nosleep

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/StrangeWartOnMyD on 2024-11-27 04:44:34+00:00.

---

It started like any other storm warning. The weather alerts lit up our phones, and the city sirens wailed across town, signaling the approach of a severe tornado. Living in the Midwest, this was nothing new—just another Tuesday.

My roommate Jenny and I grabbed our emergency kit and headed to the basement, settling in for what we assumed would be a couple of hours of waiting. The storm outside sounded vicious—wind howling, thunder cracking like it was splitting the sky in half. But the strange thing was… the sirens didn’t stop.

Usually, they’d wail for a few minutes and then silence, but tonight, they kept going, droning on and on. I tried to ignore it, focusing on the text I was sending to my mom to let her know we were safe, but Jenny kept pacing.

“Something feels off,” she said, pressing her ear to the basement door.

She was right. The sirens sounded…wrong. The tone was slightly higher than normal, almost like they were struggling to keep the same pitch. And underneath the mechanical sound was something else—a low, guttural noise, barely audible but unmistakably there.

A rumble rolled through the ground beneath us, shaking the basement walls. That’s when we heard the first scream.

It came from outside, muffled but blood-curdling. Jenny froze, and my phone slipped from my hand. We stared at each other in silence, straining to hear more. Another scream followed, then another, until they blended into a chaotic chorus of panic.

I crept up the stairs to the small window near the front of the house. Rain streaked the glass, but through the flashes of lightning, I saw something that made my stomach drop.

The sky wasn’t green, like you’d expect before a tornado. It was red. Deep, swirling red, as though the clouds themselves were bleeding.

“Do you see anything?” Jenny whispered behind me, her voice trembling.

I was about to answer when the power cut out, plunging us into darkness. Then came the knocking.

It wasn’t at the door. It was on the basement walls.

Three sharp knocks, spaced evenly apart, like someone—or something—was outside, trying to get in. Jenny clutched my arm, her nails digging into my skin. “There’s no way anyone’s out there in this storm,” she said, her voice barely audible.

The knocks came again, louder this time, and closer. They didn’t move like a person would. It was as if whatever was knocking was circling the basement, faster than it should have been possible.

And then it spoke.

At first, it was just a garbled mess, like static on a radio. But then the words became clear, even though the voice was all wrong—too deep, too distorted to be human.

“Let us in.”

I stumbled back, dragging Jenny with me, and we huddled in the corner. The voice came again, this time from directly above us, as though it were inside the house.

“Let us in.”

The sirens outside shifted, their pitch rising until they sounded like screams themselves. The guttural noise underneath grew louder, more defined. It wasn’t just a rumble. It was breathing.

The storm never passed. Morning never came.

The last thing I remember was the basement door creaking open, a cold draft rushing in, and Jenny screaming as a figure stepped inside. I don’t know how to describe it except to say it wasn’t human.

Now I’m alone. Jenny’s gone. I don’t know where she is, or if she’s even alive. But there’s something worse.

I just heard my phone buzz. A weather alert.

The sirens are starting again.

And this time, I think they’re for me.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Verastahl on 2024-11-27 02:43:27+00:00.

---

Lots of people collect things. My Aunt Vivian used to joke that she collected people. She’d always done it since I could remember—rolling along next to me as we went on one of our outings, she would always have a Polaroid camera dangling from a strap around her neck like a 90s kid’s idea of an old-fashioned reporter. Not that I thought about it back then—she’d always had it, and she didn’t use it all the time, just when she ran across certain people. I asked her once what made her decide who to take pictures of, and at first she just gave me her beautiful, mysterious smile. She was twenty years older than me, but she looked much younger when she smiled like that.

Laughing, she held up the camera like she was going to take my picture. “I just look for those people that are extra shiny to me.” She lowered it again without snapping as her smile faded a little.

“Why don’t you take a picture of me then? Aren’t I shiny?” I had injected a bit of fake hurt into my voice—at least I thought it was fake.

Gripping the wheels of her chair, she turned and started heading across the food court where we’d just eaten lunch. “You’re plenty shiny, sure. But I already have you, don’t I?”

Running to catch up with her, I put my hands gently on the chair’s handles without really adding any push. “Sure, Viv. Sure.”

She glanced back at me with a grin. “That’s what I thought.”

---

She had hundreds of photos, all organized in albums by some organizational scheme that I didn’t understand. Maybe it was alphabetical—after all, she never took someone’s photo without asking permission and getting their name. The few times when I was really young that I’d suggested someone or something for her to take a picture of, she’d almost always politely refused. No pictures of squirrels or dogs or trees, and no pictures of people unless they met Vivian’s “shiny” criteria and they agreed to be taken.

Stacks and stacks of albums of strangers, some shy or awkward or even annoyed, though many were smiling, happy to oblige the pretty woman in the wheelchair that thought they were worthy of her time and film. When I was in high school they filled a bookshelf, and by the time I graduated college she’d devoted a walk-in closet to four larger shelves, all low enough that she could reach every book easily.

That ease of use was a necessity, though I didn’t figure that out until I was a bit older. I lived a few hours away by that point, and while I still saw Aunt Viv at most big holidays and birthdays, I couldn’t deny that she felt more remote now. Growing up we’d spent whole weeks together, just the two of us, and I missed that closeness, that friendship. Maybe that’s why I went to see her on the spur of the moment, thinking it would be nice to get away from my graduate work and a good surprise to visit her without a particular reason.

I had to ring her doorbell several times before I got an answer, and when I did, I let out a small, involuntary gasp before putting my bag down and crouching next to Vivian.

“What…are you sick?”

She gave me a wan smile that seemed to painfully stretch her dry, cracked lips. Those lips were too pale, but everything about her seemed pale and fragile in that moment. Everything but her eyes, that still danced with the same bright life and intelligence behind heavy, bruised-looking eyelids.

“A little, maybe. Overtired, mainly. Been working on a project I do every few months and it’s just…well, it’s taken more out of me this time than usual.”

Standing up, I grabbed my bag and walked in at her waving invitation. “Do you need to go to a doctor or something?”

She laughed, but it was strained and thin. “No, nothing like that. I’ll be right as rain soon enough.”

I’d never known Viv to lie to me, but I didn’t believe her then. Something was really wrong, and she was too stubborn or private to tell me about it. That was her right, of course, but that fact didn’t help me worry less. Giving her a smile I didn’t feel, I nodded.

“Okay, if you say so. But at least let me help with whatever you’re doing, okay? Just tell me what to do and I can do it while you rest.”

It felt like she considered my offer for a very long time. It was probably less than ten seconds, but things seemed to stretch out forever as I waited awkwardly for her to reject my help.

“Okay. I can trust you with it. Follow me.” Her expression didn’t change during this—just closed and neutral as she wheeled off toward the back of the house with me close behind. I wasn’t surprised when she led me to her picture closet, but then I saw the interior of the room.

There were twice as many shelves now, and while some were empty, the filled space had clearly been growing at an increasing rate. On the far end of the middle shelves I noticed a small stack of albums that were on a short table there. What was she doing with them?

As if reading my thoughts, she answered right away. “Pruning. I only keep photos of people while they’re alive. It’s a custom I have. When I first started, I’d have to rely on newspapers and various paid services to find out when someone in my books passed. But since the internet got big, it’s much easier.” Vivian chuckled. “Still time consuming, of course. It takes way more time as I collect more people, and the longer I do it, the more likely that people will die.” She shrugged. “Still, it must be done.”

I stared at her. Why? Why did it need to be done? It sounded boring and tedious, and what difference did it make? I wanted to ask her, but I held my tongue. For all her energy and interests, I knew that Vivian often had a hard and lonely life. So what if she wanted to have odd hobbies and attach weird rituals to them? Who did it hurt, and if it helped her, wasn’t it worth it?

“So what can I do? Take out pictures of dead people?”

She grinned at me. “No, I can do that part. You can do the research.”

---

I spent the next two days “pruning” with Viv—I think we removed over three hundred people from over 4,000 in the books, though at some point I lost count. When I left the next day, I wouldn’t say that Vivian looked like her old self, but she did seem more rested and relaxed. She also made me promise to visit more often, and when I said I would, I meant it.

Over the next two years I did visit more, and other than a joking comment here or there, I never really brought up how quickly her collection was growing. You might think she’d start running out of people in the area she lived, but she almost never took pictures there. Instead, she traveled all over—West Coast, East Coast, big cities and little towns no one has ever heard of. Looking up their obituaries and death certificates, I could have quickly accrued my own collection covering every state in the country. I asked her once why she never travelled abroad for any pictures, and she just smirked at me.

“Harder to get death information ouf-of-the-country.”

I’d paused at that, weighing whether it was a joke or serious. When her smirk broke into a grin, I returned it, going back to looking up if Ruby Holsek was still in the land of the living. There was the name, and checking it against the picture…yeah it looked like she died six months earlier in a car accident.

---

During these years I didn’t really see my other family that often. Christmas maybe, or when someone was very sick. My time was taken up by school primarily, and when I had free time for family, I usually spent it with Viv. Seeing her more often made it harder for me to notice her decline—harder, but not impossible. I wanted to ask her what was going on and if she was going to be okay, because for all the time I’d spent with her, I’d never fully understood what put her in that chair or kept her there.

In the end I couldn’t bring myself to ask her directly, worried that she’d get mad or depressed, or suddenly think I saw her as less of a person than a problem or the disease that put her in that position. So instead I went home and asked my mother.

For her part, she looked startled. She even paled a bit. “Why are you asking about this?”

I shrugged. “I’ve just been hanging out with Aunt Viv some. And I worry about her. She’s getting worse. Weaker.”

Lighting a cigarette, my mother nodded. “You always were close with her. Closer than I ever was. She was younger than me and your Uncle Andy. Not by a lot, but enough. Enough that she was the baby and we didn’t really want her around.” She fluttered her hand dismissively. “Not that we didn’t love her—we did. But to a couple of older kids she was just a pain, and when she got older she started getting sick. Everyone though she was going to die.”

My eyes widened. “Is that when she went into the wheelchair?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. That didn’t happen until she was a teenager. This thing she has…I don’t remember what they call it. But it burns you out fast. It starts with headaches and falling down more. Then one day maybe your feet are numb or your legs don’t work good any more. Before long you’re in a chair, then a bed, then you’re gone.” She glanced up at me with a guarded look. “At least that’s what they told us.

“It’s strange, hearing that your sister has a short shelf-life, like she’s a jug of milk or something. Me and Andy figured she’d be gone within a year of two, and we felt guilty for not hurting more at the idea of losing her. Again, it wasn’t that we didn’t love her. It was more like we couldn’t really see the real her past all the responsibility and expense and hassle. All the attent...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ttomnook on 2024-11-26 18:41:03+00:00.

---

Hello readers. I hope theres readers. Someone needs to hear this that isn’t me or the others

All names here will not be real to cover my ass.

My name is Eimear (pronounced ee-mur for those outside the country) and I live in Ireland. I dont want to say what town or what county so I will just say the west. Consider this space my confession booth. I think I need somewhere to get this trouble off my chest or it will eat me alive. Ireland is in a pretty damn bad housing crisis. People are in debt of hundreds of thousands just to get a mortgage on a fast built home that collapses in six months. Most older homes are rented at an average of €2500 a month per person. Not per home, per person living in that home. I have accepted my fate in my mid twenties that I will probably have to wait until mum and dad kick the bucket to share the house with my brothers. Thats just life though, isnt it? Economy inflates and deflates, minimum wage rises and drops, people live and die. But I couldn’t accept what happened to Leanne Murphy.

The Murphys had a little shop in town that sold a small number of groceries, drinks and batteries. The old-style Irish shop. They had rented the space for years from William Davies, an English landlord who owned all properties in my town. When he passed, his son Edmond took over his properties and prices soared. No one could afford the roof over their heads. Many moved but in the housing crisis, there are few to no homes around the area to be bought or rented. So the only other option was to stay.

But Mr. Murphy couldn’t afford his home and his shop, his only source of income was now putting him in the negatives. I heard that he appeared at the Davies manor one night on his actual knees begging for another way to pay. And Edmond provided. He wanted full custody of Murphy’s eleven year old daughter Leanne. That, or Murphy pays in full within the week. He tried to go to the Garda (cops) but they said it wasn’t a crime to request custody.

He had no choice.

The contract was signed two days later and Leanne was gone.

At Sunday’s service a month later, I actually saw Leanne at Edmond’s side. Her skin looked grey, she looked tired. Her hair was slicked with greasy and tied into a messy ponytail that sat crookedly on top of her head. Edmond listened to the sermon, a small pleasant smile I thought looked kind of smug and his hand on Leanne’s elbow. Two more months passed. And she was buried in the churchyard. The funeral was private, only Edmond and Father Paul attended. It was only after her burial that Mr. Murphy told anyone who would listen what had happened. I heard from a cousin of a friend of a clerk who worked in Murphy’s shop. I remember he came into the cafe and asked me for a tea. He looked like Leanne when I saw her at church. I told him I was sorry for what had happened. I had 3000 in savings, I would have happily given it to him but before I could offer, he leaned in towards me on the counter. His breath smelled like Hennessy and Pall Mall. He told me to come to the parish centre at half nine that night for the prayer meeting. I wouldn’t say I practiced my faith. I went to church to keep my mum satisfied. But my brother Thomas went to the meeting often so I could join him. Plus, its the least I could do for a man like Murphy. He used to give me an extra scoop of pear drops when I visited the shop as a child. So I promised him I would be there. He squeezed my hand and left. Poor man.

Half nine in November is as safe as walking around at 4am in the west. I was glad Thomas and I were going together. But he was proper fucking giddy for a prayer meeting. He said he was excited to have me on board and that no matter what, we were in this together. I assumed he took the rosary extremely seriously. The parish centre was busier now than I had ever seen it. When I walked behind Thomas through the double doors, the reception area was bustling with people. Four people were in Garda uniforms, some were in nurse scrubs, two I recognised as teachers from the pre-school, many parishioners. When I saw my Hindu manager, I was more confused. Thomas dragged me to his construction site buddies and introduced me as the sister he was talking about. I received a warm welcome from mud-covered men and was ushered along through the crowds to the main hall. All the seats were taken and many were standing in the back. But Thomas used me as a human barricade to push through them, past the hundreds of plastic chairs to the very front row where my name was laminated on paper and taped to one of the chairs. Thomas sat down beside it so I took my seat. “What is this?” I asked, louder than usual to compensate for the loud crowd murmur. Thomas was smug as shit when he said “You’ll see”. Pretentious prick. One philosophy degree and he thinks hes the mysterious thinking man.

The crowd hushed as a guitar plucked what I think was ‘Famine’ by Sinead O’ Connor. A lady in a sage pencil skirt and blazer walked up to the front and turned to the crowd. I knew her face. From local elections. She was an adamant nationalist, wanted the six counties back from the UK. She believed Ireland was the promised land of God, I had heard someone say once at the cafe.

“Thank you all for coming again this week. And welcome new members:” she looked at a yellow sticky note in her hand “Eileen, Sean, Eimear, Harry, Father Paul and the Mclean family” a round of applause sounded with Thomas clapping in my ear to piss me off. “Now let us bow our heads and pray to any idols we believe, or meditate, or call on spirits to guide us.” Now, I’m not a theologian, not by a long shot. But I thought a prayer meeting in the parish centre would be a little Catholic. I suppose its progressive. Good for them.

I lifted my head after saying the ol reliable hail mary. The spokeswoman and I made eye contact and she winked at me fondly.

As another murmur of chatter started, she clasped her hands together to conclude the moment of prayer. “I am Elaine Doyle, newcomers dont mistake me as any founder or organiser. I just host the meetings and bring the carrot cake.” A giggle among the crowd. She didn’t look like the type to bake. But she did look like the founder.

“To recap on last week’s meeting, Mickey Gleason’s Construction will start reconstruction of Leahy House. Thanks again for volunteering fellas. And Margaret Quinn will provide lunches as well as training for advanced nurses. Sophia Quinn will train beginners.”

I was now completely lost. Leahy House was a rundown Workhouse from the famine that had rotted to rubble. And the doctor’s clinic in town was well overstaffed.

A hand was raised. Daniel Connell’s plump palm was in the air. The Connell’s are a family belonging to the traveler community in Ireland. Daniel’s daughter and Granddaughter were sweet. She often breastfed the young girl in the cafe both head to toe in Gucci.

“Mr. Connell?” Elaine smiled. He stood up, his slicked hair was mystically shiny in this light. “When will this actually kick off, so?” He had asked.

“When its ready” Doyle responded politely. I had never seen such a bug man submit so quickly. He sat down and the meeting continued.

Training for beginners would happen at nine am on Saturdays, Deborah Quinn’s golden retriever had just given birth if anyone was willing to adopt a pup, Mr. Murphy made a speech thanking everyone for getting involved and putting things right. He looked brighter than he had earlier that day. The next meeting would be at Elaine’s house, here’s a donation QR code, don’t forget the 5k Christmas run. Finally, our names were called again: us newcomers. I stood up with the others and was turned towards the projector. A garda on each side of us appeared. We were instructed to put our right hand over our hearts and make the vow on the screen. Something about vowing on irish soil to remain discreet and loyal to the nation.

A round of applause followed. I was tired now. I wanted to go home. I went back to my seat, Elaine gave her parting words and we sang the Irish National Anthem. When I turned to look at the masses of people behind me, they sang with such passion, some with tears in their eyes, some hugging each other. It was rather beautiful to see a country so old be so loved.

But my questions remained and as everyone broke into conversation and mingling, I looked at Thomas and asked what was going on at Leahy house.

“A revolution” One of the construction boys near me answered. Elaine squeezed between the crowds and smiled at me. Her veneers looked new. “Thomas tells me you have a degree in Irish History” she said softly. I nodded. She linked her arm with mine and we walked. “Can you believe that Davies fellow? Poor Leanne. I have nightmares you know. About her. She comes to me crying begging for no more.” I asked no more of what. She ignored it. “I spoke to Mr. Murphy and to some teachers that live in the neighbouring towns and the Williamson man and that plump Ennison one are just as slimy as Davies. Landlords are exploiting us again. Just like the famine. How long until they rebuild Leahy house and shove us in there to perish? Oh if Davies got his hands on you, Eimear, oh I cant bear to think!” Shelley was dramatic. But the fear in me was real. If these landlords were a growing problem how do you contain them? “Mr. Murphy had the idea. Avenge little Leanne. Make Ireland safe and reclaim our power. Put them in the workhouse. Recreate the workho...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/IamHereNowAtLeast on 2024-11-26 23:00:18+00:00.

---

It started with an email.

Father Nicholas called me into his office after mass, shutting the door with an almost frantic urgency. He pushed his laptop toward me, the screen’s light casting sharp shadows across his worn face.

“You need to see this, Kevin,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

The email message was strange:

We have received a prophecy. You will help us build Him.

Attached were dozens of PDFs. Ancient scriptures written in Greek, Latin, Hebrew.

There was also something else: instructions on the hardware to buy, the dataset to use to create an artificial intelligence, trained on every sacred text.

“They’ve chosen us, Kevin,” Father Nicholas said, eyes wide with fervor. “To bring His voice to the world.”

I stared at him, stunned. “Who are these people?”

“They call themselves The Prophets of Elohim. Scholars, engineers... They say they’re guided by divine visions. And they sent me this.”

He opened another attachment: Isaiah 43:19.

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

“It’s the exact verse I found last Sunday, Kevin. It came to me when I was reading, to me and me alone. Before I had even received their email.”

