. To intoxicate it long enough for me to be able to type this out and publish it. [This ends with me.](https://imgur.com/a/NVRdMGd) [X](https://www.reddit.com/r/binguswrote/)

Our planet is mostly ocean

ybahf0

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ybahf0/our_planet_is_mostly_ocean/

The fish weren't biting, but I wasn't worried. I'd finished taking a tour group around the islands last week, and I had another scheduled for Sunday — or was it Tuesday? — that should at least keep me in Spam, propane, and bottled water for a few weeks. I wouldn't have to rely on subsistence fishing until after then. Still, if I could land a nice fat yellowfin today, I could eat that and save the money for winter. If I saved money, I wouldn't have to follow the fish. Instead of burning fuel, I could hunker down with the space heater for the few cold days and try to last until next tourist season. Maybe even sock away a few fifties in the old plastic-wrapped coffee tin I kept in the safe under the captain's seat. Still, the fish weren't biting. It was the peak of the fishing season. The sea should be absolutely solid with hungry, horny fish, even with all the talk about ocean acidity and overfishing and so on. The ocean's a big place, more than twice as much water as land on this rock. Ought to be plenty of fish in the sea, like the saying goes, but there weren't, and I was puzzled. I might not have needed the catch, but I'd expected one, and it was unsettling me more than I'd care to admit that I wasn't getting one. The weather was off, too. Hot, yes, but somehow dry and heavy at the same time. Flat, like the whole ocean was a can of cola left out too long. The clouds were a cheesecloth draped over a big yeasty globe, swollen and hostile. I pulled my lines and decided to head out further than my usual grounds. Perhaps the summer traffic close to the islands was making the fish skittish, I reasoned. Even with the engine at full, the air was as dead and stuffy as breathing into a wool sock. I'd gone out another five miles or so, out where there's nothing but nothing and the deep doesn't mess around. Any further and I'd start to get worried that my third of a tank of gas wouldn't quite get me back. With my lines cast out again, I settled in under the canopy to do some mending on my clothes and wait for one of the rods to twitch. The water was a mirror. I'd never seen it so calm. It was as though I was fishing on a shallow pond in a sheltered valley, not on top of four kilometers of water. When the light abruptly changed, I looked up and saw the clouds. Where they had been a solid and dull gray sheet, unbroken and stifling, there was now an opening, perfectly circular. Even as I watched, it widened and formed a ring, then another. It looked as though someone had tossed a stone into the center of a pool. Beyond the clouds, the sky glowed with an unhealthy shade of blue: electric, radioactive, almost purple in its intensity. It was right above me. I was just off the center of the disturbance. I'd thought the sea was calm before, but now it was utterly still. The subtle rocking and shifting of the boat ceased entirely. My movements as I set aside my mending and stood were like an earthquake. I could see the ripples of my own motion inside a twenty-foot boat moving out across the surface of the water. Oddly, a couple thousand feet away, I could see the water still moving in choppy waves, stopping and flattening at the edge of the zone I was inside as though hitting the underwater wall of a bay. Overhead, the ripples in the sky widened and the glow intensified. The light was wrong for my eyes, giving whatever I looked at a sharp-edged black outline. Everything solid seemed to be trembling slightly just under the surface. I looked at my own hands and felt them buzz like an industrial power line. The light shifted again, darkening once more, and my gaze turned back to the sky to behold a horror. I was sitting on a boat beneath a mountain. The violet-tinged light and the horrible stillness made it nearly impossible to judge the size of the thing, but if my practiced eye was right and the zone of quiet water was a mile or two in diameter, the object in the sky filled all that space and more, pushing through the cloud layer like an awl punching leather. It moved with deceptive speed, seeming so slow and ponderous from my perspective, but I noted the jets of vapor streaming from its jags and crenellations, contrails born of speed and heat. I thought it would come down and crush me. A mass of that size impacting the planet? I was at ground zero of the destruction of all life on Earth, I was certain. I tried to fire up my engine, but the starter button and key might as well have been children's toys; everything was dead, except the inexorable motion of the asteroid. Then, impossibly, it stopped. The clouds continued to ripple away from that penetrating spire, and the air grew almost molten with heat. The tip of the inverted mountain flared with white-green light and abruptly spouted a column of energy so bright it was blinding. I twisted my body away, my hands in front of my eyes. I could see my bones through the flesh, black on red, the thought of my own meat and blood somehow comforting in the unreal glow. After a few moments, the flare ceased and I blinked away the confounding aftereffects. The sea was boiling where the light had impacted. I initially thought it was from heat, but the motion didn't spread and dissipate like boiling water would. Instead, as I drifted helplessly nearer to the area of disturbance, I saw that it was seething with life. Fish and eels, sharks and octopodes, worms and stranger things that normally never saw the light, all were flopping and thrashing about on the surface, whipping the still waters into a foam. I saw teeth and tentacles, blood and mucous, a writhing, flailing clot of frantic sea animals. Then, from below, a darkness that glowed with its own light, a dim green illumination that made my eyes twitch and my teeth ache. I saw shadows inside that light, long and sinuous, a stretching and a reaching from below, a circle of grasping limbs surrounding a tooth-specked tunnel that went in and down, concentric rings like ripples in the sky, a mile across and more but rising, rising to meet the falling mountain, the rock and the sea straining to touch. The awful green-black glow drew a line around every bit of living flesh in that dead spot of sea, and rose further, fumes, clouds, tendrils and trails up and up until it was no longer up but down, and I floated in the sky, looking below onto the mountainside toward which we all were falling. The light touched the actinic white tip of that ragged pyramid, and then... Darkness. When I woke, the sea was choppy and bedraggled. It looked exhausted, somehow. My fishing lines were tangled and might as well have been deliberately knotted. When I pulled them up and saw what clung to the ends, I cut the lines loose instead and let it all sink back into the dark and the silence and the ooze. My mouth tasted metallic, like old blood and burning. The engine coughed and sputtered as though it hadn't been used in weeks, but it functioned well enough to get me to shore. For weeks, I scoured the news for tales of an alien ship or an asteroid impact, but I never found any mention. Not from reputable sources, anyway. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, nothing had happened that day. And perhaps nothing had; I had no proof, other than the cut lines and the lingering symptoms, like a bad stomach virus: nausea and vertigo, weakness and fatigue, a persistent headache. My hair thinned out, as well, but I'm not of an age where that's a surprise, either. No one had see it but me, and no one knew. Perhaps it's for the best. They came and they spoke to the sea, and neither party even noticed I was there. I don't think I want them to know. This planet is old, far older than the chattering monkeys that cling to its driest and most remote protrusions. We call ourselves masters and claim dominion, but we keep to the rocks and skim over the depths like skipping stones. I prefer the comforting lie, even knowing it to be false. Let the true masters commune and depart and dwell in whatever privacy they prefer. I do not think it will end well if we disturb them.

House Sitting

yb6tt0

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yb6tt0/house_sitting/

I'm a broke college student. The master's program I'm in is really demanding so trying to work at the same time is impossible. Instead of having a set schedule I house sit, pet sit, and dog walk for cash. A couple of weeks ago I was asked to house sit for what was basically a small rural farm. The couple that reached out had goats, rabbits, dogs, cats, and reptiles and wanted to know if I would be comfortable house and pet sitting for two weeks. We discussed the particulars (money, dates, etc.) and before I knew it, I was getting my tour around the property. The wife (let's call her Cristy) explained feeding instructions and each animal's preferences as we walked the property. I also had incredibly detailed, handwritten instructions in case I forgot anything. Cristy was a bit fussy, but I could tell she was just nervous. "I'm sorry I'm being so... specific with everything." Cristy said, apologetically "We havn't been able to take a vacation in a long time and I always worry about leaving the animals. The last girl we hired was horrible! We left for a week, and she only came twice! I couldn't believe it! If we didn't have cameras we never would have known!" I agreed that that was horrible, thinking maybe the person they hired was just a teenager or something. I let Cristy know that wouldn't happen, and if she checked her footage, she would see me. "Oh, I know, I feel better about you than the last one. It helps that you had a pile of positive reviews I could read, and re-read, and read again." She laughed awkwardly as she said this. After the tour I was given the keys, tons of emergency numbers, and orders to call her if I needed anything. Since where they lived had little to no cell service, she told me I would likely have to use the landline. The first couple of days went off without a hitch. Wake up, feed animals, clean up after animals, study for class. Rinse and repeat. It was when Monday rolled around that things started getting a little strange. The morning was normal, when it was time for me to leave for class, I followed the instructions I had been given. Put the dogs in their kennels with a treat, make sure the cat is locked in the bathroom, put on music for them, ect. Then I locked all doors, closed the gate behind me and headed out. I got back in around 6, not quite dark yet but the sun was on its way down. I hurried to feed the outdoor animals while there was still light then I headed into the house. I let the dogs out then moved over to the stairs, thinking I'd change into my pajamas before doing anything else, but when I turned to face the stairs, I noticed a light was on in one of the rooms. I feel something icy stab at my heart. I didn't leave any lights on. At least I don't think I did. I grab one of the dogs, the bigger of the two, a tall, lanky black dog (Kana), and I head upstairs; certain that when I rounded the corner into the bedroom someone would be standing there waiting for me. When I entered the room, it looked the same as how I had left it; except that one of the lamps in a far corner was turned on. I walk over to turn it off and realized it was a touch lamp, meaning it can only be turned off or on by a living thing touching it. I tap it until it turns off. Scared, I pulled out my phone and call my boyfriend. The call doesn't go through, it can't connect, I have no signal out here. I grab the house phone off the dresser and dial the number, my heart pounding. Do do do! "We are sorry, you are now required to dial an area code, even for local calls. Please hang up and dial the full 10-digit number." I hang up and try again, punching in all 10 digits. I get the same message. I think about calling 911, decide I'm being dramatic, and I set the phone down hard into the receiver. "Ok, nothing has really happened yet, it's just a light on. It's fine. You're fine." I say, trying to give myself a pep talk but knowing that something feels off. I decide to search the house. It didn't take me long. The downstairs is one large room that includes kitchen, dining, and living rooms with a bathroom scrunched under the stairs. The upstairs has only two rooms, a "man-cave" like room with a projector and surround sound and the room I was staying in, the master with its on-suit bathroom. I move through the house, checking everywhere I can think to look and there's nothing. Not even a sign that someone had been there other than me. I tell myself I've over-reacted and start Googling how a touch lamp could malfunction or turn itself on. A lot of the sites tell me one of the dogs must have touched it without me knowing, but they were still in their crates when I got home, and I know I checked that all the lights were off before leaving. Nothing on Google makes me feel any better. I did not want to go to sleep that night, I've seen way too many horror movies and had convinced myself there was someone hiding in a crawl space, waiting to kill me. Or that more likely someone else had a key to the house and could come in any time they wanted, like when I'm asleep and helpless. I stayed awake as long as I could but must have drifted off at some point as I was woken suddenly by the sound of something pounding on wood. The room was dark, had I turned off the lights? I sat bolt upright in bed and looked over to the double doors that separated me from the on-suit bathroom. They were moving... or tremoring would be a better word. They were pocket doors, the type you slide into the wall to open. I noticed then that there was tape holding them shut at the top. The bottom corners of the door alternated in and out at me. It sounded like someone was pounding on them, hard, and the wood was shaking violently like it might splinter. Like the doors may fly off the tracks. I froze in place, thoughts coming fast, "Oh God, I was right! Someone's in here with me." I screamed in my head. Then I heard what sounded like "Hello" I screamed and hurled my body out of bed flicking on the lights and pressing my back to the wall, when the voice rang out again, this time sounding more like "Mellow" then "Mell" then "Mew" It was the cat. It sounded like the cat. Had it always sounded like the cat??? As the mewing continued, I caught my breath. The pounding on the door stopped. The doors stood silent and still. I shouldn't have opened the door. Anything could have been behind it. It was stupid to open the door, but something compelled me to, like I had to prove to myself that it was just the cat. That all my terror had just spilled over from a dream I'd been having. It was just a cat who wanted to be let out. A cat that wanted attention. I peeled the tape securing the top of the door slowly off, took a deep breath, and slid one of the two doors open. The cat darted out, leaving only a pool of darkness behind it. I turned the bathroom light on, but just like with the lamp earlier there was nothing to see. No one there. No reason for me to be afraid. The cat must have just...forced its way in... despite the tape holding the doors shut. Despite the fact that it couldn't get itself back out. Despite the fact that I distinctly remember closing her in the downstairs bathroom for the night. The other bathroom having a normal door with a round handle that she couldn't possibly have turned. I closed the doors, put the tape back, and spent the rest of the night in the middle of the bed, sat up, hugging my knees, with every light in the room on. When morning came, I couldn't get out of that house fast enough. Again, nothing substantial had happened to me but I was beyond freaked out. Was this why the other girl had left so soon? Did something worse happen to her?? As soon as the sun was up, I fed all the animals, locked everything up and went to class. I arrived 6 hours early, but the day still managed to slip through my fingers, and before I knew it, I was sat in my car trying to think of excuses to not go back. After turning it over and over in my head I realized if I waited any longer, I wouldn't get back until after dark. Not only would that make it harder to feed everyone (they didn't have much outdoor lighting) but the light of day just felt...safer. When I get to the house I start with the outdoor animals again, then stood at the front door fidgeting with the keys, not wanting to go inside. Things seemed normal this time. Everything was how I had left it, no lights on, no animals in places they shouldn't be. I turned on every light in the house and tried to busy myself making dinner. I was standing at the stove, when out of the corner of my eye I see a shape. A person is sitting on the couch. A tall, thin, black shadow is just in the periphery of my sight. I jump back, yelp, and turn to face the thing. It turns its head slowly to meet my gaze. It's the dog. It was Kana. "You scared me, Kana!" I said aloud, clutching my heart and taking a breath. She smiled at me then. Like a dog would "smile" but it seemed to stretch too far. There were too many teeth. Her tung lulled out the front of her mouth, and she continued to grin at me. Feeling uneasy I turned away. "She's just a dog" I thought "What the hell is wrong with me." After dinner, I'm getting ready for bed when I start to hear a tapping noise. A thunk, like someone gently tossing rocks at a window, or like hail hitting a skylight. It's faint at first, and then louder as I move through the house looking for its source. I look in the master bedroom last, thinking of the previous night and not wanting to go in. I flicked on the lights and found a little brown bird on the windowsill, a sparrow maybe? It was badly injured, one wing bent at an unnatural angle, legs limp and useless, blood smeared all over the sill and the window. It was throwing itself against the glass, frantically, over and over. Like if it flailed hard enough it would escape. Like it knew it was still in danger and needed out of the room. How had it gotten in? Its winter, I hadn't opened a single window, hadn't left any doors open. I look around the room for a blood trail. Evidence that this might just be the cat again but there was nothing. It was like it had been mangled somewhere else and then plopped in front of the window. I tried to pick the bird up, tried to be gentle, as it flicked blood across my face. I didn't know what I would do with it, but I had to do something. Then all at once its body gave out, the pulsing of its chest stopped, the flailing stopped, and it lay there. Motionless. Quiet. I took the bird to the outside trash, dogs jumping and trying to get at it the whole way. Kana trying to lap the blood off my face. As I walked, I thought about the cameras. There was only one that I could see in the house, but maybe something was on it. Maybe there were more I didn't know about. Maybe they caught something that could tell me I was really being crazy. That a person hadn't come into the house just to turn on a lamp, lock a cat in a bathroom, and leave a dying bird on a windowsill. Reluctantly, I walk back into the house and call Cristy. When she answers she sounds terrified. "Is everything okay?!" are her first words. I steady my voice and explain that everything is fine, all the animals were doing well. I was just calling because the cat had managed to get out of the bathroom somehow. I was certain I had closed the door properly and wondered if I could take a peek at the camera footage to see how she had escaped. "Or if you could look at it" I back peddled, realizing that a loose cat didn't sound like a good enough justification for me to look at their security footage. 'At least if she looks at it and sees some weirdo in the house, she can tell me, and I could call the cops.' I thought. "Oh, that's so weird! she's never gotten out before." Cristy said, "You probably just didn't shut the door all the way. Did you find her chewing on anything weird?" I reiterated that I was sure I had closed the door, and that the other reason I wanted the footage looked at was to make sure she hadn't eaten anything she shouldn't have. "Really, even if you would just take a look at it..." I started to say, but she cut me off, saying it was fine and gave me all the information I would need to access the footage on their laptop. I thanked her and told her I'd call back if I found anything. I booted up the laptop on the dining room table, followed the steps I had been given and opened to several recordings of footage. I started with the day I had come home to see the lamp on. The footage came up in two separate boxes, showing me a view of the living room and another of the driveway. The footage started at midnight, and I began to fast forward. I saw myself come downstairs, start the day, get ready for class, put the animals away. As soon as I saw my car back out of the driveway, I slowed the footage down a bit and waited. Time passed, no one came up the driveway, I watched the dogs chew on their toys... Wait. The dogs. Something's wrong. I brought the footage down to normal speed and squinted at Kana's kennel, it was large but entirely made of small metal bars so I could see every move she made. Her body twisted unnaturally. A leg jutted out at an angle it shouldn't have been able to. Her head snapped back. Fully back, to lay flat against her spine. I exited out of the driveway footage and made the living-room full screen. Kana was...writhing now. Her small, lanky frame seeming to boil and expand. The inky blackness of her fur filled every inch of the kennel. Then a long, thin, black arm sprang out from the front bars. It fiddled with something on the front of the cage, then Kana, or what had been Kana, came spilling out of the container. The footage wasn't amazing, but even with the cheap camera I could tell that whatever came out of that kennel was too big. Too full. Impossible angles and blackness were all that could be seen of what was once a dog. It moved forward, a large mass of black being pulled by long spindly arms. They reached straight out the front of it, dragging a plump body behind. Furniture skidding out of the way as it pulled itself past. It moved to the stairs, and then it was gone from view. I start to fast forward the footage again when I start to notice a sound. A cracking. A snapping like a bone being broken in two. Then more snapping. Something was growing behind me, blocking out the light, casting an enormous shadow over me. Over the laptop. I heard the skid of furniture across the hardwood floor as the shape grew. I scrambled up from the chair, flinging myself away, towards the front door. Heart pounding in my ears, whole body shaking. I looked in the center of this... thing... of Kana. She was grinning at me again. This time teeth migrated horizontally across the entire length of her. The enormous, smiling mouth opened and its tongue came rolling out, long and looking impossibly red against the pitch-black background. I ripped the front door open as fast as I could and slammed it behind me. Backing away I can see the shape pressing into the window over the door, tongue dragging back and forth and teeth clanking against the glass. My keys are still in the house. I don't know what to do.

I love my wife, which is why I’m about to die

yam9gh

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yam9gh/i_love_my_wife_which_is_why_im_about_to_die/

Fuck me. I married Alyssa because she was the archetype of my physical and emotional attraction: small, cute, unassuming, wouldn’t hurt a fly. Literally. A fly came into the kitchen once and landed on her food, so she made a second breakfast and ate it outside. She didn’t want to deny the insect a snack. She’s great. Or was, I don’t know. This is why I don’t usually ask questions with difficult answers. We each have our own credit card accounts, then share a third. We don’t fight about money. It’s great. Or it *was* great. Fuck, I don’t know what’s going on. Okay, she likes this esoteric jeweler. The business is called Blood Milk for reasons I cannot fathom. The role of a good spouse is to support the weird shit we don’t understand with an attentive ear and an open heart. But I can never remember what pieces she already has, because each one is just categorized as “that strange thing” in my mind. So I looked up her browser and purchase history on her laptop while she was at yoga. Bad idea. Today I learned that my wife spends time online searching Lululemon, Blood Milk, Buddhism, tantric sex (yay), Mother Jones, NPR, *Nature*, “how long human decomposition lasts”, garden shears, “is cholorform real”, zip ties, hacksaws, bleach, lye, scrub brushes, shovels, “how long does it take a human to suffocate”, State Farm life insurance (which I get through my employer), and “how the killer fucked up on Serial podcast.” It was so out of character for Alyssa that I genuinely believed the computer was in error. It was more likely that it had somehow read a different person’s browser history. To put my mind at ease, I looked up her Chase account. She never told me her password, but I knew that it was “butterfly.” I can say this with certainty because I *know* my wife. It revealed that she had recently purchased groceries from Vons, gas from Chevron, jewelry from Blood Milk ($191.30, let’s stick to a budget, Alyssa), dinner at Aro with a friend, a refund of $191.30 from Blood Milk (thank you for being reasonable), and a substantial amount spent at Ole’s hardware. So I logged in to her Ole’s account. Again, “butterfly.” Again, I know my wife. She had purchased garden shears, zip ties, hacksaws, bleach, lye, scrub brushes, shovels, gloves, and a 36” axe. I leapt three inches from the chair and dropped a tiny turd nugget into my briefs when the doorbell rang at 8:00 p. m. Yes, I peeked through the little hole in the door and hesitated for five minutes before opening it. I was hanging by a thread at this point. The whole “someone is just using my wife’s accounts and computer and THEY want to kill me” narrative was now flimsy at best. But I finally opened it to reveal that a box had been delivered. Damn. The guy’s job had him dropping shit off to strangers’ houses on a Friday night, probably for dirt pay. *There’s* a scary story. I pulled in the delivery that had Alyssa’s name on it and closed the door. I told myself that it was fine to open her packages, specifically because I *didn’t* think her murder gear was inside. Her murder gear was inside. I almost cut my finger on the hacksaw. Everything was exactly as described. Except for the envelope. My instincts told me not to reach for the envelope, because I wouldn’t like what I found inside. I opened it and did not like what I found inside. A thick stack of photos awaited me, and I looked through every one. Pics of me driving to work. Pics of me at work. Pics of me driving home. Pics of me showering. Pics of me taking a shit. *Why*. The phone buzzed and I nearly had a heart attack. I gazed around at the dark house; who was here without my knowledge? I looked at the message. >Hi baby home in 15 mins. want anything from Vons? What was I supposed to say? That I wanted a stabbing weapon, a mind eraser, or a new wife? I hyperventilated into a paper bag for a few minutes before texting her back a brilliant response designed to throw her off: >no thanx babe That should buy me some time until I figure out what to do. Because my wife will be home shortly. I can’t call the police for a crime that hasn’t happened yet. Confronting her would only accelerate her plans, and not confronting her desire to kill me will result in her killing me. What do you suggest? Because I hear her car in the driveway, and if I need to grab that axe, I should probably [do it right now](https://www.facebook.com/P-F-McGrail-181784199029462/). [BD](https://www.reddit.com/r/ByfelsDisciple/) [W](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcn_pa1QfNMRzbTuJqXSoRQ) [E](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCrypticCompendium/)

I Asked An AI Text-To-Image Site About The Future. I Regret It Tremendously. A Warning.

yaexaj

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yaexaj/i_asked_an_ai_texttoimage_site_about_the_future_i/

I've been crying for the last few hours. I can still hear my wife screaming and sobbing in the other room. I have never regretting something so much in my entire life. I'm making this on an anonymous account because I don't want anyone to find out who I am. You'll see soon why. This is the only post I'll ever make with this profile. I wish I could take it back. The worst part of all of this is that I could have stopped it from happening. I could have fucking prevented this from happening. But its too late now. Maybe this will keep you all from making the same mistake. ​ I'm reminded for some odd reason of the old saying, "Curiosity killed the cat". This is what happened. ​ I read this article on this site: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y6ut1m/spooky\_artificial\_intelligence\_found\_to/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y6ut1m/spooky_artificial_intelligence_found_to/) ​ For those who don't wanna click and read through it, it's a simple clickbait article laying out the possibility that AI can predict the future with amazing accuracy. According some scientists who work with that sort of thing, they've been asking computers to predict things regarding certain events. Sometimes it’s about politics, or some result in a controlled set up. Where will the ball land in a game of Pachinko, for example. They found that the computer's AI could accurately predict the result 99% of the time, or so they allege. I'm not into computer science all that much, but the article peaked my interest. Wouldn't that be cool if it could do that? And if so, it would basically be like a psychic with scientific and mathematical proof behind it. ​ I somehow got it into my head. I've heard a lot about the advancements being made in AI. It's so powerful now that AI can generate photos based on typed up sentences and prompts. There are websites and engines online where anyone can type something up and get an image spit back at them. They're often durpy, but they've been getting really good lately. In fact, an AI computer recently won a recent art contest in Colorado. they've gotten so good: [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/artificial-intelligence-art-wins-colorado-state-fair-180980703/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/artificial-intelligence-art-wins-colorado-state-fair-180980703/) I've seen ads online for these AI Text-Photo sites like DALE, and whatnot myself, on sites like Instagram. So, I started to ask myself: What if you didn't just ask the AI for the future, but let it show it to you? ​ Last night, I went onto Dale. It's free and easily found online for any of you stupid enough to play around with it: [https://openai.com/dall-e-2/](https://openai.com/dall-e-2/) ​ Usually it's used to generate silly photos from typed up sentences like "flying pineapples with pearl earrings". Instead of typing in a sentence or a descriptive phrase about what I wanted generated, I asked the AI about my future. I did it as a joke at first. I had read that article and I figured it bring back some dumb image or something nonsensical. ​ All I typed in was, "Me, my wife, and our 2 year old son's future". This is what I got back: ​ [https://imgur.com/a/aDfCcwY](https://imgur.com/a/aDfCcwY) ​ I have to use imgur to upload these AI photos apologies, subreddit rules. As you can see, it was creepy as fuck. I've cropped the image to protect the identity of myself and my wife. It showed our faces and what looked to be my son, his face turned away, on the road in a pool of his own blood. But I laughed it off. The faces were similar to us, but we don't own a car like that. Besides, the Ai works by selecting from google images, so that could be any couple. I shuddered but managed to move past it. I typed in a few other prompts. I forgot about the photo for a little while. ​ But it kept creeping back into the front of my mind. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I had to know if it was just a random fluke. I typed in "Me and my wife getting married" as a prompt. I couldn't really think of anything else, but I figured it was vague and amorphous enough to prove to me that the AI wasn't some all knowing being. It brought back this image: ​ [https://imgur.com/a/IBHRXSb](https://imgur.com/a/IBHRXSb) ​ Again, I've cropped it to hide our identities. I'll say this much right now, I gasped when I saw it. Our wedding photo is so fucking similar, it isn't even funny. I was so shocked I started laughing. Do you ever get so freaked out you just start laughing for no reason? That was me for a solid ten minutes. Then that shock turned to confusion. How could the AI replicate our wedding photo so well!? We had had a Halloween wedding, which is why my wife was wearing an orange dress. It had the same black suit I had, everything. The posing was just off, and our faces distorted because the AI has trouble with proportions. But God, its so similar. ​ May be I should have freaked out. But I honestly had no idea what to do. What are you supposed to do in that kind of situation? I tried to explain it rationally. I eventually figured that the AI must be using my location and then taking photos from google images of my wedding photos from Facebook. We posted so many online, and a lot of facebook photos are searchable through google. It didn't exactly calm me, but it seemed like a good explanation. I decided that was enough of the site though for my liking. ​ I wish that it had all stopped there. I wish I had listened to my gut. I wish I had done something, or told someone. God, I wish it so much. I did nothing, and went to bed last night like usual. ​ This afternoon, my wife was playing with our son in our front yard. Oh God. Oh God. I had just gotten back from work. ​ I was sitting on the veranda. My wife turns to me to ask me something about dinner. My son suddenly runs off into the road. A driver in a red Honda came down the road. You can guess exactly what happened. I can't even type it. ​ 30 miles over the speed limit. Some fucking idiot-ass teenager showing off for his stupid friends. ​ The screaming. The wailing. My son was dead in an instant. And that fucking AI photo had captured it almost perfectly. I swear to God. It even got the color of his shirt right. ​ My wife has been utterly inconsolable. She won't touch me. She just keeps wailing and screaming for her baby who will never come back. ​ Oh God. I could have done something. It had warned me. But I was too stupid to listen. I had had a gut feeling all day. But I didn't even think of it. I was busy today with work and errands. It slipped my mind. ​ Curiosity killed the cat. I don't know if knowing would have made a difference. But I know now that I am tortured by the fact that I got to see the future and did nothing to change it. It's my fault. I cannot even begin to describe the guilt and pain I feel right now. Me and my wife got back from the hospital an hour ago. I went into our bedroom, and I've been typing this up. May be if all of you read this you'll learn from me. ​ For the love of God, don't go messing with things you don't understand. Please. This AI shit is more powerful than any of us realize. And if you do decide to be stupid and ask about your future, consider that you may be better off not knowing. ​ I did something as soon as I got home. I went on Dale again. I stared at the screen for a while and decided to ask it about my future again. I typed in: "What is my future". It gave me this image: ​ [https://imgur.com/a/XF2IfIj](https://imgur.com/a/XF2IfIj) ​ This is the last thing I will ever write. A final good thing for the world before I leave it. ​ I have it in my hands now. ​ And who am I to keep the future from coming?

Trick-or-Treating Is Fun Until You Reach The House With The Gnome Garden.

yaw16h

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yaw16h/trickortreating_is_fun_until_you_reach_the_house/

“Holy crap, that’s a lot of Lawn Gnomes!” When I had told my cousin Tiana that the house at the end of the cul-de-sac had an enormous Gnome Garden, I don’t think my description had adequately prepared her for the reality of it. I had never counted them, but there must have been hundreds of them. At least, it felt like there were hundreds of them. There were enough of them that it was instantly creepy when you saw it. You just intuitively knew that no sane, rational person would ever hoard such a mammoth amount of Lawn Gnomes. “You can’t even see them from the street because of the hedge, so what’s the point?” Tiana asked, looking around from one Gnome to the next, trying desperately to spot some method to the madness. “I know. It’s like he’s hiding them. I think he’s afraid that if they were in plain view, they’d be too tempting to steal or break,” I suggested. “Trick-or-treating is pretty much the only time I ever see these things. I swear, there’s more of them every year.” “So, it’s like some kind of crazy cat lady thing, then?” Tiana asked. “That’s what my mom says; that Mr. Mahlberg has some kind of OCD hoarding disorder,” I replied. “They’re so weird looking,” Tiana said as she knelt down to examine the one closest to us. “Does he make them himself?” I honestly didn’t know, but I had considered it. They certainly didn’t look like anything there was a mass market for. They were squat and lumpy little things, their expressions dead-eyed and dull, their features ill-defined and their colours all unsaturated yet unfaded despite most of them having been left out in the sun and rain for years. None of them had any damage at all, as far as I could tell. “He maintains them, at least. They mean a lot to him for some reason, so don’t mess with them,” I cautioned her. "They don't look carved, or even moulded. They look organic, like they've been grown or something. Chitinous! That’s the word. They’re like sea shells that look like people,” Tiana claimed, mesmerized by the peculiar ornament before her. I saw her raise her hand and slowly reach forward to touch it. "Don't! I mean it! Mr. Mahlberg's nice, but there are all kinds of crazy stories about what he does to kids who steal or break his Gnomes!” I warned her. The sound of an older man theatrically clearing his throat to announce his presence caught both of us off guard. Tiana shot up and we both turned towards the front porch, where we saw Mr. Mahlberg leaning against the door frame. Mr. Mahlberg was a tall and slim white man, balding with limp, shoulder-length grey hair. He was wearing a pair of spectacles and a Mr. Rogers-like outfit of a cardigan, slacks, and shiny dress shoes. He looked serious, but not angry or upset, and certainly not crazy. “Hello April,” he said flatly and with a mirthless smile. “Hello, Mr. Mahlberg,” I stammered with an anxious swallow. “I’m sorry for what I just said. Mom says I shouldn’t repeat unsub, unsub, *un-sub-stan-ti-ate-ed* rumours about people.” “It’s alright, April. Nothing I haven’t heard before,” he said, reaching down to the Gnome by his door and feeling the top of its cap between his fingers, pausing as if he was trying to detect something. “Who’s this you’ve brought with you?” “Oh, this is my cousin Tiana. She’s taking me trick-or-treating this year,” I replied. “Tiana, this is Mr. Mahlberg. He… lives here, with the Gnomes.” “Hello,” Tiana said with an awkward wave. “And I’m trick-or-treating *with* her. I’m just in charge because I’m older.” Mr. Mahlberg nodded and reached into his house to pull out the bowl of Halloween Candy. “Let’s get on with it, then,” he said, gesturing for us to come forward. Setting aside the momentary awkwardness, Tiana and I eagerly rushed forward with our bags opened and outstretched. “Trick or Treat!” we ritualistically said in unison. “Hmm. Just a witch hat and a black dress, Tiana? That’s not a very original or challenging costume, now is it?" he asked. He cast his eyes toward me with a bit more approval. "You're a dragonfly, April?" “Yes! Thank you! Everyone else thinks I’m supposed to be a fairy,” I said. “That’s because a witch and a fairy make a lot more sense than a witch and a dragonfly,” Tiana murmured under her breath. “There’s no reason why your lack of creativity should stifle that of others, Tiana,” Mr. Mahlberg claimed. “I don’t see too many insect costumes, especially on girls. It’s nice to see someone who treats Halloween as an opportunity for self-expression.” He tossed the candy into our bags, giving noticeably more to me than Tiana as a reward for my costume. “Thank you!” I said with a huge grin. “Thank you,” Tiana said, a bit more perfunctorily than me. “So, you have a pretty extensive Gnome Garden here, Mr. Mahlberg. Can I ask where they came from?” “Tiana!” I scolded through my teeth, my eyes trained on Mr. Mahlberg for any possible sudden outburst. “It’s fine, April,” Mr. Mahlberg assured me with a weary nod. “They were gifts. All of them. An inheritance, in a way. I realize they're actually a bit of an eyesore, which is why I keep the hedges up so that I don't get any complaints from the HOA. But getting rid of them or sticking them in a storage facility somewhere would be incredibly disrespectful on my part, so the Gnomes get free run of my lawn.” “Oh, okay,” Tiana said as she mulled over his explanation. “But April said that you’ve gotten more of them over the years. So, is this like some kind of deferred inheritance of lawn ornaments or –” “Happy Halloween, girls,” Mr. Mahlberg said as he stepped back inside his house and politely, but firmly, closed the door in our faces. “That was mean, Tiana,” I said as we turned around and began to walk down the sidewalk back to the street. “What? A guy says he’s getting Lawn Gnomes as dividends and I'm not allowed any follow-up questions?" she asked. "I don't buy it. Maybe it was his wife that originally collected Gnomes, and she either died or left him and he’s never gotten over it, so he keeps getting more of them as a coping mechanism to act like she never –” We both jumped at the sound of a small piece of ceramic falling to the ground. The nose and upper lip of the Gnome nearest to us had inexplicably broken off. “What did you do?” I asked aghast, turning back towards the house to check if Mr. Mahlberg had seen what happened. “Me? I didn’t do anything! I didn’t even touch it!” she insisted. "Oh no. Oh no," I said as I started to hyperventilate, every story that I had ever heard about Mr. Mahlberg racing through my mind all at once. “Hey, it’s okay. Calm down. We’ll just go. It’s Halloween; there are lots of kids and parents coming and going. He won’t know it was us,” she suggested. "He'll know!" I said in a strained whisper. “Then we’ll go back and tell him what happened,” was her next idea. “You said yourself that he must be maintaining these things. This can’t be the first time something like this has happened. He’ll tell us that he’ll be able to just glue it back on and not to worry about it. I promise.” I shook my head fervently, too scared to confess to the crime of merely being present when the Gnome broke, but equally too scared to flee. “Fine. Then we’ll just put the piece back in place for now and it will fall out on its own again later,” she said, bending down to pick the broken piece up. “What are you doing? Don’t touch it!” I demanded. “No, it’s fine, see? It’s a clean break. I should be able to slide it right back into place without it even being all that noticeable,” she claimed. She began to put the broken piece back in place when she paused, lowered it, and took a much deeper look inside the hollow interior of the Gnome. “April, I think there’s something in there,” she whispered. Another crack appeared on the Gnome’s exterior, this one nearly splitting it straight down the middle. Tianna stumbled backwards and pulled me back with her as we watched it slough off fragments of its chitinous shell, freeing itself in a matter of seconds. What was left was a still soft and wet exoskeleton the size of at least a small dog, wriggling and pulsing as it laboured to take its first breaths. We watched in morbid disgust as the overgrown insect unfurled itself to reveal a golden pair of wings and eyes against its dark bronze carapace. It vaguely resembled a cicada, only with a much longer and thinner abdomen, like what one might find on a dragon or butterfly. "What – the hell?" Tiana cursed softly. I wanted to run, but I also didn't want to leave the protection of her arms, and she was still too transfixed by the bizarre and grotesque spectacle we had just witnessed to want to flee. The cicada rolled over so that its feet were firmly on the ground, and then started beating its wings rapidly. It couldn’t fly yet; the wings were still too wet. It was beating them to help them dry quicker. An ear-splitting, humming cicada song began to resonate through the air; and this, it seems, was the signal for the other Gnomes to start hatching. A random smattering of Gnomes began to shake and crack from the inside, and we were now standing in the middle of the lawn. It was a minefield of the strange creatures, with any one of them capable of bursting open at any moment. Tianna and I both began to whimper as we stood too petrified to move, hoping the ordeal would be over as soon as it began. “Girls!” we heard Mr. Mahlberg shout. He had presumably been drawn back out to his porch by the cicada song, and he was now desperately waving us over. “Quickly! Before they take flight!” The Gnome nearest to our feet began to crack, and that was enough to send the two of us screaming across the lawn, back up the sidewalk and into Mr. Malhberg’s house. He immediately slammed it shut and turned the lock, but kept a steady vigil on the window in case anyone else stumbled upon the bugs. “Eggs? They’re eggs?” Tiana screamed. "Pupa, actually. Those are their adult forms out there," he corrected her. "Their cocoons look like Lawn Gnomes to help them remain inconspicuous in a suburban environment. They're less inconspicuous all clustered together like this, but it's still a reasonable defence. I knew they'd be coming out of their pupas before winter, but I was really hoping it wouldn't be tonight." “Okay, what the hell is going on?” Tiana demanded. “Why the hell do you have hundreds of giant bug pupas disguised as Lawn Gnomes in your front yard?” This time, Mr. Mahlberg looked less irritated and more contrite at Tiana’s question. “I… raise them here,” he confessed. “They’re not dangerous. They’re herbivores. I hatch their eggs in a terrarium downstairs and feed them compost. They have an irregular, years-long pupation stage so once they pupate, I put them outside so that when they come out, they’ll be able to fly off. As soon as they reach their adult stage, they instinctively fly off North West. I don’t know where they go, but I assume they have some isolated pocket of wilderness somewhere they can remain hidden from the world. When it’s time for them to breed, they make their way back here, if they can, like sea turtles returning to the beach they hatched on. They lay their eggs, I take them in, and it starts all over again. “It started when one of them crashed in my backyard and laid its eggs with its dying breath. I had never seen such an enormous insect before, let alone one so beautiful. They’re like coelacanths, I think; remnants of a long-vanished primeval world. They’re survivors from the carboniferous period, having somehow adapted to the lower oxygen levels and everything else that’s been thrown at them since. And yet, the fact that they’re still unknown to science can only mean their numbers are sparse. “I knew I had to do everything in my power to make sure the eggs survived. I took them inside, kept them at a steady temperature, and fed them when they hatched. When they pupated, I was as surprised as you were that they looked like Lawn Gnomes. I think it’s some kind of epigenetic camouflage that originally adapted to mimic local rocks, but now mimics human structures, like hermit crabs using pop cans as shells. Their pupation period is so long that I thought they died, so I put them out in the backyard as mementos, until one night I heard their cicada song and came out just in time to see them emerging. They flew off, but some eventually returned to lay more eggs. More and more make it back each time, so apparently, I’m doing a fairly decent job as a cryptid conservationist. “I’m sorry they scared you, girls. I don’t keep them here to creep people out. I keep them here to ensure they survive. Please, come look out the window. They’re about to take flight. It’s beautiful. You’ll see they’re nothing to be afraid of.” Tiana and I glanced at one another nervously before warily approaching the window next to Mr. Mahlberg. There were dozens of them, sitting out upon the lawn, beating their golden wings as they shimmered in the moonlight. Then one of them, the first one who emerged, started hovering off the ground and the rest of them followed suit. All at once they rotated to face North West, pointed themselves away from our neighbourhood and towards the woods behind us, taking off on an upwards trajectory like a flock of geese. The house vibrated with the humming of their wings as they flew over the roof. Mr. Mahlberg rushed outside to get one last look at the rare, prehistoric insects he had reared from generation to generation, with Tiana and I racing out right alongside him. I was just able to make out the golden tint of their wings and the shine of their carapaces against the black backdrop of the night before they swiftly faded from view and out of my world forever. “Wow,” I gushed softly, looking around at the dozens of still intact Lawn Gnomes with a newfound appreciation and understanding for what they were. Mr. Mahlberg stepped back into his house briefly and came back out with the candy bowl once again in his hands. “Here. Take what you like. For your trouble. Just leave me enough for the rest of the Trick-or-Treaters,” he offered. I eagerly grabbed a handful of my favourite chocolate bars, but Tiana was a bit more hesitant. “Are you buying our silence?” she asked. “Tell whoever you like. One more crazy story about my Gnomes circulating amongst the local kids doesn’t matter to me,” he said with a shrug. That was almost a decade ago now. My mom’s remarried and moved in with her new husband, and while our old house is still hers on paper, she’s informally bequeathed it to me. I’ve taken in Tiana as a roommate to help with the expenses, but I chose her specifically because she’s the only one who knows the truth about Mr. Mahlberg’s Gnomes. The other day I went over to Mr. Mahlberg’s house, noting that his lawn was as filled with Gnomes as ever as I walked up to and knocked on his front door. “April, hello. Good to see you. What brings you over?” he greeted. “Hello Mr. Mahlberg,” I smiled. “My mom’s all moved out now, so the house is mine to do with as I like. I couldn’t help but notice that things are getting a bit crowded around here, so I was wondering how you would feel about rehoming some [of](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheVespersBell/) [your](https://www.reddit.com/r/Odd_directions/) [Gnomes](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCrypticCompendium/)?”

I think my girlfriend was possessed...

ybaklo

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ybaklo/i_think_my_girlfriend_was_possessed/

It wasn't in the "Exorcist of Emily Rose" type of way. But, something was off about her ever since we moved into the house that backed up to a cemetery. We had been together 9 years before moving into our first home together, although we had lived together at my folks place for a few years prior. During the pandemic, maybe even right before, she had gotten heavy into drinking. That eventually led to some issues which resulted in her going back to live with her mom and step dad. Things were great for a few months, she was even able to say sober with her mom always watching over her. Then, the pandemic hit. Her mom was one of those traditional, overprotective parents, that didn't want her daughter going out past 10pm, let alone mingling with people during the middle of a pandemic. So, we started seeing each other less and less. After a few months, we both had enough of the "long distance" relationship, and decided to start looking at places together. We started off our search by looking at rental units, mainly townhomes and a couple of houses. We soon realized that we were limiting our search, and together, we could afford a pretty nice house together. She was doing taxes for a big marketing company, and I was an over the road truck driver. We ended up finding a house in a nice, quiet neighborhood. Honestly, it was the first one we looked at. I think we were in a rush to start the next chapter of our lives, or maybe the house just felt like home, but we didn't even look at any other houses. Our house was actually pretty dope. I know it wasn't a mansion or anything, but we were both pretty proud of our first big purchase together. It has a 2 car garage that lead into a basement. The basement was a bit outdated, but it was still nice. The carpet was an ugly green color, probably from the 70's, which was complimented by light brown wood paneling on the walls. It also had a gas fireplace, and a giant TV and surround sound sytem, which was left behind by the previous owners. There was also a half bath on the way up to the main floor. The stairs led you up into the kitchen, which was all updated. Nice, newer appliances, with a nice modern tile floor. One end of the kitchen led to the front door, and the other end had a sliding glass door going out to the back. It wasn't huge, but we were both able to cook comfortably together. Who am I kidding, she did most of the cooking....anyways, enough of the kitchen. We also had a 2nd story, which had 2 bedrooms, and 1 master bedroom/bathroom. The bathroom had heated floors, and even a heated toilet seat. It also had a jacuzzi tub and shower combo, which was pretty sweet. The master bedroom also featured reading lights that were installed in the ceiling, so you can read without disturbing your spouse while they're sleeping. Overall the house was pretty awesome, however, there was one part that made my girlfriend uneasy. The backyard. See, the backyard backed up to a small, local cemetery, with tombstones dating back to the early 1700's. There were maybe, I don't know, 75 or so headstones there. Maybe more, I never really took the time to count them. The cemetery was separated by a single chain link fence, that went all the way down the row of houses, and eventually opened up on a side street about 20 houses down. There was a small gravel path you could drive on, that went through the cemetery, it was kind of like a one way in and one way out kind of deal. Basically, looking at it from our backyard, the gravel road was like a C. Anyway, *I* was kind of excited to live next to a cemetery. I thought it would be cool. If only I had known... The first night, we both felt a little creeped out. We really didn't have everything put away when we decided to go to bed. Honestly, it was a long day, and we were both tired from moving an entire U-Haul truck worth of stuff into a home. As we laid in bed discussing how we were going to set up the rest of the house in the morning, the reading lights above the bed started flickering. We instantly stopped talking. Neither of us were really religious, to be honest, but we didn't dismiss the possibility of ghosts existing. After about 15 seconds of the lights flickering, it stopped, and went back to normal. It was almost like a ghost was welcoming us to the house. Or maybe that was our warning sign to get out... On day 3, we're still trying to get everything situated, when we hear a noise coming from the upstairs bathroom. We froze in place, listening carefully, wondering what the hell it was. It almost sounded like a pipe had burst, or a radio had turned on but it was all static. I grabbed the closest thing to me that I can use as a weapon, which happened to be a 10lb dumbbell, and went to investigate. My heart was pounding as I walked up the stairs, starting to think of all the different possibilities it could be. As I reached the top of the stairs, I was able to see into the bathroom. It was empty. It took me a few seconds to realize that the jacuzzi had a self drying feature on it, which, when moisture is detected, it will dry itself with air. I guess there are a bunch of tiny holes on the bottom of it, and we hadn't even noticed it. I guess one of us did take a shower not too long ago, but it was still weird because it didn't go off yesterday. We didn't really think much of it, and after our blood pressure returned to normal, we laughed it off. The next day, I went back to work. My girlfriend was lucky enough to work from home, thanks to the pandemic. So she set up her little home office on the main floor in the living room, as I was on my way to Nebraska. Later that night, she called me as I was getting ready to shut down for the night. I asked her how her day was, and we mostly talked about work, and coming up with ideas for the house, like painting, remodeling, etc.. We got on the topic of putting a fence up in the backyard, to block the cemetery. Not that it was creepy to look at, but mostly for privacy. Our backyard had a small deck, and it was summer time. We planned on hanging out in the back quite a bit, since we liked to grill, and just enjoy the weather. While we were talking about what color fence we would get, the bathtub went off. She stopped mid sentence and just gasped. I freaked out a little too, considering I wasn't there, and she was all alone. But then I remembered, it goes off after you shower in it. The funny thing is, when I reminded her about this, this freaked us both out even more. Turns out, she hadn't showered since the day before, and neither had I. We started talking in whispers, wondering if she should call the police or go investigate it herself. While we were trying to figure it out, it just stopped suddenly. It definitely ran a lot longer yesterday, when we actually used it for a shower. Did maybe some moisture get into the tub somehow, and it just sensed it and started drying itself? I highly doubt it, but we chalked it up to her maybe splashing the tub when she washed her hands in the bathroom. Yeah...lets go with that. It was a lot better than genuinely thinking a ghost was playing tricks on us, while I was hundreds of miles away and she was all alone. I still had this creepy feeling about it though, but I didn't say anything. I didn't want her to freak out, especially since she voiced her concerns about the cemetery in the beginning. The rest of the week went on fairly normal, we would chat on the phone a couple times a day, and nothing like that happened again. I returned home on the weekend, and we finally got to enjoy the house together. We mostly just sat back and watched movies, cuddled up on the couch in the basement. Then, out of nowhere, she dropped this bombshell on me. She said she swore she felt like something touched her while she was sleeping one night. Like a hand, gliding down the bottom half of her leg, moving towards her feet. She said she jolted out of bed, but no one was there. She had a hard time getting back to sleep, but didn't tell me while I was on the road because she didn't want me to worry, and she wasn't sure if she was just tweaking out. The hairs on my arms stood up, and I started getting goosebumps all over. We talked about it a bit, and figured it might've just been the blanket, but I got her some pepper spray before returning to work, just incase. The next few weeks seemed normal, until I get a call from her one night. It was pretty late, but she would stay up way later than me, watching re-runs of *The Office* and random documentaries that piqued her interest. When I answered, she seemed like she was distressed. her breathing was heavy and slow, and it sounded like she was worried. "Babe..." she said, "When are you going to be home again?" "I'm not sure, probably Friday night, why is everything okay?" I asked, starting to worry a bit myself. "I don't feel too good, I think I'm gonna go to sleep a little bit early tonight" she replied. "Well, what's wrong? Do you need me to call the paramedics, or is it just like a stomach ache kinda thing?" "I don't know, I think I'm fine, I just don't feel good. Ill talk to you tomorrow. night babe" and with that, she hung up the phone and went to bed. I tried texting her a few times, but she never answered. The next day, I called her pretty early in the morning to see how she was doing. She seemed confused, as if she didn't remember calling me the night before. I told her about her call last night, and she swears she doesn't remember making that call. She said she fell asleep watching a movie last night, but doesn't remember when. I figured she had just called me when she was half asleep. I can relate to that...I've picked up phone calls while half asleep, and I don't remember much of the conversation. She *has* talked in her sleep before, but it was usually when she was drinking. Which made me think...shit, was she drinking again? So I asked her about it, and reluctantly she told me she had been drinking while I was on the road. This problem went on for months, and the calls got more bizarre. She seemed completely normal when we were home together, and made promises she would stop drinking. But at least once a week, I would get a call from her where she clearly wasn't herself. That eventually lead to arguments, as I felt helpless being on the road. I kept my cool, but she was the one that would lash out. The weird thing is, her voice would change sometimes. She would be telling a random story, or talk about something that bothered her at work that day, and just start getting really worked up. Worked up, to the point that she would raise her voice, but it would get lower in pitch. As in, she sounded like a *fucking demon*. Now, I've known her for over 9 years at this point, and I've seen her worked up before. I've seen her drunk *and* worked up before. Hell, we've both seen each other at some of our lowest points, more than once. And I've never heard a voice like that come out of her mouth. She was usually very quiet, and even shy. She had a pretty feminine voice, and rarely even got angry. So this was definitely out of character for her, but I just assumed she had gotten pretty bad with drinking. At this point, I was just getting frustrated with her drinking issues, but I stayed with her. In that haunted fucking house. I didn't put two and two together. Occasionally, we would get the lights flickering in our bedroom. The jacuzzi hot tub would start drying itself at random hours of the day. I swear, I've even seen things move in the corner of my eye. I thought maybe if we got a dog, it would help things. Honestly it just made it worse. We adopted this adorable pit-bull, with a beautiful brown and golden coat. He was happy as a dog could be as we drove him home from the animal shelter. Once he got in our home though, he seemed skittish. Like he didn't feel comfortable. And for some reason, he refused to go into the basement. He would just kind of stare at it, like he was watching something. Anytime we went in the basement to watch a movie, he would bark at us. We thought maybe he just wanted attention, so we moved movie nights to the main floor, where we had another TV, so he can hang out with us. Things seemed to be okay, but the next week, when I was on the road, the dog nipped at my girlfriend. She was coming up from working out in the basement and he just jumped at her. As if he didn't recognize her or something. The weird thing was, he definitely was a mommas boy. He liked her more than he liked me. And I grew up around dogs my whole life, so I knew how to train them and take care of them, but he still favored her. My girlfriend absolutely adored animals, but didn't know the first thing about owning a dog. She did good, for being unexperienced. She took him for walks, trained him to sit, and to even ring the bell to be let outside when he needed to go to the bathroom. So it was weird when he nipped at her, and even though we both figured he may not be used to being in a new home, she wasn't ready to be left alone with a 60lb dog that can easily bite her face off, so we returned him to the shelter. After that, things started getting weirder. I occasionally found myself at home alone once in a while on the weekends, while the girlfriend would go run errands, or visit family and friends. I always felt like I was being watched. There was this one time, I went to grab something from upstairs, and as I was going back down, one of the spare room lights turned on. It wasn't on when I went up, I was sure of it. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I swear to god it felt like some kind of energy had touched me. My body got cold instantly, and I ended up walking out of the house. I sat in the garage for a while, afraid to go back inside. She got home, and we both went in together. The light was off, and I didn't feel that energy anymore. I was slightly creeped out, but at this point we were kind of used to strange things happening around the house, and tried not to think too much of it. She claimed that she could tell there were things living in the house with us, but they were all nice, and that there was nothing evil there. We never experienced cabinets slamming shut, or pots and pans flying across the kitchen, so I believed her. Fast forward a few months. We both went out to the city with some friends for a few drinks. It was a club on the top floor of a skyrise, so we all ended up microdosing LSD, which wasn't uncommon for that friend group. What wasn't common about that night, was how my girlfriend reacted to the drinking and drugs. We ended up getting a table, and bottle service. Tequila was our go to, and we got two bottles. My girlfriend was doing better with drinking at the time, and could handle the occasional drink or two on a night out. So we all proceeded to have a few drinks, and were all just chatting about where we should go for vacation next spring, when out of nowhere, my girlfriend starts talking nonsense. I asked her to repeat what she said, and she just said "*fuck you*" in this low, demonic tone. The two friends we were with looked at me in shock, like where did that come from? She then proceeded to stand on the chair she was sitting on, and started contorting her body and limbs. She was double jointed, but this was fucking wild to see while on acid, even if I was just micro dosing. She looked like she was throwing up demonic gang signs, if that helps paint the picture. She also said something along the lines of "I can feel my ancestors inside of me. The tequila awakened my ancestors." She started knocking stuff over, so we quickly paid our tab and left. As we were leaving, she seemed to get 10x more intoxicated by the time we got to the elevator. She started talking more gibberish and was yelling at some of the workers. It took all three of us to hold her up, and she weighed no more than 130 pounds. At this point, staff decided to call 911 as we all stumbled into the elevator. We get to the lobby and wait for an ambulance to arrive, while management is trying to calm her down. Once they arrived, they put her in a stretcher and tied her down. It looked like she was going to be taken away to a mental institute, the way they restrained her. There was a restraint over her chest, holding down her two arms near the shoulder. There was one on her stomach, holding down her lower arms. And then one or two on her legs, I'm not too sure. I just remember as they were wheeling her away, she looked at me and almost jolted up, but the restraints held her in place. Her eyes were rolling to the back of her head, and after throwing her head back, out came the most sinister sounding laugh I have ever heard in my life. And she just laughed like that until they loaded her up in the back of the ambulance. Me and my friends stood there, honestly creeped the fuck out. I filled them in on everything that's been happening, and of course, that just made things worse. We started theorizing if she was possessed, and if she WAS, she was probably standing over me while I was sleeping. Not something I wanted to think about while I was tripping, but it was already too late for that. The image of her being restrained, throwing her head back and laughing the way she did, will forever be seared into my brain. They say when you trip, you can almost see peoples energy. Like their glow, or their aura. Some people call it vibes. When she was being wheeled away, I saw darkness. It was like a black cloud of smoke was looming around her. The glow she once had, was gone. I think my ex-girlfriend was possessed....

fear4life.com

yb4l5k

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yb4l5k/fear4lifecom/

[Part 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/xx4z4i/fear4lifecom/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) [Part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/xy2vrm/fear4lifecom_part_2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [Part 3](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y29zjx/fear4lifecom_part_3/) I went a few days without having any problems at my parents house. There were a couple video calls that I didn't answer, but nothing strange happened at their house. The only notifications I received from my camera were from the wind or the raccoons that must live near my house.  Yesterday, my parents went out for lunch and shopping. I took the time to sit, relax, and enjoy the silence around me. I started drifting off to sleep while sitting on the couch, but was pulled out of it by a knock coming from the patio door. Their house backs up to the woods so there shouldn't be any reason for someone to go to that door. I got up and peered around the entryway to the kitchen. The blinds were partially closed. From the light coming through, it didn't look like anyone was there. Still, I waited a minute before walking to the door. Then I opened the blinds all the way and was relieved that no one was there. I was worried I put my parents in danger by coming here, so I figured I'd better go outside and look. I slid open the door wall and stepped outside. The backyard was empty, but I thought I saw movement in the woods at the end of the yard. When I looked around to find the movement again, I couldn't find anything. After pulling out my phone, I zoomed in and took a picture of the woods..  Before I could look at the picture, my phone vibrated to notify me there was movement detected at my front door. The camera had saved a short video clip. I played it three or four times, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I received a few more notifications, but it was the same thing. Even looking closely and zooming in, I couldn’t see anything moving. Needing a distraction, I turned on the TV and sat on the couch. My phone vibrated again, but this time it showed that motion was detected from the camera that was by my monitor. Nothing showed on the camera at first, but I could hear something moving near it. It sounded like something was being dragged across the floor. And then something showed up in front of the camera, causing me to send my phone flying across the room. It looked like the thing that had been at my door the first night when this all started. With my heartbeat rapidly increasing, I went over and picked up my phone. There was a new text message waiting for me. It was from a five digit number and it said, "go home." I responded back with, "no!" Shortly after, my phone vibrated from another text message. It was a different five digit number with an image attached. Risking a virus or malware, I downloaded the image. It was a picture of me standing on the patio of my parents house. My phone vibrated again. Another message came through and another image. This one was my parent's front porch.  My phone vibrated again and again as more pictures came through. Another one looked like it was the window to my parent's bedroom. Then the next one was outside my bedroom. All these messages and images kept coming from different numbers and showed different parts of the house. They were all taken from outside the house.  Then the original five digit number messaged me. It said, "go home." It repeated the message about ten times and then said, "...or we'll come inside to find you."  I didn't want to put my parents in danger, but I also didn't want to go home. Especially after what I saw on the camera. My concern for my parents won so I texted them and said I needed to get back home for a writing job and that I would talk to them soon. I grabbed my things and got in my car. On the way back, I made a stop at the police station. After showing all the texts, pictures, and videos and telling them about the website, they said it was probably a friend playing a prank on me.  I told them I was positive that it wasn't a prank from a friend. I don’t think they believed me that this was real, but they did at least take my information down and said they would look into the website. They also promised to send a police car to drive by my parents’ house tonight. Then they recommended I call the police if anything happens while I was home. That was a very disappointing stop. I took my time driving home and when I finally pulled into the driveway, I just sat there. I started thinking of everything that had happened so far. Nothing had harmed me, but I was definitely afraid. I began wondering if maybe they won’t hurt me and they are just trying to scare me. The website was definitely accurate about being afraid even though I still didn’t understand how it worked. I read a comment someone posted that maybe they were coming in through my computer. As much as I don’t believe that could happen, I don’t know how else they would have gotten inside. However, if that is true, then they could have easily hurt me by now so maybe I don’t need to be so afraid? Although, it is hard not to after seeing what was at my door, on my monitor, and now on the cameras. I’m going to check around the outside of my house once I can gather the courage and then go inside. [Here are the videos I mentioned.](https://youtu.be/gXnH3-qOz7s) It was weird how there was nothing on the video from in front of my house. Especially with how many notifications I had from it.  Edit: I watched the video again after I posted it online and something changed. I'm positive neither of those things were there when I watched it before. I think somehow the website infected my computer and then got into my phone through the synced browser or wifi or something.

I Work for a County Sheriff’s Office in Maine - I’ve Been Placed on Unofficial Leave.

yavkqf

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yavkqf/i_work_for_a_county_sheriffs_office_in_maine_ive/

[PREVIOUS](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y4rooj/i_work_for_a_county_sheriffs_office_in_maine_i/) “God. Damn it!” I shouted in frustration as paperwork fell clean out the bottom of the folder I was carrying and fluttered to the floor scattering in all directions. I glared at the papers ruefully. It had been only a couple days since the witches attack and as it had turned out I was a little worse for wear. My left arm had been dislocated severely and there was a decent hole in my hand from where Eric removed the curse mark. As a result my left arm would be in a sling until the end of the week and my right hand was bandaged up tightly. This made even simple tasks difficult so I knew it was going to be near impossible for me to pick up the paperwork. I decided to ignore them for the time being rather than try and awkwardly scrape them back into a pile. You see, after the incident I had been placed on night duty. This meant that I would spend my nights alone in the Station with little more to do than twiddle my thumbs. If any problems arose I was to call a larger station in the next town over to come resolve it, though I still tried to spend my time productively. I focused on writing out reports and filing documents. I was about to head back to my desk when there was a soft knocking and I looked over to see Eric standing in the darkness on the other side of the glass entryway doors. I moved to unlock it for him and he entered. He looked fatigued, and his clothing was slightly dampened from the weather outside. “You’re earlier than usual.” I commented, glancing at the clock to see it was only nearing 3am. For the past two nights he had taken to patrolling the forest though he usually didn’t return to the station until 5 or 6 in the morning. “It’s quiet out there.” He answered as he sat heavily on the couch in the visitors area, “It’s never a good thing when it’s quiet like this.” He sighed running his hand through his hair and closing his eyes a moment. I realised then that he must be tired. He was out in the forest for the entirety of my shift the previous night and the Sheriff had complained earlier about him being around on his shift during the day as well. It only occurred to me then that he was probably out there day and night, “Have you slept in the last two days?” I asked raising my eyebrow. “That’s not important right now, the spirit is still looking for a host. If she senses that I’ve left the area, she’ll take someone.” He explained, “How are your injuries?” He asked now, opening his eyes again to examine me as if he had forgotten to do so before. “They’re fine.” I assured but he looked to the pile of documents on the floor pointedly. “I see, and you just felt like throwing paperwork to the ground in joy?” He mused. Dejected I ignored his question, “What happens if she can’t find a new host? I think you should try and get some sleep.” I regretted sounding like my mother. He seemed to think a moment this time before speaking again, “Spirits.. Take a risk crossing the barrier. Typically they only come when called, and presumably whoever summoned her should know she needs a host. It’s.. Odd, that they didn’t have a host for her already. No sacrifice waiting.. If she can’t find a host again before she runs out of energy she will cease to exist.” “Isn’t that a good thing?” I queried. At this Eric looked amused, as if I was missing something, “She wants to live just as much as you or I. Every creature that has the will to live has survival instincts, as she becomes more desperate she will become more dangerous and I hope you realise you are still her ideal target.” He informed me casually. I felt a fresh wave of unease roll over me, “I thought you removed the curse?” I asked nervously. “I did.” He assured, “However, you’re still the easiest choice for her, she knows you. She’s familiar with your energy. Removing the curse made it more difficult for her to find you, though you shouldn’t let your guard down. The curse was like a key of sorts, but even without a key, she can still break in.” His words hit a new found anxiety and I stepped back, reaching for a chair to sit down into as I did. I was almost certain I was going to faint, the thought that she might come for me, that I would hear her voice in my head again and feel her will imposed over my own brought back a fear I wished I had never known. “Don’t look so worried Charles, I’ll handle it.” Eric said calmly, “Can you pass me my cane?” He asked then. “I thought you said you didn’t need it for more than show?” I asked curious, I had assumed he wouldn’t feel the need to keep up appearances with me anymore since he didn’t even keep his arm bandaged now. “Today I need it. I’ve over extended myself slightly.” He admitted. “Oh, right.” I didn’t really understand but I did get him his cane, “Diane should be here any minute, I can ask for an early minute so we can go?” “You’re pretty useless here anyway, I doubt she’ll mind.” He mused and I felt a twinge of embarrassment. As he predicted Diane was only too happy to allow me to go early, though I think she might have also just wanted Eric to leave. Sheriff had driven me into work the day before since it was difficult for me to drive as I was, and Eric offered to drive me home since he would be staying with me anyway. His car was, ancient. A 1929 Mercedes, he told me, it was a shiny black thing with white wall tires. At first I doubted it was even drivable, but it quickly became apparent that it had been modified somewhat over the years, the engine certainly wasn’t from the 1930’s. “Did you steal this from a museum?” I joked, the interior was leather, but the seats were an odd shape. No head rests. “..Not from a museum…” He stated after a small hesitation. It took me a moment to fully understand, “You know I’m an officer of the law, right?” “So arrest me.” He said calmly and I closed my mouth. This was going to be one of those things I chose to ignore. When we arrived at my apartment my neighbour, Mrs Jones, was out watering her garden as the sun was beginning to rise. She watched us with displeasure as we went inside, scowling down her nose at me, I’m not sure why she disliked me so much. My apartment was the on ground level, three bedroom one bath. Nothing special. I had cleaned up a little bit, but it still didn’t look great. “Bathroom is down the hall, you can use the guest bed. I’ll make us some dinner.” I announced. “Thank you.” He answered politely though his expression gave away none of his thoughts as he moved to go shower. I set about struggling to cook up some steaks and vegetables, I couldn’t lift the heavy iron skillet well but I made do. As promised Eric wasn’t gone long. He came back out in black boxers with a towel half draped over his shoulders. He was using it to dry his hair with his left hand while his right hand was awkwardly held away from things, presumably so he didn’t cut the fabric. Now.. I know I agreed that I would ignore certain things when it came to him, but I help myself. Taking the chance to subtly look him over I noticed his skin was remarkably unblemished. I don’t know why I had assumed that fighting the kinds of things he did that he would have scars. He didn’t. Aside from where his abnormal arm joined at his shoulder of course. The silver marks on his neck just below the jawline were oddly bright, I think I can be forgiven for thinking they glowed slightly. He had his back turned to me as he started to pull on a shirt and I noticed that he was also remarkably well defined. One of those guys who’s veins show in their arms slightly when they pick things up. He seemed to struggle to get his monster arm through the shirt sleeve and I thought I heard him curse, then I remembered his left leg. I had always been curious about what injury it may have had and I had never seen him before without jeans on so it had always been covered prior. I was simultaneously disappointed and intrigued to see that from his hip down the length of his leg was a neat line of what I thought were tattoos. They seemed to be a series of circles, crescents and stars, the ones from his ankle up to his thigh were empty outlines while the ones higher near his hip appeared to be full. When he moved to put his pants back on I realised that I had been staring too long at the symbols and turned back to the food, “Hey Eric, what’s your routine?” I enquired now. “Excuse me?” He asked confused. “You’re ripped. What’s your work out routine?” I clarified as I plated up. He seemed to contemplate what I was saying for a moment and I thought I saw his cheeks heat faintly in embarrassment as he understood the compliment. “Oh.. I spar a lot.” He answered blandly, “I thought I told you not to stare at me?” “I wasn’t staring, I was just looking. I mean, n-not *‘looking’* just… I have eyes?” I struggled and I hope you all appreciate the effort I went to so that you know what Eric looks like. He didn’t answer me then as we sat down for dinner. I gave him his plate and began struggling to cut through my steak like a savage. Juice leaked out of it and I knew I had cooked it perfectly, however that’s when I noticed Eric seemed to flinch and I realised he was watching me. “I’m fine, I can cut it.” I assured assuming he was concerned. “It’s not that..” He answered. “What is it then? Are you alright?” I asked concerned now. “It’s nothing, but I would prefer cereal.” He said finally. “Oh, in the pantry.” I said easily and he got up quickly. I wondered if he had some kind of problem with meat? I felt a little dumb for not having considered that he might not eat the same things I did. I wasn’t entirely sure what monster-people liked to eat, but I had assumed meat, maybe I shouldn’t have cooked it? The morning drew on and Eric took some time to place salt across all the entry ways into the house. I didn’t ask why, I felt like I knew better at that point. However as I was about to go to bed there was an energetic crashing out the front. Immediately Eric was tense and he moved to investigate. “Wait, it’s okay, it’s just my sister.” I assured quickly, her enthusiasm was hard to mistake as she bashed on the door. “Charles, CHARLES! Are you home?” She called trying to look through the frosted glass of the front door. “Sister?” Eric echoed confused. “Yeah, her name is Clair.” I said as I moved to open the door. “Don’t-“ he started but it was too late. With the door open less than a crack my sister pushed her way in. Dragging a suitcase behind her she let it go before leaping onto me to wrap me up in a hug. I winced, “Ow ow ow, Clair…” She appeared to notice then that I was bandaged, “Oh, I’m sorry, *So* Sorry, are you alright?” She contained her energy quickly realising it was too much for the situation. “I’m okay, I was just about to go to bed.. Nightshift.” I explained. “Oh, I’ll have to be quiet then.” She said understanding, then she seemed to notice Eric for the first time. I watched as her expression changed from curious to embarrassed, “Charles.. There’s a very hot man standing in your living room and you have just let me make a fool of myself, but I just want you to know I support you 100%.” I looked back to Eric who was covering his face with his hand, I was sure he must have been hating his job at that particular moment, then I turned back to my sister and I wondered briefly how exactly my life had gotten to this point. “Clair no, that’s not right-” I tried. “I won’t ask any questions I swear.” She assured putting her hands up. To say it was a long day is putting it lightly. My sister did not in fact remain quiet and I’m sure neither Eric or I got much sleep with her in the house clattering around. She was determined to host a thanksgiving dinner at my house in the coming days and so was preparing. In addition to this the small emotions I had noticed in Eric evaporated and I wondered if I was previously able to recognise them because he was comfortable around me. As evening came about Eric and I headed to the station for my next shift, “I’m sorry, my sister is.. ahhh.. high energy.” I apologised. “You don’t need to apologise.” He stated. “I know, but she’s.. Sometimes she has no filter when she says things. She’s great really, it was just her and I growing up. We don’t really get along well with our parents so she’s kind of my entire family.” I explained, “Do you have any family?” I asked curiously. At this he hesitated, “In a round about way I suppose I do. Though I haven’t seen them for some time.” “Oh, I’m sorry..” “It’s fine.” He dismissed me. “If you want, you’re welcome to stay for thanksgiving.” I offered which seemed to catch him by surprise, “You don’t have to but, my sister and I would like it if you did.” I clarified. “I’ll think about it.” he stated noncommittally, then put his lefthand out to stop me flying forward as he slammed on the breaks of the car. He saw it before I did, a figure standing just ahead of the headlights. My heart began to race as I watched it shambled back out of the light, but Eric didn’t seem concerned as he pulled the car forward slowly until we were level with the thing. I could tell then that it was a man, dressed in a suit standing on the edge of the forest. His mannerisms were strange and he seemed to recognise Eric with a caution that kept him from coming closer. I also noticed that his eyes were entirely white without pupils. “Why are you here.” Eric demanded. No answer that I heard came but he continued as if one had, “That’s not important, answer the question.” Another pause seemingly without response, “I would hope I don’t have to remind you of what is acceptable to hunt and what is not.” His voice was colder now, “If you’re going to have a conversation, you had better include everyone.” ‘As you wish.’ A male voice came to mind, it was distant sounding and deeply disturbing, not quite the same as the witch.. But similar, ‘Hunting witches Eric? Isn’t that a touch too dangerous for you\~?’ The voice asked, ‘Nathaniel wouldn’t approve.’ “It doesn’t matter what he would approve of.” Eric muttered, oddly annoyed by the comment. ‘You should know he requests that you come see him, he says it has been too long.’ I saw Eric subtly raise his hand to the crescent marks on his neck, “ ‘Requests’? or ‘Commands’?” He clarified tensely. The man on the road smiled broadly, ‘Just a *‘request’*, for now.’ The voice exaggerated the ’s’ in ‘request’ and I saw him turn his attention to me, ‘When I see him next, I will be sure to tell him of your new… friend.’ I felt as though I had just been looked up and down. “Tell him what you like.” Eric answered finally as he put the car back in gear and we sped off. “What *was* that?” I asked anxiously, looking back to see that the thing was still standing where we had left him. “A parasite.” He explained vaguely, “He won’t hunt humans in this area so there’s no need to be concerned. He’s little more than an inconvenience.” “What did it mean when he said witches are too dangerous for you? I can’t imagine anything that’s beyond what you can handle.” Eric seemed amused, “There are plenty of things I can’t handle. This witch isn’t one of them. I don’t know what it is, but she’s not strong. I can sense it.” “You think she’s injured or something?” I asked now unsurely. “I don’t know.” He said honestly as we arrived at the station, “I won’t be far.” He told me and I knew that to mean he wasn’t coming inside. The night passed slowly and without incident. As dawn approached Eric returned to collect me from the station then we decided to go to Millies for breakfast. Though I was disappointed to note Jess wasn’t on shift I was interested to see that Eric ordered pancakes. We sat in silence for a long time before I finally spoke up, “So, you’ll eat pancakes, but not steak?” I asked waving my fork at him accusatorially. “Charles.” He warned without looking up at me and I knew I had hit a weak point. “Why is that exactly?” I continued being cheeky. “Pick another subject.” He said finally. “Alright.” I agreed, eating a spoonful of the ice cream that came with the waffles I had ordered, before enquiring, “Who’s ‘Nathaniel’?” I asked and Eric choked. “Since when did you decide you could interrogate me?” He muttered. “I’m not interrogating you, I’m just asking questions-“ I assured though stopped when I noticed Eric’s attention fixate on the door. Confused I turned in the booth to look back at the door. A father and daughter had just entered and I recognised the man, Dr. Dempsey, “Is something wrong?” I asked unsurely. “Do you know them?” Eric asked quietly. “That’s my doctor.. I went to see him when I got the curse mark.. I assume the girl is his daughter.” I explained speaking quieter when he did. They looked similar, both with red hair and light eyes so it was an easy connection to make. As I watched then Dr. Dempsey’s eyes came to rest on me and I felt a chill run down my spine. It didn’t seem as though *He* was looking at me.. Rather, that something *else* disturbingly familiar was. I didn’t have the time to say what I thought before the man attacked. Eric was gone from the booth before I could even determine what was happening and the Doctor’s fist came down hard on the empty space, breaking off the corner of the table with the force of the impact. From then, it was pure chaos. Other customers screamed and in a panic everyone tried to cram themselves out the doorway. “The girl is the witch!” Eric told me as the big man recovered from his initial missed attack and turned back to challenge him again. I’m not sure what he wanted me to do with that information. I was just a man with a fork and a half eaten plate of waffles. “Charles, don’t let her make that circle!” He clarified and I realised that the man’s daughter was drawing a pentagram on the linoleum floor of the diner with her own blood. I hurried to try and stop her, I really had no idea what to do. They don’t teach you how to interrupt a witch’s seance in the yearly retraining and so I ended up sort of bear hugging her then scooping her off the floor so she couldn’t continue drawing. In response the 16 year old screamed and bit me. She thrashed wildly and kicked off the counter top with her feet. The momentum knocked us both backwards. I landed taking the brunt of the force for both of us, hitting my head and injured shoulder, one of them made a sickening crack that I knew wasn’t good, though I’m not sure which it was. Dazed I rolled in agony as the teen sprung up. I knew she was going right back to her pentagram but as I struggled to recover it was too late. I didn’t know what would happen until it had begun. She completed the symbol and the entire coffee shop began to vibrate. Mr. Dempsey stepped away from Eric now, returning to his daughters side with a wide smile, I could recognise the spirit that had infected me in him and it made me shudder. Eric returned to my side and was urging me to get up, “You need to leave Charles, now.” He stated firmly. “What’s happening?” I asked numbly instead. “I don’t know, she’s summoned something else.. There’s only one way this ends now. The castor has to die to break all of the summons, you don’t want to see it.” He told me calmly, his expression was cold. I realised then that this was his true job, to take care of things no matter how unpleasant the resolution was. “You can’t just kill a teenaged girl.” I protested. “She’s not a teenaged girl anymore. Nothing like that is human, it’s just wearing a pretty shell.” The floor began to split apart along the lines of blood and I realised I could see something in the darkness below. There was a tense moment of quiet before the thing rose up out of the ground. It was a massive scaled creature with spines, the top of its head brushed the ceiling of the diner and it reminded me considerably of a snake. When it launched itself directly at Eric and I, he readjusted and in a split second I saw his darker eye dilate from a slit to a circle, like a cat focusing on a bird. He then slammed his hand directly down onto the ground, I saw blue sparks ignite in the air and the creature smashed into a shimmering silver wall that didn’t seem to be there until the moment it was impacted. It looked just as confused as I did that it had hit something and the barrier then began to crumble into a sparkling silver dust, dissolving in the air like snow on a warm day, “That was a one time deal wasn’t it..” I asked and Eric nodded. “Yes. Now go, if I have to protect you you’re in the way.” I couldn’t argue with his logic. I scrambled to get out of the diner as he squared up with the thing more than triple his size. I couldn’t imagine how he could fight that, but I could also see a singular determination in his eyes. I thought then that he probably didn’t know how to give up on anything and I realised that there was something I could do to help.. I still had my gun on me from work and I’m not a bad aim. As Eric fought with the creature the diner was being destroyed, broken crockery was scatted over the floor and I trained my eye on the girl. She didn’t look any different from any other teenaged girl I had ever seen, but it was her blood that connected these creatures to this world.. Truthfully I don’t remember pulling the trigger, I vaguely remember hearing the shot and seeing the surprise on Eric’s face as the serpent hissed thrashing back and forth. It seemed to burn up with protest in the same way the witches spirit did as it left Mr. Dempsey. I don’t know what happened after that. I heard sirens and the Sheriff’s voice arraign with Eric’s before I faded into unconsciousness. When I came back to I was in a hospital bed, again. Though this time Eric was in the room along with my sister who was pacing anxiously. “He’s waking, stop worrying.” Eric was telling my sister. He sat neatly with his arm bandaged, eye covered and cane by his side. meanwhile my sister looked like a mess, her hair haphazardly done and wearing the same clothes from the day before. “How do you know? He SHOT someone Eric.” she stated panicked. “I’m well aware.” He responded calmly. I’m sure that bothered her even more. “Stop.. worrying so much..” I murmured to Clair and she immediately launched herself at me. I didn’t feel a thing, pain meds I suppose. “You’re alive!” She said dramatically. “He was never going to die.” Eric said flatly, “Though, you will be mending a broken arm for a considerable time.” He informed me. “What else has happened?” I groaned and he hesitated. “..You’ve been placed on unofficial leave.. Pending investigation.” He said gently. Great. [NEXT](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ycasl3/my_name_is_stacy_white_im_an_investigative/) [Chapter List](https://www.reddit.com/user/xXKikitoXx/comments/xhj9xo/eric_linnaeus_stories_discussion_thread/) [.xXx.](https://www.reddit.com/user/xXKikitoXx/comments/vl2ws4/hi_and_welcome_to_my_page/)

I'm a freelance artist. An AI image generator keeps on predicting my death.

yaxmyu

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yaxmyu/im_a_freelance_artist_an_ai_image_generator_keeps/

I still remember a time when the internet had a distinct metallic sound. I miss it. If I could pull the hands of progress back to when cellphones were a luxury good I would. If I could avoid a place like this, filled with digital strangers and computers masquerading as people; if I could sit in a bar somewhere and speak to another human being about my problems — I would. But I can’t. I’m typing this out on my phone with my back pressed against the front door. I’ve locked it, I’ve put up the chain and I’ve even turned the key on the ancient metal bar. My windows are covered up by furniture and on the off chance that someone (or something) manages to get inside I have my sharpest kitchen knife ready. I just don’t know if any of this will help. I’ve called the police and they’ve hung up on me. I’ve called my brother and he insists I lost my mind. I’ve reached out to countless others who I considered friends, family even — yet they all consider me mad. All I have left is you. I am starving and drunk and terrified, and all I have left is this chorus of faceless strangers. Come morning, I doubt I’ll even have that. I’ve never been one for tech or the internet. I got my kicks from painting and hiking and getting drunk on the beach. My brother, on the other hand, was a computer junkie way back in the floppy disc era. When we got out of our parent’s place I stayed in the arts, he went over to the states to work tech. He moved halfway across the planet and we weren’t particularly inseparable to begin with. I lived my life doing odd jobs around Prague and he went on to become a project manager somewhere off West. We’d see each other every couple Christmases if he decided to visit the family, but aside from a dinner or two we never spent any time alone. We were two adults with differing interests and our lives had very little in common. There was no malice towards him from my side and I presumed there was no malice from him towards me. With everything that has come to pass, however, I do wonder. I wonder whether my brother doesn’t secretly despise me. He sent the first e-mail a couple months before the pandemic. Short and to the point. One of his associates was working on an AI-image generation program that could one day replace artists. He thought I might be interested. He included a key for a beta test. Back then I was working as a lecturer at a private university. I had my hands full with teaching, and, when I wasn’t teaching, I was busy with personal projects. I let the e-mail sit for a couple of weeks. Not out of malice, I was just busy and it didn’t seem important. When I finally did click the link and open up the artificial intelligence it seemed like a joke. I typed in “dog.” Half an hour later the computer spit out a blurry picture of a brown blob. I tried a couple more simple requests like “boat” or “cow” and all the image generator returned were vague shapes that took an eternity to manifest. I answered my brother’s e-mail with an assertion that his associate was a fool. Computers were tools, they could never replace a human hand. It took me a couple of days to write back but my brother’s reply was instantaneous. He said I was wrong. He said it would take a couple years, but that AI would surpass the skills of regular artists. He was willing to bet money on it. That’s why I think he hates me. Because he made it all a bet. Had he simply made the assertion I would have shrugged and moved on with my life. But my brother knows the sort of person I am. He knows that I never back off from a bet. We agreed on a decent chunk of change and three years. Aside from the e-mails, we never spoke a word to each other. It wasn’t until I called him in a panic today that we spoke about the AI. My brother’s second e-mail came in May of 2020. My life situation had changed considerably by then. Most of the students I taught were internationals who had moved to Prague for the university. When classes moved to the cyberspace, attendance took a sharp dive. Eventually, so did my hours. I had always avoided social media up until then, but with nowhere else to find work I started offering commissions. Not a lot of strangers took me up on the offer, but back then plenty of friends were willing to throw some cash my way for a portrait or a landscape. With my commission workload full, it took me a couple of days to get to my brother’s e-mail. When I did, I wasn’t impressed. The blobs which the AI produced still lacked any coherent connection to the prompts that I delivered. The “Dog” had eight legs, the “House” was just a big green smudge and any attempts at landscapes were just dark screens. I wanted to reply to the e-mail but the thought completely slipped my mind. Once it slipped, it disappeared. For months I didn’t think about my brother or the AI but then, around the fall of 2020 my brother sent me a third e-mail. The stream of commissions from friends and family had long dried up, so I wasn’t particularly busy when I got the message. With nothing else to do, and the world outside too stressful to watch; I clicked the link immediately. The new version of the AI was far from perfect. The rendering time ballooned up to over an hour and the images produced still looked like something drawn by a toddler — but the images had shape. Somehow, through mere text, the AI was able to unearth primal depictions of simple objects. That’s when I started to worry. I wrote back to my brother, asking him how the program worked — but he never replied. He left me alone with the AI to stew. I tried to push it out of my mind, I tried not to think about what difference a couple months of development would make. Yet, every other night, I would find myself testing out new prompts. The results weren’t impressive, but I had enough of an imagination to know where they were going. Around spring of 2021 I received a fifth e-mail. The link attached confirmed my fears. The software was making radical leaps in quality. Image generation boiled down to a crisp fifteen minutes and strange digital smudges were an exception rather than a rule. More e-mails came in throughout the year, but they were all blur. The AI my brother was sending me updates about wasn’t the only one on the market. MidJourney, Dall-E, countless others — month by month I would see more artificial art pop up on the newsfeed hellscape where I would look for work. I was still getting commissions, but they were few and far between. The price of everything was going up, but the wages for putting brush to paper stayed the same. My brother’s last e-mail came in a month ago. It simply included the link to the latest version of the beta test and a quick message: “Don’t worry about the money. Something tells me you’ll need it. ” With the bet off and my mental fortitude in the gutter, I avoided the link. I avoided the link for weeks and tried to keep my head down and get as much work done as I could. The implications of the exponentially progressing tech stole away my appetite and woke me in the middle of the night but I did my best to resist the pull towards the link. I resisted for a long time, but yesterday my efforts proved futile. I was working on a commission for a particularly picky client. He wanted a digital painting of his Dungeons and Dragons group for some sort of an anniversary party but, as indicated by his feedback, he wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted. I was getting paid for each redraw, but the payment was a pittance in comparison to the client’s demands. Last night I sent off the sixth version of the picture and, in hopes that it was the last, I opened up a bottle of wine. Almost instantly, the client replied with a list of demands that would take at least six hours to draw. Initially, I started typing up an angry e-mail telling him our business has concluded. Then, when I realized the man still owed me a good chunk of cash, I got ready for a final redraw. As I sat behind the tablet and stared at a piece I was beyond tired of, however, I got another idea. Perhaps it was the months of frustration that had piled up. Perhaps it was the three glasses of wine that led my hand. Perhaps, I was simply curious about what the new software could do. I clicked the link my brother sent me and copy pasted the client’s request into the prompt box. The AI rendered the image almost instantly. I had grown accustomed to leaps in progress, but I held some semblance of hope that the AI would still have issues rendering humanoid figures. The image on the screen dispelled all hope. It was perfect. I poured myself another glass and pondered. Passing off the AIs work as my own was immoral, but so was making a freelance artist do six different versions of the same drawing for pocket change. Once the glass was finished, I poured another one. A few healthy sips later I sent off the image to the client. When I was halfway through the second bottle of wine the client got back to me. He was more than satisfied with the new version and promised to recommend me to his friends. There was also something about a bonus in the e-mails text, but by then my vision was far too blurred to read the message in its entirety. I was far too drunk and far too occupied giving new prompts to the AI. The art popped up on the screen with startling speed and haunting beauty. Whatever prompt I suggested to the computer, simple or complex, came out with the composition and skill of a gallery exhibit. Each piece of breath-taking art that rendered before me broke my heart just a little more, but I couldn’t stop. I kept on drinking and I kept on throwing new prompts at the computer. The alcohol mixed and fused my fear and anger and fascination into a cocktail of utter madness. As my fingers turned numb and my brain emptied of prompts, I got ready to pass out. Seeing all my years of study and practice be replicated by a soulless machine was simply too much for me to handle. Before I shut down my laptop, however, I put in one last prompt: “Me.” The system froze. For a solid three minutes the AI remained unresponsive. Before I could find some amount of pride in defeating the machine, however, my computer started to huff and puff and render. The image came out much slower than the rest, but what the AI lacked in swiftness it made up for in terror. On my screen, painted with haunting beauty, I saw a terrified man staring into a laptop. The initial render was distant enough from my face to keep me calm, but the more the image sharpened the closer the likeness appeared. By the time the art had fully rendered I was staring at my own terrified face. The man was tired and drunk and scared and I wanted to believe that the AI had just taken a lucky guess. Yet, when the image was completed, the resemblance was unmistakable. The man’s jaw was open in drunken awe, and soon my lips also parted. There was a scar on the man’s chin. The same scar my brother gave me when we fought as kids. I was prepared to shut down the laptop and ignore the unexplainable image, yet just as I reached to shut the top of the screen my computer took another deep breath. It started to render another image anew. From the rough outlines of the scene, I could make out my apartment living room. Somehow, without any input from my side, the AI was able to construct a bright replica of my cramped home. I watched in terror as an algorithm crushed all semblance of privacy I thought I had. I watched, and then, just as the image sharpened — I closed my laptop shut. I was far too drunk and scared and tired to interact with the future. What I needed was sleep. In the morning I awoke with a devilish hangover. With my body completely drained of energy I crawled out of my bed and opened the window to let some fresh air. I thought I could lose consciousness once more and wake up as a human being, but my stomach disagreed. After rolling around in bed for what felt like an hour I got to my feet and went to the bathroom to cough out stomach acid. It's on my way back to the bedroom that I first saw it. The window in my living room had been broken. Among the shattered glass sat a large stone. The neighborhood I live in isn’t particularly safe. The broken window was definitely troubling, but with the pure strength of the hangover I couldn’t muster up the energy to care. I simply crawled back to bed and fell into a drained sleep. I woke up at some point in the late afternoon. The worst of the hangover had passed, but what remained was pure hunger and thirst. I made myself a coffee and started to get dressed for groceries. Before I left the house, however, I thought I’d check my e-mail and socials for new commission requests. The moment I opened my laptop I spilled my coffee. Right on the screen, hauntingly beautiful and absolutely accurate — sat a rendition of my living room. Warm afternoon light poured in through the broken window and illuminated the rough stone as if it were holy. The AI had not only rendered my living room, it also predicted the broken window. Before I could even begin to make peace with the AI’s soothsayer abilities the image disappeared. The computer was rendering a new image; a street, specifically the street right outside of my apartment. A man was lying on the floor with blood pooled around his head. A broken flower pot sat next to him with the soil turning the dry earth into crimson mud. It did not take long to identify the man. The chances of a random flower pot falling from the sky and caving my skull in were astronomically low but so was the prospect of a large stone smashing through my third floor living room. My initial instinct was to call my brother right there and then but I knew that with the time difference my chances of reaching him were slim. Instead, I fished out some crackers from the cupboard and satiated myself on the water from the tap. I thought I had it all figured out. In retrospect, my behavior makes little sense. But then again, in my defense, my circumstances made very little sense as well. I figured since the image of my death that the AI generated took place in the afternoon sun all I had to do was to wait it out. I spent the whole day sitting around my apartment, occasionally looking out of the window to the spot where I was meant to die. As the sun started to set and the sky turned a blood red, I found myself calming. The AI’s prediction wasn’t fulfilled. My skull remained unbroken and even though I was starving and terrified I remained alive. One look at the laptop dispelled all my joy. A digital rendition of me was still lying dead on the street next to a crushed flower pot, but the sun had shifted. The sky on the painting, much like in the flesh and bone world, was blood red. In the crimson light, on the computer screen, I still lay dead. I stared at the screen as the sun outside set. The darker the outside world got, the less legible the picture got. When the streetlights finally turned on, the computer went blank. Nothing new was being rendered. I held my breath for minutes, and then, when no unpleasant surprises presented themselves on the screen — I ordered a pizza. I was still far too scared to venture onto the street for food, but I figured no disasters would occur if I descended to the doors of my apartment complex. I patiently waited in my drained hunger as my Wolt app counted down to delivery. When the courier was downstairs with the pizza, my stomach ached so bad I nearly bolted out the door. Yet, just as I got ready to leave, another image popped up on the computer screen. A familiar man with a scar on his chin sat on the steps of my apartment complex. He was slumped over leaning on the railing, lit up by the streetlights like a renaissance statue wearing a hoodie. There was a bloody dagger sticking out of his back. I tried to convince myself that my fear was irrational. I tried to convince myself that there was no conceivable reason for the pizza delivery guy to murder me or for a computer to predict my death. I tried to convince myself, but I couldn’t. After a couple phone calls the courier simply placed my pizza on the steps and left. The pizza is still sitting where the man had left it, but the image on the computer has changed. It’s because of the new image that I barricaded my windows and triple locked my doors. It’s because of the new image that I am here, in this sleepless corner of the internet. On my computer screen a familiar man lies in a familiar bed. His eyes are wide open and staring at the ceiling, and the blood on the bedsheet is brown and dried. The bottom part of his face, starting from the scar on his chin, is ripped apart to the jaw bone. I cannot phantom what means of violence could mutilate a human body so, but I fear I will soon find out. Over the past couple of months, I thought my biggest worry was keeping a roof above my head. I thought my biggest fear was having to face technology that only needs a couple thousand days of progress to make us obsolete. Over the past couple of months, I thought the things I had to fear were hiding years in the future. But now I know that the things I should fear are much closer. I still remember a time when the internet had a distinct metallic sound. I miss [it](https://www.reddit.com/r/MJLPresents/).

Stain

yb6qe7

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yb6qe7/stain/

I need to quit my job. But I don't think Ill make it out alive. Over the summer, I injured my knee and it completely ended my volleyball career (I say career, but I was a benchwarmer at best). To save my mental state, I decided to move on from sports. This left me with a lot of free time on the weekends, and I’ve been meaning to redo my bedroom, so I needed some extra cash. I became a housekeeper for the neighbors. They were The Rich People™ in the neighborhood. Everyone knew them as a little… eccentric. The type of people to collect spoons and garden statues. But they were a seemingly sweet little old couple and they were offering to pay well. I took the job before anyone else could. It was a big house, so they couldn’t keep up with cleaning all of it. They had a landscaper and another housekeeper who did the top floor already, and they just needed someone to clean the ground floor and basement. They often rented out the place to other rich people who wanted to have parties without worrying about their collectors items getting broken or whatever. It wasn’t the most relaxing job ever, but I just turned on a podcast (my favorite is The Magnus Archives) and worked for a couple hours every other weekend. I’ve been cleaning here since the beginning of the school year in August, so a couple months now. Nothing has been out of the ordinary up until a couple weeks ago, at the beginning of October. I have a specific schedule I like to abide by when I’m cleaning. First, I do the entryway, then the dining room, then the sitting room, then the kitchen, then the hallway, then the bathrooms. I’m not allowed to go in the office. Next I do the basement. I start the laundry, dust some of the corners, and clean the bathroom down there. Surprisingly, it’s not too big of a basement compared to the rest of the house. I followed this schedule religiously, it was the quickest and most efficient way I’ve found. I went about my life following this routine every weekend, and so far I’ve earned about $200. This felt like a pretty permanent job, I wanted to keep it until I move out and go to college. Unfortunately, the first weekend of October is when things started to feel… off. It started small, with some of my cleaning supplies not being where they should have been in the closet. The upstairs housekeeper used the cleaning supplies upstairs so it would be easier, so I’m the only one who uses the downstairs closet. The supplies were rearranged, sometimes completely off the shelves, even the ones that were never needed. We don’t get earthquakes where I live, so it can’t be that. These incidents gradually became more and more concerning. For example, I would throw away a wad of paper towels and they would appear in the closet. I would stand in the hallway and look through the kitchen and the door to the office would be blown open despite being locked and the windows all being closed, papers and documents blowing around like a tornado passed through. They were all resignation letters. I read them. I know that is wrong of me, but I was curious. They had names, but no dates. What was the most concerning though, was a strange stain that showed up three weekends ago. The stain started out small. I assumed it was water damage or something, so I sent a text to the couple and thought nothing of it. Why was it concerning? Well, it grew. And grew. And grew. It was dripping an inky black liquid by the next weekend. One week ago, I lost my patience. The couple hadn’t gotten back to me and I’ve never seen that upstairs housekeeper even when our schedules must have lined up. I did something for the first and last time while working there. I went upstairs to find the source of that stain. There was a landing upstairs that stretched all the way to the back of the house. Dusty furniture and lint covered carpets covered the place. It makes sense now that I’m thinking about it. The closet was in the back left corner, so I made my way to the room above it. It was hard to breathe in the musty air, to be honest. I was coughing a lot, and the smell was awful. What’s strange is that the room above the closet didn’t have any dust on the knob. And the air was significantly clearer as I got closer to the room. I find that incredibly strange, considering what was in it. This next part is hard. Not hard to remember, just hard to think about. They were… horrific. I hate it, but it’s true. Five people. All dead. All unrecognizable. They were grotesque husks of what should have been their former selves. But they aren’t who they used to be. They were pinned to the walls by their wrists like handcuffs. Some of them were midair, some slumped against the walls. A black, inky substance that should have been blood was leaking from the wounds, eyes, mouth, and nose of a girl that was a couple years older than me. The stuff was dried and crusted to the others. I found the source of the stain. And I walked calmly through the landing. Down the stairs. Out the door. And to my house. What’s funny is that I didn’t feel anything until I was in my room. The feeling was fear mixed with morbid curiosity. I looked up the names from those resignation forms along with my town name. I tried the surrounding towns too. I couldn’t find anything. It was like they never existed in the first place. For some reason, I’m still going back there, for some reason. I looked in the office, there wasn’t anything else in there besides the five forms from the people in the room. All I know about them is their names. I want to quit, believe me. I need to quit. But I don’t think I can. Something tells me that if I try, I’ll end up in the room. The old couple have been around a lot more, and they’ve been watching me. Me and my every move. If I so much as glance up those stairs, they appear in a doorway, staring. I texted them when the stain appeared. Now it’s gone. I’m planning on quitting on New Years. If I don’t turn in a letter, maybe they won’t get me. They can’t kill me if I stop showing up, right?

