nosleep

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/La_knavo4 on 2024-11-25 04:41:14+00:00.

---

So it was a normal Sunday around 10 PM when I was chilling in my house, and I was sitting by my desk, watching videos on my phone

The browser I use has a built-in ad-blocker, but somehow YouTube updated and found a way to still place ads and REMOVE THE SKIP BUTTON, very fucking infuriating

So I was just watching videos on my phone and another goddamn unskippable ad starts playing

It was some local PSA/charity? about wildlife preservation/anti-deforestation or something and it had a woman talking

She started talking about trying to preserve a large forest near my town, I was getting annoyed at her for wasting 2 minutes of my time

I know I should feel bad since this is a charity and not a commercial but honestly? I really don't care, it's not like I would donate or anything

I start dozing off, sometimes looking around my room for something interesting to look at instead, just waiting for the PSA to end...

But then when I "dozed back in", I realize that my phone wasn't in my hand anymore, and I wasn't in my room, or my home...

I kid you not, I genuinely am not joking, but I somehow magically appeared in the same forest she was talking about

"What the?" "How did I-"

I was so baffled and confused, I genuinely didn't know how I got here

I was still sitting in my chair, somehow the chair also got here

When I realized where I was I got so confused, how the hell did I get here? Was I kidnapped or something?

And then I started panicking, I'm trapped alone in some random forest in the middle of the night without my phone and I have no idea how I got here

I stand up and start looking and wandering around (keeping a close distace to my chair not to get lost) and trying to find a way to go back home, hoping that I can somehow get out, I start panicking that I might have to sleep in the forest and wait to be recused

Luckily I find a road in the distance and start walking to it, When I got to the road I realized I recognized it and that I was not too far from my hometown

I start walking along the road, hoping that I don't get kidnapped by human traffickers or whatever my mom says when I go outside

I started wondering how the hell I got here, how the fuck did I end up in a forest with absolutely no memory of how I got there?

Did I get drugged? Was I kidnapped? Was it because of that PSA?

After some walking I finally saw my house again, and when I went back inside I saw my mom waiting and she started scolding me for going out at night, alone, without her permission when there was school tomorrow

I have no idea what to say to her, I tried explaining that I had no idea how I got to the forest

Obviously she doesn't believe that I "magically teleported" to some random forest from a goddamn YouTube ad

I ask her if she saw me go walk the door or disappear from my room or ANYTHING that could give me answers

She rebuked me and told me that I could have gone out the window, and that I was grounded for a week

Great, fuck me

I go back to my room, and I start obsessively writing down every detail I can remember of what happened in my notes app, trying to wonder how the hell that happened???

I realized that my chair was still gone, I left it in the forest and since I'm grounded I can't go back to the forest to check if it's still there

It's genuinely driving me crazy trying to figure out how the fuck I got in the forest, did I sleepwalk???

I tried looking for the PSA, I tried looking through my search history but obviously they don't store what ads were playing

I tried searching stuff online like "Philippine Wildlife PSA" or "Black Haired Woman Philippine Forest Ad" and obviously I got nothing

I even tried searching on YouTube, and got 4 results semi-related to what I searched and the rest were unrelated garbage cuz YouTube's fucking search engine is a piece of shit

I have no idea how to find the PSA/ad again, but here's some details I remember if you wanna help me find it again:

It was about a forest in the Philippines

It was a black haired woman talking

I remember her saying "in a world dominated by human activity" or something like that

It was for a charity that was called something like: The Philippine Wildlife Front or something

That's genuinely all I can remember as I only was half-paying attention

Please help me find this PSA, It's fucking driving me crazy

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Lostinternally on 2024-11-25 01:03:31+00:00.

---

My job in tech sales brought me to Worcester Massachusetts a few weeks ago. My company put me up in a short term rental in the neighboring town of Leicester. I'm based out of Arizona and this is my first time visiting the New England area. I'm newly divorced, and the constant travel is a nice distraction. It gets me out of my head, and takes my mind off the shitshow failed marriage. Plus, I like people, and meeting new people and I'm good at my job, so work has been fairly rewarding and therapeutic. So I've just been immersing myself in it.