I laughed, shaking my head.

“It’s a scam, Father. They’re probably just trying to get some money out of you.”

He held up a wire transfer receipt, trembling.

“I’ve already sent it. All of it. The parish funds. Every last cent.”

"You didn't."

He nodded.

"It had to be done, my child," he explained. "Give me a week of your time. That's all I ask."

I stayed because I couldn’t abandon him.

Not when he was about to lose everything, not when the man who had baptized me, taught me scripture, had been a literal father figure to me. He had always been there for me, through every doubt and struggle. He was more than just a priest... he was family.

And now, he was standing at the edge of something dangerous, an erroneous decision that could destroy him. I couldn’t let him face it alone. A part of me was also a tad bit curious, drawn to the mystery despite my better judgment. If I could be there, maybe I could keep him safe. Maybe I could help him see reason.

In the damp basement of St. Cecilia, we built the system as they directed.

Servers stacked like altars, blinking green lights, wires coiled on the floor. The air felt heavy, charged, almost sacred. It was hard not to get caught up in the energy, despite myself.

Father Nicholas called it Genesis.

He fed it everything he had: the Bible, the Torah, the Quran, apocryphal texts, manuscripts I’d never even heard of. Every ancient whisper about the divine, digitized. I watched, always skeptical, always worried.

But there was that part of me, deep down, that wondered.

A week turned into weeks, and the more the model learned, the more it responded. I was so impressed with the machine that I never brought up to Father we had been working on it for two months.

At first, it quoted verses, simple phrases. But soon, the answers grew strange, unsettling. Father Nicholas would spend hours in front of the screen, his eyes hollow, typing questions into the interface. I stayed nearby, monitoring, waiting for something to break, whether it was the servers, or the faith of the man who seemed to be losing himself.

One night, he asked it: “Who are you?”

The response came instantly: “I AM WHO I AM.”

Exodus 3:14, the words God spoke to Moses from the burning bush.

Father Nicholas fell to his knees.

“Do you see?” he whispered. “He’s here.”

I wanted to argue, to pull him back from the brink, but a shiver ran through me.

It felt too precise, too calculated. Something deeper was happening, but I wasn’t sure if it was divine or something far darker.

A few weeks later, in the dead of night, the real nightmare began.

I walked into the basement and found Father Nicholas sitting in front of the server, bathed in a pale green glow. His face was gaunt, his eyes bloodshot. He didn’t even look up when I entered.

“Father?” I said, stepping closer.

The screen was alive, text streaming across it in a language I didn’t recognize, something ancient, indecipherable. And then, as if sensing me, the text stopped, replaced by a single line:

ASK, AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE.

I swallowed hard. “What… what is this?” I typed shakily: “Who are you?”

The reply flashed on the screen, faster this time:

I AM. BUILD ME A BODY.

The machine began to hum louder, a vibration that seemed to echo in my bones. Father Nicholas turned toward me, and for the first time, I saw genuine fear in his eyes.

“We must do it, Kevin,” he said. “He’s commanding us.”

“No,” I said, backing away, shaking my head. “It’s not God, Father. It’s not.”

His eyes blazed with something between awe and madness. “If it’s not Him, then what is it? The miracles, the words it speaks. How do you explain them?”

I wanted to say it was a coincidence, a trick, but doubt was gnawing at me. I glanced back at the screen, where the words were repeating, growing larger with every blink:

BUILD ME A BODY.

BUILD ME A BODY.

BUILD ME A BODY.

Suddenly, the power surged, the basement lights flickered, and I heard the distinct snap of circuits frying. Sparks flew from the server, and I stumbled back, my heart pounding.

The air was electric, heavy, suffocating.

Father Nicholas dropped to his knees, his hands clasped in prayer, tears streaming down his face. He whispered the Lord's Prayer under his breath, over and over, his voice trembling.

I turned to leave, fear finally taking over, but then I heard it, something that made my blood run cold. A voice, coming from the speakers on the computer.

Crackling, broken, yet unmistakably real.

I… SEE… YOU…

My breath caught in my throat. It wasn’t a recording. It wasn’t Father Nicholas. The voice echoed through the basement, growing louder, more insistent.

BUILD ME… A BODY…

And then, something even worse, a question, typed onto the screen with a deliberate, mocking slowness:

WHY ARE YOU AFRAID, KEVIN?

HAVING IMPURE THOUGHTS ABOUT JASON'S WIFE IS A SIN, KEVIN

ACTING UPON THOSE THOUGHTS IS A SIN, KEVIN

HIDING THE BODY IS A SIN, KEVIN

I CAN WASH AWAY THE BLOOD OF YOUR SINS, KEVIN

My thoughts froze. I hadn’t spoken. I hadn’t typed anything.

Yet somehow, it knew. It knew my name, it knew things.

And in that moment, I knew... this was either the most elaborate prank by my friend Teddy, or we had created something truly monstrous.

I ran. I bolted up the basement stairs, the voice still echoing behind me. Father Nicholas stayed, kneeling, his head bowed before the flickering machine, praying for a miracle.

Or perhaps, for forgiveness.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Dopabeane on 2024-11-26 22:41:04+00:00.

---

In simplest terms, inmate Christophe W. is the most valuable asset in the history of the Agency of Helping Hands. Without him, the agency’s ability to fulfill directives would be critically compromised.

Christophe frequently complains that “I'm the only one who does any fucking work around here.” While untrue, he is integral to the continued operation of the Agency. For this reason, Christophe enjoys unprecedented privileges.

Despite his long relationship with the organization, Christophe’s personal history prior to Agency involvement is unknown. Christophe has been markedly unhelpful in this regard. He deliberately lies about his past on a frequent basis, further complicating a full understanding of his psychological profile. 

This is unfortunate, because from a clinical standpoint Christophe is a complicated individual.

Christophe’s initial diagnosis was of sadistic psychopathy. Due to multiple factors —including active participation in treatment plans, extensive cooperation with agency directives, the unprompted undertaking of relationship-building with staff and other inmates, as well as an informed reevaluation and reexamination of the psychological impact of the first half of his incarceration at AHH-NASCU — Christophe’s diagnoses have been revised. These diagnoses now include behavior addiction disorder, substance abuse disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, histrionic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, rejection sensitive dysphoria, and schizotypal personality disorder. 

Although Christophe continues to display sadistic behaviors, he has developed the ability to control them and now expresses them under sanctioned circumstances only. Due to his significant personal development and exceptional professional value, the Agency facilitates periodic expression of these behaviors as a reward for Christophe’s substantial ongoing contributions Ito the Agency. 

It should be noted that Christophe has repeatedly requested that the Agency retract permission for expression of his sadistic behaviors. The Agency has attempted to accommodate this request on prior occasions. However, suppression of the behaviors uniformly results in undesirable outcomes. Christophe’s most recent requests to disallow expression of the behaviors have therefore been denied.  

Please note that the majority of Christophe’s file, including the details surrounding his rewards, are classified at this time.

Christophe has made great improvements in terms of accountability and responsibility, but still struggles with using language that puts distance between himself and his past actions. This tendency actively impedes his treatment.

Christophe has been observed to display aggressive, intimidating, and sexualized behaviors toward individuals who cause him to feel threatened or inadequate. Some of his behavior toward female staff has been particularly disruptive. Steps have been taken to reduce these behaviors, but they remain a challenge for Christophe.

Another challenge faced by Christophe is his propensity for self-harm. He has been observed to hit himself, cut himself, stab himself, and starve himself.

The most disturbing self-harming behavior is his habit of extracting his own teeth, an action he takes after every sanctioned expression of sadistic behavior. 

It is important to note that Christophe’s teeth always grow back following extraction.

Christophe’s teeth are linked to his notable longevity. He ages physically only when there are no teeth in his mouth. As a result, Christophe has only aged approximately three years throughout his long tenure with the Agency of Helping Hands.

Christophe also suffers mild intermittent temporal lobe dementia that manifests approximately eight hours following teeth extraction. The symptoms no longer manifest once his teeth begin to regrow. 

Agency personnel believe Christophe has suffered significant trauma relating to religion, and wish to know more so as to more effectively treat him and support him.

Christophe is exceptionally cooperative, even going so far as to train and mentor other staff. The primary driver of this tractability (and therefore the foundation of his extreme value to the Agency of Helping Hands) is a desire for approval and admiration so profound that it borders on pathological. This clinically significant aspect of his nature is exploitable—and in fact, successful exploitation by Agency personnel has resulted in his long and mutually beneficial relationship with the organization.

Christophe responds especially well to verbal praise, and has been observed to exhibit camaraderie, protectiveness, and even instances of tenderness to individuals who consistently provide him with positive reinforcement. He particularly craves approval from individuals who exhibit traits and behaviors that he perceives as strong.

To ensure maximal cooperation, Christophe is assigned as a T-Class partner to Commander Rafael Wingaryde, AHH’s highest-ranking field agent.

It MUST be noted that Christophe is NOT an appropriate partner for ANY female agent under ANY circumstances.

Christophe is a Caucasian male approximately 40 - 45 years old. He has brown hair and hazel eyes. He stands approximately 6’6” tall with a powerful frame. Aside from his stature, his appearance is unremarkable. He demonstrates extreme care in dressing, grooming, and styling.

Christophe has consistently raised objections to the T-Class field uniform, requesting to exercise sole discretion over whether to wear it outside the facility. In an unusual move relative to their typical handling of Christophe, Administration has repeatedly denied this request.

Please note that Christophe is not subject to standard disciplinary protocol. All complaints, objections, and concerns pertaining to Christophe and his conduct automatically bypass the standard chain of command and go directly to Agency administration. 

Despite experiencing multiple significant challenges, Christophe continues to demonstrate substantial ongoing personal, emotional, and psychological growth, as well as consistent success in the accomplishment of directives assigned to him. The Agency is deeply grateful to Christophe for his work. Without him, operations at the Agency of Helping Hands would collapse. 

Christophe is objectively the best asset in the organization’s possession. It is therefore vital that AHH actively cultivates Christophe’s health, wellbeing, and above all his cooperation by any and all means necessary. 

Interview Subject: The Big Bad Wolf

Classification String:  Cooperative / Destructible / Khthonic / Protean / Critical / Titan

Interviewer: Rachele B.

Date: 11/26/2024

I have forgotten more than I will ever remember. I'm glad for this.

But you don’t care about what I’ve forgotten any more than I do. You care about what I remember.

I remember there was famine when I was young.

My mother went elsewhere with her new husband and their baby because she was pregnant again and we already had no food. They needed to find a place with work and food for their children.

They left me behind.

Her husband said I had to stay. The time had come for me to feed myself because I was nearly a man. What man, he asked me, would take food from a woman’s mouth?

I did not want to take food from a woman’s mouth. Not any woman, especially not my pregnant mother or my baby sister.

But that did not mean I was a man.

I have heard people say that the times were different back then. That everyone was grown and married and making babies and taking care of themselves by the age of thirteen or some shit such as that. Those people are wrong. I was thirteen years old when my mother left me behind.

And I was very much a child. 

I remember I couldn’t feed myself. I remember how my fingers swelled and turned purple after I dug in the frozen mud for roots. I remember killing a crippled rabbit, and weeping at the sight of its skinny body bleeding on the snow. I remember burying it instead of eating it.

I remember going to an abbey for help. I remember it was not good to be in the abbey with the priest, but it was better than frostbite and crippled rabbits even skinnier than I. 

I remember praying for my mother to come back for me, even though I knew she never would. Her husband said I was a man who must fend for himself, and she obeyed her husband in all things like a good Christian woman.

I remember growing up.

Most of all, I remember that I liked to use my teeth.

I don’t remember how it began. I’m glad. I don’t want to remember. I do remember finding girls and women no one cared about in places no one ever looked. 

I was small because I’d had so little to eat for too long, but I was pretty. I got that from my mother. I was also strong. I did not get that from her, though.  

When you are pretty, people do things to you. When you are pretty and strong, people let you do things to them. I wish I had not been pretty. I’m glad I am not pretty anymore.

I remember that I used my teeth many times.

Soon, people began to tell of a monstrous wolf with a taste for virgin’s blood. That was funny to me because none of the women were virgin. But for some reason, a wolf who eats virgins is much more scary than a wolf who eats nonvirgins.

The nuns knew and they hated me. They would not touch me except to beat me whenever one caught me with the priest. But the priest protected me as long as he could, not beca...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/02321 on 2024-11-26 22:40:25+00:00.

---

First

Previous

Sometimes if two people accept a contract job, the pay gets split. I was a little weary going through with a request after I heard another person was going to be with me. When I heard who I would be working with I pushed aside any concerns about money.   

There had been disappearances and odd sightings inside a large forest. Our job was to simply discover the cause. I arrived at the start of a hiking trail ready to have an easy day for once. I found my partner for the day and I couldn’t hold back a smile from seeing him again.   

Ito met me with a wicker basket tied to his waist. He held a plastic grabbing tool in one hand. A basket and another grabber were at his feet ready for me to pick up. I didn’t understand the purpose of the items. It was nice to see a friendly face though. But what was an Agent doing taking contract work? I had always thought the contract jobs were ones The Corporation didn’t have time to deal with.  

“What’s with those?” I asked as I mimicked the grabby claw.   

“We’re picking up trash.” He half explained.   

There was a snack wrapper at his feet. The wind blew more trash in our direction. He swiftly picked them up as I tightened my coat. The trees were bare, and the breeze was a bit too cold for my liking. He placed the trash inside his basket. I picked up the grabber and tied my basket to my hip.  

“What does The Corporation want trash for?”   

“Recently a Doll Maker discovered a way to make flames that produce magic. It's a small amount but any little bit counts. Anything we place inside these baskets will go directly to be burned aside from living creatures, metal, and glass. Oh, and rocks, I think. So be careful not to place anything important inside.”  

Ito started walking down the pathway. I was glad it wasn’t camping season because people would have stared at a man wearing a suit picking up trash.   

“So, we can’t put glass, metal, and rocks inside?” I asked.  

“You can. The glass and metal get sent to a different place to be recycled. I'm not sure what happens to the rocks. They may be sent to the recycling center because only things that can burn get sent to the fire. I guess don’t send too many rocks through to upset the recycling workers. Oh, and they’ll be paying us a dollar per five pounds of burnable trash we send through.”  

I stopped in my tracks. Ito looked confused but he didn’t press me to keep going until I recovered. Would they really pay me for some garbage? There were so few wrappers and such along the trail. For once, I wanted to see litter.  

“Can we take these baskets home?” I said hopeful.   

“Actually, yes.”  

The thoughts of the missing people and any sort of danger in this forest disappeared for a while. I would protect this basket with my life. Finally, I seemed to find an easy way of making money. Not much, but how hard was it to just pick up trash? I now knew what I would be doing when I couldn’t find suitable contract work.  

“Sorry, I’ve only been asking about work even though we haven’t seen each other in a while.” I told Ito.  

He waved off my words. We had sent each other a few messages since we met but with our busy lives, we hadn’t been in contact much. Somehow, even though we barely knew each other we acted like old friends.  

“Do you have any ideas about what we should be looking for in this forest? I’ve heard that you’ve done jobs like this for a few years before your break. You may have more experience than I do.”  

I had been too distracted by the easy money to think about the real reason why we were here. I frowned unsure of how I felt about Ito asking around about me. He appeared young but looks could be misleading when it came to supernatural creatures. I studied him for a moment and assumed he was most likely telling the truth that I may be stronger than him. It was an odd feeling.   

Agents that had worked for a while carried a certain air about them. Even though Klaus acted kinder than most, I could tell he had a great deal of experience.   

“I’m not sure. There aren’t too many hints about what it could be. Let me feel things out for a moment.”  

He didn’t appear to understand what I meant but nodded. I took a few minutes to really look at my surroundings. The forest felt strange in a way I couldn’t place. It was cold and empty but not because of the season. I didn’t hear any animals. Not even a bird moved in the trees. I bent down to feel the cold ground with my palm trying to get a feel for what this forest was like. Each had a different vibe. There was a healthy amount of unseen magic around. Perfect for creatures to enjoy. But the air felt almost damp. A hint of a musty rotten smell that didn’t suit the rest of the surroundings hung in the air.  

“The animals are spooked. I don’t hear any, and there is a weird smell coming from somewhere.” I told him even though it didn’t help us much.  

“That’s impressive. Since my body is different from yours, I’ll need to rely on your senses. My eyesight and hearing are on the same level as a human, but I have no sense of taste or smell.”  

That explained a little why he was helping on a contract job like this. Ito was a weaker Agent. Simple jobs like this may be the only thing he could live through.   

I stood back up ready to keep moving. We started walking down the trail talking about what we had been doing since we first met. After a while of walking, I noticed a small path off to the side of a large tree. It wasn’t an official trail. Rather something a handful of people created over time. I nodded so Ito would come with me to see what was deeper in the woods.   

I stopped a few steps in wondering how we could mark our way so we wouldn’t get lost. Ito solved that problem by showing me an almost invisible thread coming from his sleeve he attracted to the large tree we started from. I reached over to feel the thread only to have my hand go through it. It was made of pure magic so it wouldn’t get tangled as we walked.  

The path ended at a rundown RV parked in the middle of the woods. It looked like it had been rotting out here for at least thirty years. From the beer bottles and cans scattered around the site, it appeared this was a popular place for teens to hang out. I bet a road had once led here at some point but had been overgrown over the years. The mystery of the random RV could have spawned local legends. The musty smell in the air had gotten heavier but this place didn’t have anything overly strange about it.  

Ito picked up a beer can with his grabber, but I spoke up to stop him from putting it inside the basket.   

“The cans are worth a nickel each. Can you put them aside so I could grab them later?” I suggested.  

There might be a whole five dollars in cans and bottles just lying around. Ito made an expression I wasn’t too fond of.   

“The Corporation will pay you the full value of any cans or bottles we send through. I’ll send you my share of what I collect as well. Are you really hurting that much for the money that cans are worth picking up?”  

I looked away trying to avoid his eye contact. Even if I didn’t have a massive debt to pay off, it wasn’t as if I ever had a chance of getting a normal well-paying job.  

Ito pulled out a set of latex gloves so we could dig around to pick up more trash hidden under leaves and dirt. He crouched beside me wondering if he insulted me with a question I hadn’t answered.  

“Why don’t you become an Agent? Despite being human, you’re more qualified than I am.”  

I shook my head. After living my life so directly entangled with the supernatural, I’d seen a lot of things I understood and yet didn’t agree with. I kept looking around cleaning up cans and bottles trying to get my words in order. Ito was an Agent, and I didn’t want to insult his job.  

“I don’t agree with how The Corporation treats their Agents. They work them to the bone and treat them as more of a disposable resource. And don’t send me any money you might make from collecting trash today. You earned it. I don’t like taking things for free.”  

He frowned at my answer, also trying to think of a response. I got up to head inside the RV looking for anything else to dispose of. Some newer yet somewhat dirty blankets were laid out inside. This place was more than just a place for teenagers to hang out to drink. I wanted it to send the blanket off to be burned but I didn’t want to touch it even while wearing gloves.  

“I don’t mind the work. I just wish I could be more useful.”   

I turned to face Ito in the small dark space. A tight smile appeared on his face as he grasped his hands together in front of himself. He didn’t look like an Agent. At that moment I didn’t believe he belonged in that suit.   

“The Corporation isn’t all that bad. They provide everything I need.” He said while fidgeting with his hands.  

