nosleep

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Doug_Schablowski on 2024-11-03 04:16:01+00:00.

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”Finally”, followed by a huge sigh of relief is what I thought after setting down the cardboard box marked “my stuff” in the living room of my new home.

The relief wasn’t that of any physical exhaustion since the house came furnished, it was more of a mental relief. Aside from the tedious search on the market for one that fit my “paid peanuts” salary, I cold finally say I was out of that fucking apartment.

Now you might think that’s a little ungrateful and exaggerated especially for those that have lived or are living in a shitty apartment, but trust me when I say mine was exactly that: shitty.

From the garbage heating system to the repulsive growing mold on every corner, I’m surprised it was even legally allowed to be up for rent but then again the neighborhood was’t all that great either. It was the kind that required every window to be barred and every street to be surveillanced passed sundown. If I’m being brutally honest though, all those things were just little gripes that fed the real reason I couldn’t live there anymore.

To me, the whole place felt like a cage and not because of the barred windows or my need to install four locks on my door, but because it was a reminder that I would be stuck there forever with no indication of a better future. So I began to save up some money. I laid off on the useless spendings, got a better job, two jobs actually. As much as I hated the place I will say it was a hell of a motivator.

Anyway, during the time I was saving up to move out, I came across a tear off flier as I was taking my morning jog down to the park. It read “Home for Sale” in bolded red letters and displayed printed images of the home. Two stories, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths. It was ten miles north of where I lived in a city you can say lacked the kind of excitement you’d find down here. Below there was the price: $140,000. This immediately got me questioning the liability of the flier but then as if placed to diminish all doubt, all the flier’s labels except one blew loosely in the wind. I stared at it for a while and finally ripped the whole thing from the wooden pool and stuffed it into my pocket.

One phone call later and a lot of paperwork and here I was, in my own home and finally free from that cage. It wasn’t all that much but given I’ve been living in the saddest excuse for an apartment for over 6 years, it was basically a mansion. An old mansion that is.

It was as though the whole thing was pulled right from the Victorian era. There was a matching intricate floral design on the walls, carpets, and curtains throughout the entire house. In almost every room a large chandelier hung conspicuously around the furniture that was as chaotic as Van Gogh’s painting palette; mismatched colors and cramped knick knacks on every drawer.

It was odd to me that someone would sell a house that looked like someone was still living in it, I mean I’ve seen furnished homes for sale but the furniture was usually new, neat and appealing to look at, this on the other hand, gave me a sense of claustrophobia and made my eyes go fuzzy just staring at it. I found it even more bizarre that the house was up at such a low price and there were no other potential buyers. (Despite the torn labels from the flier). Still, I bought it. I mean, who wouldn’t.

The real estate agent representing the seller was a slender, older woman and judging by what she was wearing, time was having a pretty rough time passing through her too.

She wore a black pointed gown tightly secured with a corset that did more harm than good. Thick strands of greasy hair escaped from under her dark bonnet like snakes slithering out of their nest. She was friendly though there was almost this forced nature to her. Her voice was too soft for her appearance, her unusual boney fingers twitched anxiously on her hands like they had a mind of their own, and her smile sat on her face like a heavy dumbbell pulling down on her aged skin.

—

“Hard to imagine living here with all this furniture. I can’t believe someone would just leave like this.”

”I guess some people are just eager to move out.”

”Yea, tell me about it.”

”You know, this place can use someone young like you. Someone with enough energy to lighten up the place… Just think of it as a game.”

—

I stood there still in a state of pride and a little excitement. I scanned the living room, then the dining room and finally the kitchen. It felt odd not having them less than three feet from each other or the fact that the space between the three wasn’t a “bedroom”.

I found myself touring around again, occasionally examining some of the antique items on the shelves like I was in some yard sale. There is no way I’m keeping all of this up.

I moved to the kitchen staggering over my feet since the mattress my mind was so used to avoiding was no longer there. I opened the kitchen cabinets. The previous owner had even left his silverware. They looked new but I’d rather not take any chances. I turned to head toward the staircase leading to the bedrooms upstairs when I heard a door slowly sway open. The creaking of the hinges doubled in the silence. It was a door to a small empty closet in the living room. I walked over. I swear this was never here. I guess I never noticed. I closed the door and made my way upstairs toward my bedroom.

Naturally I chose the most spacious of the 3 bedrooms for myself. It also happened to be the one with the least amount of furniture. There was a mahogany wardrobe on one end and a king-sized canopied bed on the other. Next to it, a night stand accompanied with a night lamp that looked as though spiders had spun its lampshade. There was also a large built-in closet with sliding doors. I slid the closet door open, half expecting it to be full of clothes and shoes but it was empty. I guess the owner wasn’t gracious enough to leave his clothes behind.

Just then, I felt a cold breeze brush up against my neck. I turned, pawing at my neck. *Hm? No windows.*I can’t remember what drew me to look up at the ceiling but I did. I noticed a faint outline of an attic door above me. The ceiling was high enough so that no normal person could reach it without some sort of elevation and there was no drawstring to pull down a ladder either. The sales woman never mentioned an attic. Maybe it belonged to an attic long ago sealed. But why leave the entrance marked? Or maybe there was an attic and it too was filled with junk even older than what was down here. Either way, it was mine now and I was curious enough to investigate. I stared at it for a while because I remember the aching sting on my neck when I looked down for any possible way to get to it.

Then the phone call came.The loud ringing of a phone shot through the house. I instinctively looked down at my phone but there was no incoming call. With that, my ears honed in on the sound. It was coming from the living area, downstairs. As I made my way down, I noticed it had that old high pitched bell sound of an old dial phone.

The black dial phone was hiding among the many relics in the living room. I let it ring longer, hesitant to answer, somehow knowing the call would be unsettling. Finally, I answered.

”Hello”

A stretched static sound made me pull away from the phone. I called out again. No answer. Just static. Then a faint raspy and distant voice fighting through the static, spoke.

”Don’t look around.”

”What? Who is this?”

”Don’t— don’t look around— don’t play the game— just ignore it.”

Before I could give another bewildered response, the static fired a hard ring that stung my ears to their very core. I dropped the phone in pain, shutting my eyes so tight I saw white. In a fit of rage, I pulled the whole thing right from where it laid and threw it against the wall. It shattered.

What the fuck was that? A prank call?

Yea. And maybe the damn thing was too old to handle another call. Yea, that’s it.

That night, after pulling off the sheets that came with the bed and replacing them with my own, I laid there in the dark, chasing sleep. You would think that on my first night in my new home I would sleep soundlessly with a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction but that wasn’t the case. Everytime I’d close my eyes I’d hear the floor creaking downstairs. After a while the creaking would be accompanied by subtle kicks on the walls like someone was running or playing downstairs. The whole thing brought back those frustrating memories of my upstairs neighbors living their lives in the night like some nocturnal animals.

My restless mind echoed the warnings given to me through the phone. *Just ignore it. Don’t play the game.*Was this some sick joke someone was playing on me? What a coincidence that as soon as I got a call telling me to ignore it, the whole floor suddenly became some rickety bridge blowing in the wind. Maybe I was overthinking it. The phone call just had me on high alert. I read somewhere before that the creaking you hear in the night is just your home’s wooden structure contracting and expanding. I kept telling myself that and zoned out moments later.

The next morning I quickly noticed that the weak flooring was permanent. Everywhere I stepped the floor would creak despite it not ever doing that the day before or the times I was in the house with the sales woman. I also began to notice other changes or gripes I hadn't noticed before. The floral designs on the walls, carpets and curtains were fade...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Theeaglestrikes on 2024-11-03 03:43:26+00:00.

---

The idea was that we would never face the apocalyptic aftermath of a failed experiment. They would.

But when that world ended, something came back with us.

“Like each of you, I joined this agency for a reason: to advance our species,” Director Stefan Blom announced at the monthly assembly. “Mankind must experiment to avoid stagnating, but we are rarely permitted to do so. We are constricted by bumbling bureaucrats who care only about preservation. Conserving the status quo.

“They fear change. Fear what it might mean for them. They do not understand that we will die if we do not take risks, which is why we owe our lives to Dr Gerard Weston. Our esteemed physicist has found a way to pursue experimental projects without upsetting politicians and militaries. His latest achievement, the Weston Tunnel, has created a doorway to another universe. One with a parallel version of our world.

“Earth Two. There, we will conduct our supposedly ‘dangerous’ work without putting ‘Earth One’ at risk. And our leaders will see. Presidents. Prime ministers. Commanders. When we achieve results, they won’t care about how we obtained them. They’ve never cared about their ‘neighbours’ before, have they?”

Dozen Minus is a callous corporation in every universe. One linked to the British and American governments. Governments you might already despise in the public sphere, so you wouldn’t want to know the dreadful things they do behind closed doors.

Dozen Minus rarely conducts ethical experiments. Your leaders only care about money, and we only care about progress. Director Blom has only ever cared about progress, I should say. He ensures that politicians get their payday, and they mostly let him do as he pleases. Governments only expressed concern when we began to develop technology that threatened humanity’s very existence.

Of course, as Blom explained in his speech, world leaders think nothing of their neighbours. And Earth Two was nothing more than a cluster of nations across the pond. The ‘pond’ being that multiversal tunnel between one reality and another.

Earth Two became Director Blom’s playground. A gargantuan laboratory for performing Dozen Minus’ experiments without repercussions. And when inventions were tested successfully, they were green-lit for use in our world.

How do I fit into all of this? Well, my name is Adriano Rossi, and I was a computer programmer who worked on the Nervorum Project. We were creating the world’s first superintelligence — a conscious, self-teaching AI named Nerv. Science fiction made reality.

Now, I know that AI has been snowballing over the last couple of years, but Dozen Minus has been ahead of the curve for decades. The Nervorum Project was, actually, near-completion in the late ‘80s. This organisation has always possessed technology beyond anything in the public realm.

But Nerv was obstructed. Was prevented from being ‘born’. The risk of humanity’s extinction was, and still is, too high. Roadblocks prevented programmers from ever taking that final step. From creating a self-sustaining, inorganic intelligence capable of growing itself. A digital mind.

And that was why Dr Gerard Weston changed everything. When he developed that tunnel to a parallel version of Earth in 2015, Director Stefan Blom saw an opportunity to finally test numerous deadly devices. Inventions with the potential to end the world. After all, politicians were no longer concerned when somebody else’s world was in danger.

We began by investigating the Dozen Minus of Earth Two. Seeing whether that parallel agency had also developed a tunnel — one that would risk Earth One. But there was no Dr Gerard Weston in that alternate world, thankfully. Earth Two was vastly different. Politically. Culturally. Historically. Dozen Minus existed, but not in the same manner.

After that, we threw all we had at the parallel world. Deadly experiment after deadly experiment. And when Earth Two survived one project, we moved straight onto the next. In early 2024, the Nervorum Project reached the top of the list. It was approved for testing.

Helen Harding and I stepped through Weston’s tunnel into that parallel world, and we prepared to become gods. In the banal setting of a hotel room, we set up a potentially cataclysmic device — a slim, rectangular gadget that held Nerv on its hardware. That digital brain had existed in some form for nearly thirty years, being tweaked and improved by each new influx of geniuses. A collection of binary commands waiting for some courageous, or foolish, Dr Frankenstein to yank the lever.

“You need to let it go,” Helen said.

She’d read the slight frown on my face. The slight sign of humanity. Only I seemed to see Earth Two as a real place. A planet barely different from ours. One teeming with life. Human beings in a drastically-different world, but human beings, nonetheless.

“We aren’t the first to come here and take a risk, Adriano,” she pointed out.

“But this experiment’s the worst, and you know it,” I said. “Nerv won’t have any use for humanity once he exceeds our intelligence.”

“Not our intelligence,” Helen reminded me. “Theirs. This is their world, Adriano. You keep forgetting that.”

“Even so, I still don’t think we were ready,” I said.

She sighed. “Director Blom was very clear that—”

“Yes, well, the director isn’t a programmer, is he?” I asked. “Nerv will have the ability to become exponentially powerful. He’ll see things that we, with our limited brains, physically can’t see. Who’s to say that he will stay within Earth Two — this ‘laboratory’, as Blom calls it? Nerv might find its way back to our world. Might slip through our tunnel.”

Helen frowned. “Adriano, why did you even get involved with this project?”

I shook my head. “You misunderstand. I’m not trying to act holier than thou. I was drawn to this for the same reasons as you.”

“Then what’s up?” she asked.

“I told you. We need more time,” I said.

“This has been ready for decades,” Helen answered. “All we’ve really done is tweaked and improved it. Added as many safety features as possible.”

“I know,” I replied. “This is my admission of guilt then.”

“Adriano…” my friend started.

I looked up from the device on the hotel bed. “What?”

“Are we going to do this?” she asked. “Or do you want to explain to Mr Blom that you’ve had a crisis of morality and changed your mind?”

I didn’t, and I hadn’t. With the tap of my thumb, I booted Nerv.

And you may think that the horror of my tale involves this superintelligence running amok. Annihilating the world. Well, it certainly did not take long for our artificial intelligence to study the internet, then teach itself things that mankind may not even be able to understand. But Nerv did not go rogue. Did not scorch the Earth. He improved it.

The artificial intelligence multiplied at a rapid pace. Not in the sense of procreating, but uploading itself to physical devices across the world. It revealed its plans to world leaders, offering to improve the global infrastructure, and quickly became something of a global celebrity. All within a single month.

Helen and I were instructed by Director Blom to remain on Earth Two, and we watched the planet flourish. Watched the intelligence put forth plans for tackling climate change, poverty, global debt, all known wars, and even resource shortages. Powerful folk on Earth One wanted Nerv to be implemented back home. Wanted our reality to enjoy the same economic, cultural, and scientific development as Earth Two.

However, after two months of staggering growth, there came an unexpected knock on the door of our hotel room.

Helen sighed. “Will that receptionist ever just—”

It wasn’t the receptionist, and the visitor did not allow me the dignity of opening the door. It burst inwards with a single thud — the forceful pummel of a thick boot. Then charged several dark-uniformed men, and the last thing I heard, before my environment slipped into a black ooze of unconsciousness, was Helen’s piercing shriek.

You may be shocked to learn that the above segment was only the preamble to the true horror. The story I am about to tell.

Waking in a drab cell with two single beds and my screaming colleague, it did not take me long to piece together the situation. I’m not calling myself a genius. I simply felt familiar with the layout of the prison. The grey décor of the small room in which Helen was pounding on a glass viewing pane and begging for release. The yellow badge emblazoned across the guard’s top pocket — a cold man who watched us with static eyes. My fellow inmate had, of course, also pieced things together.

“Adriano… You’re awake. Help me. You programmed these panels back home, didn’t you?” Helen asked, desperately fiddling with the screen by the locked door. “Do you know how to unlock it?”

I rubbed my sore brow and climbed off the bed. “I’ll try, but this isn’t our Dozen Minus, Helen. Things are different here.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a voice interrupted.

It did not come from the guard who observed us from the hallway. It came from some concealed speaker in a ceiling panel. And I recognised the dulcet tone of the speaker. It was, undoubtedly, Director Stefan Blom. His parallel self.

“Please just let us go!” I called.

“Not until I know why you’re here,” Blom continued. “Not until you tell me why I’m seeing double.”

Then two figures joined the watching guard in the hallway. I had expected their arriv...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/LCDatkin on 2024-11-02 20:37:30+00:00.

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Thrift shopping had always been a sort of ritual for my wife and me. We’d hit up estate sales, thrift stores, garage sales, even old shops on their last legs, picking up whatever caught our eye to breathe new life into our home. Nearly everything around us had a story—things that, in their quiet way, had been through someone else’s life before they became part of ours. Cookware, furniture, our daughter’s toys, clothes—it didn’t matter. If it was well-made and had some years left, it was good enough for us.

Growing up the way we did, my wife and I both learned early on not to waste anything. We weren’t poor now, not by a long shot, but when you’ve spent your childhood stretching every dollar, that “waste-not” mentality never fully leaves. It’s more than a habit; it’s instinct.

I’d become something of a hawk for deals, tracking social media for those inevitable posts about local stores closing down, big sales, liquidations—anything with a shot at uncovering a hidden gem. It was like a hobby. And that’s how I found out about the toy store. An old post, buried deep on the community page, announced the auction of a local toy shop that had been a fixture in the town since the Great Depression.

The place was special. I’d been there once as a kid, and I remembered the almost magical feeling of the store—the smell of old wood and varnish, the glint of paint on row after row of handmade toys. This wasn’t your usual toy store. The owner, an older man everyone knew as Mr. Winslow, had poured his life into every toy, carving and painting each one by hand. Wooden soldiers, miniature dollhouses, delicate puzzles… everything you could imagine. He never imported a single thing, and every toy had a strange, vintage charm that you couldn’t find anywhere else.

Mr. Winslow and his wife had run the shop right up until they died, years apart. They didn’t have any family left, so the state had seized the property, and now they were auctioning everything off, right down to the last hand-carved toy. 

The sale was on a cold, gray Saturday. I convinced my wife it’d be worth checking out, maybe picking up a few toys for our daughter. The place was in rough shape, dim and drafty. Half the lights didn’t work, and the smell of dust lingered heavy in the air, clinging to everything like a veil. But the toys—they were immaculate. Each shelf was still filled with tiny wooden faces frozen in mid-expression, each toy glancing out at us, wide-eyed and almost… expectant. 

The crowd at the auction was familiar, dotted with faces I’d seen at sales like this before. Liquidation sales bring out a certain kind of person. You can always tell who’s a regular and who’s new to the scene just by watching them bid. The newcomers hesitate, test the waters before committing to any serious bid. But the regulars, the seasoned ones, they’ve got a rhythm. They know exactly how high to go, exactly when to pull back. Most of them aren’t there to pick up keepsakes; they’re there to flip it all for a profit online.

In most liquidation sales, they bundle the goods in bulk, which suits the resellers just fine. You see a table stacked with, say, a hundred of the same porcelain vase or unopened action figure; people bid on the lot, the highest bidder picks their fill, and then the next one steps up. It's efficient. By the end, whatever’s left just goes for the average bid price, first come, first serve.

But Mr. Winslow’s toy store wasn’t your average liquidation. No one was here for bulk toys from China, and no one was going to find a stack of hot-ticket items like last season’s electronics. Every item was unique, hand-crafted and individually priced. There wasn’t a single barcode in the building, not a plastic wrapper in sight. Every toy was a labor of love, something that had been sanded, painted, and assembled by hand. It was like stepping into a time capsule, each piece carrying a bit of the old man’s life and passion.

The toys looked like relics from another era: wooden horses with faded paint, lines of tin soldiers standing rigid, delicate porcelain dolls with blank, glassy eyes. There were marionettes on thin, tangled strings, and intricate dollhouses with hand-painted wallpaper and tiny furniture inside. Toys made for another world, another life. Most of the people there took one look and left early, their disinterest written all over their faces. These weren’t things that would sell for much online. And with the store’s gloomy atmosphere and the unsettling shadows cast by the dim light, I didn’t blame them.

But I was in it for more than a quick sale. I’d come to find a treasure, maybe something special to put on a shelf for our daughter or a keepsake to remind me of a place that had been in the town forever. So I stayed, wandering the aisles, running my fingers along the toys’ edges, feeling the worn, chipped paint under my fingers.

The auction had turned out to be a bust. I wandered around the store one last time, eyeing the shelves filled with dusty old toys, and I was just about ready to leave empty-handed when my daughter tugged on my sleeve.

“Daddy, look!”

She pointed to a battered old toy box shoved in a corner. Sitting upright inside it, propped against the side like she’d been carefully placed there, was a plush doll. But this wasn’t just any stuffed toy. The doll was eerily life-sized—just about the same height as my daughter, in fact. It had stringy blonde hair that cascaded messily down its shoulders, two large button eyes stitched onto a cloth face, and a stitched-on smile that seemed just a little too wide, curling up at the edges in a way that didn’t quite feel right. The doll wore a faded black dress with lace trimming, adding to its peculiar charm.

My daughter rushed over, her face lighting up with excitement. She plucked the doll from the toy box and hugged it tightly, like she’d found a long-lost friend. “Her name is Dolly!” she declared, squeezing the doll with the kind of fierce, unfiltered affection only a child can muster.

I looked at the doll more closely, a little unsettled by its fixed, button-eyed stare and that odd smile that seemed to follow me even as I shifted from side to side. There was something strange about its proportions, almost as if it had been crafted specifically to look like a child… but not quite.

The auctioneer, clearly tired of a morning spent trying to hawk dusty old toys to an uninterested crowd, noticed my interest and gave a half-hearted wave.

“Take it if you want,” he said with a shrug. “Ain’t nobody bidding on this junk. Most of it’s headed for the dump. You find anything else you like, feel free to pick through it. Won't cost you more than a few dollars.”

The truth was, there wasn’t anything else in that store I wanted, and after an auctioneer calls the merchandise “garbage,” it’s a good hint to leave. I paid him a few dollars for Dolly, who was now practically glued to my daughter’s side. She clutched the doll’s hand, looking at me with a beaming grin that melted any lingering doubts I might have had.

As we left, I noticed that my daughter was oddly quiet. Normally, she’d chatter all the way home, talking about every little thing she saw, but this time, she just held Dolly close, staring out the window with a sort of distant expression, almost like she was… listening. It was subtle, but it was there. I chalked it up to the thrill of her new toy, and figured she was probably just imagining adventures for Dolly, weaving stories in her head like she often did.

Still, something felt strange. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the doll’s stitched-on eyes were watching me, even as I drove, catching glimpses of it in the rearview mirror. And though my daughter was silent, there was a sort of tension in the car, a quiet that seemed to settle in like a chill.

We pulled into the driveway, and I glanced back at my daughter, who was still holding Dolly, her fingers entwined with the doll’s soft fabric hand. She looked up at me with a serene smile.

“She really likes it here, Daddy,” she whispered, as if Dolly herself had somehow told her.

The words sent a shiver down my spine. I told myself I was just being paranoid. After all, it was just a doll, a cheap, old-fashioned plush left over in a toy store no one cared about.

But as we stepped inside, I couldn’t help feeling we’d brought something else home with us that day, something that had been waiting patiently in that dusty corner, in a forgotten store full of discarded things. And now, it had found a new place to belong.

In the weeks that followed, my daughter’s attachment to Dolly grew into an obsession. At first, my wife and I thought it was adorable. Kids have imaginary friends all the time, right? And if she wanted to treat Dolly as her special friend, that seemed harmless enough. 

At any given moment, you could find my daughter playing with Dolly. She held tea parties for the two of them, setting up our good china in tiny rows on her play table. Dolly always had the seat of honor, perched across from my daughter, her button eyes staring straight ahead, her strange stitched smile ever-present.

When it wasn’t tea parties, it was “school.” My daughter would line up her other stuffed animals, but Dolly was always in the front row, right under her watchful eye. I’d hear her talking to Dolly, sometimes even scolding her in a low, serious voice, like she was dealing with a difficult student. She’d talk with Dolly while watching TV, telling her all...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ImmediateFruitSalad on 2024-11-02 23:35:23+00:00.

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I’ll start by saying I didn’t think I’d ever write something like this, but a friend told me there’s a community here that might be interested in some… strange experiences I’ve had at work. I’m not one for sharing much online, but I guess writing it out is better than nothing since I don't have time for therapy.