Massachusetts is beautiful, but cold, and the drastic lack of sun is hard to get used to. It fills me with a sense of somberness. The remaining leaves are falling rapidly, and the trees are becoming skeletons of their former selves. It's late November and it gets dark around 4pm here, which kind of compounds the dreariness.

I've been sober from alcohol for about 8 months now. I haven't had an urge to drink at all until 2 days ago when I almost talked myself into going to the bar across the street from where I'm staying. The loneliness, the weather, it almost broke me. That's when I realized I needed to do something in my down time here, or the next urge.. I might not have the willpower to deny it.

There was a big yard sale going on yesterday down the street and I saw a metal detector for sale for $40. Seemed perfect.. I can sightsee, get a little exercise, maybe find something cool. Who knows? It's better than sitting in my room with the shades drawn and thinking about whiskey. The homeowner, an older gentleman, saw me eyeing it and I struck up a conversation with him. Nice guy, his wife looked annoyed at how much time we spent talking, as she frantically handled all the potential customers on her own. I worked my sales-y charm and I got the detector for $20, and he even showed me how to use it, and threw in a backpack that had a small telescoping shovel, and miscellaneous metal detector accessories. He drew me crude maps of local spots where he said he had some luck finding things.

I got up this morning a little late about 10:30, ate a big breakfast, put a comfy sweatshirt on and thick zip up hoodie and headed out to where the old man told me to go.

The map led me to a big clearing in the woods, and my mood instantly improved. Oak trees everywhere. The fresh cold air stung my nostrils a little, but it was invigorating. I spent about an hour ambling about in the clearing with the detector, but no real hits on anything. In the distance I saw a yellow metal blockade and what looked like a path behind it. I think the old man had said something about a hiking path but I don't remember. It wasn't on the map he drew. I walked over to the path. Should I check it out or just stick with the map? I heard what sounded like water and a vague sound of wind chimes, must be a little brook or something. I thought it would be nice to just zen out by a small stream, so I crossed the yellow blockade and headed down the the path, and that's when things began to get a tad bit strange. I must have walked a mile down this path and the sound of water decreased, while the wind chime sound increased.. But the chimes were ringing at a full octave lower than what they were at the start of the path. Odd.

The sound of water eventually completely subsided, "So much for my water therapy moment." I continued walking, finally I came to something that looked.. Very old. A low stacked stone wall, with two large granite gate posts in the middle, with massive black wrought Iron gates in between them. The metal work was... Definitely unique. Two large circles with wavy lines that converged in the dead center. It looked like long creepy wild spider legs. Like a gate Stephen King would have adorning his garden. Ok, I needed to check my phone and see where the hell I was at. I got 3 bars out here.. Not bad. I pulled up google maps "Friends Quaker Cemetery" It was then I noticed all the obvious head stones through the gate. I was so captivated by the odd design of the iron that I hadn't even noticed them.

There was a sign in front of the stone wall. It read: "This is a private cemetery under the care of the Worcester Friends Meeting (Quakers) We hope that you will treat this cemetery as you would the one where your relatives and friends are buried. This cemetery is closed during the hours of darkness."

I can't go metal detecting in a fucking cemetery can I? That's not cool right? Well at least I can go look around I thought. I opened the gate and walked through.. An icy gust of wind blasted me as I set foot inside the cemetery, and now the otherworldly windchimes rang again loud as ever. I needed to find the source of these weird ass chimes. The graveyard was seriously old. Headstones from 1850, 1730, There was one from 1660! Massive oak trees peppered the landscape, with thick arm-like branches hypnotically swaying in the breeze.