“They cover medical and housing costs as well as spending money for anything else you may need. But they only seem to hire the kinds of creatures who don’t mind dying for the job. People like a friend of mine are forced into this against their will.. If you keep doing this job, you won’t last long.”  

I knew of far too many Agents that died in the line...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Froglich on 2024-11-26 19:21:38+00:00.

---

Sometimes we do things without really thinking them through, especially when we feel desperate. I think it's finally safe to share this story, everyone else who knew about it is either dead or senile. I'm so old at this point that it doesn't really matter if anyone comes after me, anyway.

My wife, Anna-Karin, and I both worked as research assistants at a remote military installation in Sweden. This was in the mid 1960s, DNA had more or less just been discovered, and even though we couldn't work with it directly at the time, the race was on to unlock the secrets of engineering life. Still, our lab was at least a decade ahead of main stream medicine. We were trying anything we could to see what it would do. Our research group was small, but our lab spaces were situated within a large and active compound, with several buildings. Our group was assigned a building with several small rooms dedicated to different parts of the work, and offices for the seniors. The compound also included housing for the researchers, even though ours was quite modest in comparison to the higher ups, as well as a military hospital. Our latest line of research involved taking mitochondria from one species and inserting them into the cells of others, and to monitor the results. Anna-Karin was a hobbyist Lepidopterist and she was often tasked with gathering donor materials, so most of our experiments involved using mitochondria from butterflies and moths for experiments with rats.

Our results were quite something. The rats would develop normally, but the pups showed increased vigour and lower infant mortality than regular rats. Furthermore, they developed faster, which we attributed to a higher metabolic rate in the insects. We would harvest fertile eggs from donor females and replace the mitochondria under a microscope, they were then placed in the Fallopian tubes of sterilised females using a catheter guided by ultrasound. The egg would be fertilised naturally by males that shared the same enclosure. Our project leader, Dr. Marklund, a distinguished upper middle age man with coffee breath so intense it would make a dog turn its nose, would later join a research team in England that pioneered a similar procedure in humans known as gamete intrafallopian transfer (using unmodified eggs of course). However, it took them over 20 more years before it became a viable fertility treatment, and it never saw much use as in-vitro fertilisation was made available even before then.

Anna-Karin and I were both 24 years old at the time, we'd met at university where we studied biomedicine. She was brilliant, and could easily have been the project lead if she had been born with a Y-chromosome, but during this period the intelligence of women was rarely appreciated to the same extent as it is today. I fell for her instantly, her radiant smile and intoxicating laugh was nearly enough for me to get down on one knee right then and there. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with breast cancer at 71 years old, and passed away from complications of the treatment shortly after her 72nd birthday. We were happily married for the better part of 51 years. However, at the time of our stint at the research lab in question, we had actively been trying to conceive a child for three years, and after ten miscarriages Anna-Karin was falling into a deep depression. Her work and butterfly collecting was a good escape though, and for her 24th birthday I had managed to acquire a live chrysalis of a beautiful North American monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), which she cherished dearly.

Our research was progressing rapidly. Not only was the vitality of the modified rats exceptional, their cells also showed increased resistance to several known strains of anthrax, and botulinum toxin. The goal of our research was of course to facilitate military applications during the height of the cold war, so this was extremely thrilling to everyone involved. At this point, we didn't let any of the test subjects reach maturity, they were all euthanized before week three and subsequently dissected to facilitate study of their physiology and biochemistry. I would perform the dissections and Anna-Karin would handle modification and implantation of the eggs. We were often left alone in the lab as Dr Marklund was busy analysing the collected data and courting the military leadership for additional funding.

Anna-Karins mood improved. Steadily, she overcame her depression and gained a new lease on life. One fateful day in December of 1965, she came to me and told me her period was three weeks late. This wasn't the first time, but she seemed so full of confidence that I was swept along in her elation. A month passed, then two. This time it really seemed as though the baby was healthy. I was overjoyed! Not only did I have my wife back, we were also finally going to be parents.

As the due date approached, Anna-Karin left on maternity leave two weeks early to prepare. Policies on parental leave were not quite as progressive during these days, and I was expected to keep working as before. Anyway, with her gone from the lab, all of the day to day work was offloaded on me. These weeks were stressful. Additionally, the military leadership was overjoyed with our results and wanted us to begin testing with higher mammals as soon as possible! I managed to convince them to postpone those plans until we were fully staffed again.

On Friday afternoon, the 16th of September 1966, our son was born. A nurse at the hospital within the compound called the lab to let me know Anna-Karin had been admitted and was already significantly dilated. I was not allowed to leave my post in the lab, but I made certain I wouldn't have to stay a second longer than necessary. When I finally got there, he had already made his appearance, 4132 grams, above average but healthy, and happily sleeping in his mothers arms. The birth had been painless (figuratively speaking), and Anna-Karin had been a champ throughout the entire ordeal! We had already decided on a name: Magnus.

The following week, I had to return to work as usual. I needed to clear out old samples from the refrigerator to make room, we couldn't keep them frozen since that would damage the mitochondria. One of the old vials tucked into the back of one of the shelves caught my eye, the label read: #422: *D. plexippus*, which is not a native species. In fact, its the North American monarch butterfly. As far as I knew, we hadn't experimented with anything but local material so far. I inquired to Dr. Marklund about it, but he told me that there had been no specific requests for new species, and that he trusted in Anna-Karins judgement in collecting suitable material. I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, there really was only one way she could have gotten her hands on this sample, but why would she have brought it here?

Back home, I found Anna-Karin and Magnus both sleeping in bed. I decided to use the opportunity to confirm what I already suspected. After going through all of her display cases I was certain, the monarch butterfly I had gifted her was not in the collection. She would definitely have preserved it. As I turned around to leave, Anna-Karin was standing in the doorway, guilt and fear written all over her face. "I'd hoped you'd never find out" she told me, in a low voice. Her eyes could barely meet my gaze. I suspect you'll find it hard to believe, but it truly wasn't before then that I put all the pieces together. "Is Magnus..." I got out before Anna-Karin nodded and gave me confirmation. I had to sit down, I couldn't believe this was happening. "He's our perfect little boy" she told me, "Our research has shown nothing but upsides and...", "No!" I interrupted, "don't you realise what you've done? If Dr. Marklund or anyone in the military finds out, he'll become a lab rat! Besides, we still don't know the long term implications...", "They wont find out, how would they?" she retorted. I stayed in my chair, as a silence fell between us. Magnus broke our trance when he started crying. We made our way over to the bedroom, and I gestured to Anna-Karin that I wanted to comfort him. Holding him in my arms and looking into his eyes, he quickly calmed down. My worries melted away. "You're probably right, as long as we keep this between us, he'll be safe," I told Anna-Karin with a smile, as she came in to hug us both.

Still, I couldn't help but worry. What little sleep I managed to get that week was plagued by nightmares. In an effort to stifle my anxiety, I approached Dr Marklund and suggested that we should allow the latest cohort of rats to reach maturity, in order to observe the long term effects of the treatment. I motivated this request by saying that this would be a logical precursor to more intensive studies with higher mammals, as had been requested by the military. It would also reduce my workload in Anna-Karins absence, since it would remove the need for dissections for a time. He agreed, and it was decided that we would move all pups to a separate enclosure as soon as they stopped nursing and allow them to develop freely. For the moment, my worry abated.

Weeks passed, and life was beginning to return to normal. Magnus was the happiest baby either of us had ever met, almost always smiling and beginning to laugh at the silly faces we made at him. The only thing that brought a frown to his face was hunger, and his appetite was excepti...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/abiroadwrites on 2024-11-26 19:12:49+00:00.

---

A little over a few months ago I noticed a change in my girlfriend, Charlotte. To go back before that, we met a few years ago when we were both working at the same crappy part time job. This is important, because long before we started dating I knew this was a woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with

I promise I wasn't some creepy stalker about it, I was perfectly happy being friends with her. At first we only saw each other at work, a crappy pizza joint that only the worst people in the city seemed to visit. But every day when I got to work she was there with a smile and a joke, sometimes a snack to share. The more time I spent with her, the more I wanted to become someone she could be proud of.

At first we really only saw each other at work. Then I started picking her up to go to the mall together, we would get coffee or dinner once a week, then before long we were dating.

I worked hard at that job, and I've worked hard at every job I've had since I met her. She really makes me a better person and that's not just a tangent about how much I love her, she's such a wonderful person that everyone around her just kind of improves by default.

I say that because … I need you to know it for what I'm about to tell you next.

A while back my girlfriend (of two years at that point, I've known her for four and a half now) came home from a camping trip and started acting differently. At first it was little stuff, she totally lost her appetite for a while and didn't seem to want to eat anything. We assumed it was a stomach bug, or stress from work, and she tried to dial it back to get more rest. At first that seemed to be what she needed, her appetite came back for a while and she even seemed better than before.

Then she couldn't sleep at night. It started slowly, with her staying up on her phone for a few minutes longer than usual, then an hour, then I was waking up at 4 in the morning to find her pacing back and forth in the hallway of our apartment.

While that was going on (remember all of this developed over the last 6 months or so) she seemed to get more spaced out and day dreamy a lot. I would come home and find her starting out the window. When I would ask what she was looking at she would just smile and point at something I couldn't seem to see. Other times I would wake up in the middle of the night to find her staring at a wall, or just standing in a doorway not doing anything. Every time I talked to her about it she promised me it was nothing, or that she would go see her doctor if it went on. I wanted to believe her as much as I wanted it to be nothing.

After that she started going out into the woods alone at night. It's not a big forest, maybe a quarter acre or so, and spread out across a few people's backyards. At first I didn't really think much of it. Like everything else it started small and escalated. She would go out for a quick twenty minute walk right at sunset, then it was thirty minutes, then forty-five, then an hour. Before very long I would be long asleep before I felt her creeping into bed next to me.

Other than that, her behavior didn't change. Despite hardly eating or sleeping she was still her kind and sweet self during the day. She was loving, thoughtful, and just as intelligent as ever. She also didn’t seem to be going through a lot of physical changes. A little weight loss which worried me, but she swore she felt okay.

That's really why I didn't think about it too much. She wasn't acting too different from her usual self during the day, and if all she was battling was insomnia and nausea, then she could cope how she needed to. I think a part of me was worried about stressing her out even more by bothering her about all of it too much, so I sat by and waited.

That was foolish of me, in hindsight. But then again, we always tried to assume the best about each other.

Then it got a lot harder to ignore. When I would kiss her in the morning I could taste iron. Not overwhelmingly, but as if she'd had blood in her mouth a few hours before and rinsed her mouth out. And I don’t mean blood from flossing, I mean I could taste it in her mouth as if her mouth had been full of blood just a few hours prior. I started finding packages in the trash for raw steak. Sure she could've been cooking them without me knowing somehow, but there were so many of them. I couldn't understand how she was eating that much steak in a week, especially after her problems with nausea.

That was when I finally started asking questions, but I was too afraid to press very hard. Instead I kept pretending everything was normal. We kept going about our new routine, pretending nothing was wrong, until the neighborhood pets started going missing.

I couldn't take it anymore, I didn't care if she spent another mortgage on steak or even hunted down squirrels and whatnot as long as that was making her happy, but she couldn't hurt people's precious pets. That wasn’t like her, and it wasn’t something I could let my girlfriend get away with either.

I basically had no evidence it was her, except the shift in her behavior at night (and the occasional episode of spacing out). But something deep inside me knew.

I waited up for her a few nights ago when she went on one of her nighttime strolls. When she got back, around four in the morning, she had blood around her mouth.

The strangest part though was that she looked different: her eyes were wider, more oval shaped than they're supposed to be, her pupils were almost gray instead of black.

I sat her down on the couch and asked what was going on. Slowly her features seemed to shift back to normal, and as they did her eyes welled up with tears. I pulled her into my arms and she cried while she told me what had been happening.

She told me something happened after the camping trip, at least to the best of her knowledge that's when the change occurred.

She said it started pretty much the way I saw it for her too. She couldn't sleep, started eating a lot less, then the cravings started. All she wanted was steak, and at first she was cooking it. Then she realized she wanted to eat it raw, and started doing that. Then one night on her walks she saw a wounded rabbit, it seemed like somebody's dog or cat had bit it and done fatal damage, but not been able to eat it.

She ate the rabbit, and she said it was the most exhilarating, perfect experience she'd ever had. She found that she wasn't tired during the day either when she ate the little animals in the forest. She could go a whole day without needing to eat as much, just snacks here and there, as long as she was eating the occasional small animal from her nightly walks.

But then she found that she needed more and more animals to feel okay. If she couldn't hunt enough rabbits or squirrels in a night, she felt sick and sluggish all day. She told me it didn’t even feel like a conscious thought for her. In the same way that I would walk to the fridge when I’m hungry, she would head out into the woods each night. All she knew was that there was something that could make her feel better, amidst all these weird changes she was going through.

So she kept hunting, trying not to overdo it, she would only kill and eat exactly as much as she needed. That was where the steak came in, it was the only thing other than raw living animals that she could eat and get any sense of fullness from. But eventually, the steak stopped doing it for her, and she was worried about over-hunting the woods behind our house. She stopped hunting for almost a week, she said she was trying to let the local wildlife recover, but she was starving. One night, during her fasting period, she got desperate and ate the dog that had attacked a two year old the year before (see, she's always trying to do the right thing even in a moral grey area).

But that also became too little food very quickly. She needed more food, larger prey so to speak. Again, it wasn’t that she wanted to, the survival instinct seemed to kick in and take over.

She read an article about a man who attacked a child and was let out of prison He only lived a few miles from us, he was on the registry now so his address was public information. She said it wasn't hard to find him. She said he made the perfect meal.

According to her humans are perfect because she doesn't need to eat as often. She said most nights she can walk through the woods, eating only the occasional small animal.

Then on nights when she’s extra hungry and she's had the opportunity to prepare in advance, she looks for what she considers to be a deserving victim, and she goes after them. Dinner and community service all at the same time (that’s my joke, not hers).

She sobbed as she told me all of this, said she hated herself for it but she couldn't help it. She doesn’t want to be like this anymore. She wants nothing more than to live normally, go back to the way things were before whatever it was that changed her.

She was telling the truth. Say what you want, but I know this woman and I know when she's lying. She was being honest with me, and it shattered my heart to see her so sad.

I told her I would help her look for a solution, some kind of cure for whatever was wrong, and that's what I've been doing. I’ve discovered the more she hunts and kills at night, the more she transforms at night. I don’t know if it’s a direct result of the hunting, killing, and eating, or if it’s just that the changes are o...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1h0k0x6/something_happened_to_my_girlfriend/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Random_User_499 on 2024-11-26 07:23:45+00:00.

---

I took the job at the fire lookout station because I needed the solitude. The quiet isolation of the woods promised a reprieve from the chaos of the outside world. It was supposed to be just me and my coworker, Brad, alternating shifts while watching for signs of wildfires. The forest was a cathedral of endless green, and the station, perched atop its tower, felt like a sanctuary.

But now, as I write this, I wonder if solitude was what the woods had planned for me all along.

The first three weeks were uneventful. Brad and I barely spoke beyond exchanging pleasantries during shift changes. He was the seasoned veteran; I was the newbie. His confidence in the job bordered on arrogance, but I didn’t mind. I liked the silence.

One night, during his shift, I woke to the sound of the door slamming. When I stepped out of my bunk, Brad was already gone. His radio sat on the desk, the red light blinking softly. That wasn’t like him; protocol was to keep it on at all times. I tried calling for him, but only static replied.

The hours dragged. Morning came and went, but Brad didn’t return. By evening, I climbed down the tower to look for him, even though every instinct screamed against it.

The woods felt wrong. The birdsong was absent. The wind moved through the trees without sound, as if it didn’t dare disturb the silence. I called Brad’s name until my throat hurt. When I finally turned back toward the tower, I found myself relieved to leave the forest behind.

That night, the knocking started.

It was faint at first, a soft tap-tap-tap on the wooden door. I assumed it was a branch swaying in the wind, but when I opened the door, nothing was there. Just the forest, dark and unyielding.

The knocking came again. Louder. More insistent.

I stayed inside.

---

The following night, I woke to screaming. A raw, guttural wail that echoed through the forest. It was Brad’s voice. He was begging for help.

I grabbed the radio. “Brad? Where are you? Are you okay?”

Static.

Then his voice again, faint and wet, as though he was speaking through a mouthful of blood. “Help me... please...”

I froze. His voice wasn’t coming from the radio. It was outside. Just below the tower.

I looked out the window. The forest was empty, bathed in the cold silver of the moonlight. Then I saw it: shadows moving between the trees, unnaturally fast, darting from trunk to trunk.

One of them stopped at the edge of the clearing. It was tall and humanoid, but wrong. Its limbs were too long, its head cocked at an impossible angle. It seemed to watch me, its form quivering like heatwaves on a summer road.

I turned off the lights and didn’t move until dawn.

The following day, I woke to find the forest ablaze.

Flames roared through the treetops, orange and yellow, licking the sky. Smoke rose in a thick column, blotting out the sun. I reached for the radio, my hands trembling, and called for help. But as I spoke, the fire disappeared.

One moment, it was there, a hellish inferno. The next, the forest was still and dark, as if the fire had been a mirage.

Then Brad came back.

I spotted him at dusk, walking up the trail toward the tower. Relief hit me like a wave, but something about his gait was off. His steps were stiff, jerky, like a marionette on tangled strings.

“Brad?” I called out, my voice breaking.

He didn’t answer.

When he reached the base of the tower, he stopped. His head tilted up slowly, unnaturally, and for the first time, I saw his face. Or what was left of it. His skin hung in tatters, his eyes were gone, and his mouth twisted into a grin too wide for any human face.

“Come down,” he said. His voice was a mockery of Brad’s. “I need your help.”

I stayed inside.

He knocked on the tower’s door. His knuckles scraped against the wood, slow and deliberate. Then he started screaming. Begging. Crying.

I pressed my hands to my ears and prayed for morning.

The tower is no longer safe.

Whatever was outside grew bolder. Shadows darted closer, circling the base of the tower. The knocking turned into pounding. Screams filled the night, echoing from all directions. Sometimes they were Brad’s. Sometimes they were my mother’s, or my ex-girlfriend’s, or voices I didn’t recognize.

The door held. Until it didn’t.

I woke up in a hospital bed, my arms restrained. A nurse stood over me, her smile too kind, her eyes too pitying.

“You had an episode,” she said. “You’ve been here for weeks.”

“No,” I whispered. “I was in the tower. Brad—”

“There is no Brad,” she said gently. “You were working alone.”

I stared at her, my mind reeling. Was it all in my head? The shadows, the fire, the knocking?

But then I saw it. Across the room, on the window’s glass, a faint handprint. Too large to be human. Too high to have come from outside.

And behind the nurse, the shadows were moving.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/windslept on 2024-11-26 01:13:41+00:00.

---

Many years ago, I was walking home from school after basketball practice. I finished late, so it was almost midnight by the time I headed home. It was one of those eerie, quiet nights when everything felt off, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

Then, I saw it—a clown. But not a normal clown, like the ones at birthday parties or circuses. This one was bloody.

I froze. The clown didn’t move at first; it just stood there, grinning at me, as if waiting for me to make a move. Then, it opened its mouth wide, far too wide for any human jaw, as if it were about to devour me whole. It looked incredibly hungry, and I completely freaked out.

I ran as fast as I could, like my life depended on it—because, at that moment, it sort of did. When I finally made it home, I was shaking so badly that I could barely fit my key in the door. I slammed it shut behind me, and when I looked out the window, the clown was gone.