I work the night shift at a small, rural emergency vet clinic, wedged between three tiny towns that most people haven’t even heard of. The clinic is out on a stretch of country road, surrounded by empty fields that turn to thick woods about a half-mile down. There’s no streetlight for at least a mile in either direction, and by the time I clock in around 4 p.m., the place is already sinking into that eerie twilight.

The clinic itself is a squat, old brick building—two stories if you count the attic, which I don’t, because no one goes up there unless they have to. It was built in the ’60s, back when it was just a regular vet’s office. These days, we’re one of the few 24-hour emergency clinics around, so we get a steady trickle of folks coming in from all over. Sometimes it’s just routine stuff, but other nights, we’re the last stop for animals in bad shape.

If it sounds grim, it’s because it is. But I need the money. Badly. I started here when I’d just finished school, with a mountain of debt to show for it, and there wasn’t exactly a line of clinics eager to hire a brand-new grad. On top of that, my mom—who isn’t exactly young anymore—had moved out to this area a few months ago. The rent is cheaper out here, and it’s quiet enough that she doesn’t mind the isolation. But there’s no way I’d let her live out here alone, especially now that she’s older and has some health issues. So, when I found this job listing at a dusty coffee shop in town, I jumped at it, even if it meant working the graveyard shift.

But pretty soon after I started, I realized the clinic had a bit of a reputation. I mentioned my job to some locals, and I got more than a few strange looks. A couple of older folks told me, in lowered voices, about a girl who went missing back in the ’70s. Supposedly, she’d last been seen outside the clinic, waiting for her dog, which the vet had kept overnight for treatment. No one ever found her. Officially, they said she’d run away, but people around here have their own theories.

The vet was questioned but never charged. The clinic eventually shut down, citing “financial issues,” but everyone around here thinks that was just a cover-up. It stayed empty for decades, too—no one wanted to touch it. When they finally reopened it as an emergency clinic in the early 2000s, the townspeople still kept their distance. If they bring their pets here, they’re in and out, like they don’t want to be around any longer than they have to.

And, honestly, they’re right.

During the day, it’s just an old clinic with too many fluorescent lights and the smell of antiseptic in the air. But when the sun goes down, there’s something off about this place. The silence becomes overwhelming and there’s a heaviness that settles over the whole place once the sun sets.

I work the 4 p.m. to midnight shift, which means I’m there to watch the light drain from the windows and that eerie darkness settle in. By now, I’ve gotten used to the sounds—the hum of the AC in the summer, the clicking of the radiators in the winter, the strange creaks from upstairs, the way the lights sometimes flicker like they’re about to die. I’ve learned to ignore the noises, the weird cold spots, the way some of the animals refuse to go near certain rooms, no matter how badly they’re hurt.

It’s not like the place is haunted, but every now and then, something happens that’s hard to ignore. Little things, mostly. Strange enough to notice, but not enough to make me quit—at least, not yet.

I’ve been here over a year now, and I’ve got a handful of stories that still make the hairs on my arms stand up when I think about them. So, if you’re reading this, settle in. I can’t promise you ghosts, but I’ve got more than a few tales that might make you think twice about that late-night trip to the vet.

To start, I guess I’ll tell you all something that happened about three months into the job. 

It was a Friday night, around 11 p.m., I was finishing up with a dog that had come in after being hit by a car. The poor thing had a broken leg and some nasty scrapes, but he was stable. His owner had left, planning to come back first thing in the morning, so it was just me and the dog in the back exam room, the only sounds the faint hum of the fluorescent lights and the quiet beep of the heart monitor.

I was almost done wrapping his leg when I heard something. I froze, the bandage roll still in my hand. It was so faint I thought I might have imagined it, but a few seconds later, there it was again. Just a gentle, rhythmic tapping coming from the lobby.

After 6 p.m., we lock the doors, and there’s usually only one vet on duty until morning. Since we’re out in the middle of nowhere, anyone who shows up after hours is supposed to ring the bell outside for service. Walk-ins at that hour are rare, but occasionally, someone shows up with a sick animal, desperate for help.

So, I figured maybe someone had come by, tapped on the door, maybe even tried the handle. I left the exam room, half-expecting to see someone outside in the parking lot, but it was empty.

I checked the door—it was still locked. No sign of anyone, no car outside, and definitely no bell sound. Shrugging it off, I returned to the exam room to finish bandaging the dog. I’d just clipped the bandage in place when I heard it again. Tap. Tap. Tap. This time, it was louder, more insistent. But it wasn’t coming from the lobby. It was coming from the window in the break room, which was just a few doors down the hallway.

I’ll be honest; by that point, I was on edge. The break room window is high up, facing the back of the building, with nothing but an empty field stretching our behind it. No one would be able to reach it without a ladder or something to stand on. I started wondering if maybe some kids were messing around, trying to spook me.

Still, I had to check it out. 

I crept down the hallway, my footsteps echoing in the quiet as I made my way to the break room. The tapping stopped the second I reached the door. I flicked on the light, and of course, there was nothing there. Just the empty room and the blackness of the field stretching out beyond the window.

But as I turned to leave, something caught my eye. There was a handprint on the window. Not pressed flat against it, but smeared, like someone had dragged their hand down the glass. It was a large print, too—larger than mine. I tried to tell myself it could’ve been a smudge from one of the other techs, maybe leftover from cleaning or something, but I knew it wasn’t. We never open that window.

I flicked the light off and shut the door firmly behind me.

By now, my heart was racing but I went back to the exam room, hoping I could shake it off and get through the last hour of my shift. That uneasy feeling stuck with me, though. Every sound seemed amplified and even the animals seemed tense, especially the dogs in the kennel, who’d been quiet all night but were now pacing and whining.

At 11:45, I did my last round of checks. The building was silent as I moved through the halls, checking on each of the animals, marking things down on my clipboard. Everything seemed normal—until I reached the break room again.

The light was on.

I was sure I’d turned it off when I left, but there it was, spilling yellow light into the dark hallway. I stepped closer, my heartbeat hammering in my ears as I reached for the door, but the second I stepped inside, the light flickered and went out, plunging the room into darkness. I fumbled for my phone, turning on the flashlight, my hands shaking as I shined it around. The room was empty, exactly as I’d left it, but there was a new smudge on the window. Another handprint, smeared down the glass, larger than the last one.

That was it. I grabbed my bag, went back to the front, and waited by the door until midnight, my hands trembling. I kept an eye on the break room door, half-expecting it to open on its own, but it stayed closed. When my replacement, Monica, came in, I bolted out of there without an explanation.

That morning after a fitful sleep, I sent a message in the staff group chat asking about the handprints on the break room window, asking if anyone had noticed them or had an explanation. But the responses were just confused. “What handprints?” one of my coworkers replied. Another joked that I was “seeing things” after too many night shifts.

Determined to prove that I wasn’t losing it, when I went back the next night, I made it a point to check the break room window right at the start of my shift. It was spotless. Not a single smudge or fingerprint anywhere. The rest of the night was thankfully quiet, and for a while, I managed to convince myself that maybe it was just a fluke, that maybe I’d somehow missed the smudges during the last cleaning or that it was just my mind playing tricks on me in the dark.

But a week later, it happened again. I was alone in the clinic, finishing up some paperwork, when I heard that same faint, rhythmic tapping. My stomach twisted with dread as I listened to the sound coming from the break room—exactly where the smudged handprints had been before.

For ...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/abiroadwrites on 2024-11-02 23:11:13+00:00.

---

I used to live in the middle of backwoods Pennsylvania, near a set of train tracks that ran through the woods. About once, maybe twice a week I would hear the cry of a train horn splitting the air, always at a different time but usually in the early morning or late evening, sometimes it would even wake me from a dead sleep in the middle of the night.

The little house I was renting was nice, at the very end of the cul-de-sac I lived in, and nestled back against a copse of trees. I wasn't entirely sure where the train tracks were, since they didn't run through town anywhere, but every time I was startled by the piercing cry I thought it sounded like it was coming from the woods.

The longer I lived in that little house the more curious I got about the train. It probably sounds silly, but I’ve always liked trains, and even though I found the train horn startling, it was comforting in a weird way too. Every time it sounded my ears would perk up, and I would find myself tracing the sound as it moved, trying to pinpoint exactly where it came from, and where it was going to.

Finally, after about a year of that I decided to take one of my days off and go look for the train tracks. I put a few bottles of water and some snacks in a backpack, put on my favorite pair of walking shoes, and practically skipped out the front door.

It reminded me of being a kid. I didn’t have the best home life, so it wasn’t uncommon for me to pack a bag with enough provisions (and comic books) for the day before disappearing into the woods near our house. The woods were my escape, a place where I was safe from anger, yelling, and whatever my parents were throwing at each other that day. The forest was always calm and quiet, it made me feel safe, a feeling I couldn’t always get at home.

As I walked out my back door I was reminded of that, and how much I loved going for those walks as a kid. I’ll admit, I think I was expecting it to feel just as safe and magical now, but oh how wrong I was.

The forest itself was perfect. Silence punctuated only by the occasional bird call or rustle of the leaves brushing each other in the wind. It was an early spring day and the earth was spongy from recent rainfall, dew dripped lazily from the green trees and sparkled on the tall grass as I walked through it. I made my way in the approximate direction I heard the train horn coming from, no real plan in mind for when I found it, just enjoying the breeze as it played with my hair.

After about an hour I finally found the train tracks, and let out an excited whoop when they came into view. I raced forward like a little kid until I got right next to them, then I began walking parallel to the tracks, towards the mountains in the distance. My parents had always told me not to walk near train tracks, but I always wanted to follow them just once to see where I wound up.

I followed the train tracks with a spring in my step, not noticing the sun sinking lower in the sky until the shadows grew long enough in front of me to blend together into one big pool of shadow. When I realized the sun was starting to go down I stopped. I had been so lost in my thoughts (and in finally fulfilling a childhood dream) that I hadn’t realized how late it was. I turned around and followed the train tracks, now at a quicker pace, until I reached the area I thought I had started from. I was still following the tracks when a figure emerged from the twilight on the path in front of me.

I couldn’t make out any details, but it seemed to be entirely gray, like a smudge of ash on the horizon growing steadily larger.

Something about it really unsettled me, which I attributed to being a woman walking alone at night and seeing a stranger approach in the twilight. I veered off the tracks and made my way through the woods, emerging one neighborhood over from my own, and followed the streets back to my house, exhausted by the time I finally got there.

I guess the stranger I saw on the tracks just left my mind, I didn’t think about it at all for the rest of the night, and by the time I woke up the next day I didn’t even remember the vaguely unsettling encounter.

It was a few weeks before I was able to make it back into the woods, but once another lazy day off came around I packed my bag and escaped out the back door again. This time I left a bit earlier and went the other direction, towards what I assumed would be town, or maybe the next town over. I figured if I wandered to the next town by accident I could always take a taxi home (this was before uber was very popular). This time, I took a can of spray paint and made a huge blue X on one of the trees that I could see from the tracks, so I would know where to head back into the woods to get home. I can’t say for sure, but that decision might have saved my life.

Again, time seemed to escape me, and before I knew it, it was late afternoon. I turned myself around, and once again saw a smudge on the distant horizon, slowly approaching me and taking shape. This time there was enough light that I assumed it would be fine, probably just another person wandering the train tracks to fill their empty Sunday afternoon.

I kept walking, studying the trees surrounding the tracks on either side, and admiring the giant purple mountains in front of me. I was startled from my reverie to realize that what had been nothing more than a smudge the last time I looked was now a person, just a few hundred yards away at most.

I studied him as he approached, he seemed to be wearing a gray three piece suit and gray shoes, his hair was gray too. He carried some kind of bag, it looked like a white trash bag, like one of the really heavy duty ones, and it almost looked like it was filled with a liquid. It heaved and sagged, even though he carried it with such ease it could have been full of helium.

I’ll admit, I didn’t find him terrifying at first. It was a lovely afternoon, I was enjoying myself, and I’ve always been a really friendly person, so I was actually kind of excited that I might get to meet one of my neighbors out on my little walk. But when we were close enough for me to greet him, I felt a wave of nausea wash over me. It was like all my senses shut down, and the only thing I was left with was this awful feeling of complete and total revulsion. Despite my vision going gray around the edges I forced myself to keep walking, to get past the mystery person and closer to home.

When we were right next to each other all my senses returned to normal, and I noticed with a pang of fear and concern that even the man's skin was an ashy shade of gray. He continued to face forward but his face seemed to melt and twist in my direction, all the features remained clear but it was like the skin behind his face was melting, allowing the face itself to slip in my direction. He smiled at me, flashing gray teeth and the corner of a gray tongue peeking out of his mouth. Then he passed me and I took a huge gulp of air, trying to calm my rioting stomach and nerves.

Despite how badly I wanted to collapse to the earth and sob from whatever the hell that was, I forced myself to keep walking. Now more than ever I just wanted to get home. After a few more minutes of walking I managed to convince myself I had just imagined it, or maybe the man had some kind of medical condition and I was being unfair to judge him so harshly.

As I successfully guilt-tripped myself into brushing off the weirdness, I noticed something on the horizon. A gray smudge that seemed to be getting closer to me. I debated it for a moment, then allowed myself to stop and turn around. There was nothing behind me, no traces of the strange gray man. I turned back around, and somehow he had managed to clear almost all the distance between us in the time it took me to turn around and back.

I forced myself to keep walking, insisting to my now terrified brain that it was a coincidence, or I had spaced out for longer than I realized. As I got closer to the man I forced a smile onto my own face, and with every ounce of courage I had asked, “Hey there! Didn’t we just see each other?”

The look on his face didn’t alter in the slightest, and neither did his stride as he approached. His mouth opened, and a voice as gray as a tombstone said, “We’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

The smile on his face stayed in place as mine faltered and crashed, and I picked up my pace to get past him as quickly as possible. As I did, a scent I hadn’t noticed before wafted from his trash bag to my nose and I had to resist the need (it was more than an urge) to vomit. What I smelled can only be described as death, plain and simple. It assaulted my nostrils and filled my mind with images of death and destruction, things I never could have pictured on my own. Wartorn battlefields scattered with the flesh and blood of innocent people, bodies torn apart by animals, corpses swaying in the breeze, glassy eyes still begging for a savior even though it was far too late.

I gasped, pressing my hands to my mouth and nose, and hurried away. After a few minutes the smell was gone, but the images and nausea remained.

I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me, and more than anything I just wanted to get home, to safety and my comfiest chair, but I was still at least an hour away from my house. I glanced behind me again, let out a sigh of relief when I saw the gray man still walking away from me, then bit my tongue so hard I dre...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/1000andonenites on 2024-11-02 18:25:59+00:00.

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The scars have faded with the passage of years and clever plastic surgery. With proper make-up and lighting, you can barely tell they’re there.  

But in the full direct light of my bedroom, I can see them clearly in the mirror, spread across my face and body, bumpy and crimson and just plain weird.  

I am the lucky one who survived that horrific school fire. Or maybe the creature remembered that it was I, after all, who saved it from the nasty muddy wetness that was dragging it down, and a possible horrible death from being stomped by some random kid, and somehow engineered my escape. I don’t know- I was unconscious from the smoke at the time. Oh yes, I still have permanent lung damage, wheezing like an eighty-year old if I even slightly exert myself.  

Let me tell you the story from the beginning, and you can decide. 

It began on a gleaming wet fall morning, over twenty years ago, as I walked miserably to school.  

There was no real reason I was miserable. I hated school with a passion that made my heart ache- but there was no reason. I wasn’t bullied, I had some friends, my grades were fine. I didn’t have the words to explain the loathing I felt for the building, the smell, the sounds, the actions, and so I didn’t try.  

Everyone else seemed cheerful enough. It had rained heavily overnight, but now the sun was shining, making the puddles gorgeously dazzle. Kids jumped noisily into the puddles, shrieking with excitement. I skirted them carefully.  

And that’s when I saw it, almost completely buried in a pile of soggy leaves, tinted all the hues of late autumn. Only its head was poking out, its eyes shining right at me, a damp puff of smoke hanging around its delicate snout.   

Instinctively, I knelt and scooped it up in my arms. It was as big as a pigeon.  

It flapped its wings irritably. Its mouth opened and I heard it right in my brain, very clearly.  

“I did not give you permission to pick me up.” 

I was not in the mood to take shit from a telepathic pigeon-sized creature. A gaggle of loud smaller children passed by, hooting, stomping around in big rubbery gleaming wellies, and jumping aggressively in the puddles and the pile of leaves, scattering them everywhere. 

I said “Would you like me to put you back down on the pavement?” 

The wet Creature clearly couldn’t fly, nor could it breathe fire. It contented itself by glaring angrily at me from its orange-red eyes. 

I said, ”Why don’t you spend the day at our place, I’ll keep you safe. Once you are dry, you can fly off. I’m not going to try and imprison you.” 

It thought a moment. “And what do you want in return?” 

The words came out by themselves- I swear I have no conscious recollection of forming them. 

“Burn the school down. Please.” 

It nodded solemnly. 

I ran home, and carefully laid the Creature on my bed, where I knew it would be undisturbed for the rest of the day. 

I still blame myself for not specifying the time it should burn the school down. But then, how could I have predicted the exact moment that it would be ready to breathe flames and fly? I had left it that next morning looking still quite miserable and ill, with no apparent desire to leave. How could I have known that around 10am, it would take wing and soar out of my room? 

The first I heard of it was the fire alarms going off during second period. 

The I saw the flames, hearing the crackles before I even heard the screaming and the heat slammed into me. 

I had had no idea how thoroughly such a Creature, even a small one the size of pigeon, could burn things. 

I remember the smoke, the crashes and the screams. And then, almost before the time I had time to feel fully afraid, I passed out.  

I revived in hospital, with third degree burns down my face and body. I was so lucky, I was told solemnly, the only survivor of that horrific school fire which no-one ever figured out how it got started.  

Except me.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/JamFranz on 2024-11-02 18:22:48+00:00.

---

They’ve been down there too long.

I keep telling them they just need them to come upstairs, to leave that cramped, dark room of packed dirt and come into the light. 

We all need to leave this place while we still can.

I'm still clinging to the hope that it's not already too late.

Did you know that in Connecticut, sellers aren't required to disclose that a death occurred in a home unless you submit an inquiry in writing? I sure as hell wasn’t aware, not until after we'd already moved in – until it was already too late.

I wonder if whoever buys this place after we’re gone, will think to ask.

I did later learn that the realtor regretted selling to us. That if he had known our ‘situation’, he never would've shown us the place.

I can't help but imagine what our lives would've been like if we'd never bought the small fixer upper off of Lakeshore Drive.

That's all moot now, of course. 

If it weren't for the price, we'd never have looked at it in the first place – especially since it'd been a foreclosure. 

I hated the feeling of building our lives on the shattered remains of someone else's, but Gideon and I needed to move, we had to. We couldn't stay in our old house, its recently vacated bedroom dangerously close to becoming a shrine.

We couldn't keep going to the same grocery store in our tiny town, where everyone knew and regarded us with looks of pity.

Once we moved to Bridgeport, we were just two more people amongst a hundred thousand.

We could mourn in peace and anonymity, lost in the throngs.

But living in the city doesn't come cheap. 

So, that's why Gideon and I were looking at a fixer upper that had sat vacant before the bank eventually reclaimed it.

I should’ve trusted my gut when I thought something about the place was off. The new cheery welcome mat seemed at odds with the rest of the house, which gave off an aura of a deep – almost crushing – sadness. It hit me like a wave when we first walked in – a split second before the scent of rot and decay followed in its wake.

The realtor apologized and said that they'd found fridges full of rotten food from when the prior owners left the place abandoned. He assured us that he’d dealt with something similar before, and with a few windows left open it'd air out in no time.

The house was outdated in parts, yet remodeled beautifully in others. It seemed the prior owners had apparently begun the process of painstakingly restoring it before they abandoned the place – leaving behind a new kitchen, but upstairs bedrooms that were missing flooring and plastered with faded, mildewy wallpaper.

As we approached the door to the basement the smell intensified to eye watering levels.

There was something else that gave me pause, too – something about the basement. 

The space was cramped, all unfinished dirt floor and exposed brick beyond the small area that had been set up for a washer and dryer.

Right at the edge of where the faint light from the single pull-string lamp faded, was a small wooden ladder leading down into a darkness that soon swallowed it up.

Despite the realtor's best attempts at leading us away from it, I found myself subconsciously drawn to it – unaware I'd even approached until I was standing at the edge.

“What's down there?” I felt that wave of sorrow and longing the closer I got to the packed dirt floor leading down to the blackness.

“Nobody.” For a brief moment, his salesman’s smile slipped off of his face, and after an awkward silence he quickly added “Just a crawlspace.” The smile was back. “Just a little extra storage space.”

As my husband and I stared at the dark expanse beyond the ladder, we discussed plans to install some lighting to make that space, that took up the majority of the basement, usable. 

We planned a lot of things, back then.

We wanted to place Brie's belongings in one of the bedrooms like we had at our old home, even though part of us knew that their presence only served to highlight her absence. But the rooms upstairs were a mess – riddled with holes through the subfloors, mold behind the walls – so we reluctantly agreed we needed to complete the renovations before the space would be usable.

It didn't feel right to put Brie's things in a storage unit during that time, though. Yes, I knew they were exactly that – just things, just objects, but no matter how many times I told myself that, it felt like we'd be leaving her in a storage locker. 

So, we wrapped up the rocking chair I'd read to her in, in cellophane, lovingly packed the stuffed animals and Barbies, and with the rest of the house being in the state that it was, we tucked them neatly into the only place safe from construction – the crawlspace. 

Close by, and protected while we made a safe, more permanent place for them.

At first, I expected us to spend all of our free time down there, like we used to in her room at our old house, but something about that place alarmed me as much as it called to me.

I think that even before we'd finished placing her belongings down there, we realized that we'd made a mistake. Some part of me knew – maybe it was the look of that place – the black dirt that seemed to swallow up any light we directed at it from headlamps and flashlight beams – or the overpowering smell of lingering rot mixed with old earth. Maybe it was that feeling – the one of emptiness I'd felt when we first moved in had been replaced by something far worse. As we placed the final box, the stale air down there was thick with a sinister sort of excitement.

Even then, I had a vague feeling of no longer being alone.

It didn't take long for the noises to start.

I was running a load of laundry when I heard it over the rumble of the machine – a prolonged shriek, the sound of something sharp being slowly dragged across cellophane. It was my first time alone in the basement, and to hear that emerging from the claustrophobic space… at first I thought it was Gideon down there, opening the rocking chair and I smiled sadly at the thought of him leaving work early, succumbing to the need to feel close to her again. I too had felt the burning desire to go down there, despite myself.

“Couldn't resist?” I called down to the space.

The sound abruptly stopped, and I heard shuffling along the hard dirt.

I put a foot on the old wooden ladder, figured I'd join him so he wouldn't be alone. It felt right, going down into the darkness. No one should have to be alone, especially in a place like that.

That's when I heard footsteps from upstairs, followed by Gideon's voice, announcing his arrival home from work.