I spent another hour just looking at these almost medieval age headstones. Thinking about what life must have been like in this town back in the 1660's. So many of these people died in their 30's and 40's.. That must have been considered old age back then. I was pretty far into the cemetery. Far enough that I couldn't see the border wall or the gates anymore. I found myself in this circular configuration of grave stones, the circle was about 50ft in diameter. The head stones were so old and weathered you couldn't read the inscriptions anymore. In the middle of the circle stood a giant tree, like something you would see in a children's fairytale book. The tree looked like an organic 3 pronged pitchfork. It had two thick branches on either side that arched upward into J shapes. Picture the Japanese martial arts weapon "sai" and imagine that as a gigantic tree.

Then I saw them.. Dangling menacingly from the hulking left branch. The chimes. There must be 12 of them.. 3ft long, each one tapered and came to a dagger point at the bottom. They were made from Industrial looking rusted metal and attached to the massive branch with an equally rusted metal chain. These are wind chimes you would expect to see in silent hill. The sound of them even more unnerving now. OK... I needed to research this cemetery.

I Pulled out my phone again. Two bars now.. I googled "friends cemetery" and immediately wished that I hadn't. Friends Cemetery is also known as "Spider Gates"(appropriate) Every result of the search was "Most haunted cemeteries in America, 8th gateway to hell, Satanic rituals, Hangings, dimensional portal." Not bullshitting you.. Google Spider Gates and see for yourself.

OOOkaaay.. Yeah.. I'm good with my little metal detecting adventure for today. It's quarter of three and it's going to get dark soon and I don't feel like spending anymore time in an actual urban legend.. I literally take one step away from the tree and the metal detector screeches to life.. The volume so extreme I thought it would burn out the little onboard speaker. Didn't I turn this thing off before I walked in here? I guess not.. I quickly flick the off switch and the ear piercing noise ceased. It's hard for me to describe my mindset in this moment because "I" don't even understand it. But, I HAD to see what was down there. It wasn't an option. I NEEDED to see.. A compulsion.

I get out the little shovel in the backpack and start digging as if I was going to find the cure for cancer down there. I get about 2 feet down before I hear the clank of the shovel hit something metallic. It was an ornate silver box buried vertically. Real solid actual silver. It was about 9 inches wide and 5 inches long. 4 inch depth. Heavy and thick, it felt too heavy for how small it was, felt like 20+ pounds. I managed to wrestle the thing out of the ground. The design of the box had silver flowers and trees all over it, like little sculptures. How did they make this? The top of the box had what I can only describe as something resembling a "comedy/tragedy" type mask. But the expression wasn't happy or sad it's mouth was just wide open. There was a latch on the front with no lock on it.

It was stuck shut. I couldn't open it with my hands. I looked into the back pack. Flathead screw driver, bingo! I wedge the screwdriver into a little gap in the box just barely wide enough to get the tip of the driver in, I took one of the rocks I dug up and use it like hammer on the back of the flathead. I twist the screw driver and it pops open. I couldn't fully open it all the way, but I didn't need to. The inside was completely lined with a maroon velvet. Inside it, old parchment papers rolled up like a scroll. It had a black ribbon in the center securing it. I slid the ribbon off and unrolled the papers..

What in the actual fuck am I looking at?.. Everything on it looked like it was written in blood. OLD blood.. That dark burgundy color like when you see a month old band-aid in the trash. There were symbols I have never seen in my life. English letters and numbers in it, but the words were not English. Some of it looked mathematical or related to geometry. Blood paintings of strange humanoid nightmare figures encircled by gibberish words. It was like a malevolent version of the Voynich Manuscript.

I got to the last piece of parchment. It was a sanguine illustration of the very tree I was standing in front of. A strange gibberish sentence at the bottom of the page: "Arten...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CryptidCelts on 2024-11-24 20:24:06+00:00.

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So there was this house, back in my old hometown. Run down, caked in dirt, rust, and usual grime. An abandoned craftsman style house, supposedly part of an old ranch that sat just outside town. No one remembers the owners, or even the name of the ranch it belonged to. The house was always covered in a thicket of decoration lights, webbed across every surface of the place like wild vines. It never mattered what time of day it was, the lights were always on; and so bright you could see the lights grazing the horizon of the sky as if it was fighting against the air, defending its right to exist.