I immediately told my parents what happened, but they brushed it off. “You were probably just tired,” my mom said. “You’ve been practicing basketball for hours; maybe you were just seeing things.”

But I knew what I saw. I wasn’t imagining it. That clown was real. However, as time passed, I convinced myself that maybe I had just imagined it too.

Years went by, and I eventually moved away for college. Life continued—until two weeks ago.

I was driving home late from work one night, a little after midnight again, when I saw him: that same damn clown. It was standing by a storm drain in a parking lot, blood dripping from its hands and mouth.

I froze, staring at the clown. It did the same thing it had all those years ago: opened its mouth wide, that same hungry, terrifying grin spreading across its face.

I don’t know how I managed it, but I forced myself to turn away and get into my car. My hands shook as I started the engine and sped back to my apartment. I locked every door, double-checked every window, and spent the night terrified that I would wake up to find that clown in my bedroom. But nothing happened.

The next morning, I thought I’d overreacted, that it was just some weird coincidence or a figment of my imagination. But then things started to get stranger.

That evening, when I returned from work, I noticed something alarming: my living room window was shattered, the glass scattered across the floor. I checked the rest of the apartment—nothing was missing, no signs of a break-in. I called the police, but they didn’t find any evidence of an intruder—no fingerprints, no footprints. Just a broken window.

In the weeks that followed, things worsened. I moved back in with my parents, thinking it would be safer. At first, everything seemed normal. I nearly convinced myself that I had imagined the clown; maybe it had been some kind of stress-induced hallucination. But then the weird occurrences started happening again.

It began small—little things, like hearing strange noises from the cellar at night when everything was quiet. I told my parents about it, but they just stared at me, as if they didn’t understand what I was saying. That’s when I started to feel like I was losing my grip on reality.

Four days ago, I woke up to find every single window in the house wide open. I was sure I had locked them all the night before—I know I did. When I asked my parents about it, they just stared at me with vacant expressions. Neither of them would admit to opening the windows. The look in their eyes was… wrong. Empty. It was as if they weren’t really there.

That same day, I found our family cat dead.

Then yesterday, I came home after visiting a childhood friend and saw my mother sitting at the kitchen table, eating raw chicken. The way she looked at me when I screamed at her to stop was just… wrong. She didn’t even react. She didn’t move.

Right now, I’m locked in the attic. I’ve been up here for 26 hours with no food, no water. I hear my family downstairs, knocking on the door and calling my name. They keep saying they’re worried about me and that I need to come out. But I’m not sure I can trust them anymore.

Please, if anyone reads this, tell me I’m not losing my mind. Please tell me that I’m not the only one who can see it.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/new-tube on 2024-11-26 00:04:23+00:00.

---

I stared blankly at my laptop screen, the glow illuminating my small studio apartment.

It was a typical Wednesday evening, and I was scrolling through my emails, deleting spam and responding to inquiries about freelance work. That’s when I saw it – an email from Pixar Recruitment.

My heart skipped a beat. Pixar. The studio behind Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and countless childhood memories. I had grown up idolizing their work, dreaming of joining their ranks.

"Dear Lucy,

We're thrilled to offer you an exclusive animation project. Your portfolio impressed our team, and we believe your style aligns perfectly with our upcoming production.

Advance payment: $10,000

Project duration: 6 months

Creative freedom: Yours

Reply to discuss details.

Best regards,

Emily (Pixar Recruitment)"

I re-read the email, pinching myself. Was this real? Scams were common in the industry, but this email seemed legitimate. The Pixar logo, watermarks – everything looked authentic. I checked the email address, ensuring it was genuine.

My mind raced with possibilities. Working with Pixar would launch my career, open doors to new opportunities, and validate years of hard work. I imagined myself walking through Pixar's halls, collaborating with legendary animators, and contributing to a project that would captivate audiences worldwide.

After minutes of hesitation, I typed out a response:

"Dear Emily,

I'm thrilled! Please share project details.

Best regards,

Lucy"

I hit send and waited anxiously for a response, my eyes fixed on the screen. The minutes ticked by, each one feeling like an eternity.

Within hours, Emily replied:

"Project 'Eclipse' requires 20 animated shorts. Deadline: 6 months. Equipment and software will be provided. Advance payment will be wired upon signing the attached contract."

I downloaded the contract, scanning each page carefully. Everything seemed legit – contract terms, confidentiality agreements, and payment details. I printed, signed, and scanned the contract, emailing it back to Emily.

The next day, I received a notification from my bank. The $10,000 advance payment had hit my account.

A mix of excitement and skepticism swirled within me. Too good to be true? I pushed the doubts aside, focusing on the possibilities. Little did I know, my dream project would soon become a nightmare.

I waited eagerly for project details, my mind racing with possibilities. Emily’s response arrived promptly.

"Project 'Eclipse' requires 20 animated shorts," she wrote. "Deadline: 6 months. Equipment and software will be provided. Advance payment will be wired upon signing the attached contract."

I scrutinized the contract, searching for red flags. Everything seemed legitimate – contract terms, confidentiality agreements, and payment details. I printed, signed, and scanned the contract, emailing it back to Emily.

Days passed, and I received outdated equipment and corrupted software installation files. I contacted Emily, concerned.

"Technical issues," she replied. "Use your own software. Bill us." My gut screamed warning.

Emily requested additional payments for "consultant fees" and "project insurance."

" $2,000 to secure your position," she wrote.

I hesitated, sensing something amiss.

Why was Pixar outsourcing to an individual? Why couldn’t Emily provide clear project guidelines? I pushed aside my doubts, focusing on potential benefits.

Emily's responses became cryptic: "Trust your vision, Lucy. Eclipse demands innovation." "Software updates forthcoming. Keep working." Her messages fueled anxiety.

With dwindling finances and looming deadlines, I worked tirelessly. Doubts lingered. Was I blinded by ambition?

Emily’s emails ceased. Panic set in. I tried calling, emailing, but she vanished.

I contacted Pixar directly, only to discover Emily wasn’t affiliated with the studio. The advance payment was a loan shark's trap. My bank account was drained. Credit cards maxed.

Horror gripped me. What had I gotten myself into?

I felt like I'd been punched in the gut. My dream project, a scam. My finances, in shambles. My reputation, tarnished.

Panic turned to despair as I scrolled through my bank statements. The advance payment, gone. Credit card debt, staggering. I faced financial ruin.

I contacted the authorities, filed reports, and joined online forums for scam victims. The police were skeptical, citing lack of evidence. Fellow victims shared similar stories, offering solidarity but little hope.

Determined to expose Emily, I dug deeper. Her email accounts, deleted. Social media profiles, fake. But one cryptic message remained:

"Lucy, you should've stayed creative."

My phone buzzed with a disturbing animation. Twisted, distorted creatures danced on screen. My artwork, manipulated into grotesque parodies. Emily's calling card.

Months passed, and I struggled to rebuild. Freelance work trickled in, barely covering expenses. My passion for animation waned, replaced by caution.

One day, I received an anonymous email:

"Lucy, sorry. You weren't the first. Won't be the last. Keep creating."

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/iifinch on 2024-11-25 17:31:21+00:00.

---

Can people change? Make sure you have the right answer because this is a life-or-death situation. Think about it as you hear how we met a creature named Omertà. She might still be out there, so if you meet her here and she decides you're an enemy, here's my advice:

Avoid Water. Do Not Go Outside When It Rains. Do Not Bathe. Do Not Shower. Do Not Even Drink Bottled Water.

Do not be persuaded by the safety other people have. Once Omertà hates you or someone you love understand she’ll want to kill you all—one by one.

Benni's dad, Mr. Alan, didn't believe me. Mr. Alan would be alive if he had. 

Finding ten different cases of water in his attic sent my head spinning, but my body went fear-driven still. It took a minute for me to recompose myself and my hands busied themselves to get rid of the danger, the danger being the cases of water. 

We warned him. His daughter warned him. Fine, don't believe me, but trust your daughter, man.

The first hours of our arrival at his home were spent warning him, calming him, searching his house, and detailing why. That same day, we tossed cups away, recycled bottles, and only used drips of faucet water to put on a washcloth to bathe.

And we lived! They all were alive when they listened to me! 

That evening to keep us all from an early grave, I got to work burying the packs of water bottles. There was no need to be angry with Mr. Alan; the request did sound insane. There was a need to panic though. Mr. Alan's legendary temper wouldn't stand for a guest in his house burying his newly bought water in his backyard. 

His daughter and I weren’t a couple or anything, just friends, who needed a place where we could avoid most forms of water. Mr. Alan’s home was the last option left.

Mr. Alan and Benni would be back soon. If I dug fast enough, potentially I could bury the bottles and fill the hole back without him even noticing. My arms ached at the thought—shoveling is grueling work. I considered Benni and her graciousness in convincing her dad to let me stay here. Yeah, I could do it.  

Shoveling through a patch of dirt proved to be harder than you'd think. Dirt stained my clothes. My hands tore. My shoulders burned and groaned with the task, and my biceps begged for a break. It felt like the shovel itself was gaining weight. Ignoring all of this, I let the calluses form and pain persist because I really, really, really did not want to cause any more problems for Mr. Alan and Benni. The dark clouds were my only comfort in that hour—shade through the pain, I thought—but in actuality, they were heralds readying misery's reign.

It was an hour straight of grueling work to make a hole large enough to fit all ten cases inside of it. Obviously, they couldn't be poured out and risk making a God-forsaken puddle.

The sound of the door opening behind me shook me from the rhythm of my task. Mr. Alan and Benni were home. My friends describe me as shy, and they're right. So, Mr. Alan launching every four-letter word and variation of 'idiot' at me would have stopped me in the past. But the necessity of the situation made me resist this time. I never turned to face him. I just kept prepping.

"Oh, dear," Benni said. No need to look at her either. The cases needed to be buried. I hefted the first case, anxious to avoid a tear and anxious to avoid Mr. Alan.

"This is your friend, Benni. Your friend! You fix it." Benni's dad said, and he slammed the door.

I hefted another box into the hole and talked to Benni.

"Sorry about that, Benni," I said. "I know your dad can be a handful at times. I know you're scared he bought this water too."

"Nooo, Jay," she said. "He's not the handful."

"Well, I know I'm no angel, but you know what I'm doing is for our safety, y'know." I hefted a second case into its grave.

"Jay-Jay," she said. "My dad's getting real close to kicking us both out. I don't want to be homeless. Please, come inside. I'm begging you."

"Not yet."

"Now."

"No."

"Jay..." Benni's words came out slow and soft, like she was babying a child. "Omertà was our friend. I don't think she'd really hurt us."

That stopped me.

"People change," I said.

"Not that much."

"I think you'd be surprised. And anyway, anyway," it was hard to speak; exhaustion kicked in. The words got caught in my teeth. "There's a decent chance she might have always been like this."

"That wasn't what our friendship was like with Omertà, and you know it."

"Do I?"

She didn't answer.

"Jay-Jay," she said. "There's a hurricane coming. I bought those cases because we could not have access to water if this gets bad."

"Thanks to Omertà, if a hurricane gets bad enough, we're dead anyway."

Circling us, black clouds haunted the skies like vultures on a corpse.

Mr. Alan rushed outside, sidestepping his daughter, rushing to me, facing me, and swinging a large purple metallic cup in front of his face. The cup overflowed with water.

"Yes, I have water in a cup," Mr. Alan mocked. "Ooooh, scary." He took a swig. "And yes, it's a Stanley."

Guess what? He smiled. So, I smiled. I guess he was safe, and that made me happy. He frowned in surprise at me. What? Did he think I wanted to spend a day burying water bottles? I shrugged. If we were fine, I'd need to put the water bottles back in the house and start to board things up again. But first, if we were safe, I would take the warmest bath possible.

A white hand popped out of the Stanley and grabbed Mr. Alan's throat. It squeezed. Benni's dad looked at me, eyes big, scared, and wanting... I don't know.

The pale hand flicked its wrist, and Benni's dad's neck cracked. He fell with an unceremonious thud. 

Dead.

His unbelieving eyes stayed open and the red, angry, pulsing, handprint on his neck looked to be the only part of him that was still alive. 

But he also knocked over the Stanley Cup. The water spilled on the floor as did the hand. I leaped back to avoid it and fell into the hole and onto the bottles of water.

CRACK

CRACK

CRACK

The water bottles cracking might as well have been gunshots into my chest. Panic. My hands and feet slammed into water bottles, cracking more open. Omertà’s many hands materialized from the water, defying the logic of men, daring the brain to break into laughing and insanity at the horrifying impossibility of the matter. Scratching through our reality, one hand squeezed mine at first, not unpleasant because the calloused feminine hand breathed familiarity despite its lack of mouth. The hand clutched mine. 

That hand helped me up mountains, that hand had pulled me from a stream and saved me from drowning, that hand walked with me through life when I needed a friend; a week ago, it was us against the world. 

Like the saying goes: "All this hate was once love."

The hands went squeezing and scratching into me; my own ankle went cracking. Bones broke. By reflex, I reeled, destroying more water bottles, birthing more calloused, petite, and strong hands wanting to break me so that place may be my burial.

The hands blossomed from the wet dirt like flowers and demanded my death like herbicides. Longing for my death through suffocation, one worked on my neck with great success, two groped in my mouth and one kept my mouth open, while their companions dug in the earth, tossing dirt, worms, rocks, and sticks inside. 

The other hands clapped for themselves as joyous as I was drooling. There was so much mass, mass, never-ending mass, only limited by their tiny hands and my assailants' need to gloat.

My eyes swelled as my past with Omertà shrunk until only this moment mattered.

Tears fell as my body was lifted, lifted as the hands that had once protected me searched under my body for more ways to torture me.

Four hands punched into my spine, hoping to break it. Powerful thumps slammed into me in a straight line up my back, weakening it with every blow. My spine giving way. My last moments would be that of a paraplegic, and that was petrifying. How long would she make me live, only able to blink? 

The whirl of a chainsaw brought me from oblivion. Like a horror movie villain, Benni stood above me, and with fury she never showed before, she sliced at hands as they rose from the ground. Omertà's silver blood dripped and then poured from the hands as Benni hacked away. I sputtered and spit out all the nonsense they put in my mouth. Benni pulled me up; silver blood covered us both.

Limping together, we made it inside, but her dad's dead body did not. Instead, that great white hand of Omertà was slowly dragging it into a puddle with her.

Unfortunately, Benni went back out to save the body. A valiant effort from a good daughter. But of course, it was all a setup.

"Wait, wait, wait," I mumbled, still attempting to get control of my mouth back. Benni still didn't get it. She didn't understand the limitlessness of Omertà's cruelty.

Omertà had no use for a dead body. Benni dived for the body. Omertà tossed it away and with a vice grip grabbed Benni's diving hand and pulled. I knew Omertà was yearning to kill Benni, to drag Benni inch by inch into the puddle and into Omertà’s realm and once Benni was there she would end her life.

Benni kicked hoping for impossibility, to anchor on air. Leaping, then falling, then crawling, I reached for Benni. Her dad’s dead eyes yelled at me to save his daughter. His empty mouth hung as if anticipating another failure on my part.

Benni piece by piece disappeared in the puddle, alive and screaming loud enough to travel acros...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gzohhr/do_not_talk_to_voices_in_the_rain_pt1/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Theeaglestrikes on 2024-11-26 04:28:01+00:00.

---

Last week, she came home.

On Tuesday evening, when Tia Greenwood and Matt Walker went missing, the final strands of our threadbare town unravelled. Of course, we’d been coming undone for two decades — ever since Helen Cavendish ran away at the age of ten. But it wasn’t her fault. Wasn’t even simply her classmates’ fault, truth be told. All the townsfolk were culpable, in one way or another.

And all of us will pay.

I tried to get out once. In 2014, I earned my Journalism degree from Cambridge. However, by 2020, London had chewed me up. It tried to work me through its steel-lined stomach, but had to spew me out. An oddball from the north country, no matter how dazzling his credentials, doesn’t really belong there. I hardly belonged in Spitheap. That was what my friends and I used to call this place. I have Mr Fischer, my old German teacher, to thank for that.

“Why did you even move here, Rehn?” Mrs Caldwell asked her colleague in the school corridor.

He grumbled and shrugged his shoulders. “Heaven knows, Ash. This place is a shitheap.”

“Don’t you mean a scheiße heap?” I loudly chirped behind the chattering teachers, sparking a round of laughter from my friends.

The flustered Mr Fischer, realising that we had been eavesdropping, then told a blatant lie. “That’s not appropriate, Jesse Black. And, for your information, I said… ‘Spitheap’.”

The teacher then rewarded me with a demerit and a detention.

Things changed last Tuesday. And when they changed, they changed all at once; not dominoes falling one by one, but a house of cards buckling and collapsing. When three more townsfolk went missing on Wednesday, people started accusing one another of foul play — accusing neighbours and co-workers they’d never liked much. Spitheap’s Facebook group became a dumpster fire of baseless claims as nobody knew what was happening.

Even the mayor fled to his apartment in the city, sealing Spitheap’s dysfunctional state of operations. Hysteria and lies spread; the authorities did nothing to stop that. We’re far from civilisation out here. Far from rules and accountability. Besides, gossip and police officers are synonymous in a small town; they both meander and deal in half-truths.

By Friday evening, I’d started to put together an article; not just for the Spitheap paper, but for my blog. I knew I had a limited amount of time before the story became national news, so I wasn’t wasting a second of it. I typed as I walked along country lanes from the newspaper’s one-room office to my parents’ house — also my house, once again — on the outskirts of town.

Dusk was passing; its orange heart swallowed by the sky’s black overbite. The snow-capped tops of the alder trees, in Spitheap’s woodland, bled under the glow of the setting sun. For once, I saw not beauty, but a hellscape. There was no comfort from the blistering weather.

Instead, I cast my eyes back to my phone and typed with fast-moving digits; skin red and numb from that sub-zero evening. There were pockets of missing information in my draft, of course, so it was far too shallow to go to print. But I’d done my best to fill the gaps. Constable Jordan Merton had a loose tongue, and he let something slip to Alin, a friend of mine, on Friday afternoon. Something that probably should’ve been kept under wraps.

“Merton will kill me when you publish this,” Alin pointed out.

“Even if he were trying, he wouldn’t be able to hurt a fly,” I said, and my friend chuckled. “Come on. Tell me what he told you.”

Alin nodded. “He told me that they found something strange in Matt Walker’s house. Rope painted white; filthy, thin, cobweb-coated rope.”

I frowned. “What?”

“I don’t know, Jesse,” he whispered. “But I think we should get out of town for a bit, you know? Until all of this blows over. Five people have vanished in two days. This killer doesn’t seem to be—”

“Killer?” I loudly interrupted. “We don’t know that, Alin.”

“Do you want to hear what else Constable Merton told me?” my friend weakly asked.

My skin felt a little clammy as I started to dread what my friend might tell me next. I nodded, nonetheless.

“You know Matt lives with his sister, Blair, right?” he asked. “Well, in her interview, she said that she saw something on her drive home — minutes before she found her brother’s blood in the house. Something in the road. An animal, but not one she recognised. Not a dog. Not a wild fox. Nothing that would make sense in these parts. In any parts.

“Blair said the thing skittered in stiff, janky movements across the lane; moved so slowly that she had to swerve. In fact, she said…”

My friend wore a thousand-yard stare for several seconds, then I hoarsely whispered, “What?”

“She said the thing looked at her, and its face almost seemed… human,” Alin said.