I sprinted up the basement steps, out of breath and nearly tripping as the only thing running through my mind was that if Gideon was upstairs*, who the hell was in the crawlspace?*

As I was about to describe what I'd heard to Gideon, I suddenly felt silly. I was in a new place, with our past wounds still so fresh – of course I was imagining things.

The next morning, I was working from home when I heard it echo through the previously silent house – a giggle, a familiar sounding one, coming from outside the kitchen window.

I didn't remember leaving the window open, but when I went in to check, it was closed. Still, the laughter continued. 

That's when I realized – it wasn't coming from outside, it was coming from below, floating up through the grate under the stove.

It went on like that – every so often, the sound of her soft laughter would float up from the basement. 

But there was a wrongness to it – it was laughter in name only, hollow and joyless, lacking the light my daughter had always carried.

Gideon never mentioned hearing it, so I never brought it up. At the time I thought maybe I was just losing it due to stress – the stress of losing Brie, of starting over in a new city.

Looking back now, and recalling the circles under my husband's eyes, the grimness there – he must have been in the same boat.

The first time she spoke to me, I'd been bringing down a box of Christmas decorations.

“Mom?”

I nearly choked on the air I'd been breathing.

I never thought I'd hear Brie's voice again. For a moment, I thought I'd dreamt it.

“Are you coming?”

The voice, song like, floated up from the dark.

From the crawlspace. 

A dry little cough echoed out. 

I lost my shit. I ran upstairs, and I finally told Gideon.

My husband gave me a look when I did – a look that said he understood, and if what I needed from him in that moment was to go into the basement and duck into that dark little crawlspace so he could tell me everything was okay, then he was going to do it.

The little room was pitch black as I followed him into it. All of our attempts to install lighting down there – temporary and otherwise – had failed – and the dim glow from the single bulb in the basement was swallowed up before even descending the ladder.

We clicked on our flashlights.

I wondered if he too had heard the sound of something moving across the packed dirt that echoed out seconds before we directed our beam towards the darkness.

The sound of…Scurrying?

Gideon gasped, and a moment later turned to reveal what he'd seen.

A blanket has been placed across the hard dirt, one of Brie's, adorned with smiling characters from her favorite animated movie. Stuffed toys were strewn along it, a single book lay open off to the side. I didn't even need to see the impression left on the blanket to know that someone had been sleeping down there.

Gide...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Saturdead on 2024-11-02 17:12:38+00:00.

---

[1] – [2] – [3] - [4] - [5] - [6]

From April to May, we had to move to the old fire station. The Tomskog Fire Department had long since been dismantled, being absorbed into St. Cloud and the surrounding area – leaving their old station available. It’d been used a handful of times as a sort of community space, but there was limited use for an old fire station. It didn’t take long to set up shop though, and with the folks from the DUC helping us out we got the resources we needed.

With Charlie on sick leave, I had to stay on radio duty for the foreseeable future. As we were running short on manpower, I was solely responsible for running the dispatch during the evening shift. We moved off the secure channels though – just in case I wasn’t around for a call or two.

I’m not gonna say those few weeks weren’t eventful, but they were eventful in a way that didn’t directly affect me. There was some sort of operation to shut down a turbine, for example, that seemed to have dire implications.

 

My days weren’t that eventful. I took calls, redirected our various units to check them out (or not), and made sure to take note of anything out of the ordinary. I also acted as a sort of info hub for the DUC, who checked with me every now and then to see if something unusual happened. A couple of people called in about spotting Patrick and his crossbow a couple of times, but he hadn’t hunted anyone since the Rosemills, so we just assured the callers and hung up.

But there was that one call that would change my time in Tomskog – permanently.

I was on my way home after an evening shift, clocking out just after 10pm. I was dragging myself to my car, sipping the last few drops of a forest-fire-tasting americano. Apparently getting a decent coffee machine wasn’t high on the DUC list of priorities. I heard a strange noise and stopped, only to realize it was my phone. My personal one. It hadn’t rung in so long that I’d forgotten my custom ring tone – Stayin’ Alive, by the Bee Gees.

I didn’t recognize the number. I figured it might be someone from work who needed me for an extra shift.

I answered.

 

“Please don’t hang up.”

That was the first thing they said to me. It sounded like a man – nervous, if anything. I stayed quiet, giving the stranger a chance to say his piece.

“You’re the new girl, aren’t you?” he continued. “At the station?”

“Who is this?”

“My name’s Adam,” he said. “I’m looking for my daughter.”

“I’m sure we can help you,” I said. “But I need you to call during office hours, and not to my private phone.”

“It’s not like that,” he sighed. “I’ve talked to the sheriff countless times, but he’s not doing anything. But I believe you can.”

“This is sketchy, Adam. Why would I be able to help when the sheriff can’t?”

“Because you’re still here to protect and serve.”

I stopped in front of my car, rolling my eyes. The taste of burnt coffee stained the roof of my mouth.

“I just need a few minutes of your time,” Adam continued. “You’ll get a free lunch.”

 

It was the first bribe I’d ever accepted. The next day, I met Adam for lunch at the one downtown café Tomskog offered. They had little blue sunflowers in every window, and they all had that strange illusion where it looked like they turned towards you no matter the angle you looked at.

Adam was in his early 50’s, with thinning blond hair and a beer belly that poked the edge of the table. He had these naturally sad facial features, like his face had slightly melted. I couldn’t imagine him smiling, other than sarcastically. He got out of his seat, shook my hand, and asked for my order. I wanted a sandwich and a latte, and he was off like a bullet.

When we sat down to eat, he scooched a little closer and lowered his voice.

“Thank you for meeting me,” he said. “I’m sorry if I startled you.”

“I’m still not sure if I can help,” I said. “But I’m sorry about your daughter.”

He pulled out a small photo. A young woman with a black pixie-like haircut and black eyeliner.

“Her name’s Elizabeth,” he said. “Or Ellie. Elle to some.”

“She’s pretty,” I smiled. “But I haven’t seen her.”

“I know, I know,” he nodded. “But I think you can help me find her.”

 

We finished our lunches. As people walked by, Adam would lower his voice and look over his shoulder. I could tell he wasn’t comfortable being out in public. I’d seen strange people in Tomskog before, and there were a lot of them, so this wasn’t out of the ordinary; but something about Adam seemed more genuine. He was weird for a reason.

“I don’t know how much they’ve told you,” he said. “Have Hatchet been around?”

“Hatchet?” I scoffed. “The pharma people?”

“So no. You got any inoculations? Any shots?”

“What, like, tetanus?”

“You really are new, huh?”

He attempted a grin, but it came of as a tired squint.

“Look,” he continued. “I’ll tell you everything I know. But you gotta promise to help me.”

“I can’t promise you anything,” I said. “I don’t know this girl.”

“Just promise you’ll try. Please.”

Looking across the table, there was no way I could say no. I had a soft spot for people asking nicely, and Adam seemed like an honest guy. At least genuine enough to know when to reach out of his comfort zone.

“Alright. I’ll try.”

 

I followed Adam to his car and sat down in his passenger seat. We exchanged numbers, and he took out a notebook. He had detailed notes about everything related to his daughter, along with names, dates, witness testimonies, and a handful of other details. I got a brief look at his glove compartment when he got his reading glasses. There were a handful of other notebooks in there as well.

Elizabeth had survived a fall from a great height. She’d broken her legs and cracked her pelvis but had managed to make it to a nearby road. They’d found her next to Frog Lake. How she’d managed to fall from such a great height, only to end up in the lake, was a mystery in and of itself. But that wasn’t all – she was exhibiting some unusual symptoms.

By the time Adam got to the hospital, she’d been quarantined. Early reports indicated something called SORE, but that changed when a new doctor made a second diagnosis. Elizabeth was to be taken to a special clinic upstate, but Adam was never given any details. Three days later, he was told she died from respiratory failure.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “So why do you believe she’s still around?”

“That first diagnosis,” Adam tapped his head. “SORE. That’s never mentioned again.”

“Maybe they made a mistake.”

“If they did, why do they refuse to tell me what it is?”

He flipped a couple of pages, turning to a section labeled ‘SORE’.

 

Sudden Onset Rest Event - SORE. According to Adam’s notes, it was a strange condition that could trigger within 72 hours of exposure, and often when a victim submits to rest.

“There have only been a handful of mentions of this,” Adam continued. “One is at a prison. Corporate-sponsored. They get this all the time. The other was an explosion of cases in, uh… Juniper, West Virginia.”

“Not seeing much of a connection here, Adam.”

“There’s like… six branches of… you know what? Never mind. I’m getting off track. Here.”

Grabbing another notebook, he handed it to me. He turned a couple of pages and tapped the page.

“There has never been a resolved case of SORE. Check the numbers if you want.”

“It’s just names.”

“Dozens. All diagnosed, none of them released. They contract this thing and disappear.”

“So it’s fatal.”

“No, fatality means closure. There’re no record of anyone dying from it either. They die from something else, or they just…”

Adam popped his hands, making a poof noise. He looked at me as if expecting some kind of conclusion. I shook my head at him.

“Take this home”, Adam sighed. “I got copies. Just look it over.”

“Alright,” I nodded. “Thanks for lunch.”

“Yeah.”

 

I looked it over later that night, when my job lulled to a halt. I didn’t understand what this had to do with me, or the Tomskog PD, but if I could put this paranoid man’s thoughts to rest, that’d be a win in my book.

A stray thought blew through my mind. There was an incident in West Virginia where plenty of folks had come down with SORE. I vaguely recalled Nick mentioning Tomskog PD being called there once in response to a ‘geological event’. The dates lined up. Checking the records, I could confirm that yes – the same event that Nick and the others were called out for resulted in one of the largest outbreaks of SORE that they’d ever seen. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

SORE was a Tomskog thing, much like the other strange things happening here. Someone had to know something. But chances were that, if no one had told Adam by now, it was for a reason. Either way, I was curious.

 

There was a lot of info in those notebooks. Something about SORE being an “accelerant” rather than an infection in and of itself, and how it didn’t introduce anything new or foreign to the human system. Records of strange behaviors, such as people drinking rainwater and throwing up white globs of parasites. And violence – endless witness statements about violenc...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/PCTWH on 2024-11-02 14:45:28+00:00.

---

Firstly, a quick introduction. I’m Cheryl, and my husband is Mark. We’re a husband and wife couple who were planning to start the Natural World Adventure Vlog, but my husband’s injuries will make that impossible. We just want answers to what happened in the cave. But I think it’s best to get everyone on the same page about Rock Well.

Rock Well Caverns is a recently opened show cave somewhere in England. The exact location isn’t something I can tell you right now, as news of this event seems to be getting removed for some reason. This might be tourism related, or it might be to prevent public paranoia. You’ll see the caverns have a sort of “spooky” theme, with witches and skeletons and the like around the front entrance. This is sort of what attracted us to it: a new, unheard of location with a theme perfect for the Halloween season, which is when we planned of launching the channel.

Okay, I’ll speed up a little for Mark’s sake. I’ll get through the backstory and caves, then Mark can take over. With the condition his mouth’s in, we have a system that allows him to dictate words to me using eye tracking software. 

We arrived pretty early.  I think we were the 20th or so visitor into the caves. The mouth was pretty unassuming, just a crack in the side of the valley wall, barely squeezing the metal walkway between the jagged sides. We travelled in groups of ten to prevent the cave getting clogged with visitors. It was like walking through a portal. The warm Summer air of outside quickly became colder, almost slimier, once we entered the Caverns. It smelled of limestone, the smell so thick I was almost worried my nose would clog up with limescale. The group was ushered into a chamber, one lit with thick red lights that cast elongated shadows across the damp walls. This is where we were told the backstory of this place.

According to local legend, plants and crops around the town started to die off one week after a supposed witch was executed in the town centre. Their roots turned to stone and flaked away. People who drank the water from the well wouldn't fare much better. Some would pass, as our tour guide called them, “intestine stones”, others would have their insides turned to rock. They'd fall to the ground with a bone-cracking thud as the petrified organs slammed into their ribs. This was believed to be nothing more than a morbid tale inspired by the town's name, until a cave explorer discovered an underground lake. A petrifying well.

Maybe you know of the petrifying well in Mother Shipton’s Cave, North Yorkshire. A thin trickle of water coats any object placed under it with minerals over the course of months. This lake is like that, but stranger. The body of water is stagnant, and, perhaps because of that, the effects are much faster. It takes seconds to coat something, not months. Nobody knows why. The visitor attraction is partly a way to get funding for experiments on the lake, but the working theory is the water’s lack of movement, as well as lack of exposure to weather, allows the process to happen faster. My husband and I disagree.

Deeper into the cave, our tour guide pointed out inscriptions on the walls. They are apparently indecipherable, but they could be phrases in an ancient language eroded to incomprehensibility. Mark’s telling me he took some close up shots of these, but with the camera in the state it’s in, they’ll be unrecoverable. From memory, they seemed almost geometric. The “erosion” theory seems like a stretch, with how preserved the shapes are. Mark also tells me of the rocks found on the floor. Some child in the first group found a gemstone, barely reachable from the walkway. I can remember a conversation between tour guides about whether he could keep it. Management got involved, but we’re not sure what came of it. Mark believes this detail is important, and I almost forgot to mention it. I was more shaken by the gust of wind from deeper in the caves. It smelled even stronger than the cave’s natural atmosphere. It almost felt sandy. I remember brushing some kind of powdered rock (it felt like salt) off my face.

The next chamber of the cave is the petrifying well. I’ll give you a description of the room, before I let Mark give his side of the story.

The chamber is a massive dome shape. A row of electric lights were supposed to illuminate the pool, but some were out, coated in some kind of sediment. The dim light illuminated a milky pool below, surrounded by beaches of rough sand. We were on a metal platform, ten metres above the pool. Around the railings, a series of metal wires acted as safety nets in case anybody lost their footing too near the edge. The smell here was the strongest, even the tour guide suggested only having a brief look at the pool and regrouping outside the chamber. In hindsight, everything was leading to what happened.

Before Mark takes over, I’ll say right now that the doctors found no evidence of head trauma. He is in relatively sound mind, and I believe everything he’s told me. I’ll let him talk now.

“Why me?” I can’t stop thinking that. I’ve been told that if I have a positive outlook, it’ll be better for me. Well, finding shoes in my size was always a hassle - I’m glad I’ll never have to do that again. Anyway… I’ll start properly now.

I had this feeling in my stomach when we entered the chamber. It was like I swallowed an entire ice cube, but I just chalked it up to the stench that place gave off. The best description I can give is “it smelled like an old, damp church in the rain”. The walkway was thin, the water was bubbling, the lights were dimming. I should've run out of there. But I just needed some footage of the pool. Everyone else had left, and they were congregating around the tour guide as I slowly walked back towards the crack in the wall that formed the chamber’s entrance. I didn’t even get halfway when a powerful gust of wind blew me back, it forced my scream of fear back into my lungs. I think you [he’s referring to me, Cheryl] were out of the chamber when this happened - I let you go ahead so you could hear what the guide was saying. Each backward step I took felt lighter than the last, until I was totally weightless. The camera I tightly held onto flew out of my hands as I was launched over the railing.

It felt like it took several hours. Flying over the safety nets and several metres into the pool can’t have taken long, but my head was racing. Nothing seemed real. I couldn’t process what was happening as cold cave air rushed past my head. Then I felt a splash.

Sound became muffled. Powered by nothing but adrenaline, I forced my head above the water. For a split second, I thought the stories of the petrifying pool were exaggerated. That I was safe in the water. I reasoned that the heaviness on my lower body was due to my clothes being waterlogged, and that the tingling feeling on my face was just sediment from the pool. Luckily, I hadn’t fallen too far away from the walkway, and underneath it was a rocky outcropping, just above the waterline. I’m not sure how I made it there, but when I did, I flopped onto the rock. It felt… strange. Not the rock, but the impact. It was like my entire body was wrapped in a hard, rough bandage that dulled all sensation. Something was on me. I could barely see it in the dim lighting, but my coat and trousers had turned to stone and fused with my body. My vision became hazy and filled with dark splotches as I began to panic. I could hear you [me, Cheryl] screaming my name as lights scanned the pool, so I tried to call back. But pain surged through my body as I did. My coat crumbled away, and it must’ve taken some flesh with it. The parts of my chest that weren’t numb burned and screamed in agony. In a panic, I tried to grab my chest, but my left arm began to flake away. By the time I grabbed my crumbling body, it was only a stump. The water on my face hardened into dust. I brushed it off, with sharp stings of pain as the rock was torn away, before everything turned black. 

I jolted back awake. At first, I expected to be in my bed, maybe wrestling with you for the covers, but the stench of limestone quenched that fantasy. The lights were mostly out now, the cave became a wall of darkness. Everyone was gone. I assume they left to get help, to start a search party. The skin I had left was sweaty and clammy. Intense nausea throttled my stomach as I rolled around on the rock. I couldn’t feel it, but I knew fragments of rock were chipping off my body. Even my mouth was turning to stone. That was all I was - a lump of stone with a head. My face bled, and I could feel several layers of rock scraping against each other as I moved. Well, I couldn’t feel the rock, but I could feel the vibrations made by the friction, and the echoing of these vibrations in my teeth. I lay in a panic induced haze, when I heard a splash. A light flicked, illuminating the outline of a humanoid figure in the pool. That thing wasn’t human. It was too thin. It looked more like a skeleton linked by just enough muscle to hold it together. I kicked and rocked, trying to move away from the water, when my shin slammed into the metal support of the walkway. As a metallic clang echoed out, I could feel my crumbling away. 

Something grabbed me and scraped my chest with what felt like a blunt metal pole. The light flickered again. This skeletal figure had me pinned down with its finger, and was scratching something into my skin. I tried t...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MaxMic11 on 2024-11-02 00:14:53+00:00.

---

The holidays are always an emotionally very confusing time for me. I love the decorations, the festive mood, but I also feel a melancholy nostalgia that lingers in the back of my mind. Not a yearning for younger times, but vague childhood trauma and family inadequacies bubbling to the surface. My sister and I individually still live in our hometown. My parents do too, and so did my grandparents. I have no desire to move, I do really like it here. That doesn’t mean though that I’m not affected by the proximity of parts of my past.

I practice Wicca in a modern, cultural sense. I was raised loosely Catholic, and I still celebrate Christmas. But I also celebrate the Wiccan sabbat of Yule which overlaps with Christmas. It’s nice to be able to have something to share while also having something for “yourself” to enjoy and experience. This year’s holidays were different though. Surprising, but not shocking, my grandfather died.

He was ninety-two, so his passing was not unexpected. Active and mentally alert up until the very end, but still, ninety-two. Just the timing of being so close to the holidays was not foreseen in the brief overview of planning for his passing that my parents, sister, and I happened to discuss earlier in the year. Getting funeral arrangements made for December 20th was a pain, but we got it done. We made it simple. A public wake and a private funeral. Of my family, I was the closest to my grandfather and I felt treating his death arrangements in a more logical, left brain matter just made sense and wasn’t insensitive at all. He would have wanted people to move on quickly and continue with their lives.

I learned of Wicca from my grandfather. Many people are surprised to hear that being Wiccan, or a witch, is not just some New Age fade. My grandmother was Wiccan too. My mother, their daughter, decided not to practice which is of course totally fine and her decision. I decided though that Wicca really aligned with my values and felt best for me. Cooking, especially baking is a main aspect of my practice. Since I was a kid my grandfather and I would bake together in his big kitchen. Savory or sweet galettes (depending on the season), witch’s bread pudding using buttery brioche bread, and much more. Nine out of ten times, we made perfect creations.

Wicca is very much individual-centered. While my grandfather and I practiced together, he also encouraged me to develop my own practice for myself as he did his own. When my grandmother died three years ago, it was nice to see that he had a “system” in place for himself to process the grief in a healthy way. What exactly that system was when he was alone, I’m unsure. But it worked for him.

Speaking of speedy death arrangements, I happened to get a call from my grandfather’s lawyer maybe 10 minutes after the funeral. He wanted to go over my grandfather’s will. He was able to arrange a meeting for my family and I to come into his office the following day. The convenience was very nice.

We all sat down in front of the attorney’s desk. “It’s honestly one of the most simplified wills I’ve ever been designated to carry out,” the lawyer said.

“As he stated in his will, you are already aware he is donating most of his money to charities and causes he cared deeply about. However, he left $10,000 total to divide amongst the four of you equally.” Thankfully, we all understood and acknowledged that we knew this well in advance. No one contested it. The lawyer handed each of us a check for $2,500. The lawyer proceeded.

“The only thing left is this.” The lawyer lifted up onto his desk a small, old wooden chest that was maybe a foot wide and half a foot tall. The dark brown of the wood was almost black, which matched the black metal of the hinges, lock, and corner edge plating.

“This is for you Zack.” The lawyer handed me the chest. My family looked at me inquisitively but said nothing. Right then and there I tried to open the chest, but it was locked.

“Is there a key?” I asked.

“No” the lawyer replied firmly. The lawyer then stated that my mother was designated as the executor of his “estate” or what would happen with the rest of his belongings like his home. That concluded the will distribution and the lawyer ushered us out the door because he assumingly had other things to do.

The plan was we would all get together for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at my parents’ house, which was normal for us, unfortunately. I drove back to my place. I put my keys down in the bowl by the door and took the chest into the kitchen where I placed it on the dining room table. I made myself a mug of herbal tea and then sat in front of the chest, thinking. Should I try to pick the lock? Do I try and pry it open?

I gently shook the chest. I couldn’t hear anything inside. Was it just decorative? That doesn’t seem like something my grandfather would leave in a will. Wicca tends to be utilitarian, and that’s how my grandfather was. Practical, but not in an emotionally detached way at all. He didn’t like giving or receiving gifts. He liked to show his care by providing experiences, acts of service, words of affection. Baking was a clear example of giving an experience of the senses.

I left the chest on the table and decided to light a fire in the fireplace. Some find it contradictory, or a dichotomy? I don’t know. Anyway, people find it weird that I use natural kindling from the woods but put one of those packaged logs you light on top of it. To continue the theme of Wicca, I think it’s a perfect representation of the practice. “Old” and “new” together. I lit the fire, and it immediately went up in a roar and then settled down. It’s a traditional fireplace, it doesn’t use major flammables like gas. The wood must have been really… dry? A moment after the fire settled, I heard a thud come from the kitchen. I got a little scared. Just in case, I grabbed the fire poker hanging near the fireplace and slowly walked to the kitchen.

Stepping into the kitchen I looked around. Nothing was there. The door that connected the garage to the kitchen that I normally walk through was closed, and so were the windows. I looked over at the dining room table and saw the chest. That, was open. I walked over to it and looked inside. I had to blink a few times to make sure nothing was in my eyes, and that what I was seeing was actually what I was seeing. There were eleven teeth scattered within the chest.

A shiver shot up my spine. Teeth? Real human teeth? How did I not hear at least a rattling when I shook the chest? The question in itself made me uncomfortable. Whose teeth were they? I had to assume they were my grandfather’s. Where else would he get human teeth? I thought of the worst possible scenario. Did he hurt someone to get these? I was just being paranoid in the moment. I never saw my grandfather get even remotely angry at anything. I don’t think I ever even saw him slightly irritated. Is that a good trait, or the trait of a psychopath?