I just saw my crush murder the old couple next door

yase71

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yase71/i_just_saw_my_crush_murder_the_old_couple_next/

Just like every cliché teen movie, I have a huge crush on my big brother's bestfriend, Rain. Caleb, my brother, met Rain in the town cemetery when my brother and Dad were visiting Mom. Rain caught Caleb's attention because he was blasting his bluetooth speaker over a blank gravestone to the tune of Nicki Minaj's Starships. As if that's not enough to catch anybody's attention in a cemetery, Rain appeared to be reading a story to the unmarked grave. Since then, they had become best buds and Caleb has invited Rain in multiple sleepovers already. That's when I started to develop this infatuation towards my brother's bestfriend. Rain has that certain mysterious boy-next-door quality in him which makes me wanna get close to him even more. He has these deep blue eyes which hide ever so lightly within his golden fringes, making the windows to his soul almost invisible. He's a man of a very few words and prefers books more than my brother's latest gaming consoles. He's the same age as Caleb, 16, which makes him 2 years older than me. Still, just like they say, in the name of teenage crush, age doesn't matter. So, earlier today, Caleb announced that he'll be having Rain over again later tonight. This made my heart do a tiny sommersault. This is the first time I'll be seeing Rain again after a week, so I smacked a little bit of gloss on my lips and let my chestnut brown hair fall over my shoulders instead of the hideous bun I had on earlier. I also changed to a pastel pink spaghetti strap crop top and black jogger pants just to have those blue eyes give me a side glance. It was 30 minutes past 7 PM when Caleb and Rain arrived from school. Dad was at work amd I was in charge of making dinner, so I did what every teenager was supposed to do---ordered pizza. The three of us binge watched Santa Clarita Diet and in the middle of each episode, I noticed quick glances from Rain towards me. I was trying my very best not to smile like a tiny creep so I hugged one of our throw pillows and hid half of my face so none of the two boys could see me smiling like a fool. I was already about to doze off after about a couple of hours watching when our doorbell rang. Weird. This is the first time in forever that somebody rang our doorbell at 10pm. It can't be dad. He just called us like an hour ago saying he's stuck in the ER and won't be home until tomorrow. Caleb looked at me lazily and I knew at that moment I had to get up and check who's at the freakin' door. I stood up and was about to get to the door when Rain blocked me and instead, locked it, and made sure the bolts are in place. "Hey, I gotta check who's at the door", I said as I smiled an awkward smile, trying to avoid eye contact with this gorgeous human in front of me. "It's not safe to open doors to strangers at this hour", was Rain's plain response before going back to the couch. I was walking back to my side of the sofa when I heard the doorbell ring again and Mrs. Jenkins' sweet voice from the other side of the door. "Hello? Mindy? Caleb? You forgot to come for Trick or Treat so Mr. Jenkins and I brought you treats instead." Rain shot a stern look at me. It's weird because it's like I can hear his voice inside my head saying "DON'T OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR." I stood frozen, in the middle of the living room, doing a staring contest with my crush, figuring the hell out if I should open the door to the old couple who might already be freezing outside or if I should listen to my hallucination of Rain's voice inside my head. The doorbell rang three more consecutive times before I heard Mr. Jenkins, or who I believe is Mr. Jenkins with a bad case of cough and colds which made his voice sound nasty. "OPEN UP YOUNG BLOODS!!!!! WE'VE GOT A SPECIAL TREAT FOR YOU!!!!!", followed by very loud, incessant banging on our front door. This time, I felt this bizarre tingling in my spine and I felt something was immediately wrong. Before Rain and I could do anything about it, my hothead of a brother opened the door begrudgingly but to both our surprise, there was NOBODY at our doorstep. Okay. This just went from weird to borderline creepy. Rain came charging towards the door with an ancient looking knife I didn't know where he got, and stood at our doorway looking for any sign of the Jenkins, but had no luck. "Quick!", he told us eagerly while boarding up our door, for reasons unknown to both my brother and I, "Grab anything you can use to defend yourselves and DO NOT look out the windows!" Caleb and I did as we were told, mainly because this is becoming a really weird sleepover and it's the longest we've heard Rain talk in one go. I picked up my Dad's favorite marble ashtray and Caleb had his hands on the fire poker. Meanwhile, Rain was able to secure everything, every window and both front door and back door are all locked, curtains drawn. Everything was quiet for what felt like a century. It felt like we were in an empty void, where not even air is present. That drowning silence was suddenly broken by a loud crashing noise coming from our basement. "SHIT!!! DID YOU HAVE THE BASEMENT WINDOW OPEN?!!!", Rain barked at Caleb. "I don't know dude! Maybe Dad was working on his wood art thingy and forgot to close the window!", Caleb answered frantically. I don't know about those two but my instinct brought me to our flight of stairs and the two followed me quickly. We went straight to my bedroom and locked the door, then pushed my cabinet in front of it to act as a barricade. "RAIN, WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?!!!", Caleb whisper-shouted as we all tried to be as quiet as possible as we heard scuttling noises on the other side of my bedroom door. "I'll explain everything later. For now, just trust me and DON'T LOOK AT ANY WINDOW because then they'll find us. Just don't forget that and we MIGHT just survive this", Rain whispered back. Did he just say we MIGHT survive??? So our survival tonight is NOT a sure thing??? And what are we supposed to survive from?!!! What the hell is happening tonight of all nights?!!! This is supposed to be my RomCom night and it's turning out to be an episode out of American Horror Story! My mind was still raising with questions and teenage frustrations when the power went out. Everything was pitch black. The scuttling noises outside grew louder, and that's when we heard Mrs. Jenkins' voice, not her usual sweet voice, but a twisted, guttural and unearthly version of hers. "'Miiiiiiiiindy...Caaaaaaaaleb...and you bastard son of a witch...come out for your treeeeeeeaaats..." It sent shivers down my spine. We had to call for help. I remembered my phone was just at my study table right beside the window. I walked towards it relying on my muscle memory, and was thankful for the feeling of my phone in my hand. I immediately unlocked the screen illuminating the area around me and the window. Fuck--- ---my bedroom window's curtain was not drawn. It was a huge mistake. I'll never forget what it looked like. I saw Mr. Jenkins...or what used to be Mr. Jenkins, with his Halloween themed knitted jacket covering what used to be his torso. It looked like his head was slumped on top of a heavily deformed body. He has his incredibly sharp and thick black finger and toenails stuck on my glass window, with his bones and limbs sticking out in all the wrong places. His face was plastered with this impossibly wide smile which extends to his earlobes, exposing flesh and muscle under the broken skin from what used to be his lips. His eyes...I will never forget those eyeballs. They were bare eyeballs almost sticking out of their sockets, never blinking, without eyelids. It's an inhumanly disturbing display on my window and if Rain did not shove me aside, I would have been pinned to the floor by Mr. Jenkins when he broke the glass to get in. I heard heavy grunts and screams from Rain, and unearthly and soul chilling shrieks from the creature known to me as Mr. Jenkins. I forgot I still had my phone in my hand, and with my hands shaking, I opened my flashlight app and tried my very best to see what's happening in my room. I flashed the light at Caleb who moved closer to me and gave me a hug...then I flashed my phone to the other corner of the room where all the noise was coming from. Rain has blood all over his face and clothes, and his beautiful golden hair is now almost crimson. I saw his right hand as it repeatedly stabbed Mr. Jenkins with the ancient looking dagger he had on earlier, not stopping until the creature was no more than a deformed mass of blood, bones and flesh on my pink carpet. When Mr. Jenkins looked no more than a lifeless, mangled corpse, we heard a ghastly shriek that made our ears ring and bleed...it sounded like Mrs. Jenkins with a hellish twist, and she came bursting through my barricaded bedroom door looking a lot like Mr. Jenkins in her deformed state, but with her balding head showing maggots on her scalp and barely clinging silver hair. Just as Mr. Jenkins' fate, Mrs. Jenkins scratched and grabbed Rain on his torso, his legs and his arm, making him wince in pain, but all the more fueling his rage and meeting Mrs. Jenkins with his ancient dagger for what seemed like an infinite stabbing. Almost the same time as both Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins were nothing but bloody, still masses on my bedroom floor, the ringing in our ears stopped and almost immediately, the lights went back on. I am writing this now in my journal because Rain said this won't be our last encounter with "The Unknown", especially because Caleb gave them an open invitation when he opened our front door to them. Also, because I don't want to think that I am crazy. Right when the lights turned back on, NO SIGN OF THE MURDERED JENKINS, or any struggle and damage on Rain, or any monster break-in can be seen in my room, AT ALL. I am still shaking, mostly because of an out-of-body fright experience, and partly because my crush just told me that I'LL BE SEEING MORE OF HIM FROM NOW ON.

The person you would take a bullet for is sometimes the one behind the gun.

yb23im

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yb23im/the_person_you_would_take_a_bullet_for_is/

“the person you would take a bullet for is sometimes the one behind the gun.” That’s the thing my dad always use to say to me growing up. Of course as I was young I would never listen, looking back though I wish I had paid more attention to what he had said. It was 3 years ago and I was walking home from school. It had been a pretty crappy day. My best-friend Niko wasn’t in as well as Leo my other friend. The worst part about it was the other people I had been hanging out with had slowly began to disappear one by one. It was odd, the day a friend was missing…so was Niko. I talked to my mum about it but she just blamed my dad for making me superstitious. I listened to her and shrugged it off as a coincidence. I mean come on my best friend doing something with my other friends, that just sounds stupid. I wish I had ignored my mum and listened to my gut maybe I could have changed the outcome of this tragedy. I tried calling Niko to see why he wasn’t in but he didn’t pick up so I tried Leo but it went straight to answer phone. Leo was always on his phone so that was the moment I knew something was off. I went to bed the night completely unaware of what my friend was doing. I tried to sleep but couldn’t, I just didn’t understand why no one was picking up the phone. Was it me? Did I do something wrong? I woke up the next morning and something was telling me I shouldn’t go to school today but of course my mum was having none of it and told me to “stop being such a baby and go to school” I kissed her goodbye and went on my way. As I was walking past Niko’s street he leaped out from one of the bushes. “Hey Niko! You scared the life out of me!” He looked odd, as if he was possessed. He stood there looking me dead in the eyes and said “does this scare you more?” He was holding a pistol, digging it into my side. He told me to move and so I did, why wouldn’t I? After about 20 minutes of walking we arrived in a building that seemed to be under construction. He shoved me down onto a pile of rubble and told me to stay. My heart was pounding, this was it I was thinking this is where I die! After what felt like hours Niko returned with his father. “Lovely catch Niko!” Niko looked at him and smiled. His father then walked off and Niko told me to do as I was told and only what I was told. He sat there stroking my face with the gun. “How does it feel to be so powerless? Scary? I don’t worry, all you have to do is one thing and then you can go home.” At that moment I had some hope, surely whatever I have to do I would be able to. A little while later niko’s father returned but he wasn’t alone. he was holding a women by the arm with a pistol to her head. “If you want to go home…your going to have to kill her.” I sat there shocked, there was no way I was going to kill anyone. “And if I don’t?” I asked. “Well if you decided to wimp out you’ll end up like them” Niko said as he pointed towards a bunch of bodies piled in a corner. They weren’t any people though, They were my missing friends, he had taken and killed them all. I sat there for a moment trying to process everything, I knew one thing… I wasn’t going to kill anyone. “Go to hell!” I said. “Come on indigo, you kill people all the time on call of duty, it’s the same thing!” Niko said smiling. “This is nothing like call of duty Niko, this is real life.” He laughed waving his gun in the air. “Then I guess you have made your choice.” He pointed the gun straight at me and said “goodbye indigo” and then he shot me in the stomach. I must have been seen or heard because next thing I know I was in a hospital bed. The doctor told me that I was shot and the bullet went straight through my stomach and into my back. He said I will be fine apart from one thing… I was paralysed from the waist down. I sat there in shock, I didn’t understand how I was still alive. That 2 months later they caught Niko and his dad and they were arrested, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. I went to visit him for the first time and he asked me one question “did you have any last words? Anything you wanted to say to me that night?” I told him one thing and one thing only… “The person you would take a bullet for is sometimes the one behind the gun”

I can see the future. I wish I couldn't.

yajqvf

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yajqvf/i_can_see_the_future_i_wish_i_couldnt/

I can’t remember when it started, I’ve had this ability for as long as I can remember. It started small. I could see a few seconds into the future, and although these flashes were random, they were occasionally useful. I could avoid dropping a plate, or someone opening a door while I was standing in front of it. A lot of the time though, the flashes weren’t really helpful, they just… were. I used to try to convince my parents that I had this ability, that stopped when I was around 5 or 6. They, of course, thought that I was just a kid with a large imagination. I realized that my ability wasn’t normal. That I, was different. I was alright with that. After all, it was pretty cool to be able to see a flash of the future, right? As I grew older, I began to be able to see further. First a minute, then two, three, five. By the time I was 14 the flashes would let me see over ten minutes into the future. The flashes were never long. They were just that: flashes. You know how sometimes you have a thought, and that thought encapsulates an entire idea? You just have an entire idea in a flash; a single quick thought? These flashes were like that. Around the time I turned 15 I could on occasion control when a flash would occur. It didn’t always work, but sometimes, sometimes it did. I started to manipulate this to cheat on tests. If I didn’t know the answer to a question, I would wait until about 5 minutes before the test ended, then I would try to look ten to fifteen minutes into the future, having already planned to google the answer to a question once that point in time arrived. I could of course not always control the flashes, but when it did work, it was quite useful. My friends always thought I was weird for googling the answers to questions after the test was over. I didn’t mind. Though I could not tell them the reason I did it, because, well, you understand. Anyway, my control over my ability kept becoming greater. I could control how far to look into the future, there was a limit on it of course, but I could look far enough. I could almost fully reliably use my ability. Random flashes started to become increasingly rare. When I turned 17, I could look weeks into the future. I didn’t really know how I would be able to make this very useful yet, but I had no doubt I would figure out a couple ways. You might think it would be easy to use this ability to your benefit, but there is a problem: No one can change the future. The actions I take, will always lead to the future I saw. I found that out when I tried to cheat on a biology test one time, and I instead saw myself in the supermarket with my friends. Then, when the test was over, I actually forgot to check the answer, and went to the supermarket with my friends. One day, while having breakfast, I had a random flash. I hadn’t had a random flash in months. In the flash, I was in my bed, late at night. There was a pain in my chest, and screaming from my parents’ room. I… didn’t want to believe what I saw. So I went back, looked into the future to that exact moment. And to my horror, it showed the same thing. A person at the foot of my bed plunging a knife into my chest, and my parents screaming. This couldn’t be real. For the first time I could remember I didn’t believe a vision of the future. No… that’s wrong. I just deluded myself into thinking that it wasn’t real. Maybe I was seeing a nightmare? Yes. That must have been it. I was seeing a flash of myself having a nightmare. But I couldn’t delude myself forever. So, a week before the date that it would happen. I looked 5 minutes before the incident, 10 minutes before, half an hour before. And it all pointed to one conclusion: It wasn’t a nightmare. It was real. Myself and my family are going to get murdered. I… had to do something. You might think that it would be easy: just get yourself and your family out of the house, right? But I knew it wouldn’t be that simple. So… I went on the internet and hired some people to come and I suppose protect my house that night. It sounds ridiculous, I know. But I wasn’t thinking very clearly, and I had to think of something convoluted, something that would elude the future. Something that could trick the passing of time to avoid my fate. But now, laying in my bed the night that it’s supposed to happen, I’m not so sure anymore. The website that I hired these people from was a little shady, though I had brushed it off at the time. But then why was there a strange noise coming from the front door? I tried, I really did try to convince myself that it was nothing. However, deep down, I knew that wasn’t true. After all: No one, can change the future.

I’m a cop, and I saw a high school kid shoot a …. Oh hell, I don’t know WHAT I saw.

yabejx

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yabejx/im_a_cop_and_i_saw_a_high_school_kid_shoot_a_oh/

The Clairmont Claws were up 14-3, and six of those points had been run in by my son Brandon. It was his first high school football game. I was feeling good, up there in the bleachers as the halftime show started. I had the whole night off, my boy was kicking ass, and the first hints of Maine autumn were in the air. I reached into the pocket of my sweatshirt to warm myself up a bit more. Linda, my wife, elbowed me when she saw me pull out the flask. “Oh relax,” I said. “I’m off duty.” “No. I mean pass it over here.” I grinned, looked around to make sure nobody was keeping tabs on the Clairmont Chief of Police, and took a quick slug. Then I passed the flask to Linda, on the downlow, as Louie the Lobster took to the field. Louie was the team mascot. When I’d gone to Clairmont High, he had been this big fuzzy stuffed animal type thing, but a few years ago some kids got into the basement and tore the thing up during the off season. So they’d rebooted Louie, and ordered a new suit, and this one was more realistic looking, and more menacing. Louie had an angry lobster scowl now, and his claws looked like red mouths filled with lumpy teeth. Both versions were ridiculous in different ways, I thought – one being way too goofy and one being way too serious – but then I didn’t get bent out of shape about it like some folk did. It was a high school mascot… nothing to get worked up about. Down on the field, Louie was doing his best to do just that: get the crowd worked up. He was waving all ten arms around, and snapping his claws like crazy. In addition to the cosmetic makeovers, the new suit also featured some animatronics…. though there was still a kid in there doing the bulk of the work. Noah Fletcher, his name was. I didn’t know him before that night, but I later did some research on him. He was just a kid. An awkward kid who spent a lot of his time online, and who didn’t have many friends at school. People were surprised when he auditioned to be Louie, and even more surprised when he nailed the audition. “He was a dork,” Brandon told me after the incident. “But, like, a cool dork, you know? He didn’t look down his nose at us, and he *tried*. He *tried,* and that made him cool, you know? Didn’t just sit there and feel sorry for himself. He got in that suit and danced his ass off!” \* Halftime was wrapping up, and the crowd was egging Louie’s antics on. After another hit of whiskey, I was doing the same, up on my feet shouting: “Get ‘em Louie! Rip ‘em to shreds!” That was when Joel Clemments stood up from his seat in the third row and began climbing down the bleachers. I noticed him out of the corner of my eye. I had a run in with him the year before when I’d pulled him over for driving 15 mph in a 45 and found a half smoked joint he’d hastily tucked into the crease of his seat. Now he was probably just going to grab a snack from the concession stand, stricken with the munchies. I was off duty, so that wasn’t my concern, but something made me turn a little more in his direction and watch him. Some instinct that drained the warmth of the booze out of my body and left me feeling cold. Joel walked down to the bottom row, but instead of turning left to go to the concession stand, he turned right, making his way toward the fifty yard line, where Louie was winding down his show. I stopped clapping and reached down to my side for the gun. It wasn’t there, of course; it was down in my truck, in the parking lot. And what was I doing, anyway? Reaching for my gun because some kid was a little too high and couldn’t find his way to the boiled hotdogs? At a fucking high school football game? “Garry?” said Linda. “What is it?” “Huh?” I turned to her. She looked a little scared. “You’ve got your cop face on. What is it?” “Oh, nothing. Just saw some stoner and wanted to keep an eye on him. Make sure he didn’t get himself hurt.” I nodded back over in Joel’s direction, and saw him hopping over the little fence down to the sidelines. Then I knew that something bad was going to happen. “Hey!” I shouted, but it was no good. The crowd was applauding Louie’s performance, and I got the sudden unshakable feeling that even if Joel had heard me, he wouldn’t have stopped. He was on a mission… which meant that I had to be, too. Joel stepped onto the field and I started shoving people aside, making my way down there too. But I never had a chance to get over the fence before he pulled the gun out from the back of his pants, leveled it at Louie – at Noah Fletcher – and fired three times. As I leapt the fence, the applause in the stands turned to panicked screams. I hit the ground running. Louie was on his back, spasming, his giant claws reaching up to the sky… opening and closing. Joel brought the gun to the side of his own head and I crashed into him an instant before he pulled the trigger. The shot went up into the twilight sky. I was on top of Joel then, pinning his arms to the ground. He looked at me with swollen red eyes. A grotesque smile twisted itself into shape on his pale face. “I did it,” he said. I punched him hard across the side of the head and then he was out of it. Louie, I saw, was also out of it, maybe forever. The fierce lobster had stopped snapping his claws. Some of his limbs were still waving around, but I knew that was only due to the hidden mechanisms. \* At the station, I locked Joel Clemments in a jail cell, and sent our dispatcher/assistant Darlene, telling her to get some rest and that I’d man the phones. Then it was just me and the kid – still unconscious – in the building. I sat in my office drinking black coffee by the pot, and sent Linda a few texts letting her know that everything was under control. It wasn’t. I switched between the video feed of Joel tossing and turning in his cell, burning with some kind of fever, and the series of texts I had received from Bud Greenleaf. Bud and I had gone to school together, and he was with the EMTs who’d lifted Louie – Noah still in the costume – into the ambulance that had wailed its way to the 35 yard line a few minutes after it was called. The texts said: *Jesus Christ, Garry. The kid is dead. And he died a long time ago.* *Doesn’t make sense. He’s decomposing. What happened?* *Wtf? Can you come follow us? Meet us at the hospital?* *Come! This isn’t right.* I’d been dealing with other things – like a panicked crowd and a murderer – so I didn’t even have the resources to look at my phone as the texts were coming in. But once Joel was finally in his cell, I read them uneasily, and responded: *I’m tied up here, Bud. Will send some guys.* I radioed in to the three men I’d left at the football field – the four of us together were the entire Clairmont police department – and told them to send two to the hospital and report back. Through the monitor, I saw Joel stir in his cell. I left my coffee in the office and went to wish him a good awakening: “Why’d you do it, Joel? Why’d you shoot Louie the Lobster? Some kind of grudge? Getting too much attention you thought should be yours?” Joel sat up on his cot and put his face between his hands. He started shaking… I thought with sobs – remorse – but when he lifted his head, it was with insane laughter. “I did it! I actually fucking did it!” I shivered. I had dealt with plenty of violent drunks, and even a few domestic violence cases that escalated into murder… but I’d never seen anybody positively ecstatic about taking a life. This was the deep end of things, and I didn’t have my certificate to swim there. “Yeah,” I said, putting my trembling hands behind my back. “You sure did. You killed a classmate. I have hundreds of witnesses, and they’ll all agree with the both of us. You did it. *Why*?*”* Joel stopped laughing, and seemed suddenly terrified. “Why didn’t you let me do the rest? Why didn’t you let me off myself?” “Because it’s my job to make sure people don’t go around dying willy nilly. Now… I answered yours… you gonna answer mine?” Joel shrugged. “I can try, but if you didn’t see it, you wouldn’t understand.” “Trying is good enough,” I said, glancing at the nastry bruise I’d left on the side of his head. *Good*, I thought. *He deserves worse than that.* And if there hadn’t been a crowd of people watching… would I have given it to him? I thought I might have, in the moment. “That wasn’t Louie the Lobster,” said Joel. “No,” I agreed. “Because Louie the Lobster isn’t real. That was….” “That wasn’t Noah, either," said Joel. “Oh? Who was it then?” Joel shrugged again. “Like I said. You wouldn’t get it. You didn’t see it.” “You said you’d try. You’re in a lot of trouble either way, but if you try, it helps you out.” The kid ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “Alright. You got a smoke?” “No. Start talking.” “Alright. Alright. So last week, I was hanging out with Noah during lunch period, just sort of wandering the halls, shooting the shit.” “You two were friends?” “We were. We were best friends. So we were walking and talking and somehow we passed by the Janitor’s Closet. You ever heard anything about that?” I knew about the Janitor’s Closet. There were legends about it back when I was going to Clairmont High, and apparently those legends were still hanging around, like ghosts. “Sure,” I said. “The Janitor’s Closet. Nobody’s ever been inside… except that one kid who was never seen again… or that other kid who was also never seen again… one from every graduating class. Never seen again, and nobody could even remember their names. Spooky stuff. But those are made up stories. It’s just a supply closet that they keep locked so troublemakers don’t steal toilet paper.” “You’re dead wrong about that, officer. I mean, that’s what I thought too. That there was nothing supernatural about it. I thought it was funny that everybody was legitimately creeped out by it. So I made a proposal to Noah. We’d come back at night, when everybody was gone, and break into the closet. We’d stage some kind of scary scene, and take a bunch of pictures of the two of us there. It’d fuck with people’s head, and maybe get us some popularity for having the balls to go into the Janitor’s Closet.” Joel started shaking again, and this time he *was* sobbing. “God,” he wailed. “Why did we do it? It’s my fault. It was my stupid idea!” Any suspicion that the kid was jerking me around vanished, even as I suspect that his story was about to take a turn into the delusional; at least it would be an honest turn. “Wait here,” I said, then went back to my office for the pack of smokes I kept in a drawer. I’d quit years ago, but on some nights, when things in town got ugly, and my faith in people got stretched gossamer thin, I still sucked one down. In my office, I took a few moments to check that I had my ringer on – in case somebody was trying to reach me – and then tried to raise the unit I’d sent to the hospital on the radio. When I didn’t get a response, I felt a pit start to open up in my stomach, but I forced it closed, and headed back to the cell. The kid was talking. I had to keep him talking, before he wised up and started asking for a lawyer. I lit a smoke and handed it to Joel through the bars of the cell. He gave me a surprised look, then took it with a trembling hand. After a deep drag, he said, “Thank you.” “I won’t tell your parents if you don’t.” That was another thing. His parents. I hadn’t notified them yet, but I would have to do that soon enough. I was surprised they hadn’t heard the news already. I wanted Joel’s story before they had a chance to get between us. “So anyway, later that day, Noah made an excuse to go down to the school basement. That’s where they kept the Louie costume. He said he had to check on something, but really what he did was unlock one of the windows down there. That night, we rode our bikes over and slipped in through that window. It was so easy. And we could have done so many different things, instead of what we did. We could have written messages on the chalkboards… could have fucked with Principal Keeler’s office… anything but the Janitor’s Closet.” Joel finished his smoke and dropped it into the dingy toilet with a sizzle. Then he leaned his mouth under the faucet of the sink there, and took a quick drink of water. “We headed upstairs, and down the dark halls, using our phones to light the way, but once we got to the Closet, there was another kind of light. A green light, seeping out from the Closet, through the gaps around the door. Noah saw that and wanted to call the thing off. I told him….” He choked back a harsh sob and went on. “I told him to stop being a pussy – that the janitor had just left the light on by accident or something – and I went to work on the lock. I’d watched a YouTube video, and after a minute or two, I had it open. I was so proud of myself. Pride goeth before the fall, officer. Pride goeth before the fucking fall. “We were going to scatter plastic bones and stuff like that around and start taking pictures. That was the plan. But as soon as I opened that door, the green light spilled out. I saw that it was coming from a crack in the wall. At first it was swirling everywhere, like an aimless fog, but it started to coil together like a snake. Noah started screaming, and the snake of light took his open mouth as a sort of invitation. It wormed its way inside of him, until it was gone completely, and everything was dark again.” I cleared my throat. “I don’t want to sound insensitive, Joel… but I have to ask. Did you maybe take some pills, or smoke a little something, before this all happened?” Joel shook his head. “I’m not gonna get high before I do something like this… break into the school… you crazy? It happened. I saw it. And after that… Noah wasn’t the same. We got out of there fast, forgetting the stupid prank, and we got back on our bikes. Noah made me escort him home. He kept asking what the fuck had happened. What the fuck had slithered inside of him. I told him I didn’t know… maybe some kind of weird gas leak? I said maybe he should go to the doc for a check up, just to be safe. When he got to his house, we said goodnight, and he went inside. “He wasn’t at school the next day. I kept texting him, but he didn’t respond.” I pulled my own phone out and checked it again for missed messages. No word from anybody. *Goddammit!* “But I saw him that night. At 1 AM… in my fucking bed room! I woke up and there he was, at the foot of my bed, staring down at me. His eyes were glowing green in the darkness. Before you ask, yeah, I’d been smoking a little weed before bed, but Jesus Christ, not that much! “Man… I tried to scream, but I couldn’t even open my mouth. So I tried to tell myself, ‘It’s just sleep paralysis, dude, calm down.’ I couldn’t though… not when Noah walked over and started stroking my forehead. His touch felt so real… and cold. “He leaned down and started whispering in my ear. He said: “‘I’m growing stronger again, and soon I’ll be everywhere. I’ll be in your closet and I’ll be in your momma. I’ll be dripping from the faucet, and soon, very soon my pal, I will drip all over this world and transform it into the screaming Hell that it wants to be. Do you see?’ “And I did see. I saw my dad, coming home from work. He was covered in blood… had just stabbed his foreman sixty three times. He was screaming at my mom, demanding to know what was for dinner. She said *he* was for dinner and bashed his skull in with a meat tenderizer. I watched, frozen in terror, and heard wails outside. Human wails… people moaning in agony… and wails of sirens, cut short as ambulances crashed into each other. Through the window, I could see a green fog overlaying everything, and I could see people running down the street with missing limbs, or the flesh flayed from their faces, and other people chasing them, and other people chasing *those* people, armed with golf clubs, gardening shears, guns….” I was a rational man, and believed that at best this was all a fever dream or a bad trip, but still I shivered. “So you felt like you had to stop him,” I said gently. “Yes! I mean, Jesus Christ, I didn’t *want* to do it. Who wants to shoot their best friend? But that wasn’t Noah anymore. That was some… a demon or something. I don’t know *what* it was, just that it was evil and it had to be stopped, and nobody would believe me if I went for help. And I know you don’t believe me either. I know I’m fucked. My entire life is fucked.” I sighed, and lit two more cigarettes. One for him, one for me. “I believe that you believe what you’re saying,” I said. “I know it wasn’t easy for you to tell me that, either, and I appreciate your cooperation. I’m going to call your parents now, and tell them what you did, on the off chance that they haven’t heard by now. Do you have their number?” Joel gave me the number, then sucked on his cigarette in gloomy silence. I left him in his cell. \* Back in my office, I sat down and waited for my heartbeat to slow. Was there some part of me… some little sliver of my lizard brain… that actually *believed* that crap? If there was, I had to push it aside. And focus on the next steps. I’d call Joel’s parents, but first I had to know what was happening at the hospital. I tried the boys over the radio… no response. I tried texting Bud, the EMT… nothing. The pit in my stomach opened up again, and this time I couldn’t will it shut. I dialed up the hospital and listened to the line ring and ring. I hung up and decided that Joel’s parents could wait. I had to find out what the hell was going on, and if nobody would answer, I’d have to haul my ass over there and see the situation with my own eyes. I pushed myself out of the chair. It took an effort and my knees cracked when I stood… I was getting old and beyond tired. As I scooped up my keys, there was a great crash out in the hallway, followed by a harsh scraping sound. I put my hand on the weapon strapped to my hip and hustled to the door, sticking my head into the hallway only to see… was that a *lobster tail*? Dammit, it *was.* The door separating the public area of the police station from the holding cells had been shattered apart, and the giant tail was disappearing into the darkness left in its wake. I heard Joel scream. I took a deep breath, steadied myself, then broke into a sprint, down the hallway, toward the cells. I nearly slipped, and looked down to see that I was following a trail of green slime. The pit in my stomach turned into a gorge, and then, when I made it to the cells, it opened up into an endless abyss. Louie the Lobster stood tall, with his scaled back facing me, snapping his formidable pincers in the air. Joel was shouting in wide-eyed terror: “Shoot it! SHOOT IT!” My mind scrambled to make sense of what I was seeing. Louie the Lobster, mascot for the Clairmont Claws. I knew that. My son played for the Claws. Tonight was his first game. And, during halftime of that game, I’d watched Joel Clemments shoot three bullets into Louie the Lobster, who wasn’t really a lobster, but a boy named Noah. And that boy was dead. My EMT friend, Bud, had told me that. That was right, wasn’t it? But if it was right… then what the fuck was this thing in front of me, snapping its claws? “SHOOT IT!” wailed Joel. “PLEASE!” I drew my gun, more because I didn’t know what else to do than out of any intention of using it. “Halt!” I said. “Put your…” *claws?* “hands up!” Louie ignored my command and began reaching his pincers towards the bars of the cell. “Jesus fucking Christ, shoot it! Shoot it shoot it shoot it!” But I didn’t shoot it. There was a boy in there. He must have somehow survived the bullet wounds… maybe the lobster costume had dulled their impact. And maybe they had given him some heavy duty drugs at the hospital that jacked him up, and allowed him to break down the door to the holding area. Now he was here to get his revenge on his assailant by frightening him. As improbable as all that seemed, I had to consider that it was possible, and so I couldn’t, wouldn’t shoot him. And after all… Louie couldn’t do more than frighten Joel, right? Steel bars stood between them. “I said: *freeze* and *put your hands up!*” Louie closed each of his giant claws around four bars and snapped them in half with a metallic crunch. With his wiggling legs, he peeled them aside, creating an opening into the cell. Then he began shuffling inside, as Joel shrank back into a corner. This, certainly, was all a good argument in favor of shooting Louie. “God forgive me,” I muttered, and pulled the trigger, aiming at Louie’s segmented tail. The shot landed, and a spurt of green slime oozed out of the wound, but it did nothing to slow Louie down. And then it was too late. Louie was upon Joel, grasping the frightened boy with its legs. Joel let out one final cry as Louie opened a pincer in front of Joel’s neck. He said simply: “NO!” Then Louie snapped his claw shut, and Joel’s head toppled from his neck and down onto the dingy jail floor in a gush of blood. His body slumped down beside it. I unloaded my clip in a frenzy. Louie jerked with the impact of each shot, flailing his legs, and I was reminded, grotesquely, of his performance at halftime earlier that night. Only here there was no cheering crowd, and nothing to celebrate. Louie fell to the ground, supine, next to Joel’s body… opened his claws one more time, slowly, and then closed them forever. Meanwhile, a hideous maw opened under Louie’s twitching antennae, and I recoiled as a green fog began spewing out of it. I kept dumbly pulling the trigger of my gun at the substanceless fog, though the bullets were all spent. In terror, I remembered Joel’s story… about how the green fog had seeped into Noah’s mouth when they had broken into the Janitor’s Closet. I kept my mouth sealed tight, and backed down the hallway. But the fog wasn’t moving towards me. It drifted over to the sink, swirled around in the basin for a moment, and then shot up and into the faucet. \* I left that bewildering and gruesome scene in the jail cell and drove unsteadily to the hospital. I felt drunk, though the little whiskey I’d had at the game had worn off long ago. The hospital parking lot was nearly empty, which I took to be a bad sign. The squad car I had sent was parked on the drive, in front of the ER entrance. I pulled in behind it and got out. A man was there, sitting on the curb, clutching at his hair. When he looked up at me with bleary eyes set in a pale face, I recognized him. Bill Larkin, lead reporter for the *Clairmont Times*. “Bill… what happened in there?” Bill shook his head. I started to make my way past him, but he clutched my pant leg before I could make it inside. “Don’t,” he said. “It’s my job.” I tore free of him. The doors slid open for me and I walked inside. I should have listened to Bill. The officers that I had sent there were lying dismembered and scattered, their extremities flung far, and mingled with what must have been four to six other bodies. I saw a torso with Bud Greenleaf’s id card clipped to its chest. I saw Martha Blanchard’s severed head, staring at me in amazement. She had been the front desk receptionist. I vomited, wiped my chin, then walked back outside to sit next to Bill. “I… I was here when it happened,” he said. “I hid like a coward.” “No shame in that. You’d be dead if you hadn’t.” “It was… Christ, you’re not going to believe me. It was….” “I know what it was,” I said. “It came down to the station after it left here.” “This should be a national story – Hell, an *inter*national story – but if I pitched it, I’d be laughed out of a career.” “So then don’t pitch it. The thing’s dead now. It’s over. All that’s left to do is pick up the pieces.” \* Picking up the pieces wasn’t all that easy to do… and, as I found out soon enough, the horror was far from over. I spent the rest of the night talking with the families of the dead, doing my best to explain what had happened. Some of them had already heard, from the witnesses at the hospital who had seen Louie unleash his terror. Some believed that Noah had been acted upon by some heavy duty medical grade drugs, and though I knew that wasn’t the truth of it, I didn’t try very hard to dissuade them. Some didn’t believe my even my abbreviated account at all at first… they thought I was playing a cruel joke on them. The hardest call was to Joel’s parents. They were out of town, and weren’t even aware of the shooting at the football field. I spoke with his mother, and when she finally understood that her son was dead, the phone carried her wails of grief from one side of the country to the other, and down deep into my gut. News of what had happened spread around town, but no further. Bill didn’t even run an article on it in the *Clairmont Times*. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement to treat it as an unexplained tragedy, and nothing more or less than that. The town effectively shut down for a few days in mourning. And when it reopened, things were different. At first, I thought the mounting tensions were a result of the shooting at the football field… the massacre at the hospital… the “unexplained” nature of what happened at the police station. At Hannaford, people would fill their shopping carts without meeting each other’s eyes, or saying a word of greeting to folks they’d known and lived next to for years. It was as if they all suspected each other capable of harboring some unfathomable monster inside. That, I thought, was understandable enough, and I thought that it wouldn’t last long. But the tension began to bubble into violence. Fights broke out nightly at Willie’s Bar and Grille. They spilled into the streets and turned into brawls. Somebody threw a brick into the window of Bob’s Hardware. Car tires were slashed… garage doors graffitied. Down half of my police force, I worked around the clock trying to keep the peace. Waldo County agreed to send over two men as temporary replacements, but they were weeks out, and until then, I was working 18 hours shifts. Nor did I get much rest when I clocked out. Sleep brought nightmares. Nightmares of giant lobsters crawling through our town, beneath an endless green fog… crushing buildings and people between their monstrous claws. And idle hours awake brought bad memories… Louie’s carcass lying next to Joel’s decapitated body… that hideous maw opening and spewing forth its evil poison. The violence continued to escalate. It was impossible to keep up with. Somebody burned down the Unitarian Church. People I had grown up with snarled at me… spat at me and called me a pig. My nerves were raw, and I started to feel like I might snap too. \* “You need some time off,” Linda said last night after work. “This is eating you alive. Why don’t we go somewhere for a week?” “Can’t,” I said, pouring a whiskey. I looked at the glass for a moment, reminding myself that I had to be careful with that shit. I’d seen it get its hooks into too many people… like my old man. *Two drinks,* I promised myself. *Two drinks*. I slammed the first one down. “I know you think it’s your duty to single handedly save the world, but it’s really not, Garry. And I’m *scared*. Something crazy is happening here. It’s like there’s something in the water.” I was in the middle of fixing my second drink when she said that. I froze, and whiskey kept pouring over the edge of the glass and onto the counter, until Linda gently took my hand and lifted the bottle. “Garry…” she said. “You’re not well.” *Like there’s something in the water*. In the jail cell, when Louie had died… the fog hadn’t come after me. It had gone into the sink faucet. The thing had told Joel: *I’ll be dripping from the faucet, and soon, very soon my pal, I will drip all over this world and transform it into the screaming Hell that it wants to be.* We were a few miles out of town, and had our own water well. So did our neighbors. And, as the thoughts tore through my wrecked brain, I realized that the violence and vandalism was mostly contained to the city limits, despite the fact that just as many people within the *town* limits lived outside of the city. So it was in the fucking city water pipes? It had slipped into the faucet in the jail cell, swam against the pressure… found the mainline… spread out, splitting a part of itself off at each branch… flowing into each home? Pouring out of showerheads, out of kitchen faucets, into cooking pots… into drinking glasses. I did a desperate mental calculation, trying to remember if I’d ingested any city water since it had started. We had a commercial water jug at the police station. Did Darlene use *that* water or tap water to make the coffee? Christ, I didn’t know. Had I gone to the diner and ordered a glass of tap water? I didn’t think so. Where else? “Honey,” I said. “I want you to think carefully. Have you drank any city water recently?” “What? I was *kidding* about there being something in the water.” “I know. But I think there actually *is*. So think. Maybe at Claire’s house? Didn’t you go there the other day?” “What? Yeah, yeah. I went to Claire’s on Monday for our book club. But nobody else showed up. Claire wasn’t even there. So I left.” “Okay. Okay. Good. Think. Anywhere else you might have had some water?” “I don’t know, Garry! You’re scaring me!” I took a deep breath and looked at my wife. I didn’t think that she was infected. She was worried… but had been almost supernaturally patient with me. The infected weren’t patient. “Bran!” I called. “He’s at a friend’s,” said Linda. Then her eyes got wide. “Oh no!” She scooped her phone off the kitchen island and called our son. She held the phone to her ear for a while and finally shook her head. “He’s not answering.” “Where is he?” She told me and I was off. \* Cedar Street was mayhem. A group of teenagers was overturning a car parked on the side of the road. I slowed as I passed them, shining my flashlight out the window, looking for Brandon. He wasn’t with them. “Fuck the police!” one of them shouted. He flipped me off and I kept driving… past an old man kicking a dog… past a pile of leaves burning on the sidewalk… past a tree with figures hanging from it that were, I hoped, dummies, rather than human beings with burlap sacks over their heads. Finally, I reached number 88. As I pulled up to the curb, I saw that the large bay window jutting out from the front of the house was shattered, and there was a body lying on the ground among the broken glass in the flower bed. It looked to be a woman. I got out of the car with my hand on my weapon and slowly approached the body. Heavy metal music blasted through the broken window and I heard something smash inside. “Ma’am?” I said. She didn’t respond. I could see now that it was Tina Godfry… Brandon’s friend’s mother. I reached down and felt for her pulse. She was cold and dead. I walked around and tried the front door, terrified of what I might find inside. It was unlocked. Inside, the music was so loud that it hurt my ears, and I was hit with a horrible stench that almost made me spill back up the whiskey along with the hamburger I’d had for lunch. “Brandon!” I shouted. “You in here buddy?” The overhead lights were off, but I saw a flicker coming from a room at the end of the hall. A strobe light. That was also where the music was coming from. I crept towards it, drawing my gun and trying to steady my nerves. “Brandon!” Brandon stuck his head out the room. “Pops!” he yelled. “Come join the fun!” “Are you okay?” I asked, getting closer to him. “What happened to Mrs. Godfrey?” “That wasn’t me! That was Jason!” He laughed. “Threw his own fucking mother out the window. Can you believe that?” “And where is Jason now?” “He’s in here! Come on in!” I was close enough now that I could see my son’s face as the intermittent light hit it. It was covered in blood and he was grinning like a maniac. “You wanna try some, pops?” he asked, before bringing an arm out of the room and showing it to me. It wasn’t his arm. It was severed at the elbow, and had several bites taken out of it. I didn’t know what to do. God help me… I didn’t know what to do. “I told ya, pops! Told ya once, and I’ll tell ya once again. This world is an inch away from being a screaming Hell, and we’re gonna give it that last little nudge, aren’t we pops? Just a little nudge! That’s all it takes!” He sunk his teeth into the severed arm and pulled away a chunk of flesh. I turned away. I thought about just leaving him there. Going home and telling Linda that he was dead… that we had to get far, far away, fast. Then I thought about actually killing him, so that it wouldn’t be a lie. For a second, I thought about killing my own son… even if that wasn’t really my son anymore. “Drop the arm and put your hands up in the air,” I said. “What you gonna do, pops? *Arrest* me?” He laughed, but did as instructed. I approached slowly… pointing my gun at him with one hand, and fumbling for the cuffs with the other. I got them, and dangled them in front of him. “Put these on,” I said. “Or what, pops? You gonna shoot me? You don’t have the balls.” I bit my lip and shot him in the foot. It would be a long time before he played football again. He dropped to the ground and howled in pain and rage and I slipped the gun into my holster and slapped the cuffs on him. “Oh!” he said, smiling now. “Kinky!” I grabbed the cuffs by the chain and dragged him down the hall as he snapped his teeth and spat blood at me. We made it outside and I thunked my son down the concrete steps and scraped him along the walkway until we got to the squad car. I threw him in the back, then got in the driver’s seat and drove home sobbing as he told me about how much he was going to enjoy eating me alive. \* Back at the house, I went inside and gave Linda a partial account of what had happened, while Brandon squirmed in the back of the squad car. I argued that we should keep Brandon in the basement, tied up and possibly gagged, until we could figure out what to do. She refused to allow that. So I told her about the cannibalism. That’s where our son is now… tied to a chair in the basement. Linda agreed to the gag, too, after hearing the evil filth pouring out of his mouth for a few hours. As for me, I went to the computer and started typing up this account. I thought that maybe somebody would read it and be able to help us… maybe somebody knows what this thing is, and how to stop it. That was my hope. But just as I was coming to the end, I got a text message from Darlene, the dispatcher/assistant at the station. It said: *What did you think of the coffee yesterday? I tried something new. Made it with tap water.* My vision started to waver as another message came through: *We'll see you very soon in Hell, chief.*

Skotádi

yazh1e

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yazh1e/skotádi/

Sometimes I like to paint or sketch just to vent. Sometimes I like to write to vent. But most of the time I just paint. But lately, I haven't felt like doing so. It's weird. I used to do it every day, filling the canvas with the brightest and most vibrant acryllic paints availabe to me. Now, anytime I pick up my paintbrush the only thing that comes onto the hairs of it are blacks, greys and brown. Before you get the wrong idea, I am not here to vent. I have a story I want to tell. A few days ago, I decided enough was enough and forced myself over to my art studio. It is small, but efficient. I picked up the brush and thought for a moment. Nothing came to my mind specifically that I wanted to make, so I just put down some colors on my pallette and dipped my brush into the grey. I swiped it against the canvas, and felt nothing. I swiped it again. Still nothing. I do not remember what happened during the time period of me swiping a stroke across the canvas, and me coming to my senses, but I know something did. Because the thing I created was absolutely mortifying. Over the course of 7 minutes I had created something so utterly terrifying I had scared myself. The background itself was black. There was a person, or some type of a person, standing in the void of blackness. It's eyes stared into mine, more realistic than anything I had painted before. It's mouth was curled into the most eyebending smile I had ever seen. It would have put the Joker to shame. It's body was frail and naked, only showing from the waist up. The most terrifying part though, was it's chest. The entirety of its chest was open. The ribs were pulled apart into wing like forms, and all of it's internal organs were seen. I have never taken any sort of anatomy class other than the basics in school. After some further research, I found out everything was in the right place and looked identical to photographs. I do not want to believe that I had painted that. It's horrifying, glossy eyes. It's petrifying smile. And the open rib-winged chest. I really don't wanna believe that I created it. But who else could've? I was the only one there. I was the only one I knew that could possibly paint it, and even that was a far stretch. The painitng itself isn't even the scariest part. It is the fact that I saw it. Actually saw it in the real world. I was walking home one night from a late night out with my friends, and was listening to my favorite song. I looked up from whistling and saw it standing just in the shadows of a lightpost. This was exactly 24 hours after I painted it. I was so terrified I couldn't move. Then it started to walk towards me. That is when I screamed and ran. I don't know what to do. It is in my dreams. It is in my head all the time. I have even named it *Skotádi.* It means darkness in Greek. I am utterly terrified and I don't know what to do. It's driving me crazy. I can't sleep. Or eat. Or drink. I think it's here right now.

The Haunting of Apartment 106

yar608

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yar608/the_haunting_of_apartment_106/

Sometimes I hear it scuttling in the shadows or behind the walls. I rarely witness it but when I do it's always a blur that disappears into the shadows and it never happens when I expect it to. I know I sound off my rocker but there is a monster that lives in my apartment.  I first heard its calls five days ago, the same day my sister, her husband and their daughter came over to visit before they left for a vacation. It was the middle of the night when the sound rose from the darkness, freezing my blood. Its calls sounded like an orchestra of string instruments being played by gorillas with a propensity for causing as much pain as possible.  That was the first in a long series of nights that seemed to never end.  The next morning when I got up, I found my chair was torn and the stuffing was partially dragged out.  I was physically attacked by this monster the following night while sleeping. The monster plunged its fangs and talons into my feet, attempting to shred my flesh from its bones.  I wanted to go to a hospital to have it looked at but I am afraid of what they may tell me. What if it gave me some kind of disease when it scratched and bit me? After two days without sleep, my mind was playing tricks on me.  I think the beast enjoys chaos. Returning home I sometimes find my clothes torn and laying on the floor or the remains of a digested meal.  It even knocked over the urn of great grandma and scattered the ashes. I decided to ask around for help and thankfully found people online. Unfortunately, since I had not seen this beast and couldn't give a description, they couldn't tell me exactly what I would need, but they did recommend that I buy books of wards and rituals.  In a new age shop, I loaded up with everything from charms to Christian crosses in the silver and gold variety since one may work better than the other.  I didn't expect to buy as much as I did that day but the weight of all the charms around my neck is a small price to pay for safety. People online also recommended that I purchase incense and sage to purge the beast. After performing all the rituals I could and surrounding my bed with salt I finally felt comfortable enough to sleep. As soon as my head hit the pillow I was out of it.  I don't know how long I was out of it, but when I woke up it was dark. That isn't what woke me though. There was something laying on top of my hip, its tail was twitching back and forth, slapping my leg and I was too afraid to move. When my alarm clock went off the beast ran away. It was the first time I was thankful for having an alarm clock if I am being honest. When I went to the kitchen, I saw some more of the creature's destruction. This time it decided to tear apart a throw pillow. I am not the kind of person who likes to tell people if I need help, so I didn't tell my friends or family about this even though I knew that if I did they would offer me a spare bedroom or a couch. Each day I go without sleep its as if the shadows get darker and larger. I am not sure if I am going crazy or not.  Even as I write this I wonder: Did I just see the beast? Some people online told me about the origin of Halloween, and how people would place offerings of milk out for ghosts and goblins to calm them. They recommended that I do the same thing. I sat a small bowl of milk out and ran out to buy offerings of meat at the store. When I returned I saw that the milk had been drunk so I put out a piece of bologna. I looked away for only a moment and when I looked back the meat was gone.  These offerings are only a bandaid. I need to identify this monster if I am to have any chance of being free of it. The following night my blood ran cold when I heard the monster in the walls between my bed and my neighbors apartment. On the other side of the wall is an old woman who lives all by herself. I should've got up and run to her rescue, but at that moment I was a coward and didnt do anything except cover my head and drown out the sounds with tuneless humming.  I rearm all the traps I have set up the next morning and cry because of how useless these traps are and how helpless I feel. Its at this point where I get more glances of the creature. A tuft of hair here, a tail there. Seeing all this I wish I was never born. I cannot do this for much longer. I am not religious and I was reluctant to ask a priest for help, however at this point I have no other option. He said the church no longer does exorcisms, that demons are a way to explain the evils in the world and not to be taken literally. When I insist that I am living with some sort of entity he recommends prayer. I caused a bit of a scene when he said this and stormed off. My friends started to notice how much I have changed and how I am isolating myself so they reach out to me. I told them everything was fine because I do not want to bother them with my burden. As we speak I take my time bringing up the possibility of borrowing his gun so I could go duck hunting. Thankfully he believed me.  I do not like being dishonest but I don't see another way out of this situation. If the tables were reversed and he were to tell me about a monster I would not believe him.  That night I didn't try to sleep, I sat in my bed with the loaded weapon and waited for the monster to show itself. The moment it rears its ugly head I was going to end its life or die trying. Hours pass, I think I might have nodded off with the gun in my lap. I wake up suddenly and raise the gun to the door where I thought the beast would appear. I cocked the gun, putting a shell in the chamber while at the same time ejecting the one I forgot was already in there. As I pan the gun left and right, waiting for my eyes to adjust, I look for any movement. After a few moments I see that the wards on the floor made out of salt have been spread all over.  I really should not be surprised, the wards offered me no help yet, why should I expect things to be different now? Feeling pressure on my bladder I dread getting out of bed when it is dark. Under the bed the monster could wait for me to put my foot on the floor. I feel like a child all over again, scared of the dark, scared of monsters. In truth I am afraid of everything. After a silent prayer I jump off the bed and as soon as my foot touches the ground I sprint to the bathroom and shut the door. Unfortunately I didn't bring the gun with me. Deciding to sit on the cold toilet instead of standing up to urinate I consider sleeping here with the door shut. Before I know it I am asleep once again. I woke up to the sound of loud and rapid scratching. In that tiny gap between the door and the floor I see a white claw reaching out towards me. Needle-like claws extended and excitedly scrape the floor as if it's trying to pull the floor, and me, towards its awaiting maw. A moment later the claw turns and reaches towards the doorknob.  I am thankful I am already on the toilet because I scream like a child and because I don't remember the last time I ate, I faint. When I wake up its to the sound of my phone ringing on the other side of the door. As soon as I build enough courage I burst through the bathroom door and sprint to my bed where the phone and the gun lay. Instead of grabbing the gun I look at my phone. Four voice mails and six missed calls, all of which are from my boss.  He said that I was fired in the last voice mail. This should upset me more than it does but how could losing a job compare to living with some kind of demon?  Forcing myself to eat I open the fridge and the smell of old spoiled food breaks me. I cry harder than I ever have in my life.  Babies don’t cry this much. The anticipation of being attacked was almost worse than actually being attacked.  I shout, challenging the beast to reveal itself as my knuckles turn white around the gun. I position a chair in the corner so I can see more of my house and I wait for the monster.  Outside I hear people go about their day, I hear birds chirp, cars start and in the distance I hear a school bell ring indicating that the students are about to go home. Everyone else gets to feel normal. Again I cry. There was a moment I thought I heard a woman screaming in the hallway outside, but it ended up being one of those happy screams. I cry yet again.  The only time I move from that chair is when I go to turn on the lights just before it gets dark. After all, I need to see the monster in order to shoot it. If the monster survives the blast it would kill me. If that is the case, at least this nightmare would be over and I would be able to finally sleep. Weighing the pros and the cons of living, as well as the gun in my hand, I made a decision and put the barrel of the gun in my mouth. Slowly I apply pressure to the trigger, knowing that at any time this thing will go off and my suffering would be over. I think about the poor bastard who would have to clean this mess for a second but quickly set that thought aside. As soon as I shoot, it would not be my problem. I add more pressure to the trigger with the business end of the gun in my mouth. My lips tighten on the barrel and I cry more, my finger not easing the tension on the trigger. That was when the phone rang. I pull the barrel out of my mouth on the third ring to see who is calling me. Wiping tears from my eyes I pick up the phone and see it is my sister who just came back from her vacation. She is the one person who could talk me off of this cliff. “Hello?” I answer as calmly as I can muster. “Hey, I’m coming over, be there in five minutes,” she says.  “What? Why?” I ask, surprised. “I’m picking up my cat today. Thanks for watching it when we were gone by the way.” [WAE](https://www.reddit.com/r/WhisperAlleyEchos/)

The girl who drank the rain

yabq1n

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yabq1n/the_girl_who_drank_the_rain/

My mom used to say that rain is God’s tears, and that’s why we shouldn’t drink it. She said a lot of things to make me behave. She told me that eating too many sweets make invisible goblins that chew on my teeth. That spiders would crawl into my mouth if I didn’t breathe through my nose. That eating snow would freeze my stomach and turn me into a snowman. A hundred little lies, all engineered to trick me into behaving. And I behaved. As the years passed, I’ve turned into a perfectly tricked human. I left all childish nonsense behind years ago. I pay my taxes and keep my head down. I don’t eat too many sweets, I breathe through my nose, and I don’t eat snow. And, of course, I don’t drink from the rain. ​ Last August, I was at a supermarket on the outskirts of town. Just another lazy Saturday morning, with a sky full of grey clouds and a persistent wind. I’d bought some groceries and was heading for the door when I noticed it’d started raining. I hadn’t brought an umbrella, so I just pulled my leather jacket close and rushed to my car, hoping the bread wouldn’t get soggy. I threw the groceries into the passenger seat, leaned back, and noticed a woman standing in the middle of the parking lot. She was staring straight up with her jaws wide open. Her mouth filling up with rainwater, like a bird bath. Seeing her, I couldn’t help but to think about what my mom used to tell me. To never drink the rainwater; that it was an *ugly* thing to do. My mom passed on years ago, but some words can stay forever. ​ I sat there looking at her for a while. She had this black pixie haircut and a gray hoodie long enough to reach her knees. She was completely drenched, with lines of black mascara running from her eyes. It took me a while to notice she didn’t have any shoes on. I got the feeling that she wasn’t well. This wasn’t something sane people did. Sane people don’t drink rainwater like that. God’s tears. It wasn’t unusual that strange characters came by this supermarket. There was a prison nearby, and a lot of people stopped by to buy something on their way out. Mostly friends and family visiting, but every now and then there was an odd bird. I have no idea what kind of people they keep at that prison, but the company that runs it has quite the reputation around town. Hatchet is a strange company. ​ I decided to say something, and stepped out of the car. “Hey!” I called out. “You’re gonna get sick!” She didn’t flinch. It was as if she didn’t even register my words as a language. Instead, she just kept staring into the sky. She had this sort of mindless determination about her, like she didn’t know what else to do. She didn’t even blink. Raindrops bounced off her unblinking eyes. I was about to get back in my car, but I felt bad for her. She was barely an adult, and she was clearly having some sort of breakdown. I jogged back inside the supermarket. ​ There was an older man standing behind the counter, listening to the radio. I’d shopped there a few times, but never actually talked to him. He didn’t even look at me when I came back inside. “Excuse me,” I said. “I think the girl outside needs help.” He leaned over a bit in his chair, squinting at the glass doors. She was still out there. “What for?” he asked. “I dunno, she’s… she’s just standing there. She has no shoes.” The old man was clearly not happy about this. Not about her standing there, in particular, but that I’d bothered him about it. “Let’s go,” he said. “People don’t talk to each other no more?” ​ I followed him outside as we approached the girl. The rain was picking up. “Hey!” he called out to her. “You alright?” No response. He slowed his pace, giving me a concerned look. Now he saw what I saw. “You want us to call someone? You have a… a phone?” he asked. “You need help?” We all just stood there for a few seconds, until the old man sighed. He put his hand on her shoulder, rustling her gently. “I’m sorry, but you can’t stay here,” he said. “You have to move on.” He shook her harder, making some of the water in her mouth spill over. I got a bad feeling. “Come on now.” ​ He grabbed her again, and she immediately lost her balance. She tipped over like a falling tree, her head smacking haplessly against the concrete. Water spilled out of her mouth, mixing with the blood from the fresh head wound. The old man’s eyes went wild. He fell to his knees, repeating “oh my God” over and over. I backed away with my hand on my phone. I didn’t register what was happening, and I went into a sort of paralysis. It took me a few seconds to notice she was still coughing up water. A *lot* of water. And some of it had turned *black*. I thought it might be blood, but it didn’t look like it. Too dark. I was suddenly aware of the phone in my hand. The weight and texture of it. I dialed 911 as the old man put her on her side. “Breathe through your nose!” he said. “Stay calm, and breathe through your nose!” Black water was pouring out of her like a faucet. Her eyes were still fixed on the sky. ​ It felt like minutes, but it was just seconds. Breaths. The water stopped pouring out of her. She just laid there, unmoving. I could hear an operator talking to me in my ear, but it was as if the words just passed through me. I couldn’t hear them over my own pulse. Something about an emergency. A question. “She’s… she’s not breathing!” the old man cried. “She’s not-“ A twitch. Her mouth moved. Something passed between her lips; something dark. A finger? A claw? She rolled onto her back with a violent muscle spasm. She bent her back like an arch, balancing her entire body on the soles of her feet and the scalp of her head. She inhaled, sucking in as much rainwater as she could in a screeching gasp. Her throat rattling as the rain drops passed into her lungs. We went from trying to help to just staring in disbelief. In an impossible move, she got to her feet; invisible tethers pulling her back up. Her face still locked towards the sky, and jaws once again wide open, her body turned to me and the old man. And as we recoiled, she gurgled, and charged us. ​ My phone slipped out of my wet hands as she burst forward. I tripped over my own feet, falling backwards, and she hurled herself over the old man. Her head was constantly looking upwards, like a gyroscope. It was as if her body was moving and twisting independently from her head. I could swear she twisted her neck an entire 360 degrees at one point. I crawled backwards, scraping the palm of my hands. She gurgled again, the water from her mouth pouring over the old man that she’d pinned. He was gasping for air. Spitting and coughing, wildly flailing his arms. Just this relentless stream of water, practically drowning him. Then he stopped. Slowly, he opened his mouth wide, and he too started to drink the rain. ​ I stumbled to my feet and ran for my car. I could hear naked feet slapping against the concrete; she was chasing me. I got my keys out, unlocked the car, and got in the driver’s seat. I slammed the door shut right on her fingers, breaking them like carrot sticks as the door bounced back open. I crawled into the passenger seat as useless fingers brushed against my face; trying to grasp at me. She crawled in after me, gurgling with anticipation. I got out on the other side of the car, slamming the passenger side door shut. I rounded back to the driver’s side and closed that door as well, trapping her inside. She didn’t have the mental capacity to open the doors, so she just settled back into pounding on the glass with her bleeding, broken fingers. Her eyes were moving independently of one another, trying to find a way out. Trying to find the sky. ​ I backed away, my heart pounding. I didn’t even notice my tears in the rain, just the sting of sweat in my eye. I kept hunching over, clutching at my stomach. It was burning, like my insides were trying to jump out of me. My heart was having none of this. The old man had gotten to his feet. He looked at me from across the parking lot. For a few seconds, I could see fear on his face. Pleading eyes, begging for help. Then, his face snapped upwards, and he opened his mouth wide. His body, moving seemingly on its’ own, started walking towards me. He tripped over the concrete outlines of the parking spaces, barely keeping his balance. His shoulder smacked into a sign, sending him reeling onto the ground. All the while keeping his head fixed on the sky. Then, just as the girl before him, I could see this invisible force pulling him back onto his feet. Transparent tethers, hidden in the drops of rain. ​ He got his bearings. And suddenly, he was *fast*. ​ This man was easily 70 years old, but he was keeping an impossible pace. I didn’t know where to go. Didn’t know what to do. He gained on me, and I just stood there like a deer frozen in headlights. Thumping feet coming closer. Then the girl trapped in my car slapped her hand against the window again. The sound kicked me off like a starting pistol. I shot into a sprint as my stomach shivered. ​ I don’t remember running back into the store. I don’t remember knocking over a stack of shopping baskets. It was just a blur of colorful packaging as I ran through the aisles, cheerful radio tunes playing overhead. The old man tripped over a shopping basket and fell sprawling to the floor, water spilling out of him like a fountain. As he struggled to get back on his feet, I saw little things moving between his lips. Little fingertips, black like ink. A little hand reaching out. He stepped back outside and leaned his head back upwards. Slowly, he walked out of sight, towards another side of the store. I was left standing there, holding a mop. I didn’t even realize I’d grabbed it. ​ I started to look for a phone. There had to be some sort of alarm, but I couldn’t find it. There was no big red button to press. My hands were shaking, and I kept knocking things over. A bunch of pens rattled against the ceramic tiles. I looked for the manager’s office. The guy was old, chances were there was a landline. Going into the back, I heard a surprised yell. There was someone outside the back exit. I couldn’t be bothered, I had to call for help. Help yourself before you help others. Put on the oxygen mask. The manager’s office was locked. I tried just pulling the door open, or banging at the glass slit, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, I pulled a fire extinguisher from the wall and just hammered relentlessly until the thing shattered. I put my hand through, clicked the lock, and stepped inside. ​ The place was a mess, but it had a landline buried under piles of unsorted documents. There was a computer, but the thing was already old ten years ago. I dialed 911 as I closed and locked the door behind me. I only have a vague recollection of speaking to the operator. I told her about people turning violent, but in trying to explain it I realized I sounded completely mad. I tried calming myself down, and explain it in a way that made it seem like the owner had snapped. They asked me if I was safe, if he was armed, if someone was injured… a thousand things, it seemed like. I kept hearing little noises in the back of the store, and I completely lost my train of thought. ​ “Sir? Sir, are you there?” I heard the voice on the phone, but it was distant. Every bone in my body was listening to what was happening outside. Someone was getting in through the back door. It was clunky, but I could hear the handle rattling. “Sir!” I slowly put the phone away. Not hanging up, just putting it away. I had to concentrate. There was an old toolbox in the corner of the room, so I grabbed a large wrench to defend myself. I needed solid metal in my hands. It brought me a kind of courage I didn’t know I had. When the old man stepped up to the manager’s office, I was ready. I slammed the door open, knocking him back. Even now his head was tilted upwards. I whacked him over the head with the wrench, sluggishly connecting with his throat. He stumbled sidewards, and I hit him again. He tripped, fell over, and snapped his neck against the wall. ​ It was over in a second. He stopped moving as black water oozed out of him. And there, moving at the edge of his lips, were little black fingers. Reaching outwards, desperately. Looking for something to grab, to pull itself free. His jaw moved up and down, like he was chewing an invisible meal. His eyes were still fixed upward. As I raised the wrench to attack again, the little hand stopped moving. It turned into a black sludge, like coagulating darkness. ​ I couldn’t let go of the wrench even if I wanted to. My fingers had cramped shut. I took a deep gasp, as I realized I’d been holding my breath. I backed away. I’d killed this man. Self defense or not, he was dead. No question about it. “Sir?! Sir!” I could hear coming from the landline in the other room. I didn’t know how to explain this. I didn’t know what I’d say. I just stood there, listening to myself breathe. ​ In an instant, the world shifted upside down. I lost my balance, as something grabbed me from behind. I fell hard on my right shoulder, losing the grip on my wrench in the impact. Two arms had gripped me and was pulling me backwards. The stock boy. He’d been out back on a smoke break this whole time. That’s the startled sound I’d heard; he’d been attacked. Moments later, I felt the rain again. He’d dragged me outside. The guy was in his early 30’s and built like a redwood. He had no trouble keeping me off balance, as he pushed me to the ground. He tilted his head downward, as water started to spill. ​ “Wait!” I screamed. “Wait, w-wait!” Then, rainwater. Luke-warm, body-tempered rainwater. ​ It is hard to explain the sensation. At first I was drowning, trying to keep water out of my lungs. But after one or two involuntary gulps, I didn’t feel it anymore. It was as if air and water switched place. The rainwater kept me alive, and losing it would mean choking to death. My neck locked itself staring upwards, as to not lose any water. As I looked up at the clouds, I heard a voice. It felt like it was reaching into my stomach, resonating in my body like an echo. Rain falling on me, making it look like I was running through a tunnel, or being pulled upwards. “*Hello*.” A greeting. A dark presence went swimming through my thoughts. Little tendrils seeping into my memories, touching all my secrets. I could feel my body moving on its’ own, and all I could do was look up. I tried to scream for help, but all I did was gurgle. It hurt something awful, burning like razor wire being pulled out of me the more I resisted. There was something up there. Something in the clouds that needed me, the way a body needs a pair of hands. ​ I lived in that world. I don’t know for how long. Having a conversation with something inside myself, trying to feel something. My body was numb and distant. Frozen solid, and pulled by an impossible force. And at some point, the rain stopped. ​ I was staring up into the sky; coughing up water, as my body slowly remembered how to breathe. I was lying on my back, looking up at the clouds. They were parting. I turned to my side, feeling something wriggle in my throat. I gulped down hard, feeling an obstruction slide down. Then the water started coming out of me. Rainwater, black water, and blood. I had an idea where I was, but it took me some time to orient myself. It was a grassy field, just a bit out of town. Underbrush, some scattered trees, and a few dried-up discolored sunflowers. I was just off the freeway, about a fifteen-minute walk from the store. I’d seen this field on my way home from work, I realized. Not too far from Frog Lake. ​ I eventually made my way back to the supermarket. Four patrol vehicles and an ambulance had arrived, sirens wailing. I saw the young woman with the black hair being lifted into an ambulance, her hand broken and bleeding. She had a tight bandage wrapped around her head. They were also moving a body out of the store, and three officers were talking to themselves and taking pictures by the entrance. Coughing up the last drops of black water, I tried my best to scream for help. All that came out was a gurgle, that slowly turned into a scream. That part was all me. ​ They eventually recognized my voice from the emergency call. They took me in, had a medic check me out, and questioned me all about it. The officers tried to piece it all together into something comprehensible, ending up at the story of “an old man goes crazy and gets killed”. I wanted to tell them more, but I just couldn’t find the words to make it sensible. There was some surveillance footage, but it didn’t cover much of the parking lot. All they saw was me being chased into the store by a sick-looking man. Before I was sent home, and asked not to leave the state, I got the chance to ask my own questions. I asked them about the young woman in my car, and what happened to her. Apparently, she’d been picked up by her guardians almost immediately. They had all paperwork in order, as well as a pair of very expensive lawyers. “Strange people,” the officer noted. “Didn’t seem very parental.” ​ Since then, I’ve been getting shivers whenever it rains. I get this sense that I should go outside, to see if there is anything up there. Something that still needs me. Something calling to me. But I’m fine, according to the doctors. Still, I don’t trust myself to stay inside. I lock myself in the bathroom with my headphones on, waiting for it all to pass. I’ve read about others seeing her. A young woman who comes out when it rains, to drink from the sky. I have to know more about her. I need to know what happened to me. ​ So if you’ve seen her, please let me know when and where. And if you meet her, just walk the other way.

National Parks, and nature in general, Can Be Scary. Part Two.

yaue6e

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yaue6e/national_parks_and_nature_in_general_can_be_scary/

First part in series: [National Parks, and nature in general, Can Be Scary](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/p5b67r/national_parks_and_nature_in_general_can_be_scary/) So Lora was my first real paranormal experience at the house, but I did have some questionable things happen to me before I moved in, and I think sharing those might be important. Especially if someone else out there could be going through similar experiences. As I’ve made clear throughout my first post, the woods in national parks are spooky. I’ve been to many throughout the last couple of years, and they always give off strange vibes. I always assumed that it was me just being weary of being alone in nature, but now I’m not so sure. This next story I’m going to tell takes place before I met Rick and before I moved into that house. I was new to the park, I mean brand new. I had never heard of it online or seen it on a map. But it seemed like a beautiful place so I figured I’d do some adventuring. Sorry for not giving the name, but honestly I’d rather none of you adventure it until I figure out what’s going on here. So after stopping briefly at the front office to pay my way in, I headed out. I ended up finding a trail called Flora Hollow that was 24 miles long , so my plan was to hike about halfway, set up camp for the night, and finish the rest of the hike tomorrow. After about a mile in, I started to notice something was off. There was very little light being let in through the trees. I mean, next to zero. I could maybe see 3 feet in front of me, if that, and the further I walked, the darker it got. It struck me as odd because it was 1 in the afternoon, and when I had checked the forecast less than 20 minutes ago, there was no chance of rain. So really, there was no reason for it to be dark. But, against my better judgment, I pushed forward, wanting to stick to my plan of hiking 12 miles and setting up camp. Now I know how frustrating it is to watch someone in a movie press forward when there’s obviously a problem, but believe me, when you're actually in one of those situations, the evidence isn’t always so obvious. As soon as I realized it was way darker than it should have been for that time of day, I should have turned around. Whether it was because of a sudden change of weather, or some strange supernatural phenomenon, I should have known to just get out of there. But I didn’t, and I’m sure that’s obvious since there’s so much left to the story. At 2 miles in, I stopped to put on my head lamp. My visibility was still about 3 feet in every direction, but this was the point where I started to get a little on edge. Being in the dark itself isn’t inherently creepy, but the thought of something else being in the dark with you, is. It felt like as I walked on there were millions of little eyes peering out from the darkness to watch me go. Around 3.5 miles into my hike, I stopped again to quickly slip on a hoodie. Maybe it was all in my head, but it was suddenly frigidly cold, for no reason. Nothing else had changed, not the elevation or the amount of light coming in through the trees. And it’s not like it was getting super late, it was 2:30 at best, and for an average July day, there’s no reason for it to be sweatshirt weather. Now I’m not usually the paranoid type, but at that point the feeling of being watched was so strong it was putting my stomach in knots. I continued to tell myself that it was probably just because it was dark, or maybe because I was in a new park on a trail I’d never seen in regular daylight. But something in the back of my head kept telling me something was off about the Flora Hollow trail. So you may be wondering, what was my solution to combating this paranoid feeling? I simply put up the hood on my sweatshirt and drew the strings so it was sealed just around my face and the light strapped to my forehead. And then, I pressed on. Nothing really notable for the next 8.5 miles. I got more uncomfortable the farther I went, and I thought I heard sticks crunching in the woods around me, but I chalked it up to my imagination. Finally, I reached my halfway point. I started setting up my camp. Nothing too fancy, just hanging a tarp angled from a tree to make a little half shelter. I laid out my sleeping bag and made a circle of rocks to prepare a fire. One thing about lighting fires is that you need some sort of fuel. I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t carry wood in my bag while I’m hiking. So, once I finished laying out my home for the night, I grabbed my hatchet and trekked off into the woods. I planned on staying close, heading north away from where I set up camp. Because of the darkness that surrounded me, I couldn’t really pick out things around me to use as markers, so I decided to count my steps instead, hoping to keep myself on track. One. Five. Ten. Sixteen. Twenty three. Thirty. At thirty paces from my campsite, I stopped. Looking around I saw a triangular shaped piece of bark, so I laid it on the ground with the sort of pointed end facing back the direction I came. I loaded up my arm with all of the sticks I could find in about a 6 foot radius of the bark arrow, and then turned around and headed back the way the bark was pointing. One. Seven. Thirteen. Nineteen. Twenty six. Thirty. My campsite was nowhere to be seen. My pack was gone, so was my tarp, so was my sleeping bag, not even the circle of rocks for a fire remained. I swore it was my camp, the trees looked the way they did when I left, some branches were angled down, and they had been the ones holding up my tarp. Maybe there was a chance I somehow went the wrong way, so I turned 180 degrees and began walking back to my wood collection spot. Two. Eight. Fifteen. Twenty one. Twenty eight. Thirty. Lying on the spot where my makeshift bark arrow once was, was my pack. Pardon my French, but there wasn’t a snowball's chance in hell that I had put it there. When I left my campsite, the only thing I had was my hatchet and my headlamp. I wanted all of my focus to be on collecting wood, not adjusting a bag that would just weigh me down. So I picked it up and put it on. Still no sight of the rest of my things, and now I had no idea where to go. The map of the trail that was in my pocket wouldn’t even help, since I couldn’t really figure out where I needed to go if I didn’t know where I was. I knew the thirty steps behind me wasn’t the right direction, so I set one of my sticks down pointing that direction, and set off straight ahead. Three. Eleven. Eighteen. Twenty four. Thirty. Nothing here caught my eye. This couldn’t have been the campsite, for one obvious reason being there was no tarp or rock fire pit, but also because the tree branches started much higher off the ground. I didn’t climb up a tree to string up my tarp, and these branches were far out of arm's reach. So I walked back. One. Ten. Sixteen. Twenty six. Thirty. Low and behold, lying on the ground where my pack once was, was my tarp, neatly rolled up and secured with the cord I had used to hang it back at my campsite, wherever that was. Now I was starting to get pissed. Who followed me on a 12 mile hike to just screw with me when I set up camp? And how did they have time to do all of this? Walking thirty steps, looking around, and walking back took maybe 2 minutes, and that’s being generous. And how had I not heard them? It was near dead silent, the only sound reaching my ears were my own footsteps. I should have heard someone galivanting around. At this point I was insistent on finding my campsite. Unless whoever was screwing with me had also picked up the rocks, I would have been able to identify the place by the rock circle. So I turned to my left, and marched forward. Three. Nine. Twenty. Twenty three. Thirty. A fruitless venture in my quest to find my place. The area around me was bare, no trees in the space illuminated by my headlamp. Plus, the ground beneath my feet was dried mud, hard and cracked. My campsite was grassy, a little stray rock here and there, but certainly not mud. So, I turned around and walked back, once again. I felt like a kid who had done something wrong, and was now on the way to the principal's office. I didn’t know what fate awaited me, and I knew I probably wouldn’t like it. Four. Twelve. Twenty. Twenty five. Thirty. Only one direction left to look, and that was obviously the one that this trickster wanted me to go. On the ground in front of me where my tarp once was, laid my fire pit rocks. Instead of being in a crude circle shape, they were arranged into an arrow, pointing the only direction I had yet to check, straight ahead of me. I now had all of my possessions, so it’s not like I’d find anything else when I got there, but if I didn’t find my camp, I couldn’t find the trail. I had set up camp right along the left side of the trail, and I had yet to see it. It wasn’t clearly marked, but a gravely (however overgrown with plants) path would still stand out against the terrain of an unwalked forest floor. At this point I was more livid than I was scared. I mean, why would I need to be scared of what I presumed to be a person, and all they were doing was fucking with me. It’s not like they were hurting me. And if they wanted to, they could have by now. However, this did warrant me to be absolutely furious. Who does shit like this? What’s the point? Obviously it’s not someone I know, so what would anyone get out of this? Hiking 12 miles just to get me all lost and directionally confused in the middle of nowhere, that sounds like a total waste of time to me. So once again, doing as I had done before, I stepped off, walking straight ahead. The last way to go. In a childlike fashion, I stomped my feet with a bit of force when I walked. Let ‘em know I’m coming. I’m not a violent person, but I did still have my hatchet, and I would never swing at anyone but I sure as hell would do some intimidating with it. I dropped what was left of the sticks in my arms, no point in carrying them since I wasn’t even sure what I was gonna do next. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty one. Twenty two. Twenty three. Twenty four. Twenty five. Twenty six. Twenty seven. Twenty eight. Twenty nine. Thirty. I stopped dead in my tracks, my thirty paces complete. Remember how I said my headlamp illuminated roughly 3 feet in front of me? Well that must have been a detail that my tormentor noticed because exactly 3 feet in front of me was a tree. Dead, for sure. It looked rotten. It was peeling, discolored, limbs just barely hanging on, and any cover it once had was long gone. Funny how that description matches not only the tree, but the body that was hanging from it. I was sick. What had I just stumbled upon? Obviously the poor bloke on the tree wasn’t the one messing with me, since it was so far decayed that I could just barely tell it was a man, so did that mean the killer was still out here? Waiting to make me its next victim? It would make sense, I mean maybe they get off on the confusion. Watching me wander around the woods for them could have been like a scientist watching a rat in a maze. Not for study, however, for personal satisfaction. They say curiosity killed the cat, and I guess that’s true. I heard a crunch behind me, the first sound I’d heard in a long time that wasn’t the product of my own footfall. I spun around, ready to do whatever it took to keep myself safe, and more importantly, get the hell off of the Flora Hollow trail. What I saw is not what you’d expect. Behind me was a mirror. One of those older ones that’s on a stand and it’s adjustable. A full body mirror, with a long crack down the length. In it I saw my reflection, just a scared girl with her hood up and a hatchet in her hand. Behind me in the reflection, slowly emerging from the shadows and into the dim light, was a figure. Tall, but not too tall, maybe 6’2, and very long limbs. Like drag your knuckles on the floor long. Its face was all mouth, with big sharp teeth encircling the vast hole that led to its throat. A long black tongue spilled out and over the teeth, wriggling around by the base of its neck. In all honesty, I’d rather be face to face with the man in the tree instead of seeing this thing behind me in the reflection. Even without eyes, it felt like this creature was looking right at me. Sizing me up, reading my thoughts, analyzing my every detail. The creature raised up its left arm, and coiled up in its slender fingers was my headlamp. My headlamp, which until right now as far as I knew, had been strapped to my head. It had to be mine, because the light that used to cast shadows around me from my head was now casting me into shadows from that thing's hand. It’s face, or mouth I guess, shifted, almost lifting into a smile, or whatever a smile could look like on a face that was all mouth, and a mouth that was a full circle. Spit dripped off of its tongue and teeth, running down its disgustingly pale body. Its tongue continued swirling around its neck, moving almost like a snake. And then, it screamed. The most grotesque sound I’ve ever heard, ripping at my eardrums, filling the empty silence of the woods that I so desperately wished would return. In those few minutes it screamed, the whine filling my ears, eventually deafening me, I wished I was dead. It would be so much better than whatever this was. Ringing took the place of silence in my ears after a few minutes, but in all honesty, I don’t know if it even mattered. That thing may have stopped screaming, but it still stood directly in front of me, and I had no idea what to do. I mean really, what do you do in a situation like this? As much as I wanted to, I knew that running would make things ten times worse. If I ran, I would stray even farther away from the trail that I still had hope to find. If I got lost in those woods, chances are I would have never been found. Do you recall earlier when I said I would never swing my hatchet at someone, just intimidate with it? Well, that was a lie. Out of desperation, I swung my arm up and then down sharply on to this creature's grotesque arm. It wasn’t a clean slice, but it broke a good halfway through its thin arm, and that was enough. The creature began its deafening howl again as it pulled its mangled arm away from me, my hatchet still sticking out of its skin. To my surprise, it kept moving away from me, backing up past the strung up man so it stood just barely in my line of sight. Was this really it? Was that all it took to get this thing away from me? It continued with its deafening howl until once again my ears began to ring. I could feel little trickles of blood running down my earlobe. The ghastly creature, still screaming in pain backed further and further away, eventually just turning to run off into the darkness. Without my headlamp, I was left standing in the pitch black, no hatchet to protect myself. Staying near the trail to be damned, I started running in the opposite direction of where the creature went, running towards where I thought the trail would be. I ran. And ran. Praying that the sun would come up eventually and that I wouldn’t just be stuck wandering around this terrifying forest, another life lost to its unholy destruction. For what felt like days I ran, until finally the sun broke through the treetops and I found myself back at the trailhead. Standing there, fighting for breath, I heard a voice off to my left. “Quite an early start on the trail, aye?” I whipped my head around and saw a park ranger standing a few yards away. He stared at me, no doubt taking note of my disheveled appearance. “I’m no professional, but that trail’s a tad longer than some of the others here at (redacted park name), make sure you’ve got a headlamp for when the sun goes down. The one you’ve got there looks a wee bit broken!” He chuckled a bit, then turned away to answer his phone that had begun to ring. Respectfully, what in the fuck was he talking about? The last time I had seen my headlamp was in the palm of that creature’s hand. But yet, when I reached up to my forehead, my headlamp was right there. The plastic covering the light was shattered, and the elements inside were definitely destroyed. I wanted to vomit or scream, or both. How did I have the lamp? I had run damn near 12 miles in the dark, if not more, for the simple fact that my light was stolen from me. How had I not felt it strapped to my head until now? Part of me thought that maybe this was all a bad dream, that I had somehow sleepwalked and dreamt the monster, which caused me to wake in a panic and bolt for it. But somehow, deep down I knew that wasn’t true. What had happened on that trail had to be real. I started to walk away from the trail, walking past the park ranger who seemed to be finishing up his phone call. After I passed him, I heard the clack of a flip phone being closed. “Hey, where are you going?” the ranger said to me. I spun around, pulling my mouth into the friendliest smile I could muster. “Well you had a point, I definitely need to get a better source of light. Luckily I have some spares in my car.” I flashed my smile again, trying to hide the fact that I was scared shitless and confused. He strode towards me, pulling something out of his pocket. “It happens to be your lucky day, lass.” He produced a seemingly new headlamp, holding it in the palm of his outstretched hand. “I’d hate for you to have to start your hike late, you can take mine for a spin and drop it at the front office when you’re done.” As I looked at his hand, I was transported back to the forest. Darkness fell in around me, and I looked up to see the creature standing their, its grotesque tongue writhing across its face. Its hand was holding the lamp which illuminated its “face”. I blinked hard, needing for this to just be my imagination. The weight of exhaustion in my body screamed at me, and I knew this time I wouldn’t be able to run. When I opened my eyes I was back with the ranger. Worried too much time had passed, I quickly reached out and took the lamp. I smiled again, thanked him for the lamp and promised to return it to the front office when I was finished. He then took off in the opposite direction, exclaiming something about a family picnic going awry at the beach because of a seagull problem. As soon as he was out of sight, I turned around and made for the parking lot, a short distance from the trailhead. When I reached my car I wasted no time tossing my pack in the back seat and sitting behind the wheel. I locked the doors, checking that they were locked several times before I tried to relax. I know there were a million things I should have done, like looked up the trail online, asked the front office if anything strange had happened to other hikers on the trail, or the best thing which would have been just outright leaving the park and never coming back. But all I could manage to do was recline my seat and sleep. When I came to, it was around noon, and hazy memories of the night before drifted to my thoughts. ………… Thank you all for being so patient with me and waiting for this upload. I know my promise to make it fast was not fulfilled, but this time part three will come a lot more urgently. A lot has happened since my last upload, and I look forward to telling you all about it. This park has proved itself to be more dangerous than I originally thought, and I fear that I may never leave with my life. I hope that all of you here on r/nosleep will continue to offer me wisdom, God knows I’m gonna need it.

The pastor of my church had a deadly secret

yav8mu

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yav8mu/the_pastor_of_my_church_had_a_deadly_secret/

When we moved to Colorado Springs for my girlfriend’s dermatology residency, we began attending The Church of the New Blood, one of the many Evangelical churches that had sprung up around the city. Let by the charismatic Hamish MacDonald, the church attracted about 5,000 worshipers every Sunday. It was not a traditional service—a rock band replaced the choir and the pastor wore jeans and a t-shirt. However, in doctrine, the church was very conservative. After a ten minute intro where Rev. MacDonald would offer some trite advice on topics like dealing with stress and being true to yourself, the reverend would turn up his Scottish accent and deliver a fire-and-brimstone sermon that would make Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards blush. It wasn’t my choice to attend. But since it was important to my Vanessa, my girlfriend, I agreed to go. This past August, Vanessa invited me to go hiking with a group from the church on a Tuesday morning. I loved hiking, disliked most church folk, but since she seemed excited about it, and since it was a mountain I had never summited, I agreed to go. We drove about an hour to the mountain, arriving just after 8. The parking lot was empty save for a yellow Porsche 911. Standing outside it was Hamish, looking ridiculous in a bright orange hiking jacket. “Nice car for a pastor,” I said to Vanessa. “Looks like the money from your tithing went to a good cause.” She sighed. “He’s a good man and has helped thousands of people. If he wants to have a little toy, let him.” We got out of our jeep and approached Hamish. “Just us today?” I asked. “Aye,” replied Hamish. “Looks like the rest of the club chickened out. Either that, or they had work. But more mountain for us. Let’s get going, we have a long day ahead of us. Just shy of 9 miles round trip, nearly a 14er, summit tops out at 13,996 feet.” We walked in silence. First on a flat trail that weaved through a marshy alpine meadow, before we began a gentle climb through Ponderosa pines and Douglas firs. Soon the trail became steeper, and Hamish had to take a break every ten minutes or so. “I’m not in as good shape as you, Jake,” Hamish said during one of these breaks. “You’re very fit, heard you were a football star at your university.” “I’m not sure I could be considered a star,” I said, wondering how Hamish, who I had never talked to before, knew about my past. “You sound a bit gloomy, mate. Here’s a joke to cheer you up. Why did the Scottish baby cough?” “Why?” “Because he had a wee cold.” He looked at me. “Come on lad, do you not get the joke? You can laugh.” I forced myself to laugh, and we resumed our hike in silence, like monks walking the *Camino*. As we gained in elevation, the trees kept getting smaller, looking more like shrubs, until only grasses lined the slopes. At noon, when we still had an hour to go before reaching the summit, I suggested turning around. “No need for that,” Hamish said. “Look at the beautiful sky, Not a rain cloud in sight.” “They say to be off the summit by noon,” I replied. “No, it’s off by two. We have plenty of time. Trust me, I’m from Scotland, been climbing my whole life, since I was a wee lad. We’re fine, just have a little faith.” He started walking. I looked over at my girlfriend, but she was following Hamish. ​ We finally reached the rocky summit a little after 1, much later than I anticipated. The weather was still good, but I knew it could change abruptly in the mountains. “Let’s not stay too long here,” I said. “We really don’t want to get caught in a storm above the timberline.” Hamish ignored me. He sat down and pulled out a trail bar from his backpack. A marmot, hoping for food, emerged from the rocks and approached the pastor, who swatted at the rodent. “Annoying lilbugger,” he said, before turning to me. “Look at this beautiful view. Look at God’s creation. I don’t know how someone can see a sight like this and deny his existence.” It was indeed a beautiful view. Pristine wilderness, no sign of civilization. As I scanned the vista, I thought I saw a large mass moving, about a mile down the trial. “Look,” I said, pointing. Hamish and my girlfriend got up, but what I saw, if it was ever there, had vanished. “Maybe it was a mountain goat,” Hamish said. “Or an elk. They’re common in these mountains.” “Maybe,” I said. But it looked like it was walking upright. Perhaps just another hiker. But I doubted anyone would have started their hike so late in the day. I looked down the trail for several minutes. Saw nothing, but fog was beginning to roll in. “So,” said Hamish, breaking the awkward silence. “There is something I want to talk to you about.” I sighed. “Hamish, we do not have any more money to give you. Just because my girlfriend’s a doctor does not mean we're rich. Judging from your car, you have more than enough. You don’t need a private jet too. Against my wishes, my girlfriend gives you 10% of her income. She’s not giving you more.” “It is not money that I am after.” “Then what do you want?” He paused for a few seconds. “I need you to trust me. I trust you, so much that I will tell you something, something that I have never told any other members of the congregation. My birth name was not Hamish MacDonald, it was Ismail Qesari. I was not born in Scotland, but in the highlands of Albania. My family was part of an acting troupe; we traveled the mountains by donkey, performing in village after village. But that way of life was dying, and my parents knew they had to escape. They took out a large loan, a loan that they knew they would never, and could never, repay. We rode a bus to the capital of Tirana, where at the embassy we were able to obtain a visa, by producing forged documents which stated that we were to perform at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. After we landed in Scotland, we never came back. For if we, or any of our descendants, return, our lives will be in danger. For we have never payed our debt, so a blood feud, or a *gjakmarrja*, has been initiated.” “What are you telling me this for,” I asked. “You’re confessing that you’ve been lying this whole time? That you’re a fraud?” He shook his head. “No, I have never lied. When I first got to Scoland, as a lad of 8, I was bullied for my name, my accent. So I took a name as Scottish as bagpipes and haggis. I have never told anyone this before. For some members of the congregation would look with suspicion at someone who was born with a name like mine. I am telling you that because I trust you and want you to trust me. Most importantly, you need to trust God.” “So what do you have to tell me?” I asked. “I had a revelation from God last night, in the form of a dream. He has a plan, and he wants you, as well as me, to be involved in the plan.” “I’m not listening to your nonsense,” I said, getting up. I turned to Vanessa. “And if you are going to listen to his nonsense, we are through.” “Jake, my good lad,” Hamish said. “God has spoken to me in a dream. He has given me clear instructions, although I must confess, I do not understand his plan. He wants me to be with Vanessa, not you.” “What?” I was not expecting this, not even from Hamish. “I have prayerfully considered the vision I received, for one ought to be wary when they receive a vision, for Corinthians says that ‘Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.’ However, James 1:5 says ‘if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously,’ and so I asked God, who provided me wisdom in abundance. This is a message from God. You do not always understand God’s plan, but if he tells you to do something, you do it.” “Look, I’m sure you tricked many members of your flock, but I’m not deluded like them. I’m not going to be cucked by you.” “God has revealed things about you to me, Jake. And about your girlfriend. You two are not saving yourselves for marriage, an all too common, but still grievous, sin. However, you go beyond that, by inviting other individuals, both men and women, to join you in your bed.” I looked at Vanessa. “Have you been sharing our private life with him?” I asked. She shook her head and appeared as shocked as me. I believed her. I began walking down the path, slowly, for the fog was getting thicker, hoping she would follow me. “Look!” Hamish cried, a few seconds later. I turned around and saw him levitating a few inches off the ground. “Do you believe me now?” He stayed in the air for about five seconds. I don’t know how he did it, whether he installed some mirrors or wires on an earlier trip to the summit, but it didn’t change my mind. “A cheap magic trick won’t convince me,” I yelled. “How many men and women have you fooled? How many have you coerced into sleeping with you? You’re not a man of God, you’re a charlatan, a fraud, a—“ A gunshot rang out, a bullet ricocheting off one of the rocks a few feet from us. Four more shots rang out in quick succession, spewing up dirt. “We need to get out of here,” said Hamish, seemingly calm. “There’s a path that goes down the back of the mountain. It’ll be longer, but that shot came from the path we took up.” I didn’t want to follow Hamish, but it seemed like I had no choice. I scurried back up to the summit. I had a feeling that Hamish was in cahoots with the shooter, so he could play hero and convince us that God sent him to deliver us from danger. Either that or it was some moron shooting randomly in the fog. ​ ​ As we made our way down the mountain, the fog continued to thicken, visibility reduced to only a few feet. Thankfully, Hamish seemed to know the way. Twenty minutes later, the fog began to lift. We were making our way along the narrow edge of a cliff, a steep drop off several hundred feet on our right, when a shot rang out, whizzing past my face. Hamish turned around, a look of shock on his face. Four more shots followed, the first three missing but the final passing through Hamish’s jaw. He opened his mouth as if to scream, but no sound was emitted, only a torrent of blood. Half a second later, his convulsing body fell off the cliff I ran, almost losing my footing several times, taking shelter behind a large glacial boulder. I looked back and saw Vanessa close behind. “You left me behind, you goddamn bastard,” she screamed as she dove behind the boulder. “What was I supposed to do? Just shut up, so whoever’s here can’t hear us.” She said nothing, tears filling her eyes. We waited behind the boulder for several minutes, the fog slowly lifting. I peaked my head out. On the summit, not even a quarter of a mile away, was a man, dressed head to toe in camouflage, aiming a rifle towards us. I ducked back behind the boulder just in time, a bullet whizzing past less than a foot from my face. “We’re safe behind here,” I said. “We’re not safe!” Vanessa said. “There’s a deranged lunatic with a gun who knows where we are hiding.” “Just stay here. I’ve got a plan." She looked at me as if she knew that I didn’t have a plan, but she said nothing. ​ I hoped that the fog would roll back in, so we would have some cover, but none did. About thirty minutes later, I heard footsteps coming down the edge of the cliff. I quickly told my girlfriend the plan I had just devised. I thought she would argue, but she didn’t. “Come out, come out little kitties,” the gunman cried, in, to my surprise, what sounded like an Australian accent. “Come out to papa, my darlings. I know where you are hiding.” “Now,” I whispered to me girlfriend, when the gunman’s footsteps sounded to be about twenty feet away. She ran, perpendicular to the cliff’s edge, towards another boulder. Half a second later, I left the cover of the boulder, charging the gunman, screaming like a banshee. He quickly readjusted his aim, away from my girlfriend, and fired a single shot at me, grazing my left arm. Adrenaline pumping, I tackled him as he aimed to fire a second shot, hearing a crack as his head slammed into the rocky path. I tried to wrestle the gun away from him, but, despite his injury, he held on tight. After a few seconds of tumbling on the ground, perilously close to the edge of the cliff, I managed to yank it away from him. I fired a single shot into his skull and kicked his lifeless body off the edge of the cliff. I ran back to Vanessa, hugging her. She examined my arm, rinsing it off with water from her bottle and bandaging it with a piece of my shirt. “Barely grazed you,” she pronounced. “Keep applying pressure and keep it elevated. Bleeding should stop soon. My main worry is it getting infected from all the dirt and debris that entered. I’d recommend visiting an urgent care clinic once we’re back. And getting a tetanus booster if you haven’t had one recently.” “Wow, you sounded like an actual doctor for a second,” I said. “Thought all you dermatologists did was pop pimples.” “How many rounds does that gun have left,” she said, ignoring my quip. “I’m not sure. I honestly don’t know how to check.” “You’re useless,” she said, picking the gun off the ground. “It’s empty, you fired the last round.” “Lucky me,” I said. “Bet if it weren’t I’d be joining the pastor and our Aussie friend.” She threw the gun off the cliff. “No use in lugging that around.” ​ Once the bleeding stopped, we resumed our descent. We were still above the timberline when a lighting storm rolled in, large chunks of hail falling all around us. There was no gap between when I saw the lightning and heard the thunder; the storm was right over us. We spread out, crouching on our backpacks to avoid any catching any currents from the ground. But I knew we were going to die. Lightning was striking all around us. It was only a matter of time till a bolt found one of us. However, after twenty minutes the storm abated, and we continued our descent, soaked but alive. It was after sunset when we finally made our way back to the parking lot, soaking wet, bruised and bloody, but alive. There was no cars but ours and Hamish’s. The nearest town was over ten miles away, and I doubted that the shooter walked all that way armed with a sniper rifle. We entered our jeep, but the ignition wouldn’t start. I popped open the hood. The battery cables were sliced. “We aren’t going anywhere,” I said. I checked my phone. As I expected, there was no service. “We can either stay here, hoping that the gunman’s accomplice ran off, or try walking the mountain roads ten miles in the dark to the nearest town.” We decided to stay. The temperature dropped down into the forties, and we cuddled in the backseat for warmth. Around midnight, a black sedan entered the parking lot. I watched as, to my surprise, a woman exited the vehicle. From the trunk, she pulled out a tripod. And then, to my great relief, a large camera. She was just an astrophotographer. We were saved. The local newspaper identified the gunman as Ian O’Rourke, a former Australian infantryman who had been living in the United States for several years. It made no mention of a possible motive. Was he a hitman, hired to kill Hamish by the family of the cheated lender back in Albania? By one of the husbands who Hamish had cucked? Or was Hamish not the target? Was he after me?