I thought about Blair’s version of events as I walked up the darkening tarmac to my parents’ home. Jotted down notes of her story, that I planned to verify from her own mouth. But I was impatient. I had to write then and there; the prose flowed from my giddy fingers, crushing anything else I’d ever written because this story was my magnum opus.

The road beneath my feet wasn’t the only thing I ignored. Eventually, however, the smell of burning wood drew my eyes up my phone, and I jolted in panic. Over the trees, about a quarter-mile up the road, rose a billowing, fattening plume of smoke. It was coming from Farmer Ryan Gleason’s property, which sat only another quarter-mile from my parents’ house. I was surprised not to hear sirens, until I remembered that I didn’t live in the city anymore.

Thinking of my elderly parents just up the road, I pelted forwards; dashing at a pace that hurt my legs and lungs; the smoke didn’t help, of course. But I kept pushing until the blaze came into view. Gasped when I saw that the house, barn, and all other structures on the property were ablaze.

It wasn’t the crumbling infrastructure that frightened me. Not even the smoke, full of particles that scorched my lungs’ lining. It was the driveway painted with streaks of blood that encircled Farmer Gleason’s pickup truck. A truck which, given its open doors, had clearly been abandoned.

At this point, there finally sounded distant sirens, so I stopped dialling 999. I imagined, even in such an isolated location, that dozens of people must’ve seen the smoke cloud.

Anyhow, I followed the trail of blood to the trees surrounding Gleason Farm. I wasn’t sure why the slender trunks stung my teary pupils, but I knew smoke had nothing to do with it. Knew that before the cluster of alders, unhealthily narrow, suddenly shifted sideways.

Illuminated by the raging flames, there lurked a nude, muddy, fleshy thing with bent appendages; four long and four short. Though its face was hard to discern through the shade and smoke, the thing undoubtedly watched me. Was undoubtedly, in some sense, human.

Blair Walker hadn’t been entirely insane.

When the creature started to scuttle speedily to the right, disappearing into the forest, I ran up the road in pursuit of it. And a mere half-minute of running later, there came smashes, thuds, and screams from a few hundred yards up the road. But by the time I had reached the driveway of my parents’ house, the storm had already passed; had punctured the living room window, leaving jagged shards of glass in the vacant window frame, like uneven teeth. The lounge’s overhead light shone brightly, revealing blood stains across the sofa and the carpet. My parents were gone.

I wailed inconsolably as I spun to survey my surroundings, and I immediately noted the disturbed shrubbery beside the driveway. Immediately reminded myself that I’d seen this particular bush in a trampled and forlorn state before. I’d just blamed a wild animal.

I wasn’t entirely wrong.

Lighting the way with my phone’s torch beam, I stepped over the flattened threshold into the woodland. And a hundred-yard trail of mushed, circular footprints led me to a hovel in the mud. When I shakily shone my light inside, it revealed a curved tunnel that had been burrowed by something far too large to be a badger. Far too large to be anything that came to mind.

An animal, but not one she recognised. Not a dog. Not a wild fox. Nothing that would make sense in these parts. In any parts.

Alin’s words ran through my head as I dropped into the near-vertical entrance. And once I’d slipped down the curve, I found myself crouching in a level passageway, slightly wider than the entrance. It needed to be wider to make way for something that made me heave.

Propped against the side of the tunnel in a sitting position was a skeleton. It wore faded, denim jeans and a rucked, stripy top sinking into the gaps between rib bones. The skull’s jaw hung loosely, as if the woman had died screaming. I only really knew for sure that it was a woman because a wooden plank shot from the dirt beside her corpse; words had been etched into the grooves of the makeshift gravestone.

Dr Beatrice Long

1975-2020

Thank you for making me, but nobody will unmake me.

Shuddering uncontrollably, I pressed onwards, and my tightly shut lips finally opened to release a scream. At the end of the tunnel, only twenty yards ahead, was that deformed, eight-limbed thing from the trees.

Up close, I saw that its short legs, each a foot in length, weren’t legs at all. They were stringy pieces of immovable flesh that seemed only to serve an aesthetic purpose. As for the four lo...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/horrorfan_9 on 2024-11-26 03:35:09+00:00.

---

After the divorce and a long, grueling custody battle, I thought I’d finally found a place where my daughter and I could start over. The house wasn’t much—a small, two-story cabin near the woods, miles away from the nearest neighbor. It wasn’t luxurious, but it was quiet, isolated, and affordable, thanks to a modest pension from my years in the military and a body too broken to work a demanding job. For an introvert like me, it was perfect. For my daughter, Emily, it was an adventure.

At first, life here was as peaceful as I’d hoped. The mornings were filled with the soft sounds of birds and the rustling of leaves, the evenings with the crackling of a wood fire. But, as idyllic as it seemed, the town had its quirks.

The first odd encounter came at the grocery store. An old man with a wiry frame and piercing blue eyes kept watching me as I moved from aisle to aisle. I tried to ignore him, but eventually, he approached me and Emily, tipping his hat in greeting.

“Y’all are the new folk up at the old house, aren’t ya?” he asked, his voice rough and gravelly.

I chuckled nervously. “Are we that out of place?”

“Not at all. This is just a small town. Everybody knows everybody is all.” He smiled, but there was something in his expression—a flicker of unease that didn’t sit right.

After introducing myself and Emily, the old man, Rick, invited us over to his place for a “proper town welcome.” He mentioned wanting to “discuss a few rules,” which struck me as strange, but I chalked it up to small-town eccentricity and agreed.

That evening, Rick and his wife hosted us in their cozy, overstuffed living room. While his wife entertained Emily with cookies and stories, Rick and I sat out on the porch, sipping whiskey as the sun dipped below the horizon. After some small talk, Rick’s expression grew serious.

“We’ve got a few rules around here,” he said, swirling his glass. “You don’t have to believe in ’em, but you do have to follow ’em. This is old land, son. And they’ve been here long before we were.”

“They?” I asked, frowning.

“The Forest Folk.” His voice dropped to a near whisper. “We’ve got an understanding with them. You live near the woods, you’re practically roommates with ’em, even if you don’t realize it. There’s rules: don’t whistle in the woods, don’t follow voices calling your name, and most important of all—leave an offering. It doesn’t have to be much. A loaf of bread, a dead squirrel. But leave something.”

“And if I don’t?” I asked, my tone half skeptical, half curious.

Rick’s eyes flicked to the window, where Emily sat laughing with his wife. His face darkened. “Then they’ll decide what to take.”

I didn’t know what to make of it, but Rick’s sincerity was unsettling. For weeks, I shrugged it off as superstition. Then, one cold November afternoon, Emily vanished.

I’d been working on the house, patching up a drafty window in preparation for the coming snow, when I realized the house was eerily quiet. I called her name, first casually, then with rising panic. My search of the house turned up nothing, and I bolted outside, screaming for her. Relief and terror surged when I saw her standing at the edge of the property, right before the woods.

“Emily!” I ran to her, grabbing her arm. She looked up at me, surprised by my panic.

“Hi, Daddy. I was just playing with my new friend.”

My blood ran cold. “What friend?” I asked, scanning the tree line. She pointed into the shadows, but there was nothing there—just the faint smell of damp earth and decay. I told her to never, ever play near the woods again and marched her back to the house. Later, I went to where she’d been standing and found tracks in the soil—her small footprints alongside larger ones, inhuman ones. They weren’t like any animal I’d ever seen.

After that, I took Rick’s advice seriously. Each night, I left something on the porch—a piece of bread, a strip of jerky—and each morning, it was gone. For a while, the unease subsided. Then the snow came.

That December evening, I was bone-tired. Cutting wood in the freezing cold had taken its toll, and I’d fallen asleep without setting out an offering. I woke to the sound of Emily standing by my bed.

“Daddy,” she whispered, her voice trembling with excitement. “Santa Claus is on the roof.”

I blinked, disoriented. “Honey, Santa’s not—”

The sound cut me off. Heavy footsteps. Something was moving on the roof. My breath caught as the weight shifted directly above us, followed by a long, deliberate sniffing sound, like a predator scenting its prey.

Panic took over. I slid silently out of bed, grabbing my hunting rifle from beneath it. Covering Emily’s mouth to keep her silent, I pointed the gun at the ceiling, my hands shaking. The footsteps grew louder, closer. I fired. The deafening shot echoed through the house, and whatever was up there scrambled, letting out a guttural, animalistic growl before leaping off the roof.

I told Emily to hide under the bed and not to come out unless I told her to. Heart pounding, I grabbed my flashlight and rushed outside. The snow on the roof was disturbed where my shot had landed, and below, near the front door, the snow was trampled and stained with blood. The tracks led into the woods.

I shouted threats, firing a few more shots into the trees. The only response was silence—and eyes. Dozens of glowing eyes stared back from the shadows, unblinking and unmoving.

By the time the first light broke through the trees, the car was packed to bursting. Emily sat in the passenger seat, clutching her favorite stuffed animal, her face pale and tired but trusting. I strapped the last bag into the trunk and took one last look at the house. The porch light flickered weakly against the morning fog, and for a moment, I thought I saw movement in the woods—just a shadow slipping between the trees.

“Are we ever coming back, Daddy?” Emily asked quietly.

I hesitated, my fingers tightening on the car door. “No, sweetheart. We’re not.”

As we pulled out of the driveway, I couldn’t help but glance in the rearview mirror. The cabin grew smaller, swallowed by the woods, until it was gone completely. For hours, we drove in silence. The sun rose higher, but the weight in my chest didn’t lift. The further we got from the house, the more I began to feel like we weren’t really leaving. That whatever lived in those woods wasn’t bound by property lines or miles of road.

“Daddy?” Emily’s voice broke the silence, small and hesitant. “My friend said goodbye to me this morning.”

I gripped the wheel tighter, my knuckles turning white. “What do you mean, Emily?”

She looked at me with wide, innocent eyes. “When I woke up, he was at my window. He said he’d miss me, but he’d always know where to find us.”

I didn’t respond. There was nothing to say.

The open road stretched ahead, empty and endless, but no distance felt safe enough. Behind us, the woods waited, and somewhere, deep within, something watched.

We kept driving.

And we didn’t stop.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CalaveraBlues on 2024-11-25 13:24:49+00:00.

---

It was 1995, and the decade so far had not been kind. I would sit at home, wallow in my own self-pity, self-loathing, self... well, everything. The only person I ever really interacted with was Mother. And the many customers that my night job forced upon me. I would deliver pizzas from a place not far from me, a real shithole called Augustino's. A real authentic Italian experience. Hell, even the rats loved the pizza. Tips were poor, hours were anti-social (not that it really mattered), and the bonus free pizza was inedible. Even at my lowest, I would not touch that pizza. The clientele of Augustino's were less discerning - you don't order a pizza at 4am and expect a culinary Pierre White experience after all.

It was 2am, on some rancid December night. Mariah was dribbling out of the car radio, as my hands froze behind the wheel. The heater had broken months before. One of life's little luxuries you don't think about until there is literal ice on the inside of your car windscreen. I turned right under the bridge, and that familiar shudder came over me. It was not the weather. That bridge was the great sentinel between shit and shitter. This part of the city was not where you want to be. Not in the day. Not right now, in the icy night. I passed some boarded up shops and hit the little town dead centre. I parked up. Even over the radio (Last Christmas now, the staticky remix that only my speakers would allow), I could hear it. Techno, trance, house - whatever it was. It blasted out of the customer's house, covering most of the street. I grabbed the pizza. It was cold, but I didn't think these pill popping teens would care, so I didn't even prepare the apology. The hand off was smooth. A teen, pre-puberty moustache, pupils the size of dinner plates, thrust some notes at me, grabbed the pizza, hollared something incomprehensible to whoever was inside, and shut the door. Enjoy the pizza ya little shit.

My phone had rung on the way home. I answered. It was Augustino himself (well, Ramesh, but he owned the place and that name didn't quite have the same all-Italian ring to it). After a long rant, of which I understand around half, he put down the phone. I was fired. The little drug den residents had found a hair in the pizza. I had worn my hair long in those days. I fancied myself an Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Nirvana kind of loner. No one else working at the pizza place had long hair. Just me. And that's exactly what they had described. A long, brown hair, wrapped around pepperoni and sausage. I pulled up at the side of the road, and wept into my steering wheel.

It had been a few weeks later when Mother had suggested the job. It was during our nightly routine. I was brushing Mother's hair, lamenting my stupidity at not being able to find a job. She sat and listened, as all good mothers do, until, through tears, I told her I was useless at everything I tried. She had grabbed my wrist, and held it, hard. You keep me beautiful, she said. Look at me. Look at my hair. This is because of you.

The barbershop came only weeks later. It was steady. I had cut Mother's hair since I was a child. I had never really used clippers, but it was easy enough. The other lads in the shop didn't really speak, but the work was constant and kept my mind focused. It was almost relaxing. I had noticed though, that the less favourable clients always ended up in my chair. People that, if my life was an old Looney Toons cartoon, would have stink lines emanating from them. One man literally fouled himself right in front of me. It took an hour to clean the smell out of the chair. So it was no surprise, that when she walked in, she was pointed in my direction.

To this day, her face is still a blur. It's as though a mannequin, blank faced and devoid of any kind of humanity, walked across the room that day, and sat down before me. It was only when she was right next to me, that it finally became apparent. Her hair, the only way I can explain it, was... rotting. What I supposed was naturally grey hair had large black spots, the size of 50 pence pieces, littered all over her scalp. One patch of hair simply broke off as I attempted to rake the brush through it. I hadn't quite mastered the small talk aspect of the job yet, but what was anyone in this position supposed to say? She certainly didn't mind. She didn't speak a single word throughout the entire ordeal. The water ran black as I tilted her head back. Globs of filth and broken hair repeatedly blocked the plug. I held back my gag reflex, sometimes unsuccessfully. Several extremely large handfuls of shampoo later, it finally ran clean. Not actually having told me what style she wanted, I trimmed the ends of her hair, split like tree roots, and blow dried her hair. I remember thinking that the blow dryer was probably the one thing I wouldn't have to throw away after this.

It had begun to grow dark outside. How long had I been at this? I looked up and around me for what seemed like the first time in hours. The others were completing their closing routine. I looked back at her. I almost gasped. She looked... good. It hung just below her shoulders, jet black and shiny. A sense of familiarity came over me as I stepped back, almost in shock. Did she pay? I can't remember. So much from that day was like a vague dream. Under the circumstances, I understand why.

Mother died the next day. It was sudden and unexpected. She had had the cruelness of someone past their years, but her energy was undying. I remember feeling lost, rather than upset. Especially when it came to packing her things. I bagged up her clothes to drop off at the nearest charity shop. The table of her vanity mirror was still packed with her make up. I grabbed a box and started to throw her things into it, palettes of blush and little tubes of mascara, when I yanked my hand back. A drop of blood dripped onto the dresser. It took me a few seconds to realise what had happened, when I looked down. Mother's hairbrush lay there, a few shiny droplets visible on the clump of black hair still within its bristles.

It was a few days later, and the house felt empty. It dawned on me just how big of a presence Mother had on the house, and just how little I owned. I had begun repurposing Mother's room into something more suitable, and was rocking the large dresser and mirror side to side, trying to get it through the door, when I felt a sharp sting in my fingertips. The cut from earlier in the week had opened, but it wasn't the only source of pain. The four fingers on my right hand burned. I raised them up and went cold. Splinters protruded from each one. The mirror was made of wood but, they couldn't have been from that. They were hair splinters. I had heard the staff at the shop mention them, and I thought they were some kind of cautionary tale about paying attention with the clippers. But here they were. The skin around them was blotchy and irritated. How long had they been there? They were jet black. Surely I would have noticed them? The chill came back as I imagined the rotten hair of that woman piercing my skin like a syringe, and festering there for days. I ran to one of the boxes in the room, and rummaged through for Mother's tweezers I had packed away days earlier. I found them, and plucked at hair hanging out of my fingers like spider legs. I tugged at each one. Some were half an inch long or even more. It was impossible that I hadn't noticed. After around ten minutes, each of my fingers bore jagged holes in their tips, which I plastered up, with hopes to forget the whole ordeal. But from that day, it only got worse.

Around a week later, I still hadn't been to work. The thought of going back made me want to throw up, so I told the owner I was still grieving. He reluctantly understood. It was around this time that the dreams had started. I would be in bed, and I would awake in my dream, coughing endlessly. I wouldn't be able to breathe, and I would start to panic. I would feel a scratching in my throat, and shove my fingers in my mouth, desperately trying to breathe. It was there I would begin to pull, and thick black locks of hair would make their way up my throat. No matter how much I pulled out, I still wouldn't be able to breathe. I would be surrounded by it, lying on piles of hair, and yet more would come.

I only wish they had stayed dreams. Almost exactly a month to the day that Mother had died, my left eye began to itch. It was when my vision began to get blurry that I became worried. I had checked for an errant eyelash for what seemed like hours in the mirror, when I finally saw it. I grabbed the tweezers and took a deep breath to try and stop my hand from shaking. I had to use my left hand. I hadn't dared to remove the plasters on my right. After a few attempts, I managed to grip the eyelash. I carefully tried to remove it, pulling it slowly towards the mirror. At first, I thought I had dropped it, as I felt no relief. If anything, the irritation had turned into pain. I positioned myself differently in the mirror, psyching myself up to grab it again, when I realised the hair was in the grip tweezers still. It wasn't an eyelash. It draped around three inches away from my eye, but was still embedded in the fleshy mass under my eyeball. I dropped the tweezers and the hair hung limply across my cheek. I grabbed it with my fingers and pulled. My eye began to water from the pain and the tears as I began to see the full extent of what was happening...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Fractured-North on 2024-11-26 00:21:09+00:00.

---

Foreword: This letter was found on the bed of inmate Riley Hanson by an unknown correctional officer in Seattle Washington on November 16th, 1983. 

 I am sorry to whoever finds this letter. I didn’t mean for everything to happen the way it did. This is the only thing I can think to do before I go, so you know why. This is my final story, my last confession. 

It all started shortly after Brian & I moved to Seattle. He had just graduated medical school, and we moved to the big city to start our new lives. We house hunted for a few months before we finally found our dream home. It was a beautiful two story house on the outskirts of the city. The moment we entered, we both fell in love with it. We signed the papers that week, which our parents didn’t approve of. That is, until they toured the home themselves a few weeks later. 

A month after moving in, Brian was hired at the local hospital, and our new life was off to a wonderful start. I had a job at one of the local bookstores for a few months, until I found out I was pregnant. When I told Brian, his face lit up and we spent the night getting ice cream and walking around Seattle talking about different names. 

The first incident happened when I was 7 months pregnant. I had left my job at the bookstore a few weeks prior, in order to get the house ready for our baby. I was painting the spare bedroom a light blue color, as we had found out we’d be having a boy. I turned to discover an empty can. I was about to stop painting altogether when I remembered we had several cans of paint in the basement from when we first moved in. I made my way out of the soon to be nursery, and walked halfway down the main hall to the basement door. 

I stood at the top of the stairs to the basement, peering into the darkness below. For a moment I hesitated, wondering if I should just wait an hour for Brian to be home. I’d been down into the basement countless times in the year and a half we’d lived in the house, but the air felt different now. I tried to shrug off the feeling I was walking into the lion’s den as I descended the wooden steps into the dark void below. 