I needed to calm down. I know my grandfather. Horribly, these had to be his teeth, and the coroner or funeral people didn’t notify us because, for some odd reason, they didn’t see his missing teeth as abnormal. Maybe they just thought he had poor dental hygiene? There was a part of me that wanted to pick them up and inspect them, but the shock was still subsiding in me, so I didn’t. 

It’s an old chest. It must have been spring-loaded and broken open. I left the open chest there and decided to bring my tea over to the couch near the fireplace and just relax. I would try reading a book I was almost done with and organize my thoughts about this discovery after. I decided not to tell my parents and sister. At least not so close to Christmas. Again, I already feel weird around my family this time of year. It’s not an emergency, and I wouldn’t want to sour their Christmas and create more tension just like I wouldn’t want my Yule shaken up like that. If I was going to tell them what Grandpa left me, I would wait until after the holidays.

Only three to five pages into reading, I started to smell a really pungent odor. It wasn’t bad-smelling, just really strong. It was cinnamon. I didn’t add anything to my tea. I thought maybe some of the wood I was burning could be producing a smell? I went over to the fireplace, but it wasn’t that. I remembered I had mini cinnamon brooms hanging outside each of my house’s doors. I thought that was ridiculous, because how could they suddenly become that strong in smell, but I checked anyway. 

I opened the front door and the cinnamon smell hit me like a wave. Yes, it was ever so clear that it was coming from the cinnamon brooms. When I bought them, you literally had to put your nose up to them to smell the slight scent they held. Now, it was as though the scent radiated off them like a nuclear reactor. I checked the one outside the connecting garage door, and it too was overwhelming.

For those that don’t know, in Wicca, it’s tradition to hang a cinnamon or spiced broom outside your door during the colder seasons’ sabbats, especially Samhain/Halloween and Yule. It’s a very contemplative time of the year. The brooms protect your home from “bad energy” and ground you in the physical realm while the veil between life and death is… thin. They’re symbolic. The same concept applied to lighting fires in the fireplace.

Whether you notice it or not, air circulates through homes constantly. Air pressure changes dramatically simply by opening and closin...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Manofmystery202 on 2024-11-02 04:06:56+00:00.

---

Yesterday I shot my girlfriend's brother. I know how that sounds, I know people are going to think I’m a murderer. But I’m not, because he never existed. Before you scroll, hear me out. I’ve known my girlfriend Marie since middle school. We’ve been dating since freshman year, and it wasn’t until I was 24 years old that I met her brother Scott. I had been to her house thousands of times. I was there the day her little sister was born. I was there the day her father died, I was there when her mother got remarried. I was there when her stepdad got arrested and we had to bail him out of jail. I’ve been there for every major family event. But not once have I seen him.

But the day he appears on our porch out of the blue begging for someplace to stay I’m supposed to be okay with that. Watch as my girlfriend greets this stranger like she’s known him her entire life. I pressed her on why I’d never met him. She replied our paths just must have never passed. I asked why she’s never mentioned it. She tells me she has plenty of time. I wondered why he wasn’t there for any of those mentioned family events. She insisted he was the best man. I pulled up pictures from the day of her mother's wedding. He’s not in any of them. I show her this and she says he must have just been unlucky when it came to catching the camera.

I was immediately suspicious of this man. All this time there is no reason our paths should have never crossed. But he knows me, he calls my first name, he knows my dad, he knows where I work, he knows my dog's name. I ask how he knows these things, he says Marie told me. I ask why we never met he says what do you mean we’ve met plenty of times. 

We sit at the dinner table, and Marie and Scott share stories of their childhood. Some stories I’ve heard before, some stories seem so out of character for my girlfriend. Marie has always been a shy girl and she hates all social events. I was her only friend growing up but all of a sudden I’m hearing of sleepovers with friends I never knew existed. I once tried taking Marie to a party but she began crying the moment we pulled up. But now Scott’s talking about how rambunctious she was constantly partying and getting in trouble with the cops. Bull shit she's never done anything illegal in her life. She chews me out if I don’t stop at yellow lights. But she sits here and says these stories are true.

I don’t want to argue but it seems impossible she could have done these things. We’ve dated all of high school. How had I never heard this? I begin to think she’s hiding things from me, maybe she isn’t the girl I thought she was. But then he slips up and he tells a story that couldn’t possibly be true. He tells me how she got caught hooking up with her prom date during sophomore year. I snap, it's impossible, she didn’t go to prom that year. Prom night we sat home and watched scary movies. I say we’d been dating since freshman year. There's no way. Scott looks annoyed with me. Marie tells me I must be mistaken, we didn’t start dating till senior year.

I leave the room convinced Scott isn’t who he says he is. How do I prove it, an idea comes to me. I went out to the backyard and called Marie’s mother. I ask her about her son, and for a moment she’s confused. It’s not till I say his name she suddenly sparks to life nonstop talking about him and all the great memories she has of him. I don’t care, I ask if she has any photos of him from when he was a child. She says there in her scrapbook. I asked her if she could send me pictures of them. She agrees, and after a few moments, she gets confused. She can’t find the photos, I ask her about Scott’s birthday, she doesn't know. She’s in shock, rambling, and she hangs up the phone. That night I can’t help but feel like something’s watching me sleep.

Scott has been at our house for a week now. I’ve heard plenty of stories, I’ve caught him a lie a few times. He never eats, at least I never see him do. He never goes to the bathroom, he doesn’t pay attention when we watch TV. That night I caught him staring into our bedroom. His face sticks right past our door frame. I woke Marie to tell her what he was doing. She tells me Scott sleeps and walks. Scott sits at the dinner table, he tells a story of how he broke his arm, it was so bad he had to go to the hospital. A thought crossed my mind and I smiled. 

I leave the room and call a friend who works at the same hospital. “I know you're not supposed to do this, but I need the medical records for a man named Scott Tillem.” After some harassment, my friend relents. He pulls up his name but tells me there was no one by that name to ever visit that hospital. I have my proof.

I don’t tell Marie, I just say I want to take Scott out fishing. She doesn’t question. She says it will be a good bonding experience for the two of us. That night I caught Scott standing above my bed. I don’t move, I don’t wake Marie, I just sit there and listen. Scott’s frustrated he mumbles to himself. I hear him say “Why can’t I get into your head.” He leaves the room still mumbling.

It’s time to take him fishing, that’s the cover story at least. I make it look as real as possible, I pack lunches, I bring all my fishing supplies, and I tell him the best bait to use. We chat on the ride and he tells me more stories. I don’t listen, I just nod and half-ass reply. I drive us as far out as I can. He doesn’t question it. I ask him one question: what he does do for a living? He says he’s lost his job, that's why he came to stay with us. I ask what he did before he lost his job, but he can’t answer. All those stories and he couldn’t make up a job.

We arrive at our destination and tuck something into my pocket. It’s cold, and the wind blows but Scott doesn’t wear a jacket. We fish for a couple of hours and grab a sandwich from the cooler for both of us. I offer one to him, he says he isn’t hungry. “Weird you didn't eat dinner last night you should be hungry by now,”  I tell him he has to eat it. He tells me he just doesn’t eat much. Now’s my time, and I pull the item from my pocket, it’s a .38 revolver. I tell him to take a bite of the food. I point my gun at him but yet he refuses.

“Scott, I know you're not who you say you are, some of your stories are impossible, there are no photos proving your existence, you don’t have medical records, and your own mother doesn’t even know your birthday. But I’m willing to look past that all. I'm willing to accept your reality, as long as you take a bite of that sandwich, and prove to me that you're real.”

He smiles and says “No one will ever believe you, I’ve put enough memories in their head to make sure of that.”

I smile back at him and shoot. He falls instantly, whatever monster he was, died just as easily as any human. I didn’t return home last night. If I returned home to Marie without Scott who knows what could’ve happened? I told her we got a little drunk and stayed at a motel. She tells me she hopes we had fun. I don’t know how to return to her now. I don’t know if I can even return home. I’m stuck how do I tell my girlfriend I killed her brother?

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/4shn1 on 2024-11-02 00:39:26+00:00.

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I'm writing this on a bus, coming home early from a frustrated trip. I can't stop thinking about what happened, and I feel like I need to share it with someone else. 

This year, a few friends and I decided to take a vacation together and go on a beach trip, planning to stay for about a week. We arranged for everyone to take time off at the same time and rented a house on the coast of a neighboring state.

At first, everything went smoothly, I took the bus around nine PM, and knowing that the trip would take around three hours, I put on my headphones, reclined the seat and enjoyed the view. We agreed to meet at the town’s port.

At a certain point in the journey, the bus stopped, and the driver informed us he’d be making a brief stop in a town near our final destination. I went to a restaurant, grabbed some coffee and a sandwich, which I barely had time to finish before the bus started moving again.

I was dozing off when I felt the bus stop. The driver turned off the engine, the lights came on and the passengers began to get off. I quickly looked out the window to check that I was in the right place, and after seeing some containers, I got off too.

That's when things started to get weird.

As soon as I stepped out, I noticed there were no other passengers around, which felt odd since it had been barely twenty seconds since everyone had disembarked. The place I was standing in was just part of the road; it didn’t even look like a bus stop, much less the port and bus station that my friends had mentioned earlier. The only sign of life nearby was a gate with a guard booth and, inside, a collection of containers and cranes that looked like a shipping company.

When I tried to get back on the bus, to ask the driver if I hadn't gotten off at the wrong stop, he had already left.

I looked at my phone, paused the music, and checked the time: midnight sharp. I called one of my friends to let them know I had “arrived,” hoping that this was the right place. No answer. I only managed to send a quick message – “I think I’m at the port” – before my battery died. Apparently, listening to music for three hours straight was just too much for my old phone. With no idea what else to do, I approached the guard booth to ask for information.

Inside was a woman, who smiled when she saw me approaching. I asked her if I was in the right place and explained a little bit of the situation. 

"Ah, the port? Oh, no, you’re far away, about five miles I believe, my dear." She replied, with a big smile and a voice a little... strange.

I can't explain it, but the woman seemed off. Her skin looked different, in a way that I couldn't tell whether she was 26 or 62, and her voice didn't sound natural. At the time I didn't pay much attention to any of this, but in retrospect, it seemed as if she wasn't human, but something trying to be human.

"But if you want, you can go through here, James and I will take you to the port, everything will be fine!" She said while gesturing to a colleague who was near the gate.

I hadn't noticed the colleague before. In fact, it's is as if he appeared out of nowhere as soon as she called him. He came towards me, with the same huge smile and strange skin.

For some reason, that gave me chills. Those two looking at me, piercing me with their eyes, and with that sinister smile, almost drooling, as if I were a dish from a five-star restaurant. Something told me not to wait for this “James” guy to approach, so I walked away, muttering a goodbye.

I couldn't see much ahead, just the road and the silhouette of vegetation on both sides of the asphalt. There were no streetlights except one in front of the “company,” and likely none for the next five miles. I started walking, but I soon realized that it would be a long trek, so I raised my thumb in hope that someone passing by would give me a ride.

And it didn't take long for a truck driver to pull up next to me. I got close to his window, and to my surprise, he didn't look right either. He was an older man, or at least I think it was because of his white hair, but he had the same strange skin as the woman and “James“ I just met. He invited me into the truck, saying he would take me to the port in no time. Strange, because I hadn't even told him where I wanted to go.

"Come on, kid, I'll take you there, you won't even notice! You can sleep if you're tired. Everything will be fine!" The old man insisted. He spoke in the same strange, weirdly broken way as the other two.

The chill I had felt before now intensified, and it went up my spine like an electric shock. I didn't even bother to say something to the truck driver, I just moved on, quickening my pace. He just stood there.

From then on, I started to walk faster. I had a weird feeling, as if things weren’t right, and what scared me the most: that something was watching me.

I rounded a bend in the road and saw a broken guardrail and a crashed car beyond it. It looked like the accident had happened some time ago, but obviously, the scene didn’t help with my anxiety at all.

The further I got, the more unsettling the place became. The air grew heavy, and I started to hear noises in the vegetation, twigs snapping, leaves rustling. I was getting exhausted from the walk, and my eyes were strained from trying to see in the pitch-dark.

After about two hours of walking, just past another curve, this time forming a big "S" along with the previous one, a car stopped next to me. It was an old hatchback, probably from the '90s. I couldn’t see much, but the car looked run-down. At this point, I was obviously no longer hitchhiking, and my paranoia made me completely suspicious of whoever the driver was.

And with good reason.

"Get in, Alex, I'll take you to the port." He said, calmly.

"HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME?" I shouted, desperate.

"What do you mean, Alex? We all know your name. We just want to help you! Trust us, everything will be fine!" He replied, lifting his head and looking directly at me, with the same massive, twisted smile as the others.

Taking a good look at his face, he looked almost identical to the truck driver, like twins, both equally disfigured and weird.

This time, I ran.

I ran like I’d never run before, without even looking back to see if anything was following me.

I must have run for another two hours until exhaustion took over, and I sat down on the roadside. Everything seemed quiet and safe. Too safe. I opened my backpack to take the last sip from my water bottle when I began to hear them.

Voices, coming from the bushes next to me. At first, I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but slowly I began to recognize my name being called.

"Alex... Alex... come this way, Alex... it's a shortcut, Alex... everything will be fine, Alex."

The feeling of safety soon turned to horror, and I went back running.

The voices grew louder, more distorted, and when I inevitably looked back, my fears were confirmed.

There was a man – no, a creature – chasing me. It was humanoid, but with disproportionate limbs and a bizarre skin, as if it were imitating human skin, which writhed and twisted. And it was smiling at me.

That thing came closer, initially walking slowly, but picking up it's pace towards me.

I ran awkwardly, totally consumed by fear, crying and screaming, the creature chasing, obviously faster than me, at one point getting close enough to touche me. And it did. It put it's hand, boney and cold, on my shoulder.

As I fumbled to get away from its grasp, I tripped and went rolling. The thing came after me, opening it's mouth, revealing rotten and missing teeth, kneeling down in my direction.

I've never been a fighter, but at that time some kind of instinct came over me. Somehow I felt this would be my last seconds alive if I didn't try to fight it. So I kicked, punch, did everything I could to get away.

After a few blows to its head, the creature seemed to recoil for a second, looking at me with a twisted and broken smile, mixed with an expression of confusion, as if it didn't believe that I could defend myself like that. To be honest, I didn't believe it either.

But that single moment was enough for me to get up on my feet and start running again.

I soon encountered the first streetlight in what felt like years.

As I got closer, I saw the sea, containers, docked ships, a lighthouse in the distance, and a small group of people. It was the port. I stopped running but was still paranoid and anxious, so I avoided contact with anyone. Looking behind me, at first I saw nothing besides the darkness of that godforsaken road, but squinting my eyes, I could barely see that pale figure, standing still, staring directly at me. For some reason, it had given up on chasing me after I've entered the light.

Then I saw the bus arrive, and exactly the same passengers who were with me got off. Soon I also saw my friends approaching. They were drinking and laughing, and when they saw me, they ran over, shouting and cheering to celebrate my arrival. One of them tried to talk to me, asking me why I was looking terrible, sweating, dirty, and shaking.

I just lit a cigarette, walked with them to the house, a few blocks away, and told them that I was extremely tired and needed some sleep.

When I got there, I left my things in my room, plugged in my phone to charge and went to take a shower. There was a clock in the hallway, and, giving me one last moment of terror, it showed twelve-oh-five.

The next day, m...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/myrasam79 on 2024-11-01 01:17:10+00:00.

---

I had always found solace in the wilderness. The Appalachian Trail, with its sprawling, untamed forests and ever-present murmur of wind weaving through the trees, felt like a realm where civilization's chatter was replaced by nature's symphony. I had planned this trip meticulously: a two-week solo hike, a chance to disconnect and breathe in the wild. The pack on my back was heavy with supplies, and my boots felt sturdy as I set off, the trail stretching out before me in a serpentine embrace of roots and earth.

On the third day, I met him.

The light was soft that morning, filtering through the canopy and dappling the forest floor. I had just crossed a narrow stream when I saw the hiker. He was crouched by the water, cupping his hands to drink. The sun caught the worn edges of his backpack, which bore patches from other trails, distant places that spoke of experience and adventure. His hair was shaggy, and a scruff darkened his jawline, giving him a rugged, timeworn appearance.

“Hey,” he greeted as I approached, standing and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His smile was open, unassuming, and for a moment, it felt as though we had known each other far longer than a few seconds. I returned the greeting, and in that pause, a subtle connection sparked between us, the camaraderie shared by two souls venturing into the same wild unknown.

“You going southbound?” he asked, gesturing in the direction I was heading. When I nodded, he shouldered his pack. “Mind if I tag along for a bit? Haven’t had a conversation in days, and I could use some company.”

I considered it for a moment. Part of me craved the solitude I’d embarked on this journey to find. But another part—an undeniably social side that thrived on shared experiences—welcomed the opportunity. “Sure,” I agreed, and together, we set off.

His name was Daniel. As we made our way through the increasingly rugged terrain, conversation flowed easily between us. He told me about his past hikes, regaling me with tales of the Pacific Crest Trail and other adventures. In return, I shared some of my own experiences—smaller excursions, nothing as grand as his, but enough to keep the rhythm of our words balanced. He laughed often, a genuine, warm laugh that seemed to echo from somewhere deep.

The trail wound through groves of towering oaks and ancient hemlocks, their roots gnarled and weaving in intricate patterns across the path. Now and then, we encountered a meadow blooming with wildflowers or a clearing that offered a breathtaking view of the blue-hazed mountains beyond. There were times when silence fell between us, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was the kind of silence that spoke of a shared appreciation for the world around us, a moment of mutual awe.

Late in the afternoon, we reached a section where the trail descended sharply, weaving through a series of switchbacks. The air was cooler here, heavy with the scent of damp leaves and moss. I stumbled once, and Daniel reached out instinctively, steadying me with a firm hand. I noticed then how solid his grip felt, like the roots of the very trees we walked past.

“Careful,” he said, and there was something in his voice, a kind of deep concern that made me look at him a moment longer than necessary. His eyes met mine, and I saw something I couldn’t quite name—something that made my breath catch, but only for a fleeting second. Then he smiled again, and the sensation vanished as quickly as it had come.

That evening, we set up camp by a creek. The water sang a soothing lullaby as the sun dipped below the tree line, painting the sky in hues of orange and purple. We shared a meal, the firelight dancing between us, and I found myself grateful for his presence. Despite the vastness of the wilderness surrounding us, the night felt less daunting with him there.

“Do you ever think about how small we are?” I mused, staring at the embers spiraling skyward. “Out here, with the mountains and the stars, it’s easy to feel insignificant.”

Daniel poked at the fire, his expression thoughtful. “Yeah,” he said. “But sometimes I think it’s comforting. Knowing that the world carries on, no matter what. It’s... steady. Reliable, even if we’re not.”

His words lingered, and I felt a pang of something I couldn’t quite place. We talked until the sky was a velvet blanket dotted with stars, and sleep eventually pulled us under. In the stillness, the forest hummed its ancient song, and I drifted into dreams filled with shadows moving just beyond my reach.

 

The following days unfolded in a blur of sunlight and shadow, the trail stretching endlessly ahead as we pressed onward. The forest seemed to grow denser, the undergrowth more tangled, as if the earth itself sought to ensnare us. Daniel’s presence had become a steady comfort, a counterpoint to the sometimes harsh and unpredictable landscape.

We had developed an easy rhythm, our steps in sync as we navigated rocky ascents and steep descents. There was a sense of unity in our movements, the unspoken understanding that comes from traveling side by side. Yet, beneath the camaraderie, I began to notice things about him that didn’t quite add up.

For one, he never seemed to tire. While I occasionally paused to catch my breath or shed a layer of clothing, Daniel was unyielding, his pace unwavering. It wasn’t as if he pushed himself; rather, he moved as though the forest’s hardships were merely a suggestion, a breeze he could walk through unscathed. His stamina was admirable, almost enviable, but as the days passed, it became... unsettling.

Then there was the matter of his gear. His backpack, despite its well-worn appearance, never seemed to lose weight. He carried it effortlessly, without complaint. I brushed it off at first, telling myself that he was simply a seasoned hiker. But doubt began to gnaw at the edges of my mind, and I found myself studying him when I thought he wasn’t looking.

We had reached a stretch of trail that led us to a broad ridge, the land dropping away on either side to reveal a sea of trees below. The view was breathtaking, a sweeping panorama that made me pause in awe. Daniel came to stand beside me, silent, as we took it in.

“It’s beautiful,” I said finally, and he nodded, his gaze distant.

“It is,” he agreed. “But this place holds more than beauty.” His voice was quiet, almost reverent. “There’s something here that’s... different.”

I turned to look at him, puzzled. “Different how?”

He hesitated, as if weighing how much to reveal. “This land has stories,” he said. “Legends that are older than we can imagine. Some say there are things out here that never left when civilization crept closer.” He met my eyes then, his expression unreadable. “You ever feel like you’re being watched?”

The question sent a shiver through me, and I laughed to shake off the feeling. “I think everyone does, at some point out here. It’s the way the woods are, right? The sense of something ancient, hidden just out of sight.”

He didn’t laugh with me. Instead, he watched me with an intensity that made me want to look away. But I didn’t. Something held me there, rooted in place as the wind whispered through the trees. Finally, he turned and started walking again, and I was left to trail behind, questions swirling in my mind.

That night, the air was heavy with humidity, and the fire struggled to catch. We were deep in a hollow, surrounded by trees whose limbs seemed to lean closer as the dark set in. The forest was quiet, too quiet, as though holding its breath. Daniel sat across from me, sharpening a small knife he’d pulled from his pack. The rhythmic scrape of the blade against the whetstone filled the space between us.

“What made you decide to hike the trail?” I asked, trying to dispel the unease that clung to me. He glanced up, his expression softening.

“I guess I’m chasing something,” he said. “Or maybe running from something. Hard to tell the difference these days.”

The honesty in his voice surprised me, and I felt the tension between us ease. I nodded, understanding more than I wanted to admit. “Yeah,” I said. “I get that.”

The conversation drifted after that, and we settled into our own thoughts. As I lay in my tent, the weight of the day pressing down on me, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Daniel was guarding something—something I was perilously close to uncovering.

 

We pressed deeper into the Appalachian wilderness, the terrain growing ever more treacherous and the underbrush thicker, as though the forest was slowly closing in around us. The trees loomed tall and ancient, their gnarled branches twisting like skeletal fingers. Daniel was quiet, his mood subdued in a way that had become more frequent as we traveled. His eyes often drifted to the woods, a far-off look settling on his features, as if he could see something I couldn’t.

By the seventh day, my sense of unease had blossomed into a full-blown anxiety. Strange things began happening, events that felt too deliberate to be chalked up to coincidence. The rustling in the bushes that never seemed to move away, even as we progressed. The occasional echo of footsteps mirroring our own. The feeling of being observed, of unseen eyes following our every move. My imagination ran wild, fueled by the silence that had fallen between Daniel and me.

We reached a rocky outcropping around midday, the sky a pale, ominous gray. Clouds clustered low, threatening rain. We stopped to rest, and I took the opportu...

---

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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 2024-11-01 17:48:54+00:00.

---

I guess your career path can take a sudden turn...

I used to spend hours slicing through chlorinated water, racing my own shadow down those perfectly spaced, blue-tiled lanes. I was supposed to be at the Olympics, once. I was that close. I'm not even joking. But torn rotator cuffs and a few failed surgeries later, my dreams sank like a stone.