I do not have a brother

yasful

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yasful/i_do_not_have_a_brother/

There are no normal people who, going along the path of life, would not drag with them a heap of bitter regrets about what they have done (or not done). It is considered that this is normal, and I'm not going to argue. If you meet a person who does not regret a single act, my advice to you is: run away from him with all your strength. My burden of regrets, as you will see, is extremely heavy. I'm going to tell you about one thing I did in my childhood. It weighs on me to this day. I probably won't achieve anything by presenting it to your court. But I hope someone will feel a little easier when he realizes how much more terrible mistakes others are capable of. You see, I don't have a brother. However, in August 1991, I still had a brother. *** Every summer, my parents floated us, the boys, to the terrible wilderness, to the village to my grandmother on my mother's side, for at least a month. They motivated this by the need for us to consume the gifts of nature and clean air. In fact, everything, of course, was more prosaic: parents wanted to get rid of us and relax themselves. These trips left a twofold impression in my memory. Of course, there were a lot of good and interesting things. The kids have something to entertain themselves in the village, you yourself know it perfectly well. But the feeling of a serene summer was greatly spoiled by our Grandmother. I'm capitalizing this word for a reason. Our Grandmother was as far as possible from the image of a kind fairy-tale grandmother who would bake crumpets and tell a fairy tale for the night. Frankly speaking - and years later I understand this even more clearly - my grandmother was a disgusting, half-crazy, evil vixen who brought her quiet and compliant husband to the grave. I hardly remember our grandfather. My brother was three years older than me and remembered him much better, always spoke warmly about him. Perhaps this was the reason that if my Grandmother was still relatively tolerant of me, then she openly hated my brother. The more difficult it is for me to understand the selfish position of our parents, who, year after year, put us in the care of this old and sick woman. Oh, they were aware of her character, especially her father. But the answer to all the protests was the same: "Well, well, don't make it up," "Listen to your grandmother, she's old, don't upset her." I was scared to death of my grandmother. That summer, my brother and I were 9 and 12 years old, respectively. Andrey, as the eldest, was charged with the duty to keep an eye on me, because we spent almost all the time together. There were few other children of our age in the village, and we were content with those games that we invented for ourselves: a tree house in the forest behind the house, pirates on a homemade raft, stealing raspberries from a neighbor's garden - a traditional boys' set. Grandma has introduced an extremely strict daily routine and God forbid you to break it. For understanding: she did not hesitate to take up a twig if we were late for the table even for a minute, did not do her errands in the garden quickly enough or went "where it was not necessary", which she became aware of from chatty neighbors. "Where not to go" was practically nowhere, a forest, a highway, a large ravine, a neighboring village, abandoned cowsheds, a village at the intersection and, of course, a river were banned. Every evening we told her stories about how innocently we spent the day: holding hands, walking in the meadow and picking strawberries. "Well, look at me, you brats," she squeaked, squinting her eye. - "I'll find out everything anyway if you're lying." Things were going on as usual when one day we were "lucky" to find a cave. I begged, but for some reason without hope. He apologized for saying I wasn't his brother anymore. We had never talked in our lives as we did that day, by the light of a dim bulb among the narrow walls. At dinner, Grandma said that since Andrei had not returned, it was necessary to call the police. The sin of cowardice is the most terrible of sins. And, as you already understood, I didn't tell anyone anything. Half of the village's population agreed to take part in the search for my brother. I lied that the last time I saw him was behind the vegetable gardens near the forest. We combed the forest, found our tree house. Andrey was not found. When I came to my brother's cave, he had already spent the last candles that I managed to find for him, and did not react to my appearance in any way. It seemed to me that something very humanly important was missing in his haggard, dirty face with bulging, half-mad eyes. I think he was licking moisture off the walls and chewing clay-I saw nail and tooth marks everywhere. I said I didn't bring him food because that way he would lose weight faster and be able to get out. Andrey agreed without any interest that it was reasonable. When I left, he didn't make a sound, just lay there and looked straight into my eyes. I crawled back by touch, holding the lantern, and continued to look at his retreating face until it disappeared around the turn of the tunnel. The next day, a gloomy father and a tearful mother arrived. I was sitting in my room -I was strictly forbidden to go outside. The policeman and my father asked me again what had happened. I was disgusted by lying, and I was disgusted by the fact that deep down I was glad that I managed to escape punishment. But I was happy anyway. The search lasted four days, some people came and went, accompanied by a heavy grandmother's gaze. Finally, in the evening, Mom came up, hugged me and said we were going home. Dad will take us to the station in the morning. I begged her to give me one last walk alone, at least for a few minutes. I crept up to the entrance to the grotto and sat there for a long time, not daring to climb inside, so as not to stain the new clothes that my mother brought. From the black hole came a barely audible singing- more precisely, a moo without words. There, deep underground, my brother was humming a song in the dark and alone. We left in the morning. *** Now I am thirty-five years old, I have a wife and a son. Mom is very old, I bring her to us for the holidays. I don't have a brother. Like my father: a second heart attack in 2010; I think he suspected something until the very last day. Grandma died in 2003, no one bought her village house. I was there a year ago: a log rotted in a ravine and fell. I went down to the place where my brother's cave began, stood there: nothing, just a grassy ground. Memory brought back to me that very strange melody, hummed without words. And, by the way, the disgusting old woman knew everything. Our dirty clothes and dirt in our hair-she was watching us. I saw her that day over the cliff. She put one plate on the table when I got home. She knew what was going on. But she never liked Andrey.

I’m a marine biologist. While exploring a 'hidden beach' off the Southern coast of Thailand, we uncovered a lifeform unlike anything else on earth...

y9sla6

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9sla6/im_a_marine_biologist_while_exploring_a_hidden/

I'd heard about the secret beach from some Thai fishermen and had my heart set on studying the unique ecosystem, but the rest of my group said the idea had ‘dumb foreigners get themselves killed by acting like dumb foreigners’ written all over it. Then later on that night, at some dive bar, Johnny waited until our girlfriends nipped to the bathroom and told me he was in. He even promised he’d talk the ladies round, so long as I helped him with a special surprise. Three months of travelling together had taught me that guy could get anything he wanted with a quick flash of that movie star grin... He waited until Alex and Vicky got drunk on fishbowl cocktails before saying, “I think it sounds like fun, while Gary’s off creaming over fish the rest of us will have the place to ourselves. We can rent a little boat and set off before sunrise. I’ll leave a note telling the hotel staff to send help if we’re not back by supper.” “I’m in,” Alex said, snuggling into Johnny’s muscular arm. Vicky pursed her lips. She and Alex had been best friends since childhood and looked so alike—short with blonde hair and bright smiles—locals frequently mistook them for sisters. “Fine,” she said. First thing in the morning we set off cutting through waves, Johnny at the helm. The sun stayed hot on our backs, and sickening fumes from the boat’s engine mixed with the salty ocean air. Did you know Thailand has almost 3,000 miles of coastline? That’s a lot of ocean for hungover tourists to get themselves lost in. But, again and again, our fearless skipper insisted he knew the way. Close to noon, long after we *should* have arrived, he called, “Land ho!” then everybody’s head whipped toward a dark spec along the cerulean horizon. A giant sea stack, at least three hundred feet tall, rolled toward us. I let out a quiet groan, secretly annoyed macho man found the place through sheer dumb luck. It took fifteen minutes for him to steer us toward a tunnel along the Southern side where he killed the motor and let the boat bob up and down. “Finally,” said Alex, as she grabbed flippers and snorkels from beneath the stern. While Johnny wrestled a strap around his heel, he leaned in close to me and whispered, “Got everything ready?” I tapped the waterproof bag hanging around my neck. He shot me a thumbs up before tipping backward, overboard. Everyone else climbed down the ladder, me last, into the blissfully warm water. Beside the mouth of the tunnel, Vicky floated in place, anxious. “What’s the matter, afraid of the dark?” Johnny called back. “More like afraid of barracudas.” “There’s no barracudas around here,” I said, swimming alongside her. The ocean was so clear you could see for miles around. “Come to think of it, I don’t see *any* fish.” Johnny said, “Give it a rest Aquaman,” then flicked on his headlamp and vanished into the shadows. He pulled that ‘alpha male’ bullshit a lot. My hand laced with Vicky’s. “Don’t worry, if any barracudas try taking a bite out of you, I’ll use myself as bait.” Guided only by our headlamps, the four of us swam along, the narrow trail widening further into the bowels of the stack. "These walls are freaky," Alex said at one point. "I think there’s bugs crawling over them." After navigating a series of bends, blinding sunlight appeared before us. The tunnel opened onto a wide body of water, half the width of an Olympic swimming pool and probably fifty foot deep. A horseshoe-shaped beach encroached on three sides, outlined by a narrow forest lush with vegetation and palm trees. Everywhere you looked, there were vibrant hues of gold, turquoise, and emerald, all silhouetted against the grey-black rock walls encasing the enclosure, giving the space this secluded, intimate feel. “Was I right or was I right?” Johnny yelled as he swam past the ‘bowl’ and up onto the sand. “Paradise.” You couldn’t argue there. Hell, it's why I suggested the trip in the first place… After kicking off his flippers, he helped Vicky up onto dry land. I felt a pang of jealousy watching them smile at one another. The three of us spread out and explored while Alex floated aimlessly. The trees provided shade from the constant heat while gentle waves crashed against rocks, producing a soft melody that could lull babies to sleep. There was no wildlife—not even a marine gastropod—which seemed odd, however the uniquely shaped flora intrigued me. After awhile, I noticed Johnny waving for my attention at the far edge of the beach. Shit, I’d almost forgotten. I grabbed the phone from my neck bag, opened the camera app, and gave him a nod. He reached into his shorts pocket, spun around, and discovered a lifeless basin. “Alex?” he called out. Vicky stepped out from behind a fern. Johnny ran up to her and said, “Is Alex with you?” She looked from him to me and shook her head. I slipped my phone back into the pouch, then all three of us spread about, searching and calling for Alex. In under a minute, we completed a full lap of the forest. “Maybe she went back to the boat?” Vicky offered. “She wouldn’t go without telling us,” Johnny replied, his voice wrought with concern. Just then, a gurgle went up; the sound of a clogged toilet with fishbones lodged in its throat. Altogether, we spun toward the water, and as we did, a wave crashed over the beach, nudging our discarded flippers. There were more gurgles, real guttural, then a ripple spread out in every direction from the centre of the bowl. It looked like a 500lb canonball had plummeted from the top of the stack. The resulting wave briefly engulfed our ankles and dragged the flippers away. Johnny shouted, “Alex?” His voice echoed off the enclosure, back at us. Vicky grabbed my arm, her pulse gathering speed. That horrible cycle continued: gargle, wave, gargle, wave. This was no rhythm of nature, more like a beach gagging. “Gary, what’s going on?” Vicky asked. Even though I specialized in marine biology, the group looked to me for answers about any kind of natural phenomena, then chastised me if I didn’t know the answer. The next wave vomited strange, blue-white sausages onto the sand. I thought they might have been a trail of seaweed until I nudged one with my toe and felt something rubbery. “Oh shit,” I said, flinching away. It was a rope of intestines, threaded with veins. At the realization, a hush fell over the group. My eyes travelled toward the centre of the basin, where a red mist spread through the clear turquoise, diluting like squid ink. Blood. Vicky retreated, stammering, while Johnny looked between me and the discarded intestine for nearly twenty seconds. “What the *fuck* is going on?” The speed of those waves accelerated, cascading, one after the other, and quickly dragged the pale snake away. A study flashed through my mind: one about dolphins launching themselves onto mud banks to create bow waves which maroon fish. This spark of a suspicion spurred me to say, “Get onto the rocks, there’s something in the water.” The two of them exchanged a look, another pang of jealousy stabbing me in the ribs. “Now,” I shouted, louder than intended. The rocks were slippery with moss. While Vicky and I hopped past vines and the top halves of a palm tree in a deadly game of ‘the floor is lava’, Johnny stood with his head in his hands, internally debating while the water surged high enough to swallow his thighs. With reluctance, he eventually hopped after us. Meanwhile, those gruesome gurgles rang out, louder each time. Toward the back of the enclosure, boulders lay spread about connected with the base of the rock wall. No sooner had we reached the edge when the strongest wave yet broke against the chest-high rock we’d all halted on and launched a hissing column of foam into the air. Now only a few metres of shrinking beach remained. The ocean had come to meet us. “We have to climb,” I said, breathless. Johnny grabbed my shoulder before I could find a suitable starting point, spun me around, and pinned me against the wall. “What the fuck is going on?” he shouted. “What the fuck happened to Alex?” “Those waves are gonna sweep us off this rock,” I stammered. As if on cue, salty foam splashed over all three of us. “See? We’re being…*hunted*.” I said, feeling ridiculous for even uttering the word. None of this was clear in my mind. “Gary, what the fuck is going on?” a frantic Vicky asked from behind my assailant’s shoulder. “Something hunted Alex?” he said, like it was my fault, pinning me even tighter. “Yes…no…I don’t know.” “What do you mean *you don’t know*? You're supposed to be the fucking brainbox." “We have to climb,” I said, my hysteria mounting. "There's something in the water." His right hand curled into a fist, but before the strike landed Vicky grabbed his forearm and shook her head. She was trembling all over. Johnny released me, begrudgingly. I felt around for divots and recesses—areas easy to traverse. My fingers were still wet, which meant I slipped again and again, and for a moment I had some sense of how spiders must feel trapped inside a bathtub. Roughly eight feet up, I came across a portion of wall which had a cavity deep enough to lay flat along my stomach and reach down for Vicky. By now the beach had been devoured; only the caps of palm trees poked out, bowing under every wave. Following me up Vicky’s foot slipped once, twice. “Come on, come on,” I shouted. Ever the hero, Johnny, now gone up to his ankles, cupped his hands and boosted Vicky like a weightlifter performing a clean and jerk, raising her high enough she could be hoisted onto the shelf alongside me. He raced up the wall after her, his fingertips nudging mine, briefly. I was stretching as far as I could, honest. But then the most powerful wave yet crashed into the wall. I lost sight of Johnny in the resulting spray. He resurfaced twenty feet ahead, already paddling in our direction, and at that exact moment, the repetitive gurgle transformed into a churn like somebody yanked out a plug, then the water swirled in rich, inward spirals. Immediately the bowl became a whirlpool. My suspicions were correct: we *were* being hunted. But by what? What sort of creature manipulated the water like that? Within seconds the beach emerged, reasserting itself. On the shelf, I pulled Vicky to her feet, and then we stood there, transfixed, while Johnny careened around a central point, closer to the middle of the basin area. His arms flailed as he screamed and got sucked toward the bottom of the vortex, fifty feet deep. And that’s when I saw…*it*. Visible through the clear waves—but also a considerable distance away—what looked like a black serpent wrapped around Johnny’s ankle, worming its way up his body. I grabbed the phone from my neck pouch and zoomed in. Huddled close to me, Vicky pointed at the screen and said, “What the fuck is that?” It wasn’t a serpent. For a moment I thought it might be a giant tentacle, but then it split apart into five segments which tapered off to the thickness of a severed arm, each dark on the outside, fleshy and pink on the inside, covered with rows of suckers, moving, twitching, writhing, like hundreds of hungry, hungry mouths. Wherever they eagerly latched on skin tore off in fat clumps. Red mist spread about the water as our companion got reeled down like a fish on a line, the appendage flexing like a working oesophagus. More and more water poured in through the tunnel we’d arrived by. As our friend plunged deeper and deeper, a gaping pit the diameter of a manhole cover shivered open directly beneath the tentacle. I zoomed in on that area, a horrible realization sliding up my spine. Luminous blue lights and barbed fangs lined the inside of the hole. It was a mouth. As the tentacle-tongue reeled Johnny inside, the mouth closed with enough force to crush his ankles together, like the point at the end of a pencil. A trail of bubbles spewed from the poor bastard’s mouth, which meant he hadn’t died yet, and even had some oxygen left in those lungs. Above him, the water level evened off, perfectly calm. Vicky buried her head in my chest, sobbing. The process of digestion took several minutes, and so far as I could tell Johnny didn't die until he was disappeared up to his waist. Once he vanished, the stack quivered and shook. I felt the intense vibrations through the soles of my feet. Another gurgle went up, the beach whirled and foamed again, then bones with gristle still attached floated to the surface. Leftovers. Vicky stopped sobbing long enough to say, “What the hell was that thing?” “A mouth,” I said, emotionless. “When Johnny got too close to the centre, a tongue slid out. Like a Bobbitt worm.” On the verge of a complete breakdown, she said, “You mean there’s some sort of killer worm down there?” The walls trembled with furious convulsions, like an expanding lung. I shook my head. “It’s no worm.” “Please start making sense.” By now those circles of waves and ripples had gone up again, turning the pool beneath us into a minefield. Mercifully, there seemed to be a limit to how high the water could rise. We were safe. For now. “Look, the waters violent again, see? And the walls, they’re kind of…shivery, right?” She nodded. “I think this whole stack is resting on something big. Think about it, the water level adjusted to capture Johnny. That suggests a level of intelligence. This sea stack, I think there’s a creature beneath it. One big enough to make the entire structure shudder.” “So, what, it hunts by gulping down water?” “Possibly. It’s just a theory.” “Can you call for help?” she pointed at my phone. I tried. “No.” “So what do we do?” Dropping into the water would be like diving headfirst into a meat grinder, so that was out. I glanced up at the top of the structure. Professional climbers wouldn’t risk an ascent that treacherous: a 250ft journey to the top, with one small slip meaning a plunge straight into the drink. Best case scenario, you'd crack your skull against an awkward rock and bleed out before getting slowly, painfully digested… Just then, the realization hit me. “We could have escaped while the creature swallowed Johnny,” I said. “This thing’s mouth closes to eat, which temporarily calmed the water. We missed our chance.” “Should we wait for the hotel staff to find us?” “They won’t realize we’re missing until dark. Then you have to factor in how long it takes them to find the boat, assuming they actually find it. Plus, we’ve got no food or water.” I contemplated for a moment. You could tell from the way the bowl churned the creature understood more prey lurked close by. “I think we should get closer to the tunnel,” I said, finally. “It’s the only way in or out, we can shuffle along this shelf, look, it almost stretches the entire way.” In the twenty minutes convincing her took, I found myself wishing I had half of Johnny's charm. Most of the journey was a careful sideward shuffle along an upward slope, our backs flat against the wall, but at one point we had to spring over this little gap, and Vicky took her time working up the nerve. At the exact moment she leaped across, the stack trembled, which made her foot slip. My hand shot out around her waist and pulled her in close at the very last second. The timing couldn’t have been coincidental—this creature knew where we were and what we were doing. It thought tactically. That unsettled me. Toward the edge of the shelf, two full bodies length away from the tunnel and twenty foot above the water, I looked straight down and said, “The creature can feel us.” Vicky stared at me with sunburned eyes, confused. “The walls trembled at the exact right moment. Maybe it detects movement along the stack, like a spiderweb.” We stood until our legs ached then sat, the sun bearing down hot on our chests. I made a mental note of everything I’d surmised about the creature. Our biggest threat was the fact it displayed a level of intelligence, or at least reacted to certain stimuli. And with Johnny, that reaction had been instant. No way we could swim through the tunnel before the creature responded. If it set ‘traps’ by manipulating the reservoir and walls, then what did that make the beach? A cancerous growth? Or perhaps a lure? Once again, my thoughts drifted back to that missed window of opportunity… At dusk, the darkened waves almost glittered. A briny aroma wafted out while we sat there, Vicky to my right, her head resting on my shoulder. My arms became overcooked slabs of beef, my mouth dry from the thirst. Neither of us would last much longer. Hell, in another few hours swimming back to the boat would be harder than doggy paddling across the English Channel. “Why did Johnny want to see this stupid place anyway?” Vicky asked. “He wanted to propose.” She looked up at me, shocked. “What?” “He was gonna propose to Alex. He bought an engagement ring and asked me to take a video. He wanted it to be romantic and thought this would be the perfect spot.” “Idiot,” she muttered. I sat there, contemplating my next statement carefully. What had I to loose? “Not too much of an idiot to make out with though, huh?” “What?” “Two weeks ago,” I said, my eyes fixed on the shimmering waves. “That nightclub in Bangkok. I nipped away for a piss and when I came back, you and Johnny were…were…” My voice trailed off there. The realization slowly spread across her face. “Our lives are in danger, Gary. Is a stupid drunken mistake really so fucking important right now?” “A drunken mistake? You two were going at it like horny teens” At that moment, I felt more embarrassed than anything. I should have confronted them that night, or at least told Alex, but flights had already been booked, deposits paid. If I’d only had more balls, none of us would have wound up in this mess… “Okay Gary, it happened.” She pushed away from me and stood. I did too. “I had a lapse of judgement, and I’m sorry. Now that’s out of the way, how the fuck do we get off this stupid fucking beach that you were so obsessed with?” “A lapse of judgement? You think I haven’t noticed the stolen glances? You always said Alex could have done better, did you really mean Johnny?” The two of us stared each other down, a showdown. Twitchy. Paranoid. We both wished for the same thing—that the other would mercilessly slip off this damned rock and into the drink. A dark part of me wanted to push her myself. Then, as if on cue, the wall jerked with such force my teeth chattered together. Had the creature sensed the tension between us? Or was it simply inconvenient timing? Either way, Vicky lost her footing and slowly slid along the shelf, her thin arms windmilling around, searching for something, anything, to latch onto. She screamed as she toppled over the edge. A heroic dive forward by yours truly saved her at the very last second. I lay flat along my chest, our hands clasped, her trailing in mid-air, alternating between screaming and begging me not to let go. If I simply relaxed my grip, the creature would have rang the dinner bell. Was it really such a horrible idea? She, like Johnny and Alex, would already be minced meat if not for my quick thinking. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Despite everything, I still loved her dearly. However, before I could haul her up, the wall trembled again. The powerful vibrations did enough to force her hand and mine apart, sending her plummeting into the perilous waters below. I rose, heart racing, as she disappeared beneath the surface. By the time she re-emerged the bowl was already alive with foam and spit and cascading waves. In the dim light, the inside of the mouth lit up like a glowstick, that ‘tongue’ sliding out from the hole once again. As the water whirled toward the depths, Vicky got swept away. She slid toward the pit headfirst, trapped in the whirlpool. The tongue completely enveloped her skull. Within seconds her top half had become flayed and unrecognizable from the sucker-pads tearing away flesh in fat globs. Those skinny legs of hers did not stop kicking. A dark part of my mind pondered whether it would be better to go feet first, like my loving girlfriend, or headfirst, like her secret lover. I became so lost in thought I didn’t notice the water level had already settled. By the time I was staring at nothing more than the soles of two bare feet, I had the realization it may already be too late. Amped up on fear and adrenaline, I took a little shuffle forward, became completely weightless for a moment, and then the water came up to meet me. I put everything I had into swimming toward safety. Gaining traction was a struggle; every few strokes the current grabbed hold of me and held on tight. I swam through the darkness, relieved my hypothesis proved correct. But then, a powerful drag, like someone started slurping the ocean up through a straw. Main course over, time for dessert… I kept kicking. The walls slithered each time I touched them, a heartbeat. What did Alex say earlier: that they looked freaky? Oh fuck, I hadn’t escaped—I was still inside the creature. It didn’t inhabit the stack; it *was* the stack. Perhaps I was swimming through an intestine, or the throat. Only vaguely aware of my destination I kicked madly while, around me, walls shifted and shivered. No face, no eyes, but a simple *sentience* which made me tremble. A circle of moonlight drifted into view roughly fifty feet ahead. While I put everything I had into paddling, the water climbed higher and higher, hurling me from one wall into another. I became cut and bruised in a dozen places. Soon I could see the silhouette of the boat, but my rescue vessel drifted further and further away. No, not drifting—the creature was shrinking the tunnel, cutting off the exit. This leviathan had a biology unlike anything else on earth. As the cavern sealed itself shut, a huge wave of water careened toward me, one final obstacle. For a moment I contemplated holding my breath until I lost consciousness and drowned, rather than be served up fresh. Pushing these thoughts away, I dove beneath the wave and launched myself forward like a torpedo, and once I reached a point where I couldn’t hold my breath a second longer, I came up for air, outside the stack. Behind me, the tunnel had puckered shut. Up ahead, the boat bobbed up and down, unconcerned by the day’s events. Quickly I swam around the side, hauled myself up the ladder, and flopped over onto the deck, exhausted. Four of us set off that morning. And I hope now I’ve told you *exactly* what happened, you’ll understand that I am in no way responsible for the others deaths. [And why their bodies will never be recovered…](https://www.reddit.com/r/thoughtindustry/comments/te0fum/welcome_i_hope_you_enjoy_your_stay/)

Before Sunset

yahx32

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yahx32/before_sunset/

Greetings wonderful community! My name is Elena and I am 78 years old. Thanks to my grandson Hans through which I discovered this community, I am able to share something with you. I will only post this one story that took me decades to write, because those technology things are not for me. However, I hope that you will find it interesting. Born in a small village in Central Europe, I have lived there till the age of 19. From 1951, after the discoveries of mangled corpses, the villagers adopted a simple yet mysterious rule that they still observe till today: if you have lost your way, find it back before sunset. On top of the rule, most of the villagers would not step out of their homes without bags of chilli pepper, as a mean to escape the clutches of an evil entity suspected for the murders; an entity only known as Mirage. Like many of the young ones in the village, I always felt unconcerned about all that until what had to happen, happened. \*\*\* Summer 1962. Making our way back to the village from an exploration in the mountains, Conrad and I enjoyed our brother and sister moment teasing ourselves about our respective crushes. As two risk addicts, instead of taking the usual and safer path, we opted for a risky move. Our stupid plan: run across the 150 meters long viaduct, and then through the 85 meters long mountain tunnel that follows, before the passing of a train. After the tunnel, there was enough land to step off the railway and proceed to our village not far away. There was a train at least every 15 minutes passing across the viaduct, often emerging from the tunnel. Being on the viaduct at such instance required to stand still and so close to the edge, that one wrong move meant a 70 meters free fall to meet rocks and stones. On the other hand, getting caught in the tunnel by the train spelled death. "Coast is clear!" Conrad shouted after we waited for a train to pass to maximize our chances. Before the train was out of view, we stepped on the viaduct and the run began. I recall the heat in the air, and the adrenaline rising at each stride I took under the scorching sun. The glinting railway sent gleams of excitement right to my eyes. The sunlight dressed the surrounding mountains and the trees on them with garments of joy. I often think about that view and moment of happiness, and how it contrasted with the darkness that just awaited to befall us. We reached the tunnel after around a minute, paused to catch our breath while getting our flashlights out of our backpacks. My big brother then smiled at me, giving the signal to continue the run, before he led the way. In the tunnel, we shouted in joy while running, amused by the darkness and cold of the passage till we could see the daylight from a distance. "Last outside buy the drinks!" Conrad shouted before we both accelerated. You know, there is a certain feeling when you exit a tunnel. The mere fact to move from darkness to light can inspire and even give hope, a feeling best personified by my brother in the way he lifted his arms high and shouted in victory. However, in our case that day, Conrad and I left darkness and stepped into a nightmare, evident by the way he suddenly stopped his shouting, his run and slowly lowered his arms. Heavily breathing, we both stared at something surreal after I caught up with him. With instinct, we both looked behind us to check where we came from, but the tunnel is not straight, therefore, we could not see the other side we had left. We looked at each other then looked in front of us, beholding the viaduct and the tunnel entrance we just left behind. "What the hell is that?" Conrad quietly said, slowly stepping forward and looking around before I imitated him. Confusion led us to the middle of the viaduct, where we both stood in the middle of two tunnels, a major change in scenery while all the rest remained untouched. Any oncoming train would be the final nail on the coffin for us, so we chose to move forward and we reached the other side of the 'new' tunnel. Once again, same viaduct, same tunnel waiting for us. My brother grabbed my hand, and we ran again, as fast as we could, across the viaduct, and then through the tunnel to no avail. Awaiting on the other side were the same viaduct, and the same tunnel, mocking our efforts. It made me think of the video games that my grandson plays; those in which a moving character can endlessly disappear in the right side of the screen to emerge from the left side and vice versa. Out of breath, sweating and desperate, Conrad grew more and more agitated while tears felt my eyes, at the realization that this was what the village rule talked about. It did not feel like being lost, rather it felt like being trapped; a trap we had to break out of before sunset. \*\*\* Shivering in fear, I spent the next 40 minutes arguing with Conrad, as we proposed and discarded ideas on how to end the deadly loop. He kept on walking back and forth, growling in nervousness and pulling his hair each time he glanced at his watch. "Good, but this time we walk." Conrad said at 3:48 pm, faking a smile to ease the tension after agreeing to my last and desperate suggestion. At the mercy of the heat, we advanced, sharing one of our water bottles. With our flashlights still ON, we reached the tunnel and started walking through. We hoped to see something different, I even hoped for a train, and something different we saw, shining in the dark of the tunnel. Dressed in a white robe and looking at us, a smiling little boy of maybe 5 years old stood still in the middle of the railway. We both froze when we spotted him, then continued without saying a word, and stopped again two or three meters from the boy. "Hey cutie boy! Are you—are you lost?" I said, failing to at least smile back at him. "Boy? What the hell is—Elena you okay?" Conrad questioned, while the boy remained immobile, smiling at me. "What you mean? I'm just trying to find out." I replied. "Why you talking to that old lady like a little kid? Madam you alright?" Conrad asked. "What? That's a little boy can't you see? Sun fried your brain?" I argued. "There's an old lady smiling at me in this dark tunnel, what you—" He argued back and abruptly stopped, as we realized the potential identity of the 'person' standing before us. "Is that some kind of illusion?" I quietly asked. "Mi—Mirage?" I whispered. The smile vanished from the little boy's face when he heard that name, and his eyes became all white. He opened his mouth so wide that his cheeks were ripped open, and he let out a disturbing scream. It sounded like different men and women taking turns in screaming, but doing it with the smoothness of a radio tuning. I gasped and widened my eyes. My heart exploded and I dropped my flashlight. I felt a strong grip on my left arm as Conrad grabbed me, pulling me out of my frozen state and we turned back to run for our lives. Mirage gave chase, and we even forgot the weights of our backpacks slowing us down. We ran as fast as we could in the dark till we saw the tunnel entrance. Glancing back at my brother running behind me, I caught a glimpse of Mirage, running on four with elongated arms and legs. I first emerged from the tunnel in one piece and quickly noticed that the landscape had slightly changed. Conrad suddenly screamed behind me and I turned. Mirage had wounded him on a shoulder and he lost a portion of his T-shirt and his backpack. "Run! Run!" Conrad screamed at me, but I froze again, terrified at the idea of watching Mirage kill my brother right before my eyes. Despite his wounds, Conrad kept running and screaming at me, but Mirage screamed in pain at some point. Retreating in the shade created by the mountains, the monster fumed, rolled in pain and transformed. Conrad stopped near me and turned back to look at Mirage hiding from the sun rays in the shade. We stood on the viaduct in the sunlight and watched Mirage stand up in a new human form, and we understood why the village rule suggested to break out of the loop before sunset. \*\*\* We looked behind us, ready to check out the new difference of the scenery, and hoping to use it to our benefit. However, Mirage did not intend to make things easier for us, and we understood it when we saw what it did. Half of the viaduct was destroyed, leaving an immense gap and preventing us from accessing the other tunnel. "Bastard." Conrad quietly said before we heard the monster laugh behind us. That too sounded like different men and women smoothly taking turns in laughing, resulting in a cacophony. We looked at it before it stopped laughing and smiled. "I see a teenage girl, smiling again just like in the tunnel. You?" I asked my brother. "A medieval soldier, with the armor and all that, smiling." Conrad replied, breathing heavily. "You okay?" I enquired. "All good." He replied, lying to avoid getting me worried. My big brother spent his whole life protecting me. He did it again in the tunnel, running behind and shielding me from Mirage, and those gaping wounds on his shoulder seemed to hurt me more than it did to him. He removed his T-shirt and I used it to press against the wounds. Under the sunlight, we sat on the railway at 4:16 pm, and discussed about possible ways to escape while watching Mirage. At 4:57 pm, the sun had almost not moved at all, and the heat had accelerated our blood circulation so much that my brother's bleeding could no longer be handled. Mirage was still in the shade, immobile and smiling as if frozen in time. Conrad tried hard to conceal his suffering until I could no longer bear to see him like that. I left the T-shirt on his shoulder and went to search my backpack, hoping to find anything useful. "I'm sure you'll find nothing there." He spoke. "Stop being pessimistic! I replied." I retorted. "Realistic sister. Always be realistic." He replied. "Realistic?" I asked, chuckling. "Look at where we are. We stuck in some loop world with a monster trying to kill us." I added. "Well, you get a poin—aaargh!" He said then screamed. I rushed back to him and saw that the four claw marks turned black, as if seriously infected. "What's that? What's going on?" He asked, clenching his fists. "No—nothing." I replied. "We really need to apply something on this." I added as Conrad's pain decreased. "Well, well." Conrad said, regaining his composure. "The first aid kit is in my bag, in the shade, behind that bastard there." He added, pointing at Mirage. The monster heard us and turned back to our surprise. We wondered what it could be up to and watched it walk to Conrad's backpack, pick it up and throw it at us. The backpack fell in the sunlight while Mirage remained in the shade at a good distance, frozen again and smiling. "What is he doing?" I asked. "He heard us?" Conrad questioned too. "Got to be a trap." I spoke. "Not so sure, look, the bag is in the sunlight. He can't set a toe there." Conrad analyzed. "So what you think?" I asked. "I guess he doesn't like dead meat. Bastard wants me to survive for now." He concluded. "Wait here." He added while painfully standing up. "Hey, hey! What you doing?" I questioned, holding my brother by the arm. "I need this kit, and we need the water." He replied, and he was right. "Ok, but this time, we go together, and I pick up the bag." I suggested looking at Mirage while Conrad agreed. Step after step, my heart beat faster, and I believe Mirage could hear it. The more we progressed, the more his smile grew vicious, yet it remained still, just watching us. We reached the backpack, shining in the sunlight. Our eyes riveted on Mirage, I slowly crouched, and stretched my arm out before I blinked, and noticed that the backpack was no longer shining. The railway fully captured my attention as I realized that we stepped in the shade. I looked back and saw the sunlight a few meters behind us. Another illusion, Mirage fooled Conrad and I. Fear enveloped me and my brother's name quietly escaped from my lips. The moment I turned to look at Conrad, Mirage was already in front of us. Conrad pushed me away from the monster, which almost at the same time struck my brother on the head so hard that his neck snapped. I crawled to safety, thinking about how we should have known better; even during the summer, the sun cannot move so slowly. Mirage showed us a lie about the position of the sun. I reached the sunlight and turned to what is up to this day, the worst memory of my life. Mirage vigorously devoured Conrad, ripping him apart. I watched streams of blood gush out of my brother's torso at each bite, and I heard the horrible sounds that followed. It did not take long before I closed my eyes, and covered my ears, while crying, screaming, wailing and begging for Mirage to stop his carnage. I might have stayed like that for at least 15 minutes, before I opened my eyes and saw Mirage standing still again and smiling at me in his new human form: the physical appearance of my brother. I looked at him, then at what was left of the real Conrad. Tears escaped from my eyes, the way I wish I could just escape from that nightmare, before sunset. \*\*\* Livid for a long time, my eyes riveted on Conrad's face, I remained on my knees, defeated by Mirage, which patiently waited for the last sun ray separating us to disappear so it can rip me apart too. I could not know what time it was exactly since the watch was on Conrad's wrist. I only snapped out of my daze when Mirage moved to take my pain to a higher level. That nightmare laughed while throwing 'pieces' of my brother at me: a hand, a bone, an organ, ... It would not stop. I ran to my backpack, looking for anything I could use to defend myself: a knife, a pen, just anything. The last sun ray decreased by the minute, bringing me closer to my doom. Mirage transformed again, its arms and legs growing so long that the monster could barely crouch on the viaduct. I emptied my backpack on the rails as the last sun ray grew thinner and Mirage started drooling. I just knew that I could not go without a fight, and while searching through my items on the railway, I saw my cosmetic compact. The panic vanished and that discovery led me to the idea that saved my life. Without wasting more time, I opened the compact and after seeing the little round mirror, I dashed towards the last sun ray of hope. I placed the mirror in the sunlight and diverted the reflected ray at the monster. Mirage screamed in pain, the light quickly punctured his body and it burst in flames in seconds before it just vanished. A few seconds later, the last sun ray disappeared and I sighed in relief. The sunset brought a befitting scenery to a fight that lasted for hours, but finally reached its conclusion. I looked at Conrad's remains once more when I felt vibrations that only meant one thing: an oncoming train. I looked around and saw that everything returned to normal, including the viaduct. The train emerged from the tunnel and I started one last run for my life. I felt a sudden surge of energy as if Conrad lent me his strength from the afterlife, an ultimate act to protect me one last time while I ran. I jumped at some point and was off the railway when I felt the train speeding inches away from my back. Once again, I sighed in relief. Sorrow and tears soaked the safe route back to the village. I did not even want to think about what was left of Conrad on that railway. I believe that the shock due to the loss of my brother blurred what followed, since I vaguely remember anything after that, from the wails of my mother to the compassion that the villagers showed, at least for that night. The next morning, when the mangled body of a lady was found in her own house, panic seized the village, as people thought Mirage could now break into homes and wreak havoc. The villagers forced me out of my own place of birth after accusing me of bringing doom. Still adventurous, I traveled the world till I made a discovery that freed me from guilt. Depending on cultures, entities like Mirage have different names and representations, while their behavior remains the same. I met a man in Africa who informed me that Mirage is a spirit invoked by people involved in witchcraft. As per its rules, the spirit can only be summoned during the day and sent to a maximum of five targets. If the spirit fails to devour a prey, it returns with fury and devours the sender instead, hence what happened to that lady in my village. Mirage never appeared there after my incident, and people think that it is because I left, not knowing that it is because a witch died instead. However, just in case, the villagers now walk around with mirrors, ready for any eventuality, including my grandson Hans even though he lives in the United States like myself. Conrad remains in my heart, and even though he did not survive that terrible day, his life and death taught me that responsibility, bravery and resilience are key qualities of an inspiring human being.

Something is in my room…

yane6p

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yane6p/something_is_in_my_room/

I can hear it when I’m falling asleep. It talks to me, tells me to turn around and look at it. Look at it right in the eyes and it’ll go away. I want to but I know better than to listen. It knows my name. It knows everything about me. It calls for me at night and leaves when morning comes. I haven’t slept in weeks, terrified that if I fall asleep, I won’t wake back up. My family thinks I’m crazy. My mom tells me that I’m hallucinating because of the lack of sleep. No one else has seen it. No one else has heard it. Im starting to feel like they’re right. Tonight was different. I didn’t hear it. It didn’t talk to me or call my name. I was still to scared to turn around but for the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel it and i didn’t care, I had finally gotten a good nights sleep. The next morning, my mom was in the kitchen cooking as usual. I cheerfully said good morning and sat down at the table. I waited for her to say something back but there was nothing. I said it again. Silence. “Are you okay, mom?” I asked. She stopped moving and just stared at the wall above the oven. I looked around the house and finally noticed how quiet it was. Where was everyone. I have six siblings so this house is never quiet. It was unsettling. I looked at my mom again and slowly got up and began walking to my sisters room. I knocked but there was no answer. I freaked open the door to see both of my sisters just standing there looking outside the window. I called for them but again, silence. My heart began to race and I quietly rushed over to my brothers room and flew open the door. Not them too. All three of them were standing there. Mouths open, just staring at me. My body ran cold and It felt hard to catch my breath. I wanted to run but my legs were frozen. That’s when I heard a loud bang. Over and over again, it sounded like someone was repeatedly hitting something. I ran to the kitchen to find my mom banging her head over and over again onto the countertop. I rushed over to her and grabbed her, trying to get her to stop. Tears were running down my cheeks and blood was splattered all over the counter. I kept calling for my siblings to come help me but no one moved. Suddenly my mom stopped. She stood up and stared at me. Right into my eyes. I froze and stared back at her. Her head was split open and there was blood running down her face. Then she started smiling. But not the sweet soft smile she had given me when I broke my arm, no, this one was different. Her lips parted revealing her blood soaked teeth. Her smiled kept getting wider and wider as she just stared at me. I heard footsteps and out of the corner of my eyes I saw all of my siblings appeared in the hallway. All smiling the same as my mom. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her though. My heart was racing and I could feel every part of my body begin to shake. That’s when I heard it. The thing that was in my room. The thing that has been taunting me at night. I heard it call my name once more. I felt it icy cold hands slowly make its way up my shoulders and across my chest. His fingers felt as sharp as a knife. It called my name again and I tightly shut my eyes and began to sing. I could feel it’s fingers making its way around my face. I could hear it telling me to look at it, but I just kept my eyes shut and kept singing. Once I had finished the song. I took a deep breath and slowly opened one eye. It was gone. In fact, everyone was gone. My mom, my siblings, they were all just… Gone… My heart was still racing as I looked around the room trying to see anything. I need to call 9-1-1. I raced to my room and was about to turn the knob when something stopped me. I felt my stomach begin to knot and something telling me not to go in there. I let go of the knob and ran out the front door. I began to run down the street when I looked back at my house. I caught a glimpse of my room and felt my heart drop. Inside was my mom and sibling standing there staring at me through the window. My mom began to smile again and waved at me. My siblings followed. I didn’t catch it at first but then I saw in all of their hands was a huge kitchen knife. I took a deep breath and ran to the nearest police station. I told them everything. About the thing that has been talking to me at night. About my family, I even told them about the knives. I saw all of their faces turn pale but quickly go back to normal. One of them grabbed me and told me that I needed to go home and stop causing trouble. I know he knew what I was talking about. His voice was shaky and he kept trying to avoid eye contact with me. I begged for him to tell me what was happening but he just ignored me and threw me out of the station. This was maybe two days ago and I’ve tried telling everyone, hoping that someone would believe me but everyone just acts as if I’m crazy. So I’m posting it here. Please, if anyone knows what happened and what I can do to fix it then please tell me. I just want my family back.

Anyone else get cold weather hauntings?

yal0de

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yal0de/anyone_else_get_cold_weather_hauntings/

The cabin looked cozy and calm as I pulled into the long driveway my map – a paper map – had led me to. To be fair, I was excited the map had led me anywhere out of the cold after the five hour drive. And this was the only driveway on the left from the main road for the last four miles, as Mrs Lawson had assured me. The keys to the place were in a fake “pink granite” rock amidst a grouping of natural rocks beside the front door. Took a couple of tries to open the door, as if the hinges had gone to sleep and resented being moved. A cloud of dust hit my face as soon as I opened the door and I sneezed so hard I hurt my ribs, dammit. The people who delivered propane kept the furnace going from October to April for safety reasons, like the plumbing, I think. But holy guacamole the dust! I couldn’t wait, I had to dust down then vacuum the place. Keeping in motion would keep me warmer while the furnace kept chugging towards a livable temperature. Plus I couldn’t eat or sleep if there was any chance of mouse poop or, worse, dead mice, anywhere in the cabin. Mrs Lawson called the cabin tiny. She must live in a mansion. The cabin had a main room, kitchen, two bathrooms, sunroom, and three bedrooms, cleaned in that order. The central hallway was the last to clean before I would declare the cabin sleep-ready. Well, the hallway itself and eight cardboard boxes stacked up at the end of it. I couldn’t avoid those boxes any longer, even though I wanted to. I planned to move them into one of the two smaller bedrooms as I worked. I meant to. But every time I looked at the boxes, something in me recoiled. Dry dusting cloth in hand, I breathed deeply and attacked the boxes. As I was wiping down the top four, my hand hit something metallic sticking out of the end wall. My first thought was, I’d found the door to the Lawson family’s private safe! The boxes were there to hide it from intruders. I made a mental note to tell Mrs Lawson how cheap and effective a security camera is, and took the boxes to the small bedroom. When all the boxes were gone, I got a good look at the wall they’d been stacked against. First I thought I imagined it. No food for several hours, burning a lot of calories, keeping warm and cleaning and moving stuff, it’s possible to imagine things that aren’t real, right? When my hand met cold metal again, I decided I was not hallucinating. This wasn’t a safe, it was a sized-down door. At the end of the hallway. A key hung from a sizable metal chain wrapped around the door knob. I felt like I’d discovered a doorway to an elven underground. Why else would Mrs Lawson hide the door from the rest of the world? Of course I unlocked and opened the door. Then I passed out on the hallway carpet. It reminded me of archaeologists getting sick as they entered long-unopened rooms. Something about the air being stale. I must have collapsed with great speed because I was pretty banged up. I didn’t even look at the room and the door was firmly closed as it had been when I first discovered it. While cleaning up my injuries, I realized I was hurt a lot worse than the time I fell downstairs. Maybe I had a concussion because it took me a while to realize I landed on the carpet. There was no furniture anywhere near where I fell. That meant I couldn’t account for the multiple gashes and slashes. They took a long time to clean up and bandage as my hands shook more and more. How damn long was it going to take for the cabin to warm up? My arms and legs hurt. What little I knew about passing out didn’t explain me being able to lock the door and drape the metal chain around the door knob while unconscious. As soon as I finished, I checked the house temperature. 70 F. What the hell. Normally I’d be fine at that but with how much I was shaking, I thought I’d have to wear extra layers inside all winter long. My head throbbed, my arms and legs hurt, and I know you’re not supposed to sleep with a concussion but I was also tired. I decided to lie down and relax before getting something to eat. That’s when I first remember seeing movement at the doorway of my bedroom. Was it a person with a blanket over their shoulders? Was it a cryptid? Was it a ghost? My imagination? No, it didn’t go away when I blinked. It was definitely there, and it was staring at me. Then it floated toward me. That’s how I knew it was a ghost, because it floated, what else could it be? Gravity affects beings in our dimension. It doesn’t affect beings from other dimensions. So it had to be a ghost. Which is why I was surprised when it came up to me and punched me. An arm appeared out of nowhere and punched my left eye! I don’t know what came first, the pain or the fear. I sure screamed, though, and flailed my arms and legs which didn’t help at all. Every open-handed hit by the ghost resulted in painful, deep gashes. All I wanted to do was get rid of the ghost and nothing I did achieved that simple goal. After a couple of minutes I stopped flailing and screamed, “Get away from me!” The ghost stopped hitting me and moved back about a foot. I got a good look at it. It had a head and face like a person only meaner. Instead of two arms, it had four. I don’t know to this day if it has legs or not. It spoke and I damn near fell off the bed, my body froze up so much at the sound. It said, and I’m pretty sure I am remembering this exactly, “You woke me. It’s your fault.” It disappeared in a cloud of red smoke. I lay there for a minute or two, afraid to move and afraid to stay in the bedroom. I decided to live out of my suitcase for the remainder of the year, to have my stuff ready to go in case I decided to leave in a hurry. Then I went to the bathroom and cleaned up the new wounds. Not sure exactly what I did for the next couple of hours but I ended up with a first aid kit on my nightstand when I went back to bed. My best guess is I got three hours of sleep before the ghost attacked again. I yelled earlier in the attack than before and, once again, it disappeared in a puff of red smoke. While bandaging the newest wounds, it became clear I wasn’t able to handle this attacker on my own. I tried calling 911 for help. Turns out, 911 wasn’t yet established for the area. Once I felt sure I could manage the walk to the kitchen, because I felt really weak, I got the number for the local center for emergency help on a fridge magnet. It was a number I never expected to use or I would have put it into my phone. The very calm dispatcher who answered my call explained that the police didn't come out to the Lawson cabin. They had responded to too many fake break-in calls so no. Also, without police escort, the ambulance would not respond either. I don’t know why. By the end of the short call, my stomach was in multiple knots and I struggled not to cry. All I could think was, I was trapped in a cabin with a violent ghost and no help on the way. My nightmares were filled with claws and clouds of red smoke yet I somehow managed to sleep until just after dawn. Mrs Lawson called close to 9 a.m. while I was having a coffee and rethinking my decision to take the job. She said the police called her. I don’t know why they called her. If I had to give a possible reason, I’d say the cops called because she’s the registered owner of the cabin. They likely wanted to confirm she’d allowed someone to be in the cabin without her. She said she had checked with her lawyer after the police called. Following his advice and for my own good, she terminated my employment for “shortage of work.” That reason would let me collect employment insurance and wouldn’t look bad when I looked for other jobs. She included a glowing letter of recommendation and paid me out for the full year even though I had to leave the cabin immediately. She insisted I call her when I was in my vehicle, leaving the driveway. She begged me to pack up my stuff and leave as quickly as possible. Packing the car was quick and I stuck the cabin door’s key into the safety rock storage at the side of the door. Once in my car, I called Mrs Lawson who stayed on the line with me until I left the property and was on the main road. I was concerned about being alone at home for a couple of days. My parents and sister were already at Aunt Connie’s to support her and her puppy Boots at her local dog show. They wouldn’t be back until the next morning. I couldn’t shake the feeling I wasn’t alone in my car. Two hours into the five hour drive home, I took an exit off the highway to a small diner. After I turned off the engine and before I could open my door, the ghost attacked me. I struggled to ward it off. Someone banged on my window and told me to leave or he would shoot me. There was no way I could start the engine and control the car. I was terrified of dying by ghost or by gunshot. My fear got the better of me and I screamed at the ghost to leave me alone. One last punch to my face and the ghost vanished in a cloud of red smoke. I opened my door and someone from the diner ran over and handed me a coffee. He said he was the owner and I had to go, I was not allowed to enter the diner. I begged him to let me in and at least clean up. He held up his handgun. Despite my hands shaking, I managed to start the engine and tear out of the parking lot. I got into my house through the back door as usual. It was a bit of a struggle to get my suitcase out of the car but it felt good to be home. Until I set everything down and heard it. The silence. The house was unnaturally quiet, a constant reminder I was alone. I hated it. So I turned on my TV and went to my bedroom to prepare my laundry loads. As soon as I entered my bedroom, the TV volume increased dramatically. It was so loud I dropped everything and turned to run into my main room to turn it down. The ghost smacked me in the face. My parents and sister came home shortly after, because they were concerned about me. They said the TV volume was fine when they got in the door. What shook them was the handprint of blood on the wall by the back door and the trail of blood down the stairs. I was at the end of the blood trail. My sister said Mom made sure I was breathing and all that while Dad called the ambulance. My family listened while I explained to the hospital admitting staff how I was injured. My sister stayed with me whenever she was allowed, from admitting to release. Staff checked for and treated everything they could but I caused a few problems, like shaking so badly it was hard to draw blood. While I was getting treated, Mom and Dad returned home. Mom called Grandma to keep her informed, then she put salt at all the window and door openings. She’s sure it will help. I think she might be humoring me but that’s okay, doing something is better than doing nothing. Mom says Dad bought another gun. He isn’t a big believer in the supernatural. I’m home now, have been since the end of April, and the house has been almost normal. The ghost hasn’t returned but Autumn is here. I’m afraid the ghost only shows up in cold weather and I’m afraid of meeting it again. That’s why I posted here. I wanted to get it off my chest and see if anyone else can relate or even offer suggestions on how to make sure the ghost doesn’t return.

My new dog won’t stop howling.

yaiii8

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yaiii8/my_new_dog_wont_stop_howling/

All my life I’ve really loved dogs. Growing up, my family never had one, but I had plenty of cousins who did, and whenever I’d go over, I’d prefer to hang out with the pooches. Now I’m 23, and I’ve just moved into my own place. I figured living in an apartment by myself would get lonely, so I got myself a dog, a small black border collie I could tell would eventually grow up to take care of her owner. I live on the first floor of my apartment complex, so I have access to the front and back car parks as a somewhat yard to let my dog out if it gets too overwhelming inside. I’ve had her for a few weeks, and she’s normally a well behaved pup, but recently she’s been whimpering and scratching at the door late at night. I usually try to take her out for a walk before it gets dark, but ever since the weird behaviour started, she refuses to come along. Instead, when I call her name with her leash in her hand, she just sits and stares out the window facing the carpark. Since I was a big fan of dogs growing up, I guess I expected I’d know what to do in any situation, but this one stumped me. I’ve started taking her out to the back carpark for a few minutes whenever she starts whimpering, where she’ll run around and eventually usually tire herself out. That was until four nights ago. On this particular night, when she started whimpering and scratching, I went to let her out, but as soon as we reached the building’s back door she froze. She just sat in front of it, staring out into the dimly lit lot. “C’mon, Annie!” I repeated, but she didn’t move a muscle. I went to close the door, but right before I shut it completely, she started growling. It wasn’t like any other growl I’d heard from her before. It was a low, guttural, almost predatory one that sent a chill down my spine. She kept growling at the door, even after I’d pulled it completely shut. I didn’t know what to do, she’s never behaved this way before, and it was creeping me out. She wouldn’t follow me when I tried to take her back inside, and I couldn’t just drag her back into my flat, so I tried the door again. I opened it, and that’s when she started howling. Her howls sounded almost painful, and I knew it wouldn’t be too long before the ruckus would start to wake up my neighbours. I tried to calm her down but to no avail, and sure enough, I soon saw the floor manager come into sight. “Ma’am, could you please take the dog outside?” He asked through gritted teeth. I forced a smile and nodded before walking her outside. She was still howling, but at least now we were far enough from the building where my neighbours hopefully wouldn’t hate me too much. “Alright Annie, please relax.” I sighed; she wasn’t going to stop. That’s when she started to yank against her leash. I gripped it tightly but her little legs moved faster and faster. I looked up towards the direction she was trying to run in, and that’s when I caught a glimpse of it. Beneath the flickering luminescence of one of the lot’s lights, a long, black figure stood. From where I was standing, it almost looked as though it was slanted backwards, as if it were only a shadow with no one in front of it. The light above it continued to flicker, and Annie’s howls grew louder and louder. A loud smash stopped Annie’s howling, as the flickering light suddenly burst. Shards of glass scattered across the floor of the lot, and I immediately tried to ran back to the building, but Annie didn’t follow. She sat in the same spot, seemingly frozen again. Above us, more of the lot’s lights started to flicker, then burst. With every flicker, I would catch another glimpse of the figure moving closer and closer as the lights created a runway for it towards us. It only moved in the darkness, and it seemed like it was stopped by the lights, but it’s speed gradually increased as the lights continued to break. I realised my time was running out, and I had to make a choice. I let go of Annie’s leash and ran as fast as I could back to the complex, behind me the sounds of glass smashing continued. I was almost at the door when I heard the most terrifying noise imaginable. I’m not sure whether it was Annie or that creature, but whatever it was, it sounded painful. It sounded like it was being torn limb from limb, with a metallic roar accompanying it. I made it to the door of the complex and practically threw myself inside and slammed the door shut behind me. Outside, I heard nothing but silence. I bit my lip and walked back to my apartment, my entire body shaking. I leaned against my door for a few seconds before I heard a knock. From the other side of the door, I heard my neighbour asking me if everything was okay. When I opened the door, she gave me a worried look, and her hands was Annie, who looked shaken up, but seemingly happy to see me. I nodded and thanked her, and she left Annie at my feet before walking off. Annie barked and hugged my leg, but I couldn’t find it within myself to pet her. It looked like my dog, it barked like my dog, but it couldn’t have been my dog. Not my Annie. It noticed my fear and sniffed me, and I tensed up, but I didn’t make a noise. It licked my hand then went and laid in Annie’s bed. It’s been four days since this all happened, and tonight I’m wearing ear plugs to bed. I don’t want to listen to the howling again tonight, and I especially don’t want to listen to the horrifying noise that comes after it. Some nights, the screams that follow are short, but they never stop sounding painful, and now they’ve started sounding human.

Arctica 2

ya9n8c

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ya9n8c/arctica_2/

[Arctica 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y3kplm/arctica/) ​ The thing about the South Pole is that no one's ever truly warm. I can feel the coldness seep into my bones, my body is always a shiver away from being too cold to move another muscle. It makes walking difficult, breathing too - the air is thin and ragged on my lungs, even thinking becomes a harrowing task. And I'll put this down in writing, I don't care if someone in the future will see it as an admission of guilt, but it was probably why I wasn't thinking clearly after we arrived back at camp. I never should have took the equipment, cutting Chloe off from the rest of the world. I never should have left her alone. But by this point my self preservation mode had been active since we first left for the mission, and it was all I could manage to come up with before I crawled into my sleeping bag, and passed out. It never felt so dark. That's something I never thought I'd say after spending nearly everyday in constant sunlight, this was the beginning of summer, the midnight sun wouldn't set until long after October ' I constantly had to remind myself all those days ago, those day when I wished that the sun would go down for a second, a wink, those days that turned contemptuous, where I wished the sun would sizzle out so that I may get some decent sleep. Those days when I didn't give a damn about anyone. Now, now I'm glad it's high up in the sky at all times. Glad that I can see...see if anything is coming. God, I hope so much that it's help that is coming for us. The 6 hours after our ordeal at the Ross Ice Shelf was a strained one. I woke up thirsty, and damp. Damp is danger, any moisture is dangerous but my body was too tired to care. What was a finger or even a limb if it meant that I could get back to base, get on a helicopter, on a boat, and get home? I'm a long ways away from Ontario, that much was certain. I dried myself, changed, and not once did I look down at my body, afraid of what I might see. Protocol dictated that I contact points of authority. Report to them what happened, and what we were facing, even if it meant what I had to say would cost me my future in the field. I think that was why I took all of our communication equipment and hid it in my tent. That way when I slept, Chloe wouldn't sound the alarm before I had time to think, before we could talk things over. She was only 2 years out of her understudy, her career had only begun, and I...I wasn't ready to give this up yet. I did this even though I knew I was directly disobeying rule # 2: Keep An Open Line Of Communication. Without it, people die out here. I don't remember how many times I've seen it, a simple yes or no that could have saved someone's life; while the information we were withholding was undoubtedly more important. I kept telling myself this was the right thing to do, that we needed to be clear headed before we made any decisions. Those thoughts went out the window the moment I opened my tent flap. Outside in the snow, right at the foot of where I had been sleeping - were footprints, hundreds, if not thousands of them, it looked as if an entire procession had passed through. How one person could do this all alone was beyond me. But I could see it from her point of view, it was as if I had taken away her sovereignty, treated her like a child and took away her ability to make decisions for herself when I took away her ability to connect with anyone else other than me. A dangerous feeling for someone, anyone, let alone a woman stranded in the middle of no where with a man she hardly knew. "Chloe," I called from outside her tent. "Chloe," I called again. After what felt like longer than it did, "What?" I was glad she was talking to me. "We have to start getting packed. Leave for McMurdo." She unzipped the teeth in her tent, "I'm ready to go. If you're not done in 5. I'm leaving you." I could see the bags forming under her eyes, and the corners around her cornea were bloodshot as well. "Shit. Did you even get any sleep?" She pushed past me, her pack heavy on her back. For a moment I decided to argue, point out the elephant, but I didn't want to shift the momentum in our movements. So I bit my tongue and quick enough - I got in my tent and stuffed the few things I thought I would need. The trip through the Lewis and the ice belt was about 3 days. Give or take. We would need food, shelter, and...I grabbed my drinking can. The soft plastic was easy enough to grip in the cold and to store when it was empty. Mine was almost gone. I had half a propane cannister which meant that I could melt another liter and a half at most. I groped around my bag for more water, and I found none. By now I knew she could hear me outside, scrummaging, thinking, knowing where the water had been stored. Most of it had been in the crawler, the rest of our provisions were stowed in London's tent. A tent where Chloe's footprints had been all over. Before I thought she was only looking for the equipment, but now I knew better. "I'm afraid," she said as I left my tent. Her arms crossed, "I'm not stupid." "Chloe." "Shut up." She threw her bag into the crawler. I could see it wiggling, straining against the straps as it was gorged with liquid on the inside. "I was trying..." She rounded on me, "You think I don't know what you were trying to do?" She took a step toward me, it felt as if I had been pushed. "You didn't think that we read the same handbooks? Face the same consequences? What did you think that this was a-" "I'm sorry." I held out my hands, "Look. I'm sorry. I was scared. And, and I was tired. I didn't know what to do. All I knew when we got back was that, was that I needed to rest." I didn't mean to change the subject, "Did you get any sleep?" "At least now we can tell them back at the station our radio wasn't working. And if they don't believe that, you can tell them how you stopped me from contacting headquarters." "Fine." "Fine is right." I paused, "Should we contact them now?" She looked at me, "If we contact them before the point of no return, they might want us to turn back. And I am not staying here for another second." "Agreed." I hesitated, "What do we tell them about London?" "We tell them how he died. The drill didn't clip in properly, and...and there was an accident." For a second I saw the look of the old Chloe, the kind and caring Chloe in her eyes, but it disappeared quickly enough. "What about the blood?" "Without proper evidence, they might hold us, blame it on spring madness. Extreme sun exposure affecting our brains." She looked at me, "We'll never stand a chance," she chewed on her lower lip, "I say we hand it off to the lab. Let them take a look at it. If they report anything abnormal-" "It'll be someone else's problem." "They'll stand a better chance at convincing them than us." We looked at each other silently and agreed amongst ourselves. "Let's go." I nodded and climbed into the crawler. My hand paused for a second as I held the key. "What?" I turned to her, "What if it doesn't start up?" "Don't say that." I turned the key and prayed. The engine began clicking, sputtering and gurgling as the ignition coils zapped the petrol in the cylinder, trying to light. The "kekeke" of the starter beginning to sound like a sickening laugh. After several tries, it finally gurgled, letting a plume of black smoke out of the rear as she groaned to life. The cabin shook slightly as I put her into gear. There was nothing but an endless horizon of ice and snow in every direction as we pulled out into the open. I used to joke that God had forgotten his paintbrush here. Chloe laughed, it was the first sign of the tension between us cutting since I woke up. It was a mixture of giddiness and relief. Infectious enough for me to smile through my teeth. "We're getting out of here," I said aloud. She laughed again, "Damn. You don't know how scared I was when I found all of the equipment gone." The sense of routine putting us both at ease. "You don't know how scared I was trying to leave that tent," I told her. "Fuck, this place does weird things to you, don't it?" "Yeah," I adjusted our navigation, "It'll take us about 3 days to get to base. What about those footprints," I chided. She laughed, "I almost peed a little when I saw them." I could feel the smile disappearing from my face, the tightening around my heart. I could tell Chloe noticed, because suddenly she looked scared too. "I thought they were..." "No." ​ \* ​ We had been driving for nearly 9 hours, several times we had to put the arm down on the crawler. The arm was a flat panel with an inflatable tube filled with sensors that extended about 8 meters in front of the bumper to test the areas ahead for crevasses. Falling through one in the crawler would mean death. Getting stuck, the same. Several hours ago I somehow managed to convince Chloe that I wouldn't murder her in her sleep, and she was finally dozing off. Her head pressed against the sidebar and her legs propped against her chest. I could see her breath fogging the glass window even though the heat pump from the engine bay, porting through the front dash was keeping the cabin fairly warm, warmer than usual at least. This had been our first expedition together, and although I didn't know much about her, outside of work, I couldn't help but feel drawn to her. She was attractive by all means, but it was more than that. An attractive woman can only hold my attention for so long, with the advent of social media, I've stared at attractive woman unabashedly, while on the comforts of my own toilet. She began to stir and I quickly looked away. "This god awful light," she murmured. Shielding her face with a hand as she was greeted by the glistening white scenery in front of us. "It's like my sister when we go to the beach." "It's beautiful," I said. "Haunting, is more like it." She reached into a bag, pulling out a container of water. I watched her drink. I could almost feel the soft liquid touching my throat. After awhile I noticed her eyes were peering at me from above the plastic ridge. "Do you want some?" She handed me the water. My free hand gripped the soft edges and squeezed it down my gullet. After I had finished, "God. Water is so underrated." She laughed, "Would you like a beer?" My eyes lit up, "You don't have some do you?" She reached into the bag and then pulled out her fist with the middle finger extended, while laughing. "Oh yeah, real mature," I groaned. "Man, a beer would have been great." She couldn't stop laughing, "You should have seen the look on your face." "Go back to sleep." Chloe capped the water and stored it back into her bag. Leaning slightly against it. "Do you think we should contact base by now? Let them know our course." It was rule number 4: Maintain a travel itinerary with Command. "I don't know-" "What if we need help? It's easier to search for us if they had a general location." "I don't plan on falling through the ice." "We didn't plan for a lot of things to happen." She nudged the navigation," "Plus. We're past the point of no return," as she reached for the console above her head. I had clipped it back some time ago. The signal cracked over the speakers. "AFAN this is Crawler 2215. Do you copy?" We waited in silence. "I think you're supposed to say the call sign?" "I did." "I thought it was K-C-4-W?" "I remember it being AFAN." I shrugged my shoulders, "Call out McMurdo station and see if anyone replies?" She choked the receiver, "McMurdo Station, this is Crawler 2215. Do you Copy? McMurdo Station, this is Crawler 2215. Do you Copy?" Chloe holstered the comm. "Nothing," I muttered. ​ "This is KC4W, McMurdo, 10-4. Over." "Fuck!" Chloe grabbed the mic excitedly, "McMurdo. This is Crawler 2215. We're traveling through the Ross Ice Shelf, coordinates negative 84, negative 123. Following the Hulbe line back to base. Over." "Breaker, breaker. This is Expedition 7. Chloe is that you? Over." She turned to look at me, "I think it's Simon?" "Chloe, what's going on? You're about 130 kilometers away from us. Shouldn't you be back at camp?" "Simon. We're heading back to McMurdo. There's been an accident. London...London's dead." There was a long pause. "This is McMurdo. Crawler 2215. Please repeat. Are you in distress? Over." "Yes! We are heading back to the station." She pauses. "Over." Another long pause. "Chloe. This is Simon. We've departed from P-99 and nearing U.S. core site three-eighty-five. We should rendezvous at negative 78, negative 170. Over." I looked at Chloe and saw her beaming. This was great news. We were traveling. We were meeting up with other members of our team. We were heading back to base together. "Sounds great Simon. From our coordinates it looks like we're 18 or so hours out. Over." "This is McMurdo. We will prepare for your arrival. Medical team will be on standby. Over." I stretched my neck. Wiggled my toes. And found new grip on the steering. We were going to make it. ​ \* ​ ​ Over the next few hours we would sporadically hear updates from Simon's crew or directly through McMurdo. Chloe got into gear and began tidying up the crawler, and was back to inputting data through her laptop. And I readily surveyed the path before me, making sure I was plotting all the correct points coming onto my screen. And we were making good time! Everything was settling back to normal, if my lips weren't wind cracked ' I would have considered whistling. Several times we passed by Blankets: top layers of snow that covered a crevasses opening, but our equipment held up despite my lack of experience. And we made it safely enough. Eventually Simon's crawler came into view. I could even see their tents from this distance, they looked like yellow pyres, signaling us. "Should we get them on the radio," Chloe asked. I shook my head, "Let's surprise them." She laughed, "God it's going to be good to get back with the others." "The more the merrier," I laughed. When we had pulled up close enough I sounded the horn. Not even bothering to take the key out of the ignition as I hopped out, the engine rumbling behind me. "Simon!" Chloe was having difficulty getting out, the crawler was quite tall and she was dragging her equipment along. The look of a scientist back on her face as she was worried about preserving our findings. Even the blood sample she had scraped off my boots ' didn't seem to bother her. It sure didn't bother me. "Simon," Chloe called. "Amy? Hey can someone help me with this." I popped around her side and grabbed the two thick satchels from her. "Thanks." "No problem," I mentioned. "Hey guys," I called out. Chloe looked at me, "Turn it off." "What?" "The crawler." "Oh right," I reached over and pulled the keys out. They fell into the ice, "Shit." I looked down the hole where they had dropped. It could be anywhere, nearly anywhere but straight down. I dug a glove into the snow, rummaging around. "Shhh," Chloe hushed. "Do you hear that?" I stopped moving, and strained my ears. Silence. The sound of nothing was deafening. Neither of us moved a muscle. I was too afraid to even move my eyes, to search the grounds, in case it made too much noise. Suddenly I could hear myself blink. And when I swallowed - the small bones in my ears clicked. I began to hear my heart beat in my chest. The way it strangled itself each time. Chloe took a step forward and I heard the snow crunch beneath her feet. "Guys," I called out. "Simon? Amy?" She paused. "Dave?" "Where is everyone," I attempted. "Hey," I took a step toward a nearby tent, my hand moving for the zipper all the same as any other day, a part of me pretending that everything was fine, made it easier to unzip. It was empty inside. "Angela," I called out. "Look," Chloe pointed to the corner of the tent. "Tracks." I followed them around the tent, it took me a second to realize what I was seeing. They were in the shape of feet, "Someone." I tried to laugh. "Someone's forgot their boots," I tried to laugh again but it came out hoarse and shaken. "They're barefoot." Chloe screamed. I turned around and suddenly I felt sick. The hours before, finally catching up with me. My knees were wobbly, but I forced them in her direction until she came into view. She was buckled before a tent, the flap laid on its side, crusted red by the cold was blood. "We have to get out of here," she said. "W-what about the others?" I reached my hand to the next tent, shaking it. Afraid that it would open, afraid to open it, afraid of what I would find. "There's only three," I swallowed. "In there. Where are the others?" She shook her head, "I don't know. But we have to get out of here." She grabbed my arm and started pulling on it. "They can't be dead. Not all of them." "Come on-" From a tent directly to our left, we heard a groan. I looked over, the blood in my veins running cold. One of the sides had collapsed and it was slightly opening, snow had already begun piling inside. Chloe took a step back and fell. I saw her hands reaching for the ground around her, for something to grasp, all she found was the ice between her gloves. I wanted desperately to pick her up, pull her from under her arms, but my legs wouldn't let me. The tent shook again. And then something fell out. It looked up at us, a glacier of blood caked onto the side of his face. "Fuck." I tried to find my bearings, "Dave. Are you okay?" He shook his head, his voice groggy. I couldn't make out what he was saying as I pulled him to his feet. His wound had frozen shut. "What happened," he asked. "I don't know man. We just got here and..." "Where are the others?" His head suddenly dancing on his neck as he swiveled back and forth. "Something came at us. It ran me right over. Oh god." His eyes set on the tent where we had found the other bodies. "Oh god. No." He reached out his hand. "Tiffany. Angela?" "Where's Simon," Chloe asked. "I think she's still breathing," Simon knelt into the tent. "Patrice. Patrice!" Dave motioned for me, "Help me with her. I think she's still alive." I wish I could have said I rushed over quickly. But I didn't. When I got to his side and peered into the tent. I could see clearly for the first time, their faces were torn. Tiffany's jaw was hanging open and her eyes were rolled back ' the thin mucus on them long frozen in place. But it was their stomachs. They had been ripped open. Gutted like fish intestine on the ground. That made me throw up. I heard it splatter on the ground as it left my mouth. Thick like stew, it began layering on the snow as it hardened. "Jesus Christ," Dave said, "Get a hold of yourself." I wiped my mouth, "Why did they. What happened." By now Chloe had helped Dave pull Patrice out of the tent. There was a gash in her stomach but it wasn't serious, at least not as the wound forming on the side of her head. It bubbled, likely filled with blood. A hematoma, some part of me remembered. "Let's get her into the crawler," Chloe said. She looked at me, "We have to call McMurdo." I nodded, "Yeah. Yeah, I'll get on that." I rushed to the Crawler and got my hands on the radio. "McMurdo. AFAN. Shit I don't know. Shit. KCWA four three two. I don't. McMurdo! We need help. This is Crawler 2215. We are in need of assistance. Over." After a second's hesitation, "This is McMurdo. Please state your emergency. Over." "We have three dead." I let it die. "Two dead. And one injured. Another, another missing. Over." "We can send an immediate air drop to your location. Please confirm. Negative 84. Negative 140. Over." "Yes! We have joined with Simon's team. Over." "Stand by 2215. Over." Chloe ripped the transmitter out of my hand, "McMurdo. We are not waiting for the arrival unit. Tell it to meet us on our course. We are heading back to McMurdo. Now!" "Negative 2215. It'll be against protocol-" "I don't give a shit about protocol!" She slammed the receiver down and turned the dial until it clicked off. "What are you doing," Dave asked. He was still several meters away, "What's going on," standing over Patrice. Chloe looked at me then back at, "Dave. Listen. There's something. I don't know. There's something, fuck. There's something in the ice." I could see Dave shaking his head, his eyes closing, his demeanor in disbelief, his mouth still half open when it hit him. Took him right off his feet. It moved so fast and blended into the snow perfectly that it was difficult to see, even more difficult to see when it started stomping the ground, the snow came up like smoke as I see parts of her stamped out in the ice. That's when I ran. I ran as fast as I could, the ground slipping before me as the world turned upside down and I hit my head hard against the ground. If it weren't for Chloe, I would have never made it into the Crawler. My head was still spinning when we took off. I could hear Chloe's panicked breathing as she kept looking behind us. I came in and out a few time, my vision distorted, it was like looking at snapshots, a strobe light in a dark room. When I was finally able to gather enough sense to fill a sentence, I looked over at Chloe who had a death grip on the wheel. Her exposed fingers beginning to blacken at the tip as she drove. "Chloe." She jumped in her seat, "Fuck. You're okay?" I shook my head, "I feel like shit." She looked back again. "Did we get away," I asked bleakly. "I think so. I mean. I don't know. But I think so." "What was that thing?" "I don't know." She looked at me and then leaned in close enough for me to hear, "But did it look to you as if it came back for Angela? To finish her off? Like. It didn't even want Dave. He was just in the way. The way that thing tossed him. But it ripped into her stomach. Pulled out her guts and crushed them. Did it, look like that? To you? Did it?" And I didn't want take solace in this, but I found some comfort, as we kept driving into the endless white snow, that if it was only killing women. Then maybe I was safe. ​ ​ [S](https://www.reddit.com/r/CornerCornea/comments/u6rx8n/subscribe/)

I see the numbers of how many people somebody has killed. My sons... Continued rising.

ya4lz9

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ya4lz9/i_see_the_numbers_of_how_many_people_somebody_has/

I had always had this strange ability. I had always thought about telling somebody or using it to get a great job as maybe like a detective or a cop or something but in the end I had decided the best thing was to keep it to myself and just live my life away from people higher than a 1. A 1 can be bad but also you don't know their stories... It could've been in self defense. And so that's what I did. Nobody knows. I now have a wife with a 1. She killed her dad when she was 12 and he was beating her mom as he did often, he was a drunken and she panicked, grabbed his bottle and shattered it over his head... Cracked his skull and he died almost instantly. My child Sam is 2 years old, obviously a 0 and hopefully it'll always stay that way. Looking back now I would've been happy if he'd grown up to be a regular serial killer compared too what he very well might be now. I had gone on a vacation to Paris for work and unfortunately had to leave them behind for a week. It was only a week and nothing longer so I figured what's the worst that could happen for just that little amount of time. Well… I got home and I look at Sam... 12. I blinked, 39. 75. 90. It continued rising all while he was just sitting there. I figured it couldn't be real- there was no way THERE WAS NO FUCKING WAY but... It was.. And he just.. Stared at me. With those complete black eyes. "Hello papa." He says in this dark raspy voice, the one you would hear from some dude living in the woods in a horror movie who turns out isn't a killer and saves the main character in the end. He smiled at me... And I'll never forget the words he said. "150. 180. 200." All as the numbers hit there. After that he went limp and just fell backwards. 2 days later he woke up and his number was 0. It was just a hallucination or something is what I wish i could tell you but no. It happens every single FUCKING month. I saw on the news. 200 people every month die. His eyes are emerald green but during those times they're completely black. Look I could actually use some help here, please somebody help me. I.. My number when I look in the mirror is 0, but... As I held my hands around his neck... I watched it turn to 1... And then I felt as if I'd been shot in the head. I'm not typing this in the emergency room and... Now whenever I look at somebody... Their numbers are always 666 Help. Wait. Who… What's going on again? Why am I typing here… Either way the paramedics are coming to take me to surgery! I'll get to go home! I wonder why they have the number 1,957,384 above their head… How odd, either way I'm… I'm drowsy… Goodnight everyone..

I own a winter cabin in the forests of North Minnesota. Things are getting... weird.

yaexmh

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yaexmh/i_own_a_winter_cabin_in_the_forests_of_north/

9/24/21, 11:00 PM, Recording 1. Me and my wife recently purchased a cabin deep in the forests of Northern Minnesota. As recently as Six months ago, in fact. I was never much of an outdoors person, growing up in a fairly large town in the southern part of Minnesota, I rarely saw "The Great Outdoors", as I've heard many call it. My wife, however, is a country loving woman, through and through. Having grown up miles from my home town, surrounded by woods, and farmland her whole life, I don't think there's a single City Slicker bone in her whole body. That being said, I somehow managed to convince her to buy a house with me in a small town, with the condition that, when finances allowed, we would purchase a cabin to stay in half of the year, and, well.. Unfortunately for me, she held me to that promise. My wife decided that she wanted the six months spent in that cabin to be from October, to March. Why anyone would choose to go farther north for the six coldest months of the year in what is essentially the fucking ice capital of the Central United States is beyond me, but my wife insisted. *"Please, James." She had begged, "You know my favorite seasons are fall and winter."* And, she was right, I did know that. Growing up, she loved the leaves changing color in the fall, and the first snow fall was always magical for her. After some more insistent begging, I caved. *"Fine, but don't slide closer to me when you're freezing your ass off at night." I replied, a slight smile creeping across my lips.* a Large, child like smile spread across Samantha's, (or "Sammy", as I affectionately called her) face, at my response. Her smile always seemed to brighten up the room , even since we were kids, it's always made my heart flutter. *"Better not smile like that up at the cabin. You might scare all the wild life away" I smirked* Her smile turned into a half offended, half amused open mouth smirk, as she smacked my arm. *"You asshole!"* I chuckled softly at the memory, as I drove down the winding dirt pathway through the woods. Sam turned her head, to look at me. *"What's so funny?" She asked, cocking her eyebrow up slightly.* *"Oh nothing, just laughing at myself." I said, flicking my eyes towards her.* She rolled her eyes, as a hum reverberated up her throat. I moved my eyes back to the road, and immediately slammed on the breaks, sending us both into our seatbelts. Crossing the road, was a maimed deer, limping from one side to the other. It's stomach was torn open, leaving a trail. How it managed to keep moving was astounding. Sam and I looked at each other, and back at the deer, which was almost fully back within the trees, before it collapsed. *"What the hell." I muttered, turning and looking at her.* *She shrugged her shoulders, "Probably from Black Bear, they've been known to hunt deer."* *"Do they hunt humans, too?" I asked, half joking* *"Not usually. "'m sure they'd make an exception for you though"* *"Oh, whatever.." I said, putting pressure on the gas again.* We slowly rolled by the carcass, as we continued down the road. Once we were a couple meters away, I looked in my rear view mirror, and saw a flash of black, and the deer get slowly pulled into the brush. I always hated seeing wild animals getting killed, but such is nature, I suppose. We drove for another 15 or so minutes, before we rolled up to the small, cozy cabin. It was technically about a week before October, when we decided we'd make our stay up here, but with it being our first time, we decided to come a week early, to get set up, and so I could scout around to find any possible work for our time up here. Since I was an electrician, I could work where ever I had my tools, and the supplies needed for the job, and well, I had one of those things. My wife worked from home, working in the oil and gas industry, so that wasn't a problem for her. *"Oh, its beautiful" She cooed, "It's perfect"* I must admit, even as someone who could give or take country living, it was a sight to behold. Maybe staying out here won't be so bad. *"We can gawk later, come on, lets get our stuff unloaded." I said, beginning to unhitch the small moving trailer we brought up.* She nodded, and opened the rear passenger door of the truck, pulling out our suitcases, and whatever else we had in the back. *"What's this?" She asked, showing me a small recording device.* *"Oh, Jace wanted me to bring that. Something for him to laugh at when we got back."* I took the small device, and pocketed it. Jace was a good friend of ours, back from middle school. After I told him about the cabin he laughed. He told me to bring a recording device so I can document my endeavors of "trying to survive out here", as he called it. The asshole. Instead of only documenting my misery, however. I had decided to make recordings once a month, or during important events. *"You, living in the woods? I'd be surprised to see you survive three weeks." He had said.* *Sam just smiled, "Of course he would."* We both grabbed our respective bags, and brought them up to the front porch. I fished the key out of my back pocket that the realtor had given me upon purchase, and unlocked the door, opening it for the both of us to enter the cabin. We set our bags on the inside door, to prop it open, and made our way back into the trailer, to finish unloading, and to get our living situation in order. Once we had gotten the trailer and truck empty, moving the boxes into their respective rooms based on contents, we decided to call it a night. We have almost a full week to get everything situated. Samantha went to bed, after we exchanged kisses, and I decided to record this first entry. 10/15/21, 10:45 PM Recording 2. Well, it's been a couple weeks since my first recording. The Cabin is set up, exactly how Sam wants it, lord knows she's picky. Bordering OCD, honestly. She's gone to bed by now, I think that these recording sessions are going to have to be a nightly thing. Luckily she calls it a night a couple hours before I do. She generally wakes up a couple hours or so before me though, so I suppose it balances out. We haven't really done much since we came up here. I found work near me, which I will be starting on in the near future. Just a small job, maintaining a warehouses electrical systems, fixing anything that needs fixing, so that's nice. Sam is busy as ever with her job, so we both stay pretty busy during working hours. Last weekend, she decided she wanted to take advantage of the open country, and do some shooting, grabbing her old .22 she's had since she could first hold a gun and shoot properly, as well as the 30-06 her grandfather gave to her after he had passed. She's always been a pretty remarkable shot. I don't think there's a single target she can't hit in one round. I gave it my own shot, as well. I'm not quite to her level, but I can hit most targets within the first two rounds. Every once in a while, I might need to take a few more shots. My old man used to take me to the range once or twice a month. We like to make friendly competitions, to see who can hit the target the most before going through 15 rounds. Of course, she wins every time. *"Dammit." I had whispered under my breath, after my final round hit the ground to the side of the target.* *"You're getting better." I could feel her smirk, "You only missed five out of the shots you took."* *"Yeah, yeah. Give me that 12 guage and I'll hit every shot" I retorted, nodding in the direction of the bag it sat in.* *"Well, yeah. It's hard to miss with one of those." She laughed.* *"Exactly" I smiled, turning back to her.* *I flipped the gun to safety. "Are we finished?"* She nodded her head, grabbing the small 22, and we walked back inside. That's more or less all that's gone on since we've arrived. I must admit. I am liking it up here a bit more than I had anticipated. Of course I'd still prefer it back at our other home, but, I could adjust to this. It's getting pretty late, and I should probably hit it for the night. I have to get to work in the morning. My next recording will probably be on my birthday. I'm sure Sam will have something planned, she always does. 11/23/21, 11:50 PM, Recording 3 Sam threw me a very small surprise birthday party. My parents drove up here, and they're staying until the morning. I had to come out here to my truck to record this, as my parents are in our room, Sam and I are sleeping on a blow up mattress in the living room. Her parents decided to make the drive back home, so they left some hours ago. It was nice to see them again, I haven't since- Wait.. What the fuck is that? 11/24/21, 12:04 AM, Recording 4 Holy fuck, that freaked me out. Some deer was sitting on the edge of the forest, just barely in view from the light given off of the house porch lights. It looked like just the skull, at first, I thought it was just sitting on a post, left as some sort of freaky house warming gift, but it turned its head, and disappeared. Must've just been a trick of the light, or I'm just tired. I'm going to call it a night and go inside. It's getting pretty cold now, since its getting later in the year, getting close to winter. 11/29/21, 10:30, Recording 5 Well, Jace. You wanted me to record me trying to survive out here, so I'm going to make you listen to every damn minute that I have something to say. There's been a pretty foul smell, since the night that I saw that deer. I've smelled decaying animal before, and that's more or less what this is. I asked Sam about it, and she didn't have much to say. *"Animals die all the time. It could be that one recently did round the edge of the forest. It should go away after a couple days."* I hope so. It's been driving me nuts. On a brighter note, my new job has been going fairly well. I've seen some pretty dumb shit working there, having to replace some wiring, conduits and what not, but for the most part, it's been easy, and smooth, which is good. Easy money is the best money, as I'm sure you know. Sam's job has been the same as always. She's on that damn laptop almost all day. Internet out here is much more shotty than back at the other home, so I often hear her cursing at the computer, which I find amusing. I've been seeing a large amount of wildlife charging through the yard, deer, I've even seen a couple moose. Big fuckers, I didn't even know we had them here. I don't know where there's been so many. Maybe they move when seasons change? I don't know. I don't know anything about animals. Like I said, I'm a city boy. They all looked like they were running from something, or trying to run all of them seemed jacked up running janky, like their bones were all messed up, or that their skin just, didn't fit quite right. But they were too far away to tell exactly. Maybe a bear got to them all? Must've been some big ass bear to make a moose run, or fuck it up that bad. I didn't take moose as the type to run away from anything though. But, I don't know. Tomorrow I'm going to try to get Sam out of the cabin, so we can do something, maybe we'll go for a short hike through the forest. She might enjoy that. 12/25/21, 11:45 PM, Recording 6 Merry Christmas, to all those listening to this. We came back down for the weekend. We're staying home until January first. It's quite nice being back. Nothing too interesting has happened since the last recording, so I won't have anything else to say until we get back. 1/1/22, 4:30 PM, Recording 7 *"There is shit everywhere up here. We just pulled in front of the cabin, and it looks like someone came through and broke into the cabin. The door is off its hinges and just laying on the porch. There's garbage everywhere. Looks like whoever it was wrecked the enclosed trailer as well, It's all dented and smashed to hell, the boxes we used to move are torn to shreds all over the yard."* *"Really, James? You have to record this now?" Sam asked* *"Well, Yeah, Sammy. I'm sure Jace, and whoever else is listening is going to want to hear about this."* *"Fucks sake.." She sighed. "Just help me clean up"* 1/1/22, 10:40 PM, Recording 8 Well, I don't think Sam liked me recording our reaction. She got pretty upset about it. Guess I'm sleeping on the couch tonight. 1/2/22, 1:27 AM, Recording 9 I just woke up to weird noises... it sounds like, a person.. calling? I'm.. it sounds like Sam, coming from outside. I'm walking to the door now.. Fffuck me its cold.. holy shit, I think I see her.. why is she standing out here *"Sam? Sammy!?"* ***"J-aamesss"*** *"Sammy, what the fuck are you doing?"* ***"J-aammeess"*** *"It's cold as hell, hun. Come on back inside"* *"James. What the hell are you doing" Sam said, "Wait, who the hell is that?* 1/2/22, 1:35 AM, Recording 10 They're gone now. Sam came out from the bedroom, and was freaked the hell out, which honestly, I don't blame her for. I had her go get the 12 gauge to try to scare them off, but it wasn't until I shot the ground in front of them. After that they ran off, but not before screaming this almost, inhuman scream.. It was definitely human, but it was just, so animalistic. The flash revealed them for half a second, and, they looked so.. wrong. Definitely some druggie high off their ass. I'm just glad they're gone now. Listening back, It seems so obvious it wasn't my Sam. I mean, the pitch is there, but its so.. off. I'm just chalking that up to being tired. Sam seemingly forgave me for what happened earlier, because she's letting me get into bed after I'm done recording this, or maybe she's just scared, either way, I'm not complaining. That couch sucks. I don't know how well I'll be able to sleep tonight, with that freak out there, but we'll see.. 1/5/22, 10:45 PM, Recording 11 I know that I said I'd only be doing these about once a month, but.. things keep getting weirder, almost, paranormal. I'm not opposed to the idea of ghosts, or spirits and all that. My wife and I are Christian. Well, that's the easiest thing to call it, We don't exactly follow an organized religion, but you could call us Christian. We've been hearing weird noises at night. Both of our names being called, other.. strange noises. I don't quite know how to explain it. The smell of decay is back, too. Last night I saw that deer thing, I think its a deer. I'm not so sure anymore, it might be someone in a deer mask, but it looked so.. decayed from were I was, and looking at it the smell of death was overwhelming. I'm honestly scared. I haven't told Sam yet, in fear of sounding insane to her, but, I'm ready to just go home. I'll see about bringing it up to her in the morning. There's a massive blizzard going on right now, and it's getting cold. I'm going to cozy up in bed with Sam, and get some sleep. 1/6/22, 8:45 AM, Recording 12 She's gone. Fuck fuck fuck FUCK. Sam's just fucking gone. I woke up and, and she just wasn't here. The truck is still outside, its covered in a blanket of snow, the door was wide open, its freezing in here. I'm getting my boots on as I'm recording this. 1/6/22, 9:30 AM, Recording 13 That fucker. I know they have something to do with this, The truck is inoperable, tires slashed, fucking engine wont even turn over, there's gas everywhere, like they punctured the gas tank. I don't know where Sam is either. I ran around out there calling her name, trying to find her. I kept hearing my name, the same fucking voice from the other night. I swear, when I get my hands on these freaks. 1/9/22, 6:30 PM, Recording 14 Sam still hasn't come back, and I've been searching for the last three days. I called the nearest police station, they sent out search parties, but nothing.. I listened back to the recording, and the voice isn't the same. It, it actually sounds like her, but, its.. its wrong, its so, so wrong. I don't know what else I can do.. It smelled like death in that damn forest, everywhere... Please.. I hope that wasn't Sam.. And I keep hearing that fucking voice, I can hear it now, outside.. I'm going out there with the 12 gauge, and I'm fucking whoever is doing this up. Consequences be- Holy fuck, holy fuck. What the fuck. That's not.. what the fuck is that!? 1/12/22, 5:45 PM, Recording 16 Sam's dead, she has to be.. and I'm in here, sitting like a fucking coward. The doors are boarded up, the windows too. I, yesterday I saw a big deer thing, but, it was not a fucking deer. It was massive, seven, eight feet tall? Gangly, and the smell, holy shit the smell.. it was awful. I've spent the last day reading, and, I came across something called the Wendigo? Some, old native legend.. said to have insatiable hunger. But It couldn't have been a wendigo that night.. It was a person I saw, I know it.. It had to be.. they came back last night, I heard it calling my name, trying to imitate my wife.. my poor wife. We should've stayed home. Wendigos can't look like people, they can sound like them, sure, but not look.. What the fuck was that? I've also come across skin walkers. From what I know, they can't copy whatever they're trying to imitate perfectly, which could explain the weird movements, and the messed up face.. but that has to be fake right? But, the Wendigo shouldn't exist either.. Plus, skin walkers surely would imitate more than one thing.. right? Not just one- The animals... The animals I kept seeing running through the yard, they were all messed up too.. Oh, shit..

The house on the corner.

yaj8vq

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yaj8vq/the_house_on_the_corner/

This house on the corner, as far as anybody knew, was never inhabited. As far back as Esme could remember this house gave everyone she knew the most eerie and unpleasant feeling something was inside waiting in the depths for its prey. There was rumors and legends about the house and its previous owners but even Esme's grandparents could never recall anyone ever living there. There was different contradicting accounts on the houses' occupants from criminals to witches, cults and escaped mental patients; all insane dramatic tales of murder, evil, terror and mystery. The house itself was extremely dilapidated with peeling paint, ivy growing wild all over, smashed top storey windows and boarded up doors. It had a dark and gloomy air that made people shudder involuntarily when they walked past. Even the mention of the house on the corner made people uncomfortable and change the subject as quick as they could. Esme was fascinated by the house. She tried to research it's history and ask locals different questions but didn't find any satisfactory answers to explain why it stood empty for years. Why wasn't it sold or demolished? The council didn't even want to discuss this house and dismissed Esme outright from making any queries on its origins and why it was taking up a decent sized section on a prime piece of land. Esme knew on Halloween night she was going to explore this house. It didn't perturb her the same way as it had everyone else. It was just an abandoned house with an unknown history and that was all. She asked her reluctant friends to come with her so at least she wasn't completely alone. Only one of them agreed and Esme used trick or treating as an excuse to go out after dark. Her mother's usual refrain was *"Don't go near that damned house Esme"* but Esme had already packed a torch and crowbar in her lolly bag. Esme was dressed as a basic vampire tonight to match with Renee who was coming with her into the house. She assured her parents she was most certainly not going near that house especially on Halloween! Renee was going to video the whole thing for Esme and put on it on their blog. None of the kids believed they were going into the house so this was the proof they needed. The street was full of trick or treaters so different witches, werewolves, Frankenstein, Draculas and skeletons were crossing the street and knocking on different doors all shrieking and laughing. Esme and Renee were standing in the gloom at the rear of the house prising off an old slat of wood on the back window. The nails were old and rusty so they came off easily so Esme and Renee didn't need to use much force with the crowbar. Esme heaved herself through the window shining the torch into the interior of what liked a bedroom. There was an old bed collapsed in the corner, the bedding black with mold and an old rotting chest of drawers in the other corner. The smell was overwhelming with mildew and mustiness. "Eugh!", Esme gagged in disgust leading the way out into a hallway with an old rotting staircase leading to the level above. She crossed to the room to the right and came across the lounge room with an assorted of old dusty furniture and a disused piano with broken keys. Renee went to explore the kitchen beyond yelling out a horrified scream of "Rats!" and came running back out to Esme. "We have enough footage now Es should we go? This place is making me feel icky." Esme rolled her eyes in exasperation "What about the rest of the house?" Esme dragged Renee to the foot of the stairs and both tentatively climbed each step hoping it will hold their weight. "When in doubt keep filming", Esme whispered to Renee as they made it to the second floor. The temperature felt like it dropped several degrees up there. Esme shivered and pulled her jersey tighter around her. "We will just get a few videos and be done" Esme decided, turning to confer with Renee. Only she wasn't there. "Renee?" Esme called out peering into the rooms. The first two were completely empty, the third was a bathroom with a broken toilet and bath its curtain black with grime and a shattered sink with a smashed mirror. "Haha Renee!" Esme shouted into the gloom "very funny!" She stepped into the last room which was another bedroom. It looked to be a children's room judging by the old dollhouse and a collection of old and decaying teddies on the bed. Esme shone her torch into every crook of the room and stopped as she got to the last corner by the window. Crouched low with her back to her was Renee. "Renee!", Esme called out in relief "what are you doing?!" Renee slowly turned and Esme came to the sudden horrified realization that it wasn't Renee at all. The creature's face was completely decomposed with eyes as black as pits, its mouth hanging limp and open. Its teeth were like jagged fangs, its rancid breath permeating the room. She was skeletal and hunched in stature just staring at Esme with a hungry curiosity. Esme was paralyzed with terror and could barely breathe. Her heart was pounding painfully in her ears, she felt the blood coursing through her veins and the feeling of utter dread like a stone in the pit of her stomach. The hunched figure was breathing obscenely from the corner waiting to make a move, waiting to pounce. Esme slowly backed out of the room barely daring to make a sound. The figure remained crouched in the corner but began making this appalling sound like a fox being slaughtered. *It was laughing.* Esme screamed and ran as fast as she could down the stairs feeling, rather than seeing, the figure pursuing her. Esme tripped as she got to the second to last step and fell with a loud thump on the bottom. She could see the figure on all fours right behind her making that terrible sound of excitement as it came upon its victim. Esme could feel the pain from the fall from her very soul but she made herself stumble up and make the final dash back through the window to safety. She felt the creature grab her leg as she climbed out but she kicked as hard as she could and got herself free. Esme managed to escape with her life. A later investigation revealed Renee's body hidden in the bathtub in the bathroom Esme had gone into. Renee's body was behind that rotting curtain completely mutilated. Horrifyingly Esme was only inches from Renee's body. Renee's phone was recovered with the footage containing the couched figure hiding in the bath. Confirming Esme's unbelievable story.