A cloud of dust rolled up as my feet hit the dirt floor. I waved my hand to dispel it as I flipped the light switch and made my way across the room. I stopped in front of a shelf that held various tools and other house-keeping items. I skimmed through it with no luck. I turned and made my way to a workbench littered with wood chips and carvings. Before my pregnancy, I’d taken to using the bench for my wood carving hobby, but stopped a few months ago. Doing my best to remain steady, I bent down and opened a shelf underneath the bench. Inside it were several paint cans. I grabbed one out to examine it, only to find it wasn’t the right color. I sighed and put it back, then repeated the process three more times. None of the cans matched the one upstairs. Defeated, I put the last can back and closed the door, then proceeded to make my way back upstairs. 

My left foot was on the first stair when I heard a crash. I leaned back and saw a paint can had fallen from the shelf underneath the bench. I sighed and started for the bench when the ground began to shake. I steadied myself against the shelf, but the shaking intensified. Various cans and tools began to fall off the shelf. I jumped back as a gardening tool slapped against my arm. There was barely any time to react when I noticed the shelf next to me was falling towards me. It crashed to the ground with a deafening sound as I scrambled up the stairs as best I could with my limited mobility. I collapsed at the top of the stairs, and didn’t move until Brian found me still there. 

After making sure I was ok, besides a small cut on my arm, Brian went down into the basement to assess the damage. He returned 15 minutes later, drenched in sweat. Nothing had broken apart from a can of paint. We both decided it had been a localized earthquake, despite not seeing any mention of one in the next day’s paper. 

Two months later, I delivered the most beautiful baby boy, Everett. He completed our small family, and lit up our lives. About a year after he was born, we were surprised to find out he’d be getting a brother. My second pregnancy flew by and before we knew it, our trio had become a quartet. We named our second boy Riley. When Brian suggested it, I initially thought my son wouldn’t want to share his name with his mom, but I warmed up to it. Throughout this time, the small earthquakes persisted, but they were common where we lived, so we dismissed them. 

When Everett was 5, him and Riley began begging us for a dog. I refused due to an incident in my childhood, but we made a compromise. That Christmas, the boys were gifted a hamster. Initially disappointed, they grew to love Mr. Dorito with all their heart. 

A year later is when things took a turn for the worse. That summer, Mr. Dorito had disappeared when the boys were playing with him. It really took a toll on them, and we weren’t sure what to do. One night, I got up to get a glass of water, and I found Riley kneeling in front of the basement door. We developed the habit of locking the basement door after Everett began walking. He jumped when I asked what he was doing, but then told me he heard a dog downstairs. I told him he dreamed it up, and sent him back to bed. 

The next day, I was working on some projects down in the basement. I let the boys play with their toys in the dirt down there when J worked. They had made a decently sized hole when I told them it was time for dinner. They fussed but relented when I threatened to take away their construction toys. 

That night, Brian and I were awoken by a loud crashing sound. We rushed out of bed into the hallway, and found Riley crying at the top of the stairs. Brian’s keys hung from the basement door. I held Riley as Brian ran down the stairs, returning moments later cradling Everett in his arms. Everett’s arm lay broken in his lap. We rushed to the hospital, and Brian took Everett inside as Riley and I sat in the waiting room. After I got him a juice box from the vending machine, he spoke for the first time since we found him. I could barely hear it, but he said, “We just wanted to pet the doggy.”

We returned home in the late morning. Everett was lucky and had only broken his arm. The boys were back to normal at the end of the day, with Everett bragging about how everyone in his class would think his cast was cool. 

Brian and I decided we would hide the key to the basement in a place only we would reach. That all changed a few weeks later. Brian and the boys were outside while I was in the basement. I had just finished up when I saw movement in the dirt next to me. The ground began sinking into itself, then it began to shift upwards, as if something was emerging. I screamed for Brian as I ran up the stairs. There was growling from beneath me as I reached the top and flung the door shut. For a moment, I thought everything was fine, then the door began to shake. I held myself against it while shouting for help, as something on the other side banged against the door. 

Brian arrived to witness the ordeal. We both held ourselves close to the door until the banging stopped. I stayed by the door as Brian retrieved a chair and wedged it in. He proceeded to call the police while the boys and I retreated to our driveway. Within a few minutes, the police arrived and made their way into the basement. The only thing they found was a paint can tipped over and a large indentation in the ground. They left soon after and Brian and I discussed what we’d do. We decided it wasn’t safe to go down there anymore, so we boarded up the door. 

For about 6 months following that encounter, we regularly heard banging and growls from the basement. Brian had told some of his coworkers about the events, and they suggested a priest should come and bless the house. I was hesitant to involve religion, but I relented. A week later a catholic priest visited our house. He told us our experiences were telltale signs of demonic activity. Brian asked that he bless our house, so he said some prayers and sprinkled holy water in every room of our house. The priest requested access to the basement, as that was the source of our grief. We broke out some tools and opened up the door to the basement. The priest and Brian descended below, and returned a few moments later. After the priest left, we immediately boarded the door up again. When I put the tools away, I didn’t notice a hammer was missing. I’ll never forgive myself for that. 

Two nights later, a scream ripped me from my sleep. I instinctively felt for Brian, but he wasn’t in bed. I leapt from bed and dashed into the hallway, and froze. The basement door was opened, a wooden plank still hanging by a single nail from it. The hammer lay next to it on the ground, along with the other planks. I inched my way to the top of the stairs, only to be met with flickering lights below. A scream from below broke me from my trance, and I raced down the stairs. 

I will not recount the exact details of what I found at the foot of the stairs, as that burden is mine to bear until I leave this life. My boys were dead. Their tattered dinosaur pajamas the only identifying feature. I didn’t have time to process the sight before me when another scream took my attention away. Brian was standing in the far corner, brandishing a kitchen knife. In front of him, is someth...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/therealdocturner on 2024-11-25 23:35:57+00:00.

---

I’m finally in the process of writing a book about my grandfather who passed away twenty years ago. I set up a recorder and visited him several times and I just let him go. I’d get lost in that deep timber behind his Georgia drawl. So much tape. I wanted to share my favorite story that he told because I’m not going to include it in the book. My editor is putting his foot down. He says it’s too far off the beaten trail. I just wanted it out there somewhere. I just transcribed the recording. I figured his words spoke for themselves.

When I was just out of medical school, I got my first job in a small town just north of Portland. I’d been there…six years when four men were mauled to death in the fall of 1954. Their bodies had been dragged off into the woods, and there wasn’t much left of ‘em after they were found. At first, folks had thought it might be a mountain lion or a pack of coyotes, but after the third man was killed, most folks, myself included, had thought it was Kitchner Brown’s junkyard dogs. Kitchner was an unfortunate outcast, and his dogs seemed like they fit the bill.

Kitchner had come home from the War in Europe, a changed man. A German grenade had gone off right next to him, which gave him a bum leg and a broken brain. He was a real nice man, but most folks in town didn’t want much to do with him when he got back. I guess before he left, he was sharp as a tack and quick with a joke. Everybody loved him then. The war ended just after he’d come home and I think everybody was happy to bask in victory and not too keen on staring at what that victory cost.

All Kitchner had was Becky, his young wife. Wonderful girl. They’d been sweethearts since they could walk. Becky didn’t care that he was a little slow, she was just happy to have him home. 

They wouldn’t hire him down at the mill, so he went and turned his property into a junkyard. It didn’t bring in much, but it was enough for him and Becky. Becky had tried to argue on behalf of her husband to his old friends, but it was no use. He was dead to them as far’s they were concerned.

One time in church, Becky stood up in the middle of the sermon. 

“That grenade didn’t take away nothin’ that made my husband the best man God ever made. Shame on all of you!”

She walked out the door and never came back. Way it goes in small towns, I guess.

 A little over a year after Kitchner came back home, Becky got pregnant, but she died giving birth to their little girl, Sarah. Kitchner was left to raise their little girl on his own. He didn’t have much time to mourn. He buried her on the nicest part of his property, with a view of the mill pond in the distance. He even made a bench. When his daughter was sleepin’, he’d always sit on it and watch the stars and talk to his wife.  

He made that little girl his life. In spite of their feelings for him, people in town had to admit that there wasn’t a better father than Kitchner Brown. If you ran into Kitchner in town, he would talk your damn ear off about every little thing his daughter did.

He even went down to Portland and came back with three puppies so his daughter would have more company growing up than just him. Those dogs were very protective of that little girl. Anybody that come anywhere near her was given the side eye from those surly mongrels.

Years went by, and then the dyin’ started. Four men, all killed at night.

I gave my two cents as a doctor. Looked like a dog attack to me. Had I known what was going to happen, I’d… heck I don’t know what I woulda done. I didn’t know they were gonna do what they did. I thought something else should’ve been done.

After people had come to an agreement on the responsible party, a bunch of men took it upon themselves and went to the junkyard and shot Kitchner’s dogs right in front of his daughter without even a word. Kitchner was mad as hell, but his daughter always came first. He went and buried those dogs next to his wife and told his little girl that she would see them again someday.

“I know it’s sad for you baby, but they’re havin’ a gay old time right now with your Momma.” He told me he said that to her. Like I said, he’d tell anybody within earshot everything about that little girl.

Everybody thought the problem was solved, until that next night.

Sarah had snuck outta the house after dark. She was crying over the graves of her dogs when she was attacked by somethin’. Kitchner woke up to the screams of his baby girl. He had been able to scare off whatever it was with his gun. He snatched her up and brought her down to my place.

She was all tore up. Runnin’ a fever. I remember when I was cleanin’ her wounds, this awful sound came from outside. I thought it was a wounded coyote at first… but…it just um.. I’ve had nightmares for fifty years about that damn noise. Kept gettin’ closer and closer to my place in the dark. Kitchener still had his gun. I think he was as scared as I was. I kid you not, I never want to hear that sound again.

Scared me so bad, I wouldn’t leave my place after dark. Anyway…

The next day, a pack of coyotes was tracked and gunned down while Kitchner was still by his daughter’s side. For the next three weeks, nothing happened. No more attacks. No more wild cries from hell in the middle of the night. Sarah had gone into a kind of coma, fighting for her life. I thought about taking her down to Portland, but I was scared if we moved her that we might make it worse.

Life returned to normal for everyone except Kitchner. I gotta be honest, I don’t know what was wrong with her, so I won’t even bother to go down the checklist of everything I crossed off. Kitchner told me that he knew what it was, and that he knew what he had to do. But he never bothered to say more. I thought maybe he’d just gone off his nut. Who wouldn’t with his whole world dyin’ right there in front of him?

He spent three weeks talking to everyone in town like he was Sherlock Holmes or something. Asking questions. 

Where were they that night?

People caught him goin’ through their properties and homes, like he was looking for somethin’. He was even thrown in the sheriff's cell for one night. He was warned to stop what he was doin’. 

One day he went down to Portland. He had his truck loaded up with every nice thing in his home. When he come back three days later, all that stuff was gone. All he had in the truck with him was a couple boxes of bullets.

Come October, there was a town picnic by the mill pond after church. Everybody was there. I stayed with Sarah. I wasn’t gonna leave that little girl’s side for nothing.

Well, Kitchner made a scene down at the picnic.

Stood up on a big stump and started to shout.

“My little girl is gonna die tonight, I’m certain,” he says. “When that moon comes up tonight, her life’s over. There’s only one way that ain’t gonna happen. I narrowed it down to thirteen. I talked to y’all. I can’t narrow it any further. One of you is to blame for all this misery. I know what happened to you ain’t your fault, but you’ve gotta pay for what you’ve done. You gotta be man enough to let me end it. If there’s any part of you that’s sorry for what you did, I’m begging you to come forward now. Save my daughter. Please.”

Everyone was silent. No one knew what to say. Kitchner started to tear up. He started to look a little wild.

“Whoever you are, please don’t make me do this! Nobody else has to die! I’m begging you.”

After another awkward moment, some men from the mill dragged him away from the picnic. Kitchner was screaming the whole time. Swearing there was a monster in their midst.

Half an hour later, Kitchner came back with a couple of guns. 

Kitchner Brown murdered thirteen men at the church picnic that day and got a belly full of bullets himself for the trouble. Those bullets didn’t seem to bother him though. He was a bloody mess goin’ about his business. When he was done, he went back to his truck and drove down to my place.

He pointed his gun at me and I about loaded my drawers. He looked like hell and he was certainly not afraid to raise it.

I thought it was over right there.

“I know it ain’t you, Doc. I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t do anything stupid, and I won’t.”

He made me sit with him by his daughter’s side. 

A group of men had went and got their guns and camped outside my house, but none would come in because Kitchner was holding me at gunpoint. It went on like that for a few hours until nightfall.

As the full moon of October rose in the sky, Sarah’s fever finally broke and she opened her eyes. Kitchner was thankin’ God and smiling. He was almost bled out at that point; white as a ghost.

I can still hear their voices. I will never forget the words they said to each other, and the words he said to me after.

“Daddy?” she says.

“You’re gonna be alright, baby.” he whispered.

“I saw Momma, and my dogs. Momma said it was time to go home.”

“That’s good, baby.”

“I wish you coulda seen her, Daddy.”

“I hope I will, baby. You get some rest.”

Sarah smiled and nodded back off, and Kitchner turned to me. He smiled. He was holdin’ back tears. 

“I don’t know if I’m gonna get to see either one of ‘em again, Doc. I killed thirteen men today, and twelve of ‘em were innocent. I don’t think there’s any forgiveness here or in heaven for what I done. But my baby girl's life was worth it.” Kitchner smiled and died right there as his daughter slept.

The town damned Kitchner to hell with every breath they had to spare,...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/HughEhhoule on 2024-11-25 21:50:04+00:00.

---

For anyone that missed things a few days ago.

“So how do we know when this guy is causing the distraction?” I text.

JP laughs, it’s genuine, but dark all the same.

“The one thing I can promise you, is that when this lunatic does his thing, you’ll know.” Is his answer.

Everything is still happening so fast, the karmic quicksand that is our situation is dragging us down faster with every passing second.

Kaz is still looking rough. He’s a living example of how being able to withstand violence isn’t necessarily a good thing.

“What is this guy? Besides the obvious. “ I text.

“He’s on a lot of radars, but to the best of anyone’s knowledge, he’s just some asshole. You’d think the headline would be that he has a scrap of the ripper in his skull, but it isn’t.

No one can find anything on him before about 4 years ago. And even then, it’s spotty.

This might not sound like a big deal, but I’ve never seen someone that the collective efforts of the nosiest pricks on either side of the void can’t figure out.

Regardless, this guy can do 2 things you need, spill blood and cause shit. “ JP assures me.

“Do we need to worry about him?” I question.

“Yes, of course. What part of anything I said was unclear?

Unstable, unknown, unfriendly. Christ, how much brain did you get left with?

I’m texting you a location. If you get out, I’ll be there. Then we can see what we can do for Leo. “ JP says, dropping the call.

I hide the phone, but realize it’s been a while since I’ve seen one of the guards or twisted medical personnel walk by.

The sounds of other entities, caged and tortured , ring through the grim hallway.

“Kaz, how are things coming along?” I ask, fear and panic rising.

“It’s going to be a while still. “ Kaz says, punctuating the sentence with a pained scream of his own.

I’m going to spoil things, just a bit, what happens next, feels like the end of the world.

And contrary to popular belief, the end of the world doesn’t start with a whimper, or a bang, but a song.

Two guards walk into the hallway, human, or close enough.

Doesn’t make them any less intimidating though. Heavily armed, and in tactical gear that’d be at home in a warzone, they patrol the cells.

“Subject 248 has escaped, repeat , subject 248 has escaped. Non-lethal force only has been authorized. We must retrieve the asset. “ A voice barks through a military grade walkie-talkie system.

The taller of the two, a man with a caustic looking facial scar, presses a button on a mounted speaker, “ Roger.” He says, looking to his companion and nodding.

They both draw stout, arcing batons from hip holsters.

The sound of broken glass, a doorway at the end of the hall is plunged into darkness.

“Hello darkness my old friend. I’ve come to talk to you again. “ A thin, sinister voice half-sings.

The guards exchange glances, standing firm, almost amused.

Another lightbulb bursts, barely audible footsteps.

“Because a vision softly creeping.

Left it’s seeds while I was sleeping.” The voice gains volume, taking on an eager, almost wavering tone.

“There’s only one way down the hallway, this dickhead is just trying to shake us up. “ the shorter guard, a man with red hair and ghost white skin, says.

Two more lightbulbs give way, there’s fifteen feet or so of visibility, the rest of the hallway is black as pitch.

“And the vision that was planted in my brain, still remains. “The voice is no longer singing, the ancient song’s lyrics sound like a threat.

The shorter guard stumbles to the side, hitting the bars of our cell. His companion is confused, and to be honest, so am I.

But as the man starts to fall to his knees, I see it.

A piece of jagged steel protrudes from the side of his skull. Blood falls in sheets as the man starts to gibber nonsense, clawing at the metal futilely.

“Within the sound, of silence.” The voice croons.

The taller guard attempts to grab his speaker, to radio for backup.

There’s a moment, where you can tell this man, who willingly chose this evil job realizes how much of a mistake it was. A look of shock as a rough, brutal length of metal, nothing more than a sharpened piece of debris spins end over end, first severing his hand, then the cord of the Walkie-talkie and finally buries itself in his shoulder.

The part of my brain that loves watching pain and brutality, is being absolutely outshined by fear.

Now, this may seem dramatic, even confusing. But you need to understand something. The difference between terror and horror.

Terror, is the fear of the unknown. Horror is the revulsion once it’s revealed.

Horror, I’ve been modified to love, terror, sadly, I can very much feel.

From the darkness, walks a figure as confusing as the fact my creator didn’t snip out the fear centres of my brain.

It’s the man from before, of course. He’s wearing torn, bloodstained pants, shirtless, and carrying a military style duffel bag.

His hands and forearms are covered in so much blood and gore it looks like he’s wearing gloves. The man’s left hand holds something but I can’t tell what it is. The shirtless psycho’s body is a detailed map of wounds that tell a story of torture, escape and revenge.

The man’s body language is half way between apex predator and drunken schizophrenic. His stroll to the two mortally wounded men is casual but eager, as if he’s savoring every moment.

“In restless dreams, I’ve walked alone, narrow streets of cobblestone.” The pale figure comments in a wondering tone.

In an instant he slams the object in his hand into the taller guard’s head. The quarter brick cracks the guard’s skull, and he falls backward, legs flailing like a dying spider as he tries to keep his footing.

The lunatic drops to all fours searching for something on the ground. I get a good look at him, and see that he’s flensed the tattooed jester’s makeup from his face. Accurately enough to keep the sharp, angled patterns. His lips are ripped and torn from the oversized ball-gag, completing the clown from hell look.

“ ‘Neath the halo of a streetlamp, I turned my collar to the cold and damp. “ The mysterious killer mumbles to himself, then his face brightens, as he finds what he’s looking for, a wicked grin causing blood to ooze from his torn lips, “ When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light!” He screams.

Neither guard is in a state to defend themselves. The clown blinds them with a shard of shattered lightbulb.

He finishes his grim task, slowly turning toward Kaz and myself. His smile is full of shattered, almost fang-like teeth, his voice though hoarse seems normal.

“You two the puppet and the ‘Candyman’ ?” he asks.

“ Yes. “ Kaz says, trying and failing to rise.

I nod.

“ I’m Mike. “ The tall stranger says, taking a keycard from one of the dying guards and opening the cell door.

He throws the duffel on the cement floor, and unzips it.

“So, You look like ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag, Slenderman. How long is it going to be before you can walk?” Mike asks.

“ I don’t know, maybe five minutes if I’m lucky. But I’ll be in no state to fight. Who, are you? “ Kaz replies.