A job in the water with bad rotator cuffs isn’t easy to find either. Most companies don’t want to take a chance on someone who might struggle lifting even 20lbs above their head.

So I've been desperate.

I've been taking gig work mostly. For a while, I was teaching basic scuba classes to tourists, getting them ready for certification, but lately, I've been getting hired by a company called Fjord Explorations.

They've developed some new submersibles and are testing them in the Norwegian trench. And one of my old coaches is involved with the company. His wife is one of the investors.

It's a tiny metal sphere covered with cameras.

Claustrophobic if you let it get to you, part of a new line of business that Fjord Explorations is venturing into. Deep-sea exploration for the everyday consumer.

Designed to drop way, way deeper than any regular Joe is ever really meant to go, pushing the boundaries of what we know about visiting sea floors.

Honestly, as the test has been getting closer, I've been psyched. I'm going down 700 meters and giving feedback on their first human-passenger test.

I'm also low-key terrified, but it’s not like I was gonna say no.

****

Inside the submersible was freezing. Way colder than I expected.

The pod was tiny.

Imagine you're in a spherical MRI machine, standing up right, fully strapped in.

The entire front panel of the pod is a special glass, a viewing porthole.

They're sending me down, pulling me up. Easy.

“Ready, Maria?” crackled through the speakers, snapping me back to the here and now.

I stared out the porthole at the water.

It was this endless, gorgeous blue that was just begging me to come get lost in it.

“Shit, I guess so,” I replied, adding a grin.

With a lurch, the pod began its descent.

50 METERS

I watched as the world outside shifted from bright turquoise to this dark, almost navy blue. Sunlight still pierced through, casting streaks across the water like an underwater cathedral. The kelp swayed gently, and I could see schools of fish darting around.

100 METERS

It was getting murkier.

The sunlight faded, replaced by a deep blue that was almost hypnotic.

"Visuals are still good," Control said over the speakers.

200 METERS

I could feel the weight of the ocean pressing in, squeezing the pod. The light outside was nearly gone, and all I saw were shadows.

Strange shapes drifted by. Maybe fish, maybe something else. But it was hard to tell.

The deeper I went, the less anything looked familiar.

300 METERS

The pod’s lights clicked on, casting a faint glow into the darkness. It was eerie, the way the beam just vanished into the black, like the ocean was swallowing it whole.

The pressure built with every meter down, squeezing in, like the ocean’s giving the pod a hug that just kept getting tighter. I tried to keep my breathing steady, my eyes flicking over the gauges.

Depth, pressure, oxygen. So far, so good.

"Camera feed seems to be struggling," Control said.

"Shit, really?" I asked.

"Let's hope the connection resolves itself. Radar's still clear," they said.

The descent continued.

500 METERS

It was completely dark.

I mean, it was dark in a way you don’t really get until you’re down there. I’d always liked my alone time, but this was next-level isolation. Even my thoughts sounded louder than they should.

700 METERS

It felt like the ocean was closing in, squeezing tighter and tighter.

The pod’s lights barely cut through the darkness, and suddenly, there they were...

Hulking shadows looming just beyond the beam.

The outlines of massive ships, covered in barnacles, rusted and broken, their skeletons frozen in time. World War II vessels, I realized, swallowed by the sea decades ago.

Huge, shadowy figures moved among the wreckage, their serpentine bodies coiling around rusted beams. Massive eyes glowed faintly, reflecting the pod’s light.

They looked like something out of a nightmare, long, serpentine bodies with rippling fins, massive eyes that glowed faintly, watching me. And then, in the distance, I saw her.

A mermaid, her eyes locked on mine.

She was beautiful in a haunting way, her long hair floating like it had a life of its own. Her eyes were empty, cold, like they’d seen a thousand shipwrecks and dragged a thousand souls to the depths.

It almost looked like she was conjuring all of this, like these monsters and ghost ships were her creation, her puppets in the dark water.

Re... venge... for... thou... sand... ships...

Re... venge... for... chem... icals... you... drowned... us... with...

The words were broken, disjointed, but I knew they were coming from her.

They sent a shiver down my spine.

“Control, I… I think I'm hallucinating” I whispered.

It was the only thing that made sense.

Giant sea monsters and ghost ships aren’t real, right? This had to be some kind of pressure-induced, oxygen-starved trip. Suddenly, there was a loud, crunching noise, and the pod shuddered violently.

Yet it was so real. I knew deep down I wasn't hallucinating.

Then -

One of the ships crashed into the pod, the sound echoing through the small cabin. I could almost hear the groaning of metal, like a deep, ancient sigh, as if the ocean itself resented my intrusion.

“Maria, stay calm,” Control said, voices overlapping, urgent now. “Your readings are… Hold on, we’re seeing a drop in—”

The radio crackled, then cut off entirely, leaving me in total silence. Then there was a loud hiss, and the air inside the pod thinned out.

The following happened in an instant. I will try to describe best I can remember it.

It felt as though the pod was struck from behind by something else. Maybe another ship. I could sense the pod was about to split apart from the pressure.

My heart rate was cruising up and up.

I was staring at the pod's ceiling, wondering if it might give out.

Then the banging on the front porthole started.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

It was her, slamming her fists against the glass.

She stopped, then slowly reached through the glass, as if it wasn't there, wrapping her amphibious fingers around my right wrist, squeezing it with more pressure than I could have ever imagined.

She was going to break it, I knew it.

Re... venge... for... chem... icals... you...

My vision blurred, and I tried to focus, tried to breathe, but my head felt light, and everything started fading. The last thing I heard was the pod’s systems winding down, like some eerie lullaby.

Then. Total blackness. Nothing.

****

When I came to, it was the harsh, buzzing lights of the Fjord Explorations office that greeted me. My head was pounding, and I was wrapped in this scratchy-ass blanket that smelled like it had been in storage for a while. Across from me were two HR types, looking at me like I was some science experiment gone wrong.

“Maria, can you hear us?” one of them asked, leaning forward like he was talking to a kid.

I blinked, trying to piece together what was real.

“Uh, yeah,” I croaked. “What… happened?”

The guy glanced at his tablet, scrolling through something.

“We’re still figuring that out. The pod’s systems registered a depressurization event, but when we pulled you up, everything was… fine.”

“Fine?” I repeated, my brain still foggy. “I saw things down there. It wasn’t fine.”

The woman beside him cleared her throat, frowning.

“We reviewed the footage. And I'm sorry to say we lost signal about 300 meters down.”

I stared at her, my mouth dry.

"You're kidding me," I finally said.

“We’re going to have you checked out by medical,” the guy said, his voice that fake calm people use when they think you’re about to lose it. “Just to make sure everything’s okay.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled, barely listening.

My eyes were drifting down to my right wrist, where I could see that it was swollen and bruised. It was already a mixture of deep purple. Blood was pulling under my skin.

"We think you may have freaked out and had a panic attack," he said.

"Fix your fucking cameras," I snapped back to him.

After being cleared by medical, I was sent home on leave.

To take a couple weeks off and recover.

My wrist healed pretty quickly.

I've spent the last week thinking about what happened down there. You could say what happened has become my Moby Dick. I have to get back and figure out what's happening down there.

Online, I've been searching like crazy. But the Norwegian trench is quite young by trench standards, only a million years old or so.

But I did find something...

Apparently, during WWII, the Norwegian trench is famous for having 36 ships sunk that were carrying Chemical Weapons. The attack was approved by the Norwegian government. Never recovered.

So I wonder if this has to do with what I heard down there.

Revenge for chemicals they drowned in. But the thousand ships part doesn't make any sense.

I think this mermaid figure knows the full story.

My apartment isn't far from it where we dropped the pod. I'll catch myself glancing out the window at the fjord. The water looks so calm, so normal, but I know better now.

I’ve seen what’s down there, even if no one else believes me.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Weird-Suggestion-152 on 2024-11-01 17:23:45+00:00.

---

When I first saw the job listing, I thought it was a scam. “Night Attendant Needed. Historic Arcadian Hotel. Must be reliable, detail-oriented, and trustworthy. Pays $500 per shift.” The rate sounded unreal, too good to be true, but too good to pass up, especially considering my dwindling bank account. The email response arrived less than a day after I applied. They attached a quick questionnaire, then sent a brief email confirming that I'd been hired and was expected to report that night.

The day before my shift, an envelope arrived at my apartment. Inside, a small brass key, along with a second envelope containing a check for $500 and a handwritten note:

Congratulations, and welcome to the Arcadian family!

Enclosed is your master key. You’ll need this key to let yourself in and access certain parts of the hotel. Enter through the main doors by 10:00 p.m.

Your first shift begins promptly at 11:00 p.m.

Training will be available in the back room behind the front desk. Please watch all training materials before starting your shift.

We appreciate your commitment to rebuilding the legacy of the Arcadian.

Curious, and admittedly a little nervous, I made my way to the hotel that night.

The Arcadian was just as I’d imagined. The exterior was a fading memory of elegance, worn stone walls with crumbling edges, tall windows with elegant exterior spotlights that no longer worked. I glanced at the clock on my phone. 9:45. I had time.

The hotel’s lobby was huge, dominated by a grand staircase. Dust layered every surface, and the faintest whiff of mildew hung in the air. I took a breath, suppressing a shiver, and walked toward the front desk. Behind it was a small door labeled STAFF ONLY. This must be where they wanted me to watch the training.

Inside the staff room, I found a TV set atop a rolling cart and a row of numbered VHS tapes stacked next to it. The first tape had a label on it in looping script: “Arcadian Employee Training - 1952.” Next to it was a sheet of paper with instructions: “Watch all tapes in order. Do not skip ahead.”

I slid the first tape into the VHS player and turned on the TV. The screen flickered, a hum crackling through the speakers, and then it jumped to life.

A video came up, which looked in rough shape, like it was a copy of a copy. A cheerful man in a sharp 1950s suit stood in front of a pristine version of the lobby I’d just walked through. “Welcome to the Arcadian family!” he began with a polished grin. “We are delighted to have you on board as a steward of one of New York’s finest luxury establishments.”

His tone was light, upbeat, but he had a strange way of pausing, just momentarily, between each sentence to smile.

“Let’s begin with a few simple rules to keep our guests safe and happy!” he continued. “Remember: our guests may at times be unique, but they deserve the utmost courtesy and the finest of service. Now, please follow these essential guidelines.”

 The first few videos went over the basics; instructions on how to clean, address guests, check-ins and check-outs, when to check the guest log, and where to find supplies. But on the final video, things took a took for the strange.

"Congratulations on making it to the end of your training. Attaboy! Now, let’s cover a few final essentials to keep our guests smiling, and keep you right as rain. Listen close now, these pointers are real important!"

“Rule #1: If the elevator takes you to the basement, do not be alarmed. Simply close your eyes and stand still until it moves back up. No peeking!”

The man chuckled in a practiced, rehearsed way, as though he’d been told to laugh but wasn’t sure why. My stomach twisted at his words. The basement? Why would the elevator just take me to the basement?

“Rule #2: If you find a guest wandering the halls between 2 and 4 a.m., gently escort them back to their room. Under no circumstances should you allow them near the front doors. Use a firm hand if needed. If they seem upset, simply assure them that it will all be over soon.”

A chill ran through me. What kind of guest would be staying here, anyway? The hotel wasn’t even open. I tried to shake off the unease.

The man’s smile remained fixed as he went on with the rules.

“Rule #3: Do not look into the mirrors after midnight. Our mirrors sure are something else! We wouldn’t want you to become disoriented.”

“"Rule #4: Every night, count all the keys on the board. Make sure all your keys are accounted for. Mot importantly, there should always be four keys marked for the 10th floor. If one of those keys are missing, lock up the lobby doors, turn off the lights, and wait behind the front desk until dawn. Do not attempt to look for it."

Tenth floor? I thought. The hotel doesn’t even have 10 floors.

He proceeded with a few more rules.

“Rule #5: Now listen closely, folks! If a gentleman with a yellow umbrella comes in asking, “Do you have a vacancy?” you must politely reply, “I’m sorry, we have no vacancy.” No matter how upset he gets, stay calm and cheerful! That’s the way to keep things running smoothly!”

“Rule #6: Attention, night owl! If you find that key 309 is missing at the start of your shift, here’s what you do: whip up a ham and cheese sandwich. Gather those supplies from the kitchen. Then, head on over to room 309 and give a polite knock. Remember, don’t make eye contact! Just hold out that plate and wait until you hear the door close before you step away. You’ve got it!”

“Rule #7: Now, let’s talk about Ronald, our cleaning ace! He’ll waltz in and say, 'I’m here to clean the mess.' To which you’ll unlock the custodian closet, and let Ronald take it away! If he doesn’t give you that magic phrase, simply say, 'No cleaning needed tonight, Ronald,' and don’t forget to lock the doors tight after he leaves. That’s how we keep everything shipshape!”

“Last but not least, Rule #8: Now, listen up, friends! It’s important you remember this: Never, and I mean never, enter the management office. If you happen to find the door slightly ajar, just keep on walking and mind your business. And if you hear any peculiar sounds coming from inside, don’t let your curiosity get the better of you! Simply carry on with your tasks. We want to keep everything peachy keen around here!”

What the f….. I thought

The next few minutes focused on specifics of the hotel layout, explaining what doors led where, how to reset the breaker, and the importance of logging any “guest encounters” in the shift report binder. The rules he’d given, though, stuck with me like a bad taste.

“That concludes our training. You’re now ready to head on out there and knock it out of the park! Thank you again for your commitment to the Arcadian legacy!”

Finally, I switched off the TV. By then, it was a little after 11 pm, so I made my way to the front desk to get a feel for my new workspace.

The first part of the night was uneventful. The Arcadian was silent except for a soft hum. I completed the tasks in the handbook they’d given me, accounting for all the keys, sweeping the lobby, wiping down the desk. It was eerie, but manageable.

I settled in behind the front desk, scrolling through my phone and waiting for the night to pass by. At around 1:30 a.m., the front door of the hotel opened. An old man shuffled into the lobby. He wore a faded custodian uniform that looked like it had seen better days, and I could barely make out the name tag reading “Ronald” as he drew closer.

He moved slowly, his feet dragging slightly on the worn carpet, and I felt a knot tighten in my stomach. I knew I had to wait for him to say the phrase that would confirm he was here for his nightly duties.

When he finally reached the desk, he looked up at me with weary eyes and said, “I’m here to clean the mess.”

A wave of relief washed over me as I realized he’d said it. I quickly unlocked the custodian closet, my hands trembling slightly as I fumbled with the keys.

As he pulled out his cart, filled with an assortment of cleaning supplies and tools, he glanced at me, almost amusingly and asked, “New here?”

“Yeah, it’s my first night. Any tips?” I replied, eager to learn anything that might ease my nerves.

“Stick to the rules, and you’ll be just fine, kid,” he said, before turning back to his cart.

He wheeled it toward the elevator, the cart rattling softly behind him. As he stepped inside, the doors closed with a quiet thud, leaving me alone again. Ronald’s words did little to ease my nerves. I was still trying to figure out what those rules might really mean, and why seemingly mundane rules would be so important to follow.

When I returned to my desk, I noticed almost immediately a space on the key rack. A key was now missing. The key to room 309. Panic rose in my chest as I rifled through the key rack again, hoping it was just hiding among the others.

“Where the hell did it go?” I muttered to myself, feeling a bead of sweat form on my forehead. I had barely left the desk for more than a minute. Had someone come in while I was with Ronald? Or had I just missed it during my last count?

I quickly pulled out my notes, scanning for the rule about the ham sandwich. There it was: if key 309 is missing, bring a ham and cheese sandwich to the room and knock, avoiding eye contact. I sighed, resigning myself to follow the rule.

Heading into the kitchen, I was surprised to find it fully stocked, despite the hotel’s long period of inactivity. T...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/adorabletapeworm on 2024-11-01 17:07:47+00:00.

---

Samhain Part 1

The Dead Duo had a far worse time of it than we did. To put it simply, Victor had met us at the bonfire alone.

I'll get into what happened to Wes in a minute. Sorry to leave yinz in suspense, but this account of events is all second-hand. To spare us all some confusion, let me start at the beginning of their night.

(If you're not familiar with what Orion Pest Control's services are, it may help to start here.)

The first time that they'd heard the howls of the Cŵn Annwn, the otherworldly hounds had sounded far off. During their initial trek into the woods, the black birds continued to haunt their steps, chattering to each other as they shadowed the two undead men.

However, our coworkers didn't have this unwelcome entourage for long.

They didn't see the owl, at first. A crow screeched, then its cry was abruptly cut off. The other crows began to chatter in outrage.

Victor saw the owl soaring away with one of the Hunt's crows trapped firmly in its talons. It was the very same brown screech owl that had been watching us load up the barn with supplies. It had even brought friends, the ranks of which included other birds of prey that dove furiously at the Wild Hunt’s crows as if they had a vendetta against them.

Wes and him exchanged a look.

“Friends of yours?” Victor questioned, only half joking.

Wes shrugged, “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Since the owl and its buddies were keeping the lesser Hunters off of their backs, Vic opted just to keep moving without questioning that odd experience further. They could find some way to thank the birds at a later date, preferably when they weren't about to be hunted for sport.

The Dead Duo didn't waste any time once they got to the barn, swiftly pulling out their supplies to start securing the doors. Salt lines were drawn across the thresholds of every entry point, including windows. I guess the boss hurt himself with it, in his haste. Wouldn't be the first time. Occupational hazard for a draugr.

During our initial preparations, one of the three extra hagstones had been hung from the rafters. It may sound like a questionable location for a stone, but the Hunters can fly, after all. Meanwhile, the Dead Duo kept the remaining two stones on them. They were as ready as they could be. At least, that’s what Victor had thought at the time.

Roughly an hour after they finished setting up, there was a round of hooting and hollering from the hounds. Victor knew in his gut that their chorus meant that the Hunters had found one of the ‘appetizers’ the mechanic had mentioned.

After the fact, we found out that both victims were registered sex offenders. Something I'd never thought about until Victor brought it up is that the registry provides full names. The boss explained that it’s a useful tool for the Hunters, chock full of the exact types of souls they prefer to torture the most. To quote Iolo, ‘The types no one’ll miss.’

Up until that point, the Dead Duo had been killing time with chitchat. But after the second ‘appetizer’ had been caught, all conversation died. Victor was on high alert, listening to every breeze, every creak of the trees, every murmur of the forest. Waiting. Meanwhile, Wes still seemed fairly excited as he kept glancing through the windows to see if anything was coming.

Occasionally, they'd hear the crows call as they passed the barn by. The owl attack had thrown the lessers off, buying the Dead Duo a good deal of time before shit hit the fan.

Another hour passed. They continued to wait. Wes had begun to pace from pent-up energy. They hadn't heard any hounds or crows for a while. Where were they? There was still time before sunrise.

There was a soft scuffing sound outside. Wes' pacing stopped, having heard it, too. There it was again, but higher off the ground.

The roof. Something was on the roof.

Victor didn't hesitate. He took aim and shot at whatever was climbing on top of the barn.

They heard laughter outside from multiple sources, followed by Briar's voice from above, mocking, “I've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty!”

Thorns began to slither along the top of the barn, their serpentine movements stopping abruptly as they neared the hagstone on the rafters. Putting it there was a good call. The vines were unable to pass it.

Victor fired again into the gathering of thorns, blasting some of them off.

They heard the mechanic's voice then, taunting Wes, “You gonna hide in there all night, boy?”

To Victor's chagrin, our coworker didn't hesitate to shout in reply, “Just you!”

His response was met with more laughter along with some Gaelic spoken amongst their pursuers. Not surprising that the merry band of jagoffs would take the challenge as a joke.

Victor glanced up to see that Briar was standing above the hole in the roof in all of his winged glory, head tilted curiously. The thorns writhed against the ceiling, testing the limits of the hagstone on the rafters.

“Don't go out there,” Victor warned.

Unfortunately, Wes wasn't listening, “If I meet you out there, I'm only dealing with you. Hear me, Dragonfly? No interference from anyone else. One-on-one. Just you.”

There was a moment of consideration before the mechanic replied casually, “Yeah, I got some time to kill. It'll be a while ‘til the White Son of Mist finishes up.”

That had instantly rang alarm bells in Victor's head. Finishes what? He'd worried that meant that the king of the Wild Hunt had turned his attention to someone else. Namely, Reyna, Cerri, or I.

Victor tried to warn his employee again. “Don't-”

“Oh, be quiet.” Briar cut him off dismissively, “He wanted this, didn't he?”

Without another word, Wes marched out to face the mechanic, salt-covered cutlass drawn.

The boss stepped forward to follow, but stopped once he heard more scuffling from above him. He turned to see that Briar now clung to the barn's ceiling by the hooks in his wings.

“You don't mess with the fight, neither will we.” The Hunter told him lightly. “All's fair, right?”

Was it, though? Was it really fair, Briar?

~~It's probably a good thing I wasn't there to piss the Hunters off more.~~

“Sure.” Victor snapped curtly. “This the thanks we get for helping you with the hag?”

Briar scoffed, “Come on, draugr. I know you don't like us, but you know us better than that! At least, you should, by now.”

The Hunter had found a spot on the rafters that was just outside of the hagstone's influence to perch on, thorn-covered antlers brushing the ceiling.

He continued, “We let you set up this little safe house without making a move to sabotage it. You really think we didn't know what you were up to? Hell, I'm even going the extra mile and taking the liberty to make sure that none of our guests get the idea to weasel their way in here. We're being far kinder to you than we have ever been to any others. And you didn't even notice. Have to say, it's kind of hurtful.”

Victor stole a line from Reyna: “Cope.”

When he told me that, I let out the ugliest snort. Clearly, the boss was done giving a shit. And he didn't have many of those left to begin with.

Briar just shook his head, “You Orion fuckers really have forgotten how to keep your attitudes in check, haven't you?”

Victor ignored that comment, “Won't your boss have some choice things to say about you helping me?”

Briar chuckled, “Who do you think is the one that okayed this?”

Okay. That's interesting. But one semi-good deed on the mechanic's part isn't much compared to his laundry list of war crimes.

Thankfully, none of the other Hunters appeared to have any interest in entering the barn now that Wes had come out. He was their primary target. Briar’s influence probably didn’t hurt either, as begrudging as I am to give him so much credit.

To Victor's horror, he then saw that Wes had left his hagstone hanging on a hook by the door. The reason for this was most likely that he wouldn't have been able to get close enough to the mechanic to try to stab him without the stone repelling him. Victor swore to rip him a new one for taking that risk later.

Keeping the shotgun trained on the thorned Hunter, Victor glanced out the window to see what was going on between his employee and our least favorite psychopomp. According to him, the pair were moving around each other so quickly that it was hard to keep track of them. He'd occasionally catch a glimpse of Iolo's wings or spikes glittering in the darkness, or the reflective Orion Pest Control logo on the back of Wes’ jacket.

“Your boy is doing better than I thought.” Briar commented, swinging one furry leg absent-mindedly. “I should've brought popcorn.”

“I am very selective about who I hire,” the boss informed him. “You think I'd bring on just anyone off the street? You should know me better, Briar.”