Mom Told me About a "Looking Man". He's Nothing like I Expected.

ya24tj

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ya24tj/mom_told_me_about_a_looking_man_hes_nothing_like/

*Do not be afraid if you see a man looking at you through your bedroom window. It's just the "Looking Man".* My mother used to tell stories of her experiences with the Looking Man to prevent me from fearing him when He came to visit me. Her experiences were deemed acceptable by my grandparents, as they claim the Looking Man also visited them multiple times. To them, it's a tradition for the family's women to be greeted by this "man". I hadn't met the Looking Man until my 18th birthday, which was earlier this month. After celebrating my birthday with my family, friends, and my amazing boyfriend, I settled down and got ready for bed. This was the first time my parents allowed my boyfriend to spend the night with me, so I was pretty excited. We binged horror movies, because who doesn't watch horror movies in October? Now that I think about it, that might've been a bad idea, as I'm a total scaredy-cat. We stayed up until maybe 1 am before falling asleep together, and it was the safest I've ever felt in a long time. I awoke at around 3:30 to the sound of scratching on my window. I assumed it was the dogs, as they've been known to jump around at night. My brain was still asleep, so I ignored it and cuddled up to my boyfriend. He was still sleeping, and I felt like having a little more snuggling time with him before my parents could kick him out in the morning. Everything felt right at that moment, until I felt a pair of eyes staring me down. Glancing at my boyfriend, I could see that his eyes were still closed. At that point, I was wide awake. Sitting up, I scanned the entire room. Everything seemed normal, until my eyes drifted toward the window. There, I could just barely make out the figure of a man. The only thing I could make out of his face were His with eyes, which looked to be the size of golf balls. The hairs on the back of my neck stood tall, and I went to shake my boyfriend. The man outside the window brought His boney finger up to His mouth as if telling me to be quiet. I kept my eyes on the man while slowly reaching my hand to my boyfriend. I quietly shook him, to which he grumbled and turned the other way. I turned to look at my boyfriend and harshly shook him, causing him to jolt up. *Wake up, there's a man outside the window and I'm scared,* I whispered to my half-awake boyfriend. He told me that he'd take care of it and told me to go back to sleep. I remained sitting upright while my boyfriend got up, grabbed the nearest sharp object, and stepped to the window. He moved the curtain aside and held up his weapon. After scanning the area, he got back in bed. *Nobody's there. I think you're just scared from all those movies. Let's go back to sleep.* My boyfriend laid down and started playing with my hair before going back to sleep. I stayed awake the rest of the night, scared He would try something while we were both asleep. My eyes were glued to the window until daylight struck. My boyfriend woke up, and my parents decided that he should join us for breakfast. At the table, I was as quiet as a mouse. I didn't eat much of what was on my plate, and soon, everyone noticed. My mother asked me if I didn't like the food, to which I straight up told them about what I'd seen. The family looked around at each other before my mother glanced at me with a smile on her face. *It seems the Looking Man has paid you His first visit.* It's been a few weeks since that conversation, and now every night, I'm greeted by the Looking Man. However, each time He appears, He gets stranger and stranger. One night, the Looking Man had both of His hands on the window, and then the next night, He'd continuously tap on the window to make sure I didn't get sleep. Last night, the Looking Man stuck His long tongue out, licking the outside of my window for the entire time He was there. It's 4 a.m. as I'm typing this, and the Looking Man is not outside. I can see His big eyes staring at me from an opening in my closet. He hasn't moved, He's just... looking at me. I'm starting to freak out, but I don't want to make any sudden movements in case it angers Him. If anyone has any advice on what to do about this, please don't hesitate to comment.

The Briar Elm Witch

ya9si6

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ya9si6/the_briar_elm_witch/

My village holds a legend of a witch. An urban legend to for misbehaved children. It tells of a witch that resides inside of a large elm tree. It is said that she lures small children into the woods around her elm and they are never seen again. It’s a pretty basic urban legend and as the growth of technology and social media began taking over, most found the legend to be be nothing more than just that. It was only a handful of years ago that I had heard of it myself and it quickly piqued my interest. I was 8 at the time and ghost stories my father use to share with me fascinated me. I wasted no time speaking to elders in our village, pleading for any scrap of information to do with The Briar Slit Witch. I finally snagged my first lead when someone shared a story of a teenage couple venturing out into the woods in the 1960’s. They entered the woods before dusk and showed up in the village hours later, shaken up, the girl pale and freezing. Not long after this, the girls family left the village, but the boy resided until his death. I couldn’t do much to track down the girl who would have probably been in her late 60’s at this point. However, I did find an article about a woman in her late teens that took her own life not long after. She had moved from a small, remote village to the city and in a note she left, explained she couldn’t live with a choice she made. Nevertheless, I was back at square one. In my research, I was surprised to find such a large number of disappearances not only of children, but adults as well. As recent as 2005 a couple and their 5 year old son went missing as well. Most locals attributed it to the couples struggling financial debt. Assuming they had just moved away without giving any notice. I continued pushing people in the village until I found the spot the teens were last spotted before disappearing. I gathered some supplies and prepared to be out the rest of the day. After a few hours of searching, it finally dawned on me that this could all just be a spooky story. Something I was dumb enough to waste all this time and effort on. The thought alone drove me further into my search. If this really was just a story, it had to have some form of truth to it. Eventually the sun began setting and I realized I would have to start my search again in the morning. The night quickly approaching made finding my way back, that much more difficult. I had to be quick or else I might be stuck here for the night. Suddenly, I hit a dip in the landscape and my ankle buckled. As I landed, I could hear twigs and branches breaking in the distance. I paused for a moment to listen. It was at this point, I realized how quiet the forest had gotten. It was ominous and unsettling. As I attempted to pick myself up, I could hear the branches continue to break. It wasn’t long before I realized that they weren’t heading away from me, nor towards me. It was as though the noises were circling themselves. I looked up to find the foliage so thick, it blocked out the night sky. The movement continued, only stopping with me as the forest became blanketed with an unnerving silence. It felt as though it was mocking or taunting me. I almost expected a cackling to follow, but I was met with silence, followed by more footsteps. I picked myself up and regained my footing before fumbling through my supplies for a flashlight. No good, I must have forgotten to pack it. I began feeling my way around while hoping my eyes would adjust to the darkness. As I pushed forward, I realized the sounds of snapping twigs and leaves never waned. They were always the same distance away, no matter how much further down the path I went. Eventually my eyes adjusted slightly and I could make out the silhouettes of trees directly in front of me. The footsteps grew in number and volume. As though many feet were marching just behind me, mocking any attempt I made to escape. Trembling with fear and terror, I began picking up my pace as I made it to a small clearing in the forest. Dim lit stars gave me reprieve from the sounds behind me. My heart sunk as my eyes began to focus on figure floating several meters above me. My eyes continued adjusting as I noticed another. Their silhouettes, gaunt and elongated Just above me, 2 bodies hung lifelessly in the trees on either side of me. Beyond them, lie a massive elm, twisted and tortured. A massive hole in the center opened into complete darkness. Attempting to get a better look, I began to approach it. Noticing the footsteps now circling the clearing around me, I hesitated to move forward but I wasn’t in control anymore. I began panicking, knowing I couldn’t stop myself as I approached hole. I attempted to close my eyes, but whispers in my ears begged me not to. My eyes began adjusting to the darkness as I began to distinguish eye lids and a nose, eventually lips as my face twisted in horror. Less than a meter from my face, hung the dried out skin of a child. Perfectly cut from the body and hanging on display in front of me. I began to hyperventilate as the hole expanded from within. The mouth of the hole decorated in children’s flesh like trophy’s. I felt my stomach churning. Between the grotesque collection, was a dark figure. A torso protruding from the elm as though she and it were one. It’s disgustedly mangled figure hanging lifelessly between its victims. I paused as a soft voice in my ear told me a story. It was only when it was done, that I gasped, causing the witch to stir back to life. I stumbled back, finally in control of my body again and ran. I never found my way home that night, but the next morning, a few men from the village found me instead. It’s been a while since I’ve been back, but I don’t think I can ever return. I just keep thinking about something that little voice whispered. “They offer us up, she just collects”

My Friend Might be a Serial Killer

yagoyp

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yagoyp/my_friend_might_be_a_serial_killer/

Hello, my name is Robert. Well, that's not my real name, more of a name I just came up with. The reason why I came up with this fake name is pretty much explainable. No, this isn't clickbate either, or using this as a little clout for attention. I should probably stop stalling and get onto the story, huh? How did I even reach to this conclusion to begin with? First off, let me talk a little bit more about that friend. I'm honestly scared to reveal his true identity so, we gonna call him Henry for the rest of this story. Henry is a definition of a "Social Butterfly" in my eyes. He always gets along with me, charm all of them just by his beautiful green eyes and his mascular body. His deep, yet calming voice will always manage to give you butterflies and forget the worst day you had at work. I envy him at first, and even had a massive crush on him. I should probably also tell you right now that I am gay and indeed, a male. Back to Henry. One day, he begins to date this girl. For this purpose, I will call her Carly. Carly is a angel in my eyes. She's very polite, soft spoken, but yet knows when to stand her ground. So of course, I try not to piss off the woman. She is also dating my best friend, so she has massive respect for me. One day, Henry invited me over for a date the two were having. Why he wanted me to become their third wheel is something I still confuse with to this day, but I agree to come over. The restaurant was very fancy, it was like Olive Garden honestly. We also did have a very fun time, eating, drinking, until Carly got very sick and begins puking uncontrolly. Henry, noticing this and standing right beside her, helped her get up and walk to the car. "Sorry bud, but I have to cut this day short!" He told me before driving off. That was the last time I heard of Carly. For the next couple of days, I haven't heard from both Henry and Carly. I thought nothing of it at first, maybe they were having their little couple moment. One particular day, I decided to watch the news since I was very bored and had nothing to do. I just finish my Psychology work for the day, and I have nothing else to work on. Once I turn on the news, the first thing I notice was a picture of Carly. Strange, why would she be in the news? "Carly Hamison, a 26 year old female, has been missing for a week now. The last place that she was seen was at a hotel, seemingly running away from a stranger". Stranger? The last time I saw her, she was sick and wasn't feeling well. And I know Henry was dropping her off to his house. Not only that, but the footage the news showing me happens three days later, after I last talk to them. Of course, at first, I doubt Henry would do something like that. But, it slowly begins adding up. He hasn't been here for a couple of days also, and he was the last person to stay with Carly until her disappearance. I decided to pick up the phone and call Henry first. If he is here, then maybe I could ask him when he last saw her. But, there was no answer. I begin to feel uneasy and worry for both my best friend and Carly. Maybe they both got kidnap and someone murder both her and Henry? I don't know what came over me, but I walk to my car and begin driving to Henry house. I honestly should've called the police first, but I was worry about my best friend too much that I couldn't think straight. It took me an hour to reach his house. That uneasy feeling came back, rushing all over my body. I got out of my car and begin to walk to the house, staring at his brown door. "Henry isn't a killer, he wouldn't dare do something like this". I constantly tell my mind that. After slowly believing in that lie for a bit, I knock on the door. No answer. I would knock a couple more times, hoping that someone would answer. Still, no answer. I would grab the doorknob and turn it. The door was unlock, which is weird. Henry would always lock his door, especially at night. That's when my mind cross over to that conclusion. That maybe, Henry and Carly got robbed and was kidnap. I walk inside his house, closing the door behind me. It was eerie quiet and dark. My heart begins speeding up as I glance around the house, looking for at least a clue. The place looks like it hasn't been touch at all, which makes this even more eerie. I would reach over to the living room lights before turning it on. His living room was all neat and clean, wasn't touch at all. I would do the same to the kitchen, and it was also fairly normal. "Maybe I'm just overthinking it?" I told myself. But, why is Carly missing then? And why hasn't Herny been answering my calls? I walk over to the basement. That basement always gives me the creeps, and Henry would always tell me to avoid going to that basement. "Sorry bud" I whisper before opening up the basement. The basement was eerily dark, you can barely see the stairs. Reaching for the light switch, I turn on the basement light and begin walking down. While walking down, I could smell something so rotten, like someone left their rotten food downstairs for a very long time. It made me feel a bit lightheaded. Taking my last step, I begin to glance around the small basement. "This basement stinks" I whisper to myself. Then, I notice a toolshed. Strange, Henry never told me about him building. I took a couple of steps forward to examine the tools. Hammers, chains, Nails, any tools that you could think of, Henry has it. Not only that, but there seems to be crimson blood in all of them. The fear and theory begins to race in my mind again, that my friend might actually be a killer. Then, I notice a door right beside the shed. I try to open up that door, but it was lock. "I should probably get out of here" My mind would tell me. But my body just stare at that smelly door. I wanted to officially know if my friend was actually a killer or not. The tools might be prove alone, but I wanted to be one+hundred percent sure. "Mmhp! MMHP!" Suddenly, I heard a sound of someone screaming. It sounded familiar. "MMHP! MMMMMHP!". Is that, Carly?! "Carly, is that you?!" I shouted at the door. The voice seems to scream a bit louder, reacting to my voice. It is Carly! "Carly! Oh fuck! I'll get you out of here, I swear!" I shouted at the door before charging back upstairs. I gotta find his basement key and- Then, I notice his car was parked outside. Shit! If Henry sees me, I'm dead. I quickly ran to the bathroom and hid myself there. Covering my mouth, I would try to control my heavy breathing and thumping heartbeat. Thump....thump....thump... The sound of his footsteps would echo throughout this quiet house. "Seems like someone was in my basement". His voice, it wasn't the same cheerful happy voice that I know for years. It was eerie, cold, emotionless, like he was a robot. I could hear him walking down the basement, then slowly, unlocking the door. Shit, Carly! I want to save her, but how? I can't just face my best friend and try to fight him. He's twice my size, and have more experience of fighting than me. So, I did the most cowardly thing. I quickly unlock my door and begin to run out of the house. The last thing I heard before running outside, was a scream of a victim that my best friend just murder. So, why am I typing this right now to reddit? Because, I want to help Carly. Even though she's dead, I want to try to save her soul. She was a sweet innocent person, and me, a fucking coward, let her die. I also found out before typing that, this isn't the first time Henry done this. There was a total of thirteen females, all of them missing at the same year and at the exact same time. It's just upsetting to believe that he was the one who did it. Or maybe, it wasn't him? I remember that his voice wasn't usually this deep and cold. It was very high pitch and full of energy. I refuse to believe that this is my friend. It can't be. I will give you guys more updates if I can. At least, I hope I can. I'm honestly risking my life here just confessing what I saw, and I'm too afraid to go to the police. Would they even believe me? I have no evidence to pinpoint Henry as the murderer. And I not even sure if that deep voice IS Henry. But, in the end, my friend might actually be a serial killer. And someday, I probably just gotta accept that fact.

My girlfriend is watching weird Tik Toks.

y9t78z

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9t78z/my_girlfriend_is_watching_weird_tik_toks/

I need advice. I’m terrified and I need advice. I’ve always been a long sleeper. I go to bed early and wake up late. My girlfriend, Lucy, on the other hand, is a night owl. This combination has developed in me, a habit of falling asleep to the quiet ambient noise of electronic speakers. Whether it be a conversation between George and Jerry or some LA vlogger going on about the latest Starbucks drink. Most recently it’s been the ever changing sounds of the doom scroll on Tik Tok. Monday started out as any other, except for my allergies making it impossible to concentrate at work. I expected it, with the changing seasons. But this was worse than ever before and I had scheduled a doctors appointment that day. The evening was uneventful. Lucy and I fell into our nighttime routine. As the sunset slipped away, we lay back to back, but close together. My eyes were already closed, but I opened them briefly to check my morning alarm. The room was mostly black. The wall, illuminated slightly by Lucy’s phone light. I could hear quietly, some popular hip hop song, a boy talking, an ad for face lotion. I closed my eyes again and was soon asleep. I awoke with the urge to pee. The night had progressed. The room was blacker. The wall was still illuminated. As I opened my eyes and oriented myself, I heard screaming. Children screaming. “Luc …”, no response. Ever so slightly louder, “are you still awake?” “Yea.” A click. The room turned totally black. “What were you watching? I heard screaming?” “Oh, just this stupid Tik Tok. This lady who works at a daycare put on a scream mask and scared the kids. So stupid. She’s going to get calls from the parents”. “That’s so messed up”. I went to the bathroom and returned. I could tell Lucy had closed her eyes. Tuesday passed by quickly. I felt more myself at work. Lucy texted me, mentioning an all day conference on Thursday. She’d be back by the evening, but it would be a long day for her. Early start, late end. Tonight there was no Tik Tok. Lucy found a new show on Netflix. I was reliant on her for cultural awarness. The main character received a cancer diagnosis. The rest, Lucy would have to fill me in as I fell asleep before her again. This time, I simply awoke. It felt like I hadn’t slept much. Again, light on the wall. The quiet sound of Lucy’s phone. But this time, men screaming? No, yelling. I heard a frantic ‘Shit no! Shit no! No way this is happening!’. “Luc, what are you watching?” I said it at full volume. “Huh?!” Lucy was startled. “Oh sorry, I guess it’s time to put it away”. “What were you watching though?” “Oh, it was some dudes who lost a motocross race or something. My algorithm is so weird.” We fell asleep. As Wednesday went on, my mind went back to the night before. That video, the yelling. That aside, I was a little concerned at how late Lucy was staying up. She struggled with insomnia before. Those Tik Tok’s probably weren’t helping. My plan was to discuss it on the weekend. She had that conference tomorrow. That would be on her mind. As we lay in bed, Lucy perked up for a moment. She warned me. An alarm would go off in a few minutes. It would be a trigger to put her phone down. I was pleased. Lucy recognized her bad habit on her own. Maybe there was nothing to discuss this weekend. I stared at the wall. Eyes open for a minute, then closed for another. An elderly couple talking. Their voices shaky and broken. ‘Oh my god! Oh my god! No, no, no.’ I sat up quickly. “What is up with that app Lucy?” “What?” “That app! There’s always someone screaming, or yelling, or upset about something!” I only now noticed the anger in my voice. I quickly settled down. “Okay, jeez. I’m sorry.” The phone clicked closed. “Uh. I’m sorry. I’m just really tired.” “Don’t worry, I should sleep anyway.” That’s when it happened. The room went black. I was under the covers. Tight. In the middle of the bed. Her feet hidden by the bed, Lucy was there. In front of the TV. Floating. Mouth wide open, eyes white, shining. She rose slowly. I felt absolute terror. Her feet slowly became visible and she started to approach. I tried to move. I tried to scream. My head sank into the pillow, slightly sideway. So deep, half my mouth was covered. Then, a jolt, and I was upright. The room filled with light. She was gone. I was alone. My first thought was to call in sick to work. What was that? My mind danced between different pieces of information. The video’s she was watching. I only heard them, never saw them. What was she watching? As I paced the room I thought of some option. Simply confront her? Call a doctor? A priest? After about 30 minutes of uncontrolled contemplation, I went to the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water. Suddenly, I realized my mania. It could have been a bad dream. Lucy probably didn’t want to wake me and left before I woke. It all started to click. I decided to try and get some rest. Sleep wouldn’t find me, but I could rest. The evening came and early sunset brought a violent red into the sky. Slightly seeping into the living room where I sat. Despite my rationalizations, my heart jumped when Lucy pulled up. There she was! A small knife in hand. Her phone held up beside her head. Camera turned front. A smile on her face. It felt like she was running towards me, yet it’s clear her pace was walking. I stepped back as she opened the door. “Luc! What are you doing?” No response. She approached. “Luc!!” Still nothing. I ran upstairs. The only way out. Opening the window to the roof. The damn bug screen. I virtually destroyed it. Turning back I saw her there again. The only option was to jump. I write this from the nearby forest. Ankle twisted. I need advice. I’m terrified and I need advice.

A Survivor's Accounts of the Depraved Funhouse: The Greatest trick (Part Two) FINALE

yaak36

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yaak36/a_survivors_accounts_of_the_depraved_funhouse_the/

[[1]](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9g2d1/a_survivors_accounts_of_the_depraved_funhouse_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) We were trapped. Nowhere to run or hide. "It's the little piggy, trying to make off with one of his [playmates!](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y6sy0t/a_survivors_accounts_of_the_depraved_funhouse_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)" said another high-pitched voice, this one clearly female. Slowly, out of reflex more than anything, I began backing the two of us back toward the black box. It was the only thing I could think to do to try and get away from the oncoming threats in front of us. Suddenly, we were stopped when we felt something big behind us. "Well..." said the voice from behind us, deep and dementedly jovial. "If it isn't the little piggy himself. Welcome back." My blood froze solid when I turned around to see it was Happy Bob standing right behind the two of us. "You miss us?" he asked, giggling. Despite his smile, I could see the bloodlust in his eyes, seeing the way his nose was all bent out of shape from when I'd hit him. Before I could react, he grabbed both me and Ray by our arms and said "Maybe you'd like to apologize." "What are you talking about?" cried Ray, already struggling while I remained frozen with fear. "Why don't you ask the little piggy yourself." chided Happy Frannie from up ahead. "What? Linus, what're they talking about?" "I-I don't know!" I stammered, looking back and forth between him and Happy Bob. It *was* true, at least at the moment. I really wasn't sure what they were talking about. "Don't know?" exclaimed the other voice from ahead, the hyperactive one I knew to be none other than Jack-O. "He says he doesn't know." "What do you want?!" I cried. By that point, I finally started joining Ray in fruitlessly trying to wrench free of Happy Bob's grasp. Out from the darkness ahead, stepped Happy Jack-O and Happy Frannie. It was here, though, that I noticed something. Particularly with Happy Jack-O. He looked older. I know that sounds weird, but it's true. I'm honestly not sure how to really describe it other than to say that I noticed his skin seemed to look a lot more wrinkled than what I figured it should be. Not only that, I also began to notice gray spots in his hair, including his goatee. See, last time, he looked like he was maybe only in his mid-20's to early 30's. Now, though, he looked closer to 40 or even 45. I looked back to Happy Bob, noticing the same was true for him as well. *What the hell happened?* "What we want..." boomed another voice that shook through the entire room. I felt it reverberate throughout my body. This caused my knees to finally buckle and I was frozen once again. *([The sound of the Devil himself speaking](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/n7g6ra/a_survivors_accounts_of_the_depraved_funhouse_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf).)* "...Is our youth, child." With this, out from the darkness stepped the Amazing Beliar himself, with Liza at his side. Like the other two, The Amazing Beliar also looked a lot older -- even more so than the others, in fact. His once pitch black hair was now almost completely gray and his face was even bonier, sicklier than it was before. Liza stood, quivering, looking scared with red makeup smeared across her eyes and mouth, dressed in a clown outfit if her own. "Who the fuck are you people?!" cried Ray. Happy Bob twisted his arm, causing him to cry out in pain. "Uh, uh, uh..." he said, giggling. "You need to watch your little mouth, there, bucko!" He and the other clowns then broke into a giggling fit while the Amazing Beliar just stared directly at me with a vulpine grin. I looked to Liza. "What have you done to her?!" I screamed. He looked to her and back to me, still grinning. "She's our new playmate!" Happy Frannie squealed excitedly. Liza looked at me again. I could tell she was crying. Her face was covered in bruises, even noticeable under the makeup. "She will be our newest disciple." the Amazing Beliar declared. He then nodded to Happy Bob, who then tossed Ray to the ground like he was a sack of garbage. "Disciple?!" I exclaimed. "You're fucking insane! You killed Derek and his family!" "Such harsh words." Happy Frannie remarked, giggling. "We just had a little fun. You should've seen her, piggy. Little Happy Lizzy there was a *natural!* weren't ya, Liz?" Liza turned away and began crying. *Happy Lizzy?!* *"Now WE'RE gonna have some fun with her..."* My eyes widened. "What did you freaks do to her?!" They giggled as Liza sobbed. "They... They... They made me..." She let out an small groan of anguish and said "They made me hurt my mom!" I was confused at first, not understanding what she meant until it hit me. The photo. Liza standing with the bat. Mrs. Cromwell's mangled body... *"... But eventually the old bag broke!"* "No... Liza..." She just continued bawling. The Amazing Beliar Smiled at me. "You..." I spat. "You made her do this! You're fucking *evil!"* He stepped forward. "Evil, you say?" "Yeah! You're the Devil, aren't you?! *YOU'RE THE FUCKING DEVIL!*" I screamed. To this, the room fell silent and the Amazing Beliar stepped towards me. He then knelt down, his face only a bare inch away from mine. "No, boy." he said in a voice that was somehow even deeper than it had ever been before -- something I didn't figure was even possible. "I'm not the Devil." He smiled again and added, giggling dementedly, "No, *I* make the Devil smile!" *("Always smiling, even in Hell, Linus!")* He then turned to Liza and handed her the knife. "Now, it is time, my disciple." He put the knife in her hand. He turned then to Ray, still facedown on the floor and said, "Pledge yourself to eternal youth and happiness, child. Spill his blood for Moloch, and adorn yourself with his blood." The others then began to gasp excitedly, like they were excited to see her murder him. Liza stood there, holding the knife pointed downwards, shaking. "Liza, don't!" I exclaimed. She looked to me. Her eyes were big, glistening. She was afraid, and I could see it. I knew she didn't want to do this, sacrifice Ray. She didn't want any of this. "Liza, don't do this!" "I... I can't..." she whimpered. "I have to. I have to... They said they'll leave everyone else alone of I do." "Liza, you don't have to do this, okay? You don't have to kill Ray for them!" "But they'll hurt everyone else if I don't, even you." I won't lie, my heart sank at this. Even now, after all of this, everything *I* caused with not telling the truth -- *with trying to run away* \-- Liza was still wanting to protect me. "Liza, don't do this, not to Ray. He's your friend. He was one of Derek's. You think he would want you to do this?" Her eyes managed to grow in shock with this. I had her now. "Liza, I'm sorry, okay? I'm a horrible friend, okay, to both you and Derek." She stood, shaking. I let out a sharp cry of pain as I felt Happy Bob pin my arms back behind me. "I think you better put a sock in it, piggy!" he said, with a giggle. "Yeah, piggy, put a sock in it, or else we'll just have to cut your little tongue out!" Happy Frannie chimed in as she pulled out a switchblade from the pocket of her overalls and skipped over to where I was. I felt her fingers reach inside my mouth and begin prying my mouth open and sticking the blade in. Because of the way Happy Bob had my arms, I was unable to reel away from her or the blade. "Stop!" cried Liza. "You said you wouldn't hurt him!" "Enough, sister," the Amazing Beliar bellowed. The boy is no threat to us, so long as he sees this. Sees what happens when the ceremony of youth is interrupted. Now, my child, let us commence." He turned again to face Liza. Liza looked back at him, almost in a pleading manner, before looking down at Ray. Ray tried to scramble to his feet to run before his arms and legs were seized by Happy Jack-O and Happy Frannie. "Come on, Happy Liz!" Happy Jack-O exclaimed excitedly. "Yeah, come on, sis, you can do it!" Happy Frannie cheered. I tried to wrestle free as Liza came closer, pointing the knife once again downward at Ray. Ray's face was chiseled in perpetual terror. "W-Wait, what're you doing?!" I heard him cry out, fruitlessly writhing against the clowns' holds. Liza slowly came closer and closer. She stopped when she stood right over him. "Say it, child!" the Amazing Beliar urged. In a small, shaking voice, Liza began. "U-Un-Unto thee in the burning lake beneath..." "Liza, NO!" I screamed. I kicked and flailed as much as I was capable at that moment. It did me no good, however. "Can it, piggy!" screeched Happy Jack-O. "Come on, Liz, make us all proud!" Happy Frannie cheered. Liza raised up the blade, hands shaking. "I-I, y-y-your servant, offer unto thee this offering. I-I o-o-o-only a-ask in r-return for the eternal youth a-and happiness o-of myself and m-my disciples." She then knelt down to Ray, still shakily poising the blade high in the air. Ray was quivering, no longer able to even try wrestling free anymore. "Please don't. I don't wanna die! I wanna go home!" he blubbered, staring into Liza's equally frightened eyes. Liza began breathing heavily. "Good, now do it, child!" commanded the Amazing Beliar. She held the knife high. I saw her hesitating to bring the blade down. "Liza, don't do it!" I pleaded. The Amazing Beliar exchanged a glare back and forth between me and her. She looked up him again. It was almost like I could actually hear her begging for him to not make her do this, despite only looking into her fearful, innocent blue eyes. "Do it!" he barked, his voice echoing all around us. She looked back down to Ray, eyes flooding with tears. "I'm sorry..." I heard her murmur as she closed her eyes. I watched her bring the knife down before turning away myself. I could hear the squelch of flesh being penetrated, but was instantly shocked when I realized I couldn't hear Ray screaming in pain. I was in for an even bigger shock when I then turned back around to see that it wasn't Ray at all who'd been stabbed. Instead, it was Happy Jack-O. She'd managed to embed the blade all the way to the hilt in his neck. Happy Jack-O began to seize up, violently convulsing and gasping desperately for breath. "What are you doing?!" exclaimed the Amazing Beliar. He made a move to seize her but she, in one fluid motion, drew the blade back out of Happy Jack-O, causing him to collapse, writhing in agony on the floor, and drove it then into his leg. The Amazing Beliar clutched his leg, roaring in both anger and pain. I felt Happy Bob release his hold on my arms before then moving in on Liza himself. "Liza, watch out!" I cried. She tried to swing the blade at him, but he caught her hand and twisted it, forcing her to drop the blade before hurling her to the floor like he did Ray. He began to stomp towards her. Seeing the blade land not far away from me, I attempted to run and grab it, only to be cut off when a deliriously enraged Happy Frannie ambushed me from my left, tackling me and pinning me to the floor. "Oh, and where do you think *YOU'RE* going, piggy?!" she shrieked. I felt her fingers wrap like ball pythons around my throat, trying to crush it. No matter how desperately I clawed at her face, I couldn't make her let go. It wasn't long, either, before her face started to blur in my vision. Fortunately, though, she wasn't so concerned with whether or not I was restrained completely because I managed to muster up enough strength to bring my feet up and under her stomach and shove her off of me. Surprising still was the fact that I'd managed to actually hurl her into the wall just half a foot behind her. I quickly recovered to my feet and made a break for Happy Bob. When I caught up to the two of them, I found that he had Liza cornered. "You've been a naughty little one, ain't ya, Lizzy?" he said, giggling insanely. I crept up from behind him, pulling out the blade. He stepped forward to grab Liza. Liza tried to back up further, but was stopped by the wall behind her. "Sorry, Liz, looks like there's no place else to run along to, is the--" Before he could finish, before he could grab and try to crush Liza with his bare hands, I bounded up and drove the blade right into Happy Bob's jugular. Like with Happy Jack-O, Happy Bob also began to wheeze desperately while rolling on the floor in agony. "Liza, quick! Run, get Ray and get out of here!" She nodded before scurrying away. Looking down, I saw that, despite the major blood loss, Happy Bob was actually still trying to get back on his feet. *Holy shit! How is this even possible!* Not willing to take any risks, I raised the blade high in the air again and proceeded to repeatedly stab Happy Bob, creating a bigger and bigger mess of blood splatter that was starting to spray all across the front of me. Finally, his attempts slowly became weaker and weaker until eventually the only movements of his body were the twitching of his arms and legs. Then he stopped moving altogether. I then made a break for the direction Liza and Ray ran toward when I was once again caught and thrown to the ground by Happy Frannie. Looking back into her eyes, They were wide, bloodshot, and wild. They were the eyes you'd see in a feral animal. She twitched violently as she stomped toward me. I quickly rolled away as her foot attempted to come down right where my face was. I started to book it again, running into the mirror maze. I'd hoped I could lose her there, possibly catching up with Liza and Ray along the way. Like before, I couldn't tell just how deep I was going into the maze. It didn't really matter -- not then, anyways. The only thing that really mattered to me in that moment was making it out of there with my life. As before, it was difficult for me to see anything or anywhere I was going. The lights decorating the mirror walls were dim, and with as clear, yet oblong shaped as the borders were -- not to mention just the sheer intensity of the situation itself flaring up at me, distorting my concentration -- and it wouldn't be hard to see why I say that I was in trouble here. Then the lights suddenly shut off completely. I froze. about two seconds later, I heard the sounds of a backup generator kicking in and the room went red. "So you wanna play hide-n'-go-seek, piggy?" I heard Happy Frannie's voice echo from seemingly every direction around me. I couldn't move. *Where is she? Where's she coming from?* "That's cool, I like this game, Hehehe!" Her echoed giggling made my heart jump worse than if I'd heard a cannon blast. I started looking around. *Where's the exit?!* As panic quickly began building up from the pit of my stomach, I heard the sound of a resounding *crash*, followed by the scattering of glass shards. "Little pig, little pig, come on out..." I heard coming from my right. That kicked me into high gear and I broke into a sprint to my left. That was until I heard another *crash* sounding from a little way up ahead of me. *What the fuck?! How did she... She was just behind me, how the hell did she break one from over there?!* *Crash* This one came from directly beside me at the left of where I was currently standing. Somehow, she was everywhere at once, like she was a ghost. I was trapped. There was nowhere I could run. Nowhere I could hide. "All around the HappyWorld," I heard her begin to sing. This was followed by the smashing of a mirror at my left. I swung my head to look, but I couldn't see her. "Frannie chased the piggy..." *Crash* This one came from behind me. I spun around to look. Nothing. *Oh God, where the fuck is she?!* "Piggy ran through the maze..." *Crash* This one was in front of me. She wasn't there. *Crash* This one came from the corner between the area to the front and to my right. I did the only thing I figured I could do and raised the knife I still had as defensively as I could manage. *Crash* This one was from the left of me again. *Fuck, I can't see her! Where is she?!* I couldn't help my knees from starting to buckle. This was only made worse when I heard her giggling echo throughout the room again. *Crash, crash, crash* I was spinning in circles. My heart was racing madly, on the verge of giving out. I couldn't see her, I couldn't see anything around me. *Oh God, what am I gonna do?! I'm gonna die! She's gonna get to me and I'm gonna die!* \*\*\* *"Smile with us Linus..."* *"Smile for Satan, Linus..."* *Go away! Get away from me!* *"Smile forever, Linus!"* *"We're always happy down here, Linus!"* *("Now you can be, too!")* *NOOOO!* *\*\*\** I was jolted from my trance when I felt a hand on my shoulder, shaking me. *Fuck, she's got me!* Out of sheer animal reflex, I thrusted the blade in the direction of where the hands came from. I didn't even see where the knife was going, having closed my eyes as I did this. I only opened them again when I felt the knife penetrate flesh, only to be faced with an even bigger horror. It was no clown I'd stabbed. It was... It was... *"A little piggy and his playmate..."* It was... *"I'm this dork-lord's sister..."* *(Oh Jesus, I'm sorry...)* It was Liza! She looked at me, her face frozen in confusion and horror as she desperately gasped for breath. I could only stare back, jaw hanging limp. Blood began running freely from the middle of her chest and every joint in my body just locked up. *Oh God... Oh fuck, oh God, no, no, no, no, no...* "L-L-L-Liza?!" I stammered. She could only reply with gasps and wheezes. Despite this, her eyes spoke for her. I could almost her it, her small voice, begging *"Why, Linus?"* "Liza! Oh God, Liza, no! No, no, no, stay with me!" I pulled the blade out and began trying to cover the wound to stop the bleeding. It was obviously no use, though. Blood ran right through the cracks between my fingers in rivers. She began convulsing violently, her eyes bulging more and more as she gasped harder and harder for air *(Just like her brother).* *"LIZA!"* I began to crumble into a meltdown as her body eventually relaxed again. She finally went limp and I watched her eyes glaze over. It was all over now. "Oh my God, dude, what happened?!" I heard from up ahead. I looked up to see Ray, standing in front of me, an expression of utter shock on his face. From ahead, I could hear multiple footsteps stomping towards us, followed by multiple voices shouting "Go around the back!" A few seconds later, I saw multiple police officers emerge from the space ahead. And like Ray, they, too were met with the sight of me huddling and sobbing over the lifeless body of Liza Cromwell, her blood on my hands. *(Just. Like. Derek's.)* I was escorted out of HappyWorld soon after that. As I was led to the police cruiser, all I could do was cry. It was over. Everything was over for me now. My life would be over, even if I wasn't dead yet. I remember wondering what would happen to me. I wondered if I'd be put in juvie or if they'd just skip that and send me straight to prison. I mean, I figured they'd not go *that* far, given that I was only twelve. But at the same time... I'd *killed* someone! *No... No, it-it was an accident! The clown, you were trying to protect yourself from the clown! It was the clowns...* *It was the clowns...* For at least the past thirty or so years, those words have repeated like a broken record in my head. It was what I told the police when I was questioned immediately following the incident. It was what I'd tell the courts three months later when I'd stand trial. It's what I've always told the doctors and the shrinks here at the institution after I was deemed mentally insane and was sentenced originally to 10 months in psychiatric care, which then became 12 months. Then 24. then 36. Eventually, it became clear that I wouldn't be leaving any time before I was already a grown man. Not as long as I still thought of them. As long as I still held to the belief that the clowns were the ones responsible. No one's ever believed me about them. Thing was, when they found me that morning in HappyWorld, having been called by my mother who'd reported my disappearance, they *only* found me. No one found where the clowns had gone. Let me rephrase, I said that no one believed me about the clowns -- which is mostly true -- except for Ray, of course. I know he believed my story. Except that you wouldn't have known that if you'd seen him at the trial. That's right, he hung me out to dry, claiming I'd been the one who'd set the whole thing up -- even so far as to say that I'd had an "unknown accomplice" to take pictures of Liza and kidnap the two of them. Why he said this, I honestly couldn't tell you, except maybe to keep himself from being thrown in the nuthouse along with me. As much as what he did costed me, I don't hate him. It's not like I was *really* any better, was I? I'd watched my friend get murdered, and then, just because I was afraid of not being believed, I kept my mouth shut about it. In turn, denying the Cromwells any real closure as well as making them targets. Because of me, an entire family is now gone. *("It was the clowns...")* This is it. This is where my story ends. I don't think it'll give me any "Catharsis" or whatever, but it's done. That was the last time I'd ever see "The home of Everlasting Smiles". It would also, just a year or two later, can't really remember when, be the last time I'd see my mother or father. They stopped coming to visit. Like with Ray, I guess I can't necessarily blame them, either. They deserve to forget about me, about their psycho-killer son. *("It was the clowns...")* Me, well... I don't think I'll be able to get over this. At least, not as long as I can still remember what happened. But, just like I did back then, I want to forget. I don't want to remember HappyWorld anymore. I want to be done with it. *To finally run away from it.* I'm going to be meeting with my psychiatrist again soon and when I do, it'll be to discuss the possibility of using electro-shock treatment. It may be possible for me yet to be rid of this. I'm going to leave this as a way of saying that it was my fault, but I wasn't a monster. Those clowns, The Amazing Beliar and his satanic jesters, they're real. They're still out there, too. They may not operate in HappyWorld anymore, as the site itself was bulldozed last year (I think they even converted it into a vacant parking lot), but they're still out there, somewhere. I'm hoping, though not expecting, that someone will believe me here. That way, at least The Amazing Beliar, the Devil ringmaster himself, won't have fully pulled off his greatest trick: convincing the world that he doesn't exist.

The Stolen Bodies Keep Smiling at me.

ya6wnq

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ya6wnq/the_stolen_bodies_keep_smiling_at_me/

The day is January 28th,. It’s been three weeks since this started. Three weeks was all it took to completely derail my entire life. It was a normal evening when I was just getting home from work. I’m a game designer for a horror indie studio, so as you could imagine, I was quite experienced with coming up with paranormal events and monsters to scare people. But I had no idea of the true limit of human fear yet. I was just about to get into bed when I thought I heard something groaning from the closet. But then I soon realized to myself that it was just my mind playing tricks on me after a long day in the studio. I woke up the next day to go eat breakfast with my coworker, and roommate, Tom sitting at the kitchen table. Tom and I were best friends since elementary school, and he seemed unusually happy that day. He greeted me in the morning while grinning like a Cheshire Cat “What’s with the smile, did something happen?” I asked Tom curiously “Oh nothing, John, just feeling great today. I read a book saying that smiling a lot helps your mood, and it seems to work.” Tom said, losing part of it but still grinning. “I see, Sorry for the randomness it just surprised me to see you up this early let alone with such a large ” Tom isn't the kind of guy to wake up early, he is usually in bed until noon at least and it's only nine in the morning right now. However, at the time I had brushed it all off as a fun new thing he was doing this week and that he would probably drop it like all the other random activities he's tried over the years. At the time I had forgotten about the groaning I’d heard last night and now that I'm writing this I wish that I hadn’t ignored it. Maybe it could’ve been stopped. It was a weekend that day and I was glad to have work off, I spent most of the day just hanging out with Tom and playing board games. It was a pleasant day away from electronics when I noticed something strange. A foul odor was emanating from upstairs. I had ignored it at first but It became almost overwhelming after a few hours. I had a splitting headache when I finally asked “Tom, do you smell that? The air is practically noxious here.” “I don't smell a thing, might need to get your nose checked” Tom replied jokingly to my question“Whatever you say, but I'm going to go crack a window,” I said lightheartedly as I stepped out of the room for a second. Towards the door and the source of the odor, I noticed that it seemed to loom from the hall leading into Tom’s room. I opened the window and before I walked back I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. Like something was very very wrong. As if there was something of great evil lurking behind the door causing this smell. It seemed silly at the time to think that but now. Looking back on the events I'm glad I checked because I shudder to think of what would’ve happened if I had ignored it. Not wanting to be caught snooping around I slowly cracked the door open to reveal a pitch-black bedroom. It was surprisingly messy, even for Tom’s standards. there was blood on the walls and shattered glass on the floor as if it was a warzone in here. The smell seemed to be the strongest in the area near the closet. I had a bad feeling about it, but curiosity got the better of me. I opened the door to reveal Tom’s body. He was dead and something had killed him. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the thing in our living room was not Tom. Something had done this to him and then replaced him. I rushed out the door to find a mutual friend of ours, Sydney. I grabbed the key to my car and drove like a bat out of hell down the road and to her house. I didn’t feel safe in my own house. At the time half my mind said to go back and confront it, but I knew better than that. This wasn’t a normal missing person situation, something supernatural was happening here. As I got to Sydney's place, I pounded on the door frantically. A few seconds later she swung it open “Hey, what are you doing?! You're going to break the door down if you keep that up!” She shouted “I’m sorry I'll explain in a minute but please let me in and lock the door, something happened to Tom” “Fine.” she let out as she closed the door behind me. She gestured toward the couch in her living room and I took a seat “So?” she questioned “Tom is gone, and something is taking his place,” I said as I let out a deep breath, I hadn’t had time to process since the incident and this was all a huge surprise to me at the time She sat up immediately, “Excuse me? What do you mean ‘Something’?” “As in, I found his body in the closet. But I saw him at the same time,” I said more frantically, “He was acting really strange when I saw him, almost as if it was a clone or a doppelganger.” “Are you ok?” she said questioningly as if she didn’t believe me, “Have you been sleeping well? Your mind is probably playing tricks on you,” she spoke with more empathy and calmness in her voice this time. “I’m not insane, you should’ve smelled the stench of it, it was vile,” I said tiredly. “If you don't believe me then please come look at it with me, though don’t say I didn’t warn you.” “Fine, if it’s so important to you then I will,” she said almost dryly. Some time passed as I walked up the stairs leading into the house slowly, and quietly. “What are you doing? Tom isn’t going to bite you, John,” She said walking up to the door, and knocking before opening the unlocked door, “Hey Tom, are you home? You left the door unlocked.” she projected with her voice raised. We didn’t get a reply. I was skeptical about this and more timidly walked inside after her. Though I must admit I felt a strange satisfaction when she admitted to the vile stench in the air. “What in the world is that?” she questioned, “It reeks like a corpse in here.” realizing the gravity of what she had while only half thinking “John you might be right about something, it smells horrid in here,” she said trying to lighten the mood. I walked down the hallway more quietly this time and I assumed she had started to believe me as she began taking more care to be near silent as well. I motioned for the door as I heard it. A loud groan came from inside as well as odd whispers that I couldn’t understand from outside. I was near losing my nerve as I whispered to Sydney “Grab something heavy.” She understood and picked up a metal toad that was sitting on a window sill as decoration. I slowly creaked the door open as she placed herself against the wall beside me. Even to this day, I’m not sure how to describe what I saw. It was a horrible creature, White as snow with long spike tipped arms and legs the length of grown men. Though its height was immense, it was a slender thing, with ribs peeking out from its exposed chest cavity. It wasn’t looking at us at the time and with a long neck, it turned its lumbering head completely around at us without moving its body. It was the worst thing I've ever seen. Its skin was stretched out on its face like pulled rubber with a wretched smile carved into its face where a mouth would be. Dozens of teeth protruded out from its gaping chasm-like mouth. Its eyes were almost vertical and stretched out. Just the image of this thing's face was enough to shock me. “Smile for me, John” it wretched those words from its grotesque maw as it moved its body over a fetid pile of strange skin-like material on the floor, it crawled towards us on all fours because it was too big to fit in the room. “RUN!” I shouted to Sydney. She and I booked it out of there as its awful warped face attempted to squeeze through the doorway. Its head popped out fairly easily but its long shoulders and arms had to force the wood to bend around it, and the awful squeaking as the oak bent around this thing’s sheer power. I got in the car and turned it on immediately. I waited for Sydney to get in before I slammed the gas as hard as I could. I tried to put as much distance between myself and that thing as possible. But as it got to the door of the house all I saw was tom waving at me with a dreadful smile. “What the hell was that?!” Sydney inquired, still horrified by the sight. “I have no idea” I responded “We should call the police, or animal control” Sydney posited to me. “No use, they might not be able to do anything and even if they could, why would they believe us, up until today monsters haven’t existed and we’d sooner be mocked than be given help,” I said almost frustrated “Look, It was just an idea, I have no idea how to stop it and figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask someone else” She quipped slightly offended “You’re right I’m sorry for snapping” I apologized. I asked her if it would be a good idea to head back to her house since it was getting dark out and I don't want to be caught by that thing if we can’t see it. Here in our hometown it gets very dark at night and foggy because of the humid air by the lake and the mountains in the distance. So being caught in a fog at night and with this thing blending it would be worse than any nightmare. So we raced to her place and made plans to try and sleep. She gave me some sheets and pillows and I slept on the couch by the glass door going to the backyard. I didn’t realize at the time that it was such a terrible idea, but I woke up somewhere around 3AM to see a stretched-out face held against the door by an impossibly long, crooked neck. Startled, I got up immediately and shut the curtains, and ran upstairs to wake Sydney. She was somehow already awake and understood the idea without any words being spoken, we both took one floor and shut all the windows, and locked all the possible entrances. With the house almost completely dark we both sat upstairs and tried to peer outside. It was so foggy we couldn’t even see the streetlights. We figured it would be safe to sleep a bit longer. But somehow, or for some reason, It didn’t go inside. Call it luck or call it fate, but It didn't break inside. I felt powerless in the face of it and I couldn’t help but feel like it was playing with me. As if it enjoyed watching me being tormented by it. Like I was a wild rabbit hiding in its burrow while a hunter stalked outside with a ready rifle. I went to Sydney to ask “Did you see it?” “Thankfully no, but I heard you shriek like a kid downstairs, which is what woke me actually,” She said half joking. It was lighthearted for sure but the small smirk on her face scared me. At this point, any emotion besides raw horror scared me, and fear became normal. It did explain why she was awake fairly well, though It still seemed off to me. “Don’t joke please” I spoke quietly “Oh come on,” she toyed, “ I was just trying to lighten the mood, you look like you’ve seen a ghost, John” she chuckled a bit after seeing the mix of emotions on my face. I didn’t yet realize what was to come. Though I knew she was acting strange, I chalked it up to both of us being in shock from what just happened as well as being woken up in the middle of the night. It took until nearly 2PM for the fog to clear. Which felt like days at the time. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary outside. Which is nice. However, it didn’t take long after inspecting the house to notice stretch marks on the window outside of Sydney's window. As if something was climbing in there when I shut the curtains. I didn’t think much of it, until the smell. It was back and coming from outside. I wandered out of the house and tried not to make a scene. I got near the garden when I smelled it. The same stench coming from the bushes. To save myself the shock I didn’t look as though I knew what it was. I couldn’t trust Sydney. I couldn’t trust anyone. I had gotten my car from the driveway and started the ignition and got out of there as fast as I could. I still remember that awful feeling of being watched from beyond my sight. I hated it and I drove and drove until I was out of town. I had stopped at a motel about a week ago after days of driving and I’ve been here ever since. As of right now, you're all caught up on the events of what happened. That you would be whoever is reading this. I’ve been planning on moving out of state. It’s a big country and I doubt anything would have followed me for this long so I think I’m safe for now. I write this story just in case anyone else is in my position. You’re not alone, and this has happened before. But recently, I feel like I’ve been being watched any time I go outside. There have been people grinning at me with soules blank eyes. But truth be told I’m tired of running, I'm going to confront this beast, and whatever you do, just don't trust the smiley. Hey, update, the date is January 29th. It’s been a day since I last wrote and I want to clarify something. My mind was simply playing tricks on me. There are no monsters and I was just tired. Tom came this morning to find me actually, and he was really worried. We drove back to town and we don’t plan on any more monster hunting for a long while. People smiling is a perfectly normal thing and not something to be worried about. You guys don't need to worry about me, I’ll be ok :)

Stain

yachp6

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yachp6/stain/

I need to quit my job, but I don’t think I’m allowed to. Over the summer, I injured my knee and it completely ended my volleyball career (I say career, but I was a benchwarmer at best). To save my mental state, I decided to move on from sports. This left me with a lot of free time on the weekends, and I’ve been meaning to redo my bedroom, so I needed some extra cash. I became a housekeeper for the neighbors. They were The Rich People™ in the neighborhood. Everyone knew them as a little… eccentric. The type of people to collect spoons and garden statues. But they were a seemingly sweet little old couple and they were offering to pay well. I took the job before anyone else could. It was a big house, so they couldn’t keep up with cleaning all of it. They had a landscaper and another housekeeper who did the top floor already, and they just needed someone to clean the ground floor and basement. They often rented out the place to other rich people who wanted to have parties without worrying about their collectors items getting broken or whatever. It wasn’t the most relaxing job ever, but I just turned on a podcast (my favorite is The Magnus Archives) and worked for a couple hours every other weekend. I’ve been cleaning here since the beginning of the school year in August, so a couple months now. Nothing has been out of the ordinary up until a couple weeks ago, at the beginning of October. I have a specific schedule I like to abide by when I’m cleaning. First, I do the entryway, then the dining room, then the sitting room, then the kitchen, then the hallway, then the bathrooms. I’m not allowed to go in the office. Next I do the basement. I start the laundry, dust some of the corners, and clean the bathroom down there. Surprisingly, it’s not too big of a basement compared to the rest of the house. I followed this schedule religiously, it was the quickest and most efficient way I’ve found. I went about my life following this routine every weekend, and so far I’ve earned about $200. This felt like a pretty permanent job, I wanted to keep it until I move out and go to college. Unfortunately, the first weekend of October is when things started to feel… off. It started small, with some of my cleaning supplies not being where they should have been in the closet. The upstairs housekeeper used the cleaning supplies upstairs so it would be easier, so I’m the only one who uses the downstairs closet. The supplies were rearranged, sometimes completely off the shelves, even the ones that were never needed. We don’t get earthquakes where I live, so it can’t be that. These incidents gradually became more and more concerning. For example, I would throw away a wad of paper towels and they would appear in the closet. I would stand in the hallway and look through the kitchen and the door to the office would be blown open despite being locked and the windows all being closed, papers and documents blowing around like a tornado passed through. They were all resignation letters. I read them. I know that is wrong of me, but I was curious. They had names, but no dates. What was the most concerning though, was a strange stain that showed up three weekends ago. The stain started out small. I assumed it was water damage or something, so I sent a text to the couple and thought nothing of it. Why was it concerning? Well, it grew. And grew. And grew. It was dripping an inky black liquid by the next weekend. One week ago, I lost my patience. The couple hadn’t gotten back to me and I’ve never seen that upstairs housekeeper even when our schedules must have lined up. I did something for the first and last time while working there. I went upstairs to find the source of that stain. There was a landing upstairs that stretched all the way to the back of the house. Dusty furniture and lint covered carpets covered the place. It makes sense now that I’m thinking about it. The closet was in the back left corner, so I made my way to the room above it. It was hard to breathe in the musty air, to be honest. I was coughing a lot, and the smell was awful. What’s strange is that the room above the closet didn’t have any dust on the knob. And the air was significantly clearer as I got closer to the room. I find that incredibly strange, considering what was in it. This next part is hard. Not hard to remember, just hard to think about. They were… horrific. I hate it, but it’s true. Five people. All dead. All unrecognizable. They were grotesque husks of what should have been their former selves. But they aren’t who they used to be. They were pinned to the walls by their wrists like handcuffs. Some of them were midair, some slumped against the walls. A black, inky substance that should have been blood was leaking from the wounds, eyes, mouth, and nose of a girl that was a couple years older than me. The stuff was dried and crusted to the others. I found the source of the stain. And I walked calmly through the landing. Down the stairs. Out the door. And to my house. What’s funny is that I didn’t feel anything until I was in my room. The feeling was fear mixed with morbid curiosity. I looked up the names from those resignation forms along with my town name. I tried the surrounding towns too. I couldn’t find anything. It was like they never existed in the first place. For some reason, I’m still going back there, for some reason. I looked in the office, there wasn’t anything else in there besides the five forms from the people in the room. All I know about them is their names. I want to quit, believe me. I need to quit. But I don’t think I can. Something tells me that if I try, I’ll end up in the room. The old couple have been around a lot more, and they’ve been watching me. Me and my every move. If I so much as glance up those stairs, they appear in a doorway, staring. I texted them when the stain appeared. Now it’s gone. I’m planning on quitting on New Years. If I don’t turn in a letter, maybe they won’t get me. They can’t kill me if I stop showing up, right?

How To Sell Your Haunted Mattress

y9opro

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9opro/how_to_sell_your_haunted_mattress/

​ It isn’t easy to sell a used mattress. Who wants to risk bringing an infestation of bedbugs into their home? Who wants to lay atop a stranger’s sweat, skin cells, and bodily fluids? *Who wants to sleep in the place where another person might have died…maybe even died horribly?* It isn’t easy to sell a used mattress, but it’s *especially* hard to sell a *haunted* mattress– Wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. It all started with my ex, Amanda. It’s normal to have a shouting match during a breakup, maybe it’s even normal to break things in the process– But using a knife to carve up everything your partner owned, from their artwork to their couch? I call that *crazy.* I suppose I was lucky that I wasn't at home when Amanda shredded my stuff and left. If I had been, I might have gotten myself as neatly sliced up as my mattress was. Walking through my bedroom door was like walking into an explosion at a stuffing factory. After that first agonizing night of sleeping on the floor, I nearly nodded off while driving my forklift at work. I couldn’t afford to wait any longer. I bought the cheapest used mattress I could find online (before she left, my ex had done a hack job on my bank account as well). The seller, a guy with a smoky southern accent about twice my age, even offered to drive it to my place. He looked about how I expected when he showed up that evening: white tank-top, grizzly gray stubble, tired eyes. The mattress seemed in good condition, not at all stained or yellowed–and for that I was grateful. The old codger barely said a word; he just helped me unload the mattress, counted the forty-nine dollars I’d handed him, and drove off, lost in his own thoughts. Sure, his behavior was odd, but I was just happy to have something soft to sleep on. Discount pillows, a second-hand mattress, and thrift-store sheets. It wasn’t perfect–and slashed-up reminders of Amanda were still stacked around my apartment–but having a place to sleep made me feel like I was finally getting my life back together. Or at least it *did*, until I lay down on my *‘new’* mattress and closed my eyes. The mattress was neither too soft nor too hard; there were no lumps or pits. It was clean and comfortable, but it felt *old*–like I could smell the dust of decades on it. I wondered, chuckling, if I might have just bought my first featherbed. It was the last time I laughed for a long time. As I was nodding off, I had the strangest feeling that the mattress was *moving* beneath me. Undulating, like gentle waves. Something crawling or snapping would have woken me in a heartbeat, but this was different; it was actually relaxing. Soon, however, the feeling became anything but comfortable. It was like I was drowning in those fabric *‘waves.’* My eyes snapped open, and I realized with horror that the cloth of the mattress had nearly covered my hands, ankles, and neck. It was like it was trying to eat me alive! I tore myself free and pressed my back against the wall, panting…but the moonlight pouring through my bedroom window shone down on a perfectly ordinary mattress. *Or did it*? I’d swear that beneath the wrinkled sheets I saw a ripple of movement. All I could hear was my thundering heartbeat. I took a long drink of cold water, and while I did, I kept one eye on the mattress. I couldn’t say why, but I felt like at any moment some awful thing would rise up from beneath those sheets. On one hand, I told myself that there was no way I could go back to sleep after what had just happened. On the other hand, I had to work in the morning. With a sigh, I lay back down–*carefully.* Nothing writhed beneath the fabric. I wasn’t suddenly sucked into a feathery black hole. Not even the box spring squeaked. Everything was fine until the moment I fell asleep. They were hands. I hadn’t wanted to believe it at first, but I couldn’t deny it any longer: hands made of impossibly solid cloth were pulling me into the mattress, suffocating me. The light of my bedroom got smaller and smaller as the fabric closed around my face. It was like being buried alive. With an effort that made all my underused muscles cry out in torment, I bit into the mattress with my teeth and twisted my torso out onto the floor. I was drenched with sweat…but the mattress looked no different than it had the moment I bought it. It sat there, still and silent, like it was mocking me with its normalcy. I groaned and dragged myself out to the main room of my apartment, where I stuffed a pillow beneath my head and tried to sleep on the rough, scratchy carpet. It was impossible. Every time I closed my eyes, I could imagine how it would happen. My bedroom door would creak open. Some white, vaguely human thing–like a mortuary corpse draped in cloth–would hover silently out of my bedroom. Maybe I’d even be able to see its rotting feet dangling beneath its shroud. It would drift toward me without waking me–not until it had me where it wanted me: with its dead hands around my throat. Crushing my neck into the carpet with otherworldly hate until it put me to sleep for good– *What the hell was happening to me?* I decided to try my ex’s technique and make a cut–*just a tiny one*–in the top of the mattress. I told myself that I could always repair it later, and anyway…I *had* to know. I felt myself trembling as I approached the mattress. The moonlight streaming through by blinds made the room ghost-pale, but clear enough to see. Would the mattress scream when I cut into it? Would it bleed? Would hundreds of fabric hands burst out to grab me? The silver blade slid easily into the cloth. Peering inside, I could see that it was stuffed with feathers, just as I’d thought. Not a single corpse. I went to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. My shift was starting in a couple hours, and based on my reflection in the mirror, *I* was the closest thing to the living dead in *this* apartment. Sleep deprivation is no joke. I lost count of the number of times throughout the day I almost caused a major accident–loading a pallet of DVD crates at a bad angle, not noticing a foreman behind me while I was backing up–but what could I do? Call in sick with a bad case of the creeps? At best I’d be laughed at, at worst I’d be fired…and I could *not* afford to lose this job. I decided I’d give the mattress one more try. Maybe the dreams had been caused by lingering stress from what happened with my ex Amanda. Maybe they’d been caused by indigestion. What was it that Scrooge had said that Charles Dickens story we’d had to read in high school? *‘There’s more of gravy than of grave about you?!’* Whatever it was, I couldn’t throw away a good deal without being sure. I was so exhausted that no amount of lingering fear could keep me awake. The moment I got home, I fell down on top of the mattress face-first and drifted into a dreamless sleep. *The inability to breathe*. That’s what woke me. And the feeling of fabric fingers pulling my neck downward into the pillow, smothering me. I screamed, grabbed at them to pull them off–and was amazed by how *human* those lifeless cloth hands felt. Once again, I slithered out of my mattress’ grip…and once again, it seemed normal the moment I’d left it. I couldn’t take anymore of this. I stripped off the sheets and single-handedly dragged the mattress down the three-A.M. hallway, ignoring the angry protests of my neighbors as its heavy bulk bounced along their walls. There was no way I was letting that damned thing spend another minute in my apartment. I heaved it out onto the curb, wiped my hands on my pajama pants, and trudged back up the stairs–where I tried once again to sleep on the floor. The moment I nodded off, however, they were back: hands rising out of the carpet. Grappling, crushing, strangling– I pushed myself up from the floor. Nowhere in the apartment felt safe. Whatever had been haunting that mattress…now it was haunting *me.* And until I freed myself from it, falling asleep would be deadly. I decided to start my investigation at the source: the old geezer who’d sold me the damned mattress in the first place. Luckily, I still had his contact information from the delivery. He didn’t answer my first two calls, but the third time I got lucky. *“Yeah?”* a husky voice rasped into the receiver. “This is the guy you sold that mattress to. We need to talk.” “Whadya want? *Do you have any idea what time it is?!* Fuckin’ punk…” “Did you sleep on it or not? I need to know. Before you sold that mattress to me, did you sleep on it?” “I…” the old man stammered like a kid who’d been caught in a lie. “I…well, no…I found it. In the apartment of a tenant. Ex-tenant, I guess I should say. Fucker disappeared. Left everything behind,” the old man spat, “just vanished. That’s the problem with you young people. You got no reliability, no roots–” The geezer kept rambling, but I wasn’t listening. I thought I had a good idea of how his ex-tenant had \*‘just vanished’–\*and if I wasn’t careful, the same thing might happen to me. “Any idea where he got it?” I grunted, fighting back a yawn. “What’s with you and that mattress? Does it have bedbugs or somethin’? I swear, if I have to fumigate that fucker’s apartment–” the old man groaned. “Look, I didn’t even know the guy. He probably bought the damn thing from some stranger online. Just like you.” *Click.* *A dead end*, I thought, and laughed morbidly. I was swooning from tiredness, but I didn’t dare to sit down; if I did, I might fall asleep. I peered out the blinds. The mattress was still out there, propped against the dumpster. An idea occurred to me. I rushed out to inspect it, searching for a tag, a sticker, anything that might suggest where it had come from. Sure enough, there was a hard rectangle of canvas stitched onto its side. The original printing was illegible, but a name and address had been scribbled over it in faded blue ink: *Lucy Delacroix* *1142 Birch Dog Avenue* *\[City and State Redacted\]* Had I stumbled upon the address of the original owner? I chugged cup after cup of gas-station coffee on the drive to Cleburne. I kept the radio turned up loud and the windows down, hoping that chilly predawn air and crackling static would keep me awake until I reached my destination. By the time I drove into town, a bright sunrise had made the grim sky a little less gray–but not by much. Cleburne looked as rusty and forgotten as the overgrown railroad that ran through it. 1142 Birch Dog Avenue was a house that had been old and eloquent once. Now it was as derelict as everything else in town. Wind chimes jingled ominously and a screen door slammed every time the breeze blew, but otherwise there wasn’t a single sign of life in the place. I checked my reflection in the mirror. With my unhealthy pallor, baggy red eyes, and greasy windblown hair, I looked like a junkie out for a fix. I sighed, rang the doorbell–and hoped that Lucy Delacroix was an early riser. “Oh…can I help you?” the young woman who answered the door asked politely. I instantly felt guilty, a feeling that only worsened when I heard the baby crying and a hound dog howling in the background. I’d woken up the whole household…and apparently this young woman was going to have to take care of all of them. “Lucy Delacroix?” I ventured. “Umm,” the young woman muttered, “I’m *Donna* Delacroix. Lucy Delacroix was my great-aunt. I think. But we’re not supposed to talk about her. Umm,” she glanced over her shoulder toward where the baby was wailing. “Do you wanna come in? This’ll just take a minute.” While Donna rushed off to take care of the baby and the dog, I settled into a saggy couch beside the window. I should have known that was a mistake. Donna took more than a minute, and I felt myself start to doze. It was a nightmarish feeling, watching it happen yet being unable to stop it. *One breath.* My eyes blinked shut. When I opened them again, a horrific figure was floating past the cardboard boxes in Donna Delacroix’s hallway. Long yellow toenails and moldering feet dangled beneath the bedsheet that draped it. *Two breaths.* My eyes stayed closed a little longer. The thing drifted closer. The ugly pea-green couch cushions rearranged themselves, sucking me in. The thing beneath the sheet lifted up its arms like a cultist offering a sacrifice to some hateful forgotten god–and hands of cloth reached up from the couch to hold me in place. *Three breaths.* A cord of upholstery slithered around my neck, cutting off my air. I was awake now, but it was too late. The thing beneath the sheet was close enough that I could smell its decay, even make out the shape of its rotting eyeless face beneath the fabric. The chord squeezed tighter– “Umm, mister?” Donna called out. “You alright?” My eyes snapped open. With disgust, I flung away the frayed golden cord that had been strangling me. “You look like you seen a ghost.” “H-ha, yeah.” I choke-laughed. Donna Delacroix had brought out two steaming mugs of coffee, and a mopey-looking hound dog hid behind her heels. “Fuck…” I coughed “...I mean, I must look like a nutcase. You must have a lot of faith in people to let me in here.” “Not really,” Donna shrugged, and I caught the glint of a .38 revolver in her apron pocket. “But I figure anyone who comes ‘round here with questions about Lucy Delacroix is somebody I wanna have a nice long chat with.” “W-w-why’s that?” I coughed. The coffee was terrible and scaldingly hot, and had the effect of making me choke even more. “Earlier you said you weren’t supposed to talk about her.” “Well, she was sorta the black sheep of the family.” Lucy got a distant look in her eyes as she watched the sky lighten over the desolate red-brick town outside her window. “Lucy was my granddad’s wild younger sister. I only know bits and pieces of the story myself, but apparently she was a…” Lucy looked around like she expected to see the necks of nosy neighbors craning around the doorway “...a *prostitute.* Ran off with some flashy guy from the big city who turned out to have mob connections, and when she tried to leave…he…umm…*he strangled her in her sleep.*” “That’s awful!” I exclaimed. Donna nodded. “Course, word had got around town by the time they shipped her body back to Cleburne. You from the city, mister?” I nodded. Donna went on. “Thought so. Might be hard to wrap your head around it, but in a small town like this one, reputation is everything. How can you trust a man who can’t manage his own family to manage a business? Or pay back a loan? Or be your child’s father-in-law? See where I’m goin’ with this? My granddad saw Lucy’s memory as this big dark cloud hangin’ over the family, and he wanted it gone. Didn’t even give her a Christian burial. Just dumped her in an unmarked hole in the family plot behind the church.” Donna Delacroix sipped her coffee sadly. Her eyes narrowed. “Who’d you say you were, again?” “I, uh, I think I might have something that used to be hers. That’s why I’m here.” “I’d love to see anything of Lucy’s!” Donna exclaimed. “It’s like I never really got to know her, you know? She’s like this missing puzzle piece of the past that I’ve never been able to fill in, and–” “It’s just a mattress.” I cut her off quickly. “Oh.” Donna frowned. “So why–” “Look.” I leaned forward, “If *you* were Lucy, how would *you* feel about what happened?” “Well I dunno about you,” Donna stared into the dregs of her coffee thoughtfully, “But if *I* was her, I’d be furious\*.\* I figure I’d be mad at the whole world.” “That’s what I think, too.” I nodded. “Do you think you could meet me around the spot where Lucy is buried in about four hours or so? I’d like to do your family a little favor.” “I gotta take the baby for a walk anyway, so yeah.” Donna hesitated. “But mister–are you sure this is about a mattress?” I didn’t answer. I was already out the door. I had eleven missed calls from work, but I could deal with that later. What was important now was slapping my face with my right hand while I drove with my left. What was important was finding someplace I could buy a simple pre-made grave marker and get a small brass plaque engraved. I knew it would be expensive, but cleaning out what was left of my bank account was a small price to pay to avoid being slowly suffocated for all eternity in some gloomy underworld. Donna Delacroix met me around four P.M. in a church graveyard that was, unsurprisingly, only about four blocks away from her house. I saw the gravestones of the Delacroix family going back generations–and one patch of dead grass without a marker. The truck of the stonemason I’d found a few towns over rumbled outside the cemetery gate. “This where you want the rush job?” The stonemason asked. I nodded. “You sure are payin’ a pretty penny for someone who’s been dead for, what? Sixty years?” “She deserves to be remembered.” Donna said defensively, bouncing her daughter on her hip. I agreed. The stonemason shrugged, blew a bubble with his gum, and got to work. When it was all over, I parked in the shade of an old sycamore tree beside the cemetery, reclined the driver’s seat as far back as possible, and slept the sleep of the dead– If it's true that the dead sleep well. I couldn’t say for sure, but no grasping hands or strangling cords came for me while I dozed, and no nightmarish visions of sheet-draped ghouls haunted my dreams. I hope that’s because the spirit of Lucy Delacroix is finally at peace– But that’s nothing more than a hope…because when I finally got back to my apartment, I could see that Lucy’s mattress was gone. The dumpsters were still full, which could only mean one thing: someone had picked it up off of the curb. Maybe they’re sleeping peacefully on it right now, unaware of its twisted history. Maybe. Or maybe they’ve already disappeared, dragged to the underworld by an angry spirit whose anger at the world hasn’t yet been quenched. I honestly don’t know. But if I were you, I wouldn’t sleep in any bed that wasn’t mine. *Not unless I knew where it had been.* [X](https://www.reddit.com/r/beardify)

Always check the trunk of your rental car

y9unx3

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9unx3/always_check_the_trunk_of_your_rental_car/

When my uncle passed away and his son reached out to me for help - I didn’t hesitate a moment. Because you do for the family. After a short flight and all the airport shenanigans - I was driving to his house in a rather comfy Hyundai hatchback. ​ An hour later, as I parked the car in the house garage - we were sitting in the living room with Dan, discussing the work yet to be done. My uncle Ron, unfortunately, was quite a compulsive hoarder, so piles and piles of various junk were scattered all around the place. ​ After finishing our coffee we grabbed the garbage bags and started our Operation Declutter. According to Dan - he had no plans for this house. ​ “Appreciate you coming, Jack. I wouldn’t be able to clear this mess on my own. I’ll start from the master bedroom and you can take the closet. Pick anything that revives your memories of him or days spent here” - he said. ​ The plan was to clean the place and toss the whole thing to a realtor, picking out the valuable things in the process. Easier said than done - the house was a complete waste dump. Loads and loads of spare parts to some machinery, stacks of outdated newspapers, gift wrappings, and empty plastic cups filled with screws and bolts. And that was just me opening the door. The junk spilled out and covered the floor beneath my feet. ​ And you think we could roll up our sleeves and finish it within an hour or two, but no. For example - one of the cups, full of rusted nails contained uncle Ron’s engagement ring. And I found his birth certificate among the pages of an ancient TV magazine. So yeah it took time. By lunch, we barely scratched the surface and decided to take a break. Luckily there was an Indian restaurant down the road, so we ate up and why the hell not - grabbed ourselves some beer. ​ Then the work continued. Junk, junk, dried leftover food stashed in an old washing machine, cobwebs, and mummified roaches. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to be there. I could almost see the back wall of the room, as I realized that I’d been doing this for 6 hours straight. My stomach confirmed that by producing some growling sounds. Time to eat! ​ “Hey, Dan! I’ll get us some burgers, or something. Any wishes?” - I shouted across the floor. “Nah. I’ll have the same as you. Thanks!” - he replied, struggling with something heavy in the bedroom. ​ And so I went down to the garage, turned out the light, and noticed that the trunk was open. That was strange, but I didn’t give it a second thought. Maybe Dan was checking out the capacities, calculating how many trash bags can we put in or something. I didn’t close the car, because why would I? Also, I noticed that the insides of the trunk were scratched a bit as if the previous guy was transporting a roll of barbed wire here. And I guess they didn’t check it when he returned the car. I made a note to myself to make sure I won’t be charged for this and went out. ​ 45 minutes later I returned and grabbed the brown bag with the food from the car. ​ “Hey, Daaaan. Dinner’s ready!” - I shouted. ​ But there was no response. Just a sound of shuffling as if he was trying to move a wardrobe. So I put the food on the kitchen table and went up to check on him and repeat my announcement. ​ “Dan! I say - the meal is ready. You need a hand, buddy?” - I said opening the door to the bedroom. The dread feeling of terror kicked me in the guts, as I saw what was behind it. There, on scattered clothes and papers - Dan was lying, shaking in convulsions. The walls around, the floor, even the ceiling - was covered with numerous splatters of blood. The urge to rush forward emerged but died as quickly when I saw the full picture. Atop my cousin, a skinny figure was sitting. Its arms and legs were so thin, I didn’t notice it first in the dimmed lights of the bedroom. ​ Its head was pushed towards Dan’s face, while its arms tore his chest digging down his flesh. And the sound, oh my god, that sound. The sound of that monster sucking out my cousin’s blood was accompanied by his muffled moans. Dan’s hands twitched, trying to grab something helplessly. ​ I didn’t think twice. Just grabbed the first thing that was next to me, which luckily happened to be a piece of steel pipe, left by my compulsive uncle. The next couple of moments became an eternity. All I remember is just the pipe moving up and down, up and down again. Until the creature lost all features it could be recognized by. Just mince meat by the side of my dying cousin. I made sure that the horrible being doesn’t show any signs of life and rushed to Dan. ​ “Man, look at me, look at me” - I said holding him. “It’s all gonna be alright, you hear me?”. I chaotically tried to find the phone in my pockets with the other hand. “Shit, don’t you dare die on me”. ​ His vision cleared for a moment. He looked me in the eyes as if he was trying to say something. ​ “Hold up, Dan. Hold up!” - I said - “You’re gonna make it”. Though I realized that it’s not an option with wounds like these. And Dan… He still tried to say something. ​ So I pushed my ear towards his lips to hear his last words. What he said turned my blood into ice. With a shaking voice, gurgling on spitting each word out he said: “There.. Are.. More.. Of.. Em…”. ​ And at the very same moment, I heard rustling sounds around. As if something was hiding in the piles of junk in the neighboring rooms, watching me, waiting for me to turn my back on them. ​ I didn’t think straight - maybe if I rushed out of the house I would have a chance. Maybe not - I don’t know what those freaks are capable of. So I smashed the door to the bedroom and barricaded it with furniture and heavier trash. ​ I’m trapped: there are grates on the window, my phone is probably in the car or on the kitchen table and those abominations keep scratching on the door and walls. ​ I found my uncle’s old laptop. It’s so old it won’t open most of the web pages. I sent an email to the local police station, ambulance, and firefighters. I hope they will see it before it’s too late. Luckily Reddit is loading too, so if you are reading this - I’m in Oakhurst, Williams Str. 33. Call the authorities. Please help me. I don’t have much time.

I Found An Old Cassette Tape In An Abandoned Mental Institution. I Never Should Have Listened To It.

y9glaa

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9glaa/i_found_an_old_cassette_tape_in_an_abandoned/

Me and my friends Jordan, Ashley and Sam are urban explorers in our free time. You're probably familiar with the type of stuff we do, but in case you're not, we go around exploring abandoned locations, record it on our phones and upload the videos on YouTube. Old abandoned warehouses, amusement parks, industrial complexes, you name it, we've done it. It's a fun hobby, but it can be scary -- not to mention dangerous. Some of the places we've explored are condemned structures so dilapidated they look like a strong wind would knock them down. You have to be careful navigating those places and constantly stop to inspect your surroundings. You never know when a rotted stairway might give way under your feet or a rusted catwalk might collapse and send you plunging fifty feet to a hard concrete floor. Not to mention there's always the possibility of running into some strung-out drug addict or crazy homeless person squatting there. Plus, what we do isn't exactly legal. We've had some close calls. Once a security guard chased us out of a deserted factory and another time someone actually called the cops on us. Luckily the guy wasn't too much of a hardass and he let us go with a warning. You probably think we're stupid or crazy to do what we do, and maybe you're right, but that's just the way we are. We enjoy the thrill of it. Two weeks ago Sam got a tip on a new place that seemed like primo material for our next video; especially with Halloween approaching. An old, crumbling mental hospital in the next county. It had been built in the late 1800s and had been abandoned for thirty years or so, the early 90's I believe, and had a pretty sordid past. Supposedly it was shut down after some kind of scandal involving an investigative reporter who went undercover as a patient and uncovered all kinds of abuse and neglect on the part of the staff. There were even rumors that the doctors were conducting all kinds of fucked up secret experiments on the patients. None of that is substantiated, of course, it's just the type of typical bullshit urban legends that spring up around a place like that. The official story is the hospital was closed due to the government cutting their funding for "budget reasons." According to Sam, the place was scheduled to be demolished soon in order to put up an apartment complex so this was probably our only chance to check it out. So last weekend the four of us hopped into Jordan's old Mazda and made the two-hour drive out there. The institution was located in a relatively rural area on the outskirts of a city. As soon as it came into view we knew we wouldn't be disappointed. A forbidding gray stone building, four stories tall, with narrow barred windows, stood in the middle of a sprawling, heavily overgrown lawn behind a high, rusted chain-link fence with razor wire coiled over the top. The main gate was adorned with a faded NO TRESSPASSING sign marked with a couple .22 bullet holes, and secured with a thick chain and heavy padlock, but after a few minutes of poking around, Ashley found a place in the fence where some intrepid explorer before us had snipped a decent-sized hole through the chain-link, probably with a bolt-cutter. We slipped through it easily, then made our way up the long, overgrown driveway towards the main building. The closer we got, the more creeped out I started to feel. The immense stone building seemed to loom over us, its imposing facade almost resembling a scowling face with many narrow, barred eyes that stared coldly down at the four intruders approaching it. The main entrance doors had been nailed shut at one point, but someone, presumably the same person who had cut a hole in the fence, had pried off the sheet of plywood that had once covered them, and they stood wide open...like the gaping mouth of a beast getting ready to swallow its prey whole. We paused for a couple minutes, still about twenty yards away, so that Sam could film Jordan standing in front of the institution as he did a brief intro. Then we closed the remaining distance, all of us with our phone cameras on and recording, and entered the decrepit building. We were in the main lobby/reception area. The floor was littered with all kinds of debris and trash; dead leaves that had blown in through the open doors, empty beer cans, fast food wrappers, cigarette butts, you name it. Presumably stuff that had been left over by kids using the building as a hang-out spot and homeless people looking for a place to get drunk and crash for the night. The walls were marked with graffiti. A bedpan, one of those old-school steel ones, stood on the reception desk. None of us dared approach it for a closer inspection. We looked around for a while, and eventually found the main stairway, standing next to the long-dead elevators (no electricity). We went upstairs to explore the second story. It was the hospital's administrative wing. Offices, mostly. Honestly, there wasn't much interesting in most of them. The place had been pretty thoroughly cleared out when the institution was shut down and all that remained were some empty filing cabinets and discarded pieces of ancient office equipment. In the Hospital Director's office, a cardboard shoebox stood open on the otherwise bare desk. I peered inside and saw it contained a number of old audio cassette tapes, still in their cases. I flipped through them out of curiosity. There were a couple dozen of them. They had various names and dates carefully printed on the labels. I didn't know what they were, but Sam suggested that maybe they were recordings of therapy sessions with former patients. I grabbed one at random and threw it in my pocket to take back with me, just as a souvenir. Then we continued our investigation, filming anything we found that looked even remotely interesting. Truthfully, the whole trip was kind of a letdown. There wasn't much to see or film. The top two floors were patient rooms, but they were almost all vacant except for a couple rusted bed frames, more litter and an occasional graffiti artist's tag. The place didn't even have a particularly sinister or creepy ambience once you were inside; there were no operating tables spattered with dried blood or rusted surgical implements, not even a spooky abandoned wheelchair standing in one of the corridors. The institution had been minimum-security when it had been in operation, so it wasn't like there had been any especially violent or dangerous patients kept locked up there. In other words, there was no dungeon ward in the basement where the likes of Hannibal Lecter had been imprisoned safely away from the general population. It could have been an abandoned office building for all the atmosphere it generated. After about an hour we decided to call it quits. Jordan filmed the outro, apologizing to the audience for the video being such a disappointment, then we left, got back into our car, and drove home without incident. I went on with my normal routine and had pretty much forgotten all about our exploration of the mental hospital until Wednesday morning when I was getting ready to leave for work. I couldn't find my car keys, which I typically carried in my pants, and was desperately hunting my apartment for them in a rush to not be late. I searched for them in my jacket pocket, not finding them but instead the cassette tape I had swiped from the institution. I had completely forgotten all about it. I had other priorities at the moment so I just tossed it on my desk for the time being and went on with my search. I eventually located my keys -- they had slipped out of my pants and found their way under the cushions of my couch -- and got to work only a couple minutes late. That evening, when I got home, I spotted the cassette on my desk, and after dinner, decided to give it a closer inspection. It was one of those ninety-minute jobs that fit into a full-sized portable tape recorder. Carefully printed on the label by hand in faded black ink were the words "Bennet, Michael." And a date. "8/17/91." Intrigued, I went into the garage and dug around until I found my dad's old recorder. I popped in some new batteries then inserted the cassette. I wasn't sure if either the recorder or the tape would still function after all this time but figured it was worth a try. I plugged a pair of earbuds into the recorder, put them on, then pressed the Play button. For a few seconds there was only a hissing sound. Then a dry, clinical man's voice spoke in a professional monotone. The audio quality was still surprisingly clear and only slightly degraded even after thirty years. "Patient 67531, Bennet, S. Michael. Session number seven. Session being conducted by Doctor Eugine Winters at two P.M. on August 17th, 1991." There were a few seconds of hissing silence, then the audio resumed. At first the only sound was a man's heavy, slightly uneven breathing. Then the professional, clinical voice from before, the doctor, spoke. "How are you feeling today, Michael?" The ragged breathing continued. There was no answer. "Michael?" A second voice spoke. It sounded like it belonged to a younger man. The voice was agitated and tight with suppressed emotion; the voice of a man in turmoil struggling to maintain his composure. "What the fuck do you care how I feel? What does it matter, anyway? There's nothing you can do. All you do is ask me the same goddamn questions over and over again, every single time." The emotion behind those words could have been rage...or something else. "It's an integral part of your therapy, Michael. We have to get to the root of whatever is the source for your mental distress in order to give you the necessary treatment you require so that you can function normally again and return to society--" "BULLSHIT!" the younger man interrupted with a shout. "You're just playing with my fucking head, like all the other shrinks did! To you I'm just another freak you can play your little mind games on, some nut you can exploit to get published in all the bigshot medical journals!" The doctor spoke softly. "I'm only trying to help you, Michael." A contemptuous snort. "There's nothing you can do to help me, Doc. There's nothing anyone can do." There was anger in the voice, but something else, too. Fear. "Please, Michael, you have to work with me if you want to get out of here. You refused to tell the other doctors what you're so afraid of. What causes you to wake up in the night screaming. Why don't you tell me, Michael? Tell me what you've been so scared of all these years." Several moments of silence. Then the man spoke. All the rage was gone from his voice...but the fear remained. He spoke with defeated resignation. "Fine. I'll tell you. Just so I can tell someone and finally get it out. You'll think I'm crazy, but everyone already does. That's why I'm in this loony bin. Why the fuck not?" He chuckled humorlessly. He took a few seconds to gather himself before he began. "Do you know what it's like to live your whole life knowing the worst thing you could ever know, Doctor? The worst thing anyone could *ever* know? Do you know what it's like to live every... single... moment in pure terror?" "Terror of *what*, Michael?" "What if you could see things that other people couldn't? Things that people weren't *meant* to see, know things humans weren't meant to know? *I* can see these things, Doctor. It started when I was eight or nine. That's when I first began seeing *them*." "Them?" the doctor asked. "The Forgotten Ones. That's what I call them. They call themselves the Ancient Ones, or the Originals." "What are they, Michael, these...Forgotten Ones?" "People talk about hauntings, about seeing ghosts. You hear about it all the time. Some people even claim to be able to communicate with them, channel them, for a living. Spiritualists, psychics, whatever you want to call them. Most of them are full of bullshit. Frauds. But *maybe* a few are the real thing. But psychics deal with dead *people*. Human ghosts." The man paused to let out a shaky sigh. "If it was the ghosts of people, I might be able to cope with that. Maybe I could have gotten used to it and come to accept it with time...but the Forgotten Ones are *not* human. And they never were." "Go on, Michael, I'm listening," the doctor urged him. "They're old. Very, *very* old. They died long before mankind ever existed on the Earth. But before they died, they lived here for a long, long time. The planet is billions of years old, Doc. And human beings have only been around for a couple million. Do you honestly think ours was the first civilization to ever exist? That no one was here before us? They were the original rulers of Earth. They've been dead for hundreds of millions of years, long before even the dinosaurs came along. But their spirits are still here. They always have been. Invisible to us. Watching us. There is no afterlife, you see. No heaven, no hell. When you die, your spirit is just stuck here, forever. The Forgotten Ones saw the human race evolve. They saw our civilization rise. And they hate us. They've always hated us. They see us as intruders. Invaders. Thieves who took the world that was once theirs for ourselves." "I see," the doctor interjected patronizingly. "Yeah, sure you do," the man muttered cynically. "What do these Forgotten Ones look like, Michael?" "You don't want to know," the man replied in a strained, trembling voice. "They're monstrous. Beyond description. And so full of rage. And envy. And vengeance. I know all this because they tell me." "They communicate to you?" the doctor asked. "Oh yes. All the time. They know I can see them. I can't understand what they're saying when I'm awake. They speak in their own language. But when I'm asleep, they come to me in my dreams. And *then* I can understand. The Forgotten Ones hate us, but they can't harm us. They can't touch us, because they're ghosts and we're alive. We're safe from them....as long as we're alive. But when we die...When our spirits separate from our mortal bodies and we cross over into their realm...then it's payback time." There was a long pause. The doctor said nothing to break the silence. The man resumed. "Whoever came up with the notion of hell, of demons, of tortured souls in eternal damnation, maybe they caught a glimpse of what the Forgotten Ones do to the spirits of the dead." That was where the recording ended. The audio cut off and the hissing silence resumed. I listened for a couple more minutes but there was nothing else. Then I turned off the recorder, ejected the cassette tape and just sat staring at it for a long time, disturbed by what I had just listened to. Out of curiosity I entered 'Michael S. Bennet' and the name of the mental hospital into Google and did a search. I found an obituary in a local newspaper for a Michael Samuel Bennet. He had died on November 11, 1994 at the age of 31, but the obit didn't say how. I did a bit more digging and found a newspaper article about his death. He had died alone in his apartment of liver failure after a long struggle with alcohol addiction. There was a picture of a man with a gaunt face and dark, haunted eyes. I couldn't find anything to suggest that he had had a history of mental health issues or had ever been a patient of the institution. Maybe his family had wanted to keep that out of the paper. Or maybe the hospital records had been kept confidential. Maybe it wasn't even the same guy. The things that guy said on the tape still creep me out. He sounded so convinced, so sincere about the things he claimed to be able to see... I tell myself I'm making a big deal out of nothing, that what I had heard had been nothing but the rambling, paranoid delusions of an extremely disturbed mental patient, and that's all it is, right? That's all it *can* be... Right?

I'm a ghost. I've been trying to outwit a ghost hunter for three months. All ideas welcome.

y9rlon

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9rlon/im_a_ghost_ive_been_trying_to_outwit_a_ghost/

I’m using my ghost-hunter friend’s computer while he’s sleeping, so hopefully he can’t figure out what I’m doing. If you are reading this, though **(Dennis’ Note: I am)**, make sure your cat doesn’t mess with the salt lines around your computer. You’re slipping **(Dennis’ Note: Just because you put tuna near the salt lines so he’d walk through it doesn’t mean I’m slipping).** I’ll introduce myself first, then explain why I’m here. My name is Chase Knight. I was born in no-where, Kentucky, and have frequented this subreddit for a few years, though I haven’t posted anything before now. I was never the creative one in my friend group. Growing up my dad was a baseball fanatic, so the first thing I learned once I could walk was how to swing a small foam bat. My mom has never let him forget that, though I think she feels they’re even after all of the bruises I gave my dad when I learned how to hit real balls. I never approached writing projects in school with disdain, but I never felt the spark that my creative friends did; that irresistible urge to start drawing, writing, *doing*, your thoughts transforming into the mind of someone else or into strings of shapes and colors begging to be woven together (**Dennis’ Note: One of your creative friends write them big fancy words for you?)**. Given the circumstances though, I think anyone would want to get their thoughts down. I don’t have any time to waste. Writing is one of the only ways I can reassure myself that I exist now, and I want my last words to be read by more than this codger. I would like to think that someone smarter than me would have seen the signs about our tenth grade field trip to Washington D.C. and refused to go. However, I didn’t realize anything was wrong until our bus sputtered to a halt in the middle of nowhere. My head rapped against the already uncomfortable window, and I groaned as I woke. The world was still pitch black outside, though my eyes had adjusted to the darkness since I’d slept. Phones glowed like tiny stars from some of the other seats, illuminating the faces of my classmates so they looked like holograms. Next to me Travis, my friend since I’d given him a pushing start on the swings in first grade, glanced over at me stirring. He had never been able to sleep in the car, and had huge bags under his brown eyes. I’m not sure if he was too sleep deprived to speak clearly or if I was still in a haze from waking, but I found myself mutely returning his dull stare as he tried to explain what was going on until I winced at the sting of cold air against my cheek. Looking around, I saw my classmates standing at their seats and reluctantly being ushered into the chilly air and was compelled to do the same. I found myself pleasantly surprised to see a girl with a brunette pixie-cut standing at the seat diagonal from mine. “Oh, hey Gabbie.” The brunette glanced over her shoulder before turning with a smile. “Hey, Chase. I knew it was you snoring behind me, even if I couldn’t see you.” She chuckled. “You still sound like that ancient tuba from Mrs. Farris’ band class.” I rolled my eyes good-humoredly. “You only remember that because it was the only year you were in the band. I bet you still have that rented saxophone.” “Like my parents would want that thing anyway near me!” Gabbie squealed, only to be shushed by one of the chaperones. I lowered my voice. “So what happened? Rest stop?” Gabbie shook her head as she stepped into the bus aisle. “No. I think we got a flat tire.” “I could drive better than this idiot,” Travis grumbled as he followed her, a throw-blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders. I made a noncommittal grunt of agreement, then followed my friends outside. The cold air was no less oppressive out in the open, a sharp breeze rustling the corn stalks surrounding us on either side of the road. Mist settled around my feet, and large tendrils rose to the sky from patches in the field where corn had already died, looking like a dozen smoldering fires. “I wish those were all real fires,” I muttered as I joined Travis at the edge of the group of students, shuffling from foot to foot to stay warm. “I’m freezing.” “No shit,” Travis replied with feeling. “You think they got a spare tire?” I shrugged my shoulders doubtfully, searching for one of the chaperones to ask, when I heard a low snarling from the cornfield beside me. In an instant, the roadside erupted in chaos. Five dogs three times the size of any canine I’d ever seen pounded out of the field near the front of the bus. As one they turned towards the group of students and advanced, none of them losing stride as their slathering jowls drew back. They fell onto the bus driver first, and out of the corner of my eyes I saw Travis’ face twist in regret at his previous words. “Come on-'' he rapsed in horror, grabbing my wrist and yanking me around the back of the bus. The motion was enough for my mind to register the faces of my classmates who were still stricken with fear. “Alex! Derrick! Move your asses!” I bellowed, and was relieved to see the two join the crowd of students stampeding for the bus door. The pack made quick work of the bus driver. I could hear a frenzy of wild barking as they fought over the pieces, then their paws scrabbling intently against the asphalt. My classmates were still slowly funneling onto the bus in a manic whirlwind of pushing and shoving, so I turned and started beating against the nearest window with a baseball I had forgotten to take out of my hoodie. My ears rang as I watched the beasts make their way along the windows on the other side of the bus, then disappear. The flow of my classmates abruptly stopped, and I didn’t have to look to know that one of the students had closed the bus door and was refusing to let anyone else inside to save themselves. The remaining students scattered into the cornfields as the dogs fell on us. Travis had let go of me as we wrestled through the crowd, and I prayed he’d made it on the bus. I saw a glimpse of Gabbie as she trampled through the cornstalks and bolted after her, tuning out the screams of my dying classmates. I don’t remember what happened after that. Since then I’ve been wandering as a spirit, at first trying to find my classmates, then desperately searching for anyone who could sense my presence. Unfortunately for me, that person is unquestionably the oldest, most spiteful asshole I’ve ever met **(Dennis’ Note: Hilarious. I’m a peach)**. The first time my voice came across Dennis Thompson’s three dollar ghost listening device, he turned it off. When I flicked the switch back to the on position and tried again, he pressed a wrinkled finger into the switch to keep it in the off position. My laughter nearly burst the speakers after I blew air at his nose and managed to get the listening device back on as he sneezed. By the fifth round of our battle of wills, he went to start digging through a drawer filled with tools. I impulsively grabbed the device and did my best impression of Darth Vader while bobbing the flimsy plastic up and down. “This is your father speaking. Do as I say and-” I was cut off as the old man sprayed me with a squirt bottle. The spray was the first sensation I’d felt since I’d died, and I was too shocked to retaliate. I remained stupefied as my figure began to glow a soft blue color, and I distinguished the faded band shirt I’d had on when I died, though enormous gashes were torn across both it and my jeans “What was that?” I sputtered, my voice still warbling out of the listening device’s speaker. “Why can I see myself now? And how can this dumb thing hear me?” The old man frowned. “I made that device myself, you ungrateful rootworm. You’re lucky I’ve been wantin’ to find spirits around here. Now, who the hell are you?” I quickly told the man my name, and he ungraciously introduced himself as Dennis. Looking at him again, he didn’t seem as frail as I’d thought earlier; he had the broad shoulders of someone who’d been professionally trained, though he wheezed somewhat when he inhaled. A naive flicker of hope pushed me to speak again. “Dennis, I need your help. There’s a pack of dogs- or not dogs but hellhounds, not far from here. They… they killed me and my friends, and they’re going to hurt others. You hunt monsters, right?” The old man hadn’t seemed to be listening, but at that question he choked out a laugh. “No boy I don’t. I’ve seen a great deal of spirits but haven’t found a one that’ll stay long enough to even share hellos. I a’int able to stop no hellhounds.” He turned and gestured for me to follow him through a dingy yellow kitchen, then into what I at first thought was a coat closet but was actually a basement. Down the stairs were wooden shelves filled with gadgets that looked the same as the communicator: toys originally meant for children that he had somehow transformed into ghost hunting equipment. “I think maybe you and I can come to an arrangement, kid.” Dennis said in between explanations of what each contraption did. “Since no spirit ever stayed long enough to test out my equipment, I don’t know if half of it works. You try them out for me and find a way to get around it, I’ll help ya with your dog problem. I’m a retired sheriff’s deputy for this county, and I reckon I get the entire police force here within an hour if I ask.” I was dumbfounded by this change in attitude, though I realized I shouldn’t have been. He still wasn’t the rugged monster hunter I’d envisioned, but he didn’t seem the type to turn down a fight. “You’re on, old man. How hard can it be to get around this garbage?” Very hard. So far I’ve been warded off by ancient glyphs made from crushed up dandelion flowers kept inside a tin can, trapped possessing a toaster for three days after I fed Dennis’ freshly caught fish dinner to his cat, and stopped from smashing any of his creations with a viscous mixture I’m fairly certain he concocted with mouthwash. He’s even made himself glasses so he could always see me with chicken wire and glass yogurt jars. I haven’t been taking any of it seriously until last week. I was pouring vegetable oil on a tarp I’d found in Dennis’ barn to send him sliding into his old outhouse when the bottle fell through my hand. Annoyed, I tried to pick it back up, only for my hand to phase right through the bottle. Panic began worming its way through my brain. Despite being invisible as a spirit, I’d always been able to pick things up and move them around. I immediately thrust my hand towards the bottle again, then tried once more before frantically waving my hand around inside the container to no avail. I wasn’t able to touch anything for three days. Dennis wasn’t able to hear or see me either, though he only berated me for screwing with him once my voice hissed across his speaker. I was too scared to explain. I had felt untouchable since I’d died, the answer to life’s biggest mystery solved. But the longer and more frequently I disappeared, the more certain I became that something was reaching for me, determined to pull me into the unknown abyss for a second time. That’s why I need your help. If I don’t act soon, I won’t be able to get justice for my friends. So I need all of your best ideas on how to outwit Dennis. The more I can humiliate him in the process, the better. Thanks in advance. **(Dennis’ Note: I never knew the boy wasn’t just disappearing to make himself a nuisance. I wanna help‘im, but I don’t think he’d even want my pity if I gave in without a fight. I won’t be looking at the comments. I hope y’all are as sharp as he says, for his sake.)**

I Threw A Halloween Party and a Psychopath Showed Up

y9w9bc

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9w9bc/i_threw_a_halloween_party_and_a_psychopath_showed/

I was in my teens and living in my small hometown. My parents left town for the weekend, conveniently on Halloween weekend.  I was a nerdy, awkward, anxious kid, and hosting a party was the perfect way for me to get some social momentum. I had a big house, outside of town, so there were no neighbors to call the police.  Word spread around school. I knew my plan was successful when Casey, the girl who I had been failing to talk to for years now, stopped me in the hallway at school and confirmed she would be invited to the party? I celebrated silently as I confirmed that of course she was.  Halloween came quickly and I readied the house. My friend Riley was the first person to show up. He alerted me of the first thing that was off that night.  “I tried calling you like five times and the phone was always busy,” Riley explained. I stopped what I was doing. I hadn’t been at the house all day. I had actually just walked in from being at the grocery store.  I checked the phone. It was on the hook. Keep in-mind this was the late-90s. I didn’t have a cell phone and neither did almost anyone I knew. We just had the landline.  *Who had been on the phone?*  I remembered if you dialed \*65 your phone and got the last number which had been called from the phone.  *It was 911.*  I shook it off. My drifty older sister, Marin, may have come from college for the weekend and had been home while I was out and dialed 911?  I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Casey showed up - dressed as Carrie - prom dress, tiara, covered in blood. She looked fantastic.  Things started smoothly. I caught a very comfortable buzz. As did Casey. A good chunk of people showed up. They seemed excited to see me when usually they would just walk right past me without acknowledging me. My generic vampire costume seemed to do well enough.  The only thing that was possibly off was two people - one tall, one short, dressed in generic skeleton costumes. The two never seemed to talk to anyone and any time I walked by them they seemed to stare at me. I didn’t pay them too much mind though. I was more focused on Casey.  People started to leave around 2. Casey stayed though, even though her friends who she came with left. This was a great sign.  However, it was interrupted by flashing lights beaming outside on the road. Oh shit.  I rushed to the window. Horrified of getting busted by the cops and thinking about the 911 call someone placed from the house earlier.  I let out some breath when I saw the lights go past my house and heard one of the more intense party bros next to me click his tongue.  “Fucking asshole. It was one of those fake cop cars,” the party bro lamented. Still, the cop scare seemed to chase another big group of people out. Leaving just a handful.  \- I posted up on the couch, conveniently leaving the seat next to me open. I shot some eye contact with Casey across the room.  She came down and sat next to me. We launched into an embarrassing, too drunk, 17-year-old conversation which led to us making out on the couch.  *Which led to us eventually slipping off to my bedroom.*  Casey and I had drunken sex and fell asleep together in my bed. I had no idea what time or how long we had sex. It was one of those magical drunken exchanges where time drifts out the window.  I woke up alone in bed. I could see a light coming from the bottom of the bathroom door though. I assumed Casey was in there.  I had to pee. I threw some clothes on and ventured out into the living room.  I was surprised to see no one sleeping out there. There were at least 10 people who seemed like they were going to crash in the house and it still seemed to be the middle of the night.  Whatever…I went to pee in the living room bathroom and encountered my first oddity.  I felt something outside the little window in the bathroom as I was relieving myself. I shot my eyes over there and saw a shadow move outside of the pebbled glass as soon as I did.  I never saw who or what it was. Just that they were there.  Then I heard the music in the living room start blasting - definitely as high of a volume as the family stereo could muster.  I walked into the living room and turned off the stereo. Still didn’t see anyone in the room.  The next red flag was in the pool. I checked the backyard when I walked through the living room and back to my bedroom and couldn’t help but notice a red tint in the water.  The sight drew me out into the backyard where I quickly saw the redness in the pool appeared to be blood. My body went cold and not just because of the Fall night air outside and me only wearing my underwear and a t-shirt.  That eerie sight was quickly overwhelmed by the sight of Casey, squatting in the back corner of the yard, still in her bloody Carrie costume, shivering, scared and looking at something right behind me.  I was about to say something to her but she got words out first - whispering… *“He’s right behind you.”* I whipped around and saw someone in one of those generic skeleton costumes run away from behind me and go back into my house.  I rushed up to Casey and discovered something horrible. The blood on her was no longer just from her Carrie costume - she was bleeding out of her arms and somewhere in her torso.  “What happened?” I blurted out. “He’s lost his mind,” she whispered back.  “Who?” “My ex.” “In the skeleton costume?” I asked.  Casey didn’t answer. We were answered by the sound of an engine firing on the other side of the house. My mind told me her ex in the skeleton costume had run off and was driving away.  “He stabbed me,” Casey explained in pain.  I had to call 911 immediately. I wasn’t encouraged about the skeleton guy running into the house but I was also pretty sure that was his car driving off. I walked into the living room and was quickly greeted by the phone ringing. The sound froze me in the middle of the room.  I answered the phone and put it to my ear. There was no answer on the line. Just breathing.  Then the other line hung up.  Going back to the time period, I used a trick. I dialed \*69 to figure out which number had just called me.  A phone rang in the adjacent dining room.  I looked to the dining room and saw the person in the skeleton costume standing there, knife in hand, moving into the living room - they must have called from a cell phone on them.  I looked to Casey behind me. We were fucked. If skeleton took a run at us, there was no way we were going to get out the back.  Yet, I started to back up. Figured it was our only shot. Get out that door. I watched skeleton tense up and then charge at us.  Just as he did…a voice shot across the room… “What the fuck!?!?” My sister Marin’s angry voice shot across the room. I saw her in the doorway, her mouth open as she looked at skeleton, halfway across the room, with his knife, racing at us.  Marin screamed and reached into her purse. Her move was enough to reroute Skeleton. He now ran for the door.  He got out before anyone could take a breath.  \- We called the cops and Marin told them about her ex boyfriend. His name was Shawn and he lived a few towns away. That’s all I got. Her wounds weren’t serious. She didn’t even need to go to the hospital. Just bandages.  Casey and I started dating even though it never felt right. *I mean, how are you supposed to work with that night as your foundation?* Shawn had an alibi for the night. He worked at a gas station or something and he was on camera while this was supposed to be happening. I didn’t push on it. I didn’t want my parents to find out I had a party.  Casey and I didn’t last long and she moved away. I had mostly forgotten about her within a few years.  Every once in a while I would think about her and how there were some peculiar things about that night, including how light her injuries were, and her reluctance at first to call the police. *Was there more to what went on?*  Years later, once Facebook took off, I kept searching for her but could never find her and she had a super unique last name, so I should have been able to.  I eventually got an idea. I remembered Shawn’s last name. I searched for her with that name.  *I found her.*  She appeared to be married to Shawn. She appeared to live in the town where he lived at the time.  I made a mistake while stalking her - accidentally liking a photo.  I thought nothing of it until the next Halloween.  It was well past midnight and I was getting ready for bed. I still lived in my hometown where all of this happened.  My doorbell rang. I opened the door and was greeted by two people in generic skeleton costumes.  Both were too tall to be kids and it was far too late for kids to be trick or treating. They had no bags or baskets to hold candy.  They just looked at me as I stood there in the open door.  I quickly closed the door on them and locked it.  I could see them through the window still standing there for a little while before they walked off.  I moved away shortly after and I leave town every Halloween. 