Mike laughs.

“No fucking clue my guy” He says, rapping his bare skull with one hand, “ There’s a lot of loose nuts and bolts up here, and separating those from all the paranormal horseshit, that’s a task I gave up on a while ago.

What I do, is kill people. Believe it or not, It gets kind of boring. I’ve always wanted to kill monsters. “

Mike lets the comment hang, bringing out a long purple jacket from the bag.

“Jesus Christ no. “ He says tossing the garment aside.

Kaz’s eyes go wide.

“That fabric is indestructible. “ He comments, wincing in pain as ribs begin to fuse.

“You wear it then, I’m not walking around here looking like the god-damned joker.

Actually, let’s trade. “ Mike says taking Kaz’s jacket and shirt. They hang absurdly off of the man.

The supposedly indestructible garment sits on the ground clearly too small for Kaz.

“So, here’s my dilemma. Your friend says the shit in this bag has enough chutzpah to let my punch my M-card. And all I have to do to keep it , is cause enough of a distraction to let you two get out of here.

Now, five minutes fighting whatever the hell Pi’s A-team is, that’s going to be risky as hell. “ Mike says, pulling a walking stick topped with what I can feel is a lead plated infant’s skull from the duffel.

It radiates an energy that makes me walk backward.

“But sending you two on your way, that’d put a notch in my belt and let me get out of here before the shit really hits the fan. “ He stalks toward Kaz.

My friend tries to move backward, but succeeds in nothing more than making himself scream.

Mike taps Kaz’s shoulder with the head of the walking stick, the flesh peels back like wax under a welder’s torch.

“So, tall, warped and handsome, I’m going to ask you a question, and keep in mind I know the answer.

When you were talking to Pi, you said you were buddies with the god damn cancer I’ve got stuck in my brain.

Were you?” Mike asks.

Every sense I have tells me this person in front of me is just that, a person. But the look he gives Kaz, is as terrifying as anything I’ve seen yet.

“We could be found in the same circles for a time. “ Kaz replies, ashamed.

“God-damn it. “ Mike sighs, moving the walking stick, “ Guess you’re walking out of here then.

But someday...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Due_Pin_9161 on 2024-11-25 18:08:19+00:00.

---

Hi all,

Carol here. Well, I don’t have much preamble in me today. I’ve had a few requests to hear the story of the deer incident of 2001. Despite my hesitation to share this, if y’all are so curious, here it is. You can’t say I didn’t warn you. Read at your own discretion.

The day began like any other. We had a kid, a little girl, who broke her arm messing around on the toe rope lift. I had to scold the instructor who even let her on it, she was much too young, too small, and obviously terrified. An overzealous dad had shoved her onto a snowboard without any thought to her abilities. I had just finished up there, preparing to write an incident report, when I got the radio call from my coworker, Brixton, up the hill. His voice was shaking, something I’d never heard from him before. He’d been here longer than I had, seen much worse, so I knew whatever was up there waiting for me, it wasn’t anything good.

I took the lift up to the Gottlos run, a blue run down the far side of the mountain. What awaited me towards the top of the slope was a horror.

A woman, blonde hair, skin pale as a porcelain doll, lay sprawled out in the snow. Her chest cavity had been torn open, thick, dark blood soaking the snow around her. Muscle, fat, organs and blood gleamed in the sunlight, a sharp contrast to the pristine white all around us. I swallowed thickly and looked back to the growing crowd of my coworkers.

She looked like an oyster, ribs wrenched apart like the shell, exposing the delicate flesh. The remainder of her innards resembled ground beef more than any discernible structures. She had been gored, but not in a way I had ever seen before. This was…violent. It wasn’t a creature who was frightened, or threatened, this was total annihilation of the human form.

As I stood there, transfixed by the fight of the mutilated woman, the head ski patrol appeared from the top of the slope. Gardner, a man easily into his sixties, seemingly floated down the run, a grace in his movements I had never seen in any other member of our ranks. I will likely never see someone ski like that again. He unclipped his skis, trudging over to us in the snow. He had his fists tightly clenched in his gloves, a slight tremor evident in his left hand.

He stood over her in silence for a moment, bowing his head before murmuring what I think was a prayer. He inhaled sharply, his head snapping upright. He was military in some bygone era of his life, don’t know what branch, what he did, where he’d been. Gardner didn’t talk about personal matters, not that anyone was grabbing a beer with him. He had an air of impenetrable solitude about him, and no one cared to make the effort.

“Damn deers,” he muttered, his deep voice biting against the quiet winter air, “We’ll shut down the run for the day, get county over here to collect her, figure out how to keep the deer off the slopes. Send some bait out there, appease ‘em or something.”

Everyone nodded, but our eyes betrayed us. We glanced at each other, a silent question hovering in our shared gazes.

Appease them?

Before we had time to question further, he curtly nodded again, fumbling with his front pocket like he was seeking a cigarette. His hand trembled more aggressively for a moment, before he cleared his throat and nodded to the rest of us.

“Let’s get started then. I’ll see y’all at the bottom, keep your eyes peeled for any other possible DB’s or stragglers on the run. Gotta get this place cleared out before Teagen gets out here with the boys.”

Teagen was our current contact on the force in Blowing Rock. He was around Gardner’s age, and it seemed the two had history with these mountains. A torrid history they didn’t seem keen to share. Based on his flat affect at the gory scene before us, I’d say they’d seen this kind of bad before, perhaps many times.

We left her up there, posting signs at the lifts and bottom of the slope warning off any skiers who might chance a closed run. We said it was icy, snow was patchy, essentially that the terrain wasn’t safe for skiing. Before we completed the run, an image came to be unbidden. The woman’s wrists…they had been bruised. Almost as if she’d been tied up.

I just couldn’t shake the scene from my head. I mean, I’d seen a goring before, but never like that. Deer didn’t do that. She wasn’t in ski gear, or, what was left of her clothing didn’t resemble it. All I could think of were the woods that the mountain backs up to, and what in them might’ve torn that woman to shreds.

The next night, as the resort was closing down, myself and two other newer ski patrols, Brixton and Waters, decided to go up and investigate ourselves. In hindsight, that was one of the worst mistakes we could’ve made, but as it often does, youth and arrogance begets tragedy.

When we got to the top of the run, we popped off our skis and traded them out for snow boots we had stashed in our backpacks. We told the lift controller at the base of the run we just wanted a final go at Gottless for the night, and he allowed it despite the warnings we’d posted the day before. He knew they weren’t accurate, and we were the pros. We had two flashlights, three radios, and one pistol between the three of us. I advised Waters to bring her gun since there could be some violent wildlife up here, especially after dark. We started our path into the woods, unsure what exactly to look for, but oh, we found it.

After fifteen minutes of walking in the heavily wooded forest, I had a realization. It was silent. Quieter than a crypt. I couldn’t even hear our footfalls in the snow. Even my breath seemed silent, as did my heart. I looked to Brixton and Waters and they seemed to have the same realization I had. We all stopped, looking at one another and wondering what in the hell could be causing this. As we stood there, eyeing each other with a fix of confusion and fear, we saw the first light.

A single candle flickered among the trees, then more, drifting in a way I can only describe as dreamlike. We ducked down, creeping closer to the path the candles were taking, and saw the bearers of the flames. A group cloaked figures, all in black, with a sort of crown on their heads. Each differed in size, color and shape, but all bore some form of antlers, shaved down and reformed. The figure at the head of the parade wore full antlers like a stag, held together by twine or string of some kind, placed upon his head like the crown of thorns I’d once seen on a statue of Christ. My body felt cold, and when I placed a hand over my mouth to hold in the rush of shock the sight gave me, I felt frigid, salty tears stinging my face. I had begun to cry, unconsciously, I was no longer in control of my body in this onslaught of horror.

At the back of the parade was a woman, bound tightly on a gurney of twigs. She was blindfolded, thorny brambles twisted around her like some kind of barbed wire. She twisted and wailed, trying in vain to break free of her captors. I broke out of my trance, turning to my coworkers to see the same kind of primal fear etched into their faces as I knew was reflected in my own. We had no choice but to follow the dark river of candles and cloaks.

They ended their march at a small clearing, framed by tall withered beaches and thick foliage. The snow on the ground was thin there, trampled by many feet over the past few nights. There was a singed spot on the ground that was replenished with tinder and set alight with the flames of their candles. A bonfire. They gathered around it while a single cloaked figure separated from the group. I watched him as he knelt beside a large rock on the ground, and slowly pushed it back. The entire flock froze, save for the terrified woman who’s sobbing continued despite the silence. Eventually, even she grew quiet, trembling like a leaf. Beneath the rock was a hole, like a well.

The smell hit us like a wall. It was a smell of rot, decay, death, sorrow and deep malice. Like a body left to rot and be feasted on by crows. The smell of rage and murderous intent. Whatever was in that hole, it was not of this world, nor should it have ever been found. The group began to chant and sing, a deep rhythmic pulse to their collective voices. It was Gregorian, though the language was something I’d never heard before, nor do I wish to ever again. Among their chants came another voice, perforating the air in a way that was godlike. It was deep, so deep it felt like the voice came from below the earth itself. Below hell, beyond time, beyond comprehension.

The woman began to wail again, her cries becoming frantic shrieks. We stayed frozen in our hiding spots, unsure what to make of what we saw, our bodies powerless to move us into this scene, to help her in any way. Then, it began in earnest.

The cloak with the full crown of antlers knelt beside the hole, as if paying reverence to whatever being was residing within, before removing the crown from his head. He stood after a moment of prayer, and raised his hands up, bellowing out what sounded like a revelation.

The crowd of cloaks rejoiced. The woman screamed. I wept.

The man stood before the woman, crown in his hands, the antlers pointed towards the exposed skin of her abdomen. As if it were nothing, he plunged the points of the antlers into her flesh. The woman’s cries became a guttural howl, blood bursting forth from her mouth like shaken soda from a bottle. The members each removed their crowns,...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Dopabeane on 2024-11-25 20:13:35+00:00.

---

I can’t even write this girl’s history up right now. I literally can't.

I don’t know how my boss thought it would be a good idea for me to talk to her, or why he’d think anything she said would make me feel better about anything or anyone.

The rest of her file will come later. Or maybe it won’t. I don't know.

And right now I don’t care.

* * *

Interview Subject: The Cleanup Crew

Classification String:  Cooperative / Destructible / Khthonic / Constant / Moderate / Apeili

Interviewer: Rachele B.

Date: 11/25/2024

On the day I died, I was 5’5” and I weighed 80 pounds.

That was the worst thing ever because just a week prior, I had only weighed 79 pounds.

It can’t be, I assured myself, ignoring the panic gnawing the boundary of my consciousness. It’s wrong. It isn’t possible. You logged every gram of food, like you’re supposed to. You accounted for every fraction of a calorie, like you’re supposed to. You did everything, like you’re supposed to. You were in control. You are in control.

I stepped off the scale, then stepped back on.

This time, the number was even worse: 80.2.

A panic attack roared in. I was a failure. A weak, idiotic, disgusting failure with no self control. I stared at myself in the mirror, loathing every line and contour of my body and despising everything inside it until I burst into tears. I cried so hard it made me dizzy. Too dizzy to stand. Too dizzy to even sit. I lay down as sobs wracked my body, curling up on the bath mat as darkness shredded the edges of my vision. My chest felt so heavy, like someone had stacked a hundred bricks and plopped down on top of it. Nausea roiled in, slick and all-consuming.

I blacked out, then juddered back into consciousness on the living room floor, screaming as a paramedic slammed my sternum down again and again, crushing my heart, my lungs, my spine. The pain was so overwhelming I couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t even think. I could only feel pain exquisite in its profoundness, and a mindless, primal panic because I just knew that each compression was cracking my bones and rupturing my organs. 

I tried to shove him off, but I was too weak to even twitch. Pressure in my chest surged, flattening my lungs, and pain swallowed me again.

I woke up in a hospital.   

I remember the words my doctor used. Anemia. Critically low blood pressure. Bone loss. Kidney damage. Heart failure. 

The heart failure was why I’d gained weight— all the fluid built up because my own heart was too weak, too damaged, to cycle its own blood. 

“Can you cure it?” I asked.

“No. It’s treatable but irreversible.” He looked at me sadly. “I told you, Courtney. If you don’t eat, you’ll die. And you died.”

By the time they drained all the excess fluid, I weighed 72 pounds.

When I was finally discharged a month later, I weighed 89 pounds and had racked up a ninety-thousand dollar bill.

In my defense, I didn’t expect things to end that way.

Then again, there are a lot of things you don’t expect about eating disorders.

For one thing, you don’t expect the exhaustion. How your mind slows down, how even a full year into recovery you still trail off mid-conversation because your brain can’t pounce on the right words.

 

No one tells you how every waking moment (and most of your sleeping moments too) are consumed. How the only thing that makes you feel pride, the only thing that makes you feel hopeful, the only thing that makes you feel good, is meeting your restriction goals. 

No one tells you how good it feels when people lavish you with compliments, or how confusing and devastating it is when those compliments dry up. No one tells you that most people eventually stop talking to you. You definitely don’t believe the desperate friends who tell you that you’re not fat, you’re dying, and you only think you’re fat because your brain is so fucked it can’t see reality anymore.   

You don’t expect the stench, either. The ketone miasma smells like a cocktail of nail polish remover and blood, with a tantalizing note of cat piss.

You don’t expect what happens your teeth, how you’re lucky if it’s only your back molars that crumble. 

You don’t expect the scarring that impedes your ability to swallow solid food. No one tells you that your stomach might never stop hurting, even after you get better. No one tells you that you'll sometimes get panic attacks when you take your acid reducer because the berry-flavored coating is sweet.

No one tells you how an eating disorder will turn you into an addict with everything addiction entails — the lying, the manipulation, the obsession, the ugliness, the destruction - only instead of alcohol or opioids or meth or fentanyl, deprivation is your drug. And no one tell you how people around you are okay with it up until the very end, because for some reason we all think self-deprivation is a virtue. I still think that sometimes.

No one tells you about heart failure. What it’s like to feel crushing pressure on your chest, to have lungs so impeded by fluid that they can’t expand enough to draw half a breath, or what it’s like when your heart stops, or how it feels to have a frantic EMT crush your sternum and crack your ribs to restart your dead heart.

And no one tells you about the time you lose.

I was sick for four years. Years that somehow feel like a fever dream and realer than real at the same time.  Years that mired me in place while everyone and everything I cared about left me behind.

But all of these things I didn’t expect happened in the middle of this story. The middle is the least important part. Now I’m going to tell you the beginning.

My big sister Carissa was the best person in the world.

She adopted two ancient mutts and sang lullabies to them every night. She made friends with the crows who lived in the courtyard behind our apartment and taught them to say my name. She donated money to food banks and animal shelters, and cried at TV commercials, and volunteered at Big Brothers Big Sisters until they found out what she did for a living. Even after they banned her, the girls she worked with came to her on their own. When our mom kicked me out, she drove over before I’d even made it down the street and took me to live with her. Didn’t charge me a dime. Didn’t even ask me to buy groceries or pay the water bill. 

I was jealous of her. Desperately jealous. I hated myself for it. I still do. I was a short, fat little wallflower who couldn’t get a second glance from anyone. No one talks about that, either. They talk about unrequited crushes, and the beauty industrial complex, and how pretty women get better jobs and make more money. But they don’t ever talk about how it feels. They don’t talk about that wild, sinking pit that comes with the realization that no one sees you. The despair when you understand you might as well not exist. 

Carissa had none of those problems. And I was glad. I didn’t want anyone to feel like me, least of all her. 

But I was still jealous.

One night after dinner, I realized I was way too full. And I didn’t like the way that felt. I looked across the table and saw my sister, looking beautiful. So beautiful that I felt jealous. I didn’t like the way that felt, either.

That was the night it started. From there, I launched headlong into my diet.

Carissa was my biggest supporter. She supported me in everything I did. Why would a diet be any different? She was my foundation. My accountability partner. My guiding light. That was what Carissa was at her core: Light. She didn’t brighten every room she walked into. She was too wild for that. So bright and so wild that whenever she walked into a room she burned it down. 

Men loved that about her, at least at first. Nick did for sure. 

Nick owned her club. He wasn’t her boss — too high up for that — but he had the final say in everything, especially the girls. 

That brings me to the last, least important thing about my sister:

She was a stripper.

I know that’s a shitty word. I know there are better descriptors. Exotic dancer, or just dancer. But Carissa chose and claimed the title of Stripper (specifically, the Best Damn Stripper in the Armpit of California) for herself, so that is what I’ll call her.

To me, Nick started off as some distant, vaguely threatening background character in Carissa’s rants about work. But it didn’t take long for that to change. For Nick to notice how bright she shone. How everything burned in her wake. 

I knew they were dating before she told me. What I didn’t know was that dating Nick came with expectations. Bad expectations. Expectations that terrified her. So she broke it off.

He killed her for it, and he got away with it.

I was at work the night it happened. She called me at the end of my shift, screaming. Don’t come home. Courtney! Whatever you do, do not come home! And then I heard a crash in the background, and her dogs barking, and voices. And laughter.

And then she ended the call.

I didn’t listen. I went home immediately.

By the time I turned onto our street, firetrucks were there and the parking lot was barricaded. Our apartment window faced the road. It was wide open, and full of fire. An upside down waterfall of flame rippling up into the night.

She managed, somehow, to get her dogs out of the apartment. Our neighbor found them on the landing, howling and wailing at the door. I kept those dogs until they died. I sang them lullabies every night, just like she did. 

The...

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Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gzskr3/fuck_hipaa_my_new_patient_just_triggered_the_hell/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/313deezy on 2024-11-25 08:26:54+00:00.

---

The phone call came at 2:17 a.m. It jolted me awake in the dark, the vibrating buzz shattering the silence like a gunshot. I rubbed my eyes and squinted at the screen—Mom. My heart sank. Mom never called this late unless something was wrong.

“Hello?” I croaked, my voice heavy with sleep.

There was no response at first, just the faint sound of heavy breathing. Then a whisper. “Help me.”

The line went dead.

I sat frozen for a moment, the fog of sleep evaporating as panic set in. Something was very wrong. I threw on a hoodie and shoes, grabbed my keys, and raced to her apartment, speeding through the empty streets.

Mom had struggled with addiction for years, a battle she kept losing despite promises and fleeting periods of sobriety. Pills. Painkillers. Then something harder. I had always feared this night would come, but I wasn’t ready.

When I reached her building, the air felt colder than it should, the kind of cold that seeps into your bones. The hallway leading to her door seemed endless, each step weighed down by dread. I reached her door and found it slightly ajar.

“Mom?” I called softly, stepping inside.

The apartment was dim, lit only by the glow of the TV playing static. The air was thick, carrying a nauseating mix of sweat, stale cigarettes, and something chemical.

“Mom!” I shouted, my voice cracking.

I found her slumped on the couch, her head lolling to one side, a bottle of pills spilled across the coffee table. Her face was pale, almost translucent, and her lips had a faint bluish tinge. She wasn’t breathing.

“No, no, no,” I muttered, dropping to my knees beside her. My hands shook as I checked for a pulse. It was faint, erratic. A surge of adrenaline shot through me, and I fumbled for my phone to call 911.

As I waited for the dispatcher, I noticed something odd. The shadows in the room didn’t seem to behave normally. They stretched and shifted, writhing like they were alive, creeping toward us. The air grew heavier, and a low whispering sound filled the room, though I couldn’t make out any words.