Briar sighed heavily, clearly not happy with Vic sassing him yet again, but conceded with a shrug of his shoulder, “Yeah. You got me there.”

That's when he heard the mechanic whoop from outside, “Hoo! Yup, that's salt!”

To Victor's disappointment, he sounded more surprised than hurt.

The dueling pair had slowed down a bit, circling each other in front of their audience of antlers, growling dogs, and black birds. The mechanic had his banjo strapped to his back, ready to use if he got bored of his wooden s...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/emorybored on 2024-10-31 22:24:40+00:00.

---

Hey, y’all. Just wanna say sorry real quick before we get started for the insane delay on the update; my life is in shambles (it’s not) and everything is falling apart (I had to move) and I thought my days on the internet were over for good (I lost my computer charger). But never fear, I beat the odds (finished moving and Matt ordered me a new charger ‘cause I use my laptop for work) and I am in the proverbial saddle once again.

So, anyway. Back to it.

We found “me” first. (If you don’t know what the fuck that means, see our previous installment for context—this is a part two.)

It was the scent that did it. That cloyingly sweet, rotting smell I’d picked up on when I first headed down into the cabin space. I hadn’t noticed it coming off of Wiley’s doppelganger on deck, I assume, because we’d been out in open air, but here, now, I was choking on it. 

I don’t know that anything could have prepared me for the sensation of perceiving myself from the outside when Wiley and I rounded the corner. The compulsion to mirror the movements of this tangible, corporeal visage of myself was so incredibly compelling I had to fight not to look away.

The way its lips stretched over its teeth as it bared them to offer us a sickly, unsettling grin was almost helpful in its disconcerting nature—the less human it appeared, the better. “What’s the matter?” it asked, in a near-perfect iteration of my voice. “Aren’t you having fun?”

“What the fuck are you?” Wiley spat, fists tightening at their sides.

The thing lifted its hand to its chest in mock offense, bottom lip jutting out into a pout. “Wiley, that hurts. I’m your friend! You know me.”

“You’re not my fucking friend.” Wiley stepped ahead of me, nearly toe-to-toe with my doppelganger, and shoved against its chest, hard.

It didn’t budge. 

I cartoon-character-tug-the-collar gulped. 

Trying to recall the following sequence of events in enough detail to adequately recount them here is a beast. I’m not sure how my brain decides what’s traumatic enough to protect me from in the moment and what isn’t, but evidently this encounter in particular was too much to process, because the next thing I remember is Wiley dropping their candle as they were flung in the opposite direction of me, landing hard enough that their impact echoed throughout at least the immediate vicinity. 

“I’m okay,” they said, after a beat. I don’t remember calling out to them, but it very well may have been in response to me. “Get that fucking thing.”

I just…I don’t know. I charged it.

I’m not sure, in hindsight, what I thought that was going to accomplish. I’d just watched Wiley attempt to knock it down and end up the human embodiment of a paper airplane, so the delusion that my outcome would differ wildly enough to make full-body tackling it worth the effort, and, additionally, terror, was fully devoid of sources to cite. 

But it worked.

I won’t pretend not to have forcibly suppressed a small swell of vindication welling in my chest when I took note that the mimic’s smug stoicism had slipped precisely far enough to give away that it was utterly shocked.

There was something unsettling in the exchange, too—something about the understanding that not even it fully grasped the mechanics of what was taking place—but I ignored the unease in favor of focusing on the fact that I’d managed to best it, even by a one percent margin. 

This, of course, did not indicate to me that the situation would be smooth sailing (pun intended) from that point forward. Motherfucker was strong. I was flipped onto my back in a fraction of a second, knees practically pinned to my chest, shoulders held flat against the ground. 

“Actually going to have some fun now, are we?” It snarled happily, face inches from my own. Its breath was hot and putrid and sour, and I turned my head to the side, desperate to draw in a lungful of clean air. “I love a good dance.”

I’ve gotta give that to it: in a way, it did feel like a dance. There wasn’t anything but the existence of the two of us in the space, and the push-pull of each movement was calculated in a way that no one but a practiced pair could conceivably achieve. 

It’s a fascinating mental exercise, vying for purchase against yourself. I, of course, don’t have any real grasp on the impossible dynamism of existing as a creature that imitates a person, but I can tell you that it was uncannily perceptive of every individual one of my movements, as I was of its. 

When I rocked further onto my back, planting my feet against its sternum, its hands were already there, lithe fingers encircling my ankles. When it made its move to pull me fully prone, I grabbed onto its biceps, refusing to allow its motion any independence from mine. It used my own leverage to its center of gravity against me, folding me essentially in half, knees next to my ears as it weighed me down. Back and forth and back and forth we went, until, finally, I slipped out of its grapple a fraction of a second too fast for it to have already planned a step further. I hadn’t yet, either, which was likely why I took so little care not to hurt myself in the process of slamming my forehead full-force into its nose. 

Shit sucked. I mean, it sucked worse for the doppelganger, ultimately. I wasn’t the one fountaining blood from the center of my face like a spigot, so I guess I got off alright, all things considered. But I’m not gonna pretend it didn’t daze me for a minute. 

When I was back to seeing more darkness than stars, however, I could make out its form in front of me, both hands covering its face, and I figured that was my opportunity. 

I still had the bike chain clenched in my fist, and I considered, briefly, wrapping it around my knuckles and driving it into the thing’s already busted cartilage, but I knew that wasn’t its intended use. So instead, I placed one end in either palm, clambered to my feet, and bent behind the mimic, wrapping the chain around its neck.

Its hands sprung downward, slicking the metal with blood as it dug fruitlessly at its own skin, nails desperate to separate the chain from its larynx. I knew, though, as I tightened my grip, that the fight was over. It wouldn’t recover—not from this. It wasn’t supposed to.

Wiley pulled me out of it. I don’t know how long it had been, but when awareness returned to me, the doppelganger was entirely limp before me, lifeless form held up by nothing but my own tension. 

“Adam,” Wiley said, far closer now than they’d been at the beginning of the altercation. “It’s done.”

I looked up at them, one of the remarkably still-lit candles casting a soft glow across their face, and then, for the briefest moment, let my eyes fall closed.

“I’m sorry,” they offered quietly. 

“Thanks,” I said, knocking a knuckle against the back of one of their gloved hands. “I’m sorry, too.”

They helped me up, and I let the chain fall to the ground, landing with a sifting, tinny clatter next to “my” body. I didn’t look back as we continued down the hall.

The candle we’d lost in the fray hadn’t been doing much in the way of visual aid anyway, but its absence didn’t go entirely without note. Wiley and I remained next to one another rather than walking in file, squinting through the darkness and relying heavily on our proximity to the walls in the narrow space to guide us. 

Eventually, we advanced to a larger, open area, wherein there was a faint but persistent sound akin to that of water hitting the bottom of a tub somewhere to our right.

We both, on instinct, turned to head toward it, and were met roughly five steps in with the sensation of shallow splashing underfoot. 

After exchanging a look with me, Wiley lowered the candle to the ground. 

Not only did we receive confirmation that it was, indeed, wet, but additionally, we gleaned the knowledge that the water was not stagnant. It was spreading, centimeter by centimeter, until, after a brief moment, our shoes were surrounded.

I didn’t have it in me to be anything but horrifically, sickeningly amused. 

Wiley, in a similar state of exhausted delirium, evidently didn’t either. “It’s gonna fucking sink, isn’t it?”

“It sure is,” I laughed, pushing my damp hair back from my forehead. “Jesus Christ, what are our lives?”

“Almost over,” Wiley snorted in response. “We could…I don’t know, try to figure out where it’s coming from, I guess? See if we can…stop it somehow?”

“I mean, I guess we could try to plug it or something, maybe?”

“Wait, wait,” Wiley said, “maybe this is what the thing meant. The riddle or whatever. Maybe once we take out the…the other one, this’ll stop. But then—does that mean the whole pool won’t go away? Like, will we still be stuck here?”

“Oh. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Maybe. One catastrophe at a time. Let’s just—let’s find your…the other one, take it out, and then we’ll—”

Good news, gang! We didn’t even have to look for it. Bet you’ll never guess why.

Before you ask how many concussions this job has given me, I’ll just go ahead and confirm that they’ve done enough damage that I truly do not know. A lot. It’s a lot. 

The doppelganger fully bodied me, and I hit the floor so hard I swear to god I heard my skeleton rattle inside me. The pulsating pressure in my head was instantaneous. Everything spun, and already being on mobile ground made it so difficult to reorient myself that all I...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/RichardSaxon on 2024-11-01 15:33:39+00:00.

---

I stood on my front porch, staring out at the dimly lit street. An eerie silence hung in the air, accompanied by light fog and the last rays of the setting sun quickly retreating beyond the horizon. I glanced over at the neighbors’ houses, all lights were out, spider webs covered the corners, and dark banners draped across the walls. Even the rush hour traffic had vanished, not daring to interrupt the silence, nor did the children dare come out to play. After all, they would have to wait their turn.

“Come on, let’s go already,” Zander insisted, proudly donning his black robes, holding a scythe.

“We have to wait,” I demanded. “You know the rules.”

There were no laws disallowing us from wandering the streets. It was merely an unspoken suggestion that we restrain ourselves, giving families time to prepare for the festivities of Halloween. The vast majority of parents worked day jobs and would typically return home between five and six. Giving them an hour to clear the streets and prepare bowls of candy on their doorsteps seemed a reasonable demand. But at seven o’clock sharp, children, teenagers, and a few accompanying adults would rush onto the streets, ready for the annual round of trick or treat.

“Fine, five minutes, then we march,” Devon said. “But this year, as you know, we have something special in store.”

I groaned, “yes, I know. I’m sure it’ll be a perfectly embarrassing surprise.”

“Come on, don’t be so grim. We’re seventeen. This will be our last chance to celebrate Halloween the old-fashioned way before we grow old.” 

“So, eighteen is old now, is it?” I snickered.

“To old for this childish crap,” Zander argued. “I want to party next year.”

“You’ve never even had a drink,” I argued.

“Well, next year once we graduate, I’ll have the chance. I know a guy who can get us fake IDs.”

“There’s no person on this planet who’d let you pass for twenty-one,” Devon chuckled.

“Whatever.”

Then the clock stuck seven, and without hesitation, the entire street came to life. Thousands of spooky lights turned on, and cheap animatronics whirred to life. Then the doors opened, and dozens of costumed children and their accompanying guardians rushed onto the streets. Within seconds, chaos had emerged, and the houses with their lights turned on were flooded with eager little monsters scavenging for candy.

“It’s go time,” Zander announced.

“Yeah, and I’m super excited about your so-called ‘challenge,’ can’t wait…” I let out as sarcastically as I could.

Zander was the most heavily costumed of our three-man group, cosplaying death. Devon had opted for a cape and fake teeth, while I only wore a white, plain mask.

We ventured onto the street, standing tall above the kids. Few people our age still celebrated Halloween, most focused on getting alcohol from their older peers and partying the night into oblivion. But it was a scene I wasn’t yet interested in partaking in, neither was Devon, which held Zander back from dropping out annual celebrations in favor of his older peers. But this year, our quest was not to scare the children, nor to hunt for candy. No, this year we were heading down the street, turning onto Marewood Lane, much to my dismay.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, already having laid eyes on our target.

A house stood at the lane’s end, ancient, abandoned, not even worth a street number. For generations, the home had been left untouched, never shown any care, but also not displaying progressive deterioration. No one could tell exactly when the house had been built, just that it already stood there when our grandparents themselves were kids. A moment frozen in time even then. Though harmless on its own, there had always been one rule, never approach it, and never knock on the door.

It was a peculiar sight. The property was large, and the foundation seemed strong enough, if nothing else the building could have been torn down to put up a new home. Or at least the property could have been used for a small park. But for reasons unknown, no one had been given permission to utilize the area. So, year after year, the house would stand there, untouched, unused, every day of the year, except for Halloween.

Because on the eve on Halloween, every year without fail, at seven o’clock, a light would turn on, dimly visible through the living room window. It wouldn’t flicker or wave as if coming from a candle, but would stay static, as if a light switch had been turned on, an impossible feat seeing as the house couldn’t possible be equipped with functioning electrical systems. Yet, there it was, and to approach it had remained strictly forbidden for generations. A rule mindlessly followed, spawning many-an urban legend.

“You can’t be serious about this,” I said.

“Oh, but we are,” Zander said. “Every year there’s a challenge, and now its your turn. Unless you want to forfeit your right as a man, that is.”

I sighed, regretting that I had once taken part in deciding challenges for both Zander and Devon in the years prior. Each of us had to partake as a rite of passage before we turned eighteen. Last year, Zander had been challenged to steal our principal’s car keys from his office, wearing a scream mask as he did, and the year before Devon had been challenged to get us obviously fake IDs in a futile attempt at purchasing alcohol, all while dressed as a clown.

“So—what exactly do you want me to do? Spend the night?” I asked.

“No, of course not,” Zander began. “We’re not that devious. We just want you to go inside and figure out where the light is.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“Don’t take this challenge so lightly,” Dale joined in, exaggerating a creepy voice. “You’ll be breaking the ancient rule of Marerwood Lane. Who knows what the consequences will be?”  

On its own, the task wasn’t exactly daunting, but we’d all heard the rumors of people going missing, though it had been more than two decades since the last incident, and that was a runaway teenage boy who’d taken the life of his parents and had more likely just fled the state. Though no one could confirm that the missing people had even approached the house, most of the regions missing person reports had occurred on the eve of Halloween, which had spawned the rumors.  

“Probably just junkies using the house for shelter,” I argued in an attempt at making myself feel better.

“Then why are they only there on Halloween?” Dale asked.

“To mess with us?” I went on.

“You’re stalling,” Zander said.

“No, I’m going right now,” I said, yet I hesitated.

“Yes, you’re going, I can see that,” Zander laughed.  

“Shut up.”

At that point, the teasing felt worse than whatever I could expect within the house. Worst case scenario, in my mind, would be that I might confront some poor homeless person just looking for a place to sleep for a night. If nothing else, I’d feel like a douchebag, which had never stopped me before.

So, I took a deep breath and stepped foot on the abandoned property, heading for the house. And no sooner had I crossed the threshold, than I could feel the atmosphere change around me. My friends were still teasing me from the sidewalk, but their voices felt so far away. The chatter and gleeful scream of children trick or treating faded from reality. The sky darkened, the air felt heavier, but I hadn’t even reached the house yet.

Before I knew it, I found myself standing on the front porch. My hand hovered over the door handle. I glanced back at my friends, who looked at me with anticipation. I then lifted my hand and knocked on the door, not sure whether or not I actually expected a response.

“Come on, just go inside!” Zander yelled from the street, his voice muffled and distant.

I knocked again and got no response. I put my ear closer to the door and heard nothing from within. My heart was racing, and I felt my chest tighten, but I remained far too stubborn to just turn back and demand another challenge. So, I twisted the handle, opening the door without resistance.

Before me stood a dark hallway with stairs leading up to a second floor. The wooden walls were rotten, with whatever paint had once occupied it turned a sickly green and dull brown. Picture frames hung on the wall, containing black and white photos that had faded almost beyond recognition.

“Hello?” I called out meekly as I took step inside. The floor beneath my feet creaked loudly enough that it certainly had to have alerted anyone that might be occupying the home, yet there was no response.

Again, I glanced back at my friends, who were wildly gesturing for me to continue inside. I obliged and moved within, peering up the stairs to see if anyone was hiding in the dark. As I reached the first step, the front door slid shut behind me, creaking briefly before banging loudly against the frame. Though a shock, I blamed on a light draft pulling through the building.

“Is there anyone there?” I asked again, ready to spurt outside if anyone replied.

“Okay,” I whispered to myself. “Just check the light out and leave. Don’t be stupid.”

The living room was situated to the right of the main entrance and was where the light had been turned on. It was short walk through another, narrow hallway, also separated by a closed door. I went to open it, but before I could twist the knob, I heard a faint cry coming from the top of the stairs, the unmistakable sob of an infant.

Redirecting my attention to the second floor, I wondered if I had imagined the sound, but then the baby ...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/aaron__47 on 2024-11-01 01:51:05+00:00.

---

I met Jeremy at the tail end of sophomore year, though he wouldn’t have known it. Psychology major, sharp jaw, always carrying a battered, highlighted textbook under his arm. To him, I was just background—another half-smiling face in the mass of campus strangers.

But I watched him. I was drawn to his confidence, the way he leaned forward when he talked, like he wanted to dissect people’s words, peer inside their minds. And that casual smile—it was natural on him. He probably had no idea how that smile felt to people like me, people who lived on the edges, unseen. A glint of warmth on a cold day. For me, that smile was a flickering flame.

The little occult shop in town was the type that pulled at you with its own quiet gravity. Its shelves sagged with oddities: dried herbs, jars of something that looked like crystallized spiders, tarot cards with edges worn soft by years of handling. I’d been browsing in there since freshman year. Mostly I looked, rarely bought. The owner, an older woman with eyes that lingered too long, didn’t care.

That day, though, I found the book—a cracked, dust-coated, leather-bound thing stuffed under a stack of crumbling grimoires. “Charms and Potions to Influence the Heart.” I nearly laughed at it, but I flipped through the pages, my fingers staining just from touching it. There, between brittle sheets and smeared ink, was the love potion spell. Irresistible allure, it claimed, with warnings written faintly in cursive in the margins. I shrugged them off. Desperation drives people to warnings, but what did they mean to someone who didn’t plan on taking them seriously? Besides, I wasn’t desperate. I was curious.

The instructions were straightforward, even for a first-timer. A few herbs, some strange Latin incantation. Nothing I hadn’t tried in simpler forms. But one detail felt... unnecessary. The book advised a personal “cleansing” ritual before crafting the potion, to “prevent the caster’s own desires from tainting the charm.” I scoffed at the idea. My desires weren’t dangerous—maybe a little silly, maybe stupid, but not dangerous. So I skipped it, brushing it aside as some medieval quirk.

Back in my apartment, the kitchen reeked of thyme, rosemary, and something called witch’s lavender, a cloying scent somewhere between licorice and death. I ground the herbs in my mortar and pestle, feeling each hard crush of the stone, then mixed the powder with honey and a drop of my own blood—a required “personal touch.” The whole concoction gleamed dark red in the dim light, the color of a bruise. Thick, syrupy, almost alive in the jar. I held it to my nose, inhaling that odd mix of bitterness and sweetness, and felt a small thrill tighten in my chest.

The next day, there was a campus event in the courtyard—some tedious student fair with free coffee on a long table lined with dusty thermoses. Jeremy was there, chatting with friends near the theater club’s booth, coffee cup cradled in his hands. Perfect.

I slipped the vial out of my coat pocket, popping the cork as inconspicuously as I could. The potion trickled out in a thin stream, nearly black, sinking into the coffee like oil in water. I stirred it quickly with the plastic stir stick, looking around, heartbeat quickening, but no one was paying attention. Why would they?

Then I watched him drink. Watched him talk with that effortless laugh and casual shrug, watched the coffee cup go up to his mouth, the potion slipping past his lips. I had to pull my eyes away so no one noticed. And then, I waited.

It wasn’t immediate—no magic spark, no grand revelation. But over the next few days, things shifted. I’d pass him in the library, and he’d do a double-take, that small flash of recognition in his eyes, like he was recalling a dream. And then he’d smile, half-confused, but a little longer than usual. Once, as he left the library, he turned back, lingering by the door as if he had something to say, his eyes finding mine through the glass.

At first, the thrill of it made me dizzy. It was like touching fire without getting burned, like I’d somehow altered the air around me just by saying I would. By wanting it.

The first time Jeremy showed up outside my class, I thought it was coincidence. Just him leaving the lecture hall next door. He walked up to me, an easy smile spreading across his face like I was someone he’d known all along.

“Hey, Emma, right?”

The sound of my name from his mouth was like an electric jolt. He said it like he’d practiced it, testing out the shape of each syllable. I managed a nod, feeling my cheeks heat up.

“I thought I recognized you from the library.” He laughed, an awkward chuckle, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. “You have this focused look, you know? Makes me wonder what you’re always reading about.”

His gaze lingered a second too long. “Uh, yeah,” I stammered. “I read a lot. For class and...other things.”

There was a spark in his eyes as he asked what I was studying, what I liked to do, if I’d want to grab coffee sometime. He seemed genuinely interested—too interested, maybe. And I found myself overwhelmed, almost uncertain. But I agreed. Because, after all, wasn’t this what I’d wanted?

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Over the next few days, I started seeing him everywhere. He’d pop up when I was leaving the library, or walking to class, or at the café where I went to unwind. He acted surprised each time, always chuckling, like, “What are the odds?”

It was thrilling, that first week—like I’d somehow summoned him from a distance. But soon, his presence became a constant shadow I couldn’t shake.

One evening, I was sitting on my dorm’s front steps, headphones in, hoping for a quiet moment to myself. Then a shadow loomed over me. I glanced up, startled, and there he was, standing inches away, grinning down at me.

“You’re hard to find, you know that?” he said, his eyes locked onto mine, unblinking. “I tried to catch you in the library today.”

I pulled out an earbud, forcing a laugh. “Didn’t realize I had a schedule to keep.”

He didn’t laugh. He just kept watching, his gaze heavy. “Just saying it’d be nice if you made a little more time for me.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________

A few days later, Lily started noticing too. She was my roommate, my one friend on campus who knew my quirks and obsessions, though she only teased me for them. But the morning she saw Jeremy waiting outside our building, she raised an eyebrow.

“That guy again?” she asked, peeking through the blinds as he lingered by the entrance. “Is he always around, or is it just me?”

I tried to play it off. “We’re just...getting to know each other.”

She gave me a hard look. “Emma, getting to know each other is one thing. Having a guy stalk you is another.”

“He’s not stalking me, Lily. He’s just...he’s into me, I guess.”

She shook her head, closing the blinds with a sigh. “Just be careful, okay? He seems a little...intense.”

Intense. I brushed it off, but the word clung to me. That night, I felt my skin prickle as I realized how often his face flashed in my thoughts, how his gaze felt more like a lock than a look.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

The next evening, as I walked back from class, I felt a presence behind me. Quick, light footsteps, then a familiar voice.

“Emma.”

I turned. Jeremy was standing just a step away, close enough that I felt his breath, sharp and shallow.

“Hi,” I managed, forcing a smile. “Didn’t realize you’d be here.”

He reached out, his hand brushing my arm, holding just long enough that I felt pinned in place. “You didn’t text me back.”

I stammered, trying to explain about assignments, a long day—but he didn’t let go. His grip tightened, his fingers pressing into my skin.

“I just don’t get it,” he said, voice barely above a whisper, his face inches from mine. “I thought we were...special.”

“Jeremy, you’re hurting me,” I said, tugging my arm free. For a second, a strange light flashed in his eyes—a brief, angry spark—but then he released me, his hand falling limp by his side. He muttered an apology, his eyes trailing me even as I hurried away.

When I got home, Lily was already there, tapping away on her laptop. She looked up when I came in, her expression softening as she saw my flushed face and the red marks on my arm.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” I lied. “Just...Jeremy.”

“Emma, this is getting weird. You need to tell him to back off.” She bit her lip, worry creasing her forehead. “Or I will.”