THE DARK HUNT Part4

ya88mc

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ya88mc/the_dark_hunt_part4/

Part 1 [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/xpbfe8/the_dark_hunt/) Part 2 [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/xr72be/the_dark_hunt_part/) Part 3 [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/xx0fk2/the_dark_hunt_part3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) ​ This is not going to be easy to write. The horrifying truth that I had discovered had kept me awake for these past few days. Where to begin. Probably from right after I left the creature that had taken the guise of a one detective Daren, currently most definitely dead in that forest. I saw a dozen policemen converging onto my location. All with red glowing eyes. I even saw the two men I bear maced in front of my cabin to get away from, their eyes glowing red under the shadow that was casting upon their faces. It was then too clear to even doubt it. The creatures have become more precise and accurate in their mimicking of their victims. They can talk and act like humans and even maintain their disguise over a long period of time. Is it just this particular pack of creatures or is it a natural state of maturing for them that I haven’t seen? Honestly, I don’t know, and I don’t care. One thing I do know is that I must kill them. Kill them all to find that one Alpha that was responsible for what happened to my Sarah. The alpha with the bluish green silver eyes. My target zero. I ran for hours through those woods, hiding and erasing my trail and scent as I went along. I could feel that they were still looking for me. Their stench filled the air and I could sense them scouring the woods. But by now they would have figured out that the dark woods are no longer a hiding place for them anymore. I got to get away from here, even further than before. And I had just the right place in mind. An old, abandoned mining ghost town not too far from the town I am currently operating from. I’ll be isolated but so will they. I’ll lure them there and wipe them out. I headed back to town before the local ‘police’ starts flashing around my facial sketch to alert the town folk. Don’t need to get any of them involved. I got around to Jacob’s gun shop for my last order. Jacob looked concerned. I mean if I saw myself in that state, blood stains and tattered clothes. Not to mention the overall state I was in after running through miles of forest prior to getting there. “Are you ah…. Alright there Jack?” Jacob tried to look and talk casually as he put in obvious effort to make a straight face. But still the worry and concern seeped out through his efforts. I also replied casually. “Yeah, tough hunt. I need some supplies Jacob. I need a lot.” “What happened? Did you meet a bear or something?” “Yeah, something.” Jacob’s look of concern thickened at that reply. He took my request and went behind the store without a word. It took him sometime. When he came back, he had a huge bag in his hands. “I don’t know what you’re into Jack, but you be careful. I don’t have to tell you that some of these supplies are more than dangerous. You have enough fire power here to go to war.” “Thanks Jacob.” I paid Jacob with the cash I had. He insisted I take a few supplies on the house. I thought I was not making any progress with the town folk, but I guess I was wrong. About Jacob at least. I thanked him and was about to exit the shop when Jacob threw a few words at me. “If anybody comes asking about you. I’ll tell them what I know. Maybe it’ll buy you some time.” “Thank you. Farewell Jacob.” Sly old man. I guess I let on a little too much. I can see his slight grin reflecting on the door glass as I exit. If they come looking for me here they’ll be directed to my now abandoned base of operations in the woods. It’ll give me time to set things up over at the ghost town. It took me half day's walk to get to the ghost town. Nice and secluded. I started to get to work, no time to rest. Jacob packed me some extra supplies. Sly old man. I figured setting up traps was the only obvious plan to achieve what I wanted. Punji stick traps seemed to be effective as they gallop on all fours. I have enough ammo to fight against a whole company. I’ve made enough Molotov Cocktails to slow them down. All I needed to do was wait. 2 nights went by and nothing showed up. I hadn’t slept a wink until then. I was on high alert. But on the 3rd night, the stress and tired body got the best of me and I dozed off. Stupid mistake. I woke up in the dark to noises outside. Bristling of trees and a weird sensation that crept up my spine. Something was amiss. It wasn’t right and there was an eerie silence enveloping the whole area. There was no moon out tonight and the whole ghost town was flooded with a thick paint of darkness. I did’t like it. There was a full moon that tonight… at least that was the prediction. But I didn’t anticipate the cloudy night sky that had covered the area, even blocking what little light the moon and stars could offer. Everything was perfect for them. This was there chance I guess, the perfect environment to make the move. I was holding up on the second floor of an abandoned house that was located further in from the main road that led into the Ghost town. I waited in silence, with as little movement as possible. Maybe 30minutes had gone by and I was getting uncomfortable of the stalemate situation. But then I heard it. A boom and a screech. Bright lights poured in from outside and I peered out through the window. Down along the main road that came towards the town center, was a great burst of fire, burning bright red. Inside it was a few creatures screaming and wailing in pain as I see others scamper into nearby shadows and buildings. “Gotcha.” They triggered my Molotov cocktail combined trap. I picked up my rifle and aimed out the window. There was a slight breeze that made the burning fire flicker. One deep breath into the chest. Slowly letting the air out. I stop as I catch a creature slowly making its way out a shadow. Holding my breath I aim and fired. This time I had a suppressor to dim the noise. The first shot hits the creature in the head and kills it. I look around while breathing slowly and lightly. Its not like them to hide like this and scope the area. They are more intelligent and careful than any of the other creatures I’ve fought. I was sure now that these are the creatures that were posing as law enforcement. No sign of their alpha. My target zero. Just had to lure it out. Just then I saw a few more creatures approaching the the house I was in. Guess they made me. I fired a few rounds at the creatures and managed to get a couple. But more creatures joined the charge. I started firing without time to aim with precision. My hail of bullets managed to take a couple more down, but it seemed meaningless then. I put down the rifle and picked up the shotgun. I exit the room I was in and leaned against the wall next to the staircase that led down and straight up to the front door. I peered out the side and down the stairs. I can hear them approach the front of the house. Then, with a loud noise I hear window glasses being broken. They’ve broken through the front windows. But just as soon as I hear then break through it is followed by a loud boom and screams of the creatures being burned to a crisp by my booby traps. Then I saw the creatures approach the front door. Lured more like. They actually opened the door by turning the doorknob and entered the house with clear signs of caution. Something new every time. I waited while listening to the creatures rummage around the first floor. Then I hear heavy steps coming up the stairs. The fire from downstairs had emitted enough light to cast a shadow on the wall following the staircase up. I was counting on it. As the shadow of the creature reached the top of the stairs I dash forward and shot my shot gun down the staircase. The Pellets disbursed and tore through the creature in front of me and hits the creatures following it up behind. Hitting them on the chest is not as effective due to their hard rib cage casing the upper torso. The most effective hot spot is the head. Multiple creatures crumble down along the staircase as their heads are shredded by the shotgun pellets. More creatures appear at the bottom of the stairs and I had already reloaded my double barrel shotgun. They have already learned from assessing the situation and are waiting for me to come down to them. I hear scratching noises coming from outside the second floor window. I’m surrounded. The only way out is down the stairs and out the front door. Its funny but it feels like they’re luring me out towards the front door. Bastards. I blast my shotgun down the stairs, hitting the one creature waiting at the bottom. It didn’t kill it. I hear it scream in pain as I turn around and quickly make it towards the window of an adjacent room. I look out and see a couple of creatures clawing their way up. Reloading my shotgun. I kick out the old rusty windows and jump out and land on the first floor roof top. I hear the roof creak in stress as the old worn-down building struggles to support my weight. I dash across to the creatures that had just made it halfway up the roof top and blast my shotgun in their faces. I dash towards the ledge of the first floor roof as I reload the shotgun one last time. I reach the edge of the roof and jump off to a stack of old mattresses I had gathered earlier. As I do so I see a more creatures galloping towards me from another direction. I wait until they are in effective range of my shotgun and I waist no time to drop them both. The creatures seem more aggressive now and feels more like all the other ones I fought and killed before. They’ve lost their cool I guess and now just rushing at me like a pack of wild dogs. Good for me. Them mimicking human intelligence was a nuisance. I sling my shotgun across my back and pull out my primary weapons. My axe and blade. I see them start to mass just outside the, now burning, house I was just in. The flames blazed the air and scorched the ground near it as I slowly sidewalk to a nearby church building. The creatures’ eyes flow my move. Those red glowing eyes now more intense than I’ve ever seen them before. I can feel their anger, their rage. Just what I was looking to do. Get rid of their reasoning and return them to the savage mindless animals they are. I stood at the steps of the church building and looked towards the massed creatures now all glaring at me. The burning house creating a curtain of flames behind them. Their glowing eyes full of primal rage that seemed to intensify by the minute. There we were. Maybe a hundred meters distance between us. My grip on my axe and blade tightened as I got ready for the charge. Then as the second floor of the burning building came crashing down to the ground the massed creatures started to charge towards me. Galloping on all fours, they came at me like the wind. I stood still but ready to swing my weapons in full action. But I waited. As the swarm of creatures came galloping towards me the ones at the head of the charge suddenly fell to the ground screaming as their feet plunged deep into a field of punji stick traps. The creatures that followed behind galloped right over the ones maimed by the traps and landed into the second batch of punji stick traps as I lunged myself at the maimed beasts crying out in agony. Swinging my axe and blade I started to cut through the mass of creatures. Dismembering limbs and heads. Cutting into the heart with my blade. I just let myself go as if there was no turning back. I hacked away letting the primal instinct kick in and for that moment until I came to my senses again, I was like one of them. Screaming and tearing through pale flesh. Until I heard that faint cry. “P…please… stop…” As I came to my senses it felt as if my consciousness turned off and came back on again, like some kind of a damn reboot. I looked around and came face to face with a bloodied person. Naked and frightened he looked up at me and pleaded me to stop. His left arm and both legs were gone and he was bleeding out. If it wasn’t for the many dead pale skinned creatures already on the floor I would have fell for it. I knelt in. “You want me to stop?” “Y… yes … stop… please…” “Tell me where your alpha is. The Silver eyed one. The one with the bluish and green silver eyes. Tell me where he is and I’ll give you a clean death.” The creature in disguise as a man closed its eyes. It was thinking. Now there was a sight I thought I’d never seen. A creature that was weighing its options. Like a damn human. It was maybe a few seconds and he… I mean it… opened its eyes. “H.. He… is at the station….” “It! Will die by my hands.” I insisted, putting extra weight on the word ‘it’. With that I raised my axe to put it out of its misery. Just then I saw it shut its eyes as if preparing for its own death like a damn human being. My moment of hesitation was short lived and I hacked its head clean off its neck as it started to turn pale and rot. These ones, they’re dangerous. They’ll get to you mentally as you slowly start to think if they were actually human and that you were delusional. But there were too many evidence and too much to point out that they were what they were. Some damn creatures from the pits of hell. I pulled all the dead creatures to one side and set the pile on fire. I reminded myself to dig out some of those silver bone fragments from some of them. These will come in handy later. I went into another house at the end of the main road that led into this ghost town and found my remaining supplies. Reloading my shotgun, I start mapping out my way to the police station. Time to end it. That night I ventured back to town. After seeing the mass of creatures that had come for me, something told me that it wouldn’t be easy getting to the police station. I needed more supplies. I arrived at Jacob’s gun shop just as the sun started to come up. But, when I got there I could see that something was wrong. It was a small quiet town but it was too quiet. I saw the door of the shop wide open, and glasses shattered. I hurriedly approached the shop, but was vigilant about the surrounding. When I entered the shop I could see that it was trashed. Clear signs of bullet holes on the walls and blood on the floor. Looking around I saw a blood trail leading to the storage room behind the counter. I approach the door, my axe in hand, and slowly turn the handle. Locked. With a deep breath I kicked open the door and charged in. I saw Jacob on the floor leaned against the wall with a shotgun in his hands. He was bleeding bad but still breathing. “Jacob…” “J… Jack… is that you?” “What happened Jacob?” “T…the police… they came asking.. about you.” Shit, I knew it. Why did they attack Jacob? How did they know that he was the one to go after? What did Jacob know about me that had them so determined to show their true colours? “T… they weren’t human Jack! T… they were..” “Stop talking Jacob. I’ve got to take care of the wound.” “Ja…Jack… be careful … Jack… be…” “Jacob?” Damn… why did they attack Jacob and why did they not finish him? It wasn’t has if he barricaded himself behind steel doors. What prompted them to leave… I don’t’ know. I should gave Jacob a burial and stocked up. I got out and came here to my base of operation. Wifi connection came through so I'm leaving this post as a record of what had transpired here. Finally, I've recovered enough to make my move. Looks like tonight’s going to be one hell of a night. I'm going to head over to that police station and get me some answers. Find that damn alpha and rip its head off... ​ So, I’ll post an update … if I survive

Cotton Candy Scalp

y9b1xm

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9b1xm/cotton_candy_scalp/

Fifteen years ago, a boy by the name of Preston suffocated in the ball pit at our local indoor playground center for kids. I know this because a sign remains on the outside of the entrance part of the netting. *Do not sit on others in the ball pit.* *All faces must stay visible at all times.* Preston had cancer during the time of his death, and the school bullies were notorious for calling him, “Cotton Candy Scalp.” With his hair loss, the worst of the bullies made fun of him by referring to him as that sugary treat. They would often yank his hair out. Whether his death was intentional or accidental is a mystery, but Preston was found buried deep in the ball pit as others around him played. Preston’s death was a big story in our town, but when I was a child myself, I didn’t quite grasp the significance of it. I just wanted to have fun myself. Just a kid being a kid. But when Mom dropped me off at the ball pit while she went out for a smoke, I had a collision course with Dean, the one kid my age who hated me, picked on me whenever the coast was clear. Since I was scrawny and flimsy looking, Dean insulted me by saying, “Cooper, this ball is bigger than your head. All of them are.” Now, this playground was the kind of place that did not have parent supervision. All the parents chatted outside with their cigarettes and sodas, so unfortunately, it was just Dean and me all alone for the ten minutes of chaos. I remember the ball pit rumbling, coming to life. “Cut it out, Cooper,” Dean shouted. “I’m not doing anything,” I responded, as I noticed a hand emerge from behind Dean. I fell back in shock and watched the hand reach for Dean. Dean felt something touch his back and turned, “What the—” Another hand surfaced, followed by what looked like the top of a young kid’s head, the face still hidden. Before Dean could cry out for help, the two hands latched on to Dean’s face and tugged him down. Imagine whisking your morning eggs but doing that to someone’s scalp. The two hands dug into Dean’s scalp and twisted and turned and pulled flesh, discarding it like it was cotton candy. Blood poured down Dean’s head like a freshly colored snow cone. Dean’s body flailed and sunk into the depths of the ball pit. I went to retrieve his body and pull him out, but only two, sad eyes looked up at me. Preston’s eyes. And atop Preston’s head, a compressed mishmash of Dean’s blood and guts. Preston smirked at me and then vanished, while I wet myself and shook frantically. I just sat there, teary-eyed, trying to wrap my mind around the display of horror. When I got the courage to move again, I rushed outside and grabbed Mom’s hand, pleading with her to come look inside for Dean. But they never found Dean’s body. The ball pit was empty. No blood. Nothing. I told the parents what I saw happen to Dean, but they did what adults often do: didn’t believe in me. Instead, a missing person’s case was filed for Dean. Posters littered the town, but to this day, Dean remains missing.

When I was a kid, I found a treehouse that created another version of me

y9r9gm

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9r9gm/when_i_was_a_kid_i_found_a_treehouse_that_created/

My best friend, Louis, and I were out biking our usual paths through the woods like we did every Saturday of the summer. But this time, there was a new path that forked off from the other. It went into thick woods that we’d never explored because of the density of trees. But then, all of a sudden, there was a new bike trail. Louis and I decided to double back and check it out. The path was clear and wide for the first several hundred meters. But it started narrowing and more and more roots were taking over the trail. Just as we were about to turn back, we saw a clearing ahead. And something large hovering a dozen feet up. As we got closer, it became clear we were looking at a treehouse. A very well put together one at that. It had a wooden, spiral staircase that led up to a wide, octagon shaped structure with cut-out windows. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Louis and I approached it cautiously, figuring there was someone or *someone’s* inside. Louis, who was the braver and more adventurous, called out loudly with a simple, “Hello?” There was no response. No voices or shifts in movement or floorboards creaking. It was empty. Louis was off his bike first and moved closer to the treehouse. I joined him inspecting the impressive structure. But that wasn’t close enough for Louis. And before I knew it, he was halfway up the spiral stairs. And I was following. Inside, there was a wide open space. The walls were covered with shelves filled with books and photographs. There were clothes hanging from hooks and folded in dressers. There were no people though. It was just Louis and I. Louis noticed it first. I saw his eyes go wide as he looked around. The books, photographs and clothes became familiar. I approached one of the walls. I was in all of the photos. The books were the same ones that lined the shelves in my room. As were the clothes hanging from hooks and folded in dressers. On the other side of the treehouse, Louis was staring at his photos, books and clothes. We backed up into each other in the middle of the room. I was the first one to say it was time to leave, but Louis was already making his way to the trap-door down that led to the staircase. Only the trap-door was no longer there. It was on the opposite side of the room. We climbed down the staircase to where we left our bikes. But they were gone. They weren’t on the other side of the tree or tipped over nearby. They’d simply disappeared. Or been taken. This posed a serious problem because of how deep we were in the woods. Not only were we on an unknown path, but the afternoon sun had vanished. We did another look around, unbelieving that someone, somehow, had stolen our bikes while we were in the treehouse for all of two minutes. But that’s what it looked like happened. Still… we couldn’t explain the contents of the treehouse. And at the moment, we weren’t trying to. We started our way back down the trail on foot but it was winding and curving more than on the way in. It took us an hour to get back to the main path. It took us another half hour to get out of the park and back to the entrance. From there, we had to split up as we lived in different directions. We were both already late for dinner and knew our parents were going to be pissed, so we said our goodbyes and took off. It took me another forty five minutes to walk home. And when I finally got there… I saw something that shook me to my core. My bike was chained up in its normal place along the side of our house. I walked up to it and inspected it. The chain was looped through the front wheel and spokes the same way I always did it. I started doubting whether or not I even brought it on the ride. If somehow I’d imagined everything. But as I walked past the dining room window on my way to the front door… I saw something more disturbing than the bike. I saw *me*. I was sitting at the table with my family. Only… it wasn’t me. The version of me at the table looked like I’d been flipped. My hair was split and combed over on the right side as opposed to the left. And I was using my left hand to eat with my fork instead of my right. I watched the mirror version of me eating and interacting with my family. Smiling, laughing, talking. He fit in perfectly. Almost. Then he locked eyes with me. And the smile disappeared. Only for a moment. But in that moment I saw hatred and anger. Then it was gone and he rejoined the conversation. I watched my mirror version stealthily slide his dinner knife into his sleeve as he laughed at one of my dad’s jokes. I had a feeling the knife was for me. I had to get away from there. I rushed over to my bike and unlocked the combo. I was at full speed heading down the street within seconds. Behind me, I heard the front door of my house open and shut. I didn’t turn back. I pedalled faster and ten minutes later, I was pulling up to Louis’. There, just like mine, was Louis’ bike, locked up along the side of his house in the same manner as always. I had a plan to go in and get Louis. He’d know what to do. Louis’ dad answered the door and invited me in. I noticed it immediately. Louis was sitting at the table with his family. Only he was different. The cleft lip he had scarred downward on the right. The Louis sitting at the table had a scar that went left. It was a mirror version of Louis. And no one in his family could tell. Between him and I, you can tell how little attention was paid to us. But we had big families. When Other Louis looked up and saw me, he knew I knew. I saw the same brief flash of hatred and anger take over his face. But it was shoved aside and replaced by a fake smile. I joined them at the table, and Louis’ mom brought me a plate. Outside, I saw movement in the window. It was me. Other Me. He was here. I felt trapped. I had nowhere to go. Then I got an idea. Over the next few minutes, I gradually keeled over more and more and started rubbing my stomach. I asked if Louis’ dad could drive me home. He agreed. Outside as he walked me to the car, I turned and saw Other Me hiding along the siding of the house. Watching. The drive there became increasingly tense as I started to wonder if my family was okay. Who knew what those mirror versions of us would do? But I got home and my family was okay. I kept up with the *pretending to be sick charade* and went upstairs to lay down. From my bedroom window, I watched Other Me outside pacing in the shadows. Soon after, he was joined by Other Louis. I was trying to figure out a plan to make it through the night when something small crashed through my window. It wasn’t very loud and no one came to check on me so I guessed everyone downstairs didn’t hear. I picked up the projectile, which turned out to be a rock, and found it wrapped in paper. There was a message written on the inside of it. *Come out by midnight. Or we come in and kill everyone.* It was 9 o’clock at that point. So I had three hours to figure it out. I went over the arsenal in the house. Which was none. My dad didn’t have a gun. Most of his tools were in the garage that was not attached to the house. I only had close combat weapons. Except… there *was* one thing. Just one. It popped in my mind and stuck. I knew it would work as a weapon or at least a distraction. I formed a plan. I’d come to the realization that Louis was dead, killed by this Other Louis. And my twin was trying to kill me to replace me for whatever purpose. Two things were clear. The first was they wanted me dead. The second was the only way to stop that, was to kill them first. With the idea I had, I waited until quarter to midnight before getting my supplies. With my secret weapon hidden inside one of my larger coats, I grabbed two knives from the kitchen. I planned to use them, but hoped I wouldn’t have to. If I even had it in me to do so. I went to the window and watched the two outside. They’d spent most of the night on opposing sides of the house, but would occasionally join each other on one end and talk. They were in the backyard. So I went to the front door, and took off down the street. I knew it wouldn’t be long before they saw me and started to chase me. But I just needed to get four blocks to the kids park nearby. Which would be the most empty place in the neighbourhood at this time of night. My secret weapon rubbed against my chest, but I kept going. As I passed the halfway point, I turned back to check. They’d seen me. And they were in a full sprint to catch me. I had them beat though. I had just enough of a head start to turn into the park and find my way to the back courtyard. I ran towards the bathroom shelter and went into the boys room. I rushed to the far wall and pressed my back against it. I had the two knives in my jacket pocket, but it wasn’t time for them yet. My left hand moved inside my jacket, holding the handle of the secret weapon. The bathroom door kicked open and the twins burst in. They slowed when they saw me looking like a cornered mouse with nowhere to go. Other Me led the way, pulling the dinner knife from his sleeve. Closely over his shoulder, Other Louis did the same. They moved in on me without a word spoken. My left hand tightened on the handle of my secret weapon, and I lifted my right arm, straightening it and pointing my hand at eye level to the attackers. Taped to the inside of my jacket, was our house’s fire extinguisher. My left handle held the clasp handle, and the hose looped through my sleeve, with the nozzle just exiting out from my cuff. Before the twins could stop, I squeezed the handle and held it down. The stream hit both of them directly in the face, mouth and eyes. I shifted to the side, continuing the spray, but wanting to keep my location moving. They both went down, clutching at their faces and screaming. But the screams didn’t sound like they came from human vocal cords. They were croaky and shrill at the same time. I wanted to move in on them with the knives I’d brought, but the fire extinguisher had done more than temporarily impair them. The fire extinguisher sputtered out, empty. The smoke that filled the bathroom began to settle. The twins were twitching, spasming out. Green foam was pouring from their mouths. It just kept coming. Their limbs started to stiffen. Then they started changing. Their skin was peeling away and the inside looked like bark. Strange roots and brambles sprouted up from underneath. The human form they once had disappeared as they transformed into something unrecognizable. A frightening and warped series of noughts and rotten bark covering lengths of branch. That was what they were underneath it all. I left them as they were. Whoever found that mass of impossible growths in that park bathroom wouldn’t be able to tell what they were or used to be. Hopefully they ended up in a green bin. I never heard more about it. Of course, Louis went “missing.” And I knew he’d never be found. That was heartbreaking to deal with, watching his family search for him. I never even knew what happened to his body. Eventually I grew up. But I never forgot. Which is why I bring this all up now… My son and his best friends go on long bike trips through the woods. And when my son returned home this evening, the crooked central incisor on the left side of his upper jaw… was now on the right.

I'm a Marine Stationed at Camp Pendleton. I Met a Skinwalker in the Dirt Fields...

y91zhl

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y91zhl/im_a_marine_stationed_at_camp_pendleton_i_met_a/

Being assigned to Camp Pendleton was a dream come true. Located in Oceanside in Northern San Diego, it’s one of the biggest Marine Corps bases in the US. There’s a ton of stuff to do nearby, whether it’s going to the beach to surf, swim, or go for drinks at the pier. The people around here are mellow, and there’s a surfer sort of vibe to the neighborhood I moved into. Everything was going great for me the first few weeks while I was here. But I noticed that despite the laidback attitude of the surrounding area where I lived, my work-life was rigid and inflexible, my commanding officer gruff and no-nonsense. I began to realize this place was not going to be a cakewalk. Then, one cool night, I woke up disoriented and far from my bed. Looking around, I saw there was nothing nearby. Not another person for miles. Just flat, dirt ground with hills in the distance, and the black sky full of stars and a full moon above. I must have been sleepwalking, I thought to myself, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. I had been marching in my dreams while remembering my days of basic training. And I had somehow ended up in the middle of the dirt field. I looked around in every direction and finally saw lights in the distance behind me. At least I had an idea which way to go now. Turning around, I started to walk back towards the base, my legs wobbly from the long walk while asleep. It felt surreal to be out there in the middle of the night, and I didn’t understand how it could have happened. I had been caught sleepwalking once or twice before, but I'd never gone anywhere near to this far. Part of me wondered with a paranoid fear, just how often this happened without me realizing it. I walked for a few minutes alone, feeling an increasingly strange sensation like a tingling on the back of my neck. After a while, I began to suspect it was that outdated lizard-brain notion that someone was following me. A remnant from some bygone era when humans actually had to worry about being stalked in the night… Just as I had that thought, someone cleared their throat in the darkness behind me. A chill ran up my spine and my flesh broke out in goose pimples as he spoke, his voice deep, gruff, and commanding. “What are you doing all the way out here so late at night?” he asked. He stepped closer and in the moonlight I could see him more clearly. My voice caught in my throat as I looked at his eyes and saw they were yellow, like a cat or a wolf or a snake maybe. “Haven’t you been told to stay in your bunk at this hour?” His tone was predatory and overwhelmingly creepy, but his demeanor was otherwise friendly. The part of my brain telling me to run was suddenly being hushed into submission by an unfamiliar voice which told me this was fine, and not to worry about a thing. Look at his uniform, the voice said. And sure enough I looked down to see he was wearing a Marine Corps uniform, with the insignia indicating he was an officer. You wouldn’t want to disrespect a superior officer, would you? The voice asked. “Sorry, sir. I must have been sleepwalking. I’m just heading back towards the base. I can make it home from there.” He showed his teeth in a grin and told me he’d walk with me for a stretch. “We must be distant relatives from somewhere down the line,” he said as we walked. “Both of us out here walking in the middle of the night. I wish I could chalk my trip up to somnambulism - but I’m just a run of the mill insomniac. I can never get back to sleep once I’m up. I usually just go out for a long hike - it reminds me of the old days when I was deployed, I guess. Going for long marches that started before sunrise and didn't end until long past noon.” The more time that went by, the more guilty I felt for having almost run from the man. He was just an ordinary guy. And the conversation became easier as we built up a rapport and I told him about my life and my background, and where I was from. When I looked back at his face, I was shocked by what I saw. Maybe there really was a family connection between the two of us. In the increasing light from the base as we drew closer to it, I saw there was a striking resemblance between us. He didn’t look like that when you first saw him, that suspicious voice in my mind said uneasily. His eyes were yellow, remember? And now look at them, they’re brown. But it was quickly drowned out by that other, louder voice which spoke up and said all of this was okay too. It was just dark out in the dirt field, and I hadn’t gotten a clear look at his face until now. “Tell me more about your parents,” he said. “I want to know all about them. What are they like?” I started speaking again, feeling hypnotized as I looked into the older man’s swirling brown eyes. He was walking slower and slower, and I was matching his pace. The base was close now. I could see the lights of it were very bright up ahead. Less than a couple hundred yards away. But they were getting dimmer suddenly. The light was fading. But how? Were we walking backwards now? Was I even walking at all? Or was something dragging me now? It took me a few moments to shake the strange, sleepwalker's haze from my vision, and I realized I had been in a trance of sorts. When I looked at the man’s face again through my half-closed eyes I was astonished at what I saw. He didn’t just bear a passing resemblance to me - he could have been my long lost twin brother. His eyes were the same shade of brown, his hair close-cropped and chestnut. His jaw was defined and his nose was sharp and angular. But his smile, and his teeth - those were not like mine at all. They were pointed and long, designed for tearing flesh from bone and ripping it to shreds. He was pulling me, dragging me across the dirt, deeper into the darkness again. “Who are you?” I heard myself asking, and in that second he changed completely. It wasn’t like in a horror movie, when you see a man turn into a werewolf over a matter of a few minutes. The metamorphosis was NOT slow and drawn out. Instead, it happened in a split second. I blinked and the man who looked like me was no longer there. In his place was an indescribable monster - tall with long limbs, pale grey skin, and pitch black eyes. Its jaw unhinged as it revealed teeth longer and sharper than those belonging to a wolf or a bear. It reminded me of that strange, ethereal white-masked creature from Spirited Away, full of hate and hunger and wanting to consume everything. It didn’t appear solid. This thing looked like it was made of shadows. A shot was fired suddenly, bringing me out of my hypnotized stupor. I realized that I was being dragged away from the base. The creature had my shoulder between its jaws and it was biting down so hard I could feel it grating against the bone. Another shot rang out and I heard a few people yelling. There were footsteps and I heard something approaching from behind me. The thing tried to pick me up in its jaws, and it was so massive and so strong that it actually succeeded momentarily. I thrashed and punched it in the face, kicking it in the eyes. My shoulder was on fire and my entire arm felt like it was dangling by a thread, as if it would pop off at any second, unhinging at the joint like a Thanksgiving turkey drumstick. And then for a second I thought it would. It popped out of the socket and dislocated. The flesh began to rip and tear and bleed. The creature nearly tore my arm clean off as another shot rang out. I gave it one more good, hard kick to the face and the already-wounded monster dropped me to the ground, letting out a low moan of pain. It fell, its form turning into a large black puddle of darkness like an oil spill, before skittering off into the night like an infinitely long centipede. It blended in perfectly with the shadows, and was gone a second later, just as a few other marines arrived. “Are you okay?” one of them asked, helping me to my feet. “Man, I never thought I’d live to see someone get attacked by a mountain lion! You’re lucky to be alive!” It took me a few seconds to comprehend what he was saying, it was so bizarre. The thing which had just attacked me looked nothing like a mountain lion. It was long and tall and humanoid, with a black, wispy shroud surrounding it like a living cloak. “Man, are you blind?” the other Marine asked. “That wasn’t a mountain lion!” I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t crazy. Someone else had seen the thing as well. “It was a wolf! A big, gray wolf! Man, I’ve never seen one so big! You sure are lucky to be alive, though. That’s for sure. Do you want us to call for an ambulance?” I shook my head. “No, I’ll be fine. I can walk.” I took a nervous look at them both, as if judging for myself again whether they were human or not. But I decided these two were the real McCoy. If not for them, I would have been that thing’s dinner. The two of them walked me back towards the base and I tried to decide whether I should tell them the truth of what I had really seen. But with each step we took, the memories started seeming more and more surreal and dreamlike, to the point where I even started to convince myself I had exaggerated what happened. Maybe it was a mountain lion. Or a gray wolf, far from its pack, desperate for food. But no. The memories could have been wiped away, but the teeth marks were not. They were strange, and totally unlike anything a wolf or a mountain lion might leave. When I went to the infirmary to get the bites looked at, they told me they’d never seen anything like them before. After several sets of blood cultures and antibiotics, they never did figure out what was wrong with me. Or how to get rid of my symptoms. Sleepwalking being primary among them. I would get up from my hospital bed in the night and it would take a whole team of security guards to get me back into my room. So desperate I was to escape. Back to the fields, I told the men. I needed to get back to the dirt fields. To march. All they could do was watch, as my symptoms got worse, and as black, vein-like formations began to spread from the bite wounds. Like a dark plague, spreading throughout my body. Everything is so cold now. And I feel like I’m losing control. I don’t want to feel like this, but I can’t help it. Whatever bit me, it infected me. Its contagion is spreading throughout my system and I can no longer fight it. I get these windows of time when I’m with it enough to speak and live my life, and then I get a period of darkness where I remember nothing. They discharged me recently, leaving me alone to deal with the symptoms myself. I think they're worried about having me so close to the base. They don't know what I'm capable of anymore. Most nights, I wake up far from home and don’t know how I got there, just like that night in the dirt field. Like I’m sleepwalking all over again. Except that’s not what this is. This is something much worse. The dark veins are spreading up my neck towards my face, making me stand out and look strange. People think they're bizarre facial tattoos, inching their way towards my skull. They keep asking me if I’m alright, as sweat pours down my reddened face and my eyes dart around with nervous paranoia. The blackouts are getting longer and closer together. I don’t know how much longer I have left to be ME. And I’m terrified of what’s going to happen when those veins get to my heart. And my mind. Who knows how long I have left before I’m out roaming the dirt fields… Looking for a [meal.](https://www.reddit.com/r/JGcreepypastas/comments/raq7ay/all_stories_20212022/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) [MAD](https://www.reddit.com/r/MidnightAllDay?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) [TCC](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCrypticCompendium?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) [YT](https://youtu.be/zqNu60sxDCE)

The Man in the Tent on Halloween Night

ya1l73

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ya1l73/the_man_in_the_tent_on_halloween_night/

When I was young, I always had trouble deciding on my favorite holiday. I was eternally stuck between the two commercial titans in American culture: Halloween and Christmas. You see, while many kids (especially those raised religious) would say Christmas is their favorite holiday hands down (between the free gifts, fanfare, and family gatherings), my mind was in a different place. I always valued the atmosphere of each holiday the most. And while the Christmas spirit was definitely pleasant, I also was charmed by the eerie, Autumn melancholy of the Halloween season. Not to mention, my birthday always came the very day after Halloween night. The point is, I really liked Halloween as a kid. However, one may notice I use the past tense here. This is because a particular Halloween night in my teenage years left me with a shift in feelings. A shift that made me fear Halloween more than anything else. ​ \--- ​ It all started with the good old tradition of Trick or Treating. My childhood neighborhood was an older one, mostly built in the 1970s and 80s. The houses were primarily aged ranches, creating the perfect atmosphere for the Halloween motif. There was one section of the neighborhood however, that was built very soon after I moved in, somewhere around 2002 or so. The houses were large and expensive, meant to attract a wealthier group of people to our rural farm town. Being people of higher monetary status, many of them would go all out for the Halloween season, creating elaborate dioramas in their yards. On top of this, the candy they gave out was always top notch; even the houses with the lamest decorations would give you nice, big candy bars. Needless to say, this quickly became the most popular section of our old neighborhood on Halloween night. ​ Well, one particular man who lived in that newer section of neighborhood took the enthusiasm of his peers to a whole different level. In retrospect, I now believe this was not done out of kindness or love for the holiday, but out of sadistic malice. His house was bizarre, as it was the only one with a basement connected to the outside; a cellar if you will. It had typical cellar doors which were rusted and aged, despite belonging to a house that was only 8 or so years old by the time I was a teen. On Halloween night, the man would always set up an immense, white tent in his side yard, which also happened to encompass where the cellar doors were. He would also have unsettling music and sound effects on blast all night long, along with alarming, flashing lights that set the tent aglow like some scene out of a horror movie. Visiting this house was the pinnacle of the Halloween experience for all older Trick or Treaters in the neighborhood, and entering that tent was a test of courage for many. ​ Sadly, by the time my friends and I were approaching high school, we knew our Trick or Treating days were coming to an end. This ignited a new resolve within me to truly enjoy my last years of Halloween as a kid. As such, 2 years before High School on Halloween night, I invited some friends over from out of the neighborhood. Our goal was to make the most of our last couple of Trick or Treating opportunities. And I decided I was finally going to enter that tent. Up until that point, I had avoided it like the plague, only watching from afar. Ironically, despite loving the Halloween spirit, I absolutely despised horror as a kid. Well, the plan was simple, my 2 buddies and I were going to waltz on over to that section of the neighborhood when it got dark, and get ourselves some candy from the infamous tent man. Fast forward to when the time came, and we wasted no time thinking about it. My friends and I approached the house and briskly moved the flap of the tent to enter. ​ The inside was a sensory overload of lights, sounds, and even smells. I cannot recall exactly what the smells were, but I can say I remember being put off. In the dead center of the tent, blocking our view of the cellar entrance, was the man himself. He sat silently, in a terrifying, pure white, hockey mask. He was burly and imposing, a person who I could not identify at the time as someone I knew. Next to him was a bowl of candy. As we approached, he said nothing. Even as we reached for some candy bars, he sat still silently. As we left the tent, feeling like the whole thing was overhyped, I did notice one thing. The cellar doors behind the man seemed to be ever so slightly ajar. I brushed this off and followed my friends to the next house. We agreed to visit tent man one more time the next year, before we quit Trick or Treating for good. ​ So let’s fast forward one more time. The next year came around and this was it. Halloween was on a weekend, and we were prepared to make our last full blown Trick or Treating excursion a memorable one. I was dressed like a marine and frankly, felt like a badass. We let it get real late before we visited the tent man. All night long as we trekked from house to house, we heard the faint rumblings of music and sound effects no doubt coming from his tent. As we finally approached his house, we noticed that this year, the glow of the tent was pure red. No flashing, no light show. Just a droning, dark red glow. As for sound, at this point, all we could make out was a low, basal groaning. It droned throughout the air, the kind of sound that vibrates your chest. Well, this atmospheric shift didn’t seem to bother us too much, as we entered the tent just like the previous year. ​ As we closed the tent flap behind us, all sounds of Halloween bustle outside seemed to drown underneath the low bass, which at this distance was overpowering. I remember my ears vibrating as I basked in the demonic, red glow. The man’s chair and candy bowl still sat in the center of the tent. But the man himself was gone; only his mask sat upon the empty chair. My one friend noticed that the rusted cellar doors were propped open, revealing a dark stairwell. I was hit with that weird smell from the previous year, seemingly wafting from the looming darkness of the cellar. At that point, my instincts told me to turn around and leave. Forget the candy, and ignore the cellar. Of course though, in typical teenage boy fashion, my buddy who noticed the open doors, convinced us all to take a peek within. Why I said yes is still beyond me. Sure enough though, a peek turned into all three of us fully opening the cellar and plodding down the stairs. As my second buddy followed me down, he accidentally slipped his hand off the cellar doors and they slammed shut. The red glow was quenched in an instant and we were left in absolute darkness. The only stimuli left were the unsettling smell and the basal tones. ​ At that point, I was pretty much pissing my pants in panic, alarmed by the slam and not knowing why the low groaning was still happening. Not to mention, I was deathly afraid of the dark well into my teenage years, so I really wanted out. Unfortunately, my blundering friend was unable to reopen the cellar doors, so we decided to keep going into the dark. The stairs weren’t too deep, quickly opening up to a pitch black room. I couldn’t tell how large it was, but I did notice a familiar musty scent underneath the ever-present strange odor. I knew that musty scent from my dad’s stone cellar. It seemed to me at the time that the cellar was far older than the house it sat under. I decided to just stand right at the base of the stairs; I was done being brave. My two friends however, split up and traveled into the dark. I’m not sure why, but I decided to quietly plod back up the stairs and attempt to jostle the doors open. As I did this, I silently counted the seconds in my head. ‘1, 2, 3,...’ After about 15 seconds (maybe) I was able to actually pry the doors open a crack once again. Honestly, I thank my lucky stars to this day I did that. ​ After about maybe 40 more seconds (I really don’t remember the exact numbers here), I heard a loud bang and an almost inhuman shouting overpower the bass still assaulting my ears. “HEY! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE YOU LITTLE RATS!” Those were the exact words to a T. I will never forget them. Right after this, my one friend shrieked and both of them returned to me within seconds. They were truly hauling ass, and we all blasted the cellar doors fully open, tore across the tent, and dove through the flap. We landed in a heap on top of one another, jumped up, and ran out of that section of the neighborhood. ​ My friends went on to describe to me what exactly happened in the mere minutes I spent opening the cellar doors. Though they split up, they somehow ended back together farther into the cellar. They found a dimly lit room near one end, with that same red glow as outside. They told me they thought this was where both the smell and bass was coming from. Well, like fools, the both of them apparently entered that room. They saw what they told me at the time was “a fake cadaver or something on a table, with fake blood everywhere”. The smell was apparently overwhelming and they wanted to turn around and come back to me. Before they got the chance, that’s when another door at the opposite end of the red room blasted open, revealing the tent man. He was wearing a different hockey mask, covered in fake blood. This is when he screamed at my friends, lunging towards them. Let’s just say they were very happy I managed to get the cellar open. ​ I wish the story just ended there, but there is one more critical piece to the puzzle. The day after Halloween (my birthday), I drove past the tent man’s house on my way to lunch with my family. I noticed a police cruiser parked outside the man’s yard and yellow caution tape completely surrounding the tent. The entrance flap was coned off and had some sort of warning plastered on it. A couple men in trench coats stood there near the entrance, talking and writing something down on a pad. As we continued past the house, I remember a morbid thought popping into my head. What if that body my friends saw wasn't a prop? What if that “fake” blood was in fact, the real thing? To this day, I don’t know the answers to these questions. Now, I could look it all up in the town police archives, but I think I’d rather not. I’m already scared enough by Halloween to this day. Be careful who you trust, and try to avoid dark cellars that don’t belong to you.

All My Life, I Just Wanted My Mom to Be Normal

y953s4

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y953s4/all_my_life_i_just_wanted_my_mom_to_be_normal/

“Oh, you’re Elizabeth’s boy.” When you grow up in a small town, that’s how people relate to you. You’re always someone else’s something. Richie’s cousin. Dana’s sister. Mike’s brother. Everyone just expects that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. “Of course Billy is good at football, his beefy dad is the town sheriff after all. He’ll probably join the force as soon as he’s old enough.” That was the way the people in my small town understood the world. Unfortunately for me, I was Elizabeth’s boy. Everyone in town knew my mother. Not because she was a politician, or on the PTA, or anything like that. No, my mother was known for her eccentricities. Most people grew out of their goth stage sometime in high school. Not mom. Her clothes looked like museum pieces. She favored Victorian dresses, the more lace and frills the better. Her favorite color was black, so of course her clothes had to be black. Even her jewelry was black. Black pendants, black beads, black bracelets. To go along with her strange aesthetic, she wore sunglasses with thick lenses. They looked like something a cosplayer would wear for their steampunk outfit, not something an actual person would wear out in public. When she did go out, I guess to complete the look, she carried a parasol with her, black of course and with more than enough lace to match her dress. People were shocked when I turned out to be normal. I think sometimes that creeped them out a little bit more than if I would have been a straight-up weirdo. “Elizabeth’s boy? Oh yeah, I saw him back behind the Pizza Hut kicking a puppy.” For some reason, that sounded a lot more reassuring than David, the nerdy boy who plays saxophone and wants to be head of the debate team. When I was younger, I resented living in my mother’s shadow. I hated the people of our town for the way they judged us. As I grew older, I started to understand it, and that resentment started to shift. I could never understand why my mom wanted to stick out. I just wanted to fit in, to be normal, to somehow survive high school, which isn’t easy when your mom is the town weirdo. I was picked on, a lot. “Mom, can’t you just… Wear a t-shirt or something?” I asked one day, as we were getting ready to go out. She was putting on her makeup, thick red lipstick and white powder. She always managed to put it on without looking in a mirror, even eyeliner. It was never smudged either. “What would be the fun in that?” she asked. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t it just be nice to be normal?” She looked at me with a grin. “Normal? Do you know what another word for normal is? Ordinary. I don’t want to be ordinary. I want to be extraordinary. Wouldn’t you rather be extraordinary too?” If it meant that I was the town pariah, no. No I wouldn’t. I’d much, much rather be boring, common, or just plain ordinary. I never said it out loud, though. Instead I’d just smile. “Sure, mom.” She’d smile back and run her fingers through my hair. “You’re a good boy, David.” I didn’t understand why she couldn’t be more like dad. My dad was, based on what little information my mom would give me, a pretty normal guy. He died when I was just a baby. A drunk driver crashed into us head on. Somehow mom and I escaped unscathed. Dad died before the paramedics even got there. Mom didn’t like to talk about him, she said it hurt too much. When she did talk about him, she’d call him “my big goofball.” The pictures she kept all around the house seemed to reflect this. He’d been a history teacher, a nice, normal career, downright boring even! That earned him points in my book. He’d also loved photography, which I guess accounted for all the photos. In every picture, he was doing some dumb pose, flashing a peace sign, sticking his tongue out, or pretending to lean on something that wasn’t there. “A big goofball” just like mom said. I always thought we would’ve gotten along. Dad’s pictures were in stark contrast to the other decor mom chose for our house. Our furniture could best be described as pieces that looked like they’d come from a medieval garage sale. Thick, black curtains blotted out any sunlight from our windows. Where dad’s pictures weren’t covering the walls, tapestries hung like invitations to some great lord’s dining room. I figured dad’s love of history must have been what convinced him to go along with mom interior decorating. To me, it was incredibly embarrassing. At least, it would have been embarrassing if I had friends and if those hypothetical friends’ parents had ever let them come over to play with “Elizabeth’s boy.” My mom’s past was even more of a mystery than my dad’s. She spoke with a strange, English-sounding accent. When I was younger, I thought for sure she was putting it on. “Mom, where are you from?” I asked one day, working on a school project. “Oh, England. I’m from England.” “Where in England?” “The countryside. North of London.” “Could we go visit someday?” “Maybe.” “What about my grandma and grandpa? Do they live in England?” “They did. They died a long time ago.” I doubted whether or not what she told me was true. Yet another mystery was mom’s job. Growing up, I never knew exactly what she did for work. Other kids’ parents went to the office, factory, or store after they dropped them off at school, but not mom. From time to time she’d leave around dusk, dressed up in some elaborate outfit, makeup done flawlessly. She’d kiss me on the head and tell me she’d see me tomorrow, to be a good boy and make sure I caught the school bus on time. Looking back, I can see how naive I was. In high school, I started staying up later. She’d come home around one or two in the morning with some guy, usually drunk. They’d try to be quiet, but it’s hard to be quiet when you’re drunk. They’d bump into things in the hallway or whisper just a little too loudly. I wondered how I’d managed to sleep through it all when I was a little. Maybe I hadn’t. Maybe I’d woken up before, but my innocent mind had explained it away somehow. Or, I’d buried it. Buried it deep in my memories, never to be revisited, never wanting to think of my mother that way. Eventually, it became undeniable, and I started to understand that there were other reasons the people around town stared at us. Sometimes I would hear groans or loud bangs coming from down the hall as mom absconded to her room with whoever she’d brought home that night. Whoever she brought home, they were always gone by morning. I appreciated that I never had to find some sleazy guy from a dive bar eating cereal in our kitchen in the morning. At first it bothered me. But over time, it just became routine. That’s how mom paid the bills. It’s how she kept us comfortable. Everything else about her was already odd enough, what was one more oddity? It’s funny though, how one night can re-contextualize everything. I was up late studying for a chemistry test. Science was never my forte, and I was worried. The small town I’d grown up in had come to dislike me about as much as I disliked it. I couldn’t wait to go off somewhere to college. I wanted, no I needed, a scholarship. I’d take one at any school, any chance to get out. Mom came home around 3AM with some guy. “Nice place you got here,” he said in a gravelly voice said, not even trying to whisper. He sounded older. I’d been able to smell the alcohol and cigarettes the moment he stepped in the front door. “Right this way,” mom said, her voice hushed and soft. Dammit, why tonight? I put my headphones on and cranked the volume up to max. I didn’t want to hear whatever was about to happen. I was looking over the definition of covalent bonds when I heard the shout. I was like a deer in headlights, I took my headphones off and froze. “You bitch!” There was a scuffle. They were fighting. Heavy footsteps fell down the hallway. I raced to the door and tore it open. Mom stood in the hallway panting and covered in blood. “What the fuck?” I couldn’t stop myself. I was too shocked. My mom’s head snapped toward me, like someone waking up after a bad dream. “David! Go back to your room. I’ll- I’ll take care of this.” “Take care of it? What’s going on mom?” I was scared now, ready to go in my room and call the cops. “No, no. It’s okay. This- It’s not my blood. It’s his. We just- We had a disagreement. But I’m going to go find him, and everything is going to be okay!” With that, mom darted out the door and into the night. Sleep would have been a relief, but it didn’t come. How could I sleep after what I’d seen. I still thought about calling the police. But she said it wasn’t her blood. What had she been trying to do? If I called the police, would they lock mom up? Did mom need to be locked up. Needless to say, the next morning, chemistry was the last thing on my mind. I did terrible on the test. When I got home, mom was waiting for me on the couch in the living room. She didn’t look like she was hurt, or even particularly bothered by what had happened. Something felt off. It felt wrong to be back in my own home. A tiny little voice in the back of my head, maybe that reptilian part that senses danger, was telling me to get out. “Mom, what happened last night?” “I can explain, David. I can explain everything. Sit down, I want to tell you a story.” I was definitely not in the mood for stories. But, coming from my mom, that had some weight to it. So, I took a seat next to her on the couch. “A long time ago, in England, there lived a girl. This girl had a big heart and a free spirit. She longed to experience the world and all it had to offer. She just knew she would travel and see exotic places. But, above all, she knew that she would fall in love. “One night, at a party in London, she thought she’d fallen in love. She met a stranger. He was courteous and proper, but just under the surface, there was something mysterious waiting to be discovered. This stranger avoided questions about his past. Because he was so handsome, and so clever, the young girl was enamored with him. She wanted to know more. Eventually, they found themselves alone in a garden. Suddenly, before the girl even realized what was happening, she was sharing a kiss with the handsome stranger. “But, that’s not all they shared that evening. The young girl swooned, and didn’t notice when the man made a move for her neck. She realized all too late that the stranger’s past wasn’t just mysterious, but malevolent. The girl wasn’t content to just be his prey, though. No, she fought back. She kicked, and clawed, and in the end, she even bit. She bit him back, bit him so hard that she broke skin. And then, the world went black. “She woke up back in her father’s manor. Her father was a noble, a viscount. Even though she was dying, he brought her back home. Authorities were still searching for the mysterious stranger. When she awoke, the young girl was so hungry. The old doctor who’d been summoned by her father was looking down at her so stupidly, completely unable to stop what was happening to her, the poison that had entered her body, and the changes that were taking place. It was so easy to crack him open like an egg. Her father’s servants found her lapping his blood off the floor. “The viscount wasn’t a superstitious man. Instead, he sought ways to treat his daughters ‘illness’ and helped her stave off the cravings. He tried blood from cows, sheep, and pigs. While they might work to fight off the hunger for a bit, nothing did the trick quite like the blood of men. From time to time, the viscount had condemned prisoners brought in. They managed to placate the girl’s appetite. “In the end, the viscount wasn’t able to save his daughter, and neither was she able to save him. He died of disease a few years later. On his death bed, the young girl begged him to just take a drop of her blood, but he refused. Noble until the end. “And so, the girl was left alone. She still had dreams to travel, and so she did. She hitched rides in ships. She not only survived. She thrived. She saw the world, and she fed. Even though sh was lonely, she wasn’t hungry anymore. “She had learned from the handsome stranger. Men could be arrogant, that was their mortal weakness. It was also in their nature to look at a young girl as defenseless. As prey. Yet, it was them being preyed upon. The young girl would charm men, bring them back to her room. Then, when the time was right, she would feed. So it was, so it was for nearly a hundred years. Until, one day, the girl met someone, a tourist. A history teacher with a love of photography. He was from some small, no-name town in America. But, he was funny. He loved history, and she had seen so much of it. She was happy to finally have someone to share her stories with. “Then, one day, he took a picture of her. To his shock, the picture turned up empty. The young girl, so tired of being alone, shared everything with him. She told him the whole story. To her surprise, he wasn’t afraid, but intrigued. He had so many questions for her. He took her ‘condition’ in stride. He thought it was hilarious to take pictures of the two of them together, knowing she’d never show up once they were developed. Their bond grew deeper. The not so young anymore girl fell in love, for real this time. The American invited her to come home with him, to marry him, and come live with him in the tiny town where he taught history. She agreed. “A few years later, the girl discovered something she thought was impossible. She was pregnant. Worry consumed her. What would happen to this baby? Would it be like her? Or would it be human? Gray hairs were beginning to sprout on her husband’s head. One day, just like the viscount, he would die, and she would be alone again. But maybe, just maybe, this child would be like her. “The baby was born. A healthy baby boy. A human baby boy. When the girl held that baby in her arms, she knew she had to protect him. The world was a cruel place, she’d seen it. She suggested to her husband that they leave. They embrace their lives as creatures of the night. She could do it, she could turn them. All it would take was a drop of blood. But, her husband refused. He told her that he wanted his son to have a choice. He wanted him to have the chance at a normal life. “Normal. Your father was normal to a fault. So terminally human that even as he was laying there, bleeding out, he refused to take her blood. He refused to accept her gift. I loved him. I could have forced him, but I loved him. The last thing I wanted was for him to hate me. So, when he begged me, with his dying breath, to let you have a choice, I agreed. He begged me to wait until you were old enough. I’ve always hated him for that, but I loved him more. I loved him, and I promised. But after last night, you deserve to know. That’s my story. And now, the choice is yours.” I sat on the couch for a long time. I honestly didn’t know what to say. “My mom is a prostitute” is a hell of a lot easier to cope with than “my mom is a vampire.” And my dad, whoever I’d built him up to be, he had been okay with all of it. But even then, he hadn’t wanted to join her. He hadn’t wanted me to join her. “I can’t-” I finally said, “I’m sorry mom, but I can’t.” “David, just think about-” “Honestly, I can barely do that. Vampire? You’re a vampire? I thought some guy was trying to murder you last night. I had to take a chemistry test this morning with absolutely no sleep. Now, you expect me to just, what? Become a vampire?” “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I thought of her standing in the hallway, covered in blood. I thought of all the men she’d brought home over the years. All those dead men. The little voice in the back of my mind had grown to a shout, and it was shouting at me, “Leave! Leave now!” But, she was still my mom. “It’s exactly as bad as it sounds. From what I saw last night, it definitely is. Did you kill him? That guy last night?” She got quiet at this. We sat for awhile, the only sound between us the ticking of an old grandfather clock. “I did-” “Mom! You killed him!?” “David, that man was a monster. So many men are monsters. I have never killed someone who didn’t deserve to die. They always come willingly, more than happy to take advantage of a helpless girl, or a lonely woman, or a single mother! They’re all monsters, every single one. I did what I had to do to survive.” “You’re the monster,” I said quietly. “David, how could you-” “You’re the monster!” I shouted. I stormed into my room, grabbing all the money I had saved and a few changes of clothes. I shoved them into a backpack and marched toward the front door. “David, David please,” Mom continued to plead. She begged, but she never tried to stop me. She’d still promised my dad. It was still my choice. I stomped out the front door, down the stairs from the porch, and I didn’t look back. The only motel in town was a little dive just off the highway. It was run by an old lady named Myrna. When I walked in, she was smoking and watching Matlock. Her bloodshot eyes gave me a look that said, “Of course, Elizabeth’s boy.” “How long will you be stayin’, hon?” “I- I don’t know. I just need a room.” “You in any trouble?” She said, knowingly. “No. No, I just need a quiet place to study.” “Alright then,” She slid a key across the counter. A few minutes later I was laying in a dingy room that smelled like weed and body odor. I could only imagine the things that had taken place in this room. But at least, as far as I knew, multiple people hadn’t died there. I laid in bed the rest of the day, crying. I half expected the door to burst open, my mother standing there, come to take me home. I imagined her covered in blood. It’s hard for me, even now, to imagine her any other way. Finally, I fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning, a note had been slid under my door. “David, you may think I’m a monster, but I believe one day you’ll understand. Everything I did, I did to survive. All I’ve ever wanted is for you to survive. I can’t lose you. Someday, I know you’ll make the right decision. Until that day comes, I’ll be waiting. I’ve told Myrna that I’ll pay for your room. You can stay at the motel as long as you want. Please sweetie, please make the right choice. I love you, Mom.” I finished high school in that motel. At graduation, mom was there. She didn’t say anything to me, and I didn’t invite her, but I saw her in the bleachers when I got my diploma. She was easy to spot. I got my scholarship and went to college to study Literature. I’ve moved on and am getting my master’s now. Sometimes, I still get letters. They just give me little updates. She tells me she’s still waiting. All my life, I just wanted to be normal. I will never choose to become a monster. I wonder how long she’ll wait. What if she decides I’m making the wrong choice?

Don’t be in a rush to leave the nest

ya0pvb

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ya0pvb/dont_be_in_a_rush_to_leave_the_nest/

I jumped up out of my sleep drenched in sweat and gasping for air. I’d just been awaken for the 5th night in a row from a nightmare of me being choked. Except when I would look it was just pitch black nothing there but the hands felt so real. I decided to get up for a quick restroom trip and to splash some cool water on my face. I open the door to my room walking towards my bathroom. I hear my dad pacing back and forth in the kitchen whispering something but I couldn’t hear the words. I watched him for a few seconds pacing back and forth in the dark continuing to whisper inaudibly. “Dad why are you in the dark are you okay? I just had one of those nightmares again” I called out to him. I couldn’t hear his response as I rushed into the bathroom cause nature was screaming at that point. I do my business flush wash my hands and splashed the cold water on my face. I glance up at the mirror and smile at card my dad had given me when I moved out. He’s always so supportive. I glanced at my reflection and immediately froze. I noticed two large handprint shaped bruises on my neck and a long fresh scratch right under each shoulder blades as if someone with hands too large to be human had been choking me. As I observed the bruise I froze as a terrifying reminder popped in my head…I moved into my new apartment last weekend. I live alone. So who or even worse what had I seen pacing the kitchen. All the lights went out at that moment I felt it’s presence before it spoke in a bone chilling voice, “You’re not like the last one, you’re nice with a beautiful soul I can smell it, so I’ll give you 15 minutes to leave and never return because next time” the lights flashed back on revealing a horrifying creature so tall it was hunched over peering down at me with a razor sharp toothy grin. It licked its lips excitedly before continuing, “ I won’t be able to stop myself from eating you limb by limb and sucking that delicious soul out of you”. I was out the front door before he even finished the sentence. I left everything and never looked back and tried to forget it and I almost did. I was scrolling on my phone in my parents living room while they watched the news: “A gruesome discovery indeed, 22 year old tenant was found dead. Her arms and legs were ripped off. Investigation is still ongoing cause of death is undetermined. Landlord said she’d just moved into unit 156 the weekend prior…. I couldn’t hear anything else instantly filled with dread. That had been my unit. Could it really be- My thoughts cut off at the reporters next words “it seems the killer left a message that nobody can seem to make sense of” The camera turned to a wall with words written in blood I heard my mom and dad both gasp in horror. The message read: See what happens when you don’t take the 15 minute head start. It’s been 5 years. I’m still living with my parents and finally saved up enough money and courage to try moving on my own again. “Sweetie you have a package”! My mom yelled. I jogged down excited I’d been waiting a shipment of marvel comics so I quickly ripped the box open and immediately heard blood curdling screams…I realized they are my own as I looked at the hundreds of pictures of me sleeping showering etc but the note is what made me pass out…15 minutes are up I’m comingggggg! It read.

A Letter From Nicolas Devereaux Regarding The Pirate Carlos Zaragoza

y9l436

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9l436/a_letter_from_nicolas_devereaux_regarding_the/

**April 19, 1753** ​ I doubt that history shall recall my name nor will it care about my ultimate fate. Perhaps it would be best if I was never spoken of again. Should time forget me, it shall almost certainly mean that my bones were never found and that this island has been either forgotten or destroyed. That can only be a good thing. ​ For what I suspect will be the last time, I shall offer up my name. I am… Or I was Nicolas Devereaux. Once I was a respectable man. I was a sailor in the honorable service of King Louis XV. More than a sailor, I was a Captain in command of his own ship. Mine was a beautiful vessel known as *La Dryade* and for eight wonderful years I served King and my country to keep the colonies of the new world safe. I end my service without regrets. ​ Soon, I will be dead through some means or another. I do not believe any means of rescue will come for me, and I am not sure I want it to. This island must be forgotten and no living soul must ever step foot on it again. ​ To you who have found my final letter, please know that you are in mortal peril. I have given my life to stop the evil of this place from finding its way out into the world. I only ask that you honor my sacrifice and leave this island and myself to be forgotten and lost to the sea of eternity. ​ When I was informed of the attack on the French port of Saint Martin, I did not then know the effect this attack would have on myself nor that it had sealed my fate. Those who survived shared tales of a ship making port. From that ship came a force like no other. Dead eyed men moving ever forwards like automatons. No blade nor bullet could cease their advance. Any who resisted were killed and those who could not resist were taken and hauled back to their ship without a word spoken. They took women, children, dead and wounded while they left only blood. ​ My commander sent *La Dryade* was to investigate the attack and so I set sail for Saint Martin with my men, not knowing what awaited us. ​ We could see the smoke that rose into the sky long before we saw the island itself. I do not recall the last time I saw such total desolation. Buildings were burned, pools of blood had tainted the dirt but there was not a corpse to be seen. The men who had emerged from that ship had taken every body, living or dead that they could before they had at last set sail. ​ The people there could rebuild. The colony would recover in time however the sight of the wound so fresh sent a chill through my bones. What survivors we spoke to offered us little in the way of aid. Those who had been fortunate enough to be passed over had been wise enough to hide and thus had seen little of the attack itself. Yet I knew that many of them had heard the terror of battle outside their homes and many more had lost friends and loved ones. ​ One young woman I spoke to will almost surely haunt me for the rest of my days. She was wide eyed and shaken, as if she still had not quite come to accept what she had seen. When spoken to, she could only barely respond. Her voice faltered before she trailed off. She was of little help to us, and yet her horror spoke volumes and fueled my own unease. This young woman had lain eyes upon the ship as it had sailed into port. What she’d described sounded as if it had been dredged up from the depths. The ship was malformed, made of twisted and gnarled wood. So hideous was its visage that it sent primal fear through her with a mere glance. Its tattered sails were black as night but it flew no colors. Despite its grotesque appearance, it was allowed to port yet as soon as it did so, men had flooded from the ship and begun their attack. They overran the local soldiers with minimal effort, slaughtering them ruthlessly before they’d moved on to the town. They had washed over Saint Martin like a plague before they’d retreated into their deformed ship with the dead and vanished just as dawn broke. ​ The woman I’d spoken to had told us that the ship had both come from the North, and departed towards the North. So, we had our heading. ​ Within a few days we sailed north from Saint Martin in search of the ship described to us by the survivors. I had given my men the order to keep watch for a malformed ship that matched the description we had received. We did stop to gam with a merchant we’d passed who told us of a nearby attack they had witnessed. They had only seen the aftermath and rescued three sailors, all of whom they allowed us to speak to. ​ Two of the sailors were rendered mute by the sights they’d seen. The third, only a boy had told us of a dark ship that had emerged from the night and opened fire on them with neither warning nor provocation. The boy, in his cowardice, had escaped in a lifeboat along with the other three men. His actions would have been shameful had they not saved his life and the lives of two others. The attack had happened to the west of us and so we changed course, hoping we might find traces of the attack or perhaps even encounter the ship responsible. Even then, when I gave the order, I questioned my own pursuit. The desolation left in the wake of this nameless ship was enough to leave me with a sense of unease yet my duty was to the King and by his command I stayed my course. ​ It was three days before we crossed paths with the nameless ship. I awoke in my cabin that night to the sound of canon fire and felt the violent rocking of *La Dryade.* ​ When I emerged from my cabin, my men scrambled around like ants caught in a frenzy of confusion. I took the helm, ordering them to fight back and return fire. Our enemy kept their distance, staying in the darkness as they circled around us. There was no light but for the flash of their guns. ​ I would have expected to see lanterns aboard the other ship but no… The mad fools were cloaked in total darkness. It was if the night itself were attacking us! ​ I cannot say how many men I lost in the initial attack… The darkness made it impossible to keep track of the casualties. I remember that the other ship had gotten close. I could see the gnarled, twisted wood in the light of our own lanterns and I could see the blank faces of those who boarded us. ​ They had the empty eyes of dead men and they showed my own soldiers no mercy. I myself drew my sword to do battle with them but they did not fight as ones who wished to remain alive. The one I encountered left himself open to be stabbed and as I ran my sword through his gullet, he stared at me with milk white eyes and made no sound. He did not fall. He simply seized me by the throat as two of his compatriots took my arms and pulled me to the ground. ​ The night went silent around us. ​ Our battle was lost almost as soon as it had begun. ​ Two men boarded my ship, one of them tall and dressed in an embroidered coat. He wore a hat with a wide brim and a feather. I spotted a rapier at his side and I anticipated it would soon send me to be judged by God. The man at his side was a smaller, more wretched thing with a rictus grin that crept behind its master like a shadow. As the pair approached me, it was the smaller, hideous man who spoke. His French was poor. Evidently he was once a Spaniard but he spoke well enough for me to understand him. ​ *“Welcome Captain Devereaux. You have the privilege of standing in the presence of the great Captain Carlos Zaragoza!”* I looked upon the taller man. This was no doubt, Captain Zaragoza. The name was not familiar to me. Zaragoza had a narrow, clean shaven face and dark, intense sunken eyes. His skin was pale and gaunt. His gaze cut through me like a blade of ice. ​ *“I must say, your reputation does proceed you Captain Devereaux.”* The man at his side continued, *“I had expected more of a fight, but alas it was arrogant of me to assume a mere soldier could compete with the gifts given by my Holy benefactor… I must apologize for not speaking to you directly. Many years ago, I was deprived of my tongue and so I myself can no longer speak… This man here, Mr. Grigori Costa’s words are my own.”* ​ Looking at the speaking man, ‘Mr. Costa’ it took me a moment to comprehend what he was saying. He seemed to be Zaragoza’s mouth. A simple being with no mind of its own, just a translator for that wretched Captain in front of me. ​ *“I can see you’re quite embittered by your recent defeat… Surely this is not your first,”* Costa said. *“Even if it is, understand that this is a joyous occasion! Very soon you shall be serving a purpose greater than yourself or any King! Your soul and the souls of your survivors shall have the privilege of being part of a collective far greater than any you could imagine.”* ​ *“Collective?”* I asked. *“You mean to conscript us?”* *“Conscript?”* Costa replied. *“In a sense, good Captain… Although our methodology may be quite different than what you may have in mind.”* ​ Looking upon the vacant faces of Zaragoza’s crew, I thought it would be better not to know the blasphemous measures he had utilized in his ‘conscription’ of those men. They seemed only barely human and I could smell death and rot emanating from their bodies. Pale eyes looked back at me, cutting through my soul just as Zaragoza’s gaze had. ​ *“Witch.”* I said. *“Blasphemer! You would have us serve you in death, would you not?”* *“Not quite death, good Captain.”* Costa said. *“Yet not even your God would know the difference… Would you like to see an example of our work?”* I had no say in the matter. ​ Zaragoza’s dead men hauled me to their ship along with most of my surviving crew. The few brave soldiers in his Majesty’s navy who dared to try and fight met gristly fates and were brought aboard as corpses. Even now I struggle to commit to paper what I saw upon that ship. The abominations constructed by Carlos Zaragoza had no place among God's creation. Yet in defiance of the universe itself, Zaragoza had still conducted his unholy work upon that ship… ​ The stink of death lingered so heavy in the air that some men were unable to prevent themselves from vomiting. I myself felt lightheaded as I inhaled the sickly miasma of decay. The dead among us were thrown down into the cargo hold along with the rest of the blackened, rotting carcasses of the dead. Looking down into the hold I saw naught but a tangle of limbs and rotting bodies. ​ Zaragoza gestured for myself and three of my men to be taken below deck and we were dragged there by men who only seemed marginally more alive than the corpses kept as cargo. ​ In a room isolated from the rest of his ship, I watched as that foul man uncorked a darkened bottle of black liquid that smelled sickeningly sweet. Costa stood near the rear of the room, only observing as his Captain went about his work. He poured that dark liquid into a stone mortar and imbued it with a fine white powder. He mixed it together with a pestle before looking up at his dead soldiers and gesturing to them. ​ *“Look and see, the start of the new cycle of life and death.”* Costa said and I watched as Zaragoza's men pulled one of my own forwards. He was a good sailor by the name of Gabriel Celice. One of my finer men. ​ I could do nothing but watch in horror as Zaragoza forced his vile mixture down Celice’s throat. I watched the man struggle and try and spit out the mixture but the liquid was tilted down his throat before he was released. He coughed and swayed drunkenly. *“You’ve killed him!”* I cried and Zaragoza simply smiled knowingly back at me. *“Not killed, dear Captain. But granted a new life, in service of a grander cause.”* Costa said, *“In time good Captain, you shall experience it yourself. Death is only the first step…”* ​ Celice collapsed down to his knees, clawing at his throat and struggling to breathe. He looked at me, silently begging for reprieve although I knew I could offer him nothing. It took him far longer to die than it should have any his death was utterly devoid of dignity. As he writhed on the ground, choking and trying to scream I could smell the soiled stench of death already coming from him. When at last his movements fell still, I had thought it mercy… yet I found myself wrong. ​ Some time after Celice had fallen still, I watched as he began to breathe again. His eyes opened, as dead as the eyes of Zaragoza's crew and several of those corpse-like men helped him to his feet. *“Set him to work.”* Costa said as Zaragoza watched me intently, *“We have an unending need for bodies.”* ​ The chill I felt in my soul was impossible to describe. ​ I have lived a long and bloody life and never before had I feared death. Yet in that moment, in that room with Carlos Zaragoza, I felt the mortal terror that grips all mens hearts and even now, I cannot say with any certainty which I feared more. The growing reality of my death, or Zaragoza himself. ​ *“So this will be the fate of all my men?”* I asked, *“What monster takes such a sick joy in propagating the suffering of others? I beg you, cut my throat and cast me into the sea! Let me die a man, not a thrall!”* *“You shall die at my pleasure.”* Costa said, *“Your men may not be worth wasting my gifts upon. But you shall serve us in our glorious purpose, good Captain.”* ​ I take no pride in confessing that I begged Zaragoza like a dog. The mute only watched over my groveling, seemingly enjoying it as I tried to plead and bargain with him. *“What would you take?”* I asked, “*In place of me and my crew, what else would you take? I beg you to spare us and we shall hunt you no further!”* ​ *“Take?”* Costa asked, *“Good Captain, what would you give us so freely? Already we have such a bounty of souls. What more could you offer us?”* ​ There was but one thing I could give. ​ *“Two souls for each of my men you leave alive.”* I said, *“Surely even you cannot decline this offer, Noble Zaragoza.”* I could see an eyebrow raise. I had gotten the vile Captain's interest. He looked over at his lapdog, then back at me. Slowly he drew his sword and placed the blade at my throat. For a moment, I was sure my offer was rejected. ​ *“Two souls?”* Costa asked, “*You are desperate… Yet I shall give you the opportunity to deliver on your offer. Know that if you are but a soul short, all of yours shall be conscripted into our purpose and you shall live out your days in my service…”* *“So you accept?”* I asked. *“I accept… Collect the souls we require and then I shall contact you and tell you where we shall lie in wait. Remember, Good Captain Devereaux, not one soul short.”* ​ There was a sadistic glee in Costa's voice that sent shivers down my spine. All I could do was nod and pray it was enough. ​ My men and I were cast overboard soon afterward. Only a few of us were lost at sea. What was left used the moonlight to swim to a nearby shore. I had set sail in a 74 gun ship with a crew of over 500. What was left numbered less than 20. The loss sat heavily on me, yet I promised myself that that handful of men would survive at any cost. ​ Any cost at all. ​ It was several days before we attracted the attention of a passing mercantile vessel and bartered passage to Havana. ​ I had my time to contemplate the best way to proceed with my bargain with Zaragoza. I had no doubt that should I fail to uphold my end of our agreement, what remained of my men would be damned as would I. While I loathed that vile man with a deeper hatred than I had ever felt before, I understood his power. Failing him was not an option. The unthinkable needed to be done… and perhaps it might just offer me the opportunity to retaliate. ​ I had no illusions that I might escape Zaragoza, however, to betray or even kill him? Perhaps. Mayhap I could even catch him off guard as I gave him the damned souls he required. ​ When at last my men and I made port in Havana, I chose to waste no time in fulfilling our bargain. I had not chosen Havana at random. It had been some time since last I had set foot in that place, and yet I recalled an old friend who might just provide me the assistance I needed. ​ Time had been kind to Cassandara, far kinder than most. It had been years since I had laid eyes upon her and yet she had not aged a day. Her hut sat in the very same place it had been when last I had passed her way, far away from the walls of any city, upon a forgotten beach. Even in the distance, I could see the glow from the embers of her fire, and at the mere sight of them I felt like a young man, nervously treading behind his Captain into the unknown. ​ *“Speak not of God in this place, Nicolas.”* He’d said to me all those years ago, *“For this woman answers to his Masters. Not to him.”* ​ The stragglers I had behind me in that moment no doubt felt the same apprehension I did as we walked along the beach to the hut of the ancient witch. It was a feeling that I understood well. I asked them to wait outside as I alone approached the door of the hut. I would spare them the unease of laying eyes upon the Witch herself. ​ She was hardly hideous or unsightly… And yet even in her modest beauty, there remained something unearthly about her. A strange intensity in her eyes that made me pause as soon as I stepped into her presence. Her race was impossible to determine, and at a glance she looked neither male nor female. Had it not been for her name, I would have never been able to describe her as either sex. She stared at me, her gaze intense and judging. I knew in my heart that she could see my very soul and see what defined me as a man. ​ I knew she was deciding whether or not I was worthy... *“Devereaux.”* She said quietly, *“It’s been some time.”* ​ Her French was perfect as if she had spoken it all her life. *“You remember me?”* I asked quietly. *“I remember everything.”* She replied, *“Sit. You’ve come to ask questions and perhaps I may offer you answers.”* ​ At her word, I moved to sit down. I watched as she poured tea for both of us and waited for her to speak again. *“I can see the unease in your soul. A dread that I recognize all too well… What have you seen, Devereaux? What is it that weighs upon your heart?”* *“Carlos Zaragoza.”* I replied, *“I trust you know of him.”* She scoffed. A sound of utter disgust. ​ *“I recognize the name… A fool of a man, putting himself in the debt of that which one must never be indebted to…”* *“Fool or not, he decimated my crew. My very survival is now dependent on a bargain struck with him.”* *“That would make you a fool as well.”* She said dismissively, *“What was it? The terms of your bargain?”* *“40 souls. Two for each of my crew who still lives. I beg of you… I need your help.”* ​ *“So you do.”* She said, *“So you do… Strange of him to mention souls. Zaragoza has little use for them. That which he serves might, although as little more than currency. They’re naught much more than a pleasant afterthought. No. What he seeks is not spirit, but flesh and bone. That is what his master seeks.”* *“Bone?”* I asked, *“To what end?”* ​ *“The wills of the Low Gods are often a mystery. Many have their own strange obsessions. Perhaps… Should you grant Zaragoza what he wishes, you may see it for yourself. I’ve little expectation that he will honor his end of the bargain. 40 new bodies to offer to his master would be favorable, but 60 would be better, no?”* ​ *“So it would.”* I said, *“What then, do you suggest?”* *“You intend to honor your bargain, I see… This is wise. Collect your bodies. Wait. He will watch. He will know… And when the hour comes, strike. Not at Zaragoza… He is but a puppet. Kill him and given time the Master will simply find another to continue his vile work. But strike at the master itself. You cannot kill it… But you can wound it. Wound it enough to drive it back.”* ​ I nodded silently at her guidance and offered the little money I had left in exchange for her services. She refused it. *“Keep your worldly wealth. You’ve a greater need of it than I.”* She said. I left her home, knowing what I must do… And yet seemingly more unsure than before. ​ My men and I were able to commandeer a ship from Havana… No… That is a lie… My men and I murdered several innocent merchants and took their ship in Havana. We stored their corpses in the cargo hold. There were 4 of them. The ship had been moored at the time. Much of the crew was ashore, save for the unfortunate ones we killed… ​ We spent several days at sea after that, working like dogs to keep the mechant ship afloat. Supplies were scarce. They had likely been in Havana for a resupply. But we managed as best we could. When eventually we did come across another ship, I recognized it as another of the Kings navy. It was not a big ship, sixth rate if that. No doubt crewed by little over a hundred men. But it would suffice and with a heavy heart, I recognized the opportunity we had… ​ We played the part of wounded merchants, limping along after a pirate attack. The ship was kind enough to stop to gam with us, and offered to escort us back to Havana. We graciously accepted the offer, and I left several of my men aboard to enjoy a hot meal. ​ They did not suspect a thing about us… Or if they did, we never quite gave them the time to act on it. ​ I ordered that the attack commence that evening. ​ We were outnumbered heavily. But we had the element of surprise. My men had smuggled their weapons aboard. While much of the ship slept, we attacked, taking out the night shift, and capturing several of the officers. For the sake of caution, we executed most of them, tossing their bodies in with the dead merchants, and steeling my heart for what needed to be done, I ordered the slaughter of any man we could not keep within the brig. ​ When all was done, little over half the crew remained. Still well over 40 men. My own men took control of the ship. I left my first mate in command of the merchant ship, and we waited… ​ It was not long until he spoke to us. ​ Two days after we took the ship, I was awoken by the shadow of a man in my quarters. ​ When I lit my lantern to see who had come to me, I was disturbed to find the visage of the captain of the ship we’d taken, standing at the foot of my bed and he spoke to me, despite the fact that I had watched my men slit his throat some nights ago. Although his voice sounded less like the man I had ordered killed and more like the voice of Grigori Costa. ​ *“You’ve done well, good Captain. Far better than I had hoped.”* He had said, *“What a generous bounty you now seem to bring to me…”* *“And where shall I bring it?”* I asked. ​ The dead man took a knife from his belt and turned away from me, shuffling towards a nearby map. I watched as he studied it for a moment, before driving the knife into the paper. *“Where Gods slumber… And the midnight grows dark… The way will be open for you. Do not keep us waiting, good Captain.”* The corpse said. I watched if offer me a rictus smile, before death took it once more. ​ The next morning, I directed my weary crew towards the heading that Zaragoza had given us. It was a lengthy voyage. To keep supplies, we had little choice but to attack two merchant ships that we passed on the way. ​ When we took the first ship, there was some debate amongst the men about whether or not to kill the merchants or not. I argued against it, as we already had more than what we needed… But the crew was not so easily convinced, arguing that the more souls we had, the better. ​ As we had no more room in the brig, the merchants were killed and their bodies placed with the rest. ​ When we took the second ship, there was far less debate on the matter. The merchants were killed and I was given little say on the subject, outside of my own quiet prayers for the souls of the men we’d slain. ​ It was some weeks before we came within sight of Zaragoza’s heading. The island he had directed us to did not appear on any maps that we had, and yet we saw it with our own eyes and as we sailed closer, I swore that the sky above us grew darker and darker. I gave the orders to my men to prepare for battle. We had armed ourselves heavily with what we scavenged from the armory of the ship we’d taken. Most of my men carried explosives on their person, myself included. We had found a fair number of them in the cargo hold of the naval ship we’d taken… I had thought it only appropriate to put them to good use. ​ We saw Zaragoza's ship moored just offshore, and as we came within range and they dispatched a ship to gam with us. ​ I was not surprised to find Grigori Costa aboard. *“Bring your ship into the cove. We shall offload the new offerings.”* Costa had said, and we did as he commanded, allowing him to lead us around the island, to a small inland cove that our ship only barely fit inside. ​ I imagine that this cove must have been where Zaragoza had sailed in from. The walls were bone white and the presence of the place left a pit in my stomach. ​ Once we were close enough to land, we were boarded by more of those dead eyed men, who offloaded the corpses and the prisoners we’d brought. The stench of the dead, after weeks at sea was unbearable… But it would not be the worst part. ​ *“Come, come and see the fruits of your labor. We would greatly like to show you.”* Costa had said, as he’d urged us to follow his living corpses into a cavern just off the cove. I’d had little desire to follow him, but little choice to refuse. ​ My men and I allowed ourselves to be led deeper into the island. Costa spoke the whole while, although I recall little of what he said, instead looking onwards to what awaited us. I suppose in my heart, I had known it to be something vile… But I do not believe I was ever truly prepared for it. ​ In a large chamber, beneath an open black sky, dark as night, I saw what Zaragoza had been building and how do I even begin to describe it? It was a being… Of that much, I am sure. It was only vaguely humanoid and it seemed almost impossible to determine just what it was actually meant to be, or what it could have been. Just how close to completion it was, I cannot truly say… But it was hideous. ​ The being, the colossus was a twisted amalgamation of bone held together by sinew with some flesh. It was constructed, crudely out of countless disassembled skeletons, and it was impossible to guess with any certainty just how many bodies had gone into this abominations construction, or how many more were needed. As it was, the thing must have measured somewhere around 50 feet tall… ​ The chamber we were inside stank of burning flesh, and looking down near the base of the chamber we were in, I could see great iron pots lit with bonfires. The living dead, under Zaragoza’s thrall, were piling the fresh bodies we’d killed into those pots, boiling the flesh off the dead so that their bones could join the others… ​ And from a place of honor near the top of the chamber, I could see Carlos Zaragoza himself, watching over this macabre scene like the Devil himself. The mere sight of him turned my stomach with a mixture of dread, and disgust. ​ *“Is it not beautiful?”* Costa had asked, *“Our work, to give our Master new life?”* Beautiful… Not a word I would have ever used. But out of obligation, I agreed with him. *“Your feats are certainly… Impressive.”* I had said. *“You think so?”* Costa had asked, *“I do too. Perhaps then, you may wish to have a closer look?”* *“I’m quite fine where I am.”* I said, *“I’ve gone above and beyond the terms of our deal. Now honor your end.”* ​ *“Honor… So many people seem to hold that word so very dear to their hearts.”* Costa said, *“May I ask you a question, good Captain? Do you believe in God? Do you believe that His law is absolute?”* *“I do.”* I replied. *“Well, I do not.”* He said, *“And I believe in no law… No code. No honor. Only that which I can see and I can touch. That which I can reach out and feel… Like our master here… This, I know to be real. This I know to have meaning. But your delusions of God, of honor… These mean nothing to me.”* ​ I had closed my eyes, knowing this answer was coming. *“In time, you will be glad.”* Costa told me, *“To have your bones, join with the Master is one of the greatest gifts I can bestow. And when he awakens, when your soul joins with his… You shall thank me.”* ​ As he spoke, I could see the dead approaching myself and my men… Hundreds of them. More than we could ever dare fight. I had suspected it would come to this… ​ Costa just smiled at me, and from his perch high above us, I sa that same smile upon Zaragoza’s face. *“Then permit me to spite you,”* I said, *“And deny you that gift, yourself.”* ​ Without a further word, I had drawn my pistol and fired it into Grigori Costa’s head. He collapsed to the ground, eyes wide and mouth agape, as dead as the men I’d slain at him and his masters request. ​ Above me, I saw Zaragoza turn and storm off in a rage, drawing his sword as he went. The dead reached my men, who met them with swords at the ready. ​ For the honor of God, they fought. In the name of the King, they fought… And I fought with them. I’ve survived many a battle, but never before had my blood rushed in my ears the way it did during this one. ​ More than once, I felt the white hot sting of a blade as it bit into me. But I did not die. I refused. I fought like a man possessed, carving my way through the corpses, with my men at my back as we made our push towards the vile skeleton Zaragoza had sought to construct. I know not how many of my own men I lost… Too many. The explosions of the grenades we had scavenged from the ship shook the entire cavern. Desperate, dying men detonated them, and with each new explosion, I half prayed the entire cavern might yet collapse on us. Yet it did not. ​ In a haze of battle, I reached the base of the cavern with a few men still left. They held the dead, as I dispatched those who struggled to construct the vile colossus of bone they worked on. With them dead, I was free to scatter the iron grenades wherever I could. As I worked, I saw him entering the cavern from a side tunnel, his blade drawn and ready. ​ Carlos Zaragoza charged me like a bull, a look of utter disdain upon his face as he came for me. The mere sight of his approach filled me with a primal terror, as if I were watching a tiger race towards me. ​ Our blades met, and I kicked him away. I had little interest in fighting this man as an equal, and so I drew one of my pistols and put a bullet in him, as I had with Costa. An ordinary man would have died… But though I shot Carlos Zaragoza in the chest, he did not fall. He stepped back one step, and smiled at me before coming for me once more. ​ His every swing was like a hammer, striking me and he moved with almost blinding speed. It took everything I had to evade him, and even then, I felt the sting of his blade more times than I could count. ​ Looking at the battle of his undead against my few remaining men, I could see that it was a losing battle. Most of those I had come with were dead, and those that remained would not last much longer. ​ As Zaragoza forced me back, away from his colossus, I meekly raised my sword to parry his blows. His own blade crashed against it, over, and over, and over again before snapping it like a twig. He kicked me to the ground, grinning a wicked, twisted grin as he savored the moment of my coming death… Thinking fast, I kicked with all of my might at his knee before he could drive his sword through my chest. I felt his leg snap, and heard him let out a hiss of rage as he collapsed. ​ I kicked the sword from his hand and he grabbed at me, seizing me by the leg and trying to grapple with me. I kicked and thrashed at him before driving my broken sword into his neck. That seemed to stun him just long enough for me to force him off of me, and allow me to stand and try to run. ​ Looking back, I could already see Zaragoza’s leg snapping back into place as he grabbed for his sword. I had little time, and strove to make the most of it. ​ On unsteady legs, I ran towards the iron grenades I had planted before and carelessly spilled the rest around the skeleton. I saved only one, which I lit and tossed into the colossus. I saw Zaragoza stare at it, eyes narrowing in rage. ​ I stumbled towards the cavern that Zaragoza had initially emerged from, looking back at him and dreading the thought that he would keep coming, chasing me like prey. And then came the explosion. ​ The entire cavern shook. I could see dust falling from the ceiling as it came down. ​ The last I saw of Carlos Zaragoza, he was glaring at me. Eyes burning like those of Satan. ​ I ran. On my weakened legs I ran… The earth quaked beneath me, the cavern seemed to threaten to collapse. But I did not care. If I died, it would not have mattered, so long as I died away from Zaragoza. My body did not stop until I saw the sky again and when I did, I finally collapsed. I stared up into the dark sky above me… And drifted into darkness. ​ When I awoke, the darkness was gone. ​ The sun had risen… And the island was empty. ​ I have investigated it thoroughly, and all I have found are corpses rotting in the sun. Some look to have one been Zaragoza’s. Perhaps their return to the cold slumber of death means that he himself is dead… And yet I’m not entirely sure I believe that. ​ My men are dead. ​ My ship remains trapped within that cove. I have managed to return to it, but I cannot leave this place alone… And perhaps it is better than I don’t. ​ I leave this letter as a warning to those who may find it… To those who may find this island, my stolen ship, and my final resting place. ​ There is nothing here to be unearthed. ​ There is nothing here that should be studied by history or researched by science. ​ This is not a place where man is meant to live. ​ Leave the earth here to settle. Leave it to swallow up the evil here, so that it may never stalk this world again. ​ Leave Carlos Zaragoza to his prison, under the stone… For I dread to imagine what horrible fate awaits this world, should he still [survive…](https://www.reddit.com/r/HeadOfSpectre/)

That God Damned Knock

y9mwu4

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9mwu4/that_god_damned_knock/

At first I thought the knock at my door was normal. Every day, sometime around 4-5 pm my mom gets home from work. She lets me know she’s home every single day by that knock. One day, I got a knock at my door at 4:30, “Hi honey!” I answered, “Hey! I’ll be out in a moment.” A few minutes later, I stepped out of my room into the hallway connecting the bedrooms and the living room. Then I saw my mom, sitting on the couch reading her phone. “How was your day?” I asked “Busy! But good, what about you?” “Mine was okay! I’ve just been chillin today.” “Oh good.” Then I went back into my room for a bit, and 15 minutes later I started hearing what I thought was another knock at my door. “Ya?” I asked. I stepped out of my room, and I heard the banging coming from the bathroom. The door was open… What I saw next was horrific. She was banging her head against the mirror as fast and as hard as she could. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Her blood splattered against her reflection… Then she turned toward my direction after a moment, looking directly at me. She paused for a moment, smiled, and said, “Wanna join? It’s fun! I promise!” I screamed, “What the fuck mom?!? What are you doing??” I ran towards her, grabbing her by the shoulders, making sure she couldn’t hit herself anymore. She opened her eyes as wide as she could, and rolled them back into her head. She said calmly, “You’ll see how fun it is.” I ran to the front door, got in my car, and said “NOPE THE FUCK TO THAT.” I called my step dad and told him to get to the house as fast as possible so we could either take her to a psych ward or a church. Then she stepped out of the front door. Her eyes were now pitch black, and she was cackling… I started to cry. What the fuck happened??? She was normal just a few fucking minutes ago! Then she appeared in the passenger seat in my car in an instant. She asked, “Where are you going sweetie?” With the worst, guttural, fake, garbage impersonation of my mom I’ve ever heard. Then I blacked out. I woke up in my bed and the time read 9:00 AM. What kind of dream was that? Jesus. I stepped out of bed, and I opened my bedroom door. That’s when I saw it. On my living room couch were my two parents. Their mouths were more open than humanly possible with their eyes missing, watching static on the TV. I panicked, I got back in my room and locked the door. I’m writing this now. They don’t seem to have moved since, because I haven’t heard any footsteps. I have spent hours trying to call for help. But the only thing that happens when anyone answers is they say, “You don’t have much time left.” I don’t know what to do. I think I’m just gonna kill myself. It would probably be much less painful and scary. I’m so scared. I’m so fucking scared.