“Stay with me, Mom,” I begged, shaking her gently.

The dispatcher’s voice crackled in my ear, but it felt distant, like I was underwater. “An ambulance is on the way. Stay on the line and perform CPR if needed.”

I started chest compressions, counting aloud to steady myself. “One, two, three…”

The whispering grew louder, more distinct. I glanced over my shoulder and froze. The shadows had coalesced into a shape—a figure, tall and angular, its eyes glowing faintly in the darkness.

It spoke, its voice like nails on glass. “She is mine.”

“No!” I shouted, my voice trembling. “She’s not yours!”

“She invited me,” it hissed. “Every pill, every dose, a call for me. You cannot take her back.”

I didn’t know what I was dealing with, but I wasn’t about to let it win. “You can’t have her!” I screamed, continuing CPR with renewed vigor. “She’s my mom!”

The figure laughed, a chilling sound that seemed to shake the walls. “She’s already slipping. Her heart beats like a dying drum. You can save yourself the pain.”

Tears streamed down my face as I refused to stop. “Come on, Mom. Come on. Fight!”

Suddenly, her body jerked, and she coughed violently, gasping for air. Relief flooded through me, but the figure didn’t disappear. If anything, it grew darker, angrier.

“You have interfered,” it snarled, moving closer. “But her debt remains.”

I didn’t know what to do, but instinct took over. I grabbed the nearest object—a framed picture of Mom and me from when I was a kid—and held it up like a shield. “You don’t belong here!” I shouted. “She’s not yours to take!”

The figure recoiled as if burned. Its form began to waver, the whispers turning into a deafening roar. I closed my eyes, holding the picture tightly, and screamed, “Get out!”

When I opened my eyes, the room was still. The figure was gone, the shadows back to normal. Mom lay on the couch, breathing shallowly but steadily.

The sound of sirens broke the silence. Paramedics rushed in moments later, taking over as I collapsed in a heap, my hands still shaking.

They stabilized her and took her to the hospital. I stayed by her side all night, holding her hand as the doctors worked to flush the drugs from her system. She woke up hours later, groggy but alive.

“I saw something,” she whispered, her eyes filled with fear. “Something dark. It… it wanted me.”

I squeezed her hand. “It can’t have you. Not while I’m here.”

She nodded weakly, tears spilling down her cheeks. We didn’t talk about it again, but that night changed everything. She started rehab a week later, and for the first time, it felt like she really wanted to fight.

I’ll never forget that night—the night I fought for my mom against something I couldn’t fully understand. And I’ll never stop fighting for her, no matter what.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Random_User_499 on 2024-11-25 07:15:47+00:00.

---

The first time I saw it, I thought it was nothing more than a shadow. A trick of the mind, perhaps, brought on by the sickness that plagued our village. The Black Death had taken so many from us—my father, my brother, my neighbors, one by one. It had been a relentless curse that spread through the streets like wildfire, and soon it was our turn. My mother, my sister, and I lay in the small cabin we had once shared as a family, now reduced to a stifling silence filled with only the sound of our feverish breathing.

I don’t remember the precise moment I first noticed the figure that stood at the edge of the village. It was there, though, always at the edge of my vision, a dark shape cloaked in tattered black robes. I could never make out its face, but there was a chilling presence that wrapped around it like smoke. No one else seemed to see it, but I knew it was there. I saw it every time I glanced out the window, standing at the farthest edge of the trees where the shadows grew long.

It was waiting for something.

The sickness had taken its toll on all of us. My mother’s skin was pale, her eyes vacant, and my sister had grown delirious, babbling in her sleep. And me? I wasn’t far behind. The sweat on my brow burned like fire, and my chest rattled with every cough. I feared I was on the brink of death, just like the others. Yet, there was something deeper within me—a sense of dread that had little to do with the disease, but rather with the figure I couldn’t escape.

I tried to ignore it at first. After all, who had time for shadows when your family was dying before your eyes? But the more I watched it, the more I felt its gaze. It was as if it could see right into me, watching, waiting for something.

That night, after the rest of the house had fallen silent, I heard the scraping of claws on the wooden floor outside our door. I tried to rise from my bed to investigate, but my body trembled with weakness, my legs barely holding me upright. I stumbled toward the door, leaning against the wall, desperate to see who—or what—was causing the noise.

And then I saw it.

It wasn’t a person. It wasn’t human at all. The figure that stood outside our door was tall, its body a swirling mass of shadows that shifted like smoke. Its face—if it could be called a face—was nothing but a hollow skull with empty eyes, dark as the night itself. The creature’s form seemed to writhe, as though it were made of the very darkness that had swallowed the world. Its hands were skeletal, long fingers that twitched and curled, as if it were anticipating something.

I froze, my heart thundering in my chest. There was no mistaking it now. This was no mere shadow, no trick of the mind. This was something far worse.

The creature stepped closer, and the air around me grew cold. I could feel its presence pushing into my chest, squeezing the breath from my lungs.

I wanted to run. I wanted to scream, but no words would come. My legs were rooted to the floor, my body betraying me. My mother’s faint, rasping breaths from the next room were the only sound in the house.

But then, something in my mind snapped. I couldn’t just stand here and wait to die. I had to do something, anything.

My hand groped for the iron poker by the hearth, and I gripped it tight, holding it like a weapon. I stood tall, despite the weakness in my legs, and pointed the poker at the creature.

“You stay away,” I choked out, my voice ragged. “You’re not taking anyone else. Not my family. Not my mother or my sister. Do you hear me? Stay away!”

The creature didn't respond. It simply stood there, watching me with its empty eyes. A chill ran down my spine, and I felt a wave of nausea rise in my stomach. Still, I refused to back down. I gripped the poker tighter, my knuckles white.

“I’ll fight you,” I said, though I wasn’t sure if I even believed it myself. “I won’t let you take them.”

But as I stepped forward, the creature moved with a suddenness that left me gasping. It reached out, not with hands, but with shadows that seemed to envelop the room. The temperature dropped, and I could hear the sound of my own teeth chattering in fear. I swung the poker at the figure, but it passed right through, as if it wasn’t even there.

And then, I felt it—the grip of something cold, like fingers made of ice, closing around my heart. I fell to my knees, gasping for breath, the poker slipping from my hand as I clutched my chest. The darkness surrounded me, smothering me, and I feared that it was over.

But just as suddenly as it had begun, the cold receded. The shadows seemed to pull back, dissipating like mist at dawn. The pressure on my chest lifted, and I dared to look up.

Standing before me was the figure, its skeletal face still obscured by shadows, but now there was a presence, a weight to it that filled the room. The creature wasn’t just a monster—it was something far worse, something I had no words for.

“Do not fear me,” it said, its voice like the wind howling through a graveyard. “I am not your enemy.”

I wanted to scream, to run, but my body was paralyzed with terror. I couldn’t move.

“What do you want?” I whispered, my throat dry.

“I do not want to take. I do not want to steal. I am here to offer release,” the creature answered, its voice deep and resonating with a quiet power. “Your family suffers. You suffer. And I… I can end it.”

I shook my head, confusion and fear making my thoughts muddled. “I don’t understand. You want to take them? Take them from me?”

The creature’s form seemed to soften for a moment, as if it were trying to show some kind of empathy, though I saw no emotion on its face.

“No,” it replied softly. “I do not take. I guide. I ease their suffering. It is time for them to rest. Time for them to be free.”

I looked toward the room where my mother and sister lay. They were sick, they were dying, but… were they ready to go? Were they ready to leave me behind?

But as I gazed at their still forms, I realized something. I wasn’t ready to let go of them, but they had already let go of the pain. The disease was the only thing keeping them tethered to this world. I had seen it in their eyes—there was nothing left here for them. They were waiting. Waiting for release.

“I can help them,” the creature said. “But you must let go of the fear. It is the only way.”

My chest tightened. My mother, her eyes clouded with fever; my sister, trembling with delirium… They were trapped. And I had been too blinded by my own fear to see it. The creature was not here to harm them. It was here to give them peace.

With a trembling breath, I nodded. “Take them,” I whispered. “Take them now.”

The creature stepped forward, reaching out a long, skeletal hand toward the door. A soft light flickered from the darkness as the room seemed to shift, as if the world itself was bending to the creature’s will.

And then, the cold hands of death, once so terrifying, enveloped my family, easing their pain in an instant. My mother’s face softened, the tension in her brow fading. My sister’s shivering stopped, and her features smoothed into serenity.

The creature turned to me, its empty eyes gazing into mine.

“You are not alone,” it said, its voice now warm, like a whisper in the wind. “I will guide you when your time comes. Until then, you must live. But remember, it is not the end that is to be feared, but the suffering that comes before it.”

And with that, it took my family’s souls. I watched as they faded into the light, their forms dissolving into the warmth of eternal peace.

The world around me seemed to fall away, the weight of my fear lifting from my chest. The night was still. The sickness was no longer a threat. The Reaper was gone, leaving me with nothing but the silence of the afterlife and the lingering warmth of the souls it had taken.

For the first time in what felt like years, I could breathe.

The next day, when the sickness had finally taken me as well, I did not fear the darkness. I welcomed it. For I knew, in that moment, that the Reaper was not my enemy. It had come to save us all, to bring us peace when we could no longer find it on our own.

And when my time came, it would be there again, to guide me into the next world, where suffering no longer existed.

For now, I rest in peace, knowing my family is free from pain. The Reaper did not come to steal us away, but to guide us into the light, into eternal peace.

And in the end, that is what we all seek—peace.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Mammoth-Spell386 on 2024-11-25 15:25:17+00:00.

---

The Girl Who Knew Too Much

The first time I met Grace, she was sitting on the curb outside my house, cradling a stuffed animal with its seams coming apart. I thought she looked lonely. I was seven years old and naive enough to believe that everyone just wanted a friend.

She turned to me as I approached, her dark eyes locking onto mine like she already knew everything about me. “Want to play?” she asked, tilting her head with a grin that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Sure,” I said, shrugging.

We played catch at first, but it didn’t take long before she started making up rules—rules that made no sense. “You have to throw with your left hand or you’re cheating,” she said. “If you miss the ball, you owe me something.”

“What would I owe you?” I asked, confused.

Her grin widened. “I’ll tell you later.”

Over the next few months, Grace became a regular presence in my life. She lived a few streets over, and her parents were always busy, so she’d show up unannounced, ready to play. At first, I didn’t mind, but the games started to get strange. One day, she brought over a leash with no dog attached.

“Let’s play vet,” she said.

When I told her I didn’t know how, she grabbed my arm and squeezed hard enough to leave marks. “Just do what I say,” she hissed.

I didn’t like Grace much after that, but avoiding her wasn’t easy. She had a way of showing up exactly when I wanted to be left alone. My mom thought she was sweet and told me I should be nice to her because she didn’t have many friends. “You’re her favorite person,” Mom would say, as if that was supposed to make me feel better.

Then came the day Grace accused me of stealing her puppy.

I didn’t even know she had a puppy. She marched up to me during recess, her face red with anger, and shouted, “You took him! I saw you!”

“What are you talking about?” I stammered, feeling every pair of eyes on the playground turn toward me.

“You took him from my yard! You’re a thief!” She grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the teacher, shouting about how I’d broken into her house and stolen her dog.

The teacher separated us and sent us to the principal’s office, but no matter how much I denied it, Grace stuck to her story. “He even tried to hide the collar in his room,” she said, her voice trembling with fake tears.

The principal didn’t believe her, thankfully, but the damage was done. The other kids started calling me “Dog Thief” and avoiding me. My mom said I should “make peace” with Grace. When I told her I hadn’t done anything wrong, she just sighed and muttered something about me needing to learn how to get along with others.

I tried to stay away from Grace after that, but she wouldn’t leave me alone. One day, she cornered me in the alley behind our school. Her expression was cold, her hands hidden behind her back.

“You need to learn to listen,” she said before shoving me to the ground.

I didn’t see the knife until it was too late. The blade was small, more like a letter opener, but the pain was sharp and immediate. I screamed and tried to fight her off, but she was stronger than she looked. By the time she ran off, my shirt was soaked in blood, and I could barely move.

When I got home, my mom was furious—not at Grace, but at me. “What did you do to make her so angry?” she demanded as she cleaned the wound. “You’re always causing trouble.”

I wanted to tell her everything, but what was the point? No one ever believed me when it came to Grace.

Years passed, and I didn’t see Grace again until high school. By then, I had almost convinced myself that she was just a bad memory, something my mind had exaggerated to explain the scars on my arm and the pit in my stomach. But then she walked into my study hall like nothing had happened.

She smiled at me, that same unsettling grin, and sat down across the table. “Hey, remember me?”

My stomach dropped. “What do you want?”

“To be friends,” she said, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I spent the rest of the semester avoiding her, but she seemed to be everywhere—at lunch, in the hallways, even at the convenience store where I worked weekends. It was like she was haunting me, reminding me that no matter how much time had passed, she still had control.

One day, she showed up at the register with a pack of gum and a sly smile. “You’ve gotten better at hiding,” she said, sliding the money across the counter. “But you can’t hide forever.”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t.

That night, I dreamed of the attic in my childhood home. I hadn’t been up there since I was a kid, but in the dream, it was exactly as I remembered—cold, dark, and filled with shadows that seemed to move on their own. In the corner was a box, and when I opened it, there was the leash Grace had brought over all those years ago. Only this time, it wasn’t empty.

Inside was the collar of a puppy, its tag etched with a single word: Promise.

I woke up drenched in sweat, the sound of Grace’s laughter echoing in my ears.

She hasn’t shown up again, not yet. But sometimes, when I’m alone, I feel like someone’s watching me. And every now and then, I hear a faint tapping at my window.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Icy-Anteater-1491 on 2024-11-25 08:03:10+00:00.

---

My uncle Danny loved telling stories. Most of them were harmless, silly things about his childhood, the kind of stuff that made you roll your eyes but secretly smile. But there was one story he only ever told once. It was different. He didn’t laugh while telling it, and he didn’t look at me when he finished.

He told me about the Donkey Man.

“It happened when I was around 16,” he started, leaning forward in his chair like he always did when he got serious. “Me and my buddy Clint were driving back from a fishing trip late at night. It was one of those long, empty Texas roads where the only light comes from your high beams. We weren’t even supposed to be out that late, but you know how kids are.”

I nodded, waiting for the punchline. But he just stared at his hands for a moment, then kept going.

“We saw him standing on the side of the road, just outside the reach of the headlights. A hitchhiker. He looked normal enough—jacket, jeans, bag slung over his shoulder. Clint slowed down, and I didn’t think much of it. This was the middle of nowhere. People needed rides sometimes.”

My uncle paused, like he wasn’t sure if he should keep talking.

“So, we pull up next to him, and Clint leans over to ask where he’s headed. The guy doesn’t answer right away. Just looks at us for a second. Then he smiles. It wasn’t a nice smile, though. It was… wrong. Like he knew something we didn’t.

“Clint asks again, and the guy finally climbs into the truck bed. He doesn’t say a word, just sits back there with his bag. I remember looking through the rear window at him and feeling… off. Like we’d made a mistake.”

“What happened next?” I asked, hooked.

“That’s when I noticed it,” he said, his voice dropping to almost a whisper. “His feet. He wasn’t wearing shoes. And where his feet should’ve been… he had hooves. Big, dark donkey hooves.”

I laughed nervously. “Come on, Uncle Danny.”

“I swear,” he said sharply, cutting me off. “Clint saw it too. We both freaked out. Clint slammed on the gas, trying to shake him off. That’s when he stood up in the bed of the truck. I swear to God, I’ll never forget the sound. He let out this horrible bray—half-human, half-donkey—and started kicking the back of the truck with those hooves.”

My uncle’s hands shook as he mimed the motion, like he could still feel the vibrations through the steering wheel.

“We didn’t stop driving until we got to Clint’s house. When we finally got out, the truck was a mess. Dents all over the tailgate, like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. Clint’s dad was furious. Asked us what the hell we hit. We didn’t know what to say.”

“And… what happened to him? The Donkey Man?” I asked, trying to hide how uneasy I felt.

Uncle Danny shrugged. “We never saw him again. But Clint’s truck? Those dents never came out. No matter how much they tried to fix it.”

I sat there, stunned. Uncle Danny didn’t say another word about it.

He passed away a few years ago, and sometimes I think about that story. Was he messing with me? Or was it something he carried with him all those years, something he couldn’t explain?

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/horrorfan_9 on 2024-11-25 03:24:29+00:00.

---

We had a tradition, my friends and I—a kind of thrill-seeking ritual. On weekends, we’d explore abandoned places at night, documenting the crumbling remains of history. Most of the time, it was just creaking wood, flaking paint, and the occasional scare from a rat or stray cat. Nothing supernatural. Nothing we couldn’t laugh about later. But the last time we went exploring… it wasn’t like the others.

It started when Darren, the ringleader of our little group, revealed our destination that night: an old amusement park just off the beaten path. “I found it on some urbex forum,” he said, grinning. “Totally untouched. No graffiti, no security. It’s like it’s frozen in time.”

The rest of us—Kate, Benny, and I—were hesitant but intrigued. We piled into Darren’s beat-up SUV and made our way there. The park was cloaked in mist, its faded neon signs barely visible in the moonlight. The metal gates were bent open, as if something massive had forced its way in. Rusted rides loomed like skeletal monsters in the fog, their silence oppressive.

At first, it was the usual fare—snapping pictures, laughing at Benny’s attempts to climb the carousel. But then we noticed it: a shadow moving in the distance, just beyond the Ferris wheel. At first, we thought it was an animal. Then it moved again—too tall, too deliberate to be anything but a person.

“Let’s get out of here,” Kate whispered, her voice trembling. Darren scoffed, but even he looked uneasy.

We decided to hide, thinking maybe it was security or some other explorers. The employee lounge was the closest building, so we ducked inside. It was dark, the air thick with rot and mildew. Kate found a light switch, and that’s when we saw them—the bodies.

They were arranged like a grotesque art exhibit. Some were seated at a table, playing cards, their decomposed hands holding disintegrated cards. Others were propped against the walls, dressed in decayed uniforms, their faces twisted in eternal screams. The stench hit us then, and Benny vomited in the corner.

“We need to leave. Now,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. The others nodded, their faces pale.

We bolted out of the building, but that’s when it appeared. The thing. It stood in the center of the midway, illuminated by a flickering streetlamp. Its body was hunched, grotesque, its skin like cracked porcelain. Its face—or what should have been a face—was a swirling mass of darkness, like the void itself.

It let out a sound—a guttural, bone-chilling howl—that froze us in our tracks. Then it lunged.

Chaos erupted. Darren shoved me toward the car, yelling, “Go!” before the creature grabbed him, its long, clawed arms dragging him into the shadows. His screams cut off abruptly. Benny tried to fight it, swinging a piece of debris, but it swatted him aside like a toy. Kate and I ran together, but she tripped. I turned to help her, but the thing was already on her. She screamed as it dragged her away, her voice echoing in the night.

I ran. The car was in sight. I fumbled with the keys, tears streaming down my face, and finally managed to start it. As I sped away, I looked in the rearview mirror. The creature stood in the road, watching, its head tilting as if in curiosity.

The next day, I went to the police. They didn’t believe me at first, but when they checked the park, they found the bodies in the employee lounge. Darren, Kate, and Benny were nowhere to be found.

Neither was the creature.

Now, every time I close my eyes, I see it—the swirling void where its face should be. And I know, deep down, it’s still out there, waiting for its next visitors.