I waved her off, embarrassed, but a part of me was relieved she noticed. Maybe I wasn’t overreacting. Maybe he was going too far. But I’d tell him myself, I thought. I didn’t want to make it worse.

The next morning, I woke to a quiet apartment. Lily’s bed was empty, her things untouched. I assumed she’d left early, maybe went to the library or for a run, though she was usually one to leave a note. I texted her once, twice. No response.

By evening, worry settled heavy in my chest. I tried her phone again, hearing only the hollow rings on the ...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gguu61/the_love_spell_worked_but_now_he_wont_leave_me/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/bushleaguetree on 2024-11-01 01:10:02+00:00.

---

I found them this morning, stuffed between the torn seats of my old leather duffel bag: a brittle stack of my own journal entries from thirty years ago. Strange, considering I barely remember writing them, let alone journaling at all... I hardly remember anything from my early years, busy from driving coast-to-coast non-stop to build a decent bank account. Look how that turned out... It's my handwriting, no doubt—there it is, clear as day, looping and fierce across every line. The entries start like any trucker’s log, full of routes and road conditions, little observations as we're teached to do at truck driving school. But as I read, the tone shifts, and my handwriting gets shaky and approximate. Then I remember.

The night of Halloween 1994.

October 24, 1994 There’s something strange about Nevada this time of year. It’s the way the desert wind has a bite to it, how it carries the smell of sagebrush and dust, how the sky turns from deep orange to bruised purple and makes the whole landscape look haunted. I'm due to drive across the state in the next few weeks.

Got to Tonopah early, barely had time to grab a coffee. We’re all meeting up at this truck stop off the 6, and it’s a grimy place, but it has this campfire pit where we gather when the sun sets. Jerry said it was great at this this of the year, "like a rite of passage," he said. They’re all in their forties, fifties, old-timers with the road written into their faces. I’m the youngest by a few decades. Probably why most of the ones I don't know look at me like I shouldn't be there, everytime I go to one of these gatherings... Usually the others ignore me, which is fine by me.

October 27, 1994 One guy I didn’t recognize. Never seen him around before. Not new in and of itself, however that one guy... Just standing there at the edge of the firelight, silent as stone. Didn’t say much, barely even looked up. None of the other guys seemed to be put off, but all ignored him unless spoken to. As always, I was more of a distraction... I probably shouldn't go to these anymore, Jerry hasn't even shown up. Just awkward.

October 30, 1994 They’ve gone from accidents to hauntings to outright superstitions. All of them drunk. Incredibly, that makes them like me more.

We’re huddled around the fire, about twenty of us. Multiple conversations, swapping stories. One of the guys — Tom I believe — even asked me where I'm headed next.

That's when I heard it. Low and quiet, almost like a whisper: “There's always the shortcut.” The stranger stands a bit apart from us, arms crossed, eyes like coal. "What?," I said, turning around. "You said you had to be in Denver by tomorrow. That's quite the ride. So I said: there's always the shortcut." Puzzled, I looked around at Tom, the guys... not one met my eyes. I turned back towards the stranger, but he was gone. All that was — and is — left is his voice, deep and succinct. "There's always the shortcut."

No one has looked at me since then, like the stranger's words had made me invisible. Better get to bed.

Couldn’t sleep. That man—he was waiting for me by my rig. I almost turned back, but he looked so desperate, his eyes wild and dark, and I felt something twist in my gut.

“Listen to me,” he said, voice low, barely more than a breath. “Whatever you do, don’t take the shortcut. If you see it—just... don't take it.” He swallowed, glanced over his shoulder, and I swear, he looked as if he was running from something. “Please. Just don’t.”

I tried to ask him what he meant, but he was already moving away, slipping into the shadows. I stood there, cold and confused, a bad taste in my mouth. Then I got back in the truck, shut the door, and locked it tight. I lay there, mind spinning, but sleep pulled me under... for a few hours at least. Better get back to it, the road is long to Denver...

October 31, 1994 I woke up late. Later than I’d planned, anyway. There was no time for coffee, no time to think. I just threw my gear together and hit the road, the world around me hazy, like a half-remembered dream.

The sky was still heavy with the last of the dawn haze as I pulled onto the empty road. It stretched out ahead of me, cutting through the flat Nevada desert like a scar. I couldn’t shake the stranger’s words from my mind, circling over and over: If you see it...

Something about that warning itched under my skin. The others. They just went silent, like kids who’d been told a ghost story they half-believed. This is a well-known route, pretty common, and not once had anyone mentioned a shortcut. So why that weird moment?

Miles stretched on. The landscape was desolate, just sagebrush and scrub rolling on either side of the road, with the occasional rocky outcrop breaking up the monotony. By then, I'd made up for my late start. By noon, I’d hit that perfect rhythm where the hum of the engine melted into the background, and time began to slip. This was what I loved about the road, the way it let you disconnect. Even the strangest warnings and wildest stories could fade out here, where it was just you, the truck, and the endless blacktop.

Then, sometime around late afternoon, something caught my eye. Up ahead, a thin track branched off from the main road, barely visible, like it was half-buried under sand and years of disuse. My heart skipped. I knew the roads out here like the back of my hand, and I’d never noticed this turnoff before.

The shortcut.

My hands tightened on the wheel, and I slowed down, the gravel crunching under the tires as I approched the odd branch in the road. I could feel a strange pull, like something deep in my chest was telling me to turn, to see where that road went. But then, the stranger’s words echoed again.

And past I went.

The shortcut quickly vanished in the rear-view mirror, and sent my mind racing. Was that it?

Skipped the shortcut. If it even exists.

I don’t know how long I sat there, engine idling, in a trance. Didn't even remember stopping the truck. Hours have gone by... I'd better shift back into drive and merge onto the main road, can't believe I lost all this time...

The rest of the drive was quiet, almost too quiet. As the sun dipped low, painting the sky with fire and shadows, I felt that unease creep back in. The road seemed to stretch on forever, no other cars, no signs of life. Just me, my rig, and the empty desert.

I finally stopped for the night about an hour ago, at a rest area miles near the Colorado border. As I killed the engine, I noticed something strange in the back of my mind—a foggy sort of sensation, like I’d left something behind on that road in Nevada, something I couldn’t quite... remember?

November 1, 1994 The first thing I remember is waking up with a start, like I’d been shaken out of a nightmare. But when I tried to recall any details, they slipped away, just shadows in the dark. I checked my log, saw the miles I’d covered, and my own scrawled handwriting in the entry from the night before:

Skipped the shortcut. If it even exists.

I don’t remember writing that.

October 30, 2024 Thirty years. And tomorrow, I’ll be back on that same stretch of road, going east from Tonopah to Denver. I wonder if they still hold those gatherings, with the campfire. The roads are different too—more highways, more mapped out. So probably not.

And yet, I’m holding these old, brittle pages, reading my own handwriting like it belongs to a stranger. It’s strange, how certain memories stay sharp while others slip through your fingers. I still don’t remember everything from that night, that trip. I don’t remember much at all, but that thin strip of road branching off, over and over, like it's always there—like a déjà-vu.

These pages—they’re proof. Proof that something happened, something I can't, for the life of me, remember. Why did I stop? None of the later journals refer or even allude to that night, in 1994...

I must admit, the thought stroke me a few times since I got assigned that same route, on that night, thirty years later. Sharp as a knife: what if the shortcut is still there?

The world’s changed in thirty years. We’re connected now, everything documented, recorded, tracked. Tomorrow, I’ll have cameras, a dash cam, and GPS. If the shortcut shows up again—if it even exists—I’ll see it, and I’ll have proof.

I’m not sure what I expect to find. Maybe just an overgrown trail leading to nowhere, or a memory that I can finally lay to rest. But there’s a part of me that feels it—that deep, quiet pull, the same feeling I had all those years ago, sitting behind the wheel, staring down that thin, sandy track.

I’ll take the route east tomorrow, and if the shortcut’s there, I’ll record every mile, every minute. The sun’s setting outside now, casting long shadows across my wall, and I feel that strange, familiar itch under my skin. The same one that whispered to me thirty years ago.

This time, I'll take the shortcut.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Fragrant_Term_4190 on 2024-11-01 09:01:34+00:00.

---

My name is Jane. I'm in a friend group of 4 girls, including me. Recently, I made friends with this girl, Sarah, and introduced her to my other friends. I met her through my Biology class. Mr. Williams sat her next to me, since she switched schools to our school mid-semester. I lent her my notes from the previous semester to catch her up on exam prep.

Most of my friends were fine with her, but one of my friends, Maria, wasn't. I never bothered to ask why since I usually talked to Sarah outside of the 4-girl friend group anyways. I did try not to bring her around Maria as much, because I could always sense that Maria was uncomfortable around her. This worked for the most part, until Sarah began joining us for lunch almost everyday. I didn't specifically tell her to sit with us, she just started sitting at our table.

Because of this, she started to get closer to another girl from my friend group, Jen, thus making Sarah talk more whenever she sat at our table. Maria really hated this, and stayed silent the entire time. I started feeling bad and got curious so I asked her about it during our only shared period, Math.

She told me there was no specific reason, it was just that Sarah gave her "bad vibes". I was a little confused, but brushed it off for a while. I suppose it's not entirely abnormal to get bad vibes from a new person in your friend group.

Anyways, last Tuesday, during Biology, which was the last period, Sarah had returned all my notes and reviewers I had created back to me. I was shocked at how fast she picked up a semester's worth of lessons, but still thanked her and accepted it. When I got home, I started studying, until I noticed an odd smell coming from my books. It smelled something like left out fish. Kind of like the leftover sushi a Japanese restaurant would throw into the trash.

I asked her about it the next day, and she started getting emotional. She said that her family had been evicted the previous month and they had been moving from place to place for shelter. On the days she studied my notes, her family was staying at a musty old motel and had been struggling a lot fincancially. I felt a surge of guilt flow through my veins for asking her about it. She walked away before I could apologize.

During lunch, I talked to Jen about it, since she was also getting close to Sarah. She looked confused. Then, she explained that Sarah had just gifted her a Kate Spade bag a few days ago, as an early birthday gift. How could her family be struggling if she could afford to gift Jen a Kate Spade bag. I was shocked.

Why would she lie about that? Also, what was the cause of the smell of my books if her explanation wasn't true? I couldn't take notes during class because the smell kept distracting me. I just borrowed notes from Anna, the last girl from my friend group. I was too awkward and shy to bring the information to Sarah.

I tried to forget about it, but I couldn't. The smell was so distinct, I couldn't forget it. That spoiled fish stench, with... an almost... burnt smell? It was hard to explain. I couldn't take it anymore. I decided just to take a picture of my notes then copy them onto a new notebook, so I could throw the stinky books out after that.

I wanted to tell Jen about it the next day, but she started ignoring me. She didn't even sit at the same table as me. Maria also sat at a different table from "fear" of Sarah sitting with us. Yeah, fear.

I just ate lunch with Anna that day. She hadn't talked to Sarah much, other than small talk whenever she joined our table for lunch. Anna suggested that I text her when I get home. I did text her when I got home, but she didn't reply. She left me on "read".

Maria pulled me aside the next day. She finally explained why she had been avoiding Sarah. She had recognized Sarah from the summer camp she attended the previous year. She never really talked to Sarah there. She recognized Sarah because she had attempted to hit a girl on the head with a giant wood plank and was kicked out. She was sent to jail for about 4 months. That's why she had joined late this semester. Chills were sent down my spine. It all began to make sense... for a while, at least. The next day, Maria was absent from class. I didn't know why. She wasn't replying to my texts or answering my calls, either.

I had lunch alone with Anna, again, and she told me that Jen had given her a note that she said to give to me. I took it, and read it after finishing lunch. The note read, "I'm being threatened." Another round of chills took over my body. Who was threatening her? Sarah?

Like I had mentioned before, exams were coming up. Our final project before that was a model of a wind turbine. We were already 2 days behind schedule, so we agreed to meet up at her house, to my dismay. "Wait, her house?" I thought, right before I left. I remembered how she got emotional a few days ago speaking about how she was just evicted the month before and how she had been moving from motel to motel for shelter. I hesitated going to her house, but I was already doing bad in chemistry and I couldn't afford to waste anymore time for this project. I brought a small bottle of pepper spray with me. Just to be safe.

I arrived at her house at around 6 PM. Not to offend anyone, but it did not look like the house of anyone who would be suffering financially. It wasn't a mansion or anything, but it had grey painted concrete walls, polished floors of wooden planks. Her parents weren't home. She explained that they had gone on a 2-month business trip. "It's fine. I'm independent, I can take care of myself," she explained. It was pretty comfortable, too. It made me even more uneasy. At some point during the project-making, I told her I needed to use the bathroom. She told me to use the guest one, downstairs. On my way there, my nose started tingling, as if alerted or startled by something. It had caught the whiff of a very familiar scent. That burnt rotten fish smell.

I looked behind me, and realized it was coming from a small hallway. I entered the hallway slowly until I reached the door. The smell got stronger, until it was almost unbearable. I still had that small bottle of pepper spray in my pocket. I was smarter than to leave it in my bag. I opened the door, my right thumb hooked onto my back pocket, where the pepper spray was. The was a small staircase leading down, into the basement of the house.

It was dark. I couldn't see anything apart from the outline of a chair, and a shelf. I felt the light switch, right beside the bottom of the staircase. I turned the lights on. In the center of the room, was Maria. She was unconscious, with a few scratches on her face, arms, and knees. Near the sides and corners of the room, were about 4 dead and bloody birds, the corpse of a medium-sized deer. I gasped, stopping myself from screaming. I had been gone for about 3 minutes by then, and if Sarah had thought I was using the restroom, she would probably expect me to be back up soon. The stench was killing me, and I almost passed out. Maria's hands were tied to the back of the chair, and her face was covered with duct tape. I covered my nose, and tried to untie her.

Suddenly it all went black. Not because I fainted, but because Sarah had found me in the basement and shut the lights. I had forgotten to close the door. I took out my pepper spray. "This is fun! Not for you, though," I heard a voice cackle. The innocent demeanor and voice turned into a dark and murderous aura. A tiny light flashed behind me, leaving a shadow on the wall.

I looked behind me, and it was Sarah. "Boo!" she screamed, as I jumped up in horror at the sight of her lit up face, from the flashlight under her chin. I fell backwards, bumping into the chair Maria was half-tied to. She woke up from the fall. I took out my pepper spray, and sprayed Sarah in the face. She screamed in pain, blinded, as she bumped into the shelf, making it topple over onto her, while she landed on the carcass of the dead dear. I finished untying Maria, and removed the tape on her face, and we hurried out of the house. I helped her as she limped out of the house, as Sarah's screams grew quieter and quieter the further we got from her house. We rode home on my tiny pink moped scooter.

I called the police once we got home, as my mother treated Maria's wounds. Once the officers arrived at Sarah's house, she was nowhere to be found. What would have happened to Maria if I hadn't chosen to go to her house that day?

Though this traumatic experience will follow me for a while, I'm glad I did it for Maria.

The next day, during lunchtime, the four of us finally gathered again. Including Jen. She told us that Sarah threatened to kidnap her if she didn't get away from me, as Maria and I shared the terrifying experience at her house. Now, nothing could break the bond between my friends and I. Not even some rando psycho-killer.

Every now and then, I pass by the park to cool my ever-growing thoughts. I always pass by the same flyer near the lamp post beside the dumpsters. A missing person's report for Sarah Smith. Not wanted, missing.

Why she did all of this, I don't know. I seemed to have stopped her plans before she even finished it half-way, thankfully. I get curious sometimes, but I know it's better that I didn't find out.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Various_Destinations on 2024-11-01 05:12:36+00:00.

---

Her name was Corina… I think. It’s weird, you’d think I would remember her name properly. She was certainly unique. We met in Psych 101 back in college. She was a little shy, and had a bit of a goth aesthetic. I’m not usually bold, but I took a swing at talking to her, and we actually got along ok. Ok enough that I asked her on a date a few weeks into the semester, and she said yes. We grabbed a bite to eat. I almost expected her to be vegan, but no. Ordered a big, juicy steak. Somehow I can remember that… but not her name.

She was pretty reserved at first, but I got her to open up by asking about her interests. The girl loooved horror movies. She actually kind of lit up when she started talking about them. I would just smile and nod. I didn’t dislike horror movies or anything, I can appreciate a good scare, but I wasn’t in love with them or anything. Corina… she was. So much so, she actually invited me back to her place to watch one with her after our first date. I was a bit surprised at the proposition, but I agreed. She was cute.

Her place was huge. I guess her family had money… a lot of it. They boarded her in a sizable house, almost a mansion, with no roommates. I definitely found it odd, but I quickly grew to appreciate it. At least, for a while. That first night, we watched a pretty standard slasher. She didn’t seem too into the movie, and I didn’t think too much about it myself, as we didn’t end up watching the whole thing. We got distracted.

We started hanging out more, but pretty early on it became clear that staying in and watching horror movies was her favorite pastime. I asked her to be my girlfriend anyway. While I wasn’t a huge fan of the films, the nights spent doing this always ended… eventfully. But, the movies. They got worse. She got braver in what she wanted to watch with me. And she’d get more excited. Pretty soon we were watching some pretty brutal stuff. Movies I wasn’t exactly comfortable with. I didn’t know how to approach the subject, because she seemed to thoroughly enjoy them. A bit too much. I started to notice that her “excitement” always seemed to coincide with the more… graphic scenes. And honestly, the gorier and more deranged, the more wild she got. I would enjoy myself… but the backdrop of the movie. It was more than a little off-putting.

I remember trying to turn it off one time. It was like I had hit the power button on her instead. She stopped almost immediately, telling me she was tired. She seemed annoyed, but didn’t say anything directly. I started to get the sense that she had an unhealthy obsession with some pretty dark stuff. I knew things wouldn’t last, but I was having fun. Even if the films had gotten more than a little disturbing. I remember it getting to the point where they weren’t even mass distributed movies. They were grainy and… god. Some of them felt… real.

It was one night like that, the last night. We were watching some fuckin… VHS tape of what seemed to be a man being tortured. It felt too real. It was too much. I tried to let her know it was making me uncomfortable. But, just like every other time I tried to broach the subject, she was almost immediately on top of me. She was extra energetic that night, and after some of the things she did… well. The man’s screams suddenly weren’t so distracting. Though… they were there. And they came into sudden focus after I heard the doorbell ring.

Corina gasped, giddy with excitement, and dashed to the door. I stood and tried to peer the far distance into the entry hall from her spacious living room, and I saw her excitedly lifting a sizable package. The screams from the TV subsided to whimpers as blood spilled from the tortured man. She looked back at me then, and her expression faltered a bit.

“I’ll be right back, just have to put this away!” She had said, before disappearing into a side hallway that I had never given much thought to before. Her voice had a strange quaver. It seemed like excitement and nervousness mixed. My curiosity was piqued. I tried asking her what she got once she returned, but she merely resumed her vigorous… activities. We took it up to her bedroom, and that night was like nothing had been up to that point. She was invigorated. Our activities eventually subsided, and I laid back in her black clad bed, closing my eyes. I could feel her staring at me. I peeked an eye open, and she quickly looked away. She laid then too, without saying anything. I tried to cuddle with her, but she was rigid and unyielding. Something seemed off, and I felt the unease that had slowly been settling in about her creep into my mind. I knew I had to end things. She was… disturbed. I remained quiet. So did she.

We laid there for a long time. Sleep… couldn’t find me. I felt uneasy. This was not helped by the fact that every twenty minutes or so, I would feel her sit up, and I would sense her staring at me. I peeked once or twice. It was a cold stare. I would always make some sort of noise or other indication that I was not fully asleep, and she would quickly return to lying down. Eventually, her breathing did slow, and she appeared to drift off. I could not follow her there. Something was off, and I felt like it had to do with the package.

After a time, I decided that I wouldn’t be able to sleep, not until I knew what made Corina behave so strangely. An invasion of privacy, I know, but in the dead of night, I slipped out of bed all the same. I crept down the stairs that led back down to the living room, careful not to creak any loose floorboards. It was a lovely house, but a bit old. When I got to the bottom, I realized we had left the tape running. The man, he was dead. His arms and legs were missing, and he just lay in a pool of blood on the floor. But I could tell the tape was still playing. I knew that no movie was show a dead body for that long.

I hastened to the hallway that she had taken the package down before, and even debated leaving then. But curiosity gnawed at me. I walked down the hallway, realizing that I had never been in it. There were three doors, a bathroom, a linen closet, and a locked door at the end of the hallway. It was a traditional lock, and I snuck back to the entryway to find her keys sitting on a small table. There were two keys on her ring, other than the one to her Mercedes. I went back and tried them both. One must have been for her house, and I guess the other was for the mailbox or something, because neither worked. I decided to leave it be and just try to go get some rest. I snuck back upstairs, and was about to lay down, when I noticed her clasp bag a few inches from her fingers on a side table. She went everywhere with that thing. I had even noticed her checking it obsessively on several occasions.

Another invasion of privacy, but I couldn’t help it. I quietly lifted the flap, and poked around inside it. Lo and behold, there was a small pocket on the inside, and in that pocket, a pearly key. I remember her stirring when I set the bag back down. I stood stalk still until her movement subsided, then I snuck back down the stairs.

The key fit. It unlocked the door. And behind that door? A nightmare. On display in clear cases were dozens of dismembered body parts. Some seemed preserved, others… not so much. The smell was not egregious outside of the room, but inside? I wanted to vomit. There seemed to be intricate ventilation systems inside each case, but honestly, that’s not what I was focusing on.

I remember the one closest to the door. A human leg, severed at the knee. It had been opened up like a medical display, but it was clearly for artistic effect. Strips of flesh were cut away to form intricate patterns. Blood still seeped from the cuts. It was clearly still fresh. I stumbled further into the room. I saw many things. I… I don’t enjoy recalling them. But I feel like some of it is important. I saw a woman’s severed head on display, with a cool blue light illuminating it. The bottom jaw had been split in two, leaving the two halves dangling down instead of meeting at her chin. It was not one of the well preserved specimens.

I think the worst was the knot of small appendages. Too small. Obviously children’s. They were broken and twisted in impossible ways to make some symbolic-seeming knot. It was hanging above the main attraction. A terrified looking woman who had clearly been dismembered and re-stitched back together, but backwards. Every joint had been severed, only to be reattached in the opposite direction. Her head was on backwards. Even dead and mutilated, her last expression showed primal terror. She too did not appear to have been dead long.

I could go on, but I don’t think I actually spent much time in there. Not long enough to even think of taking a picture. Not before I heard her voice from the doorway behind me.

“Do you like them?”

I’ll never forget that question. Asked quietly and sweetly. And in the most menacing way I have ever heard. I turned to look at her. She was in a white sleeping gown. Her black hair was disheveled. Her pale skin glowed. So did the knife in her hand.

She charged me. It was a jerky and unnatural movement. She tackled me with a strength that seemed incongruent to her small stature. She straddled me in a perverse reflection of our previous activities, only now she ruthlessly stabbed the knife down at me.

147 stitches. That’s how many I ended up needing. Mostly on my chest and neck, but a few o...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/spnsuperfan1 on 2024-11-01 00:20:15+00:00.

---

I just wanted to have a nice vacation getaway after fall midterms.

Instead? I’m crammed into a hot tiny space, barely able to breathe, trying not to pass out while typing this.