Too good to be true

y9zx4h

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9zx4h/too_good_to_be_true/

I’m walking down the concrete sidewalk that I usually take to get to and from my workplace. The cold air is blowing softly, yet it still stings my skin just a bit. It’s just about winter time, the trees in the park I’m walking past are barren, but the trunk of the tree is lively. I go out just before everyone starts filling the streets of my hometown. It’s a peaceful little town, small and comfortable, and everyone knows each other. They go out together and meet other friends often. Nothing bad really happens in this town. The dew from the early morning is gathering on my shoes. As the rhythmic sound of my soles tapping the concrete is calming and Repetitive. I take a deep breath, but quickly stop. As the odd sound of Paper scraping between the sole of my shoe and the hard concrete below breaks the peace. I look down from my trance, Lying there is a 100 dollar bill, A slightly faded hue of green covers the bill, and one of the presidents looks up at me. How odd that someone lost this amount of money. I picked it up as my mind landed on the decision; That I was going to return this money. Again, this is a small town, So I’ll find whoever dropped this bill and hopefully return it to them. They might have needed it to pay for rent this week or buy food. I resumed walking, a refresher of air fills my lungs, The Air is so nice in the early mornings. Tap, tap, tap, My soles resume the same rhythm with slight variations of sound each time. I usually try to make out little songs that my soles make while I walk, as it is quite fun to do. The only time the rhythm is broken is when I have to stop to look both ways down the street to cross it, Or when I have to turn the corner of a building to continue down the sidewalk. Tap, tap, scuff, tap, Crrrrrk. Again, the sound of paper crinkled under my sole breaks my rhythm, Another 100 bill. Did someone have a hole in their pocket? Perhaps they were just having a bad day? I pushed back the thousands of questions encircling in my mind. I picked up the second 100 dollar bill and put it snuggly with the first, as to not lose them. But something feels odd about this, The people in this town would’ve informed another person if they dropped their money. I guess someone was up early today too then? That could explain how no one noticed the money. I mean, that's probably the case. I continued walking again, wiping the fact that I had just found two 100 dollar bills from my conscience. I closed my eyes as I hum my favorite tune, a song that had gotten stuck in my head since yesterday. Now I should be getting pretty close to my home by now. Just a few more blocks and I’ll- Crrrrk. Another 100 dollar bill lies there, On the cold concrete. I quickly picked it up this time as I am not as surprised as the first two, I just place it where the other two are and resume. I’ll call up who I know later and ask if they’re missing a few 100 dollar bills. Then I’ll return them, simple, It’s the least I can do. I turn the last corner and see the golden numbers on the building that shelters me, this is my home. A brick apartment building, Its many windows are dewy and wet. I look back down to see the small concrete steps that are showing a bit of peeling lead up to a black iron door, A black metal railing complements it. As I stand across the street from the building, I think how it isn’t the best; But it is home. I put my foot out onto the street to cross, then the other. I quicken my pace just a bit to cross to the other side. The peacefulness of the morning suddenly stops as a black car tries to screech to a halt, but it’s going too fast. It happens in just under a few seconds, But time feels like it's slowed down. I brace myself for the worst, and shut my eyes, but it never comes. I open my eyes to maybe expect myself to be lying on the ground. But the car is nowhere to be seen. Did I imagine that? No, That was too real. I feel over my body to see if anything is wrong. Nothing, No bones broken, no bruises, not even a single, small, scratch. I haven't even been moved. I was bewildered by what had happened. This isn’t normal, or am I losing it? As I’m reflecting on the scene and trying to make sense of it. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, I looked over and saw Someone familiar. A good friend that I’ve known for years is now walking down the sidewalk as I stand in the street. A brown jacket covers his upper torso, as a slit of a gray shirt shows through where the jacket isn’t zipped up. A small bit of facial hair covers his face, Newly trimmed and His jacket hood is up, Brown hair is showing through the darkness of it. His blue jeans look like they have seen better days. They’re a bit lighter than usual, Maybe from all the use and washing. He waves weakly at me as I approach him. Seeming a bit uncomfortable “You saw that right? That car hit me, but it didn’t, and-” Jackson doesn’t respond, He doesn’t even look at me. After a pause though. He raises his head and looks at me. Something seems off about his face. His skin is a bit paler than usual, and he has bags under his eyes. He opens his mouth to say something, but I couldn't catch what he says. “What? Could you repeat that agai-'' I froze mid sentence as I see more movement from the corner of my eye. Curious, I look in the direction of the movement, And Jackson Rounds the corner then comes to a stop next to me, My heart sank. “Who is that?” Jackson says, pointing to the other Jackson facing me. “Isn’t that? You… Jackson?” I reply shakily. The Jackson In front of me opened his mouth again but again, nothing came out. Instead, Crunch, snap, Snap. His jaw made sickly pops as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. The Jaw widened to what a normal person's mouth couldn’t. As his body contorted and lengthened, Pulling his skin tighter, the skin tearing and bloodied as it tried its best to fit over the new skeleton. His Skin lost all pigmentation, What used to be a Slightly darker tan caucasian skin tone, was now a dark gray. The bones in his fingers popped out of his skin as his skin stretched, the Bones at the end of each finger were unusually sharp and long, as his eyes sunk even deeper into his skull. His arms and legs are now three times what is considered normal. A sick creature stands Unnaturally tall in front of me. It looks like it shouldn’t even exist in the first place. It made a low sound as I look up at its face. It smiles, The gums in its mouth are pointed forward, and its teeth are identical to what they looked like prior to its change. Its smile is unnaturally eerie. All I can do is stare at it, I think I'm in shock. The real Jackson Yells next to me. His indiscernible words break my trance; Snapping me back to reality as The realization sets in. I tried to run, but it reached out and grabbed me with its inescapable length of its arms. I’m dangling from one of my legs in the air now. As I kick and I kick to try to loosen its grip, but to no avail. I kept up the pointless kicking, thinking that I was still doing something. Its other arm set into motion, slowly raising up to my other leg. And it got a good hold on my other leg. Now I’m upside down looking at this thing's face while it has both of my legs in hold. It starts laughing, then I feel gradual pressure picking up in my leg joints, as it starts to pull apart at my legs. The pain increases steadily. I can tell it’s making this slow. And it’s enjoying it. Now the pain is unbearable only after a few steady seconds. I start crying out for someone to help. Tears blur my vision and my ears start to ring. I can feel my skin stretching to the best of its ability. The muscles are burning trying to keep my legs together. I try looking down at Jackson, but he’s gone. I have no hope, as I look back up at the Monster its laugh now taunting me. The pain is so terrible that I would rather die right now. Through blurred vision I stare at the creature, weeping. My legs finally gave way, as my right leg was ripped from the socket, carrying with it a part of my intestines. My own blood squirted onto my face, into my mouth, Dripping down into my nose and eyes. It was horrible, Unimaginable, I saw my own leg held up in my face by the creature, Skin hanging off of the bone, The red of the blood that covered my eyes made it hard to see anything else. But I saw the shape of my leg disappear from my sight, then the sound of crushing and chewing. It was eating my leg, it was eating my leg. My head is spinning, blood keeps spewing from the hole in the side of my body down onto myself. I only know because I can feel its warmth, but I feel so cold. The sounds stop from the creature. And It drops me to the ground, Even more pain now comes out from my skull, I can’t even tell at this point how bad it is. The feeling from my fingers tells me that my head is now flat and mushy on one side. And I have to hold my right hand over my skull just to keep its contents from spilling out. I don’t know why I kept hanging on, I’d be better off dead. I hear guttural laughing coming from the thing now. It won’t stop, Please make it stop. I felt something enter my body through the new hole the monster made. It makes sure to pierce through my body just enough that it can lift me without me falling off. But also making sure it missed all my organs and arteries, quietly pushing them out of the way. All these feelings of pain are mingling into something even worse than the pain of thousands. I feel its hot breath as It lifts me up, sticking another one of its fingers into my body. It wiggles it around until it finds my stomach. And plucks it out, lifting the organ up and throwing it into its mouth. My vision fades to black, Yet I'm still alive, Just barely conscious. One last time I hear its laugh, Taunting me, Making fun of me, and you can hear the joy of what it's doing. Then I lost all my feelings as I went limp. I awoke a few hours later in a unfamiliar place, I tried to move but couldn't. I looked to my left to see medical equipment. I'm in a hospital. Which means that I am alive. I looked to my right to see a man wearing a medical mask, with a clipboard in hand. "You are lucky to be alive right now sir." he said, "What is today?" I asked him. "May 25th, 2022" I had been in this hospital for 6, What happened was 6 damn months ago? "Can you give me my phone doctor?" "Sure, we'll get that for you. But I want to talk to you after I go get it. Okay?" "Alright doc." As the doctor turned and left the room. How in the hell did I survive that? I'm not even sure myself. Thoughts raced through my head, But left just as quickly as the doctor came back. "Here you are." He said, handing me my phone. He then sat down next to my bed. "This is going to be hard to take in but..." He sighs as he has to recall what happened. "you lost your stomach, Your right leg, and your lower intestine. You have brain damage due to major blunt force trauma to your skull. Your brain was even exposed sir. And almost every bone in your body was broken except for your Humerus, Ulna, and your radius." "I myself don't even know how your were alive that day, You lost almost all of your blood, And you were just covered head to toe in your own blood." The doctor paused and muffled back a sob. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't be telling you all this right now, Just get some rest." "I'll check on you in a few hours ok?" "Ok doctor." After a few months I'm almost fully recovered, And I'm getting a prosthetic leg soon. It's august 25th right now, And I may update you guys soon when I'm out. This is my first story I've even posted here so I hope I can Spread this to people who know me and know where I am. I'm not telling anyone where I live. you'll know if you know. I don't know what that creature was, But it's still out there. Please stay safe guys, I don't want you to end up like I did. And I still don't know what happened with the car shit, I may have had prior mental health problems or something. Just be sure to always absolutely be sure that the person you're next to is human.

The Rotting Candy Corn Cathedral

y992lq

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y992lq/the_rotting_candy_corn_cathedral/

“Life is hard down in the candy corn mines.” Blinking, I looked over at Haley. I’d been one of her advocates for over a year, working to get her transitioned back into independent living after a slow slide into schizophrenia at twenty-five had turned into a steep drop into an institution for six months. Now she was just a few weeks away from review at her group home placement, which depending on how that went, could lead to her being released back fully on her own. If she didn’t run into any setbacks, that was. “Haley, what time did you take your meds today?” I tried to keep any tension or judgment out of my voice, and I’d carefully phrased my question as though I assumed she *had* taken them, though I was worried that might not be true. She grinned at me. “Eleven o’clock. Same as always.” We were driving to a nighttime Halloween parade—one of my last times to evaluate her out in the world before I gave my report for the review—and in the passing flickers of street light I tried to read her expression. Was she joking about the candy corn? Lying about her meds? I couldn’t tell. Smiling tentatively, I gave her a nod. “Cool. So what is this about candy corn mines?” Looking back out at the road, she gave a small shrug. “It doesn’t matter. You won’t believe me.” I forced a laugh I didn’t feel. “Hey, no fair. I’m curious now. What is it?” She let out small sigh. “It’s just…none of this is real. Not for me.” “Look, I think I know what you mean. Like you’re nervous about getting back out on your own, right? That’s totally n…” Snorting, she shook her head. “No, I’m worried about the shrimp priests and the things that live under the cathedral.” Heart starting to pound quicker, I slowed down until I spotted a good place to pull over and park. When she shot me a questioning glance, I nodded. “It’s okay. We’re still going to be in time for the parade, but I just wanted to be able to understand what you’re talking about, and it’s harder for me to give you my full attention when I’m driving.” Putting the car in park, I glanced around outside. I wasn’t that familiar with this part of the city, and while it did look old and run down, it didn’t look particularly unsafe. Just a few people driving by or on the sidewalks, and there were no unsavory characters lurking in the two alleyways I could see. Turning back to her, I tried to look excited. “So tell me all about this...did you say shrimp priests?” Haley nodded. “I mean, yeah, that’s what I call them. Not because they’re short. They’re taller than me or you. But they have so many little legs and hands and their backs…you can see their backs in spots through the robes they wear because the robes are like old and kind of rotten I guess? And their backs are all hard and segmented like a lobster or a shrimp.” I felt a chill pass over my back and I tried to ignore it. “Okay. So is this something you saw on t.v. or made up or…” “No. I can dream them sometimes. No, that’s not right. I can see them sometimes when I dream.” “Okay. Now you just distinguished between dreaming them and seeing them when you dream. What does that distinction mean to you?” She looked at me for a moment, her expression almost sad. “You really do try to help me. I know that. A lot of them…they don’t really see you. You’re just a problem to them, whether they’re trying to solve you or just get past you so they can go home. But you really do listen, don’t you?” I nodded. “I try, Haley. And I do care. I’m just…I’m confused by what you’re talking about, and not understanding…well, it has me a little worried. So I just want to get what you’re saying better. Does that make sense?” Instead of answering directly, she turned and looked out the window as she began to speak. “I make that distinction because I’m not dreaming them up. It’s just sometimes when I dream I remember the truth, and when I do, I can see that place. The real place I am.” “Okay. Um, tell me about that place please Haley.” When she turned back to me, there were tears in her eyes. “Okay. If you want me to.” **** The sky is always angry there. During the day it churns green or orange, like an endless bank of clouds reading for a storm that is always there and yet never comes. At night, everything is still and clear and black, with every star standing out with a yellow glow so sharp it will cut you if you stare too long. It wasn’t until my second time remembering it that I noticed the constellations were different than here. Not until my third time that I realized I recognized them just like I do the ones “here”. One of the things that works us in the mines taught them to me when we were carrying our full wagons up the hill to the cathedral. The road up to the cathedral is packed black dirt, and most things on either side of that path are either green clay or strange trees that twist up from it and then sag back down as though they’re exhausted from trying to escape that place. Not all of the land is like that. In the distance I can see a city of black stone, and beyond that, a shadowed sea. The road we take is very dangerous. There are these things there…They look like giant snakes when they’re closed up and moving, but they like to get in the trees and stay very still until you pass close by. They look like branches mostly until they move, and when they do, they *open* themselves somehow. They glide down, and far away it looks like a huge bat coming for you, but when they get closer, you see that the bottom of them, the open, gliding part, is all just wet meat and teeth…rows and rows of hooked teeth, and when they land on someone, they wrap around them in a second. They hit them so hard I’ve seen a big man get knocked off his feet, and by the time he tried to scream, his face was already covered in their teeth and they were tightening around him as they started to roll away across the sick green earth. They keep holes burrowed in all over, so you’d never catch them even if you were dumb enough to try. Light scares them…at least a little. Whenever we carry a load to the cathedral, We have two people sitting on the front and back of each wagon with a big jack-o-lantern in their lap. They get an hour off the day before to carve their pumpkin, and the candle inside is rendered by the mine’s reclaimers—hair and fat from the dead, you know. So much of what they do is strange to me, but they don’t let anything go to waste. The jack-o-lanterns keep some of the snake things back, and it works on the Lantern Eyes too. Oh yeah, the Eyes are…well, they look like cats except for their necks are all long and crooked, and their eyes are way too big. So big and glowing, it’s all you see when they wake up and look at you from off the road somewhere. Crushed salt is always scattered on the road because the Lantern Eyes don’t like it. I think it burns them some. So between that and the light, they tend to stay back, just watching with their terrible eyes, waiting to see if someone gets too close to the edge of the road or their pumpkin goes out. I’ve never seen it happen, but sometimes the Eyes take someone even if they’re on the road. We always know it was them because when they’re done eating the parts they like, they impale what’s left on one of the trees near the road. Maybe to tell us that our travels aren’t as safe as we’d like to think. I’ve been talking about the road and the trips to the cathedral, and I do need to tell you about the cathedral itself, but I guess I should mention the mines, since that’s where we are most of the time. Vast mines that go miles underground—grey and green patches of earth and rock that can make you sick or crazy if you touch them for too long, all shot through with clusters of…well, candy corn. I know that sounds silly, but there are giant pieces of candy corn buried in the walls and floor of that place, and every day its our job to carefully dig them out so they can go up to the shrimp priests and the cathedral. I think at one time I thought they were doing all this to rebuild the church—it’s made of candy corn you know, though you can’t tell it except up close. The cathedral is rotting, always rotting, and all of the millions and millions of candy corn that make up its walls and doors and statutes and symbols, they’re all specked white and grey as little red worms crawl in and out. It makes sense they’d want to replace some of that, right? It’s so gross and it smells so bad. But no. I figured out that they always carry the fresh candy down beneath the church. To what lives down there. The things they all worship and serve. And even though it’s all rotting, it never goes away. I’ve heard that the things under the church think that place alive. And for us that are stuck there, they dream us back here when they’re asleep. To a life in this world for a little while. Part of us is always there, but their dreaming gives us times where our minds and souls can rest a little, if only for a time. **** I waited until she fell silent to speak. “Haley, that’s a very interesting story. But you do know that’s just a story, don’t you?” Her gaze narrowed. “No it’s not. I’m telling the truth.” I puffed out a long breath. “Okay. So you think that everyone in this world is actually trapped in some hell and that this is just a temporary dream something gives us to keep us sane?” She shook her head slightly, that melancholy look passing back over her face. “No, not everybody. Not most people. But some of us? Yeah.” “Do you know how…Look, think about what you’re describing. Mining candy corn. Things that look like bats and cats. Jack-o-lanterns. It’s like some kind of macabre Halloween art project. How does it make sense? Do they celebrate Halloween there?” Haley looked out the window again, this time at the alley on her side of the car. “I don’t know. I don’t think they celebrate it. I think they *are* it, or at least an aspect of it. Or Halloween is in part a reflection of what they do in that place. It just get jumbled up and wrong and softened here, like things so often do in dreams.” “Because this reality is just a dream.” Another longer sigh. “You’re not listening. The world is the world. At least I think it is. But they insert us into the world…maybe we’re from here originally and they took us a long time ago, I don’t know…but they dream a part of us back into the world from time to time. We get to live our lives and worry about dumb shit and get locked up for threatening a security guard at the mall (or maybe that part *is* just me) and then eventually we start dreaming about that other place again. That happens when whichever one was dreaming us here starts waking up. Time is different there and it takes awhile, but eventually, this place starts to fade away for us, because we were never really here. For the rest of the world? Maybe we go missing, or they forget we ever existed until we pop in again down the line. I don’t have all the answers. I just know what’s real and…oh no.” Her body had gone rigid as she gripped the door handle on her side hard enough to make it creak. “What is it?” My chest was tight with fear, and while much of it was concern for her and what I should do next, I wasn’t sure that was the only thing I heard in my voice now. “What are you looking at?” “It’s here! Oh God, I see its eyes in the alley. Green and glowing, they’ve sent it for me I…no…I’m just seeing it there…and everything here is fading away…” “What do you see?” My words were shrill and loud and desperate as I reached out to grab her arm and found I couldn’t. I could still see her and hear her, but somehow she was beyond my grasp. “Oh no! I see it all. The cathedral up the hill! It hurts my eyes but I can’t look away! Everything is rotting and burning and it never, ever ends!” I could see the alley beyond the car now because I could see *through* Haley, if only a little. And it may have been my imagination, but was there a green glow coming from that outer dark? I screamed her name and tried to grab her again, but it was no good. Head throbbing, I called out the question burning in my chest now that my doubts had been eaten by my fear and anger. Anger that by telling me all this she had somehow infected me with it or caused it to notice me. “Why? Why did you tell me about this terrible place?” She faded away the next instant, but her words lingered in the air a moment longer. Long enough for me to hear her reply and start crying harder as I put the car into drive and drove on into the night. [“Because you’re here too.”](https://redd.it/9ndww5)

My sister dug herself out of her grave

y9jbjz

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9jbjz/my_sister_dug_herself_out_of_her_grave/

Present day: I could hear my Mom screaming hysterically down the phone saying "No! Melody's gone!" repeatedly as if saying it over and over made it disappear. I could hear anguished sobs and mutters of disbelief even from upstairs. My dad was screaming different questions each more desperate than the last. I could hear my Mom saying "Noone knows Karl! They keep saying it looks like she *climbed* out but she can't! She can't! She's dead! She died! She died!" I tried to stifle the shouts, the protestations, the denial, and the *She's died!* out of my head but I couldn't. How could I? Noone has ever been faced with something like this. It's even worse than Melody's death itself and that nearly destroyed us all. Then: Two years ago Melody was found dead on the side of the road ironically next to the same cemetery she would be buried in. She'd been hit by a car coming back from her nightshift at the grocery store. Her last ever message was to my Mom saying she was on her way home at 12.13 am, thirteen minutes after she finished work. Moments later she was dead. The woman who lived across the road and the only witness heard the screeching of tyres, a loud bang and a thud at 12.15am. She ran out onto the street to see it completely empty and my sister a crumpled heap on the sodden grass. Her eyes were lifeless and staring, blood tickling from her ears, her phone laying a few meters away showing Mom's reply *Be safe, love you* still on the screen and a notification to say that it had been read. The last thing Melody ever saw on this earth until the car mounted on the kerb, onto the pavement and caused a fatal head injury that took her life at the age of nineteen. Melody was literally only around the corner from home. Had she been a couple of minutes earlier or later she would've missed that fated car and been home safe. This nightmare wouldn't be happening. We saw Melody in the funeral home after the investigation. She looked peaceful as if she was sleeping. The driver was never found and the only closure we had was knowing Melody didn't suffer. But it wasn't justice. And it didn't bring Melody back. The guilt for my parents was overwhelming. The constant "what if" became so unbearable my Mom ended up going into a psychiatric hospital for a few months leaving me and my Dad to stumble in a haze of grief and uncertainty. Present day: The police officers told us that the ground-keeper found Melody's grave disturbed when he went to work in the morning. He could see where the soil had sunken in the middle of the plot and the coffins lid had been opened. He could see finger marks on the decaying wood and could see hand and foot prints all over the soil around the grave. Someone had dug their way out. The coffin was still intact but rotting after two years underground, the interior damp and green with mildew. The ground- keeper couldn't rationalize what he was seeing. He called the police who were just as confused and horrified as he was. The one question noone wanted to ask was blatant in all of our appalled faces. Where was Melody? Then: Melody had just finished her shift and couldn't wait to get home. It was only her and Rhea on nights and they barely got any customers except a few drunk people getting a snack or someome doing a late dash to get milk or something urgent that couldn't wait. Rhea knew Melody liked to walk rather than drive but offered her a ride anyway after work but as usual Melody politely declined. Melody finished cashing up, did a brief clean up and locked up by 12.05am ready to begin the ten minute walk home. She texted her Mom to say she was on her way home as she passed the local cemetery. She knew her parents worried even though she was an adult and this was a safe area! Then Melody heard the loud screech of engine and tyres. Melody had time to turn and see a car speeding out of control down the road before it suddenly mounted the pavement and ploughed into her. Melody didnt even have time to react: she was killed instantly. Now: The police had found a damaged car in a barn of someone called Harvey which was registered to him, he was an ex of Rhea one of Melody' best friends and had worked with her at the grocery store. The car was tested for DNA and a scant bit of blood found below the headlamp matched to Melody. Harvey killed Melody. He had handed himself in and gave up the car's location. Harvey was arrested for first degree murder and tampering with evidence. Only he has to be fit to stand trial. Because Harvey is convinced he saw the corpse of my sister outside his house which led to his confession. He told the police officers she was pointing a decomposed finger at the barn the car was hidden in. Turns out he was right. It *was* my dead sister's body. Rhea had dug my sister up and used her as a tactic to get Harvey to confess to the murder. She had horrifyingly propped Melody up and made her look animated as if she was alive. She had staged the whole thing. She wanted the guilt of what they had done to be finally over. The nightmares to stop. She wanted Harvey to take the fall. Rhea finally cracked and admitted she was apart of the murder too when she was found trying to put Melody's body back in her grave. Turns out Melody was sleeping with Harvey behind Rhea's back and threatened to tell her the truth. Harvey finally told Rhea and both concocted a plan to get rid of her. Only the guilt drove Rhea to madness and she took Harvey down with her. Both are too mentally unfit to stand trial. They think Melody is going to dig herself out of her grave and come after them. They are in the same mental hospital my own mother was in. Later: I heard the same screams again. The shouting and crying. My Mom moaning in despair on the floor. Dad was looking at me with defeat. "Melody's gone again."

You all deserve closure about the woman found atop the Maynard Building. Sorry it's been such a long time coming. (Part 1)

y9pozr

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9pozr/you_all_deserve_closure_about_the_woman_found/

I have a confession to make. Back in 2009, as I’m sure a lot of you will remember, the badly mangled body of a younger blonde woman was found on top of a building downtown. She was kitted out in skydiving gear, but instead of a parachute there was a tarp, a rainbow tarp, and it was obviously not enough to do much. She tumbled down to her demise. But where it got interesting was during attempted identification. I’m sure this is where you will all recall the web theories dancing across the forums at that time. Everything from her dental records to tattoos on her wrist and inner upper arm to DNA itself linked her to a woman living 45 miles north, in the suburbs. She requested anonymity and was granted it. The woman was adopted at birth, and it was ultimately deemed that she must’ve had an identical twin that no one knew about. Still, what are the odds that they’d get identical tattoos and have the same dental history? Who knows. Everyone and their brother gets tattoos these days, and I guess dental health is largely genetic. Weird, but vaguely plausible. The existence of a twin basically made this case unsolvable. Attempts were made to find the birth mother but unfortunately those lead to a grave. The agency was long shuttered, records scattered and shockingly poor. I think The Times did an expose on that. A call for info was fruitless. The case went cold. Of course the paranormal forums went nuts. And that’s why I’m posting here. As a bunch of paranormal sleuths, you all deserve the truth. I also know why, but not how, the story has totally vanished from the web. Even WebArchive comes up empty. I don’t think even the best PR company could do that. I know who that woman was. I never dared say anything because I feared for my life. Why talk now? Well, I recently found out it’s back again. Acute myeloid leukemia. I’ve already had two bone marrow transplants (one of which was just a few weeks ago) and just do not feel up for a third that is very unlikely to work anyway. I have lung problems from my last transplant as well, and have decided to go on General Inpatient Hospice here. She can’t get me, and I will die here, with a drip and surrounded by people I wanna be around. So may as well spill the beans. The woman found atop the Maynard Building downtown’s name was Jennifer Amanda Roberts. She really was adopted, yes, but she was not a twin. And although the woman found looked human, tested like a human DNA wise, and presumably fooled a few folks in white coats, that woman was most definitely something else entirely. I know you are all sleuths, and to really get this story, I think I gotta start in the beginning, which would’ve been August of ’09. I was working as a mental health aid in the pediatric wing of a psychiatric hospital. I loved the patients but I was utterly beyond burned out. One day was particularly rough (a caller who identified as a patient’s godmother on the phone ripped into me), and that night, I had a dream. Funnily enough, I was skydiving, but something was wrong with the parachute. No matter what I did, it just wouldn’t behave like a parachute. I was big into dream interpretations then, and interpreted this to mean that I was flailing through life due to work stress and needed a change before I crashed. So, I whipped out my iPhone 3G and went on Indeed, and began looking. One job just kept standing out to me; I think it was a paid advert in retrospect because it was atop every page. It was for the Lyndon Home, a group home for kids and adolescents who had nowhere to go and/or needed a little bit of basic mental health support. Just a sort of rest home, they said, which I thought was odd wording, but it sounded great. I wondered how much easier my own adolescence would’ve been if such a retreat had existed then. Plus, hey, they offered nearly twice the pay, which was a plus. I sent in my application to there, and a few dozen other places. Several got back to me, and offered interviews, including Lyndon. Well, I guess the phrasing was a little different for some. The one from Lyndon never said interview. Just said “We’d love to meet you!” I did a few interviews, then it was time for Lyndon. I got there 15 minutes early, and when I stepped in, I was greeted by a perky receptionist who immediately went, “Hey!!!! You must be Stephanie!” I greeted her back-she introduced herself as Anna-and asked if I needed to sign in somewhere. “No silly!” said she, passing me-to my shock-an ID badge with my name and picture on it, and a lanyard. The picture was from my LinkedIn. Super odd, but I guess the place was super secure. The strangeness of that soon faded anyway, as she led me into a conference room with cake and balloons. A beaming blonde woman who appeared to be in her mid-sixties glided over to me, stuck out her arm, and introduced herself as Candice, the director. “We are so happy to have you aboard! In honor of your onboarding, we are throwing you a getting to know me party!” I was very confused. Wasn’t this an interview? Was she telling me I was hired? I’d heard of being hired on the spot but this was another level. Poppy, the head of HR, soon made that clear as she passed me my insurance/benefits info. Shortly thereafter, Anna gave me a copy of my schedule. I somehow knew better than to question any of this. The most comfortable person to be around who I found at the party was Jennifer. Nothing is creepier than normalcy where there shouldn’t be, and she was the only one who wasn’t acting like all of this was normal. She nursed her soda gingerly, and I began chatting to her. Everyone else seemed to be chatting amongst themselves, so this didn’t stand out as far as I could tell. We made some small talk, then she invited me over for some dinner after this whole event. We exchanged numbers, and then we heard Candice ding a fork against her glass. She announced me as our newest “guardian counselor” on the day shift. 7am-7pm, 3 times per week. I’d start work the following day. My eyes widened at this, but still continued on. Again, I knew somehow I had to go along with this rather aggressive recruitment. I did go to Jennifer’s home that night. She had some spaghetti cooked for us and a glass of red wine. We ate in the living room in front of the TV, watching some series on DVD. She then began telling me about the place. “Yeah, what they did to you there is what they did to me. There’s something off you know. I don’t think it’s all…above board. The kids have no families. At all. It’s not a trafficking ring either-we did check into that. But when I looked into the kids I-“ Suddenly her eyes widened and she stared, absolutely transfixed on the bay window by her door. I glanced behind me and saw a face, wide eyed with rage, screwed into a frown, with hair unkempt with brambles and needles from nearby foliage embedded into the short dirty blonde locks. Her lips appeared thin, and downward turned, completing her frown that hinted at barely-restrained rage. It honestly took me a second to realize who she was. It was Candice. Jennifer was shaking and crying at that point. I was super creeped out. Jennifer finally stammered out, “I’m screwed, I’m so screwed. Don’t quit okay, just don’t, just do what she says okay.” I planned to quit but entertained her. “You have an opportunity right now. Be nice to Candice. You have an opportunity I don’t.” “I mean I know we are at-will, but what is she gonna tell HR? ‘Yeah I was spying outside her house and heard her talk smack?’ Will she really fire you?” Jennifer gave me a wan smile, the sort you give a little kid who has no idea what they’re babbling about. Jennifer called out sick the next day. I actually did exactly as I was told by her, which surprised even myself. Candice didn’t mention that night, or anything about it really. I began to wonder if I’d dreamt the whole thing. I texted Jennifer a bit; she texted me back so much that I really thought that she must be okay. I figured the stress of having her enraged boss in her bay window must’ve made her ill. But when I mentioned it to her, she acted like it hadn’t happened. And if that was gaslighting, it worked. I was questioning my perceptions. Jennifer was back after 5 days, and I swear something was off about her. So, I mean when I heard about that case of the woman, I knew. I also knew not to say anything. Candice killed her somehow and replaced her. She also got a little tired of us all talking about it, but I know it must live on in your memories even though its’ gone from the web, right? Can any longtime true crime/mystery/paranormal buffs confirm or deny this for me? Honestly, that whole place indeed is off, including the kids. And every time I thought to look into it, I’d have another dream about failing parachutes and tumbling down, down, down towards an unforgiving concrete jungle. But I did it, and Candice can’t do a darn thing about it.

My grandmother's story: the lost man in the woods

y9cxw0

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9cxw0/my_grandmothers_story_the_lost_man_in_the_woods/

Greetings, All. My granddaughter led me here; told me it’s a place where people who enjoy the spooky and the supernatural come to get their fix. She is helping me share my own story; thought you folks might be tickled by it. These events came back to me at a recent family reunion. For fun, the last of us awake that night went in a circle and swapped our “scariest moments” stories. It was a good time, and as family members shared UFOs and creaky attics and near-death experiences, a trick floorboard in my mind popped up, exposing something my subconscious had long kept hidden, perhaps for my own good. So when their eyes all turned to Grammy K, likely expecting tales of past-era poverty or teenagers with tattoos or the trials of childbirth, I leaned in and recounted to them the time I found a lost man in the woods. It caused quite a stir with the family and, at the insistence of my darling granddaughter, I share it with you now. This is something that happened when I was in my 20s. I won’t embarrass myself by telling you how long ago that was but, suffice to say, I am quite a bit grayer above the ears these days. My first husband, Ronald, was a ranger, and for five years we lived together on BLM land. Our regular backcountry excursions instilled in me a passion for the out-of-doors that was uncommon for a lady back then. Women might be found on a long walk or at a national park with their husband and children in tow, sure. But I was partial to taking a knapsack and charging into pure, isolating wilderness, often spending two or three days at a time following trails or inventing my own. Those excursions were often my greatest peace, especially after Ronald passed in our sixth year together. It was about a year after Ronald’s passing and I was setting out for a two-day trek in the Pacific Northwest. Washington or Oregon I think, though that detail still remains beneath the floorboards. The trail looked attractive on the map, as it followed a river through a vast mountain valley that separated two small towns. I believe it had once served as a supply route between the towns before the road system came, after which it was merely a recreation trail, though not one to be taken lightly. The locals would warn all but the most avid outdoorsmen to avoid the route, as there was a point in the valley that required a difficult river fording. This ford occasionally took the lives of the cocky or the unprepared, sending their bodies bobbing downstream to be recovered by the town at the other end. But I reckoned I was avid enough. A friend dropped me off at the trailhead, as I had left my car parked in the town at the other end of the valley. I was immediately put to task by a steep hike up to a mountain saddle and a precarious descent down the other side. It was past midday before I was rewarded with even terrain in the valley below. I managed the infamous river crossing cautiously and without incident, then resumed the trek on the opposite bank. The trail followed the river a few more miles before it leaned away, sending me from high grass and wildflowers into a forest of evergreens. The sun was beginning to angle towards the western range as the trees closed in behind me, shrouding my world in a gentle emerald dim. I made my way over the soft earth beneath the trees, grateful for the shade after a day exposed beneath the summer sun. The air was muted by a mossy quiet and the limbs of the evergreens sliced the light into haphazard bars of gold. It was a dense, verdant, old-growth forest. The kind that feels like a cathedral. Proud and reverent and secretive. I have always loved and sought such places. The trail took me downhill and the shade grew darker still. There came a point where the pine needles underfoot fully obscured the path and I paused, carefully peeking around evergreens to spot where it might pick up again, trying not to lose my place. I had my compass and map, but only food enough for a day and a half, and didn’t want to be lost in the boondocks if I could help it. This was all before the age of the satellite phone, mind you. After a few moments of unsuccessful scanning, I decided to backtrack to see if there was perhaps a “Y” in the trail I had missed. I turned 180 degrees to find myself looking into the eyes of a man, some ten or twelve feet behind me. I had no clue how long he had been there. My brain, in the panic of the moment, skipped right past surprise and landed directly on bewilderment. “Oh, goodness, hello!,” I spit out, mostly on impulse. I am sure he could see the shock in my face, but he gave no sign of it. “Sure easy to get lost out here, isn’t it?” he replied in simple, even tones. His appearance was the perfect outdoorsman, practically out of a sportsman’s magazine of the day. Work boots and canvas pants, held up with suspenders that ran over a navy, double-breasted shirt. The plaid cuffs of his sleeves were rolled up above the elbow, and the sleeping bag strapped atop his rucksack poked up from behind his head. Yet, despite his textbook appearance, he didn’t *feel* like a woodsman to me. His bearded face was middle-aged, but the skin was deeply creased and drooping at the neck and jowls, as if much older. Beneath wild black eyebrows were grayish eyes that seemed unable to focus on any spot in particular. Splotches of sweat darkened the pits and neckline of his shirt, and he gave off a rank odor that disgusts me even in memory. He offered me a strained, toothy smile, as if he had heard descriptions of smiles but was trying it out for the first time. “It certainly could be,” I replied with exaggerated politeness, re-centering myself internally. “Sorry for my surprise- I didn’t hear you come up behind me.” The man ignored the comment. “Are you lost out here, too?” he asked. His expression remained ‘polite earnest’ but behind the foggy, gray eyes I detected something else, something I couldn’t put a word to. Instinctively, I began to take mental inventory of what weapons I had at my disposal. The best I could come up with was my Swiss Army Knife, which was unfortunately tucked into the bottom of my knapsack. I could hear Ronald’s deep, stern voice echo in the back of my head somewhere, saying “you should be packing a gun, Kristy. You never know what you’ll run into.” I shooed Ronald’s ghost and its “I-told-you-so”s away and turned my focus back to the man. “Certainly not lost, no,” I responded carefully, not wishing to make myself any more vulnerable than I already was. “But you said ‘too.’ Are you lost out here?” The man rocked on his feet, his eyes scanning vacantly in my direction. “Yes, lost. People wander out here; get lost,” he replied. His voice was gravelly, delivered in flat, dead tones. “But sometimes I find them. Find them wandering through the forest, stepping and breaking. Trying to find their way. So I help them. Take them back to the river, so they can follow it out. I can help you, too; help you find the river.” At that he set his empty eyes upon me, truly locking his with mine. His expression transformed into something equal parts pained and furious, as if I had betrayed him in some horrible, intimate way. A primordial part of me awoke and a wave of adrenalin screamed to sprint into the maze of evergreens surrounding us. But a firm, clear voice of instinct told me to stand still. So, like a mouse being fixed upon by a house cat, still I stood. “Well, I’m not lost, though I am sure this trail can be a bit of trouble for some. I certainly appreciate the offer, though,” I said, in the most friendly tones I could muster. Few sunbeams were making it through the trees overhead, and knew I needed to move things along. “But I think I better get moving while I still have some light. I have some friends hiking in from the other end expecting to meet me at camp tonight, so I can’t afford to get too off of schedule.” This was a lie, of course. But I wanted him to think others would be coming along soon; that I was expected. But inside I wished more then than ever that Ronald was with me again. The man practiced his disconcerting smile once more and his eyes blissfully unfocused. “Yes, still have some light,” he echoed in his staccato. “The walkers get lost, making little circles in the forest. If you lose the way, I’ll lead you to the river.” In the tension of the moment, I didn’t process his words. But it was clear that something insidious glared out from behind them at me. “Oh of course, thanks, I’ll keep that in mind. Happy trails!” I practically shouted, eager to detach, and commenced a rigorous power-walk in the direction I had left off at, unsure if I was continuing on the true trail or not. After a few dozen paces, I began blessedly to see indications of the path and took back to it. A few minutes of concerted near-jogging later, my heart thumping in my ears and my pack thumping against my back, I slowed to a walk and watched over my shoulder to see if the strange man was following me. I had put in some considerable distance and in the greenish-dark murk of the forest, I saw nothing but ferns and evergreens. Then, coming around far back on the trail, there he was. Not necessarily following, I suppose, but walking in my same direction, staggering down the path about sixty yards behind me. He moved awkwardly, almost drunken, like someone learning to walk on a prosthetic. In the moment my eye caught him, his head snapped up, and even from that distance I could feel cold gray eyes lock to mine. And I knew then it wasn’t coincidence. I was being followed. I whipped my face forward and picked my pace. The last miles of that day were hiked briskly and stressed. No matter how much speed I put into my pace, the man would always somehow catch up behind me down the trail, despite his disjointed walk. I would lose him for five or ten minutes, then catch some sight or sound of him, persisting ever forward. And so I had no peace; never breaking, often run-jogging, but never able to get more than a few minutes of isolation before I would hear his feet cracking branches along the path or see his dark silhouette come around a bend in the trail far behind me. The last tangerine rays of sun had faded from the forest floor when I realized I would have to stop. I was losing the last of my visibility, and although I was tempted, I knew that hiking in the pitch was foolish. Using my torch to find my way around would make me a beacon to the man in the night. But on the other hand, hiking blindly would mean almost certainly losing the trail, getting me no closer to escape, and could mean injury or death if I was unlucky. And I was not feeling lucky. Instead I resolved to make my way as far off-trail as I dared, quietly set up camp, and wait for the first light of daybreak to serve as a starter pistol for a mad dash to the end of the valley. I didn’t love the plan, but no better ideas came to me. So I crept past the tree line, quiet as a fox, and gingerly set up my one-man pup tent behind a couple interlocked evergreens that stood vanguard between my camp and the direction of the trail. The spot was encircled by ferns and brambles, the best cover I could find. From amber dusk to pale moonlight, I had just enough light to see what I was doing as I moved quietly on sore legs and blistered feet. I didn’t bother with dinner or coffee or any of my rituals typical of a trip to the backcountry. I scarcely remember drinking water. What I *do* remember is laying atop my sleeping bag, unwilling to constrict myself within it, fully dressed, with my Swiss Army knife clutched in my fist, the blade out and ready. I spent my time breathing evenly, staying silent, and listening. After a couple hours I began to calm. The man had never been more than about fifteen minutes behind me down the trail, so if he was a tracker he would have long since traced me to camp. If not a tracker, I suspected he had already overshot my camp, making a successful backtrack to my location near impossible. I was just beginning to form an estimate as to how long before daybreak when I heard movement in the woods. It was the snapping, cracking of something moving ponderously over the forest floor, probably twenty to forty yards away. I prayed, for the first and only time, that it was a bear. The only other thing in those woods heavy enough to make that much noise would be a ungulate, which tend not to move so sporadically or loudly. My every muscle froze as the intermittent creaking and snapping moved towards my camp. I held my knife to my chest like a cross, watching the moonlit side of my tent wall for a shape to take form. Then, after a light snap some ten yards to my left, the woods went silent. I laid there, tense as a plank of wood, terrified to so much as breath. I stared at the shadows of the ferns and tree boughs that the moon cast against my tent wall, waiting for one of them to transform into the shape of the man and lunge. But no phantom assailant came. The shadows slowly lengthened and dissipated as the moon moved through the heavens up above, but I remained fixated on the blueish wall of my pup tent, counted breaths, and waited. It must have been hours before I dared to turn my head away from the direction of the snapping in the forest. The moon by that time had angled in the sky towards the other side of camp, and as I righted myself I saw, on the opposite wall of my tent, the shadow of the man. He loomed above the canopy, perfectly still, perhaps just an arm’s reach away. I was taken with panic, and in the wan late-evening light, the silhouette’s head turned ever so slightly, so as to look directly down at me. “Little walker. I knew you’d get lost. Let me help you find the river.” The man’s voice had changed. It was no longer the masculine voice I had heard delivered in gravelly staccato on the trail earlier. It was vaguely feminine; sweet and melodic; every word dripping with acid. It was the voice that would come from a spider, if a spider could speak. And when I heard it, I knew I was going to die. “I’m not lost,” I thought. Or perhaps I whispered it. Either way, I remember it took all I had to make the words come. “I know where I’m going.” At that, the man reached out and pressed his palm against the upper wall of the tent, imprinting a black handprint against the fabric. “If you are here, then you are lost,” replied the voice from inside the man. “*And the lost belong to me*.” The handprint against my tent spasmed and I watched as the head of the silhouette convulsed and rolled back. Black shapes emerged from where the man’s mouth was; slender tendrils that twisted and unfurled upward from the man’s throat, coiling and writhing in the air around his head, making a grotesque shadow puppet show out of the moonlit wall of my tent. In the terror of the moment, my impulse was to scream. But somehow, in the hot foam of fury and indignation that I should die at the will of this incomprehensible *thing*, the scream choked out in the form of words: “I AM NOT *LOST!*” I surged up and in a miraculously clean cut, sliced the tent’s fabric from the canopy to the floor in the direction of the man’s shadow. The hand pulled away and I sprang outward, blindly prepared to sink the Swiss Army knife into anything it might find purchase. But before I could clear my exit, I heard a man’s “HEYYO” from the trees not far off camp. It was a deep, soulful bellow that rattled me and carried like wind around the evergreens and brambles. I knew the sound in my heart. It was Ronald’s voice, the call he would make when we would hike together in the wilderness to ward off bears. Only now it came with such force that I felt it in and around me; a wave of feeling and a foghorn of sound. In that same moment, I heard the garbled, vicious words of the thing speak, I know not what, and by the time I was righted to my feet outside the tent, ready to attack, there was only silence. I scanned the shifty darkness of the woods, watching the trees and shadows around me like a hare watches the skies. My heart was pounding, my body still ready for the fight. But I was alone. No man. No silhouette. No creature. No Ronald. Just a woman alone in nature, panting through the adrenaline and fear. After some time I shook off my dread, stuffed my ruined tent back into my knapsack, retrieved my torch, and carefully picked my way back to the trail in the dark. From there I began the route again, holding my torch out like a nightwatchman, eyeing the tree line while being careful not to lose the beaten path. Occasionally I thought I heard movement far back behind me on the trail, but the light of my torch never caught anything in the shadows of the forest. A few miles later, daylight began to trickle through the canopy of the evergreens. An hour or so after that I noticed the trees becoming smaller; farther apart, and the rush of the river in the distance became the soundtrack to my walk. By the time the trail rejoined the river, the woods were well behind me, and I soldiered on through open valley in a stupor. At some point I reached the meager town where I had left my car parked; by the time I realized I was walking on pavement, I was practically at town center. I am sure I drew disconcerted looks from the locals at the tap house when I staggered in, a mess of matted hair and sunken eyes, with my knapsack bulging and half-zipped. But I took no notice. It had always been my and Ronald’s tradition after coming back out of the backcountry to celebrate with a bourbon and a beer. I ordered two of each, as I knew he had joined me for a final hike, but that it was on me to drink on his behalf. The barmaid took my order with the pouty indifference of someone who had served stranger orders to stranger patrons, and went to task. I had finished both bourbons and most of the second beer when a commotion broke me from the solitude of my thoughts. The excitement was directed at a tiny television mounted in a corner behind the bar, and the pouty barmaid turned up the volume at a request. It was the county news station, where a pallid man in a sports jacket was breaking a press release from the sheriff’s office. The news ticker read “Sheriff recovers body of drowned hiker.” The camera cut to the sheriff explaining that the man was a hiker from Canada who likely drowned while attempting to ford the river in the valley pass. He had been dead for three days before washing into town on the high river later that morning. Several bar patrons issued tuts and low whistles, the dirge of the cynical and unsympathetic. While the sheriff issued a tired warning that the river fording was dangerous and not be attempted by those without proper training and experience, my thoughts went to the man. To the confident pilgrim of nature he must have been. Perhaps too confident, even. Until a few days ago, when he got himself lost in some very old woods, where he weaved and wandered through the evergreens, hunting for a trail. Until something found him. Something that took him to the river, where it takes all its lost travelers. But I was never lost.

vampires in venie

y9ozxm

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9ozxm/vampires_in_venie/

Today I woke up with a terrible feeling of dread, as well as this inescapable urge to search up "Vampires In Venice" on google to see if, well, there were vampires in Venice. The only results I found were some Doctor Who episodes, which didn't help clear my doubts. I shall try and explain my dream as clearly as I can, with as much as I can remember. I typically don't remember my dreams, but this one, I can't help but feel, that I've dreamt of before. I recall being in Venice, perhaps for a vacation of sorts, which is odd because I've never traveled there before, or anywhere near Italy. I've only traveled to 1-2 places within Asia. As the sky darkened, our tour guide suddenly began rowing towards the motel we \[my family and I\] were staying in. My parents began protesting, because the tour package they paid for had night activities as well, and they wanted to get their moneys worth. The tour guide looked grim. He was a tan man, weathered, and he had been nothing but lovely and kind throughout the tour. He looked at my parents straight in the eye, and said to them with a tone that made me feel like a child again. "If you want to live past the night, go back, shut up and sleep." At this point we reached the pavement \[??\], and he walked ahead of us, towards the little motel we were staying in temporarily. I dislike conflict, and I could tell my parents were ready to argue, or go off on their own, but something told me to listen to the tour guide. I like to think of myself as a rather intuitive person, which has saved me a couple of times. I managed convince my parents to go back, citing some stupid excuses such as the city was dangerous at night because my parents may fall into the canals or whatever. I wasn't sure how, but I managed to convince them to go back. In the motel, I remember the owner locking the doors, and binding them with these huge iron chains. The tour guide had gone off to his room, and the last thing I remembered before falling asleep \[in my own dream which felt really weird btw\], was this odd sense that someone was watching us. I was awoken in the middle of the night \[in the dream\] by my cousin's movements. As I turned towards her to tell her to shut up and stop moving, I saw her hugging herself, trembling ever so slightly, trying to make sure her neck was covered. There was something on her, human shaped, but off. I can't quite describe it, but I suppose it looked like Gollum, from Lord Of The Rings, except smaller, with black beady eyes, and horrible, horrible fangs. Instinctively, I pretended to be asleep once more, raising my shoulders and making a double chin in hopes to protect my neck. I can't tell you why I did that, because I do not know why myself. Perhaps it was the teeth, which could explain why I kept thinking about the phrase "Vampires In Venice". But it knew. It knew I had woken up, and it knew I had seen it. You know how when you close your eyes, you can visualise the room, and all the items in it? You know where it is, even if it is not physically seen. That's how i "saw" the creature. My eyes were open, but I could not see. My body was frozen. Perhaps it was sleep paralysis. I could not move, not even when I tried. But I knew I had to, for the creature was now hunting me. I tried praying, wiggling my fingers, telling myself that I was dreaming within a dream. I knew it wasn't real, it couldn't be, but the fear felt so real, and I knew the creature was there, waiting. It's odd to not be able to control your body. There's a sickening sense of helplessness that comes with the territory. The moment I managed to wiggle my fingers, the creature pounced, and I woke up, still in the motel room, screaming. I was alone in the dark room, awake and safe. My cousin was gone, but of course she wasn't here. She never followed us on the trip to Venice. It must have been a nightmare, a bad dream. As I left the the bed, to go wash my face, something lunged at me, this time real and tangible. It, no, she was small, gollum-like, but dead. Her body was rotting, bony and scarred, and the creature was barely clothed in what looked like remains of a pink dress. Her hair was sparse, and she was so small. Like a child. I don't know how, but I managed to hold her back till morning, pushing and kicking as she snarled at me, vicious. When morning came, the sunlight filtering in the blinds, the creature vanished. It was as though last night had not happened at all, but I knew it had, because I had scratches on my arm that were never there before. When i went downstairs for breakfast, I saw my family chattering and eating. I felt relieved, but also confused. Some of them weren't here before, and the room seemed to be moving, like a carriage on a train. I causally took a plate of food, and asked my family, "Did you all see something 'dirty' last night?" The whole room quietened down, and my uncle stared at me before laughing. He pointed to the plate of food I was holding, and ushered me to take some fish, nuggets and chicken. "Just go to the kitchen, and find the old lady, and tell her that her granddaughter helped you last night. Make sure to compliment her granddaughter lots, and offer the plate of food to the granddaughter as a thanks." I'm not sure why, but I did as he said. I went to the kitchen, and couldn't help but feel that I was now on a train based on the surroundings, a rather old and fancy one. The old lady looked like my grandmother, but somehow, I knew she wasn't. She seemed kind though. I did as my uncle said. I complimented her granddaughter lots, telling her how her grandchild helped me last night when I was feeling afraid, and told her I wanted to offer her a plat of food as thanks. The old lady beamed, and she called her grandchild in. A young child, no more than 6, came running in, wearing a pink dress and holding a brown teddy bear. She was adorable, but instinctively, I knew she was the creature from last night. I steeled my nerves, and offered the best smile I could, offering her the plate full of meat I was holding as a thanks. She stared at me, and it seemed like eternity before she gave a satisfied nod, took the food, and ran out. I knew then, that I was safe. At least for now. The old lady turned to me, and told me I should bring some food to the carriages upstairs. She said it would appease them. Somehow, I think she knew. As I listened to her advice, and walked to the other carriages, I stopped at the stairs. I didn't know old trains and carriages had an upstairs. But I felt this ominous sense of foreboding. I felt as though if I went upstairs, I would never come back down. Before I could do anything. I woke up, this time in real life, in my bedroom. It was raining today, and the sun was out, and I felt relieved that it was all just a dream, albeit a familiar one. But to my horror, I awoke with odd scratches on my arm, caused by the creature in pink. It wasn't there before. As I sat in bed, the urge to search the phrase "Vampires In Venice" came, and simply wouldn't go away. I did try searching it up, but nothing seems like it would fit the incredibly vivid dream I had. So I decided to post here in hopes that someone will give advice, any advice. I think this is the second time I've dreamt it, because there's no other reason why it feels as though it's happened before. If anyone knows of these creatures, of why the dream felt so vivid despite me knowing nothing about Venice, of why such scratches appeared, please, help me.

My new strange town has a set of rules in order to survive - Mr. Andrew forgot to give me the rulebook and I may or may not have broken a rule.

y9753y

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9753y/my_new_strange_town_has_a_set_of_rules_in_order/

[Our first day.](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y74eit/my_new_strange_town_has_a_set_of_rules_in_order/) The creature was still whimpering outside as I was trying my best to process what had just happened. The lady came and lifted us both up, leading us to the warm living room. Her house is covered with thick gray curtains all over the windows. Esther was still shaky from what had just happened and was clinging to me. The man named Andrew is still trying to put the locks back in their place. She brought us a blanket and a tray of delicious cookies. "Have a bite, my dear," she said soothingly, but I couldn't raise my hand to take one. "Thank you, but... we're full." I replied. "Oh, that's absolutely alright... are you two okay?" She finally let it out, looking at my sister shaking under the same blanket as me. Comforting Esther, I looked back at the worrying lady: "No... but at least we're still alive." "I'm sorry for putting you through that ordeal..." She let out a sigh, and introduced herself, "My name is Rose, and the grumpy man over there is Andrew... You could call him Troy, it suits him better." I nodded as Mr. Andrew... or Mr. Troy, finally came in and sat with us, throwing a cookie into his mouth. "You two were lucky we were still awake," he complained, "Otherwise we would have two new weird residents in this town." "It hasn't had a good meal in a while." "Wait, Mr. Troy, what exactly do you mean?" I frowned as I looked at him. He then turns to Mrs. Rose and says, "Should we tell them? I don't want to scare them," He inquired, slipping another cookie into his mouth. "I'll do the speaking," she said. "For nearly a decade, something has been haunting this town, and it's more than just some terrifying urban legends." Mrs. Rose fixed her gaze on the door. "That creature is only a minor component of that thing." "So that thing has been existing for decades?" Esther asked. She appeared to be more concerned than ever. I tried to calm her down, despite the fact that I was terrified as well. Mrs. Rose placed her hand on Esther's back and patted it gently. "We never knew, dear," she sighed. "Until my mother was killed by it." "I was only a small child when I heard the same voice from my grandmother. I went outside and opened it, only to discover the same thing on my doorstep. I can still remember its disgusting, inhumane grin. That same smile it had when it was devouring my mother's head." "I'll never forget that." She slowly wiped away her tears. Mr. Troy approached and took her hand in his. "We never knew, dearie... we never knew exactly what it was..." Sobbing, she said, wiping away her tears. I didn't know what to say, and Esther was also silent. "I couldn't save her." Her voice was still a little raspy. "But at least we managed to save you two." "I... Thank you," I replied, looking at her. "It was our job to do," she reassured. She finally continued, after a short moment of silence: "My dad and I worked it all out together. We went around the town to find more information, and we found its habitat. One time, we even tried to hunt for it, though it didn't end very well." She chuckles. "But then the town committee chimed in. They forced us to stop going out at the usual time that we would go around the neighborhood to warn everyone. And that was when we knew they had connections with that thing. It never had a name, but they worshipped it like it was some kind of god." "That is when I realized how it had been going around, looking at us through the windows. The town committee allowed it to use their body. That is how it has been hunting, disguising itself under the appearance of the committee." She frowned, "I never quite understood how that Martha dipstick even got a hold of that creature in the first place..." "Her husband," Mr. Troy said, throwing the final cookie into his mouth, "She did some weird ritual only to encounter that little shit." "Can you please tell me what that ritual is?" Esther finally asked after a long break of silence. I almost thought she was sleeping the whole time. Mr. Troy replied: "Sorry to disappoint ya, but this old man has no idea, only heard it from Daniel." "Daniel, that local hunter?" Mrs. Rose asked, taking a sip from her tea cup. Troy nodded, "It promised her something about her husband. That is why she has been so crazy about keeping the committee together." "This town is her final salvation." Esther's voice was even shakier than before, "So she would sacrifice this whole town for someone that doesn't even exist anymore?" She cried out. Rose held her in her arms to comfort her while her tears were falling out again. I couldn't do anything, I was shocked too. Learning that your life is hanging by a thread could be quite devastating. While patting Esther, I turned back to Troy and asked the question I've been wondering about this whole time: "How have you two been living in this monstrous town?" "We follow a set of rules," replied Mrs. Rose, "Made by my dad and I. Isn't that great?" "Rules? What kind of rules?" I asked, appearing to have little faith in the so-called "rules". Rose smiled as she put down the sleeping Esther onto the couch. "I'd love to introduce it to you, but dearie, shouldn't you be sleeping by now?" "But-" "Now now, it's 4 in the morning and you haven't slept for almost 2 hours. Just to be sure, tomorrow, Troy and I will renovate your house. You wouldn't want someone looking at you through those windows, right?" "Don't worry pal, we have a notebook that we've written all of them in. And we'll give it to you when we're done renovating your house." I didn't want to argue because my eyes were half closed. All the things that have happened really took a toll on me. I just nodded before settling down on the couch to get some rest. This is enough for the day. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ It was about another 3 hours when Esther woke me up. Mr. Troy had a tool box with him, while Mrs. Rose was holding a thick pile of cloth. They escorted us back to our house and started to renovate it. Troy installed three additional sets of locks on our doors and windows, while Rose strung all of the window treatments. We gave each other our phone numbers so that we could stay in touch and waved them off as they went back to their house. I finally let out a sigh of relief as we were finally back at our house. But Esther was still a bit shaky. I can't blame her. After everything that happened last night, we were concerned about living in this town. I was planning to call my mom until there was a sudden knock on the door. Esther and I looked at each other in horror. Could it be that creature again? I stood up and looked through the peephole. It was a mailman, smiling while holding a box. It doesn't seem like that cashier from yesterday. I decided to open the door anyway. Nothing could go wrong, right? "A delivery for Ms. Nguyễn." "Oh, thanks." I took the box from his hand. Still with that smile, he nodded and went back to his truck. I brought the package inside and locked the door immediately. Esther was suspicious about the box that I was holding. "Could it be mom's?" I asked, examining the package. She shook her head, "I don't know, it doesn't seem like... huh, is it your phone ringing?" I took out my phone only to get scolded in the face: "WHY DID YOU TAKE THE BOX FROM THE MAILMAN? ARE YOU INSANE?" It was Mrs. Rose. She was so angry that I couldn't imagine a sweet lady like her being that furious. "But, it's our mom's package. What's the matter?" "You haven't read the rulebook yet?" "What rulebook?" "Oh no... Troy forgot to give you the book, hasn't he?" "Yes..." "Okay, Rachel. I need you to listen carefully. You don't have to worry about the box, just don't go out by any chance. I repeat, **DO. NOT. GO. OUT.**" "But, why?" "**He's still standing at your door, and he is coming to your house tonight**." She said, her shaky voice even scaring me more. "Wait, wait, wait! Mrs. Rose, what are you saying? How could he come into our house when we've locked the door?" I interjected. "You just invited him into your house by receiving the package, and nothing could stop you from coming into your house at midnight." *Oh fucking no.* "So, we're going to die?" I gushed, worryingly looking at Esther. She seemed both concerned and confused. The sound of paper flipping echoed from the other side of the line, and then Rose finally replied: "Not if you hide in your modified closet." "You mean the closet with locks on it?" "I believe that's the one. Remember to hide inside the-" A long beep followed. Our line has been cut off. "*Fuck*." I silently cursed under my breath, Esther came and put her hand on my back. The knob on the main door starts turning rapidly. I don't think we can handle this much longer. **My new strange town has a set of rules in order to survive - Mr. Andrew forgot to give me the rulebook and I may or may not have broken a rule.**

My door keeps on opening during the night

y99azn

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y99azn/my_door_keeps_on_opening_during_the_night/

I moved into my new apartment a few months ago, right towards the end of summer. This apartment is very typical, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, a kitchen which leads into a living room as well. This would be the first time living on my own, but I was confident. I knew when my rent was due, my budget for food and all that stuff. I was sitting on my bed looking for jobs when I first heard it. I heard my door creak open, and then close abruptly. As you could imagine I was very confused, but a couple of searches throughout my apartment let me calm down. A few minutes later it happened again, a slow creak and then a sudden slam as the door was shut. This time I was more annoyed than scared. I went through my apartment one more time and found nothing. After a little thought this was the explanation I came up with The door to my bedroom has this broken latch, which is stuck, as if someone was constantly holding it open, which means that my doorknob is useless, and I can push and pull my door open. As I tend to shut my door often, this means that my bedroom can get pretty hot and the air becomes pretty stale. This means that I have my window open almost 24/7. This means that my door opening and closing is a result of the draft that comes through the window. The wind will push the door then get cut off, letting the weight of the door push it close. This began to happen so often that I didn’t even bat an eye to it. A little while after I started my courses, I was up late studying for some of my first exams. It was particularly cold that night so I went and closed my window. From my position on the bed I didn’t have an immediate sight line on the door, and I would have to lean forward to get a good view on it. As I was reviewing the material that my professor had posted, I heard that all too familiar slow open and abrupt close. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and immediately I felt the sensation that I was being watched. I took a weary step towards the door and opened it, staring into the dark void that was my bathroom. I went through my entire apartment, and no window was open. In other words there was no way, no reason for that door to open like it normally did. There was no logical explanation. Unless… No, stuff like that isn’t real. I went back to my bed and tried to get back on track with my work, but I couldn’t think straight. All I could think of was somebody hiding somewhere in my apartment just watching me. I thought to myself that there was no way I was sleeping in my apartment tonight, so I called up a bunch of people from school, or anybody in the area, to see if anybody had any room for me to sleep. But alas, they had no room for me, as most of them already had 3 college students in a 2 bedroom apartment. Totally pissed off, I looked towards the direction of my room, and shuddered. I ended up sleeping on the couch. Nothing happened for a few weeks, and I had almost forgotten about it, if it weren’t for the door almost constantly drifting open and then slamming over and over. One night at about 2am I shot awake suddenly. I had no nightmares, no bad dreams, nothing. I didn’t even feel tired. I was dead awake. I had closed the window before I went to sleep, because my apartment is right next to a train station, and the noise was unbearable. I had sat there just listening in dead silence, the only noise was the blood pumping through my ears. When I finally lay down. I heard the door creak open. It didn’t close. I leaned forwards to get a better view of the door, and I screamed. Looking back we’re two eyes, equally bloodshot, as if this thing was just crying. Its pupils were as black as the darkness that had surrounded it. I sat there, paralyzed. I saw a hand, which looked like it was manifested from the darkness, resting on the door. The skin was wrinkled, and hung loose from the bone. Its fingers were long and thin, and its nails were like daggers attached to the end of its fingers. It rhythmically tapped its fingers on the wood, still staring. It’s eyes were upturned as if it were smiling at me, yet I did not see any mouth. I was beyond horrified. All I could do was watch as it waded into the room, moving awkwardly as if it had just grown these limbs and was just testing them out. He came to a stop at the foot of my bed. It looked as if this figure had been built from wire, elongated beyond proportion. I could see his ribs poking through his skin, begging to be freed from his rib cage. He was almost as tall as my room, easily being over 10ft tall. He raised his impossibly thin arm and pointed at me. I heard one thing. *Leave* I didn’t have to be told twice. I bolted out of bed and ran past him towards my front door. It felt as though I ran for 100 meters, it felt like an eternity. That it was impossible to escape and I wasn’t moving. But i reached the front door. I swiftly grabbed my keys and sprinted out. Before I left I took one look back. And the figure seemed to be smiling, staring at me run away. I quickly moved out after that, only returning during the day to pack my shit and leave. I found another apartment that was a bit more expensive but I was happy to pay whatever to get out of that place. A few months after whilst I was working on an English essay, the news station that was on in the background caught my attention. “Recently, a landlord at the [redacted] apartment buildings has been arrested for the murder of 6 tenants over the course of 3 years. His most recent victim, Sadie Redfield, was reported missing 2 months ago, and when Sadie’s neighbours reported a foul stench coming from her apartment, room 163, two police officers showed up on the scene, and found the landlord cuddling with Sadie’s decapitated body.” The news showed an image of the landlord and his name, and my blood ran cold as I recognized the man as my own landlord. Just then there was a knock on my door, I walked up to it and on the doormat was a box, I looked left and right down the corridor and saw no one. That’s weird, first of all I didn’t order anything, second there wasn’t a delivery guy outside, and third of all, how did someone get away so fast without causing any noise? I picked up the box and attached to it was a small post-it-note. *‘See you soon’* I opened the box and screamed. Inside the box were a bunch of photos of me sleeping and laying on my bed. All taken from that creaking door.

Do not play the mod titled memories-Part 2

y9uoyq

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9uoyq/do_not_play_the_mod_titled_memoriespart_2/

Hey again guys, It's been a while since i've been here....I'm currently in my closet...Hiding from Her.....I'm trying to tell you all this before it's too late... If you're confused: A while back I downloaded a Mod for Elden ring, It ended up leading to a lot of crazy things going down. Now I'm being hunted down by some supernatural entity who wants to claim my soul...It sounds crazy I know but I promise you, that's what happened. If you want to read the story for yourself...here's the link: [https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y53r1v/do\_not\_download\_the\_mod\_memories/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y53r1v/do_not_download_the_mod_memories/) Whilst I was gone I received a message on my phone from someone named keith....I was going to ignore it, but then another message popped up, then another, and another. I couldn't ignore it so I decided to read what this stranger was saying. The following text is what was said word for word over text messages. K-Keith A-Me\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ K: Hello, my name is keith. I need to talk to you...please answer. K: Please don't ignore me...this is important. K: Please Anna....answer me. A: Who are you? How do you know my name? K: My name is keith....and I'm here to help you....you need to know more about the circumstance you're in right? Y'know the one with the HAUNTED mod and what not? A: How do YOU know?? K: You saw my video didn't you? The one with the man trying to warn people like you to not download a haunted mod? A: You're that man? How do you know I saw the video? How do you know anything about me? K: Listen, I am, or WAS in the same situation as you...Now i'm trapped in the game as one of the characters in Elden ring. A: WHAT??? How did you get trapped in the game? K: Cassandra. A: Who is that? K: Cassandra is the ghost of a girl who haunts the mod. She lures players foolish enough to download the mod, kills off their favorite characters by using memories and past trauma, and then killing the player and combining their soul with the programming of their favorite character. That bounds the player's soul to the game, more specifically, to the mod. I'm not the only one either, she's done this to numerous people, I'm the first one who bought it to light and was able to warn others in time. A: Wait...she uses memories and past trauma? Then it makes sense now why the Npcs were saying the things they said. K: What did the Npcs say? A; they were talking about the year 1999...now I know why... K: What do you mean? A: My older sister died in 1999, she accidentally...hung herself at a playground. Now I understand why Morgott died that way in the game...Cassandra must've found the memory buried deep in my mind and she used that as ammunition. K: I see...and she used Morgott because...your favorite character is Morgott correct? A: Yes, he's the entire reason why I bought the game in the first place...I thought he was such a cool character. Seeing him die in front of me in such a way.....I felt bad for him...I wanted to help him...I wanted to SAVE HIM. K: I see... A: What about you? What happened to you? K: I played the mod because I thought I was going to see some cool changes to the game...I heard the Npcs whisper as well...they bought up the year 2010. I found myself meeting starscourge radahn too early....yet, for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to stop playing... Then I saw him stab himself in the face with his own sword.....I did the same thing you did....I tried to stop him. I don't know what snapped in me to cause me to do something so odd...to care for a character that didn't even exist. It appeared that Cassandra had found the memory of when my Father got killed after being impaled in the face by a piece of plywood...She possessed Radahn's body to kill him the same way my father was killed. Then she possessed Radahn's dead body and came out of my TV screen, she started to chase me, but I outran her....I ran to my attic and hid. Then I filmed that youtube video....after I made the video, she found me in the attic, and dragged me through the TV, and bound my soul to Radahn's programming. I've been trapped here ever since. When you downloaded the mod, when all that crazy mess went down getting you into quite the predicament, I was able to see everything that happened to you. I've spent days trying to find a way to contact you..it's rather hard when you're trapped in a Video game. A: So you're saying if ghost, Cassandra, manages to find me...she'll drag me into the TV, and bind my soul to Margit's programming...trapping me in the game as Margit and keeping my soul bound to the game forever? K: Correct, I know this sounds crazy...However....it appears she hasn't found you yet.... A: I was lucky then huh? K: No...If I can find you she sure can too. There's nothing you can do to stop her...your fate is inevitable...***~~SO STOP HIDING FROM ME~~*** A: What? Keith are you okay? K: She's found us! You need to hide! NOW!! A: Okay! Okay! Should I bring the phone too? K: NO! Drop the phone, she can go through that to-------***~~WHY ARE YOU RUNNING AWAY FROM ME????..STAY WITH ME, STAY WITH US!!! STOP RESISTING!!!!~~*** \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ That conversation was 2 hours ago...I'm still here inside my closet. I hope keith is alright. All I can hear is Margit's (or should I say cassandra's) loud footsteps and slight cooing every once in a while...I know she's out there, trying to pull me inside... I don't have much time left...she's right outside the closet...She hears me breathing....I Know I'm not going to make it....Please, whoever read this...this is my final message to the world...please do not download the mod in Elden Ring titled "memories"... This is the end of the road for me...but you dear reader can help me warn the world. Warn others not to install this mod. Even if that means making a youtube video that no one will watch... \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Hello young one...Would you like to join my family? You WOULD? Just install a mod, it takes no time at all...it's called 'memories'. Just install it and we can be one big happy family, me and my friends would LOVE to meet you! I just added two new friends, a third one wouldn't hurt. So come on ***~~...install the mod. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW. DO IT NOW.~~*** ​ ​

A Survivor's Accounts of the Depraved Funhouse: The Greatest trick (Part One)

y9g2d1

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9g2d1/a_survivors_accounts_of_the_depraved_funhouse_the/

[[2]](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/yaak36/a_survivors_accounts_of_the_depraved_funhouse_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) \*\*\* *Go away! Leave me alone! What do you want with me?! Why are you doing this to me?!* [“You gotta Smile, Linus!”](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y6sy0t/a_survivors_accounts_of_the_depraved_funhouse_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) "Yeah, smile for us, Linus! Smile forever like us. We're always happy here. Always smiling in Hell!" "Home of everlasting smiles..." *Leave me alone, PLEASE!* "Stop, stop, boo-hoo-hoo!" *STOP IT!* "Do you care for her, too, boy?" *No! No, leave her alone! Don't hurt her!* "You know what I think'll make him happy?" *NO!* \*\*\* *(Oh God... I... I don't know if I can do this anymore... Fuck...)* I remember feeling jolted from the bed, almost like I'd taken 100 watts straight in my rear end. There was a surge of energy flowing through me again, similar to what I'd felt in the hospital. I wanted to go, save Liza, *something!* I couldn't take just sitting there anymore. Slowly, I got out of the bed, taking care to not wake either Ma or Dad up. Then, I slowly made my way over to the door. Before leaving, I took one last look over my shoulder to see my parents still fast asleep. *I love you, Ma, Dad. I'm gonna miss you and I'm sorry. But I have to do this.* *(I didn't... I could've stayed away... I could've forgotten...)* I then quietly slipped out the door. Afterwards, I managed to sneak my way past the front desk and out of the hotel altogether. Then I was out, feeling the bite of the chilly nighttime breeze slap across my face. I looked out across the road in front of me for a moment before heading off to the right. As you could imagine, no, I had absolutely no *real* clue as to where the hell I was going. What do you expect from a 12 year old who'd had all of maybe two minutes to actually come up with and hatch this little stunt while their parents were asleep. I knew they'd lose their shit immediately the next morning when they awoke. They'd probably call the police immediately, and then I'd be out of time to find Liza. *That means I'm going to have to find them before morning.* I reasoned as I walked down the quiet road. Like I said, I had very little sense of direction as to where I was going, however, I figured, if there was anywhere they'd be taking her, it'd be the "[Home of everlasting smiles](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/n7g6ra/a_survivors_accounts_of_the_depraved_funhouse_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)" itself, HappyWorld. *Please, God, let me be going in the right direction. Please let Liza be okay.* *What if she isn't? What am I supposed to do then? Hell, what am I gonna do if she is?* I did my best to shove these questions down and kept walking. *Gotta stay focused. Just got to make it there first. Everything else will fall into place from there, won't it?* *Won't it?* I walked for, at least what *felt like,* forever. It was around the 10th or 11th mile (approximate guess, mind you) that the direction I was going seemed to be familiar to me. I started to remember making this exact same walk with Derek and Liza from the Blockbuster that day. *"HappyWorld, here we come!"* My eyes started to burn. I had to stop and sit down for a moment, both to rest my feet -- which you can bet were sore as all hell -- as well as simply because I just needed a moment mentally. I couldn't go on like I was. I knew I wouldn't do Liza or *anybody* any favors if I went in there an emotional train wreck. I needed to be sharp for this, at the top of my game. Once my head was back on straight, I stood up and continued forward. From that point on, I had one thing and one thing only on my mind -- find Liza and book it the hell back out of there. Finally, after I'd say about two and a half or so hours (counting the two extra rest stops I had to make), I would meet face to face with destiny again, staring into the lifeless, soulless marbled eyes of HappyWorld. You're probably expecting me to tell you here that I pissed myself or something. That it looked "That much more menacing at nighttime" or something like that. But the truth is, it really didn't look as creepy under the complete cover of darkness. Honestly, without the sun's light pronouncing it's bizarre color scheme or the shadows pronouncing it's features and the fact that it wasn't lit up like last time, it appeared to me as just another abandoned amusement park attraction, like the ones you'd see at the fair or Carowinds or something where there'd be boards covering it or a sign that says **"DO NOT ENTER"**. Funny, I guess, isn't it? *(Trust me, Irony would be the ONLY thing that's fuckin' funny about this place...)* That's not to say that I wasn't still filling to the brim with an overpowering sense of dread. Just because it wasn't scary on the *outside* anymore didn't mean I wasn't in for something ghoulish on the *inside*. I stepped forward. Admittedly, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect to happen. Part of me thought it'd, you know, open up for me when I got close enough to the mouth of the structure like it did last time. Granted, of course, there was Happy Bob there then to open the gate for the three of us. I doubted it'd be the same this time. He wouldn't open the door for me like that again, would he? Well, at least in this instance, lightning actually struck twice because as soon as I came maybe a foot or two away from it, the familiar sound of screeching metal echoed in the otherwise abandoned space of land around me and I watched the jaws of the funhouse distend, ready to take me in and digest me for the second time. I paused. Looking up, I could still see the clown's bulging black eyes beating down at me. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. *Come on, focus! Just go in there, grab Liza, and run out.* *Very* slowly, I took a single step forward onto the tongue that'd ejected out for me. I then heard the sound of grinding gears once again as the tongue was slowly pulled back in, taking me with it. Then, like last time, I was in the dark. This time, I was all alone. I stumbled forward for a moment, trying to feel my way around. Eventually, though, I managed to find the first corridor from before with the four doors marked with the clown faces under the dim orange lamps. I stopped in the middle and looked around. *Which one am I supposed to go in first? Which one's most likely to be where they're keeping Liza?* Briefly, I thought back to when Derek and Liza argued about which door to go through. *"What're you doing, we gotta do this one first."* That made me look to the "Happy Frannie" door first. Looking at the clown face marking it, I realized it looked very similar to the bicycle clown. Then I thought of the news report. *Francine Withers... Happy Frannie...* My heart started pounding then as I approached to open the door. I was afraid. I'd never been through this area. I'd only seen what was behind the "Happy Jack-O" door, as well as the so-called "Secret room". What was gonna be in this one, though? I couldn't stop myself from imagining every worst possibility from crossing my mind in vivid detail. *God, what'll they do with Liza?!* \*\*\* *"Linus, Mama, Daddy, HELP! They're hurting me!"* "Hang on, I'm coming, Liza!" *"Aw look, ain't that precious. Little piggy's come to play with us!"* "Liza! *LIZA!"* *"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha , ha..."* "NO!" \*\*\* I snapped back to reality, realizing I'd actually been shouting out loud. Refocused, I grabbed and threw open the door. Inside, I was met with a hall of mirrors, all lit up with LEDs. "L-Liza..." I called out, trying to keep my voice as quiet as possible. Even if they didn't greet me at the entrance, and even on the off-chance they *didn't* notice I was there, I knew my best chance of pulling this off was by keeping it quiet. I slowly began making my way in and through the maze. The silence, I think, was what began to terrify me in that moment. The fact that I was all alone in a place as sickening as HappyWorld -- and then add the fact that it was an *unfamiliar* part of HappyWorld -- and, to top it all off, I didn't actually *know* whether or not I was being watched or followed. I was throwing my head violently in every direction possible, hoping I'd spot Liza somewhere along the way. Further and further into the mirror maze, I walked. And if you guessed that it was hard to maneuver through, well, you're wrong. It was damn near *impossible!* Seriously. See, when you imagine most mirror mazes, you'd probably think of it being just a regular maze, right? The standard kind you'd see at carnivals with large rectangular mirrors acting as the borders, right? *Heh*, Well, not here. No, these mirrors were *curved.* Some of them had a sort of U-shape while others had this weird wavy sort of shape to it. I know I had to have spent the better part of an hour and a half stumbling around blindly in that damn maze. What made things all the more difficult was the fact that I couldn't really tell that the mirrors were actually where they were. In other words, I when I ran into the mirror, regardless of the oblong shape, it was hard for me to discern where the mirror border was and where there was an actual path to continue down, if that makes any sense. Managing to actually progress a little ways further in, I began to see these weird little crates placed in random spots throughout the maze. At first, I was confused. Then, I took a closer look to see each one labeled with the red clown face. That's when memory would come into play once again, reminding me of what Derek told me back then about how the goal of the rooms was to find the clown in the box. I realized then it was a needle in a haystack type of game here. *Of course, what if I DO fond the right one? What will I do if I do find the clown girl? How the hell am I supposed to do this?!* I shook this off. I couldn't think about that. Instead, I knelt down and started trying to pry open the box. Though it *did* take a bit of effort, even managing to make my fingertips sore, it wasn't *too hard* for me to pop the lid from the crate. Inside was nothing except for a scrap of paper. I picked it up to see that it was another photo. Unlike the ones from before, however, these looked *much,* much older. Probably from like the 50's to the 70's. It was of two little boys standing in front of a man in a black uniform inside of a fence. The look on the kids' faces was unmistakable, too. They were afraid. I slowly turned it over in my hands, shaking like I did with all the others. Sure enough, on the back of this one was a message scrawled in red. This time though, I couldn't understand a single bit of it. It read, **"Zwei Kinder. jüdische Schweine. Opfergaben an Moloch."** Regardless of the inability to read the actual message, shivers still ran down my spine. Understand it or not, I knew German when I saw it, which then made me turn the photo right back over, realizing in terror exactly what it was. *It was... Oh God, they were HOLOCAUST prisoners!* It was everything I could do in that moment not to just puke my guts up where I stood. Even more haunting was the fact that, though I couldn't put my finger on it right then, I knew the face of the man in the uniform was familiar. He was smiling at the camera, exposing every tooth as he seemed to relish in the fear and suffering of the poor little boys beside him. *(The smile of the Devil, breaking the innocents with promises of hope...)* Thinking quickly, I dropped the photo and ran from the crate. From there, it was back to stumbling around in the mirror maze, now with a heightened agitation. Like how my eyes were zipping everywhere just to find my way around this hellhole, my mind was zipping around frantically, unable to even concentrate on what the fuck it was I was even trying to do in the first place. "Liza!" I began calling out again. Now, I was to the point where I wasn't even bothering with stealth anymore. I wanted to get out of there. I wanted to go home. *I just want to go home!* *(I want to run away!)* *I want Ma and Dad!* *(I want to hide!)* *I don't want to be here anymore!* *(I don't want to remember anything anymore!)* Still stumbling aimlessly through the maze, I felt my eyes begin to burn. Whatever "Courage" or "Bravado", whatever you call it, that I *might've* had earlier was all but gone. Now I was just a kid again. A scared, crying little shit, scared of his own goddamn shadow. The maze felt like there was no end, and no exit. Because I was so caught up in my stupor, I ended up tripping over another crate. This one was open. I almost didn't even want to look inside. Unfortunately, I was still stupid enough to go against this better judgement. *(Like I said, should've listened about the cat).* Indeed, it was another photograph. This time, it was the smiling man from the last one, this time kneeling next to a frightened little girl. The back of this one read, **"Süßes kleines Mädchen. Ein kleines Schwein .Molochs Spielkamerad."** Inside this crate were two more photos that really did make me vomit. One was of the little girl being crucified upside down, screaming while a crowd of other men in black robes gathered around and watched. And in the center, was the man himself, presenting her to the crowd. The second one was of the man filling up a cup with the blood that seemed to be flowing from the girl's stomach. The back of this one read **"Das Blut des Schweinekindes soll Moloch Glück bringen und mir ewige Jugend."** Looking closer this time at the man's face, I felt another wave of crippling nausea wash through me as I realized *exactly* who it was. The inverted cross, the gaunt chin, The robes and the long, black lion's mane hair and that haunting grin, it was all there. It was him, *"The Amazing Beliar"!* It was then that I looked up and was met with the sight that caused my heart to stop dead in my chest. On the wall, having seen that I *had* actually somehow made it past the mirrors, were the words **"Heil den Bestien! Heil Moloch!"** written in red. And below this was a large black box with a pentagram on it. Along the wall as well, were a variety of other symbols and words written in a language I can neither recognize or remember the spelling of. Suffice to say, though, whatever they were, it had to do with whatever black magic shit that these freaks were apparently dabbling in. *"Unto thee in the burning lake beneath..."* *"Please, let me go!"* *(Oh God, not again...)* Cautiously, I stepped toward the black box. Every step, I imagined hearing Derek's voice. Seeing Derek's face as he was tortured all over again. \*\*\* *"In nomine Leviathan, serpentum, beastia ex abysso!"* *(I still hear him screaming...)* *"I can smile forever now, Linus..."* *(I want to stop, I hear it right now...)* *"In nomine Asmodeus, Prince ab inferis..."* *"And now..."* *(God, PLEASE, MAKE IT STOP!)* *"In nomie satanas, et cecidit, en Draco, et pater infernalis..."* *"You can, too!"* *(STOP IT! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE! I'M SORRY, OKAY?! I'M FUCKING SORRY!)* \*\*\* I made it all the way to the box. On the lid, was a clown face, the same one that was marking the door leading into this room. The "Happy Frannie" icon. This was it. I'd found the box. *But what now?* I reached down, but then stopped. What would be in *this* one? More pictures? What if Happy Frannie or one of the other clowns were in there? *Hell, what if there is an actual BODY in here?* I wondered as I finally willed myself to open the box. I slowly lifted the lid. This one wasn't fastened like the lids of the crates, but it *was* heavy. When the box opened fully, I couldn't believe my eyes. *(Why did I have to be right?)* In the box, curled up in a ball, was no clown at all. It was... It was *DEREK!* At least, it was Derek's face. Sort of. I could see small stitches as well as multiple areas that were glaringly missing. Apparently, they'd somehow gathered the remains of his face, preserved them, while stitching together this fucked up mask with them. And to top it off, their little signature red smile was done around the eyes and mouth of it. If I wasn't sickened before, I was then. No, I was *beyond* sickened. I was *repulsed!* I was *petrified!* I was feeling every form of disgust and sheer horror that was even possible for a fucking human being to feel, all at once in that moment. The body began to stir, having apparently been unconscious. I screamed, seeing this, having expected them to be dead. *(I wonder if they thought they'd be dead as well. They'd have probably been happier...)* The kid in the box then began to squirm around in the box wildly, attempting to scream, despite being evidently muffled by something. For a moment, I froze up. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I wasn't expecting this. Sure, I didn't actually know *what* it was I *was* expecting, but it sure as hell wasn't this. Any of this. I could see the kid's eyes looking at me through the Derek mask. Their eyes were wide, fearful. The kid struggled even harder when I finally broke from my trance and reached down to them. "H-Hey, it's okay." I said, shuddering. "I'm... I'm not gonna hurt you." I carefully pulled the mask off, revealing another surprise. The kid in the box was Ray! My eyes grew. He had a cloth tied around his mouth and he, too, was covered in bruises. Hastily, I untied the cloth around his mouth, causing him to wheeze for air. "Ray?! Dude, what--" "L-Liza..." he gasped in between coughing fits. "What?" I asked. My heart rate skyrocketed. "What about Liza? Is she okay?" "They're... They're gonna make her sacrifice me." he said. "What?! What're you talking about?" "They grabbed me this afternoon, while I was riding down the neighborhood on my bike. They told Liza that if she wanted to be let go that she was gonna have to sacrifice me or something. They called her their 'Playmate'." "Where is she?" "I don't know, dude." He coughed heavily and added, "She said she wouldn't do it, so they took her." I helped him back to his feet. He appeared to be beat up pretty badly, having to hold himself up against me as I tried carrying us out through the mirror maze. "Did you see where they went?" I asked him. He shook his head. "No, dude, like I said, those clowns took her when she refused to kill me for them. After that, I had that mask forced on and I was shoved in the box." We got a few steps further into the maze before something happened that caused both mine and Ray's hearts to stop dead in our chests. From seemingly all around us, we could hear a high-pitched giggling echo throughout the room. It became louder as it seemed to get closer and closer. *Oh, Jesus Christ, no...* "Lookie who it is..." I heard the all too familiar hyperactive voice boom loudly, a voice that terrifies me to this day, thirty years later. The two of us froze where we stood, unable to move out of sheer panic. The sound got closer and closer. I swung my head around, trying to see where he was coming from, as well as spot a way out. Nothing.

People keep flashing their high beams at me

y8illf

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8illf/people_keep_flashing_their_high_beams_at_me/

It first happened around Wilhelmina Drive. When the sedan passed me, it flashed its high beams. A cop was ahead, or even more likely—deer. I hit the brakes, scanning the forest on either side. But nothing popped up. No cop hidden on the side of the road, ready to pounce on speeders. No herd of deer staring at me with glowing eyes in the darkness. When I’d gotten about a mile away, I figured it was safe. I pushed my foot on the accelerator and resumed my usual speed. *Must’ve been a herd of deer that crossed already.* I turned up the radio, a staticky *Carry on My Wayward Son* coming through. Damn, the reception in the valley really sucked. But my phone’s battery was low, and I wasn’t about to use up all the juice playing *Every Rose Has Its Thorn* for the 100th time. I turned the dial, but the rest of the stations seemed even more staticky. *At least I’ll be home soon.* I was halfway through making a mental checklist of everything I had to get done tomorrow, when another pair of headlights blinked through the trees. When it got about twenty feet from me— It flashed its high beams, too. *More deer?* But as I drove through the darkness… I didn’t see anything. No cop cars, either, unless they were really well hidden. As the seconds ticked by and there was nothing else—no construction zone, tree in the road, or other hazard—my heart began to pound. *What was he trying to warn me about?* I glanced down at my phone, the screen black in the passenger seat. *Is it already dead?* Maybe they were warning me about something wrong with my car. Both headlights seemed to be working, but maybe there was smoke coming out of my tailpipe, or something. I didn’t like the idea of being stuck on the side of the road at 11 PM. I sucked in a deep breath. *It’s probably just deer. There are lots of them around here, remember?* The green sign for EDGAR AVE. popped up in my headlights, and my heart slowed. *Less than ten minutes from home.* I thought of the fluffy, furry blanket I’d just gotten a week ago. Curling up in it, eating some chocolate before bed as Leela snuggled up next to me. The thought made my heart slow even further. My cat, my room, my blanket… Another pair of headlights swung around the bend. As it approached me, it slowed. And then it flashed its high beams at me. My blood went cold. For some reason, two flashes seemed to fit within the realm of coincidence. But three… *It’s not deer or a cop. It’s something about* ***me.*** Something wrong with the car, or— A horrible thought shot through my mind. That urban legend. Where a girl’s driving home late, and a truck keeps following her and flashing his high beams. But the trucker is a nice dude, and he’s flashing the headlights because there’s a guy in the backseat with a knife and he keeps rising up to stab her— *Oh God oh God—* I turned on the lights and whipped around. The backseat was empty. At least, as far as I could tell. Swinging my gaze back to the road, I reached my hand around the back of my seat. My heart pounded in my chest as I slowly, *slowly* swept my fingers through the darkness behind me. *What if there’s someone there?* I imagined my fingers meeting rough cloth. Warm skin. Sticky hot breath. The cold steel point of a knife. But they only met air. I breathed a sigh of relief. Swished my hand through the air a few more times, high and low. There was a dead spot that I couldn’t reach, but it would be far too small for an adult man to hide in. Unless he was some kind of gold medal contortionist. *So maybe it’s something wrong with the car then. Maybe they see smoke, or a door’s ajar, or a light’s out…* I glanced at the side of the road. There was a margin of dirt between the edge of the road and the beginning of the forest; I could safely pull over and check what was wrong. Then again, this road was really lonely. Especially so late. There were only a few houses on this road, and none that I could see right now. Just thick woods, brambles and twisted bark that would muffle any screams… *I’ll take my chances driving home.* I gripped the steering wheel. *Only about five more miles.* I again thought of my warm little house, and Leela, with her fluffy black fur and permanent smirk… A pickup truck swung around the bend. I held my breath. *They’re not flashing at me. Good. Good. Almost home—* But then, there it was. *Flash.* The afterimage of the searing white light danced in my vision. Cold sweat broke out on my neck. “Dammit,” I whispered. “What the *hell* is going on?!” Their headlights disappeared behind me—and the darkness immediately pooled around me again, like fluid filling a void. Scraggly, crooked branches clawed at my car, silhouetted by the full moon. The radio played straight static. I reached for my phone— And then I heard it. *Tap, tap, tap* Coming from straight above me. Something was tapping on my moonroof. My entire body shook. The dark road in front of me became a blur. *No. This can’t be happening. How could someone even be…* I jammed my foot on the accelerator. The speedometer shot to 30, 35, 40… *Tap, tap, tap.* Without looking up, I reached a shaking hand up to the moonroof. I pressed my hand against the glass. It felt *warm*. Even though it was only 40 degrees outside. *Fuck oh what the fuck—* I couldn’t look up. It was just this visceral instinct. Like the feeling you get when you know someone is watching you, and your brain is screaming *hide.* I bit my lip, staring at the road, waiting for my street to come up. *Tap, tap, tap.* *Don’t look up. Don’t look up. Don’t look up.* MAPLE WOODS appeared before me. I swung onto the street, then pulled into the driveway. Without even thinking it through, I swung the door open and ran as fast as I possibly could. Surprisingly, I got inside safe and sound. I spent half the night watching old movies, Leela curled on my lap. I checked the front and back doors, and all the windows, about a million times each. I didn’t dare look outside at my car. I closed my eyes, even, when checking the front door. I thought I was safe. But I wasn’t. Because now, I hear it again. *Tap-tap-tap.* It’s more frequent now, more frantic. Coming from right above me. Right above my bed. Coming from inside my attic.

My Wife is Very, Very Sick

y93qgv

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y93qgv/my_wife_is_very_very_sick/

I’ve been thinking about running away lately. Now, at this moment, the situation that I am in is neither good nor bad, simply inconvenient. Inconvenient in the same way that stubbing your toe is, or trying to flick off some stubborn cigar ash, and accidentally burning a hole in your brand new white blazer. The life I am living is nothing more than an inconvenience. The only thing stopping me from leaving right this moment is my own cowardice - and my sick wife, Marilyn. It wasn’t cancer. It wasn’t hepatitis. It wasn’t pneumonia, tuberculosis, appendicitis, the flu, tetanus, AIDS; it wasn’t anything that they could identify. She had been in and out of hospitals on a near constant basis for the past 18 months. X-rays, blood tests, urine tests, you name it, she’s done it. I’ve driven her to every hospital this side of the Mississippi, still with no answers. Marilyn was never the most physically stable person. In the 13 years that she had been a part of my life, the amount of times she had gotten sick or injured far exceeds most of the people I know, but she stayed ravishingly beautiful, through sickness and health. “Marilyn, if there’s anything I could do to make the world treat you right, i promise I’d do it in an instant.” I said that over 7 years ago at our wedding, and I had never once broken that promise. Not when she started passing out at work, or when she stared vomiting in her sleep, or when she lost 35 pounds off her already slender frame, or when her skin started to more closely resemble sand paper than flesh. After all of that, I kept my promise. I drove Marilyn to the doctor nearly weekly, some drives taking more than eight hours. She would lay in the back, with a bucket wedged in between the seats, next to her face incase she vomited. I gave her her medications, and ointments, and held her when she cried, even if she began to reek of rot. I was never upset, or hurt, or lost. She just began to feel more like a chore than my wife. Simply an inconvenience. I never got a break, or a pause, or a moment to relax. Eventually I quit my job. That same night, the blood vessels in Marilyn’s eyes burst, leaving her scleras bright red. Lucky for us, the damage was mostly cosmetic, much like how most of her hair had fallen out. It became quite hard to keep calling her by her name. Her once beautifully red lips had turned dry and purple. Her teeth began rotting and her tongue was so swollen it made it hard to breathe, so she spent most of her time slack-jawed and panting, like a dog. At this point, speaking became too hard for her. It didn’t matter what I said to her, she couldn’t respond or do anything. But her numerous brain scans had showed that her brain had not degraded at all. She remained the same mentally as her body began dissolving in front her eyes. I began to see the Marilyn that I married and the Marilyn that I knew now as two separate people. Subtly, resentment grew. I loved Marilyn, but was disgusted by what she had become. She wasn’t Marilyn anymore, simply a thing. As her health degraded, we no longer could take her to the doctor. We all knew she was going to die soon. I moved us both to a house in the woods, secluded from the world. I had isolated myself from my friends, my job, my family, and the world at large. I knew what I was going to do. Marilyn was going to die soon, and so was I. She was my only responsibility left, and soon, when she croaked, I was going to go into the woods behind the house, and shoot myself. There was no point in living without the Marilyn I use to love. One day, I had woken up, and went straight to the cot Marilyn slept on next to the bed. She was completely hairless, and her sandpaper skin was stark white. She was sleeping face down in a pool of vomit, her arms crossed under her chest. I smiled to myself, absolutely sure she was dead. I put my hands on her skeletal back, trying to feel for a heartbeat, and there was none. I rolled her over, she stunk like death, shit, and vomit, but that wasn’t anything new. My eyes drifted to her face. She peered directly at me, eyes moving wildly. She was still alive. I scanned down her face. Something was very wrong. Where her mouth was, the perfect red lips that i had kissed so many times - or rather the thin, purple, crusty lips that had never touched mine; there was nothing more than one small, eraser sized hole, leaking vomit. There was no semblance of lips, it looked like her skin had grown over the opening of her mouth. I looked further down, seeing her arms fused to her chest, her hands looked more like bony mittens than fingers, the separation between them no longer existing. Her feet were the same way, each individual bone was visually but her toes were melded together. For the first time, I had broken my vows. I ran out of the house and into the woods

NFSW: My friend's grandma has chosen me as a host for her next body

y9aivn

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y9aivn/nfsw_my_friends_grandma_has_chosen_me_as_a_host/

NSFW/TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE I’ve been keeping this as a diary log on my laptop and am now going to upload it onto Reddit so you guys can tell me if I’m going crazy or not. My friend’s grandma has chosen me as a host for her next body, and I have no clue how to prevent it from happening. Please help. The date of this upload is 04/07/22 - the 4th of July 2022.  3rd February 2022 A few weeks ago, Sienna’s grandma “Bibi” passed away. She’s asked me and some of her guy friends to help clear out Bibi’s house - as it was being sold due to financial issues her family had been going through. We agreed, naturally, because her grandma had just passed away - we couldn’t just say no, could we? I’m going to bring some food and my speakers to make the task more bearable because no offence to Big Mama Bibi, but her house is not only dusty but is soo creepy. Like, weird statues that stare at you as you go round the house creepy. I’ve visited it only once before and honestly had nightmares for a week after. I’ve only agreed because it would be terrible to say no to your grieving best friend, right?  7th February 2022 Today was so weird. I literally feel like I’m being watched as I write this. I should’ve never agreed to help Sienna, grieving or not, I knew I’d regret it. So we went to clean out her grandma’s creepy house, right? At first it was actually really fun. We’d all brought snacks and had turned the cleaning into a massive competition, with points for who could clean out their designated room the fastest. I was in second place, with one of the guys she’d invited in first, when he came across a door in Bibi’s room. He’d called Sienna into the room to ask if she had a key to open it so he could clear out whatever was behind the door. Obviously, in a typical horror movie way, she didn’t. I walked into the room next, boasting about the fact that I knew how to pick locks and, pulling out a few hairpin from my hair, I tried to show off and unlock the door. It didn’t unlock, embarrassingly, and I was trying to laugh off my boldness, when the guy in the room with us decided to knock on the locked door. I had jumped and pushed him, swearing and asking wtf he thought he was doing. He’d laughed at me then Sienna joined in, calling me a “p\*ssy”.  They’d left the room together to join the other one of her friends, leaving me there in that creepy, musty room. I’d rushed out of the room, then left the house in a mood. After checking Uber prices, I decided to walk home when I heard a whisper behind me. I turned around, and no one was there. It scared the sh\*t out of me so I decided to waste my money on an Uber to ensure that I got home safe, and am sitting here now writing all this, and feeling watched.  8th February 2022 I’m honestly so tired of Sienna, I do everything for her and she treats me like sh\*t constantly. She knew I was scared of her grandma’s house and instead of making sure I was okay, she decided to mock me with her little boyfriend instead. I don’t care if this is me being sensitive, I want to cut her off, I don’t need people like her in my life. 10th February 2022  Sienna’s little boyfriend messaged me today, the one who’d knocked on the door. I finally got his name, it’s Gio, probably short for Giovanni. I think he’s Italian or something. He’s not actually her boyfriend!! He messaged me and said that he was sorry for laughing at me about the door incident and that he’d been feeling a little scared after he’d gotten home. I told him that he shouldn’t be stupid, that it was only a door and I’d been dumb for acting all spooked.  I actually do still feel a bit scared, he can’t know that though 📷. He’d then asked me if I wanted to go out with some time and I agreed because why not? We arranged a little date for the 15th (after Valentines obviously) and I’ll see how it goes from there.  14th February 2022 Today I woke up around 4pm which is really out of the norm for me. I’m usually awake by 8am, or 10am if I’ve slept late. I slept around 1am, so I’m not sure how I managed to sleep for 15 hours.  15th February 2022 I’m really not feeling myself this morning. I’ve been having really weird and random memories of things I’ve never experienced - but they were definitely memories, not my imagination acting up. I also keep mentally replaying Gio knocking on that door and feeling surges of anger. I’m going out with him later so I hope that goes well.  17th June 2022 I completely forgot about this diary I was keeping. Me and Gio made it official around 3 months ago and are planning something cute for our 3 month anniversary! I haven’t slept in or felt off since that morning of the 15th Feb so everything has honestly been great for me. Sienna and I aren’t really close anymore but I’m happy with that. Her grandma’s house was sold to a middle aged couple with no kids so I’ll never have to step foot in there again, thank gosh.  25th June 2022 On the 19th June 2022, Gio passed away. We’d decided to have our anniversary celebration in California, and ended up on top of a tourist attraction called Big Sur Cliffs. Whilst we were on top of the cliff, Gio decided to jump from it and was pronounced dead at the scene. I’ve been distraught this past week. I don’t know how to live without him. I’m feeling survivors guilt and I feel like a part of it was my fault. Why did he jump on our three month anniversary? Was it something I said, something I did? Was it me? I feel responsible. I don’t know how to carry on.  26th June 2022 I managed to sleep today, which is good, but I had a really disturbing dream. In my dream, I was watching as an outsider whilst Bibi (Sienna’s grandma) and Gio were arguing on the cliff. She was shouting about how disrespectful he had been to knock on her mothers door. He was sobbing, saying that he didn’t realise the door had belonged to her mother, and apologising. He kept saying “Spare her. Spare her, please”. Then in my dream Bibi and I had merged into one somehow, though I had no control over my body, she did. She’d laughed and told him that if he jumped, she “would”. He walked to the cliff’s edge, and jumped with no hesitation.  I’m awake now and I feel so on edge. What kind of sick dream was that?  30th June 2022 I’m starting to think the “her” of Gio’s pleadings is me. I feel crazy but I can’t remember the day he passed away too clearly. I remember being on the cliff and I remember him jumping off, but I don’t remember what led up to that event. I’m starting to feel like I’m not fully in control of my body.  This is my diary log till date. I’ve decided to upload it onto Reddit to see if anyone has gone through something like this before. I don’t know if this is part of survivor’s guilt or is part of something deeper.  Update: 7th July 2022 I’m planning to visit Bibi’s house tomorrow. I want to see what was behind that door. I don’t know how I’ll get passed the couple who own the house now, but I will. Something behind that door drove Gio to his suicide. I know it.  Update: 8th July 2022  I’m running and typing this so sorry for any mistakes in test you might see. Bibi’s family has been planning to sue my body as a host for her body. Bibi’s family being her parents, who are the hosts of the middle aged couple who bought the house. They decided the first time I walked into the house, all those years ago. Gio didn’t even play a part in it, Bibi just felt disrespected and used my body to convince him to commit. Behind the door are their corpses, in some sort of advanced fridge. They’ve been perfectly preserved. I’m so scared right now. I don’t want to die. I don’t know where my soul will go if she takes my body. I’m only 19. I’m running as fast as I can but I’m feeling weaker by the second. I don’t know who’s body was cremated but it wasn’t Bibi’s. Her body is behind that door with her parents. I don’t know if Siennas had anything to do with. This. I don’t know if sienna is even sienna or some random host. I feel like everything has been a lie. Shskdodjdj 20th October 2022  Hello everyone! I have just found this story on this platform Reddit! My mother always said I had the wildest imagination. I can not believe I wrote it myself! I hope you all enjoy this piece of fiction I wrote. Good day to you all. God bless.

Coins in the morgue

y8wn88

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8wn88/coins_in_the_morgue/

The ashes fell. Dotting my forehead with smudges of black. It hurt in my chest, a pain that speared further in my body and deep into my soul. What I knew about this life was totally wrong. Things are out there that are unexplainable. I have seen them with my very eyes, and I know what they are capable of. My father ran a morgue till the day he died. Late into his eighties, I pray that I last as long hat he has. His father owned the morgue before him and his father before him. It has been in the family for centuries and in our small town, the men are not expected to leave as someone would still have to run the morgue. One of the oldest bodies we had here dated back to the mid-1800s. Safe to say that we’ve had literally thousands of bodies come through our doors over the years. I remember as a child running up and down the ramp shoot that they used to lower the bodies into the cremation chambers. Before I knew the purpose of the ramps, I thought they were fun to play on. As an adult the ramps always gave me the heebie-jeebies. While dad passed last year from pancreatic cancer, it only felt right to have him cremated him in our place. Mom had handed me the papers, he signed over the business to yours truly. I had some successful years owning the morgue. People always die so business will always be booming. Dad told me one thing over the years that had always stuck out to me. Something towards the end of his life that he reminded me for when I took over the place someday. What dad explained to me is that I should “never remove the coins from the body’s eyes”. Sure, simple enough to remember I figured. I have vivid memories of seeing bodies wheeled into the cremation chambers with bronze coins over their eyes. Momma told me it helped them sleep and when I got older, I just didn’t press the issue too much. So I followed dads’ rule and kept putting these bronze coins over their eyes. It just became habit at that point. Most of the time we just reused the same old ones, but dad kept a safe in his office with literal hundreds of these coins. Don’t know where he got them, but he had a ton of them. They had no value; they were no type of currency that I could identify. About the size of a half dollar, smooth with a dirtied bronze look. Why am I telling you all this now you might be wondering. Dad’s warning had been harder to follow than I thought. I had some successful years, but no one is perfect. And I slipped up. I was wheeling a body down to a chamber for burning. The man I was wheeling had his bronze coins over his eyes just like dad instructed. Just a routine burning. He was the last of the night, about 11pm or so. The hallway was dim and cold, must hung in the air as it did. The man was bloated and stunk of formaldehyde. Pale and lifeless, I tried not to dwell on him too much. I was taking him to a chamber where the burners are newer so I could speed up the process a bit when the wheel on the gurney had broken off. The front of the gurney tipped as I stopped short, the mans dead weight slid to the side and he crashed onto the floor with a wet slop. The coins rolled in different directions. I cursed at myself and at dad for leaving behind such an old gurney. I should have been smart enough to replace it. Now I had to pick up this wet, bloated dead guy and drag him a few feet to the chamber. He left a wet trail behind him. As I hoisted him into the chamber, I noticed his pale, washed over eyes. Eyes that I don’t typically see on the bodies; his coins had fallen out. Not thinking too much of it, I gathered the coins and tossed them into the chamber with the man and cranked it on. By then it was too late. I headed back upstairs ready to head home, passing by the freezer lockers when I heard the first banging. I stopped dead in my tracks once I heard it. A banging, loud and angry came from inside one of the lockers. In the lockers were frozen bodies that were waiting for burning. I turned back towards the room, feeling the hairs stand up on my neck as the banging continued. The lock on one of the lockers was rattling from the banging like someone was trying to kick it open from the inside. Did an animal get stuck inside I wondered to myself as I fumbled for the keys. The banging echoed against the steel lockers, feeling like it was shaking the entire building. I held the lock hesitantly and the banging had stopped. I pulled out the bed and it was just another man, but he looked familiar. It was him. The same man that I just sent into the cremation chamber before. It was impossible I thought. I pulled the rest of him out, checking the tag on his toes. It was him, one hundred percent. But then who did I just burn? And why does he not have his coins on his eyes. I slammed his locker closed and rushed back towards the chambers where I could smell burning flesh. A body was in there. As I raced down the stairs, a panic washed over me. I saw him standing there. The flames shot out from the chamber behind him, the shadows dancing against the wall. The walls were scorched with flames. I needed to turn off the gas. Flesh and fat dripped like grease from his body. His eyes glowed a fiery yellow. With his head cocked sideways, his arm stretched out with a closed fist. The charred flesh burned my nostrils. Frozen with fear, I yelled out to him. The burned man took a step forward. His foot sloshing with each movement, steam rising from his wet, bloated feet. Fear rose inside me, fight or flight. I ran. Running away as the light of the fire faded behind me. The sloshing of his feet grew louder. But there were more of them. Standing at the top of the stairs were more bodies. Naked men and women, pale and dripping with their yellow eyes crowding the top of the stairs. They were smiling at me. The fire continued to burn. Smoke burned my eyes as I fell to the floor coughing. The people tossed hard things at me. Pelting me as I lie writhing on the ground. One hit me square on the forehead landing next to me. It was a bronze coin. Heat burned inside me as the fire continued to spread. Feeling like my organs were being cooked. The figures atop the stairs remained frozen, blocking my path. But the man sauntered down the hallway. Cremation chambers doors burst open with flames as he walked past. Soon the entire building would be consumed. I struggled to see through the smoke. Their yellow eyes piercing the thick smoke behind me as I crawled down the hall further to the ramp. The ramp led outside, I just had to make it there alive. Smoke filled my lungs, unable to breathe as I slowly crawled. Feeling the heat of the man burning at my toes. He dropped coins next to me as he watched me crawl. Oils and fat from his body dripped on my back, burning holes through my clothes, and scorching my skin. I cried out for help, begging them. But he just kept walking. Coins dropped onto my bare back, burning into my skin. Filling my nose with burning flesh. With each coin dropped, I felt it fuse into my skin sinking deeper. The burning man wheezed and exhaled loudly as I crawled up the ramp, feeling the fresh air already. I turned towards him, watching the fires rise around and consume him. All while he stood there smiling and throwing coins towards me. I crawled towards the outside, the fires creeping towards me. All while his yellow eyes watched me leave, he wasn’t stopping me. I pushed open the ramp door, sucking in fresh air. Watching the morgue go up in smoke. Generations of men in my family kept this business alive, and here I was watching the fires burn it to the ground. Smoke funneled out of the tunnel in thick black streaks. Searing my throat with the stench of burning flesh. My back ached as coins loosened themselves from me. Covered in blood and blistering flesh. As the fire fighters fought vigilantly throughout the night. By morning the morgue was just a pile of ruins and ashes. Centuries of work erased in a matter of hours. A couple of fire fighters hoisted a safe out of the rubble. Charred and burned but I knew it was fathers. They placed it in front of me where I dialed it open and out poured blackened coins. I picked one up, hot to the touch and saw the face of the burned man in my mind. Whatever they are, I now know why dad warned me about the coins for all these years.

What do you do when someone died inside your home without knowing they were even there the first place?

y97902

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y97902/what_do_you_do_when_someone_died_inside_your_home/

I'm 23, and I live on my own at my late grandparents house. My ex gf just moved out and she took the dog bc she was better at taking care of him. I'm completely alone but have really friendly neighbors who always look out for me. I work at a local grocery store from 9-5 on weekdays, and just stay in my room for the rest of my free time. Sometimes my neighbors who used to be friends with my grandparents would visit me, give me free food, or bake with me in the kitchen. I was pretty satisfied with how I live. Our town is also elevated and away from water bodies so whenever it rains, it doesn't flood easily. But my house got this big pipe in the basement that prevents rainwater from reaching or flooding the basement. The pipe is really big and could fit 2 people inside. Tho it rarely rains here, when it does, it fills the pipe with rainwater which takes some time to drain. One day while I was still at work, my neighbor Eleina texted me that she left a tray of eggs to my "wife" for us to have during the storm. Our region is in LPA and it just started raining really hard that day. It took me aback as to I have no idea what she was talking about bc me and my gf separated 2 months before this incident. I called her and asked what she meant by the last message and said that my back door was open and she saw a young lady eating a bowl of cereal and wearing my shirt. Eleina has Alzheimer's and lives a few blocks away so I always had to remind her about how I live alone, and keep the backdoor locked because she comes by often and tidies my place up. I called the police and reported a burglary then I came home as soon as I could. They weren't able to find anything but they did mention that the window in the guess room slightly bent forward and doesn't close the way it used to, as if someone forcibly opened it some time ago window, which I didn't pay attention to because I thought that since it's and old issue, it must've my aunt who broke it when she used to live here with my grandparents. After the cops left, I decided to sleep over my neighbors' who was concerned and invited me in, just until after the storm. It wasn't a big storm, it just rained really heavily and flooded a little bit downtown. When I got home after the storm after 2 days or so, there was a lingering stench of something rotting. Like a dish that I have left out for a year, it was unexplainable and I asked for someone to check it out. They were able to point out where it was coming from, but had to leave to get some mask or something bc the smell was just unbearable. It was coming from the basement btw, and from one of the pipes, specifically. First thing that came to mind was "This is probably a dead animal, could be a rat". But basing from the smell, it could be something bigger, like a cat or maybe a dog. But no. The guy I askked help for started asking me questions like: have you been in a fight with someone? Do I live with someone, or used to? Was there someone in my house that I was aware of? My skin crawled as I started to get the picture. There was a fucking dead human inside the pipe. A person was living in there and I haven't even noticed nor made suspicions. All those nights of hearing sounds coming from the guest room, kitchen, ir basement, thinking it was the animals. All those convincing myself my house is haunted for all the missing jars and empty boxes of junk foods and cereal. my clothes that would disappear and reappear after a week or so. I was ignorant and it all just makes sense. So once again, there were police. I was questioned, then as I got home, I just stared at my ceiling, I couldn't even sleep. The police made an investigation out if this, and questioned people who live near the area. Apparently they have been seeing a pale woman who was in her late 20's with brunette short hair who was always in the kitchen when I'm not home. People assumed it was my new gf since she was always around. Kids saw her too and apparently, she must've been living here for more or less 4 months. 4 months and I haven't even suspect anything was wrong. Moved out of that house, but never sold it. I live with my brother now, currently unemployed. This was a traumatic experience for me, please always stay safe.

Am i eating my parents?

y90r4i

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y90r4i/am_i_eating_my_parents/

"Finally! I got my first salary yesterday. I haven't revealed it to my parents yet, but I will reveal it tomorrow on my mother's birthday!" This was the thought I had when I slept on the night of 29th of March 2021. But the next morning was.... Different! My parents were not in the house, and they left a weird note for me.  "Your uncle is not well. We are going to pay him a visit. Food is in the fridge. Take care, son ~Mom" I got a bit sad as we wouldn't be able to celebrate my mother's birthday together, but I understood the situation and called my friend, Jack, over to have MY DAY! It was my first salary, of course.  I decided to prepare some food until my friend arrived and pulled on the door of the fridge. It was locked.. Locked? Why? Where is the key?  I picked up the note left by my parents and realised something weird. The note was written...in my handwriting? How is this possible? Below in small letters was written a word, "attic". Attic? Suddenly, I heard the bell ring. My friend had arrived. I welcomed him into the house. He gave me a huge hug and gifted me a bottle of foreign wine. Time went by as we played computer games, talked about stuff, discussed future plans etc.,  It was evening... We both felt rats hurdling in our stomachs and we decided to prepare food. As I was approaching the fridge, I remembered the note. Attic? Is the key to the fridge in the attic? I went in to check inside the attic and… Found! The key. I hurried back to the fridge, and found Jack standing beside it. I inserted the key! Opened the fridge! What?  I saw a dense red liquid pouring down from a covered plate.  Next day, I woke up with the news of Jack being missing. What happened last evening? Why no memories? What was inside that fridge?  I called another friend of mine who was crying badly on the phone to talk about the unfortunate circumstances. I washed my face and tried to remember everything! Anything! Something!...Nothing! I went to check the fridge. Locked!  Just a note written in my handwriting. "I love you jack! You are the best one yet." What? The bell rang. The other friend, John had arrived. He was crying as he entered the house. I hugged him and made him calm down.  He slept on the couch after crying for too long, and I decided not to disturb him.  Then, I remembered the previous note. "Attic". I went into the attic once again and guess what? Found the key! I ran back to the fridge, horrified. This time I set my phone to record everything. I opened the fridge, and saw some sponge-like dark red material. Then, I woke up the next day with no memories of the previous day whatsoever. I picked up my phone to check the recording. Nothing! The recording… Was deleted.  P. S. - I have not felt hungry since that day. Though, I have no memories of eating anything at all. What is going on? Somebody help.

Desmond Cove

y8pfr2

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8pfr2/desmond_cove/

You’ve probably never heard of Desmond Cove, Newfoundland before and to be fair, I’m not rightly sure that it’s really even considered a town anymore. ​ Last I read, the current population numbers somewhere around 6 or 7, although that number could have dropped since last they bothered to take a census. The town wasn’t always so small although word is, it was never exactly big either. From what I’ve heard, at its maximum, only 500 people ever lived in Desmond. Enough to run the mine, and a few local shops. ​ The Haul Away Joe mine was originally the main thing that kept Desmond alive, which I suppose was ironic, because the mine was also the thing that eventually killed it. ​ Now, nobody seems to know exactly what happened. The common belief is that some sort of fire got started inside the deepest part of the mine, similar to what happened in Centralia, Pennsylvania. I don’t think that argument is entirely without its merit. The effects are certainly similar. But some of the old miners swore up and down that there was no fire, or if indeed there was, it was only set after the town was evacuated in 1985. As for why they’d set the fire afterward? God only knows. I’ve read a few different accounts. Some claim that it was vandals, or disgruntled former miners looking to get some ill conceived form of revenge. Others are adamant that it was a cover up for something else. Who can really say? ​ Me? I’m not entirely sure as to what I believe. I only know what I know, and what I know is that Desmonds Cove is abandoned and that there probably really is a fire burning in the mines underneath the town. Who started it? Now that I don’t know! But I do know that it’s not the only reason why you ought to stay the hell out of Desmond… ​ Now, let me quickly take things back a spell… My name is Maxine, and I’m a girl with what you might call a certain interest in Desmond Cove and the Haul Away Joe mine. I’ve had a fascination with the place ever since I first stepped foot inside a couple of years ago (I’ll get to that shortly) and what I’d like more than anything, is to figure out just what the hell actually happened there. Most folks generally don’t seem to care. But they haven’t seen what I’ve seen. ​ I’m not that old so it feels a little strange to be saying: ‘Back when I was in high school’ because high school was only about two years ago for me, but this is the truth. Back when I was in high school, some of the other students liked to play a little game. ​ See, the town I live in is only about a twenty minute drive from Desmond Cove. When the town got evacuated, most of its former residents relocated there. I suppose it’s on account of them that my town even knows or cares about Desmond, but I digress. The students at my school liked to play a little game, as teenagers often do. Every now and then a bunch of them got it into their head that they could go and explore the ruins of Desmond. Of course, they never got very far, and it usually turned into something of a game, where they’d dare each other to go a little further into the creepy abandoned town, although to my knowledge, none of them ever actually got very far. ​ My friends and I would hear rumors of this sort of thing all the time back when I was in high school, and I suppose it was inevitable that we’d end up talking about trying to do it ourselves. Personally I never thought anyone would have the guts for it, but I guess I was wrong., ​ My friend Julia and her boyfriend Ronnie were the ones who really wanted to go. They’d been talking about it for a few months up until that point and I’d thought they were really just all talk. But no. Come one Friday evening in late October, I’d gotten together with them and some other friends after school, and Desmond Cove was just about all they could talk about. ​ Julia had said something to the effect of: “What could be a more authentic halloween experience than exploring an abandoned town?” And Ronnie had just nodded along with her. ​ One of our mutual friends, Susie was immediately out. But Susie was sort of a good girl who never did anything remotely out of sorts, so that didn’t surprise me. A couple of our other friends, Earl and Teddy were all for it though. Me? I figured it might be neat to actually see the town with my own eyes. You could admittedly see the steeple of the church in the center of town from some of the taller hills nearby. But I’d always kinda wanted to see the town proper, if for no other reason than to sate my own curiosity. ​ There was only one road into or out of Desmond Cove, and nobody had much of a reason to drive down it. It’d barely even been maintained and had become overgrown with weeds. The only people who ever went towards Desmond were teenage sightseers and the odd person checking up on the residents or dropping something off to them. Even then, you saw less and less of the latter every year. ​ So yeah, when Julia and Ronnie wanted to visit Desmond Cove, I was all for it. I didn’t expect much to come of the trip. I figured we might inch a little ways into the town, take some pictures and come back with a fun little story to share with our classmates. I suppose in the end, I wasn’t wrong… I just didn’t realize how much of a story I’d had to tell. ​ We set out for Desmond Cove on a Saturday afternoon. Teddy and Earl had tagged along with the three of us and loudly debated what music to play with Ronnie while I just sat and watched the ocean pass us by while we drove. ​ Newfoundland has a certain beauty to it. There’s this tranquility to the landscape here. Sparse buildings, separated by lush greenery against the slate blue of the ocean. And that ocean, is dominated by rocky bits of coastline. Sure, it’s not always beautifully scenic, but it’s home and I’ve come to love it. The desolated road curved against the ocean, and I could see the spire of Desmond Coves church above the treetops. There was a faint mist in the air… Or perhaps it was smoke. Hard to say with much certainty. ​ As we got closer to the town, you could see the trees withering with each passing kilometer, as if the smoke in the air was slowly strangling them to death. Some of them even seemed to be little more than just lifeless corpses, only still standing out of obligation, as opposed to anything else. Looking over at Earl and Teddy, I could see them eying the trees with a mixture of awe and concern. In fact, just looking at Earl, I already knew he regretted coming. We hadn’t even made it to Desmond Cove yet and here he was already chickening out. ​ After a while, Ronnie finally slowed the car to a stop. We were close to the town now. I could literally just see it up ahead. Not just the church, other buildings. A few empty houses that looked run down, some partially collapsed telephone poles, and what looked to have once been a general store. A few large signs sat along the side of the road. The first read: ​ **Welcome to Desmond Cove** ​ The others were less inviting. ​ In front of the Desmond Cove sign, was a big white sign that read: ​ **DANGER!** **Underground Mine Fire** **Walking or driving in this area could lead to DEATH or serious injury.** **Dangerous gasses are present. Fires can appear at ANY TIME.** **Ground is prone to collapse.** **Don’t take your life in your hands.** **Turn back.** ​ Just seeing that sign made Julia let out an actual squeal of excitement. “C’mon Ronnie! Let’s go!” She’d said. But Ronnie didn’t budge. He just killed the engine of the car as he stared at those warning signs. ​ “Road’s already pretty rough.” He said, “It’ll be worse in town.” “So? Come on, you big baby! You can handle it!” Julia said. Ronnie still didn’t budge. He just opened his car door to step out. “It’s safer if we walk.” He said, “I ain’t damaging this car. Especially if we need it.” Julia put on a big childish pout but didn’t argue. Ronnie made a conscious choice not to be a complete dumbass that day, and I still respect him for it. ​ I got out of the back seat along with Teddy and Earl. Earl took a little longer to get out than the rest of us, and started coughing just about immediately. “Smokes really bad out here.” He said. He wasn’t wrong. There was a thick, rotten egg smell in the air and the smoke was worse than I’d thought it would be. Julia hadn’t lost her bravado though, and was practically shaking, wanting us to go. ​ “It’s fine.” Julia insisted, “Come on. Mines on the west side of town. Think we can make it?” “You’re going into the mine?” Earl asked, “That sounds awful dangerous.” “Not into the mine, numbnuts. Just to it.” Julia said, “Or at least to the Church!” “The church sounds safer.” Ronnie said, “No offense, hun. But that mine’s probably gonna stink the worst. Plus all the smoke, and the fact that there wouldn’t be much to see… Now the church…” He looked at it again, “That’d be something to brag about. Nobody’s ever actually gone that far in, in years.” ​ “I mean, except for the guys who still live here, right?” Teddy asked, “Or the guys who drop stuff off?” “Nah. The last residents live outside of the town.” Ronnie said, “We would’ve passed them by now, or they’d live on the other side. There’s a side road you can take that goes around. My Uncle used to drop stuff off for a friend who lived out here. I rode along with him a couple of times.” ​ “You’ve been here before?” I asked. “Not into the town proper. Just outside of it.” Ronnie clarified. “Hey, are we going or what?” Julia asked, folding her arms, “Come on… It’s right there, let’s *goooooo*.” ​ She was already inching closer to the town, and Ronnie just cracked a small smile before indulging her. “Yeah, we’re going right now!” He said, “Earl, you coming?” Earl stared into Desmond, before putting up his hands. “I’m good just looking.” He said. “Chickenshit!” Julia called. She was promptly ignored. “Suit yourself.” Ronnie said, “Guess you’re guarding the car.” ​ He offered him the car keys, and with that we were off, with Julia in the front leading the pack. Together, we entered Desmond Cove. ​ Passing by the signs welcoming us to the town, I could see another one in front of a faded blue shed with a white trim. ​ **WARNING** **Deadly gasses may be present. Ground may be unstable.** **Death may be IMMEDIATE.** **TURN BACK.** ​ That sign was promptly ignored. ​ Julia and Ronnie walked hand in hand ahead of us, while Teddy drifted a bit behind. I took in the sights independent of them, passing by the old general store to look in the cracked and dusty windows at the abandoned building. The shelves were empty and coated in a thick layer of dust. I almost wanted to go inside and take some pictures but thought better of it. ​ The road turned slightly, curving towards the ocean and granting us a surprisingly lovely view. Looking out over the ocean, I could see a lone ship in the distance and paused to admire it for a bit, before letting my attention drift to what had once been a local restaurant of some sort. A bakery perhaps? The sign was taken down so it was hard to be sure. A number of seagulls perched atop some of the empty buildings, watching and wailing at us, as we passed. I thought I might have even seen a puffin or two among them, but couldn’t be sure. ​ “Christ, why the hell would anyone stay here?” Teddy asked, looking ahead of us towards a massive crack in the asphalt. Julia trotted up to it to get a closer look, while Ronnie made sure she didn’t get too close. “Home is home, I guess.” I said, “Besides, Ronnie said they were outside the town, right?” “I don’t know about you, but home ain’t worth this.” Teddy said. ​ Down a short hill I could see a marina with a couple of rusted old boats that didn’t look seaworthy moored within. “This place is a shithole…” “Well it’s been abandoned for over thirty years. That’s to be expected.” I said. “Guys, c’mon!” Julia called to us. She’d moved ahead with Ronnie while Teddy and I had been talking. “How far to the Haul Away Joe mine anyways?” She’d asked Ronnie. “That’s on the other side of town. Not sure how long a walk that’ll be.” He’d replied. ​ We’d veered to the other side of the road as we noticed another crack in the pavement, this one with smoke rising from it. The stink of it made me cover my mouth and nose. Everyone else had the good sense to do the same, although just like the last crack she saw Julia tried to get close to it. ​ “Hun, that’s toxic.” Ronnie had to explain to her, for what I suspect was the second or third time. Looking past the crack, I could see what used to be a tree nearby it, although I got the feeling that the tree was long dead and whatever left was just hollowed out charcoal. Through some holes in the bark, I could see the orange glow of fire flickering inside. ​ There was what used to be a house on our side of the street, now covered in some sparse graffiti, as a memento from those who’d been either brave or stupid enough to make it this far. I stopped to look for a few moments but didn’t dwell for long. Glancing over at Teddy, I saw that he didn’t look too impressed by any of this. He might as well have been looking at his watch, waiting for an excuse to go. “And people are scared of this place?” He asked, “It’s just smoke and empty buildings. Nothing interesting.” “You’re not enjoying the ominous atmosphere?” I teased. ​ “Ominous my arse. This is just empty and boring.” He said, “How far to the church?” “Not far.” I assured him, pointing to the chapel that towered over everything, “Seems like this road eventually turns towards it.” “Good… Could be doing something more productive with my after-” ​ Before he could finish, he was cut off by the sound of Julia screaming. We both looked up, and I broke into a sprint, racing towards her and Ronnie. My first thought was that Julia’s dumb curiosity had gotten her hurt… But what I saw was something else entirely. ​ Julia and Ronnie were looking at something on the side of the road, and at a glance, I didn’t have any idea what it was. Only that it was alive. ​ It walked on all fours, with a drunken gait that swayed back and forth. Its body seemed lumpy and misshapen, like a sack full of potatoes, although the head looked jagged and sharp like a cactus. It took me a few moments to realize that what I was looking at was supposed to be a deer… Although it didn’t look like any deer I’d ever seen before. It looked sick. ​ It stumbled out from the smoke, limping as it dragged its bloated body along. It barely even seemed to be able to see past the twisted, jagged antlers on its head, and it kept jerking its neck back and forth as if it was trying to shake those antlers off. ​ “What the hell is that thing?” Julia asked, her hands pressed against her mouth. “Just a deer…” I assured her, although she did not look assured. “*That’s* a deer?” She asked. “It’s sick…” Ronnie said, “Too much exposure to the smoke, maybe?” “The smoke can do *that* to a deer?” Teddy asked. Ronnie didn’t have an answer to that. ​ Looking at the deer a little closer, I could see growths like tumors along its skin. It wobbled a little and paused before bending down and starting to retch. “Oh God…” I heard Julia say. ​ The deer seemed to cough. Its entire body heaved and its knees seemed to buckle as it spit up more blood than any animal should ever be spitting up. The deer wobbled unsteadily on its feet, before looking up again. Its body heaved once more, and I could hear the sound of its skin splitting… It seemed to shake… And then I realized just what was happening to it. The deer's belly seemed to rip open from the strain that just existing had placed on its body. I watched as its entrails spilled out, and as they did, the deer remained standing as if it wasn’t even aware of what was happening. I just saw it dumbly raise its head toward us, as if it suddenly realized that we were there for the first time. It stared in our direction, before collapsing on its side. ​ Julia screamed and Ronnie pulled her into a tight grasp. “Oh God… Is it… Oh God…!” ​ Neither Ronnie nor Teddy spoke. We all just looked at the dead deer in awe. I watched as Teddy took a step back, shaking his head. “I’m out…” He said, “I’m going back to the fucking car…” Julia didn’t try and stop him. Ronnie and I just watched him turn and jog back the way we came. “Do you want to go too?” Ronnie asked Julia. She was still silent. “Come on…” He said softly, “Let’s go…” “N-no…” She stammered, “It’s alright… I… I’m alright…” ​ She tried to force a smile but I could see in her eyes that she was clearly shaken. “Hun, you don’t have to,” Ronnie said. “I want to!” Julia insisted, “Come on… It’s just a sick deer… It’s fucked up but… It’s just a sick deer.” ​ Somehow that felt like an understatement. Ronnie looked at me as if silently begging me to turn back with him, and I seriously considered it. But we’d come this far… And as disturbing as the dead deer had been, it was just that, a dead deer. “The church is just up ahead.” I said, “We’ll go there and then we’ll turn back.” “Yeah!” Julia said, looking at Ronnie, “Just to the church and back!” ​ That seemed to satisfy her for the time being. ​ We gave the dead deer a wide berth and slowly made our way towards the church again, all three of us listening closely for anything that sounded like another sick deer. The road made its way up a slight hill, towards the church which loomed over us. I looked in through some of the windows of the shops we passed, trying to calm myself down by imagining what they’d used to be. ​ Can’t say it did me many favors. As we passed by what looked as if had once been an old bar, I swear I saw the antlers of another dead deer inside… Although I kept it to myself. No need to spook Julia and Ronnie even further. ​ We trudged uphill toward the church, and as we reached it, I saw Julia reach out a hand to place it on the rotted wooden exterior. Her smile returned, a little fainter than before. “See? Made it.” She said. Ronnie planted a kiss on her forehead. “Made it.” He said, “Wanna get some pictures?” “You know it!” ​ I let them have their cute little couples moment and take some selfies, while I took pictures of my own. I walked past Julia and Ronnie towards the door of the church, which looked to have been knocked down ages ago. ​ Standing in the threshold, I looked in to see the empty pews, with dead leaves and debris settling on them. The altar looked to have partially collapsed and the stained glass above it was shattered. I took a few tentative steps inside the church, hearing the floorboards creak beneath me as I did and that was when I noticed it. It was hard to see from the door, at a glance, it just looked like some broken wood near the front of the church but the closer I got to the altar, the more I realized that someone seemed to have dug through it… ​ Someone had dug a goddamn tunnel through the floor of the altar and into the ground. ​ I paused, before inching closer to it and looking inside. I was greeted by darkness and a faint outline of some makeshift support beams. ​ What the hell was this? ​ “Julia, Ronnie, come take a look!” I called, and saw them appear in the doorway. “What is it?” Julia asked cautiously. “Some sort of tunnel.” I said, “C’mon… It’s weird.” “A tunnel?” Ronnie asked, “Into the mine?” “Maybe?” I said as he drew closer. He stared into the darkness along with me, eyes narrowing as he tried to make sense of what he saw. ​ “Why would someone dig this?” I asked, “Thought this place was abandoned.” “It is.” He said, “Doesn’t make sense… I didn’t think the mine ran under the church… Natural caves, maybe? But who the hell dug this?” ​ He took out his phone and turned on his flashlight, stepping up to the edge of the tunnel. Julia crept up behind him, peering over his shoulder, and I wasn’t far behind. “Think someones down there?” Julia asked. “No way.” He said, “Not with the town in this state.” ​ He reached down and picked up a piece of debris, before tossing it into the hole. It thudded against the ground… And as it did, we heard movement from inside. Julia shrank back a step, eyes wide with terror, and I have to admit I was feeling a little spooked too. ​ “Something’s down there!” Julia whimpered. Ronnie just squinted into the darkness. “Should we be calling the police?” I asked. “Dunno…” He replied. ​ A moment later, we saw movement. Something was absolutely down there… ​ I heard Ronnie suck in a breath as he stared down into the darkness, and I felt my heart start to race in my ears as I saw it… Although just like the deer, what exactly it *was*, wasn’t immediately clear to me. It was almost like a fleshy blob, something that didn’t seem real at first. I saw no visible face, and it was hard to tell what limbs it was crawling on. It seemed to wiggle its way through the hole, wheezing gently as it did. ​ Ronnie took a step back, brow furrowing in concern. I did the same. Whatever that thing was, I saw its head move slightly. It didn’t seem to have any eyes… But I got the feeling that it was looking at us and finally it opened its mouth. ​ The sound it made… That’s a sound that’s going to haunt my nightmares… It was like a cross between a hiss and a roar. Raspy and ragged, but deep enough to shake my bones. It seemed to move with new intent, dragging itself towards us, and the closer it got, the more I realized exactly what it was, that I was looking at. ​ It wasn’t an animal. ​ It was a person. ​ Just like the deer, their body was bloated and malformed. They had no eyes, but their mouth seemed impossibly big and their teeth, impossibly long. ​ Ronnie and I both took a moment to process just what the hell we were seeing before it hit us. The malformed human was nearly at the end of the tunnel… And it was coming for us. We turned, and we ran. ​ With Julia beside us, we sprinted for the entrance to the church, bursting out into the cloudy sunlight. I heard that raspy scream again as we bolted down the hill, running as fast as we could back the way we came. I looked back only briefly, to see the massive thing that once used to be a man stumbling through the door of the church, squeezing itself through it like some sort of blob. It stumbled out into the sunlight and the smoke, sniffing around and looking in our direction. ​ I don’t know if it followed us or not. I didn’t dare look back again. ​ When we finally made it back to the car at a full sprint, we didn’t waste a single second in getting back on the road. Ronnie snatched his keys away from Earl and we took off at top speed. I vaguely remember Earl trying to ask us why the hell we were taking off like that, but Ronnie didn’t even listen to a word he’d said. Not until we’d put Desmond Cove far behind us, and even then, the only thing that gave him pause was the question that Earl asked. ​ *“Where the hell is Teddy?!”* ​ We called the police once we were a few kilometers out of town. Ronnie and Julia told them just about everything. How we’d gone in, how we’d seen something in the church, and how Teddy had supposedly gone back to the car, although according to Earl he’d never actually arrived. The police took our statements, then went into Desmond Cove, looking for Teddy. ​ They never found him, and they never found that thing that’d crawled out from underneath the church either. They did find the tunnel, but they described it as *‘the church floor having collapsed.’* ​ Bullshit. ​ The next few weeks passed by in a blur… I don’t recall a lot of the details, only that we spent a lot of time with the police. There was initially some suspicion that we’d murdered Teddy, but the lack of evidence and the fact that we’d been in Desmond quickly made the police dismiss that as a possibility. ​ Ronnie, Julia, and I swore up and down that we’d seen something coming out of the church, but the police never took that story seriously, and neither did the locals of our own little town. Jury’s still out on whether we made the whole thing up, or it’s some trauma induced false memory. Earl himself is in the latter camp… But I know what I saw that day. I know what I saw without question. ​ Officially, the story is that the five of us went into Desmond Cove and Teddy got separated. He likely ended up stepping on some bad ground and falling into some part of the mine. He was declared dead and after they failed to find his body, the search was called off. ​ What happened to us quickly turned into a cautionary tale as to why you shouldn’t go to Desmond Cove… And everywhere we went, we’d hear people whispering about us. Some called us crazy. Some called us killers. Some talked about us with pity… ​ Julia and Ronnie couldn’t handle it. Soon as they were done with high school, they up and left. Last I heard, they’re living on the other side of the country now, and not doing too bad… Julia’s still a scatterbrained idiot. But I suppose Ronnie’s got enough sense for both of them. ​ Earl is still in town. Folks don’t tend to associate him with what happened that much. He got off easy. ​ And as for me? After I finished high school, I left town for college… But I’ll be back. ​ Not a day goes by where I haven’t thought about Desmond Cove, or the thing we saw crawling out of the church. Not a day goes by where I don’t recall the sound it made. Just the memory of it makes my skin crawl… ​ And yet… It fascinates me. ​ Whatever we saw that day, it wasn’t something natural. Something happened to it… Something happened to Desmond Cove. The dying deer we saw is even further proof of that. I think back to the old stories, about how the fire in the mine was a cover up for something else, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s true… But if so, what were they trying to hide? ​ One of these days, I’m going to go back to Desmond Cove and I’m going to find [out.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HeadOfSpectre/)

I just got a toe in my monthly subscription box. I guess they ran out of fingers.

y8jgc7

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8jgc7/i_just_got_a_toe_in_my_monthly_subscription_box_i/

*Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence* Okay so I wasn't sent the physical toes themselves (thank goodness for that, because what would I do with a pair of human toes?), but instead a high quality 4x6 picture of them freshly severed, laying on cement flooring near a grungy drain. The cuts were far from clean or surgical. The blood that had pooled around the drain was adding to an existing stain that I had grown very familiar with over the past few months. The picture was at the bottom of the box, underneath a shampoo sample, and some face cream that had a disconcerting color and consistency. This is my sixth box, so I guess it makes sense that they ran out of fingers by now and had to move on to toes. I’ve tried contacting the company to ‘unsubscribe’ a few times, but something tells me that I’m not the one that decides when this particular subscription ends. Let me give you some background, here. I had just moved to a new apartment across town and was feeling like I could finally breathe for the first time in months. That is, until I found the note taped to my front door. All it said was ‘found you’, with a sloppily drawn smiley face under it. I knew who had written the note and I immediately broke down. I called in sick to work, moved a bookcase in front of my door, and sat in the dark with the blinds closed. I didn’t know how he found me. Again. I didn’t use social media, I had asked my employer to keep me out of their online directory, and I avoided stores in our old neighborhood. Yet, he still found me. I decided to take the note to the police since him being at my apartment at all was a violation of the protective order. Unfortunately, they couldn't do much since I didn’t have actionable evidence that he had been the one to place it there. That evening I occupied myself by searching records to see when he had gotten out of jail – just weeks prior it turned out. I obsessively searched on how to avoid an abuser/stalker (how did he find me?), safety tips, etc. I didn’t really find much that made me feel better, unfortunately. I even looked at new apartments, but this time much further away. I didn’t sleep well that night. Flashbacks intermingled with nightmares – at one point I thought I felt hands around my throat again, that I was quietly dying in the dark, and no one would find me, just like he had said. But no, it was just a nightmare this time. Did you know that it actually takes a while to strangle someone and the victim usually just passes out first? I hadn't known that before I met him. The next morning, I received an email that I almost deleted as spam at first. It was from a company I had never heard of before, and the subject line was ‘Re: Inquiry’ The email body said: *‘Thank you for your inquiry. The AirTag is in under your spare tire.* *Have a great day!* *Tiffany G.* *Customer Support Specialist’* I was confused, I hadn’t emailed anyone – it threw me off enough that it took me a second read-through to process the line about the AirTag. I instinctively looked over my shoulder after I read it, as if the sender was lurking in the shadows of my apartment at that exact moment. My first fear filled thought was that he was behind this, but I realized that made no sense. Why would he tell me how he had found me? I went to my car and opened the trunk hesitantly, almost like I expected something to jump out and bite me. Sure enough, it was there, exactly where the email said it would be. Not long before that, someone had broken into my car while I was grocery shopping. At the time I was more worried about the damage and relieved that nothing was stolen that I only briefly wondered about the motive. Now I knew. I was thankful, but also weirded out and debating if/how I wanted to reply back to the email. Their motives seemed good, but I wasn't sure. My friend, Kimmie, invited me to stay at her house for a while. She had literally just moved in days before, meaning it was one of the few places I could go that he didn’t know the location of. I threw the AirTag in the bushes near where my car had been parked at my apartment, and then packed the essentials quickly and left. I asked work for a few days off, since he would’ve likely known where my office was, too. About a week later, I got a call from the police. He had been pulled over near my apartment, initially for driving recklessly, but when they searched his car, they found what pretty much amounted to a small armory, including an assortment of knives. He always had a thing for knives... I can’t say for sure what he had been planning but I have a good guess. He was arrested, but they said that he later just...disappeared... from holding. I had another sleepless night. I couldn’t help but ruminate on something he had told me once: “Do you know what happened to Tiffany, when she left me?” he had paused, waited for me to shake my head no. And then he flashed me a smile, “Yeah, neither does anyone else.” He had shown me her grandmother’s locket that he kept in the safe in his closet, something I doubted she would’ve parted with willingly. Along with her teeth, and what was left of her fingertips. The next morning I received another email: Subject: ‘Your order is on its way!’ *‘Thank you for your 24-month subscription to \_\_\_\_\_ Beauty Box! Your order number is 05121.* *Have a great day!* *Tiffany G.* *Customer Support Specialist’* I hadn't bought anything, so I was worried that on top of everything else, my credit card number or identity had been stolen, again. When I first left him, he posted my social security number, birthdate, and credit card information everywhere he could online. I’m still recovering from that. I checked with my bank, there were no pending charges. I was hoping there wasn’t another, different credit card that had been opened using my information (again). So, I replied to the email saying I didn’t order anything and I was worried someone was using my information. I asked if they could tell me the last four numbers of the card used to pay. It bounced back immediately as an invalid email address. It was about a week later when the first box arrived. It arrived at Kimmie’s place, which was the first sign something strange was going on – I had never given anyone her address. Well, that, and the fact that the box had a picture of a severed forefinger and thumb under the beauty products. One of the fingers had a tattoo that matched my own – or at least the one I used to have. We had got them when we had been dating for a while, but before I moved in, before he became violent. This had been back when he was still laying the sociopathic charm on thick -- I was young, I fell for it. I say ‘used to have’ because I used to have ten fingers before I moved in with him. The fingers in the picture – his fingers – looked to have been roughly severed, as if they had been sawed at slowly, with something dull and serrated – the thumb looked to have been removed in a vertical cut down to the wrist. Some of the skin hung in thin strips around the exposed bone and muscle. The bones themselves looked roughly splintered in places, as if someone had grown impatient with the removal process towards the end and just ripped away at what was still attached. The sinew that trailed unevenly from the muscle seemed to confirm that theory as well. I was shocked and nauseated by the sight so I gasped and dropped the picture on the floor; Kimmie looked at me questioningly, so I showed her. The picture had a handwritten date on the back in thin looping cursive; it was dated recently, after he had disappeared from the jail. I debated going to the police, but she was worried I might be the first (and only) suspect. I googled the company name from the email and I couldn’t find anything, no phone number, email, or mailing address. I did eventually open one of the products. It smelled terrible, and was made up of thick congealed liquid. It had no ingredients listed, a hand written label simply said ‘all natural’. There was a thick bar of a yellow soap with it, and it too had no brand or ingredients and an oddly greasy texture. I got a picture of two more fingers the next month. The date on the photo was recent and the fingers looked… fresh, not like they had come out of a freezer. When I showed Kimmie, her response was, “Good. Fuck ‘em.” She knew all the details and reminded me that even if he never found me, even if I managed to avoid him while living the rest of my life in fear, he’d likely just find someone else. I wasn't the first; I wouldn't be the last. The police officers I had worked with had told me it is hard to keep that type of offender behind bars until they killed someone (and it could be proven). She and I took the opportunity of him being out of the picture (for however long), to move me out of my apartment and to yet another new place. The manager of my old place was kind enough to not penalize me too much for breaking my lease. I don’t miss living in constant fear of him finding me, but I never asked to receive pictures of him being slowly dismembered or strange smelling products sometimes marred with flecks of what I think may have been dried blood. By the time I got the picture on the third month, I couldn’t even open the box. Kimmie volunteered to, and described it to me. I wasn’t even surprised. Am I bad person for not calling the police? Maybe. I had ignored several boxes worth, leaving them stacked by the door because I’m not sure what to do with them. I opened this one, even though I was afraid of what I’d see, but I couldn’t help it. I'm slowly learning to live my life without the constant fear of him, but I do get anxious when it comes time to get the next box. I still have 18 months left on my ‘subscription’. I wonder what they’ll send me when they run out of toes.

I Think My Roommate is a Vampire

y84mfy

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y84mfy/i_think_my_roommate_is_a_vampire/

That sounds idiotic, right? Everyone knows vampires aren't real, but hear me out. It started about a year ago when my old roommate decided to move in with his girlfriend without any warning. His name was on the lease too, and I could have just forfeited my half of the deposit and found a cheaper place, but that's really hard to do on short notice, especially in the middle of a semester. So, I put out ads everywhere I could think of online and around campus for a new roommate, not really expecting much. To my initial delight I got a nibble within a week. She was a quiet grad student who'd had some sort of falling out with her own roommate and needed a place to land. Perfect! Or so I thought. She moved in and covered her half of the expenses when bills came due at the start of the next month. It looked like I managed to dodge a bullet, and maybe in my relief at not being evicted I ignored a few signs I should have picked up on. You see, I almost never saw my roommate. She stayed locked up in her room most days when I was home. Though I occasionally bumped into her watching something on our shared TV late at night. Her explanations were reasonable. Night shift work as a medical intern, sleep schedules, all that seemed legit. She was really weird about mirrors though. She doesn't have a single one in her room, which is odd, for a girl. Nor does she ever keep *any* food in the fridge. She doesn't have any cookware. She never has friends over. All of these things I could write off somehow, if it weren't for the dreams. You see, I keep having this recurring dream, about once or twice a month. I wake up with her perched on the corner of my bed. In these dreams the room is utterly black - I sleep with blackout curtains drawn because of an obnoxiously bright street lamp outside my window - but somehow I know she's there. I never say anything to her, she just slithers under the covers with me, and her body is cold! Then she talks to me in a low voice, speaking words I can never seem to remember in the morning, and she kisses my neck, and that cold feeling explodes through my whole body! Then I wake up. That's it. I know, it's freaky! I'm always a little groggy and lethargic after I have one of those dreams. Thirsty too, like, working-in-the-hot-sun-sweating-like-a-pig-all-day, thirsty. And the chronic fatigue has only gotten worse. After I fainted at work one night my boss insisted that I make a doctor's appointment. Guess what they found: Anemia. My family has *no* history of anemia, none. The doctors can't explain it, they just put me on a regimen of iron supplements and called it good. I've tried to ask her to move out, but whenever I talk to her I always seem to forget the purpose of the conversation and get sidetracked on something she wants to talk about instead, and then I go to bed having forgot about the whole thing, until the next time I have one of the dreams. I think I might be loosing my mind, either that, or my roommate really is what I think she is. I want to move out. I've even packed my stuff up a couple times, only to wake up the next morning with everything back in its place wondering if I only dreamed about packing. One night I just got in my car and drove as far as I could before sleep got the better of me and I had to pull off the highway. The next morning I woke up parked at the curb outside my apartment. I'd write that one off as a weird dream too, if it weren't for the credit card statement that has me getting gas in a town about three hours drive from where I live on the night in question. That could just be credit card fraud, except I know that it isn't. I've tried telling people about what's going on, but no one ever believes me. Family, friends, they all think it's some kind of joke, or an hallucination on my part. Especially after they meet my roommate. Everyone likes her, even though she's weird. *I* even like her, though I'm scared to death of her. I find myself waking up in the middle of the night lately with the insane urge to go out and talk to her. I know where she'll be, I can hear the TV turned to low volume in the other room. Some nights I succeed in resisting, but most I end up getting up and sitting with her until near dawn when she heads to bed. It's gotten to where I can't force myself to tell people about my fears anymore. Even writing this all out on an anonymous forum is hard to do. When I think about including any personally identifying details though, I can't make myself do it. My fingers simply refuse to type that information out. I don't think I'd be able to write as much as I have, except that I think my feeble attempts to get away amuse her somehow. I can't escape her anymore. I need help, but I know no one is going to help me. I feel like, like I should just accept my fate. One of these nights *I'll* be the one perched on *her* bed and then it will all be over. I know it somehow. I won't *want* to escape then. I'll be completely hers until I'm dead, or maybe worse. I've written my story out three times now. And each time I found some reason to delete it rather than posting. I'm not going to hit discard this time, though. I will not do it! If you're reading this, please, try to find some way of helping me! I don't know how you'd do it. I can't know. If I actually believed that someone could, I don't think I would be able write this much. I want to delete it, but I'm going to hit post before I talk myself out of it again.

There’s Something Evil At Work Behind A Door That Doesn’t Open.

y90gst

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y90gst/theres_something_evil_at_work_behind_a_door_that/

I started at a local restaurant a few months back and just took up cleaning after close for a little extra money. A few days into my new duties I noticed a door behind one of the refrigerators, I did not really think anything of it at the time as this was an old house (built around the late 1800’s) that was remodeled to be home to a mom-and-pop restaurant. Now when I first started a few of the other employees told me a few stories; how chairs would slide out by themselves, or the faucets would turn on out of the blue. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened until about a month in after taking the closing duty over. My phone was low on battery before work one day, so I left it at home. I took it to listen to music while I swept, mopped, and cleaned up. As I moved from room to room sweeping, I kept hearing the slight sound of a chair sliding an inch or so across the floor. However every time I stopped to listen it stopped, too. I was just hearing things I thought. I shrugged it off and continued my routine. That is until I came to Smoking 2 which was the room that connected to where the tucked away door was located. When I entered the room, I noticed that one of the chairs was slightly pulled out. I thought it was odd, but I really didn’t think anything of it at that time. I continued my nightly routine on the opposite side of the room where the chair was, I would have to pull it out anyway so why I push it back in I thought. On this side of the room there was an old set of wooden framed glass doors. I had my head down at the minding my work when suddenly I felt like I was being watched from the other side of doors. My eyes darted upward and trained on them, there was nothing there. I chuckled and turned around walking towards the other side of Smoking 2 when the chair that had been pulled from the table tipped over startling me a bit. “What the fuck was that…” I whispered as I took a medium step backwards. I stood there for a moment and scanned the room trying to think of a logical reason for the chair to just fall over. I shrugged it off after a minute of being dumbfounded and picked it up scooting it slightly in. I walked past it into the waitress station, where the “hidden” door was, to grab the dustpan. See, the door isn’t too visible unless you’re looking directly at it. I mean there is a refrigerator in front of it and I am ever hardly over there except to put dishes away, so it doesn’t exactly stick out like a sore thumb. When I passed the fridge, I heard what sounded like a doorknob jiggling. I stopped and froze for a moment looking to the direction it came from which wasn’t the front or back door; it was directly to my left. A cold chill ran down my spine as I gulped as this door literally led to nowhere. There is just a wall on the other side of it. I craned my head in its direction and pointed my eyes to the doorknob. Nothing. I was imagining shit I thought just the mind playing tricks on me was all. I chuckled and began to take a step into Smoking 2 when the doorknob rattled again. My head turned as fast as it could, and I saw it. The old doorknob was moving by itself! The color left my skin, and I dropped the broom and dustpan as it turned completely the door slowly opening inward. This wasn’t possible I thought, the door couldn’t have moved more than an inch that direction with the wall pressed against it; but there it was! Opening in its entirety, revealing a blanket of darkness within its depths. Then the bellowing voice came… I will never forget initially hearing that voice. Ever… I have to stop writing now because I feel it’s getting closer to me. I have to keep moving or else… Hopefully I will be able to continue to tell you my tale in the near future…

I Keep Getting Stuck in Public Bathrooms.

y8jubb

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8jubb/i_keep_getting_stuck_in_public_bathrooms/

When I was a little girl, I used to get stuck in public bathroom stalls. The locks would jam themselves, and I'd have to use the open space at the bottom of the stall to free myself. It'd gotten so bad that I started leaving the stall doors unlocked to avoid getting stuck. However, leaving the doors unlocked became a problem, as the other kids would barge in on me doing my business, or peek under the stall and scare the living daylight out of me. I resorted to locking the stall doors again to prevent peeping toms in the making. Since then, I haven't had any memorable issues with public bathrooms, until recently. I was on my way home after dropping my boyfriend off at his house, which is a few hours away from where I live. We'd spent the whole day out by a lake and having a wonderful time. The scenery was absolutely beautiful, and our love for each other was at its fullest. It was about 11 pm-ish when I felt nature calling. However, I was driving in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but the road and a few trees in my line of sight. Any rest stops or buildings with public toilet access must've been a few miles away. I sucked it up and kept driving. It felt like hours had gone by, and not a single building was to be seen. I grew impatient. Right when I was about to pull over and do my business behind a nearby tree, I saw it. A building. It was lit up as if the lord himself was lighting the way. I got close enough to see a car in the parking lot with its driverside door wide open. *Someone must've really needed to go* I snickered to myself and pulled into the parking lot. There were a few vibrant signs spread around the building's windows that read: **CONVENIENCE STORE! OPEN 24H, SNACKS, DRINKS, & PUBLIC BATHROOM ACCESS!** I entered the building and gazed around, looking for the bathrooms. My eyes landed on two doors, one with a symbol of a man, and the other of a woman. Almost sprinting, I made my way to the women's bathroom, only to be stopped by another sign, reading **out of order due to maintenance** in small print. I mentally cursed and looked at the men's bathroom. Knocking, I asked if anyone was using the bathroom and explained my situation. I got no answer. Slowly, pulling the door open, I peeked through the small opening. For the most part, it seemed empty. I could see that someone's shoes were visible from the bottom of one of the stalls. I closed the door and gave the man his privacy. Flickering my eyes back over to the women's bathroom, I could hear noises coming from inside. At first, I assumed it was an employee cleaning up until the sound of extremely heavy breathing filled my ears. I leaned my ear against the door and listened for anything else. It was silent for a few moments. That's when I heard the most gut-wrenching scream I've ever heard come from a woman's mouth. It sounded so horrid, so anguished as if the woman in there was experiencing the most excruciating pain. There were a few audible sobs in between the heavy breathing afterward. Soon after, the sobs grew louder and louder, followed by the sounds of fast footsteps heading toward the door. I backed away, right when the woman on the other side pounded on the door. It seemed like she was throwing all of her weight on the door in an attempt to open it. Terrified, I panicked and ran into the men's bathroom, locking the door shut. My thoughts were racing as I slowly got away from the door and entered the only other stall, which was next to the one the man was in. I began relieving myself, still shaken up from the previous encounter. I didn't want to be there at that moment, but there was nothing I could do. Just then, I heard a door open from afar. I immediately realized it was the women's bathroom door. it shut, and there was a rattling noise coming from the men's bathroom door as well. Whoever was in the women's bathroom was trying to get inside. The door was unlocked and swung open by an incredible force. I stopped relieving myself and put my feet on the toilet, to give the impression that nobody was in the stall. Surprisingly, the man in the next stall didn't budge an inch. From the bottom of my stall, I could see someone's bare legs and feet, blood dripping down both legs and onto the gray-tiled floor. My eyes widened as the person took a step inside the room, followed by another and another until they were facing my stall door. I was frozen, absolutely terrified. A woman's voice quietly huffed before trying to open my stall door. I was now crying but tried concealing it to the best of my abilities. The woman on the other side of the door gurgled up the words *are you stuck?* Her voice sounded sweet, yet maniacal. The woman chuckled before getting down on her knees. At that point, I stood on the toilet, desperately looking everywhere for a way out. I looked directly above myself and saw a vent. Reaching into my hair, I pulled out a bobby pin and tried picking at the vent, hoping it would open. The woman chuckled again, but even louder this time. Drawing my eyes away from the vent, I could see the woman's mangled face peeking from under the stall door. A wicked smile was plastered on her face, and she didn't look human at all. Her dark brown hair was partially covering her doll-like eyes. She had fair skin, covered in bruises, open cuts, and small bugs. I will always remember her face, as I witnessed a maggot slither around her cheeks. To say she looked disgusting was truly an understatement. She looked like she'd been dead for a few days. I panicked once again and ended up dropping my bobby pin on the floor. Quickly bending down to pick it up, I noticed that the woman hadn't moved. It looked like she was entertained by watching me struggle. I managed to loosen the vent and ultimately got it open. That's when I heard the sound of bones cracking under the stall. I turned to see the woman contorting her body to fit under the gap under the stall. I let out a petrified scream and tried climbing my way into the vent. The woman grabbed my ankle, cackling even louder. The adrenaline in my body was pumping, and I swiftly kicked her rotting face, sending her flying into the stall door. I climbed into the vent and crawled my way to what looked to be the back side of the store. I threw myself out of the vent and ran towards my car. The woman was nowhere to be seen, so I got in my car and drove off. When I was a safe distance away, I called everyone, my parents, my best friends, and my boyfriend. Everyone except my boyfriend brushed me off. Instead of freaking out, he began to tell me of a time he went to the same convenience store and experienced similar things. I was too stunned for words. I asked him why he didn't tell me about what happened to him, to which he replied *The legend says that if you tell people, they'll share the same fate, or even worse. You didn't tell anyone else, right?* I smashed the brakes of my car and sobbed loudly. My boyfriend explained that in his town, this convenience store had a very demonic history, and everyone who goes in, doesn't come out the same... that is, if they survive. Its bright lights are meant to attract people into going in, where their nightmares become reality. The woman that I saw in the bathroom was one of the victims of this store, and the man in the stall had received an unfortunate fate because of her. I stayed on the call with my boyfriend until he went to sleep, and I went home. Here I am, two years later, writing this in my car after attending one of my best friend's funeral. I have so many regrets. What started as the most romantic day of my life, ended in such horror and pain. I caused my friend's death, and soon, everyone else I told will face the same ending. I've cried so much since the incident, and I forced my boyfriend to move in with me, so I wouldn't have to drive past the store again. I've hated myself more than imaginable, and I'm not the same person I used to be. I've been going to therapy since then, and I'm doing a little bit better, although I still get nightmares of the woman's face. My boyfriend has stuck with me this entire time, but I know he could possibly have the same fate. I just hope you all here won't judge me after writing all this, I just needed to get this off my chest.

I downloaded a "Survival Horror" game, and it's way too realistic

y86nem

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y86nem/i_downloaded_a_survival_horror_game_and_its_way/

So, yeah, I was bored and since there was nothing better to do - I started to browse games on Steam, looking for something that would help me kill a couple of hours. Boring, boring, expensive, boring, way too crappy graphics, oh wait… ​ It was titled “Where I Sleep” and labeled with tags I expected to see: horror, survival horror, psychological horror, etc. Besides - it was free to play, double win. The screenshots were not explanatory, so I clicked the Install button to check it out for myself. ​ While it was downloading I read some reviews, most of them “Positive”, actually, despite it being an Early Access game, meaning it was still under development. ​ With a mug of coffee and some interest, I finally launched it. And at first, it came out exactly as expected - raw and unpolished. The UI was horrible. Well, not horrible, but it was bad. Same with the studio logo - as if a 5-year-old drew them without putting any effort at all. ​ But somehow it even added to the ambiance. I’m a huge fan of pseudo-PS1 horror games, so that didn’t make me want Alt+F4 the thing instantly. ​ I clicked “New game” and was ready for some action. ​ My character was standing in a dark room and there was a single door in the distance, illuminated by a dim light bulb atop it. WASD for walking, ok. Shift to run - usual. I was prepared for any jump scares the dev was about to throw at me on this short path. They always do that, but to my surprise - not here, no. ​ I walked to the door and opened it to reveal a dimly lit inside of an apartment. ​ “Now, he’s gonna do it. Come on, where’s the boo?” - I said aloud grinning. Yet nothing happened: no scary music and the light bulb didn’t explode behind me. For a second I felt stupid. What am I expecting of a game that is not finished? Maybe the devs didn’t place any surprises yet and I’m just walking among the assets that are yet to get some puzzles, notes, and all that stuff? ​ I reached for the light switch inside and hit “E” to turn it on. The hall illuminated and I instantly got surprised, while not realizing why. Seconds later I got it: the room looked quite similar to the one I live in. The bed, the tv, and most of the other furniture were arranged in the same manner, so it gave an uncanny resemblance. ​ “Wow! The guy who did this must be my long-lost brother. He-he. He imagines the living space the same way as I do” - I laughed to myself. ​ So I spent a couple of more minutes checking out the room to discover some more surprising coincidences and went to explore the kitchen. Not really amused by the amount of “horror”, but quite interested in the design decisions made in-game. ​ As I expected the kitchen was also quite like mine, though positioning was swapped with a bathroom in the game, compared to the real one I live in. The table had two chairs by it - just like mine, the sink was by the window and the fridge was quite similar too. Except mine was a bit bigger and black, and the game one was green. Then something caught my attention and the thought formed at the root of my brain: “Wait… What?”. There was a cereal box on the table, a plate with a piece of bread, and a half-finished glass of milk. That was too much of a coincidence. I blinked a couple of times and even bothered to stand up from the screen and double-check my own kitchen. You guessed it, the very same items were aligned on my real-world breakfast spot. ​ This was getting a bit weird and a bit unnerving, to be honest. You see, I prefer eating cereal straight from the box and leaving one slice of PBJ sandwich with half a glass of milk for a couple of hours later. That’s my breakfast routine, and even though I’m obviously not the only one who does that - the coincidence became suspicious. ​ It became even more suspicious when I navigated the character to the bathroom as other similarities popped up. There was a single T-shirt in the washing machine, and the bathrobe was lying on the floor (same as mine, I have had to fix that damn hanger for a week already) and there was no toilet paper (I used the last one this morning with plans to buy more today). ​ What the hell is this game? Is it, like, watching me or something? Or do all the lonely guys have such similar thinking that it’s easy to build a typical man cave? And just for the record - I don’t have a webcam or anything that could capture the insides of my flat. That’s so fucking creepy. Am I being watched? Are the spy cams hidden - but why and who would install them? To create a shitty indie game? No way. ​ Since there was not much else to see in the game I shut it down and checked my apartment for any traces of the intrusion. I’m not James Bond, but I did my best to look around for hidden devices with none found. ​ As I came back from the supermarket - my computer showed that a new update to “Where I Sleep” was downloaded. I checked the devlog and it said: ​ “Patch 0.3.1.0 - minor graphics improvement”. ​ I launched it out of curiosity - same dark room, same door with the light bulb, same… HOLY FUCK! The patch added more details to the surroundings. Now it looked exactly like my place - even the bowl I used for keeping keys at the door looked identical and had the same dent. I could read the book titles on the shelves - the same as mine. And the fridge in the kitchen was now bigger and colored black. ​ There was no explanation. What kind of trick is this? I went to the game discussion forums. There were a couple of messages from players stating the devs are lazy with updates and how the whole thing sucked. I dropped my own: “Devs, what the \*\*\*\* is going on?” and described my experience with the game. ​ Several hours later I checked the responses - other users were posting that my topic is “a stupid PR move” and asking me to get a life. ​ But in the evening I discovered that my query was deleted from the message board with no explanation. And to top it out - a new patch rolled out. The message from the devs contained a poll, so I couldn’t but read the whole thing. ​ “Hi, guys! We are getting there and would like our community to take part in deciding on in-game protagonist/s. Vote now - enjoy later. 1. Eldritch horror - 21% 2. Demonic horror - 18% 3. Monstrous horror - 4% 4. Let the devs decide - 57% ​ Patch. 0.4.0.0 - graphics improvement, action triggers added, environmental events added.“ ​ I had to see, so I launched the game and with trembling excitement navigated the character through the door. Not much has changed since the last time - the same things on their common spots. I walked around the room a bit and went to see the kitchen. As my character was inspecting the insides of a cupboard - the real me almost shit my pants. ​ I’ve been so focused on the game, that when somebody knocked on my door - it almost made me scream. But back to reality, I checked the hall through the peephole - nobody was there. Probably some kids having fun, eh? I went back to the game and continued my investigation. ​ I was unprepared for this. The next second the knock on the door sounded again. I swallowed, knees starting to shake as I realized the sound was coming from my apartment. Something knocked on my bathroom door. From the inside. ​ I’m not proud of what happened next. Yes, I could play the Alpha male, get the cops, get a gun, and get things done. But I chose to run. Luckily this was a rented apartment and I don’t own that many things, so even after losing the deposit - by the evening I was sitting with boxes unpacked in a different district of the city. Safe and sound. Call me a wuss, I don’t care. ​ The flat didn’t resemble the old one in any way. Different planning, a bit larger, far more expensive, but that’s ok. ​ I unpacked my PC first thing, as I still have to work on the weekdays, you know. Everything else could wait. Intending to put some music on Spotify while I unbox my clothes and washing stuff - I turned it on. Steam launched, being one of the apps I put to Autostart. It instantly started to download something, as the icon on the panel indicated. ​ It was another update for “Where I Sleep”. But it didn’t get me much. I was safe and far away from trouble. So I clicked on the update log with a grin, just to see what was happening there: ​ “Ladies and gentlemen, the voting is over. As most of you asked - we worked hard and present to you… The Follower. Stay away from him, he’s not that friendly. Enjoy and leave a review. Thanks ​ Patch 0.5.1.0 - added AI, added The Follower, added new assets, fixed several bugs“ ​ There was also a sketch of some character, but it was so poorly drawn - I couldn’t tell for sure if that was the shape of his head or a hat, and how many fingers did he have. A silhouette standing in clouds of smoke, darkness… Or fire? I don’t know what they tried to represent there. If you would ask me why I launched the game - I wouldn’t answer you. Stupidity? Curiosity? Obsession? I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted to see how that Follower looks in-game. Or if the game would freak me out now, as I’m not in that apartment. ​ But the next moment, as the game window showed on my screen and I pressed “New Game” - my body went numb. My breathing quickened and I guess a couple of blood vessels popped in my eyes as the overwhelming wave of fear covered me whole. ​ I was standing in the same dark room, the same door with the light bulb atop it, except… there was a second door next to it. Same pastel blue color as in my new apartment. ​ I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to think. I’ve been sitting here all night afraid to move or make any actions. And the constant knocking on the bathroom door keeps me awake. ​ Somebody, help, please!

The Drowned Woman

y8nxov

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8nxov/the_drowned_woman/

It began innocently enough. The trip was unusual but not my first of the kind: an expedition with several archaeologists to explore and document a recently-unearthed site. In this case, the site had been known for many years, but the locals had violently refused any attempts to explore within – until one week earlier when a representative from the locals had contacted the university at which I work and invited our team to come to explore the ruins. The team was kept small – a concession to avoid potential tensions with the locals. It was, therefore, a four-person team: Myself, my immediate superior, Doctor Muller, a doctoral student by the name of Adam Lochner, and the representative of the local villagers, a woman named Yui, who greeted us as our plane deposited us at the makeshift landing strip that had been created near the ruins. “I’m glad you were able to come, especially after how many times my people have rejected you in the past,” she said. She was younger than I’d expected, probably no older than Adam. She wore the traditional purple robes of the village leader, which stood starkly against her extremely pale skin. Her eyes were large and dark, which, when compared with her skin, gave an uncomfortable feeling that she was looking at us not through her eyes but through a pair of deep holes that had been carved through a mask. “Please understand, the ruins of the ancient temple are core to our people’s beliefs. Letting outsiders in is inviting disaster in the minds of many of our older villagers.” The village had been built around the ruins. The ancient temple had long ago collapsed into a massive sinkhole, and the village encircled the hole’s rim. Around the village were miles upon miles of forest, allowing the villagers to remain almost isolated from society even in the modern day – though, I noted, not as isolated or primitive as most would expect, considering the number of villagers I saw playing games on their smartphones. “Just so we’re on the same page, would you mind recapping those beliefs?” Muller asked, glancing at Adam. I suspected he was worried the student hadn’t paid attention. Yui nodded. “Thousands of years ago, we were ruled over by a tyrannical sorceress known as the Drowned Woman. She took great pleasure in cruelty, demanding frequent sacrifices and killing our people for her amusement. She waged war against all other peoples, slaughtering them down to the last child, drinking the blood of their most innocent. The legends say the soil of our land was stained red for generations, and we could do nothing to resist. The Drowned Woman ruled for centuries, extending her life with dark magic until a single hero managed to infiltrate her chambers and strike her down. But the legends-” “Why do they call her that?” Adam interrupted, drawing a glare from the rest of us. Yui’s mouth twitched in annoyance, but she quickly concealed it. “Water connects us to the land of the dead. Souls are taken by the water and carried to the next life. The name ‘The Drowned Woman’ is because she was a necromancer – someone who does not respect the water’s flow. And as I was saying,” she continued loudly before Adam could interrupt again, “our legends also warn that she can never truly die. They say that when the time is ripe, she will return and begin a reign of blood and terror far greater than any the world has ever seen. Our village was built here by our ancestors to guard her temple and ensure that she could not return.” “So the reason you keep outsiders away….” I ventured. She nodded. “Is so that nobody could attempt to resurrect her.” “So what changed?” Muller asked. Yui smiled wryly. “We decided to enter the 21st century. You might not have noticed, but our village isn’t exactly modern. As our new leader, I’m determined to bring us in step with the rest of the world, and getting this old temple properly studied is the first step.” “How did you become leader?” Adam asked. “The spirits of my ancestors proclaimed it into everyone’s dreams,” Yui said testily. I got the impression she didn’t like Adam or his questions. “My mom was the prior chief. She died. I inherited it. It’s not complicated.” Yui led us to her home, a one-room stone structure. “Pardon the primitiveness," she said. “I’d like to one day have a hotel here for guests. And a house with central heating for me. But this is what we have for now.” She gestured for us to sit around a small stone table and poured us each a mug of black liquid. “What is this?” Adam asked. “Water,” Yui answered. “All our water is that color. It’s safe, though. Just minerals.” I examined my drink. The water wasn’t merely dark – it was solid black, not reflecting a single speck of light. I shook my glass, and it seemed like the water didn’t even move, though I knew that was an illusion caused by the darkness. “You can boil it or run it through a filter if you like,” Yui said, sipping hers. “But I promise it’s pure. We’ve got our own underground aquifer we draw it from.” Telling myself that I’d had stranger drinks on other expeditions, I took a sip. The water was shockingly cold, almost enough to give me brain freeze from a single drink, but it tasted pure and clean, and yet something about it, more than the color, still made me uncomfortable. I felt a strange nervousness as I swallowed and decided not to finish my cup. “Thank you,” Muller said, draining his cup. “But I’m quite eager to see the ruins. If it’s not too much of an imposition?” “Not at all,” Yui said. “Follow me.” She led us out of her home and through the village to the lip of the sinkhole. A makeshift wooden stairway led down the sides to a large opening at the top of the ruins. Here, as we began our descent, I had my first proper view of the ancient structure: a massive palace of purple stone, similar in shape and size to a Mayan pyramid, but with numerous windows and arched doorways throughout the exterior. Crumbled archways of that same purple stone surrounded the exterior of the ruin, slowly being reclaimed by the swamp below. Oddly for such an ancient structure, the ruins were devoid of plant life – not so much as a blade of grass stirred in the sinkhole. The depths of the pit were filled with the same black water as had been served to us in Yui’s home. “Careful,” Yui said. “If you fall and are lucky enough not to hit one of the stones on the way down, you’ll get sucked into the Blackmire.” “What’s that?” Adam asked. “The swamp at the bottom of the pit,” Yui answered. “It’s a lot deeper than it looks, and it sucks you right down if you land in it.” "Why do you call it that?" Adam asked. Yui sighed. "Because it's a mire, and it's black." As we neared the temple, I noticed that the surface was not simply rough from millennia of exposure – nearly every flat surface was carved with intricate designs – letters, in an unfamiliar language. Those slabs not covered in ancient writing displayed the visage of a faceless woman in flowing robes gazing down from a massive throne. “The Drowned Woman.” Yui nodded at the images. “There’s a ton of sculptures of her inside, too, but all the faces have been smashed. I guess the people who did it were determined to erase every trace of the Drowned Woman. They must have been terrified she’d come back.” “So you believe this lady really existed?” Adam asked. I saw Yui’s eye twitch and shot a glance at Muller, who looked like he shared my exasperation. Adam had been selected for his academic performance, and we hadn’t expected him to be quite so bad at dealing with the locals. “Yes, I do,” Yui answered, her eye continuing to twitch. “I am the religious leader of my people, and our entire faith for the last three millennia has revolved around her. Don’t you Americans believe your Jesus existed, even if you don’t necessarily believe all the stories?” Adam mumbled something about evidence, and for a moment, I was worried Yui was about to push him off the stairway. “Yui,” Muller interrupted, clearly hoping to change the subject, “can you tell us about the sorts of rituals you perform concerning this temple?” Yui’s face seemed to brighten at that. “Of course.” The path was beginning to level out, the stairway turning into more of a bridge. “Our faith isn’t really prayer-oriented. The idea of it is ‘prevent the evil witch-queen from reviving,’ not ‘ask the evil witch-queen for a favor,’ after all. So our rituals are more…how do I put it? It’s a…well, it’s sort of a ritualized patrol route. We circle the outside of the sinkhole eight times a day. On the sixth day of each month, we put up some warding totems and take down the old totems. Each household makes its own totem in its own style. The old totems are then thrown into the Blackmire so that any evil influence they absorbed can be returned to the Drowned Woman rather than kept in our village. We also perform astronomy, keeping an eye on the stars for the ‘Day of Return,’ when the Drowned Woman will reincarnate and resume her reign of darkness.” “What does your faith say to do if the stars are right for that day, then?” I asked. Yui shrugged. “Nothing. I think the idea at that point is we’re all already doomed.” Adam snorted. All three of us glared at him, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Well, here we are,” Yui said. I had been so preoccupied looking at the carvings on the temple's exterior that I hadn’t realized we’d arrived at the entrance. “Watch your step. We only come here to clear out rubble twice a year, so it’s not exactly OSHA compliant.” “Few archaeology sites are,” Muller chuckled. Following Yui, we stepped inside into a massive hallway. The hall was lined with grand sculptures of the Drowned Woman, though, as Yui had said, all the faces were smashed. Behind each statue was an arched doorway leading into blackness. I estimated there must be nearly fifty such doorways within the hallway. “Where do those doors lead?” Muller asked. Yui shrugged. “We aren’t exactly keen on exploring. Though…” She paused. “Well, there’s one doorway that I have explored through. It’s on the way to the grand ritual chamber; let’s have a quick detour.” So saying, Yui guided us to the door behind a statue on the left-hand side, almost exactly halfway down the hall. “Here. This leads to a special chamber we use for the New Year’s ritual.” Muller went in first, followed by Adam. Yui nodded for me to go in next, then followed behind me. The door led to a dark hallway with an odd smell of iron. “What do you do during your New Year’s ritual?” I asked. Or rather, tried to ask, only to discover that some strange property of the hallway’s design muffled sounds almost completely. That was my last thought before the stone struck my skull, and the world vanished in a flash of pain. *** I awoke to the sound of voices and the smell of salt and iron. My eyes fluttered open slowly, hazy images slowly coalescing into a nightmare. I was tied to a stone table. A pair of faceless statues loomed over me. I could vaguely make out two arched doorways, one in front of me, one behind. Another table lay to my left, and atop it was a pile of flesh and meat that had once been Adam. “He’s awake.” It was Mueller’s voice. My senior stood beside my table. Next to him, dressed in elaborate purple robes and wearing a faceless purple mask, was Yui. In her hand was a bloody knife. I tried to speak, but terror had closed my throat. My heart pounded in my ears, and my stomach seemed to drop. “Please, do understand,” Muller said, as though discussing the weather. “Learning about the ancient past is lovely, but that’s not what we’re here for.” He grinned. “I’ve studied many ancient religions, but I never thought I’d have a chance to visit the necromancer’s temple myself.” A mad light danced in his eyes. “Most scholars scoff at such things, but I happen to be quite knowledgeable about the supernatural, not simply the physical. And the Drowned Woman was – is – very real.” “And the time of her resurrection is nigh,” Yui added. “I’m afraid I wasn’t being truthful either. Our faith is indeed about protecting the temple, but not to stop her from reviving. It’s to ensure no interlopers could prevent the return of our mistress.” She shrugged. “I never thought the stars would align in my lifetime, though. Imagine how excited I was to get that news a few months ago?” She shook her head. “Of course, my mother was the chief at the time, so she would be the one to lead the ritual and receive the Drowned Woman’s blessing. I couldn’t have that, so….” She made a slashing gesture with the knife. “The Blackmire is very convenient. It disposes of anything.” “I knew of the Drowned Woman’s return as well, from my own studies,” Muller said. “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet her – to gain her blessing. I contacted Yui here last month and offered to provide her with the necessary sacrifices for the ritual in return for being part of it.” That mad light flashed again in his eyes. “A few sacrifices are worth it for immortality, don’t you think? Don’t say you wouldn’t do the same. Anyone would.” “It came as a relief, really,” Yui added. “The Drowned Woman needs a blood sacrifice, and I’d have hated to have to go out and kidnap someone myself.” She made a sound of disgust. “At first, I wasn’t sure which of you would be the first offering, but I made up my mind as soon as that brat started talking. Disrespectful fool.” “A-are you going to kill me?” I managed to ask, my voice trembling as much as the rest of me. “Not yet,” Yui answered. “The ritual only says we need one blood sacrifice for the revival, but I imagine the Drowned Woman will want another when she’s revived. I’ll save you until then.” She chuckled darkly. “You should be honored. You’ll be one of the first to see her face.” The sound of a bell echoed loudly through the chamber. “That’s the signal,” Yui said. “Come on, Doctor Muller. We wouldn’t want to miss the ceremony.” With that, she and Muller vanished into the doorway in front of me, leaving me alone with the pile of meat that only hours ago had been my student. As the sound of their footsteps faded away, I began to struggle wildly against my bonds. I felt them begin to slip – like the rest of the ruins, these restraints were clearly ancient and unmaintained. After only a minute, I felt them release. Panicked, my nostrils filled with the horrible smell of death, terrified that Yui or another cultist would soon return, I turned and fled through the other archway. I stumbled blindly through the dark tunnel, running as fast as my trembling legs allowed. Many times I stumbled or dashed myself against an outcropping on a wall, but I didn’t dare stop. Whenever the tunnel branched, I simply ran through the closer opening. I didn’t slow until I began to hear voices. Terrified, I crept forward and beheld an entirely different kind of nightmare. I was on a small balcony concealed behind one of the many faceless statues that filled the ruin. The balcony overlooked a massive chamber filled with hundreds of people, all wearing the same purple robes. The entire village was here. I saw Muller there as well, near the front. Yui stepped onto a platform almost directly below my balcony and removed her mask. “Kah’trackha!” She yelled. She began pacing back and forth, proclaiming loudly in a language I didn’t understand. But while I couldn’t decipher the words, the tone was obvious. This was a celebration. The sort of speech a general gives the troops on the eve of great conquest. It was a speech about the return of their queen, their evil goddess. The Drowned Woman. As she spoke, two villages brought forth a giant basin filled with black water and placed it beside Yui. A cheer went up from the crowd as Yui extended her arm over the basin, drew her blade, and slashed herself across the arm, splashing her blood into the basin. The room seemed to darken, and the crowd went silent. Then, suddenly, a great bolt of lightning flashed inside the darkened room, filling it with orange and purple light. As that strangely-colored light flickered throughout the room, the basin began to bubble. A cold hand gripped my heart. Ice ran down my spine. I was breathing so fast that I was starting to see spots. And then, slowly, almost leisurely, she rose from the basin. She was tall and thin, with raven hair that extended below her feet. She wore a series of golden bands around her fingers and arms, and her legs were wrapped in cloth bandages. As she stepped from the basin, dripping black water from her chalk-white skin, to accept the robes Yui reverently held out for her, I beheld her face. Her eyes were gone, but it was not empty sockets that I saw. Instead, from the holes where eyes should be, I saw nothing but endless darkness, a bottomless abyss. It was not that her eyes were black – the skin around her eyes had cracked and crumbled away like porcelain, and thin cracks continued from where her eyes had been down the rest of her face. On the other side of those holes, where flesh or muscle or bone should have been, was nothing but deep blackness, like the void of space. As she dressed, I realized the water dripping from her was not leftover from the basin. From every pore in her body, pitch-black water dripped in an endless flow. “Water connects us to the afterlife,” Yui had said. A horrible vision filled my mind of an endless, infinitely deep ocean of black water. The afterlife. And it was from this Stygian sea that the woman below me had crawled. From the endless ocean of death, she had dredged herself back to the surface, back to our world. The room was completely silent as the Drowned Woman slowly surveyed her followers. And as she did, I saw my chance. She was standing directly below my balcony, directly below her own statue. I knew it was dangerous, but I also knew it was my only hope. It was only a matter of time before Yui’s cultists found me and dragged me before the Drowned Woman as a sacrifice. And beyond that…How can I describe the feeling? The sensation of pure, complete Evil? It filled the air and seeped into my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my pores. It poured out from the Drowned Woman, an aura of such utter *wrongness* that I could barely comprehend. I couldn’t allow this monster to walk upon the earth once more. With all my strength, I pushed at the statue, my pulse racing, fear filling me with adrenaline. If the statue moved too slowly – if the cultists saw me or heard it move…my mind raced with terrified visions of my horrible death, of my soul being dragged down into that black ocean. With a sudden crumbling noise, the statue came loose. The world seemed to be in slow motion. I was exposed, in full view of the crowd. Some cultists stared at me, others at the falling statue. I heard someone scream – or thought I did. Then, with a terrific crash, the massive statue smashed down onto the ground below me. Shattering harmlessly several feet too far to the left. My heart dropped into my stomach as the Drowned Woman looked up. A faint smile crossed her black lips. She’d known I was there the entire time. “Well, well.” Her voice was deep and echoing, like the roar of a stormy ocean, yet her tone was calm and conversational. In the depths of my mind, drowned out by fear, I wondered how she knew English. “It seems your guards aren’t very good at their jobs,” the Drowned Woman said, a flicker of amusement in her voice. Yui opened her mouth – to apologize, or maybe to order her guards to seize me. Which it was, I will never know, because the next moment, her eyes widened in horror, and she began to gag on the black water suddenly flowing forth from her mouth. Horrible choking sounds echoed throughout the room as the same black water, appearing seemingly from nowhere, began to suffocate the entire cult. At the front of the room, Muller took a staggering step forward, his arm extended towards me, before collapsing, black water oozing from his nose. In moments, everyone in the room was dead, save for the Drowned Woman, standing calmly amid the slaughter. I ran. I knew it was futile. I knew it was hopeless. But my fear was stronger than my mind. It drove me forward, back through the tunnels, down other side passages, through ancient paths nobody had trod in millennia. Black water dripped from the ceilings as the humidity of the ruins began increasing, water pooling in the corners of the rooms and sliding down the walls. Flashes of orange and purple light burst randomly through the air as I ran. In my ears, I heard the voice of the ocean, laughing. Light suddenly shone before me. My heart leaped. It was the exit. Hope gave my legs another burst. I ran as fast as possible for the opening, for the fresh air. And then the water wrapped itself around my legs, hurling me to the soaked floor. Cold black water dripped down onto my back. The light outside dimmed. Orange and purple spots danced in my vision. I struggled to breathe. Then she appeared, emerging from outside the temple, and stopping in front of me. She gazed down at me through those black chasms, a cruel grin on her face. I heard her chuckle darkly at my terror. And then…she left. She turned and exited the temple, vanishing into the sudden darkness as a storm began outside, black rain hiding her from my sight. I stood slowly, panting, trembling. My body ached, but fear kept the pain at bay. I took one stumbling step, then another, then another, until I was out of the temple, out of the sinkhole, out of the village. The storm clouds seemed to part as my plane took off, just long enough to create an opening, then closed again. Below me, I saw the black clouds beginning to spread. I will never be able to say with certainty why I was spared. Maybe she simply found it amusing, or maybe she found me so beneath her as to not be worth bothering with. But I think I know. She wanted someone alive, as a messenger. To tell the world that she has returned. [x](https://www.deviantart.com/redherochild) [y](https://www.reddit.com/user/DarthVitrial/comments/y5v2q6/black_phoenix_story_glossary/)

I'm a security guard for hire. My last job nearly killed me. (part2)

y8uhbh

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8uhbh/im_a_security_guard_for_hire_my_last_job_nearly/

[Link to part 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y7moz6/im_a_security_guard_for_hire_my_last_job_nearly/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Any amount of courage or denial left in me evaporated. I stood there, halfway down the steps, pain in my side, staring at a porcelain doll and fearing for my life. I climbed the stairs and sat on the top one, across from the clown. There was no way I was going to touch it, but there was no way I was going to let it out of my sight either. The next few hours were a blur, as the store became a carnival funhouse. I heard footsteps, music, crashing, and even sounds I couldn’t identify. But I refused to take my eyes off the clown. My bladder screamed at me, telling me I hadn’t taken my mid-shift bathroom break, but I refused to take my eyes off the clown. When the owner unlocked the door, she found me in the same spot, sitting at the top of the stairs, staring at the clown. “Are you alright?” she said coming over to me. It took me a moment to realize she was real. “Yes, I’m fine,” I said, staring at the clown. “I just wanted to buy this thing.” She looked back and forth from me to the clown. “I have a friend who collects these,” I said to her unasked question. “Umm… sure,” she said. “You want to bring it over… “ “Actually, I was wondering if you could take it and gift wrap it for me,” I said my eyes glued to the clown. “Of… course,” she said hesitantly, picking up the clown and carrying it over to the counter. I struggled to my feet nearly falling down the stairs again as my numb legs struggled to function. I shook out the pins and needles and waited for my balance to return before walking over to the counter and paying for the doll. “Thank you very much,” the owner said with her cashier’s smile that didn’t quite make it to her eyes. “Are you going to be ok?” I looked at the brown wrapping paper that enveloped the clown and smiled. “I’ll be fine, thanks.” I stepped out into the cold air and walked to my car. The keys slipped out of my hands as I tried to unlock the door. The second time around I unlocked it and got inside, putting my parcel on the passenger seat. I turned the key in the ignition to start the car and nothing happened. I sat back and sighed. Then I slapped the brown paper wrapper and tried again. The car roared to life and for the first time in a while, I felt in control. I drove away from work, ending up on a dirt road I used to visit when I was a dumb teenager. I knew the road ended at a quarry, and I wasn’t going very fast, but when I pressed the brake, nothing happened. I kept going straight toward the edge of the cliff. I tried the brakes again but still wasn’t stopping. I was slowing down because my foot wasn’t on the gas pedal, but that wasn’t going to stop me before hurtling over the edge. There were trees lining both sides of the road so I knew if need be, I would hit a tree before careening over a cliff to my death, but I wanted to save my car if possible. The moment of truth was approaching. I was almost to the edge. I grabbed the emergency brake and yanked up with all my strength. Dirt flew as the car slid sideways and came to a stop. I took a deep breath, put the car in park, and turned off the engine. I stepped out and looked down at the edge of the cliff three feet in front of me. I sighed and reached back inside the car to grab my brown package. I unwrapped it and looked into the eyes of the clown. “Sayonara, sucker!” I said, then threw it over the cliff and watched as it fell in slow motion hundreds of feet and shattered against the rocks. I looked at the tiny pieces scattered among the rocks with disappointment. ‘At least I could’ve seen some evil vapors floating up or the thing burst into flame when it shattered,’ I thought. ‘I guess I’ve watched too many horror movies.’ I got back in my car, and it started on the first try. I smiled as I drove home and slept like the dead until my alarm went off and it was time to get ready to go to work. I sang in the shower, I sang along with the radio, and I was still humming a happy tune when I got to work. It was the happiest I’d been in days. I did my first round with a skip in my step. Even coming to the display where the clown used to be couldn’t put a damper on my spirits. The empty space on the shelf where it used to sit made me smile. I came to the bookshelf and was happy to pick a book for the evening now that I would be able to enjoy reading again. I did my best to ignore the supernatural ramifications of the previous week as I chose a book. I reached for the Dave Barry book again, but it wouldn’t budge. I tried another book, but it wouldn’t budge either. I reached for a horror book, and it came out in my shaking hand. I slowly panned around, looking for anything. In the back of my mind, I half expected the clown to jump out, wielding a knife, and start chasing me. When that didn’t happen, I floundered, not knowing where to look next. I went to my counter and sat the phone down on record. “Where are you?” I said looking around. “What are you?” I waited for a minute then stopped recording and listened. After I was done talking, I waited for the answer. “Why?” said the raspy voice. “So you can do to me what you did to the clown?” I stared at the phone with dismay as if it was whatever was saying this. I started another recording. “How do you know what I did to the clown?” The voice answered with a harsh chuckle, then said a single word, “Prepare.” I started another video and said, “Prepare for what?” But the voice was silent. “Prepare for what?” I said on another video, leaving more time. No response. ‘I guess it sucks to be me,’ I thought ruefully. I plopped down on my chair and thought about what could be worse than the last few days of living in fear. My happy mood was gone. Now all I felt was hopelessness. The night dragged on for what felt like an eternity. There wasn’t a sound, not a hint of anything out of the ordinary. The silence drove me to the brink of insanity. I waited all night for something to happen, but nothing did. When morning came the owner was brimming with excitement. “Happy Halloween!” she said as though Halloween spirit was overflowing out of her. “That’s today?” I said. “Of course.” “I think I might need to take tonight off.” “On Halloween?” she said looking distressed. “When all the tricksters are out looking to do no good? Tonight’s when I need you the most.” I looked into her pleading eyes and sighed. “Of course, I’ll be in tonight,” I said. Her face immediately lit up and she became brilliantly happy. “Oh good, I’m so glad.” I went home and tried everything I could to get some sleep. I even took a sleeping pill. But nothing could get my mind to shut down. I couldn’t stop thinking about what could possibly happen. All this trouble I’d been having, and then add on top of that, the fact that it was Halloween night was too much. I couldn’t fathom what was about to occur. In the end, I got maybe an hour of sleep. When I got up to get ready for work, I was completely frazzled. I put my taser and flashlight on my belt, then looked in the drawer and saw my snub nose .38 sitting in its ankle holster. I picked it up and stared at it for a long time. The ramifications of taking it with me were huge. Was I prepared to face the consequences of what would happen if I used it? After a few minutes, I made my decision. \*\*\* That night on my way to work I passed dozens of kids in colorful costumes running cheerfully from house to house having the time of their lives. I wondered if any of them would ever have to face a moment like I was about to. When I turned the key in the door to lock myself in my prison of antiques for the night, the click had a note of finality. My mind had been running through a list of potential disasters that could happen that night, and ‘nothing’ had not made the list. I started my first round upstairs and it was totally uneventful. You’d think that the silence would be comforting, but it was quite the opposite. My eyes darted back and forth searching for where the attack would come from. Once I got downstairs, I was jolted into full panic mode. There was new merchandise that must’ve come in today. It was three life-sized mannequins that were dressed in Halloween costumes. The hairs stood on the back of my neck and my anxiety level jumped to eleven. I stayed as far away from these things as possible. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. I was tempted to call the owner right then and say I quit. I desperately wanted to take a book off the shelf and read to take my mind off of the stress, but I knew that all it would let me take was horror. I sat at my counter after my first round was done. My leg bounced nervously and my hands sat on the counter, shaking. I didn’t know if I was heading for a heart attack or not. I sat there, dreading my second round, waiting to hear anything unusual happened like had been for the last week but there was nothing but silence. Dreadful silence. It was like the silence of a volcano that was quietly building pressure until the eruption, and no one ever sees it coming. That’s what I was waiting for, the eruption. Second round came and my walk through the upstairs was disturbingly quiet. When I got downstairs, I noticed two of the three mannequins were still where they were supposed to be, the third was missing. ‘Please can’t I just have one peaceful night?’ I thought. As the thought rattled through my brain, I heard a rustling. I looked over to the side and the third mannequin was stepping toward me. I froze in shock. The impossibility of what was happening seemed to ricochet off my brain. It refused to penetrate. The mannequin took a step toward me, then another. Finally, my mind got out of denial mode and into full red alert mode. I pulled out my taser, put the red dot in the middle of the mannequin’s chest, and pulled the trigger. The surge of electricity didn’t phase it. It kept stepping toward me. I didn’t know what to do. As a last resort I reached down to my ankle and pulled out the .38. The mannequin started waving wildly and making strange noises. It terrified me beyond anything I’d ever felt before. It was a mere half dozen steps away from me when I fired. I hit it square in the middle of the chest. There was a small hole in the front, and something flew out the back. The mannequin stopped as if I had just hit the pause button. It slowly toppled forward, and when it hit the floor, pieces flew off. I noticed there was clothing underneath. I also noticed the large red hole in the back of the plastic. My curiosity overwhelmed my fear, and I stepped forward to discover what had happened. I looked down and oozing out of the red hole was blood. I hesitantly reached for the mannequin and rolled it over to find the face place had broken off and I was staring down into the eyes of the owner of the store. “No!” I screamed. She tried to say something, but blood gurgled out of her mouth, making it barely audible. I leaned closer and she spoke again. “Just wanted to give you a little scare,” she said weakly. “Happy Halloween.” I knelt there for a long moment before I came to my senses. I reached for her neck to feel for a pulse, but there was none. Most of her body was still covered in the mannequin plastic, but there was nothing I could do. There was no resuscitation that would work. I had shot her in the heart and there was nothing to resuscitate. I stared at her dead body for a long time. And then I got up and went to my counter, sat, and put my head in my hands. After a few minutes, I pulled out my phone, turned on the video recorder, and said, “Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted, for me to destroy my life out of fear?” I let it record for another minute, then turned it off and hit play. I heard the sound of my own voice desperately asking the question, then silence. I recorded another video. “Answer me!” I screamed. “This is what you wanted! Say something! Gloat! Do something! Anything!” I played it back, but there was still silence, maddening silence. I looked around in desperation, trying to see what was different when my eyes landed on an empty spot on a shelf. The ventriloquist’s dummy was gone. Someone must’ve bought it during the day. I stared at the empty spot in unbelief. Was that it? Was that what was causing all this grief, all this madness? To test the theory, I went back to the bookshelves and pulled out a Dave Barry book. It slid off the shelf into my hand. I looked down at it and realized whatever had been terrorizing me was gone. I should’ve been relieved. I should’ve been happy. Then I looked over and saw the arm of the dead woman with a hint of the puddle of blood beneath her. I knew it had destroyed my life. It didn’t matter that it was no longer here. For a fleeting moment I thought about cleaning up the mess and burying the body on the outskirts of town somewhere she would never be found. But she didn’t deserve that. I couldn’t do that evil thing to her after all she had done for me. I sat down and typed this out on my phone so that others would know the story. So that this woman wouldn’t have her death be a mystery. I also wanted to warn others of the dangers of unknown things. Don’t play with these things. Don’t challenge them. Get away from them before they ruin your life as I’ve ruined mine. After typing in this story, I realized there was still one thing left to do. I went upstairs and broke into the office. I dug through the receipts for the day and found the one for the ventriloquist’s dummy. Fortunately, the woman who had bought it paid with a check, and the owner hadn’t had time to take it to the bank yet. I pulled out my phone and took a picture of the check which had her home address on it. I got in my car and drove straight there. All the colorful munchkins had abandoned the streets to go home and work on their stomachaches. It was after midnight when I quietly broke into the woman’s home. I pulled out my flashlight and searched the entrance hallway, then not finding it, moved to the parlor. There were quite a few antiques in the room. I looked around slowly trying not to miss what I came for. Finally, I saw it sitting on a small table near the far end of the room. I went to it and picked it up. It was much heavier than I expected. I struggled to balance it so it wouldn’t fall to the floor and wake the house owner. I turned to leave and nearly ran into an old woman standing in front of me. “Who are you and why are you holding that?” she said in a tone that conveyed more curiosity than alarm. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I have to take this,” I said struggling to keep it in my arms. “There are many other items in this room of greater value,” she said gesturing around. “Why that particular one?” “I don’t really want to say, ma’am.” “And I don’t want to be standing on the cold floor in my robe watching a stranger take my property, yet here we are.” “Would you believe the warranty ran out and I need to take it back to the shop?” She glared at me like a teacher I had just told the dog ate my homework. “Ok, the truth is this thing is evil,” I said. “Evil?” she said. “Whatever would give you that idea?” I sighed then quickly went through the recent events, hitting the highlights. “And you still have these recordings?” she said. “Yes, they’re here on my phone,” I said setting the dummy down and pulling out my phone. “Would you mind if I listened to them?” I shrugged and played the videos one by one as she listened with such curiosity that she barely moved. When they were done, she stepped back with a pensive look. “Interesting,” she said. “Now do you see why I have to destroy it?” “And you were the only person in the store when these recordings were taken?” “Yes.” “So it was speaking directly to you?’ “I believe so, why?” “There are two erroneous assumptions you made about this object and myself,” she said. “What are those?” “First is that this object is evil,” she said in a mannerly tone with just a hint of teacher in it. “Inanimate objects are neither intrinsically good nor evil.” “But this thing… “ I said pointing at the dummy. “Yes, it did things that made you react a certain way, but that still doesn’t define it as evil.” I looked dubiously from her to the dummy and back. “The second assumption you made was that I was some poor innocent victim, That I had no idea what this thing was, or what it’s capable of,” she said with a gleam in her eye. “That I haven’t been searching for this object my entire life.” My eyes went wide with realization. “And now that you have it, what will you do?” I said in a voice that sounded detached and distant. “Prepare,” she said in a low raspy voice that sounded so much like the voice on the recordings it gave me chills. I reached down to tie my shoe, then sprung up, pistol in hand, and shot her in the forehead. Her head snapped back then slowly drifted forward. She gave me a look of surprise that turned into sheer rage. “You think you can… ?” she said before collapsing to the floor. I watched as she bled out onto the ancient carpet. ‘That’s gonna leave a stain,’ I thought. I looked down at the ventriloquist’s dummy, then looked around the room at the many other objects. Each of them looked old, just like the dummy. I felt a closeness in the air, like a pressure building. From the front hall, I heard a crash. I felt the dummy drawing my attention. Suddenly I felt surrounded and helpless. I ran to my car, feeling better as soon as I hit the cold outside air. I stood there gasping, sucking in lungfuls of fresh air, then I turned and looked back at the house. The thought of all those things being sold at auction to unsuspecting victims was more than I could bear. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ I thought digging through my glove box and finding a lighter. I stepped back into the house, feeling stifled as soon as I did, and found as many papers as I could. There was a stack of old newspapers in the foyer. I crumpled some up and threw the rest of them in the middle of the parlor floor. I lit a handful of crumpled newspapers and threw them in the corner. Then I lit another as a large glass cabinet suddenly tipped over, nearly crushing me. I dodged then lit some more newspaper and dropped it beside the cabinet. Objects started flying. Small ceramic figurines darted through the air toward me. Some missed and hit the wall behind me, others hit with surprising force, cutting me, but only increased my resolve. I continued to light bunches of paper and throw them around the room while flames climbed high licking the ceiling as they devoured the curtains. The entire room was ablaze and in chaos. Inanimate objects became deadly missiles as the flames consumed the room. I backed out of the disintegrating room, staring at the ventriloquist’s dummy engulfed in flame, then ran to my car and watched as the house collapsed in on itself. I breathed a sigh of relief as I sat in my car and posted the rest of this story for everyone to know before I go away. I hope I’ve saved at least a few innocent victims.