For reference, this all started when the girls trip we talked about in the group chat finally became a reality. You see my friends Callie, Genevieve, and I, Elenor (Ellie for short) are hardcore Halloween fans. Anything horror related, spooky, paranormal, you name it- we eat that shit up. Fall is our favorite time of year. So, as a reward for our hard academic work this semester and passing exams, the three of us saved up and pitched in for a trip to New Orleans, Louisiana. The most haunted city in the United States of America. The best part? Our trip would take place the week of Halloween.

Exciting right? Wrong.

It should’ve been, but it didn’t turn out that way. For me at least. I don’t know where my friends are or what they’re doing. All I can do is hope that they’re not stuck in the same sick and twisted game as me.

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me explain.

Last night, the second night of our trip, some local told us about The Seeker’s Game. Our Air BnB was in the French Quarter which is home to Bourbon street, where the party never ends. We’d been bar hopping and partying all night dressed as the Powerpuff Girls. Callie was Blossom, Gen was Buttercup, and I was Bubbles.

It was pretty late in the night when we stumbled into this bar. It was mostly empty with just the three of us, the bartender, and The Local occupying the space.

After our first round of shots, Gen started lamenting about how she wanted to see something really spooky. We’d been on a couple ghost tours already, but nothing was really hitting the spot, ya know?

Callie and I agreed, clinking our shot glasses together before ordering another round of drinks. That’s when The Local stepped in.

“So you want to see something scary eh?” A Creole accented voice asked ominously from a booth in the corner.

The three of us gave each other “the look” before bursting out into a fit of giggles. We went back to drinking, brushing the man’s interruption off. Then he got up from his booth and started making his way towards us at the bar, a whiskey sour in hand.

The Local was an older, skinny black guy. He walked with a bamboo cane to help with his limp. One of his eyes was blind, a cataract causing his retina to look pale blue and clouded. A salty goatee cascaded down his chin in the shape of a V.

“You should play The Seeker’s game then.” He slammed his glass on the bar, causing the three of us to jump in fright. This garnered a little chuckle out of him as he took his seat on a barstool.

“T-the Seeker’s Game?” I asked, shakily taking a sip of my drink. He’d definitely grabbed our attention now. “What’s that?”

The Local grinned with a glimmer of mischief in his good eye. “Oh ho ho, Mon chéri! Do you really want to know? Because once you do, there’s no going back.”

Callie, Genevieve, and I looked at each other skeptically. Callie then answered his question with another question. “Would we be asking you if we didn’t?”

“Ha!” He drunkenly laughed, energetically banging the palm of his hand on the counter. “You three are fun, I like it!”

We responded with more nervous laughter. At that point he was starting to creep us out more than this game was supposed to.

The Local then threw his head back, gulping down his drink. “To play The Seeker’s Game you first have to call out to him. The Seeker will then extend an invitation out to you if he wishes to accept. The game begins when the invitation is received. Be warned though for he sets the perimeters. He picks the time. The only thing you have to do, is hide.”

“How do we call out to him?” Callie asked, chuckling under her breath. Clearly, she didn’t believe a word he said.

Gen finished what was in her glass, looking The Local over curiously. She tried and failed to conceal her intrigue. “Do we just say his name?”

“No, Mon chérie,” The Local innocently grinned. “A chant must be invoked so The Seeker can hear you. It goes: Seeker, Seeker, heed our call! With every breath, we hide and sprawl! Seeker, Seeker, heed our call! As shadows dance, let fate enthrall!”

He leapt off his seat, swaying his shoulders back and forth with his arms up in the air. He laughed a wicked laugh before saying, “Then you must gather around, holding hands, and shout to the heavens: We want to play the seekers game! We want to play the seekers game! We want to play the seekers game!”

When The Local was done with his display, he took a bow before getting back in his seat. Gen gave the man a weak pity applause.

“Okay…” Callie said, taking another shot. Needless to say, we were thoroughly freaked out. But, another round of drinks would fix that. “So, shat’s the prize if we win, do we get a wish or something?”

The local stiffened, giving her a serious look,“The prize? The prize is your life.”

“No fucking way,” I murmured into my shot glass. Gen and Callie gave each other “the look” again. They followed in my footsteps and consumed more alcohol.

“Like I said, once the game starts there’s no going back…” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Well, thanks for telling us about this scary game of yours,” I said, pulling out my wallet to pay. Genevieve and Callie followed, apparently on the same wavelength as me. “Consider us spooked.”

The Local tipped his imaginary hat at us. “Do have a Happy Halloween now,” he said, flashing a smile before hobbling back over to his booth.

We gave the man our final pleasantries before leaving the bar for the night.

“So should we do it?” Callie asked randomly as we walked down Burbon Street. By then some time had passed since our encounter with The Local. It was nearing almost four in the morning.

“Do what?” I responded, fiddling with my costume.

“Play The Seeker’s Game, duh!” Out of the three of us, Callie was the last person I expected to bring up playing the game.

Gen pulled out some chapstick from her purse and started applying it on her lips. “Sure, seems fun.”

“Uh, am I the only one that remembers him saying we could die?” I laughed, tightening my pigtails.

“Puh-lease!” Callie squealed. “It’s not real, Elenor, so there’s no harm in trying it.”

I couldn’t argue with that logic.

After looking around for a place with the perfect ambience, we landed on an old courtyard. A defunct fountain sat in the middle with vines covering it and some marble benches. The moonlight gave it an ethereal glow. We set our things down and started to chant.

“Seeker, Seeker, heed our call! With every breath, we hide and sprawl! Seeker, Seeker, heed our call! As shadows dance, let fate enthrall!”

Next we gathered in a circle and grabbed hands, mimicking The Local as we gyrated back and forth. We danced and spun around, having a little and had fun with it. Our raucous laughs filled the old courtyard.

“We want to play the seekers game! We want to play the seekers game! We want to play the seekers game!”

The three of us stood there waiting in silence for something to happen. After standing there for five minutes Gen and Callie snorted and started giggling like school girls. Nothing had happened.

But I felt weird. Too creeped out and too drunk. I voiced my thoughts to the group. My friends wanted to stay out a little longer, so I went back to the AirBnB early by myself. I bid the girls adieu and somehow managed to stumble back and right into bed.

Today, I woke up with a raging hangover around three in the afternoon. My first stop in the bathroom revealed I looked as bad as I felt. The hair in my pigtails were wiry, my makeup was running, and there was a stain of unknown origins on my blue dress.

My second stop was to the kitchen. There I brewed myself a fresh cup of coffee and downed about four aspirin. Groggily, I stumbled to the front door, wanting nothing more than to enjoy my morning cup of joe in one of the rocking chairs out on the porch. I wanted to take in the historic scenery and watch as people got ready to start Trick-or-treating.

A warm gulp of coffee slid down my throat as I stuck my hand out for the door handle. A swipe and a miss. I paused, the lip of my mug stopping just beneath my mouth, wisps of steam still floating off the hot beverage.

The doorknob was gone.

A deep breath then a step back. I must’ve been more out of it than I thought. After rubbing my eyes, I looked again.

Still no door handle. In its place was a patch of smooth wood painted white. Like there had never been a doorknob there at all.

I let out a disbelieving laugh. I’d try the glass sliding back doors next. The coffee mug just about slipped out of my hands. The plastic handle on the doors had been removed too.

Frantically, I searched every door in the house. This is when I discovered pretty much every other door still had its handle. Only the doors leading to the outside world seemed to be inopenable.

Okay, if I couldn’t leave through a door, I’d just have to crawl out a window. Imagine my surprise when I found that the windows we’d been able to open just the other day, were now one big pane of glass, unable to open. No biggie. Glass could be broken.

Honestly, I was bugging. Completely freaked out and feeling like a caged rabid animal. And caged rabid animals do crazy things when they’re scared.

The dining room table of our Air BnB had these fancy wicker chairs surrounding it. Th...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Verastahl on 2024-10-31 22:30:11+00:00.

---

“Wake up.”

I felt myself coming up from some vast darkness, like a small balloon slowly rising to the surface of a vast, black sea. I couldn’t move, or even blink, but my eyes were already open, so I could see that I was on our front porch facing toward the front door and the steps leading out into the yard. Whatever was stopping me from moving, it didn’t prevent me from feeling everything. My eyes were dry and burning, and my throat felt raw and strange, like I was in the middle of choking on something. And I was sitting in a chair—I couldn’t move to see it, but I could feel the hard wooden slats of a rocking chair under my legs and the flat planes of the armrests against my forearms and elbows.

And that voice. Was that Ellen?

“Time to wake up now. The trick-or-treaters will be coming soon, and I want you to understand what’s happening before they do. I had to slip a sedative into your food earlier—I couldn’t risk you struggling or damaging something while I got you all fixed up—but only the paralytic should be left at this point.”

It was Ellen. What was she talking about? Why was she doing this?

“Now don’t worry. Part of my preparations was to give you a breathing tube. At the dose of paralytics I’m drip feeding you, I couldn’t risk you suffocating to death, now could I? And rest assured, no one will notice the tube or the I.V. That’s one of the reasons I picked such an elaborate ghoul costume for you. The mask and clothes will cover all of that, and I have a drape right behind your chair.”

Mask? But she was right. I couldn’t look around, but at the edge of my vision I could make out the edge of what could be eyeholes of a mask. And didn’t my face feel like something was against it in spots?

“I’m speaking to you through wireless headphones I’ve taped into your ears to make sure you hear everything. I’ve recorded it ahead of time—all of this is so well-planned…well, I’m very proud of it. I’ll have more little messages for you later on, but for now, we just have to wait for the first kids to come. I can’t wait.”

None of this made any sense. Ellen was a doctor, so I didn’t doubt she could do what she was describing, but why would she? In the three years we’d been married, we’d barely had an argument, much less anything violent. And now, what, she was drugging me and tying me to a chair dressed up like a monster? Fucking why?

It couldn’t be money. She made five times as much as I did. And I’d never seen any sign of problems between her and Angela—just the opposite. She’d taken to her new step-daughter right away, and they’d gotten very close in the last couple of years. None of this made any sense.

My mind was still spinning with different questions and scenarios when the first trick-or-treaters arrived, and before they could even ring the doorbell, Ellen was out on the porch in an elaborate witch costume I’d never seen before.

“Hello, my pretties! Happy Halloween! I have oodles of candy for you, but first, who wants to beat up on this nasty ghoul on my porch? I keep telling him to go, but he wants all my candy. All your candy. So will you go over and hit him for me? Maybe he’ll finally go away.”

The two kids, a ghost and a soldier, both looked uncertainly between her and me. I could tell they couldn’t see there was a person underneath, but she was still making a strange request. Maybe they would just…

“Are you sure its okay? Is he going to like, try to grab us or something?”

Witch Ellen shook her head with a cackle. “No, nothing like that. If I did my job right, he won’t move a muscle.”

Nodding at her and then glancing at each other, the two boys crept over closer to my end of the porch. The ghost wrinkled his nose and then glanced back at Ellen. “I hear a weird noise.”

It was probably the fucking breathing machine. Everything I heard was muffled, but maybe the kid was bright enough to know what it was or tell something was wrong.

Ellen grinned. “That’s just the ghoul growling because he knows you’re fixing to make him leave. He can’t hurt you, but he’s grumpy about someone showing him who’s boss.”

The ghost nodded uncertainly, turning back around just as the tiny soldier punched me in the stomach. It didn’t hurt, not really, but it was uncomfortable, and it focused my clouded mind on the fact that I could still feel quite a bit. I had to get out of this fast, before she did something worse to me. Straining with all my will, I tried to move at all or make a sound. But nothing seemed to change.

And then the ghost kicked me in the shin.

This did hurt, sending a thrill of anger and fear through me at the surprise and the sensation. The ghost and soldier had already scooted back across the porch and were collecting their candy, but I was still reeling from the pain and the inability to fully react to it. Strange as it seemed, not being able to yell or grab my leg was worse than the pain itself—it seemed to stretch everything out longer, make it sharper. I was so caught up in it that I didn’t even notice when the next kids came up.

She got them to stomp on my feet.

---

This went on for another thirty minutes or so before the earbuds in my ears flared to life again.

“The sacrifice of safety has been completed. And your process of enurement has begun.” There were three black candles on the baker’s rack next to the front door, and as Ellen’s words curdled in my ears, she lit the left most one.

There was nothing else said at the time, which was good, because I don’t know how much I would have been able to focus on. My legs and feet and hands were all aching from hits and kicks and pinches. Some kids refused to come near me, or they’d get close and then back away again without hurting me. But only some. There were still plenty that didn’t mind letting out some aggression on the bad old ghoul in the rocking chair.

I kept hoping that someone would notice that I was real, that there was a person under the costume. They’d notice my eyes, or how my skin felt when they twisted it, or something. But even if they did, they may think it was just a weird costume and I was in on it for Halloween, even with trick-or-treating being done three days early. Still, that might be my best hope. That or Angela coming home and finding me like this, so long as she didn’t get hurt. Either way, I’d just have to put up with kids punching and kicking me for awhile longer.

Ellen gave me a wink, almost like she could read my thoughts, and then she ducked inside. When she came back out, she was carrying a small table with a tray on it. On the tray was a neat row of sticks. She set it all down between the front door and my spot before turning to the next batch of three children, explaining to them that she’d brought out some special-made ash wands that would help them get rid of her mean ol’ ghoul. And that these wands weren’t made for waving.

They were made for poking.

The harder the better, and the one that poked the hardest would get the best candy.

---

It seemed like this lasted longer than the punches and kicks, and it was way more painful. My eyes would water some, but she was quick to moisten my eyes with drops and then wipe them and my tears away before the next group came up. Some of these later trick-or-treaters were older and bigger, and there were at least a couple of times that it felt like they’d broken through my skin and punctured something, but I couldn’t be sure. The ends of the “wands” were blunt and rounded, and my costume felt thick. Knowing Ellen, it was probably dark too, which would make a bit of blood easier to miss.

There were times when the pain was bad enough that I would swim out of consciousness a little. It was tempting to just sink back into that black ocean, but that’d be a death sentence. I had to keep trying to fight off the drugs she was giving me, keep looking for any opening or mistake. The porch seemed dark where I was, but if I could get one of the kids to see my eyes, maybe they’d know I was in there and something was wrong.

“The sacrifice of mercy is completed. And your enurement draws to a close.”

She lit the rightmost black candle.

Fuck. This was all clearly building towards something, but what? Was she really going to kill me? I was suddenly pulled out of my thoughts by the screen door squealing as Ellen came back out with a butcher knife from the kitchen.

“Who wants to stab the ghoul?”

---

“Now as you can see, I’ve carefully marked red circles on the ghoul. Only stab him in those spots, okay? And only once. If you stab him anywhere else, he won’t go away and you won’t get any candy.”

The football player standing in front of me looked at her doubtfully as he gripped the knife. Fuck me, he was big. He’d probably just come from Goddamn practice to get some candy.

“So, um, I can just stab him? Like it won’t hurt the, um, doll or whatever?”

Ellen waved away his concern with a waggle of black nails. “He’s replaceable. But that’s also why you only hit a red area. Limits the damage.” Giving him a sly smile, she patted him on the chest. “Unless you’re too scared of him.”

He stabbed me somewhere in the shoulder. Not as hard as I’d expected, and somehow not as painful as the wands, but still worse in a way. I could feel some core part of my body screaming at me to protect it. That my life was spilling out now, and I had to stem the flow. My vision blurred a little, but tears never really came. Instead, I just stared out as the football player gave the knife back to Ellen and went...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Relative-Obscurity on 2024-11-01 02:30:07+00:00.

---

I remember the first time I saw it.

I had been walking my dog down my street, minding my own business, when something caught my eye on the other side of my next door neighbor, Mr. Carlson's, lawn.

After standing there for a moment, unable to put my finger on it, I eventually noticed a key, just hanging there in the doorknob of his front door.

Not thinking too much of it, I went on with my walk and immediately forgot about it.

But then the next day, I saw it again.

As did I the next day after that.

And the next day after that.

Eventually, after a week had passed, I started to get worried.

See the thing is, I would have maybe written off the key as a simple mistake before going on a trip, but Mr. Carlson was quite old and frail, and had stopped leaving his house a long time ago, depending on caretakers for groceries and basic home goods.

Which brought me to my next conclusion... that it must have been one of his caretakers.

But then I remembered that they stopped by his house every few days, and surely would have noticed the key.

Finally, after two weeks of indecision, I worked up the courage to walk over to Mr. Carlson's door, place my hand on the doorknob, the key still hanging from it, and turn the knob.

As I turned it, I couldn't help but hear a faint echo, like the sound of a couple people shouting from a hundred yards away.

I stopped and looked around.

Nothing.

I turned back to the door... and opened it.

Fearing the worst, I braced myself, closing my eyes. Upon opening them, I simply saw an empty foyer, and let out a sigh of relief. But what I didn't know… was that the "worst" thing that I feared, was nowhere near what I'd soon discover.

"Mr. Carlson." I called out, before shutting the door behind me.

CLICK.

Suddenly, the lights went out, and I saw...

...Them...

...Mr. Carlson and Brenda, our neighborhood post office worker, sitting on the staircase together, a look of horror in their eyes.

Mr. Carlson! What a relief. And Brenda? I haven't seen her in a week. I thought to myself, remembering the past week's strange lack of mail that everyone in the neighborhood had been talking about.

Looking back on it, I should have put two and two together. But what possibly could the disappearance of our mail person and a key in my neighbor's door have in common?

I was about to find out.

"Brenda? What are you doing in Mr. Carlson's house?"

She simply replied. "They key."

"Oh, it's yours?" I asked, letting out a sigh of relief, after spending two weeks running through every possible reason for it being left in the door.

But before I could bask in the moment, she interrupted me.

"No. It's not mine. Or his." She said, before turning to Mr. Carlson, who looked exhausted.

"It belongs to him." The old man said.

"Him?" I asked, confused by where he was going with it.

"The man who visits us." Brenda said.

"Visits you? What do you mean?"

"Just wait. He'll be back. Especially now that you're here." Mr. Carlson said.

"He's right. I entered just like you did, after dropping off the mail and wondering if something was the matter, finding Mr. Carlson here and that I was trapped insidr. And within a few minutes, the man arrived." Brenda explained.

"Wait, what are you trying to tell me?"

"That you're trapped here." The old man said.

"Trapped?" I laughed. "Yeah okay. Is this some sort of Halloween prank? What with the lights off and everything?"

That's when I casually walked back over to the door and tried to open it.

CLICK.

But it didn't budge.

I stood there for a moment, with my back to Brenda and Mr. Carlson, wondering if maybe there was some truth to what they were saying.

And that's when I heard...

...Him.

"See?" A hoarse, disturbing voice called out from behind me. "They're right. You're trapped."

Chills ran down my spine, as I realized that the voice couldn't be coming from Brenda or Mr. Carlson.

I couldn't bear to turn around. So I simply called back to the voice.

"Who are you?"

"I'm the keeper of the keys to your worst nightmares."

I turned around, to find a man standing there in the darkness, his eyes glowing, and keychains dangling from every inch of his body.

"Let us out!" I screamed at him, pretending to be courageous, but terrified by the mere sight of such a thing.

He simply replied, "Certainly," before looking at his body and removing a particular keychain with one key on it.

"Yes, this one's for you." He said, as he handed it to me. "This will open the front door from the inside. Go ahead, leave."

I looked at the key, then back at the door, then back at the monster and smiled. "You idiot. Why would you ever give it to me? I'll be back with the police. And you better not be here."

Then, I walked over to the front door and inserted the key.

"Don't do it!" Brenda cried out.

"He's tricking you!" Mr. Carlson cried out.

But I was too compelled by my plan to listen to them, and turned the doorknob.

CLICK.

It opened.

"See?" I said, as I turned back to Brenda and Mr. Carlson with a smug look on my face.

They simply shook their heads in disappointment.

I turned back, opened the door, stepped outside, and shut it behind me...

...To find myself in a bedroom. My childhood bedroom to be exact.

What the? I thought to myself, as once again, chills ran down my spine.

Feeling unsettled by being in there, I opened the door and entered the second story hallway, where I heard the sound of someone being strangled in a nearby bedroom.

Normally, I would have been shocked to hear such s sound, but this was one that I had heard before. This...

...Was a memory. A memory that I was reliving in real life, now as an adult.

A tear rolled down my cheek, as I knew exactly what was happening in the other room, and despite my attempts to hold back, I couldn't stop myself from rushing into the bedroom and trying to stop him.

But just as it had unfolded in real life, many years ago, by the time I opened the door... it was too late.

My father was dead. Strangled to death by my brothers for reasons I'd only later find out.

"Andrew, no!" I cried out. But he had already crawled back into the corner of the room, simply staring at my father's lifeless body.

That's when he looked up at me, and charged at me like a ravenous zombie, managing to claw away at one of my arms before...

...SLAM!

I shut the door and ran downstairs, expecting to find my mother down there, just as I had found her when the event had originally happened.

But all that I found... was Brenda and Mr. Carlson. Staring up at me with wide eyes.

"I'm sorry." Brenda said, seeing the expression on my face.

"How did you know?"

"Because it happened to us. Over and over. No matter which key he handed us."

"No, it can't be." I cried out, as I began to shut down, unable to believe what they had told me.

But I should have.

As I stood there, shaking in horror, I heard the sound of keys rattling, and I turned around to find the monster standing there again.

"What do you want?" I cried out.

But he didn't answer. He simply looked down at his body and removed a particular keychain with one key on it.

"Yes, this one's for you." He said, as he handed it to me.

I looked at the key, then back at the door, then back at the monster, this time unable to smile.

I knew another horror lay before me. Knew that the key would not help me escape the house.

But for reasons I can't quite explain... maybe I thought there was an inkling of a chance that the key would work... or maybe it was a desire to see my father again... I took it anyway.

Took it, and opened the door, only to relive the same horrifying memory and return back to the staircase where Brenda and Mr. Carlson were standing.

Once again, the monster returned, once again he handed me a key, and once again I disappeared through the door.

This went on and on, until I couldn't bear to take it anymore, and eventually gave up on the keys being of any help.

When I finally declined the man's key, he simply replied, "Have it your way," before disappearing into the darkness.

I turned to Brenda and Mr. Carlson, who went on to explain how they, too, had tried the keys and experienced nightmare after nightmare from their respective past. Then we all retired to the living room where we slept on the couch, chair, and floor, respectively, reasoning that we should stay in the same room.

The next day, we huddled together, eventually coming to the conclusion that the house, its door, and the keys, must be some sort of twisted test, caused by the key in the home's front door, and enforced by the monster that wore an armor of keyrings.

We tried everything, from scouring the home for exits, to attempting to make calls on its dead phones, to prying at its boarded windows from the inside out.

But after a week had gone by without a single lead, we eventually gave up.

That's when... someone else arrived.

"Nooooo!" We all screamed, our voices surely echoing outside just as I heard them, as Officer Howe turned the key to the front door, and let himself in.

By the time the door had closed behind him, it was too late... and three... had become four.

Once again, the monster returned, this time offering Officer Howe a key, who took it and let himself out, experiencing a nightmare of his own, only to return from upstairs a short time later with a look of horror in his eyes.

After we told him our stories, he too, declined the monster's next key, and we once again huddle...

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