Several years ago, a force from beyond this world paid a visit to my house. My life since has never really been the same.

y8b8e2

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8b8e2/several_years_ago_a_force_from_beyond_this_world/

“Goodnight”, my Dad says to me as he opens up my bedroom door, light spilling lazily across the carpet. “I’ll see you tomorrow”. “Yeah, night Dad”, I grumble, scrunching my covers up a little tighter around my chin. “I’m sorry about the party, Nate. We’re just doing what we think is best… I promise”. I mutter to myself, watching my father’s silhouette shift in the light from beyond, then I roll over in bed and make a point of turning away from him. I hear my Dad sigh and step out into the hallway, and he quietly closes the door behind him as he leaves. ​ The hallway’s light is lost to the room’s cool darkness. ​ … ​ We had an argument today. My parents and I. ​ I accused them both of being cruel, and needlessly unfair. I made it a pretty big deal, to be honest. Maybe I shouldn’t have. It’s just- I’m thirteen. Most of my friends are at a party tonight in the next town over. An outdoors one, with tents and everything. My Mom said I was too young to go and my Dad agreed, so, naturally I’ve been in a foul mood all evening. I chew my tongue and fume for a while in silence, tossing and turning as the gentle murmur of my parents in the living room gradually fades away. I hear them ascend the stairs. The sliver of light beneath my door grows dimmer, and then after a while goes out entirely. I hear my parents close the door to their own room. Bed time for them too, I guess. I stare across my room at one of my posters, stuck up on the wall. It’s tough to see in the dark, but I know which one it is. It’s the one from the movie *Alien.* Good film. …My Dad introduced me to it. I sigh and shut my eyes up real tight, willing myself into a slow and uneasy sleep. The dreams do come eventually, and they revolve around my friends, all still awake, and having the time of their lives together. The dream version of myself cannot decide if I am actually there with them or not. My friends react only fleetingly to my presence, and the dream delivers a sense of cold disconnection and unsettling isolation. …Of loneliness. I want to understand more, but, I don’t know how. I don’t know how to fix it. ​ \* ​ I am unsure exactly what it is that awakens me. But whatever it is, I return to the real world with my heart beating fast, and my mind instantly alert. ​ I clutch the sheets as I feel myself begin to sweat. My body has become aware of something that my conscious self has yet to pick up on. A beam of light passes down the window, filtered and distorted through my curtains. If my window didn’t look out onto my back garden, I’d think it were a passing car. *An airplane, maybe?* It is followed by another, however, and then another. Horizontal bars of grim light in faded yellow. ​ I stare at these lights, wide-eyed. ​ The house creaks softly in the dark. A gentle rustle of wind is heard beyond the walls. I think I can just about hear the faintest hiss from the boiler, a few doors down. And then, the noises *stop*. ​ … ​ All of them, all at once. ​ Every last hint of sound or movement of any kind is sucked from air; the experience, despite lasting only a few seconds, is disorienting to the extreme. Like all the life in the world was just drawn away, and this empty vacuum was left in its place. Never before have my ears been given such true, deathly, *haunting* silence. My breath catches fast in my throat. A final beam of light passes down behind the curtains, and with it returns the sound. A quick, sudden tremor is sent rumbling across my room. The bed shakes and I cling myself to the mattress as best I can, beset with terror. A pen is sent rolling and clattering off the edge of my desk. The alien poster peels away from the wall a little and droops in one corner. *What the hell is happening?* I think to myself, trying to will together the urge to get out of bed. To pull back the curtains and to look outside. A subtle *thrumming* begins to reverberate through my bones. I can feel it sending shivers through the furniture, and it takes every ounce of control not to fall into a mad panic. *There’s always an explanation. There’s always an explanation*, I think to myself, over and over and over. … …Yeah. There’s always an explanation, until one day, there *isn’t.* ​ *It’ll be construction-works. Late night construction works, that’s all.* ​ I prepare to roll over. To try my very best to return to sleep. To ignore the shifting atmosphere and to get back to my dreams. But a tap on the window sends my blood racing, and gritting my teeth, steeling myself and unable to take it a second later, I throw off my sheets in an altogether rather uncharacteristic burst of courage, and I stride to the window. I haul back the curtains, braced to see something staring back at me from beyond the glass… ​ …But, no. ​ There’s nothing there. Nothing looking back at me. No source of lights… Just a night-time view of my back garden, and the neighbors’ gardens, all bathed in darkness. My breathing settles, just a little. Just for a moment. A brief, false-hope laden moment, before I shoot a reactionary glance up to the sky. An involuntary response to some movement there. ​ My pupils narrow. What I see in the sky is difficult to describe. I am drawn to what I see, and yet, it frightens me like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. I cannot look away. ​ Sections of the sky… vast, sprawling sections, are moving against each other in the darkness. Partly hidden behind the clouds they form curious, hard-edged shapes… they inter-lock with one another and fade in and out of view, their colors not quite matching those of the air around them. They do not look natural in any sense of the word, and as I watch, it becomes clear that they are all parts of a greater whole. A section of an enormous ring, or an arc, slowly rotating around. It is difficult to tell where the sky ends and the shifting, grinding shapes begin. They rumble softly, almost imperceptibly, crackling like distant thunder. I am awe-struck. Terrified, and frozen in place. What I am seeing defies the laws of reason. Of *sense*. Another bar of light shivers its way down the glass and washes over the garden, but its immediate source is not obvious. I cannot see what is actually *casting* the light, and besides, my gaze remains fixed on the colossal, softly swirling mechanisms in the sky. The spell is finally broken the same way it was cast. By a movement. Though, this time from below, instead of above. My eyes flicker down to the garden. To my backyard. It is small and one of many; fence-posts mark the boundaries between mine, and those of my neighbors. My yard has a few trees, and a lone shed of tools. There is a soccer ball too, kicked idly into its current position a few days ago. ​ ​ And between them creeps a figure far taller and far skinnier than any person I have ever seen. ​ ​ A sharp intake of cold breath forces its way down into my lungs. The figure is shadowed. It is too dark to make out any particular features. They do not appear to be wearing any clothes. The joints in their elbows and knees do not bend in the way they are supposed to. It is hard to see in the darkness, but the figure does not appear to be disturbing the grass in any way as they move. They move too *quickly.* And in seconds, the figure is gone. Lost to the deeper shadows of the neighboring fence, and of the wall to the house. Blood rushes through my ears. Light-headed, I turn at once and open my bedroom door to the long, dark hallway of my house. It feels like the walls spin around me as I walk to my parents’ room, one hasty foot in front of the other. “Mom!” I call out. “D-Dad!” ​ Their door is open. ​ I step into the room, hands clenched with hope. Hope that they will explain. That they will make everything alright. ​ But they are not there. ​ The sheets have been thrown off the bed, and are carelessly folded back on themselves, drooping towards the floor. The window is open. Cool night air filters in, and one of the curtains flutters lazily, ever so slightly shifting in the breeze. “MOM!” I call out, louder now. Looking around wildly. I swivel and head back into the hall, calling down into the inky, void-like depths of the landing below. “DAD! WHERE ARE YOU?” But there comes no response. ​ Just the creak of the house. That subtle, soft humming. …And the rapid pattering of feet against the hardwood floor below. ​ I throw myself backwards against the wall, staring down into the gloom below through the bannisters of the stairs, but it is too dark. I cannot make anything out. I could turn on the light if I wished, but the switch is attached to the wall, over at the very top of the stairs. I cannot bear the thought of making myself so vulnerable, of the potential threat of some unknown nightmare scrambling up from the darkness towards me, so I instead retreat rapidly to my room, slamming the door shut perhaps a little too loudly behind me. ​ *…It's in the house.* *Whatever I saw outside, is in the house.* *And my parents are gone.* ​ A sob wracks my throat and I struggle to swallow it back down, sweating and rubbing my hands across my eyes. I shoot a feverish glance back out through the window, peeking from behind the curtain. The shapes in the sky appear closer now. Ever-shifting, locking and unlocking with each other, slow, purposeful movements that give the impression of colossal weight, or density. “Please, just leave me alone”, I whisper. “Just go away, please”. ​ I hear the sound of something scrambling up the stairs. ​ My body reacts before my brain. I throw myself up against the door as irregular footsteps creep across the hall towards my room. It knows where I am. It knows that I am here. “NO!” I scream out loud, “I DON’T WANT TO GO! I DON’T WANT TO GO!” The door thuds. I shoot a look down to my right as the handle jumps, then turns. “NO!” I am pushed along the floor as the door starts to open, but with a shout of terror-stricken defiance I dig my heels into the carpet and shove back with all my might. The door re-closes. “DON’T TAKE ME!” I shout, my words thick with desperate emotion. “PLEASE JUST DON’T TAKE ME! I DON’T WANT TO GO! I DON’T WANT TO GO!” The door stops moving. My heart pounds as I wait, chest rising and falling as the tension builds, tighter and tighter… ​ ...And then, it simply fades away. ​ The thing behind the door decides to leave. I hear its footsteps go back across the hall, and back they go down the stairs. ​ When I am certain it has left the floor I dart back to the window and stare out into my backyard. ​ The view below me is illuminated, now. The grass and the shed and the trees and the fence, they’re all lit up in a sickly, watery yellow. It is not clear where the light is actually coming from. There is no obvious, visible source. It simply sticks to the objects below like paint. Localized. It does not overflow into any of the neighbors’ gardens. And in the centre of this light and looking up towards the sky, are two silhouetted figures. ​ Two figures I recognize. ​ *…My parents.* ​ They are facing the opposite way, with their backs towards me, but there is no question as to who they are. I’d recognize them anywhere, even from just the backs of their heads. ​ I stare in bewilderment, in disbelief, and I bang my hand on the glass, but they do not turn around. “MOM! DAD!” I cry out loud in distress, fumbling with the window and trying to get it open, but still they don’t respond. The light in the garden intensifies, and my parents raise their arms to the sky. With a click and a thud I finally get the window open, throwing it wide and screaming out into the night. There’s no way they don’t hear me. There’s no way. …But my parents do not react to my voice. ​ The shapes in the sky draw together beyond the clouds. The thunder increases and spark-like lightning crackles between them. How in the hell no-one else is awake to see this, I do not know. I could not say. But the speed of the anomaly’s spinning up above grows faster. Tears stream warm down my cheeks in sharp contrast to the cold night air, and for a long, terrible second that silence returns. The complete absence of any kind of noise or sound or rustle or hum. Just total empty, space-like silence. That same shudder of energy is sent rumbling through the house and the lights flash bright, and then that’s it. ​ … ​ …That’s it. ​ The soft subtle, everyday sounds of the night return, but where once there was a behemoth in the sky, there is nothing. Where once there was a subtle vibration through the floor, a humming in the back of my head, there is nothing. ​ The house creaks. I wipe my eyes and stare for a moment out into the night, then I slam my window and race to my parents’ room, forgetting for a moment the terrible threat of the intruder that crept its way through the house. Not that it mattered. The intruder is gone. …As, it seems, are my parents. ​ \* ​ It’s been five years since that night. My life in this time was quite *difficult* for the most part, to put it lightly, though things have been looking up a little more recently. I never forgot that experience, though. How could I? I do not know what happened to my parents. I do not know who took them. And I do not know if it was partly my fault. I still carry a tremendous burden of guilt. It was too much. Far too much for a child, especially. But there are always answers to be found. There is still hope. I will uncover what happened to my parents, and if they are alive, I will bring them home. *I promise.*

The Mass is Coming

y8rqlo

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8rqlo/the_mass_is_coming/

I was washing the dishes, staring out onto my front yard through the window above the sink—though I can’t remember what had caught my attention—when I heard a knock at the front door. Setting aside the plate I’d been absentmindedly scrubbing, I stepped out of the kitchen and into the foyer, but for some reason hesitated; my hand hovering just before the doorknob. A feeling of vague yet potent trepidation came over me, as abrupt as the knock on the door had been; and I found myself wondering who could be calling at such an hour, as if I'd been pre-occupied with some important task. Finally, a flicker of annoyance arose—annoyance at the audacity of the yet-to-be-identified visitor—and I grasped the knob and opened the door, intending to dismiss them. Seeing as how I had never had any casual guests before, I wasn’t expecting to see a familiar face; as only the ever-austere, somewhat curt officials and dignitaries of my town had ever visited me, and only then in the early days of my residence. (I was born elsewhere, and had only come to reside in the quaint, self-isolated town by certain circumstance which aren’t relevant to this tale.) But standing on my porch, his figure slightly shrouded by a mist I couldn’t remember seeing through the window, was a formidably tall man. He was dressed conservatively and appropriately, and by that, I mean he wore a long coat of some grey and thickly padded material: conservative compared to the somewhat peculiar uniforms I’d seen among the townsfolk, appropriate for the decidedly fall weather. The coat covered his legs, leaving only a pair polished black boots visible. His face was grim, dour as one who had never once held a smile—if such an expression were even possible for him. Clean-shaven and white as ivory, the man’s face reminded me of some grave-warding statue; a marmoreal sentinel to an unearthly and forbidden necropolis. Along his bare scalp ran tracks of scars, which intersected wildly; as if he’d been assaulted by some rabies-addled animal. The somewhat discernible aura about him—distinct from the spontaneously accumulated though plainly natural fog—unnerved for me, for it seemed to carry within it a suggestion of bodily harm. I felt that it was a noxious or otherwise inimical emanation of some kind, and that if I were to let the man in, he would fill my house with this malignant vapor. Carefully, so as to not come off as confrontational, I asked him what he wanted; and without a word, he unbuttoned his coat.  When the flaps parted, I recoiled back into my house, though in my shock I hadn’t grasped the door. I was thus shown the full, horrific extent of ghastliness that had somehow been silently, perfectly enclosed within that thin barrier of fabric.  From the base of his chest to his navel, there spanned an image, a *scene* of unprecedented depravity, of morphological chaos and abominable anatomy. From out of his abdomen poured a veritable vista of contorted, bent, and broken limbs; seas and mountain ranges of unwholesomely undulant appendages; forms and figures, totally naked and wretched beyond description, grafted onto one another, joined in insane amalgams of agonized flesh. All were pitifully, unsettlingly human. “Join the blessed Mass, Add yourself to the congregation.” Exhorted the man, with lips that were, somehow, paler than the flesh around them.  Bewitched, enthralled, and of course appalled by the depth and scale of the macabre unreality of that scene, I found myself stepping toward the man, hands outstretched to grab ahold of those outwardly flailing digits amidst his stomach. I knew at that moment that I had been waiting for him, had been watching for his arrival from my kitchen window, washing the same plate—the only one I thought I owned—for hours, days, decades; immeasurable, tireless eternities of patient vigilance.  My hands met those of that outré, abysmal world, and I was quickly though smoothly pulled inward, into that anemic emissary’s abdomen. And though I’d been given a glimpse of the madness, the sheer enormity of it was not fully revealed to me until I plunged headlong into that ultra-dimensional space.  It was beyond a region or world, it was a system, an extraterrestrial lacuna, wherein throbbed, pulsed, and flexed planetary forms of...of flesh. Spheres of impossibly amalgamated bodies hummed and murmured in communal agony, orbiting one another mindlessly, as if in some twisted choral exultation of their shared torture. I stood atop the surface of one such despairing planet, and all around me, amassed about the area were great, multi-form titans; billions and billions of naked beings fused to one another, grafted together by what had to have been sorcerous surgery. The very ground was flesh, bodies piled atop bodies, backs and bellies and faces doomed to be trod underfoot for unthinkable eternities.  There were no stars, and yet there was an omnipresent light, a widespread illumination which showed, dimly but thoroughly, the dreadful suffering of incalculable souls. A rank, miasmal fetor pervaded the space, clung to every molecule. The air—if there was any atmosphere to speak of—was teeming with this funeral funk, as if the graves of a thousand lost civilizations had opened and vomited forth their moldering dead. I remember it as a noxious, choking stench, but in that moment of grand, unraveling morbidity, I regarded it almost absentmindedly; for there were far worse things to take conscious notice of.  There seemed to be an infinite number of tortured beings, inextricably bound to one another in states of sub-sentience; aware only of their incomprehensibly excruciating existence. A droning ambience of dread persisted throughout, darkly accompanied and sometimes overwhelmed by the occasional crescendos of those shrieking Mass-worlds. There was not one entity separate from the wholescale wholeness, not a single unbound soul amidst the collective, paroxysmal nudity.  It was all simply too much. To behold such monstrous, existentially insupportable things, to witness firsthand the stark cosmic pandemonium of this multi-global congregation, my mind just snapped. I sensed, dimly and peripherally, my hands begin to claw madly at the space about me; swiping through the death-choked air as if I were enmeshed in an invisible substance. Like a trapped animal I fought to free myself, having been ensnared in a trap—but one unlike any that had ever existed on Earth.  There was no sign of the darkly clad emissary—who I’d completely forgotten in my nigh psychotic awe of the abysmal realm—but when my efforts to free myself peaked to a senseless frenzy, something pulled me backwards. And, just as seamless as my trip there had been, I was plucked from that intolerably bleak world and deposited into the mundane one.  I returned to a semblance of sanity sitting on my porch, staring up at that man—who had, mercifully, re-buttoned his otherworldly coat. He stared down at me as passively as if I’d just returned from a brief stroll, and I knew at once that he was, in some capacity, familiar with what I had experienced.  Affirming my thoughts, he then said, “Soon, you—and your planet—will join the ranks of The Mass, and one day, when time has grown tired of its aimless and futile march forward, we will all revel in immutable, timeless togetherness.”  Having delivered his apocalypse-promising omen, that Augur of the Mass turned and strode into the mist. And I, like a dreamer waking from a horrible yet cryptically premonitory nightmare, went back into my home and shut the door.  That was two days ago—and now, seated at my dinner table on what has been an unusually misty day, I can feel the advent of...*something.* A terrible ordeal will soon beset my town—something from which we won’t be able to flee or hide. Of that, I am certain. I have recorded this experience both to act as evidence of my sanity when it begins to deteriorate, and as a record—though small—of my existence, and the town’s.... should neither survive the impending terror.... [The Mass is coming.](https://reddit.com/r/bryceverse)

A Strange Ambulance

y8sckb

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8sckb/a_strange_ambulance/

It was Halloween night and my friends and I were driving to a local graveyard at the edge of town. We were too old to trick-or-treat and too shy to attend any parties, so we found ourselves piling into my car and heading to a cemetery in the dead of night. It was my crazy idea to spend the eeriest night of the year amongst the dead and, after much convincing, my friends Buck and Daisy eventually agreed. I wanted to be there as it turned midnight: the witching hour. It's said that the veil between our world and the spiritual world is thinnest on Halloween. The night was cold and empty. The stars stood bright and alone in the expansive black sky that seemed to stretch on forever. The old cemetery was worn and overgrown with tall thick grass sprouting out from amongst the neglected tombstones. Some of the graves were as old as the 1800's and Civil War soldiers were even buried there. We parked the car at the foot of the hill and climbed out of the vehicle, armed only with a flashlight. Buck and Daisy had gotten used to me dragging them along on my adventures. This wasn't the first time they'd been forced to pal along with me on one of my strange graveyard trips. They felt especially obligated to go this time however, being Halloween and all. As I repeatedly told them, it only happens once per year. The graveyard consisted of dirt pathways climbing an old grass covered hill which was quite steep in some sections, hardly the best place to bury the dead. We traversed the rough incline, carefully stepping through the tall grass and avoiding the grave plots masked under a thick layer of foliage. I shined the way with my flashlight as Buck and Daisy followed behind. "Why do you get the only flashlight?" asked Daisy. "I told you guys to bring your own lights!" I replied. "We didn't think we'd actually be going through with this!" "Well whose fault is that?" We made it to the first dirt path and stopped. The headstones gleamed as I shined the flashlight around. We listened carefully and the night was completely quiet. We felt entirely isolated. No one else seemed to be around for miles. I shut off my flashlight, plunging us into total darkness. With no artificial light anywhere, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. It was the same as closing your eyes. I clicked back on my flashlight. Moving my flashlight around once more, I caught two shining yellow lights. "What the heck is that?" asked Buck startled. I took a step closer. From among the grass, hopped out a small rabbit with yellow eyeshine illuminated in the light. We breathed a sigh of relief and felt a little silly for being concerned. The rabbit took off further up the hill of the old graveyard with a tall blade of grass hanging from its mouth. We were just about to hike up to the next dirt path when we heard it, the sound of a distant siren approaching. My first thought was that it was the police and that we were about to be told to leave or something but as we all turned around, we saw the strangest of sights, the red glowing lights of an ambulance approaching. With our solitude broken, we stood staring in the direction of the graveyard's entrance. We saw the red lights shine through the scraggly branches of the nearby autumn trees and watched as the ambulance made its way down Cemetery Drive towards us with its loud siren blaring. Something seemed off about the siren though, it didn't sound the same as a typical emergency vehicle. It was an old siren, slowly whining out a low and lonesome cry. The ambulance pulled up and came to a stop at the bottom of the hill just behind my car. The siren stopped abruptly. The red lights went out. I looked down at my watch: midnight on the dot. Buck, Daisy and I looked at each other, unsure what to do and what to think about this sudden visitor. Why would an ambulance stop at a cemetery? I thought. If this was some town officials trying to get us to leave, it was an odd method of doing so. Each of us waited for the other to say something. "Uh, Hello?!" Daisy finally cried out to the bottom of the hill. No response. We could see the vague silhouette of the driver but nothing else. They just sat there completely stationary. We thought about walking down the hill to see what they wanted but something within us told us not to. We stood silently once more. I shined my flashlight down but the beam couldn't reach the window of the vehicle. "Who goes there?!" shouted Buck. Still no response. Then suddenly, the driver began beeping the horn loudly. Loud sharp beeps rang out through the night. First two short quick beeps then a loud honk followed by complete silence. "What is this, Morse code?" asked Daisy. As if in reply, the vehicle began honking again in rapid succession. I could see the silhouette of the driver moving and thrashing around frantically while honking the horn. They also appeared to be pounding their head with their fists and even smashing their face into the steering wheel. The siren and lights turned on then off and then on again in a strange almost musical rhythm. Then silence. "What do you want?!" Buck yelled in a louder and more forceful tone than before. The vehicle's door began to open. We instinctively backed up. The door swung open and out stepped the driver illuminated by the dull glow of the vehicle's interior cabin light. It was a pale old woman with long stringy hair, a scrawny and bony figure wearing only what appeared to be a white gown. There was something almost ghostly about the woman. It was as if she was comprised entirely of paper mache, a haunting figure like that of a corpse. Her eyes seemed bloodshot, bruised and tired. They emitted a hollow sadness indescribable. She looked at us as if looking through us. She extended out one of her long thin arms and curled in the old bent fingers on her wrinkled hand. She beckoned for us to come down the hill. We stood unmoved. The thought occurred to me that perhaps this was a spirit who had crossed over for Halloween night. Perhaps this was my exact reason for traveling to the graveyard. I glanced down at my watch, it read "12:06". The timing was so eerie, as if it was the midnight hour that had called her there. These fanciful notions quickly faded though as I looked at the horrified faces of my friends. I gazed back at the crone-like figure at the foot of the hill. She beckoned once more and then seemed to grow impatient. She let out a loud blood curdling scream that could shatter windows. I covered my hands over my ears and waited for her to stop. In a frantic motion she quickly turned, jumped back into the cab of the ambulance and shut the door with a loud thud. The siren roared to life in a bright display of flashing red and the bizarre ambulance backed up. The vehicle then turned around in the road and sped away along Cemetery Drive. "Let's get the heck out of here!" exclaimed Daisy. Terrified, we hurried down the hill to my car with hearts racing. "That does it!" announced Buck. "We are never going on one of your trips again." At this point, I honestly couldn't blame them. I drove home, as nervous as can be, with my hands shaking all the while. We saw no sign of the ambulance or the lady for the rest of the night. None of us slept a wink or turned off any lights once we got to my house. It wasn't until the next day, November 1st, that we read the news. A woman from a nearby mental hospital had stolen an ambulance and was reportedly seen by locals driving strangely around the town, rhythmically honking the horn and playing the siren in strange patterns.

Move Fast, Hold your Breath, Stay Low, and Don't Make a Sound.

y8jk6t

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8jk6t/move_fast_hold_your_breath_stay_low_and_dont_make/

This happened about a month ago. I was with my friend John on a business trip on the opposite side of the U.S. from where we lived. It was about 6:00 PM when we walked into the hotel. I walked to the front desk, and the receptionist greeted me with a friendly "Hello!" After a brief and awkward interaction, we got the keys for John's room, room 35 and mine, room 7. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant, the door to which was in the lobby. I don't remember when I went to bed. All I know is that it was pretty early, as I had just been in the car driving all day. I remember hearing alarms blaring in the middle of the night, waking me from my sleep. I checked the time on my phone. 1:36 AM. I also saw a text from John from about 2 minutes prior that read "Did you hear that?" I was sort of in that "barely asleep" phase that you get when you first wake up. "Attention all residents," a voice came over the loudspeakers. "An emergency has occurred in the hotel, and we must lock down the building. All residents should stay in a safe location such as a room. If you must travel through a hallway or large open space, we advise that you should hold your breath and move as quickly and quietly as possible, while staying low to the ground. If you hear loud, banging footsteps, or any loud or sudden noise is made, immediately vacate the immediate area of the source. Stay away from areas with flickering lights or a mysterious red glow. Good luck." The announcement ended. I began to get a little bit nervous as I texted Josh, asking him what the hell he thought was happening, and what we should do. He told me to call him, and I did. "Hello?" He said to me. "Josh!" I said back. We talked for a while about what we should do, then we both heard a roar. It seemed louder on his end, and then he hung up. After a minute of processing that, I decided to try calling him back, but he called me instead. I asked him what that sound was, and why he had hung up. I was not prepared for the answer. He said that after hearing the roar, he opened the door and peeked his head out. Right then, the lights started flickering, and he ducked down in the corner of his room, holding his breath and quietly wondering what he should do. Just then, a red glow started coming from outside the door. In his daze, he had forgotten to close it. He heard banging footsteps approaching, and as he considered getting up to close the door, he claimed he saw some sort of humanoid creature run past the door at speeds likely impossible for a person to pull off. He couldn't make out any detail, as it was running too fast. The only things he could tell me were that it was too tall and too fast to be a person, and that is was roaring loudly. Then I guess it was my turn. I heard people screaming, and what sounded like people being mutilated. The lights started to flicker, and I ducked inside a closet, holding my breath and covering my mouth with my hand. As I was hanging up the phone and turning the ringer off, my worst fear came true, as I heard the door to my room creak open. I couldn't see the door from my angle, only the red glow that emanated from whatever was on the other side. But soon enough, that thing walked into view, the red glow filling the room. It wasn't running like when John saw it, so I could make out more detail. It was tall, about twice the height of an average human, with long arms extending down to it's knees. It appeared to be made of some kind of material resembling human muscles. I don't know where the light was coming from, it appeared to simply be illuminated by it, despite being the source. It lacked a nose, hair or ears, only having eyes and a mouth. Its mouth was open, and I could clearly make out al least 10 layers of small, fang-like teeth on all sides of its mouth. Its eyes were the worst part. Pure black eyes with not a single bit of light reflecting off of them. Both it's hands and teeth were coated with blood. There appeared to be some pure black liquid dripping from the eyes and down its face, and at certain points it mixed with the blood on its hands and mouth, causing it to fizz up. It lingered for about 30 seconds, and I knew that even one breath or movement could kill me. It finally left the room, and once the lights stopped flickering, I let out a quiet breath. It was about 5 minutes before I gathered the courage to turn my phone on and call John. I finally did after some time, and whispered to him that the creature was in my room, and that it is not a human. We decided we had to try and get out of the hotel somehow. We agreed to meet in the elevator. I exited my room carefully, holding my breath and moving as quick as possible while remaining silent. As I was in the hall I found a piece of paper with a bloody handprint on it. What is read was simple: It can barely see But it can hear. When the lights start to flash. That means that it's near. If it seems to be near, Don't be slow in the hall. Either move very quickly, Or don't move at all. I saw John by the elevator, and we got in quickly. We headed to the first floor. I showed him the note, and he asked if I think this might be talking about the creature we saw. We arrived on the 1st floor, we headed to the lobby and tried to get out, only to find we couldn't open the door. "Shit, the announcement did say the building was locked down, didn't it?" John remembered. I sighed, as the lights started to flicker. I ducked behind a chair, and John under a table. I saw the creature enter the room. I quickly ran to the elevator while staying as low to the ground as possible, and got in. John started to crawl towards me, but unfortunately I guess he couldn't hold his breath. He let out a big exhale, and the creature turned its head impossibly hard to look at him. (I'm pretty sure I heard the cracking of whatever the hell kind of bones that thing has.) The elevator door closed as he screamed, and blood shot out in all directions. As I sat there, realizing that my friend was probably dead, I noticed something strange. The elevator starting moving downwards, which was strange since I pressed the "3" button. It stopped with a "ding," and I landed in what looked like a large concrete hallway. I heard elevator doors being forced open above me, and a loud thud at the top of the elevator.

The V-Trade

y8h7pz

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8h7pz/the_vtrade/

I’ve waited three years to get the courage to tell this story. I finally think I’m ready to be honest and tell it like it happened. I was only nineteen when they got me. My girlfriends and I all took our gap year in Europe, backpacking started in Spain, onwards to France and Marseille, and up into Paris and eventually made our way east, into Prague. When you’re pretty, there are doors that open for you. Some doors you don’t want opened for you. Heather and I were both too easily down for whatever. I hate to say it now in retrospect, but we were toxic together. Always pushing each other further and further, drinking more than we should, taking more than we should, getting into cars with boys with harsh accents to hostels we never bothered to look up to see if they existed. We met Milo in a respectable bar just off the Charles Bridge, locally known as the Hemingway bar, though who knows if Hemingway ever actually attended said bar. But the drinks were stiff and the bartenders were hot. Milo stirred our martinis with a silver spoon a hundred times around, fifty each way as he flirted with us. He was thin, a little sallow in the face but in a sexy sort of way. He looked dirty even though he wore a tuxedo. And as the night continued on, the drinks kept coming. My sister would say, ‘just because its in front of you, doesn’t mean you have to drink it,’ but my sister wasn’t there and so Heather and I drank each little Hemingway martini placed within arms length. The night became blurry after a while, and I only remember vignettes of specific moments, like a baggie of cocaine plopped into my hand, the girls bathroom and Milo’s hands all over me, I remember singing, Heather and I singing as we crossed the Charles Bridge and feeling the cold stone rough against my fingers. When we woke up, it was dark. Blackout curtains is an understatement here, we were someplace where the windows must have been boarded shut tight with nails. I simply couldn’t see a thing. At first, I didn’t mind the darkness, my head throbbed and my body ached. It felt like I had bruises on my arms and on my neck. It felt as if I had slept funny, maybe sitting up with my head hung low straining all night. *What did we get into this time*? That’s when I thought of Heather. I called for her, there was no answer, only an echo. I couldn’t see anything. I called again, and the echo reverberated into the distance and I knew I was in a large space, cold, cavernous. I didn’t have my phone, did I leave it at the bar? The only silver lining I could think in that moment was that my clothes were still on and it didn’t feel like I had sex. Maybe it was because I could smell the vomit down my blouse. Damn Milo was a pusher. At least he wasn’t a rapist. Heather? I called again. That’s when I heard the strike of a match and saw the room brighten in a fleeting orange glow if only for a moment. I didn’t really register what I just had seen. It almost looked like a dormitory, beds stacked on either side in two long rows that seemed to go on forever, the darkness swallowed them before I could understand how far they went. “Did you have fun last night,” he said. He lit the cigarette and the orange ember only revealed part of his face. Milo stepped toward me and causally put his hand on the small of my back, familiar like my high school boyfriend used to do. “I don’t really remember last night to be honest,” and I remember laughing. I don’t know if it was because I was nervous to be in the dark with the near stranger, or the fact that he either didn’t notice the rancid smell of vomit on me or didn’t care. Because he pulled me close into him and put the cigarette in my lips. I inhaled and the smoke burned and he cooly put his lips to my ear and said, “I want to show you something,” and it was nearly a whisper. He took back his cigarette and my hand and led me further into to the black void. I had no choice but to follow. *Where the hell was I*? *Where was Heather*? I asked him. “I want to show you,” he said and it sounded as if he was smiling. As we walked, I began to notice how cold it was. Cold and damp. I could hear the clicking of his shoes and the wet smack of my bare feet against the stone. *Where the hell are my shoes*? “How can you see anything?” I asked him but he didn’t reply. I started to remember now, how the night before he seemed to choose what to answer and what not to answer. Like a married man with his ring tucked into his pocket, saying one thing but his eyes betraying something more, a secret, and the more you played along the more you became a part of the secret. I felt like I was going to get sick again. Something smelled. It was different than what was blasted down my chest. No, this smell was rotten. Acrid, even. It reminded me when a cat crawled underneath our house and died and the smell lingered. This smell lingered all around us and it seemed to only be getting stronger. I was happy to see a flickering light in the distance, a fire? Voices too. They were hushed and excited and as we drew near the voices grew louder but then quickly subsided to nothing at all. Whoever was just beyond the crack in the door was awaiting our arrival. When he pushed open the door, I took in the room before me. It almost looked like a movie set, there were high vaulted ceilings with statues that seemed to be forever praying, looking down at us instead of up toward the heavens. There was firelight by torches which hung from the walls and the slight crackle and whip from the flames fluttered from an ominous crosswind which smelled sickly sweet and almost burned at my nostrils. There were probably about two dozen of them, men and women standing. They all held cups of wine and stared at me as Milo continued to march me forward down the center aisle. They all seemed to have a crooked smile as we passed. They looked hungry. I turned to see where we had come from but the door was being shut by two of them, and the door clunked with a thud which I imagined to be some sort of old locking mechanism. Between the pillars and deeper into the darkness where the light dared not to go I could see more of them. They were not still like the others but swarmed around something. It almost looked orgiastic they way they moved as best my eyes could make out, but I simply could not see well enough. ‘Milo, I’m scared,” I whispered to him. He did not answer, only lightly squeezed my hand to let me know he heard me, but he did not turn around. He was taking me to the room just beyond. When we entered the room, there were four men lounging at ease by candle light. Just beyond them I could see three others, naked standing at attention in front of them. They were shivering. One was a young man, bearded, transient from the look of his ragged beard and mopped hair. His penis was shriveled tight against his body and his hands quivered by his side. The other two were young women. The one looked Indian from her complexion and long dark hair, the other, well, the other was Heather. She stood nude and I could see bruises on her body. In fact the others had them too. Up and down her arms and up her neck. Even by candle light I could see blotches of dried blood which speckled her fair skin. Heather’s eyes locked with mine. She discreetly shook her head and it felt like a warning. I looked down at my arms, and only then did I really notice the sharp pain at my wrist. A bruise swirled around puncture points which streaked against the veins leading up toward my elbow. “Undress,” he said. I looked a Milo, he had a wickedness in his eyes I did not see before. “No,” and I heard my voice quiver and break. I needed to breathe. He turned and looked back toward the other men lounging. One of them, a sinewy bearded man who yawned nodded his head and, FWACK!… Milo’s hand ripped across my face. “NO!” I screamed and the shrill echoed and reverberated against the walls and it felt like my head was going to explode. He grabbed me and threw me to the floor and in an instant they were on me, all of them, tearing at my clothes, ripping them clean off my body as if they were paper. He grabbed me by the hair and lifted me up and placed me to Heather’s right and just as quickly the five of them surrounded us. The bearded one, who I took to be their ring leader eyed us up and down. “You belong to me now, okay?” and it wasn’t a question. “You will be happy here, I think,” and he reached for my chin, an lifted my face. His eyes were coal black and he smelled like the air. I then noticed he was not looking at my face. He was not looking at my body. He was looking at my neck. Beyond him the others started filing in, one after the other in a line, polite and watching with hungry eyes. The men took the four of us to each corner of the room. Milo held my hand with just as careless a grip as before and led me to the corner with an engraving, SOUTH. Heather was taken to the EAST, the others to their respective corners. Below the engraving was what looked like a throne. Draped across it was a white silk robe which Milo took up and urged me with inviting arms to cover up. It was loose and hung low against my shoulders, and the sleeves and hem were easily maneuvered. He sat me down into the chair which had straps which spread my hands and feet out like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man. “Please,” I said to him, and I knew I was going to die. He said, as if almost responding to my thoughts, “You aren’t going to die. You are going to enjoy this.” He buckled the last strap to my ankle and moved into the nape of my neck. He whispered, “you’re sweet,” and he smiled, “we like to keep the sweet ones,” and I felt him bite into my neck. He wasn’t wrong. When the blood pulls from you and you feel it leaving you, when you feel the suckling and the sustenance and life you are giving you feel bonded. There’s a euphoria I can only relate to heroin the one time Heather and I tried it in the back of Danny’s truck on the Fourth of July junior year. You get high. And when I could feel them all over me, their mouths on my ankles and up my thighs, down the length of both my arms and on either side of my neck, the room feels brighter. You might think its heaven calling you, and perhaps for some it is. But for me, when I felt warm all over, when I felt no pain and felt that I was floating and it somehow made sense as to why they strapped me down, I relaxed and gently nodded off to sleep. If you have ever felt withdrawl, you only know a glimpse into what it is like after the feast. It was like no pain I thought I could imagine, the sweating and shaking and shivering and the headaches. I found myself in a bed with an IV in my arm. There were others just like me down the line, some awake, blank and staring, others twisting in fits and spasms and other simply asleep or dead, I couldn’t be sure. Above my head was a suspended clock, which was counting down. It said four-days, three hours, twenty-seven minutes and the seconds counted down. “That’s when you’re cooked,” he said. I turned to find a boy, he couldn’t be more than ten years old. He was pale and ghostly and the bite marks could be mistaken for chicken pox they were so plentiful across his body. “They need you to replenish before they feast again.” “How long have you been here?” I asked him. He told me that he was traded here just a few weeks ago. Before he had belonged to a Elder, “a snack boy” he had told me. He’d accompany his Elder like a teacup Chihuahua, only to satisfy the hunger whenever it pleased him. I began to cry, and I told him I didn’t know where my friend was. I told him she went to the east when I went to the south. “Sweetblood,” he said, “you’re lucky and unlucky. They love the sweet blood and pay top dollar for to feast in the south.” He seemed to retreat for a moment, then looked at me and said “You’re friend is the other way, unlucky and lucky. They go through the sours the quickest. Unlucky to be drained like that, but I suppose she lucky to be gone from here.” I wanted to ask if he meant that they let her go, but I knew better. I cannot tell you how many feasts I endured. Too many to count and soon I was asking for to shorten my time to get back to the chair. They listened but they shouldn’t have. I wasn’t regenerating the way you should, I was beginning to lose my taste. They traded me out after what I assumed was a year to a private club for high profile clients and the newly anointed to snack like bottle service. Given out night after night to whomever was looking to score. The thing is, it didn’t dawn on me to escape, to find help, to get back my life. It had become all I knew and I was brainwashed to believe it was all I was. That was until he came back. Milo saw me on display and purchased a round in the back room. I didn’t notice him at first until I heard his whispers, his voice in my ear rang like a bell and something inside of me awoke. I let him sample my wrist and he spit it out, he said it made sense why I was here, why I had become so cheap. It didn’t matter though, he had paid and I was his for the next half an hour. I made for the bathroom to freshen up, to offer him my right side, the side I remember him liking best. When I went into the bathroom I saw just how much I had disappeared. I was no longer myself. I hated what I saw. It wasn’t my fault, they took me, they took my life from me and left this rotting corpse with barely a heartbeat left pumping. I bashed my reflection in the mirror and saw the blood running down its splintered web. When I came back, Milo was seated behind the curtain, legs crossed and waiting. He asked me if I wanted to go away from here. Leave this life once and for all. He could do that for me. He could make me feel god one last time and go out in oblivion. I told him I was ready. I was done. He moved so fast I didn’t see him before he was on me, his teeth deep into my neck and I could see the stars behind my eyes and the blood began to drain. Then I felt him jerk violently, and shake. He stopped sucking and pulled back to look at me, the blood running from his lips. His eyes were wild with rage and confusion. He coughed and the blood bubbled out of his mouth and all over me. I drove the glass dagger deeper into his neck and started to rip it back and forth, back and forth, tearing the skin and sponge-like muscle with every saw back and forth. When he fell to the couch I got on top of him and drove the glass down harder as I felt it slip between the cervical discs and with a wet crunch pass through and into the other side of his neck. I could feel the makeshift blade slicing at my palms but I had known my own spilt blood and didn’t stop until his head was severed clean off. I put that asshole’s head in the toilet and propped his body atop and shut the door. I slipped through the back door and no one noticed. Those in the V-Trade rarely have the ability or will to escape and so the doors are left open. I eventually found help and got clean and made my way back to the states. Everyone thought that I had died. In so many ways I did. But I’m alive now and finally ready to tell this story. Why? I’m ready to seek revenge on all the rest of those vampire pieces of shit. Who’s with me?

A Survivor's Accounts of the Depraved Funhouse: The Playmate (Part Three)

y8khor

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8khor/a_survivors_accounts_of_the_depraved_funhouse_the/

[[1]](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y6sy0t/a_survivors_accounts_of_the_depraved_funhouse_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) | [[2]](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y7p2ep/a_survivors_accounts_of_the_depraved_funhouse_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) I awoke the next morning on the couch, the remaining platter of the remaining cookies resting on the space between where me and Ma's bodies were. "Ma?" I called out, rubbing my eyes and yawning. As my eyes continued to adjust, I began looking around the living room for Ma when I heard indistinct voices coming from the dining room. When I walked in, I was greeted to my folks sitting at the table, still in their bed clothes, talking with officer Hagan and two of the others that I didn't recognize. Anxiety wasted no time building up inside me in that moment when I saw Ma's horrified face cuddled into Dad's embrace. "Wh-What's going on?" I asked, my knees beginning to shake like there was a category 5 earthquake was rumbling through me. "Everything's okay, son. Why don't you go paly your PlayStation for a while? We'll talk afterwards when it's just us three, okay?" "Actually sir," officer Hagan piped up, turning to me, "I'd like to ask your son a few questions in private." "What, why?" Ma squeaked out, "He isn't under any suspicion, is he?" "I don't think so." he replied, still facing me with a concentrated stare. "No, we're just trying to figure out what the apparent link is between your son here and the attack on this young lady." *Attack?! Young lady?!* I shuddered as my thoughts were sent reeling back to the previous night. Dad looked to Ma before nodding to officer Hagan. "Wait, what're you talking about?!" I exclaimed, anxiety shooting through me from all angles. "If you'll follow me, we'll explain." officer Hagan replied, gathering the photos. I followed him upstairs and into my room while the other two officers remained in the kitchen with Ma and Dad. I sat on my bed, facing the wall, as officer Hagan sat in front of me and began laying out the photos on my bed. "Now, uh... Linus, is it? I want you to take a good look at these." He nudged two of the photos closer to me on the bed. Picking up one of them, I could feel my stomach begin to grind and churn. It was a photo of Liza. She was tied to a chair, beaten and badly bruised everywhere from what I could see in the photo and gagged with a rainbow colored cloth and she even had the red tear drop design painted around her eyes and mouth. I began to shiver, my body starting to feel extremely cold like someone had turned the thermostat all the way down. *"... Now WE'RE gonna have some playtime with her..."* "Sickening, isn't it?" officer Hagan asked. I responded with an almost on-cue dry retch. the back of this particular photo read, ***"See how much fun our little playmate is having?"*** beside it was a cartoon smiley face drawn in red. Out of, I guess, morbid instinct, I actually found myself picking up *another* one. *(So many photos. One photo = one more vivid nightmare for years to come...)* This one was of Mr. Cromwell, propped up in a chair lifelessly next to Liza. His face was painted the same as hers. On the back of this one read, ***"How sweet, Daddy-Daughter bonding time!"*** I then saw that the next one was a close-up of Mr. Cromwell's face, now having had the demented grin I see every time I would ever close my eyes carved into his face. This one read, ***"Family resemblance?"*** This one also had a red smiley face drawn next to it. The most sickening one, however -- the one that forced me to finally fully succumb to nausea -- was a photo showing Liza, clearly crying though her cloth gag, holding a blood splattered *Louisville slugger* in her hands while standing next to her mother. Mrs. Cromwell appeared to have been forcefully stripped down to her underwear and bound by her wrists to the ceiling fan above her. I could see cuts and bruises covering just about every square inch of her body. As well as this, her ribs appeared to be stoved almost completely inwards and her shoulders were dislocated and forced back at an angle I'd never even seen or known of before. The worst part of it, though, was her face. Well, let me clarify and say, what was *identifiable* of it. She, too, had the red clown face painted over her eyes and mouth, which was hanging open numbly and appeared to hang to one side, obviously broken. And to top it all off, there was a gruesome bloody gash visible on the left side of her head. The back of this one read, ***"What's a party without a piñata? Took her a few extra whacks, but eventually, the old bag broke! HA, HA, HA!"*** My breath became heavy. "Oh God, Liza..." I muttered before burying my face into my hands. "I need you to be straight with me, bud, because people have gotten *hurt* now. Possibly even worse. So I need you to tell me, right now, *anything* you might know as to who's doing this and why." "I... I..." I began stammering. My thoughts were scrambled so much that I couldn't even begin to form a coherent thought, much less try explaining everything about the clowns to him. "Who do you think would want to hurt you?" he pressed, to which I basically responded by tightly closing my eyes and shaking my head. I was desperately trying to filter out the horrific moment in the "[Balloon](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/n7g6ra/a_survivors_accounts_of_the_depraved_funhouse_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) Room" of HappyWorld and the shit from the photos. "Wh-When did this happen?" I asked meekly. "Shortly after we brought you home, when we were waiting on your folks." My stomach continued to turn over on itself. I couldn't stop myself from remembering the sirens and the urgent radio calls. "I-Is... Is she alright?" I sputtered, heart sinking lower and lower into my stomach. Officer Hagan was quiet for a moment, making me fear all the more what he'd tell me, before answering, "She's alive, but she's hurt pretty bad." "Can I go see her?!" I blurted out. Again, he paused with this, furrowing his brow at me. "That would be up to your folks. Right now, though, I need to know who these people are and why they targeted this young lady specifically." I felt my Adam's apple twitch in my throat. "It... It's... It's my fault!" "What do you mean?" "It's *me* they want." "Who and why?" I put my palms over my eyes and drew in a deep breath, shuddering. *Just tell the truth, damn it!* *("What if he doesn't believe me?")* *Just do it!* *(God... Why didn't I listen?)* Pulling out the defaced memorial photo of Derek from my pocket, I was about to begin recounting the horrors of HappyWorld when I noticed a series of rapidly blinking flashes coming from an opening in my closet door. I began to feel an even bigger tidal wave of dread flood ferociously throughout my body. *What the fuck?* "What is it?" he asked, evidently noticing the fright molded into my fade in that moment. I just looked over to the closet and pointed. He looked over and squinted his eyes before getting up from my bed. I shielded my eyes as he opened the closet door. The flashing intensified. For a moment, I felt like I was back in HappyWorld again. The strobe light blinding me while the air was being ripped straight from my lungs. The pounding of the sledgehammer just inches behind me... *"Gonna rip... your... guts out!"* "It's alright, you can come out now." Being jolted back to reality, I found that, during my little episode, I'd unwittingly buried myself under my covers. I slowly uncovered my head to find him standing in front of the open closet, inspecting what looked to be a small camera. "This thing was set on a repeating timer." He then began to open the back of the camera. "Out of film, too. Any idea how this got here?" Still in a state of pure shock, I shook my head at him. "No, look, can I *please* go now?" I urged, unsure my mind or body could take anymore of the immediate turmoil. That's when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. One of the other officers then opened up and asked to speak to officer Hagan in the hallway. He nodded and followed him out, closing the door and leaving me with the photos. Ten minutes later, they came back in and gathered the photos, telling me I could come downstairs with my parents. I obliged and when I reached the dining room, I saw that Ma was huddled into Dad's arms with the most horrified expression on her face that I'd ever seen -- from her, as well as anybody else. "M-Mom, what's going on?" I stammered. Already, my anxiety was once again spiking through the roof. She didn't respond, continuing to gaze in terror at the photo laying in front of her on the table. My heart nearly stopped dead in my chest when I saw that it was a snapshot of my mother in the kitchen. It, despite it being taken from outside the kitchen window, was somehow still close enough to fully capture her face -- which had been defaced like the others had with the red clown face. My hands started to shake again as I turned this one over. "Wh-Where did this come from?" On the back, it read, ***"Will mommy dearest let the little piggy come out to play? No... Well, guess we'll just have to make do with her!"*** My whole body went completely numb right then as I imagined Ma being the one strung up to the ceiling, repeatedly being battered like a... Like a... *"... Eventually the old bag broke..."* I all but launched myself like a rocket into Ma, wrapping my arms around her so tightly that, looking back, I'm almost surprised I didn't break her in half in that moment. "Are there any relatives nearby you could possibly stay with for a while?" officer Hagan asked. Dad shook his head, wrapping his own arms around me and Ma. "No, they're all in another state." "Then I'd recommend you folks check yourselves into a hotel somewhere for a few days while we scout the neighborhood. We'll give you a holler when we see that it's safe." "Understood." Dad replied. With that, the officers left. After they did, the three of us spent the next fifteen minutes or so semi-scrambling to pack a few necessary things for the time we'd be away. WE, of course, just settled on throwing together light baggage, figuring you know, we'd actually be back home after just a few days and things would maybe go back to what they were *before* this whole shitstorm. Once we'd all piled in the car, we drove for about half an hour to look for a hotel we could possibly afford to stay in for a few days. As we drove along, I began to notice something flashing. "What the--" Dad said, trying to shield his eyes while keeping control of the car. "Who is this guy flashing at?" I, too, was confused. It was still only early afternoon -- the sun was on full display. I turned around in the back seat, squinting my eyes, and I saw that it was a bicycle tailing behind us. I was two seconds from becoming hysterical. *Oh God, No... No, please...* Dad slowed down, probably thinking the person was trying to pass. I almost lost my shit then. I was already undoing my seat belt and was about to throw myself forward into the driver's seat when I actually saw the flashing bike pass right by us. When I looked ahead, still expecting to see the clown chick from before, I was surprised to see that it wasn't a clown at all. It was just some regular guy on his bike. For whatever reason, I saw that the bike was fitted with some kind of reflective tape that made it flash in the sunlight. "Damn kid," Dad quipped, annoyed, "Could've caused an accident with that shit." Despite this, it was still a full minute or more before my heartrate could somewhat steady itself out. By this point, you can only imagine the nausea I felt the rest of the way to the hotel. In fact, the first thing I actually did when we arrived was run like hell to the bathroom to empty out my stomach, even though I hadn't even eaten anything all morning. "Honey, are you okay?" Ma asked when she saw me come out of the lobby restroom. I didn't respond. I didn't have the energy or mental stability at the time to answer. I was tired. I just wanted to lay down. To be done with the day and the whole disaster in general. *(Wanting to run away...)* Dad got us checked into a room on the ground floor and we moved in. Clearly, I wasn't the only one drained by the stress to the point where, not even bothering with unpacking the luggage, they were passed out on the bed as soon as they entered the room. Me and Dad, both, were out like busted lightbulbs. Ma, I guess, though, was too spooked to sleep. Not that I could blame her. Really, I'm a bit surprised I wasn't wide awake with her. They were after her. They were coming for her, the same way they went after Liza. *All because of me...* *Why? Why do they want ME?!* This is honestly a question that carried on with me for the next few days. It was something I'd even wondered about before as well. I guess, in a way, it was part of the reason I couldn't ever answer anybody as to just *who* the hell these freaks were. I truly just *didn't know*. In any event, though, I remember how I wasn't asleep long. I woke up, I'd say about 20 minutes later, to see Ma watching TV. Her face was still as worried, as frightened, as it was when we'd gotten here. The TV was on some Cooking show. That'd always been sort of a weird little comfort for her. Anytime she'd be stressed, she'd cut on the TV and instantly turn to a cooking show. They'd usually somehow lull her to sleep after a while. Of course, this time, it didn't have that effect with her. What's almost funny is that, especially since I began writing this out, I've found myself doing much the same thing. *(And just like here, it hasn't done a damn thing for me. In either case, apple ain't falling too far from the tree, I guess...)* I snuggled next to her. She didn't make any move at first, almost like she didn't notice I was even there. Her eyes stayed deadlocked on the TV. Silent and motionless. "M-Mom?" I asked softly. She didn't acknowledge me. I asked again, a little louder this time. "Mom?" Nothing. I wasn't sure what to do from there. I wanted to ask her if she'd take me to the hospital. I wanted -- no, I *needed* \-- to see Liza. I needed to know if she was okay. At the same time, though, I guess I couldn't exactly blame my mother for not wanting to leave the hotel. At least there, you know, *she* was relatively safe. *They're after her...* This thought made me curl up again against her side, hugging her arm. *They're out there and they're after her. How will I see them coming? They've been able to evade the police even after all this time, how the hell are we supposed to stay safe from them?* *How the hell was I supposed to stay safe from them?* I let the silence hang for about another three or four minutes before I tried asking again. "Ma, c-can we go to the hospital?" This time, she actually broke from the TV to look at me. She no longer looked so much worried as she did more so confused. "The hospital? Why do you wanna go there, honey, what's wrong?" "It's not for me, Mom. I wanna make sure Liza's okay." Her face then fell back into one of worry. "Please Mom, I have to see if she's okay." "That's sweet of you, Linus, it really is, but we need to stay here where it's safe as much as we can." "But Mom, she's hurt because of me." I protested, knowing good and damn well that I wasn't gonna win this arguement. She *did* have a point, and I knew it -- even back then. "Sweetheart, I'm not going to argue with you, okay? I know you wanna see if your friend's okay, but right now, it's too dangerous to go outside." I could hear agitation building in her voice as she said this to me. I could tell it was everything she could do to not just go hysterical at me. "But mom--" "Enough, Linus!" she snapped. I shrank down, knowing I'd pushed too much. "I'm sorry, but the answer is no! I know you wanna do what you think is right and yes, I *am* worried about that little girl. Hell, I hope she *is* okay, given everything she's lost now. But goddamn it, *you're* my son, *MY CHILD,* and I'm *not* gonna put you in danger just over her, okay?! *YOU* still have your mother to protect you, and she doesn't! Do you *want* to be without that?!" My eyes went wide. "W-W-Without?" I stammered, quivering. Ma's own face then dissolved into one of realization. Obviously, she'd slipped up without meaning to. She must've meant to keep Mr. and Mrs. Cromwell's deaths to herself. From there, Ma melted into tears again, burying her face in her palms. Seeing this made me want to break down and cry with her. I didn't want to be without her. That's why I was scared. But at the same time, I knew I couldn't just up and forget about Liza. It's my fault she was now both in the hospital *and an orphan! (Not even when I fucking wanted to...)* "I'm sorry, Mom." I whimpered. "I don't wanna anything to happen to you. I need you. I just want Liza to be okay, too." She looked up at me. I could tell she wanted to see my point of view, even if I could also see hers. In other words, we both had a point, but neither of us could agree on what the right decision was; whether to stay put or try to make sure Liza was okay. Dad woke up soon after and asked what was going on. I quickly filled him in. He exchanged looks between me and Ma. Sighing, he said "Your mother has a point, son. We don't know who these people are, and you won't tell us." I lowered my head, defeated. "However," he said, looking to Ma, "I *can* understand that he's only wanting to do the right thing, aren't you, sport?" I looked up, nodding. "Yeah, I just wanna know that she's okay." "Here's what we'll do then. Linus, get dressed. I'm going to take you for a *short* visit." I could see Ma about to speak out in protest, but dad held up his hand, stopping her. "Just long enough to make sure she's gonna be okay. Then I'll bring you back and we'll stay here until officer Hagan says the house is safe to come back. Sound fair?" I looked to Ma. I could tell she wasn't on board with the idea at all. "I promise, dear, I'll be with him the entire time." Dad said. To this, she finally lowered her head, relenting. I did as I was told and got dressed. Afterwards, we headed out. On the way out of the room, I heard Ma call out, "I love you, *please* be safe!" Dad replied that we would and to lock the door. It was about a 10-20 minute drive from the hotel to the hospital and I spent pretty much the entire time in a complete daze. I couldn't stop wondering what state she'd be in when I saw her. Hell, would I even be able to see her? What if she'd passed by the time we got there? I wondered, too, if she *was* still alive, would she be able to even talk to me? More than that, though, would she even *want* to. *"You KNEW!"* Those words echoed in my head. *(They still do...) "I HATE YOU!"* *Liza, I'm so sorry! Please be okay!* When we pulled into the hospital parking lot, it was everything I could do to not just throw open the door and make a mad dash inside. Dad got out and the two of us walked together to the front desk and asked for Liza's room. "Name?" the receptionist asked. "James Davies." Dad replied. "And this is my son, Linus." I watched the receptionist type our names on the keyboard. "And are you kin to the patient?" she asked. "No ma'am," I said, "Liza's a friend of mine from the neighborhood and I heard she was here. I would like to see if she's okay." The receptionist gave me the plastic smile that already told me what she was going to say. "I'm sure she'd appreciate the thought, however, I'm afraid we can't let you in to see her without parental or legal consent." I looked to Dad. Truthfully, I don't know why, looking back. What the hell was *he* gonna be able to do? He confirmed this when he gave me his own look that said "Sorry, kiddo, no can do". I hung my head down. Dad patted my shoulder and said, "Come on, son, I'm sure she'll be okay. You'll be able to see her again when she's out of the hospital." I turned and was about to head out with Dad when I stopped and turned back toward the receptionist and asked, "Is she?" For a moment, the receptionist looked at me, puzzled. "Okay, I mean. Is she... you know..." The receptionist smiled again. "That's very sweet, young man. Yes, she is. That's all I'm at liberty to share." "Okay, thank you." She nodded at me before returning to her computer. Me and Dad left after that. As we were heading out to the car, however, I saw something that instantly killed any sort of relief I *might've* built up. It was a bicycle. A bright, sunny yellow bicycle and the side of it was painted that all too familiar smile. My eyes widened and I stopped. *Oh God, No...* At first, I tried to convince myself maybe I was just seeing things. You know how when your mind is so fixated on something, especially if it's traumatizing, you'll start thinking you're seeing or hearing things related to it? "P.T.S.D.", right? Well, that's what I *hoped* it was. But when I actually went and took a closer look, nope, not an illusion. It was real. It was *them, their bike!* They were in the hospital! *Oh no, LIZA!* "Linus, what's wrong?" I heard my Dad ask. I didn't answer. Instead, I instantly broke into a sprint back into the hospital. My mind was a complete blur. I halfway wasn't even aware I was running or where the hell I was even going. I sure as hell didn't know what I was even planning to do if I *did* actually run into one of the clowns. I didn't care, though. I was a dog chasing a car. I had one goal and one goal only on my mind. I *had* to get to Liza before they did, no matter what. In the hallway, I saw a petite young woman with red hair talking to the receptionist. She had almost milky white skin and her hair was almost the color of a crayon. Even before she actually turned and winked at me, I knew exactly who it was. It was the bicycle clown. She didn't have any makeup on, but damn it, I knew it was her and I knew where she was headed. I had ton stop her before she did. To my credit, I actually managed to make it all the way in and through the lobby before two of the security guards had me by my arms and were dragging me back to the front door. "Wait!" I cried. "You have to let me go! She's in danger!" It did me no good to struggle or plead, though. They weren't gonna let me go and their grips on my shoulders might as we have been that of a bear trap's. Dad was in the lobby, having tried to chase after me. "Son, what the hell were you doing?!" he exclaimed. "Dad, it's them! They're here and their trying to get Liza!" "Who, Linus? *WHO'S* after her?" I squinted my eyes. My head felt on the verge of exploding. *"The clowns!"* I cried. Dad just stood there, dumbfounded. "The what?" he asked. "The clowns, Dad. They're after me and her. One of them was on a bicycle, chasing after me yesterday. Now she's here!" He just blinked at me. "Look, please, Dad, you *have* to believe me!" "Son, calm down, okay." He stepped forward, outstretching his hand to me. "No, Dad!" I exclaimed, reeling away from him. "I *have* to get to her before they do!" "Son it's time to go. We need to--" "Damn it, why won't you listen to me!" I cried. His eyes grew in shock. I, myself, winced. I'd never talked back to either of my folks like this -- *FAR* less actually *cursed* at them. I stood frozen. I didn't want to move. *Not until I knew Liza was safe.* Unfortunately, I'd get absolutely no sort of say in the matter because Dad immediately, and firmly, jerked me by my arm and more or less dragged me out of the hospital. "Let me go!" I screamed, pitifully struggling against Dad's gorilla grip. Finally, he stopped and positioned me to face him. His face was one of what I can only accurately describe as sheer anxiety. "Linus, that's enough, okay?" "But Dad, we can't just--" "*I SAID THAT'S ENOUGH!"* he shrieked. My body went limp. All the desire to resist was gone. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Look, son," he said, "We're gonna go back to the hotel room now, and we're not going to be leaving it again unless *absolutely necessary* until officer Hagan says we can come home. That's all there is to it, okay? I don't wanna hear any more about Liza, or these "clowns" of yours, got it?" "But..." I started. I wanted so badly to plead my case, to tell him that I was telling the truth and that Liza was in very real danger. His almost frightening look of agitation quickly shot that thought in the back of its head and my head dropped. "Y-Y-Yes... Yes sir." I said, my voice breaking. *I only wanted to help.* *(Like how I "helped" Derek...)* *"Linus... Run!"* The whole car ride back to the hotel room was tense, to say the least. Actually, being more accurate, I'd describe it as "surreal". Like with everything else that went on, none of this shit felt like it could possibly be real. I was honestly halfway waiting for the point where I'd wake up from this... *Whatever* this was. *(The point where I'd be able to forget...)* For the 45 minutes or so I spent in the backseat on the way back to the hotel, I was locked in a state of entropy. Emptiness. It was like a lightswitch to my brain had been flipped and now, there was absolutely nothing. Nothing, except for the voices from that day in HappyWorld. \*\*\* *"Do you care for this boy's life?"* *"Please... Just let us go..."* *"Uh, oh, somebody's not happy..."* *"...I think the little piggy needs a balloon! Would you like that, piggy?"* *(God no, please... Not this!)* ***"Would you like a balloon!"*** \*\*\* I was brought back to reality when I heard Dad calling my name, for what must've been the third or fourth time, given the slight aggravation in his voice (he never *was* one to like repeating himself, and that was *without* incidents like at the hospital). "Huh?" I said. "Come on, we're back." He then got out and made his way back in the hotel. I followed very slowly behind him. When we got back to the room, we found Ma sitting in front of the TV. Now, however, it wasn't on a cooking show. In its place now was a breaking news broadcast. "Hey, hon, what's--" Dad was cut off when Ma held up her hand, silencing him. On the screen read the headline **"Abduction in local Tennessee hospital."** Instantly, my attention was fixed on the screen. A man was on screen saying "Just a half hour ago, authorities were alerted to a disturbance in the downtown hospital." My heart began hammering. "Authorities are currently in the process of securing the patients and medical staff. Sources have claimed that at least two doctors, two security personell, and a receptionist have all been killed, with possibly more having been critically wounded, and that one of the patients has been confirmed to have been kidnapped. The missing patient was confirmed to be 10 year old Liza Cromwell, who was in the ICU at the time of her abduction." The footage showed the struggle in the lobby area. I watched as a woman with bright, crayon red hair -- *THE* girl with red hair -- went ballistic, pulling out a knife from her pocket and viciously stabbing the receptionist in the throat before doing the same to the two security guards who'd stopped me before. I couldn't believe it. I.. I just *couldn't!* *The hospital... But... But we were JUST THERE!* I was right, and now Liza was gone. Taken to do only God knew what with. I wanted to save her. *(It was all my fault!)* "At this time," the reporter continued, now displaying the faces of Liza and the bicycle clown girl, "Authorities are actively searching for Liza Cromwell. Reports have deduced her kidnapper to be that of Francine Withers, who's priors include Aggravated assult, Assault with a deadly weapon, and felony drug possession. Authorities have advised that, if spotted, do not attempt to engage the suspect. They've advised instead to call the number on the screen immediately to alert authorities with the location as well as the license plate numbers of the vehicle. I repeat, if you spot or have any knowledge on the whereabouts of either Francine or her captive, please dial the number on your screen immediately. We'll be updating on the situation as it develops." "Oh my God." Ma said. "What're we gonna do?" "We can't. There's nothing we can do except to stay here until we get the call saying it's okay to return to the house." Ma turned then from Dad to me. "Linus, honey, are you okay?" she asked. I didn't reply. Truth be told, looking back, I honestly can't even remember really hearing her. I was just *that* tuned out from everything around me. My mind was blank. Empty. I was only pulled out of this trance when I felt Ma shaking me, calling out my name. "Linus! Speak to me, are you okay?!" "I... I... I was trying to... They.... They got her..." That was all I had the capacity to say before I just up and blacked out. That was it. My brain had hit its breaking point and it just couldn't take anymore, so it just cut out. Obviously, I can't really say just how long I was actually out. I do remember, however, that when I *did* wake up again, it was pitch dark outside. Ma and Dad were fast asleep on either side of me. I just laid there. I couldn't move. I still felt really loopy, the way you might feel coming off of a roller coaster. My body felt extremely stiff as well, like bricks of lead had been stuffed inside each of my limbs. I stared at the ceiling. *What am I going to do?* I began to wonder. *What CAN I do? I can't just sit here, can I? I have to save Liza. But how?* Despite my body's refusal to move, my head was swimming, agitated. I wanted to do something. I *needed* to do something. But what? The longer I looked up at the ceiling, the more I could faintly hear the kids from my nightmares again. \*\*\* "Smile for us!" *No, go away!* "Smile, for us! Smile for Satan!" *Stop it!* *"Now we'll both smile forever, Linus!"* Derek's voice blended in with the cacophony around. All of the disembodied voices all just surrounded me, with Derek's taking center stage. Then, from amid the chaos, I began to hear Liza screaming. *"Help me! Linus! Save me!"* This, and everything else soon dissolved away behind a chorus of crazed laughter. I shook my head furiously, but it was no good. I couldn't get any of it out of my head.

Beware the dust

y8hlzx

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8hlzx/beware_the_dust/

When you live in places like West Idaho or East Oregon for long enough, near small towns like Vale or Parma or Weiser, you start to learn the unspoken rules of the land. You learn the summer sun hits harder than an angry mule. You learn that some winters can be so cold that snow refuses to fall. And you learn that there's at least one day of every year, sometime in the middle of September, that God likes to turn on the fans of heaven at full blast over the state. Idaho's one of the furthest places north of the Continental 48 that you can actually find tornadoes. There's just something about the land here and along the valley into Malheur County in Oregon that just shapes the wind into a constant funnel, pushing it along at dangerously high speeds during some parts of the year. And during that time in the beginning of what most folks call Fall is when it gets to be particularly nasty. The only thing nastier than the wind is probably the dust. I think it has something to do with the sun. The way it beats down on the earth. You notice it way more often in the summer at any rate. On fields that haven't been set for harvest, covered in weeds but untouched by the notorious cheat grass that tends to grow worse than black mold in an old apartment. The dust lies there, exposed, finer than flour with next to no grit. When you walk in it, it seeps through into your shoes, getting past your socks and into your feet. And it stings like a mother. Almost like it's eating you alive. \* I was five or six years old when I saw my first dust storm. We were living a ways away from an old town called Vale, about a half an hour's drive from the Idaho border into Oregon. It had been in the early morning, in my grandparents' house on a ranch that my familiy bought but could have been there since before dirt even had a name. You never realize that you take the sky for granted until it turns brown. The wind roared across the flats and over the hills like a stampeding herd. Weeds and shrubs were pulled up and thrown aside like they were made of paper, and even the trees threatened to come down as all greenery was stripped from them and their smaller branches tore off into the gale. Though I was still young I held that memory vividly. No passage in the Bible could compare to that horrible throng of wind and fury that was imprinted into my childlike mind. As I walked up to the giant window that made up my grandfolks' living room wall, pressing my nose against the glass, I thought I could see something. It was like an imprint into the brown, the dust pulling free form the Earth through the force of the gale. The shape was no taller than I was, but it was vaguely human. Almost like somebody was standing there, buffeted against the dust and the wind. Just looking back at me. "Get away from the window, boy!" Before I knew it I was pulled back away from the glass and plopped on an armchair as my grandfather hurriedly closed the blinds, shutting us away from that everpresent turmoil of brown fury outside. I was confused and about to ask who it was standing outside, but even at six I seemed to recognize that sharp, worried look upon my grandfather's form for what it was. The way his breath caught in his chest, his eyes darted between the window and the blinds. "You listen to me, boy," he told me, sharp and stern like a drill instructor - that tone he would make whenever I did something wrong or had to pay attention like when he was working with dangerous farm equipment that could get me hurt if I strayed to close - "Stay away from them windows in a storm. You see brown out, you go to your room or the back wall, and keep the windows closed. Got it?" "Yes, sir," I said in a small voice. Mom and dad always told me to listen to grandpa and grandma, especially when they got stern. The farm always had some kind of dangers for a small boy like myself. My grandfather softened a bit when he saw I got the message and took me to the kitchen to fix up a bowl of cereal for breakfast. I knew better than to ask more than I should, but I couldn't shake the feeling or the memory of what I saw. The figure in the dust, my age and my height, staring through the window. Straight at me. \* It wouldn't be for another ten years before I saw the figures in the dust again. Mom and dad had a falling out with my grandpa and we moved into the city for a while. Though the wind can be just as bad at that time in September, in places like Boise there was never dust. Not like back in Vale. Something about the river being nearby I guess. My grandparents would eventually sell the ranch and move on down state, and I treated the old memory like a childhood dream. I was about 15 when my dad decided to take us on a trip to see cousins up north in some of the old towns near Hell's Canyon. We passed a number of small towns with small names like Midvale, Council, Indian Valley. We kept driving off the back roads until we reached a tiny yellow house on a plot of land beside a dirt road, out in the middle of nowhere. It was a far cry from the city like Boise or Meridian, but something in my blood woke back up then - drawn by the familiar sites of rangeland, barbed wire fencing, and cattle pens alongside barns with the whinnies of horses and the bleating of sheep. We were visiting an uncle who I barely remember meeting and cousins I hadn't seen since I was a toddler. A three day weekend of farm life, good food, and no traffic. A veritable frontier paradise. It was on the second day out there with my cousins. Ben was about my age and Joey was a little younger. They had been plying me with all sorts of questions about what life was like in the big city the day before, and today they decided to take me out hiking over to the backwoods near the farm. It was a great day of boys just being boys, playing with sticks, finding weird-looking rocks, occasionally sighting tracks of elk along the trail. It wasn't unitl we were on our way back that I noticed the quiet. The birds had suddenly stopped calling and even the leaves seemed to hush. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I looked around at my cousins apprehensively. They felt it too. Ben was the first to say that we should head back. Joey wanted to look at the track that we had just found a little longer but I was quick to agree. Everything just felt off, and I could hear a distant rumbling not quite unlike that of thunder. We decided to avoid the trail altogether and go the quick way home by cutting through an old field that had been left out of seed that year. We cut past the treeline and headed for the house, ducking under some old barbed wire as we hurried. I felt a bit of the sharp metal tug a hole into my shirt and winced at a scratch. I didn't even think about the potential for tetanus or at my mom being angry at a ruined shirt, as my focus was more on what was approaching fast from the west. It was like a massive, transparent wall was speeding across the landscape. Scattered branches, weeds, and other debris was picked up and thrown aside as it came. As it passed over the range it brought up with it clouds of dust that seemed to swallow all else in its path. And it was headed our way. I barely had time to register the stinging bite in my feet as the three of us ran in a panic. The dust beneath us seemed to be biting through my shoes almost hungrily, easily passing through the foam and rubber and going up through the denim of my jeans. My tongue felt like a dry rag in my mouth as I panted. Ben and I had just managed to cross the barbed wire fence and over the creek by the time the wall of wind hit us. The closest I could compare it was to a car accident when my mom had picked me up from school. The sudden thud, followed by a wave of shock that made your bones shudder and grit your teeth, knocked me off my feet. If I hadn't already been partway in the ditch, I swear it would have sent me airborne. I got up and tried to get my bearings as I suddenly felt like the very world was tipping me off balance from the sheer strength of the wind. "Joey! Joey, get out of there!" It was then that I turned to realize that Joey hadn't made it past the fence with us when the storm hit. He had stumbled and lost his footing in the dust by the time we had crossed the barbed wire fence. In our panic I hadn't even realized that he had lagged behind. The whole sky became a shade brown, like the ugly paint of an old office building's wallpaper. The wind seemed to howl and shriek like a wailing banshee, threatening to pull us off the ground and into the sky like plastic bags. And with it carried the dust. The whole field that we had just been running across seemed to come alive, rising with the wind like a terrible fog. It quickly enveloped Joey within its suffocating embrace. One minute he had been getting to his feet and was turning to run towards us, and the next he was gone. And then we heard the screaming. Ben called out to his younger brother, trying to raise his voice above the roaring wind. I couldn't make a sound. I watched with horror as the shapes within the dust moved with a life of their own. Shapes like clawed hands and cackling, child-like faces tearing into the screaming form of Joey as they tore him to pieces. It was like something out of a horror movie, played out before us in slow motion as bits of skin, muscle, and clothing tore free into the wind. Occasionally the dark shape of a rib cage or a skull with hair peered through the dust as Joey's screams echoed through the roaring gale. \* I don't know how long Ben and I were out there in the storm for, but it was starting to get dark by the time I remember being back in the safety of the house. We were both caked in dirt from head to toe, and it took ages for us to get it all off. My shoes were a mess and had looked like they had been eaten through by rats. My feet were bleeding. They never did find Joey's body. Search parties went through the entire landscape for two whole weeks before the search was called off. They didn't even find any bones, even despite us telling them where to look. I heard his dad had that whole plot of land dug for years after without ever finding a trace. Ben was never the same after that. Hardly ever spoke, said he blamed himself last time I ever heard him talk about Joey again. He went into the construction industry when he got out of school and spent most of his nights in bars and strip clubs, drinking his misery away. They later found his body in the Boise River. He was only 27. Mom and dad quietly decided that we were done with country life. We made our ends meet in a small apartment in Meridian until I graduated and moved out. I have a family of my own now. My wife talks about how she wants a quiet life on a farm away from the hustle and bustle of the city. I quietly try to talk her out of it, but that doesn't stop us from occasionally going out to Hell's Canyon for quick vacation trips in the summer. But every September, when the leaves start to turn color and God decides it's time to turn the fans over Idaho, I keep indoors with the blinds tightly shut. Even out here in the city, away from the farms and fields left to the weeds and the sagebrush, there's occasionally enough dust picked up to turn the sky a little brown. And every now and again I see them, through the glass, standing across on the road or in a construction lot in town. The shapes of people, standing invisibly, silhouetted by the dust. Staring at me. Waiting for me to join them.

I saw the end of the world... but it truly began when I survived. (Part 1)

y8m6ah

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y8m6ah/i_saw_the_end_of_the_world_but_it_truly_began/

Were these demons or were they angels? Or were they something else entirely and to this day, I still ask myself, if I will see them again, and if I will ever find the answer. ​ You ever have those dreams where you try to fly, but whenever you try to prove it to someone, you can't even get off the ground? You have those dreams, that as soon as you enter the dream world, you don't know exactly where you are or how it began. You're just there. Sometimes its plot after plot, no true connection to one another, no true rhyme or reason. And when you wake up, details begin to fade, and it slowly becomes an ebbing memory? That's how I used to dream. But this one shook the very foundations of what I thought to be my normal. This was years ago, and I still remember every detail as vivid as it was the first night I saw it. And I had no idea it would continue.... My name is Dante. And maybe this was my own journey through Hell. My ex girlfriend, Laura, and her current girlfriend, Amber, were friends with me at this time. I was still close to Laura and supportive of her hobbies, safe to say. One of them being, Laura and Amber were witches. Not the kind to brew potions in cauldrons and dance in the woods in the pale moonlight in only their birthday suits, but they had a coven, and I had a dream.... and it's stuck with me ever since. We had taken a trip up the east coast for this event. As far as I knew, it was essentially Woodstock for wiccans. On the outskirts was a small town, the '*bathtub*', as one could call it. The town was on the edge of a small mountain range, situated within a valley by the sea. The town was full of Venetian buildings surrounding a square, gift shops, tiki huts, and about a dozen places families could stock up on emergency sunscreen rations and fresh oysters. It was colorful and almost too touristy for my tastes, however, the one place that stuck out like a sore thumb was the abandoned pub in the far back. It had seen better days. It's dark, rotting wood contrasting the whites and pastels painting the small town. People often called the pub, "*the portal"*. The "*portal*" earning it's name, because it operated as a '*door*' to a secret path leading up to the cliffside. Few and in between knew about it, and when we had arrived at the '*bathtub*', it was evening. Laura and Amber adorned black robes, and I couldn't help but hide a subtle giggle. They were really serious about this wiccan thing. See, I had collected crystals and stones on occasion, looked into self help books for spirituality, laid back, watched the stars, looked for UFOs, and occasionally would talk to nature just on my own time. I wasn't huge into the wiccan lifestyle, nor would I even consider myself one. I thought for a moment, maybe they did take this thing too seriously. Black robes? What next, wands? I was about to crack a joke when I saw more people in black robes appear, and they were all walking towards the pub. It was then that I began to feel a little unnerved. Was this a cult? Was I a human sacrifice? Why the living hell was a squib like me invited? I paused to regain some illusion of common sense when something started scratching at the back of my mind. Itching and crawling. Like something was watching me. I brushed it off and rejoined Laura and Amber. We crossed the small town and upon arriving at the '*door*', there were three figures donned in the black robes, posing as gate keepers. I started searching in my satchel for a few bucks - of course there was a cover pay for this kind of event- wasn't there? I heard a chuckle and glanced up. There was one who was lanky and thin, his skin mottled and grey, his eyes sunken into his skeletal appearance. Another looked near identical, his eyes empty and void of emotion and life. The third, was tall and broad, and heavy set. He was bald, and his face was painted like a harlequin. He had red lips, stretched into a grin, blue eyeshadow reaching up to his brows. What bothered me about them wasn't their appearance. I had seen plenty of people of the sort after having spent the better half of a decade volunteering at the Rocky Horror Picture Show. But what sent chills down my spine, were there eyes, locked on me at all times. If I didn't know any better, I would have said they were '*Harpies*'. They didn't speak. They allowed me to enter and follow Laura and Amber into the '*portal*.' We arrived on the other side - rather, through a door in the back of the pub, leading off onto the beaten path towards the cliffside. It was when I was taking in the view, that I finally had started to feel the tension in my shoulders ease and the gnawing sensation at the back of my brain begin to fade. As I glanced around the premises, I holstered a chuckle. I was right about the Woodstock for Wiccans thing. Several hundred people in identical robes gathered on the cliffside, the '*portal*' having led us to a stunning overlook of the Atlantic and far away islands. Despite being so close to the small tourist town, the sky was blanketed in stars, the thick foliage filtering any light pollution that was heinous enough to try and obstruct the view. Entranced in the stars, I sat down on a patch of grass as Laura and Amber rushed off to mingle with the others and I lit a cigarette. I would let them do what they needed to, soak up a few moon rays and enjoy the view. I had no idea I had front row seats to the end of everything as I had known. Minutes turned into an hour, and I continued to watch the stars, smoking cigarettes, locked in my own mind and sense of peace. As I was becoming lost in the constellation of Orion, I started to see something... off, appear in the sky. Like someone had stuck a pin in the blanket of night, a new star had appeared. Right as I was about to grab my phone and google as to which star it was, or possible planet, I noticed it getting brighter. And *larger*. I stood. I was certain I had seen UFOs in the past, but this was different. This was like any other old dream I had had before, watching the night sky turn into a rain of fire as the universe came crumbling down. I waited for the earth to tremble and the first of many meteors to strike. But they didn't come. And it was quiet. Far too quiet. As I became transfixed on this growing star, I saw many others appear behind it, dozens, hundreds, then thousands. I fought to find my voice, "H-Hey! Look!" I don't know who I was talking to, but I pointed and yelled again, "Hey! Everyone, look!" And everyone did. And there we stood, hundreds of people in silly black robes, and one singular man in ratty jeans and a tee shirt, staring at the sky, transfixed on the stars that had turned into a figure. I don't know where Laura or Amber had gone. I no longer cared. The figure was monstrous and beautiful. A crown of stars adorned a massive head, a winged creature perched on the figure's shoulder. For the life of me, I cannot remember a face. Nor the words the figure in the stars had spoken as they tremble upon us like thunder and lightning. The ones in black had all knelt, praying, becoming a chorus of praise for this figure. *Was this why we had come?* *Or was this... something else?* As the figure continued, and the witches prayed, I saw the something else. It was red. Glowing hot and bright, appearing over the left side of the crown of stars. And I suddenly had the instinct to run. But I couldn't move. All I could do was watch as the red star was consumed into shadow. Hundreds of shadows that were moving, flapping, and swarming our way. The figure screamed, and one word did register. "Judgment." The first of the black winged creatures tore into the first robed person it could get its claws into. Tearing its inky teeth into their throat, consuming them and their soul in one crushing bite. The crowd erupted into chaos. Hundreds of winged humanoid creatures descended upon the cliffside, tearing black from black, turning the dark into a flood of red. I tried to find Amber and Laura. The stars had disappeared. The figure had gone. All that was left was bloodshed. Black figures, left and right. Some human, some not. But through the chaos, I saw them again. The three. The one with red lips, smiling. All three, taking a stroll through the end of the world. Towards *me*. I dashed away. I had to find Laura and Amber. I had to get them - or at least, Laura, to safety. I rushed past bodies and figures, and demonic faces with no eyes, only inky black teeth. I finally found them, rushing back down the hill towards the portal. Laura was quicker. She had almost made it back to the pub, but I caught sight of Amber lagging behind, struggling to keep up. And that was when a creature, claws poised, ready to tear into her flesh, leapt upon her back. I froze. I was never proud of this thought. It was a fraction of a second, and locked in the moment, I realized it was what I had always wished. Any way to get Amber out of the picture, to regain the life I once had with Laura. Without Amber, I wouldn't have spent so many nights questioning my own self worth. Without Amber, I would still be happy. Without Amber, I would have still been Laura's number one. I could easily watch and let the creature devour her. Later, comfort Laura in her loss, and become hers once more. But as my legs propelled me instinctively down the hill, I had suddenly come to the realization that Amber's life was worth more than mine. I sprang onto the back of the creature, fighting against its flapping, skeletal wings. Driven by absolute primal instinct, I tore the demon away from Amber. It screamed. It's hideous maw was inches from my face, and eyeless, black head staring into me and into my soul. For a brief moment, man and demon remained interlocked. And then, like some ungodly force had pushed me, I sank my teeth into its throat. It writhed, it's bat like wings slapping me, until the weight of the creature had becoming void. I fell away, and watched it dissolve before my very eyes, into dust. Amber was long gone, as was Laura. Both had safely reached the portal. I breathed a sigh of relief, reaching up to wipe the sweat from my brow and the black ooze from my mouth. My skin was stained with the blood of the creature. My fingers black as if I had dipped them in ink. And the ink was *growing*. Spreading. Spider webbing up my arms to my shoulders. And I buckled to the ground as giant blades stabbed through my back, forcing their way out of me. Like something wished to be birthed- I felt no pain. Only fear. And I reached back to find what had emerged. I felt blood. And scale. Too consumed with fear as to what I was becoming, I turned away from the direction of the portal - my newly found wings flapped, propelling me off the ground- and I flew, desperate to find shelter within the trees. Or was this something worse? A vision? I don't know how I fell asleep or when, or if I ever dreamed. *Was this a dream?* I woke up at dawn under a fallen oak tree. I stared upon my black flesh, overcome with a shudder. *Guess not.* I gathered myself and decided to make my way to the portal again. The cliffside was empty. The sky was blue, the grass was... red. The blood and the black being vast and vivid reminders of the previous night. I was alone. I returned to the portal, and coming out the other side of the dilapidated pub, I found that it was abandoned. Masked in grey and red. What was once lively and colorful had been stripped of life. I knew calling for my folks would be moot. Part of me had known since it had began, that this was it. The end of all things. But I wasn't sad. I couldn't tell you why. I hardly felt anything. With no direction, no clue as to where I could go, I returned to the pub, hoping that perhaps, it would have answers. Spoiled beer and broken beams were not the answers I was looking for. I read the graffiti in the bathroom, searching for the smallest clues. And then, I saw a mirror. And saw myself. My natural black hair was white. My eyes, void and black, my skin, as dark as the night. I no longer recognized myself. But what disturbed me, wasn't my appearance. Instead, it was how... happy I was. How entranced I was in my own reflection. And then it moved. My reflection smiled back. Tears leaked from his eyes. His lips parted. He wanted to speak. And then light cut through the darkness of the pub. There, in the threshold of the light, were the Harpies. "Who are you?" I had asked. "What's happening here?" The one with the red smile offered a hand, "Come with us." And I went.

Sometimes getting home is not an easy walk in the park.

y87qd7

nosleep

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y87qd7/sometimes_getting_home_is_not_an_easy_walk_in_the/

The transit system in my city sucks. Any buses take at least forty-five minutes to get to the university to my cheap apartment but if I walked through the park, it would only take fifteen minutes. After a full day of classes, and working I hated walking home. But I also wanted to get into bed as fast as possible. Dragging my tired feet along, I made the long trek through the park almost every night. I did come across some homeless men asking for change. Being a broke student, I couldn't give them much. Though I could give them sandwiches from my job that were just going to be thrown out at the end of the night. Most of them appreciated the gesture. One man named Eddie always thanked me and walked along with me for a few minutes making sure I got through the darker part of the park safely. Because of his overall manner, I fretted over his motives until I realized he was a pretty decent guy under his appearance. I started to get worried when a few days went by and I didn’t see any of the regulars in the park. That wasn’t unusual. Sometimes the cops ran them out thinking they were doing drugs or creating a mess. The homeless men only quietly drank and collected bottles or cans along the path. Honestly, those men were the ones taking care of the park better than the paid city workers. My room mates were thankful for the leftovers to grabbed from work that should have gone to the regulars, but I still wondered about the men I’d slowly become friendly with. As I walked along the dark path one night, I thought I saw a figure following behind me. I wasn’t alarmed because I thought it was one of the men. From the smell drifting on the wind, and how the figure stumbled behind I felt positive there wasn’t any danger. I just kept my music playing as I walked a little bit faster. I did think those homeless men were harmless, but sometimes they got awkward to be around if they were wasted or in a bad mood. After my long day of work, I didn’t want to deal with a tense interaction. I nearly reached a light post when I thought I heard a noise over my music. I turned it off and looked over my shoulder just in time to see a pale figure running down the path. Something that looked pale and human and not any of the men I’ve come across before. The figure let out a heart stopping scream and I bolted. My legs and chest burned right away. I might be able to stand serving food for eight hours but that didn’t mean I could run for any length of time. The thing close on my heels as I started to feel dizzy from the effort of running. I tripped over my own feet when I reached the light. My elbows and knees hitting the paved ground hard. I saw stars from the impact for a few moments. Panting, I looked around trying to see what made me run in the first place. My eyes darted around in the dark, my head swimming. I expected to see that figure again, but nothing moved on the path. I forced my breathing to slow at least until I saw what I may have missed if I’d been walking down the path. Being on the ground made it so I could see under some bushes. A smell hit my nose the same time I saw a dark color staining the grass and leaves. A face stared back from under the bush, eyes lifeless and mouth open in a silent scream. I knew the face as one of the regulars in the park. I choked on air and my hand flew to my pocket trying to find my phone. To my horror, my pockets was empty. My phone had flown out when I crashed to the ground. I started to sit up to look for it and another scream came causing my body to freeze. A blur of white came leaping out from the bush. I raised my arms in a useless defence. Another body came down on top of mine, forcing us both to the ground. I screamed for help, praying that anyone could hear. Those screams replaced by cries of pain as the creature thrashed trying to bite my face sank their teeth into my palm. I hooked one arm under the neck, using all my strength to keep the face up and from it ripping out my throat. I tried to use a thumb to dig into the eye socket but the pale thing bit me first. I kicked trying to get it off, shocked at how heavy the creature felt even though it looked impossibly thin. We struggled with each other in a desperate messy attempt towards our own goals. The pale monster wanted to eat me and I wanted to get the hell away. Without any weapons or any knowledge of how to deal with a situation like this, I would be bound to fail. Tears clouded my vision as the thing tore into my hand even deeper, causing blood to spray and for me to scream to loudly it hurt my throat. My heart almost stopping from fear. Just as I thought I would be torn apart by those sharp teeth and claws; a sound rang out as the thing collapsed. Someone had walked over and smashed a bent steel pipe against my attacker's skull. I scrambled away, crying and holding my torn-up hand as another person dragged the monster off and in the middle of the light. I flinched hearing the steel pipe coming down again and again. I couldn’t even look up to see my rescuer fully from the stress and fear. Body trembling uncontrollably, I listened as the creature's head got smashed in until there was nothing left. Finally, I looked up, and movement caught my eyes. Another one of those lankly pale things came screaming from outside the light towards the one who saved me. It was nearly naked, skin a pale grey with blue veins showing. The hair falling out in clumps leaving a messy greasy mess behind. The mouth opened so wide it might be able literally bite off someone’s entire head. Hands out stretched, it leapt into the light. The steel pipe came down, knocking the pale monster out of midair and it landed front of my legs. I let out a yelp of fear as the pipe made short work of the second monster. Blood spraying from the wound from each swing. Grey brain matter spilling out causing the creature to twitch for a few seconds. As grateful as I felt over not getting eaten, my body reacted from such a gory sight. I turned, throwing up my small dinner to the side. When I emptied out my stomach, I looked up at the man holding the pipe. His appearance strange, but I didn’t see just how strange until I stopped shaking long enough to get a good look. Aside from the pipe, he didn’t have any weapons. It was as if he picked up the first thing he found on the ground to use to kill these monsters. He wore white gloves now stained with blood and rust from the pipe. His sharp dress shoes also stained with blood. He wore a suite, but that wasn't what made my brain almost shut down. His face hidden by a large bunny mascot face. One ear up, and one ear down. The bunny’s eyes massive and looked too freaky to be cute. Like, the person designing the mask wanted it to be cute, but went overboard causing it to look menacing with the large eyes. The blood now splattered on the white fur didn’t help. As I stared, I noticed something off, I couldn’t see any eye holes. How the hell did this guy see out of the mask, especially in the dark? In the distance, I heard sirens. My shoulders dropped all the tension I felt for a second when I thought I was going to be saved. Cops would show up, and I could go to the hospital for my hand. I opened my mouth to question the man, and to thank him when he dropped the pipe. With one swift movement, he’d closed the distance and kicked his foot against my chest to I fell back to the ground. I didn’t have a chance to move as he knees pined both my arms down. I opened my mouth to scream again as one gloved hand covered it, muffling the noise. I fought for my life, and didn’t move the mask wearing weirdo an inch. He lifted his hand from my mouth to pull a small case form his suit pocket. I screamed, hoping the cops would hear. The noise died in my throat as he pulled out a syringe from the case. My head feeling faint from the blood loss, but the sight of the needle nearly made me pass out. I've never been so scared in my life. Getting attacked by that monster was less frightening than seeing a syringe filled with a mystery liquid. I fought even harder, doing nothing to avoid the masked man grabbing my face with one hand. With one other steady gloved hand he started to bring the needle closer. My mouth became dry as he grabbed my eyelids with two fingers, forcing my left eye open. I would rather be eaten by that monster than what he had in mind. The needle came ever closer. I heard people starting down the path, shouting orders and asking if everything was alright. My body froze when the tip of the needle went into my eye, and I passed out into a very long darkness. When I woke up, I found myself in a hospital bed and shortly went into hysterics. Some police arrived to take statements, and asked for some drug tests to be taken after hearing my story. I don’t blame them for that. I heard a body of a homeless man was found nearby where I fainted along with a lot of blood. They weren’t able to figure out who killed the man, or who the blood came from. They mystery blood assumed to be at least a few hours old even though they found me on the path only a few minutes after I passed out. All the tests came back clean and I was released after a few days. The police also told me that Eddie heard screaming in the park and called them. I would need to thank him later when we came across each other again. I made a habit of looking at my left eye in the mirror before bed, trying to see any damage. My hand healing up fine, but I fear the wound is going to leave a nasty scar. I thought I would be too stressed out to eat after such an ordeal, but the opposite happened. I couldn’t stop eating. A dull hunger lingered in the pit of my stomach now, always there no matter how much I ate in a day. And I don’t seem to be gaining any weight. I think I’ve lost some, but I’m too scared to weigh myself. My skin has started to go paler and I've gotten some comments on my sickly appearance. I've taken time off work unsure of when, or if I'll be back. I’m keeping an eye out for any other weird signs, or changes. I can’t sleep from over thinking about a very simple fact. One that I don’t want to face but deep down know it true. It might have been better if that creature killed me that night. That the man who tried to save me failed. Whatever he injected into my eye simply didn’t work, or only delayed what was coming. I would rather die than turn into anything remotely close to the monster that attacked me. With how things are looking, I'm not sure how long I'll remain myself for and that scares me to death. I've started to make a habit of walking in the park praying to find some answers or a sign of the man wearing the bunny mask. At least I was able to thank Eddie for calling for help that night. If I die because of a random monster attack while trying to get home, I won't bring that regret with me.