We were only ever able to see it. Anyone that tried to go out and find it rarely found Success in their efforts. People would talk about a dirt road pasture, with trees flanking either side and always seemed to get incredibly dark the further along you went. Others said they would get close enough to see a fence, rusted wire strewn around a rotted wooden post every few dozen feet or so from the next. Just never the house itself. Only the now dim glow of artificial lights left as any sign that there was anything there to begin with. Somedays it wasn't even there, like it just got up and decided to not be there anymore. An active participant deciding who was allowed to see it.

Despite how small our town was, there was a considerable amount of kids that would go missing every few years or so. Coincidentally, people would notice small changes to the house around the same time new notices would be posted; it was usually small stuff. A new window, an extended deck, or even new lights. They never looked new though, always the same well worn look complete with dirt and all.

There was one year in particular, a friend of mine from middle school went missing. He was a bit of an oddball; would take any bet possible, Sean was his name. I remember there being another kid I wasn't a huge fan of, Dylan; kid was damn near obsessed with giving Sean the worst bets possible knowing he would guaranteed take them on. One of the worst ones being an incident where Sean was dared to jump off the roof of our school building. We didn't Have a tall building or anything, it's was just one of those one story places that spanned across with maze like halls and a small concrete courtyard. One side of the building dipped downwards, maybe a solid 45 degrees down and into a small grass field where the football players and coaches practiced and did morning workouts. At first everyone thought he had jumped right onto the concrete and just died on the spot, turns out he landed on his back on the top of the hill in the back, rolled the rest of the way down right into the middle of a game of flag football. He came out with a concussion, and a custodian actually ended up getting fired for leaving out the ladders while the roof was under maintenence. Overall a pretty bad day.

Sean came back to school eventually. And was right back to taking on dares. Dylan didn't let up one bit after the jumping debacle. Which leads into one of the more known disappearances around town. Usually it was something like, a kid running away from home, or a teen going off to elope with an out of towner. In Sean's case, everyone saw him go into the behind school when Dylan dropped a crisp 50 in front of him. And no one ever saw him come out.

A few months after Sean went missing his body was discovered at the edge of the same treeline he was last seen entering. I remember the screams of the other kids to this day, it was like hundreds of boiling kettles going off at once; the tea leaving a rancid stench of copper and dried out leather in the air. Sean was mutilated nearly beyond recognition, no one even knew it was him until they got dental records. His body had been stretched out and flattened, his chest was made square and stiff. Ribs bent backwards and folded out straight to either side; his arms tucked to the side, with each rib bone poking subtly into what should have been his biceps. The forearms pointed down to the earth below, hands bent backwards with the fingers coiled backwards like tiny snail shells. He was in a sitting position, thighs out in front of him and bent at the knee, his feet were bent in semi-circles, the splintered bones poking out the skin. He was reduced to a fucking chair. Furniture, an accent piece of what should have been a person.

No one wanted to ever say it out loud, but we all blamed the house. Even though he shouldnt have even been looking in the direction of its usual spot in those woods. A person couldnt have done what was done to poor Sean, and its not like we could even pin a person to begin with. The investigation went cold years ago with no suspects even being named. The House was the only one anyone in town could turn to for blame.

It appeared on the hill outside school after his body was found. Looking down on us all with a knowing and guilty bright gaze, taunting us.

I havent lived there in years, havent even thought about the house until recently. Not until the damned thing started showing up outside my city. It knew I was starting to finally forget, it knew I was moving on, and others were too. So it sits there; grabbing at my attention with its horrible lights; a gateway to hell waiting to ensnare my mind again. And its working. Because im going to burn it to the ground, find it and make sure nothing but a memory of its ashes remain. It wont have me, not like it had Sean, not like it had everyone else. I refuse to feel guilty for an outcome I never expected, I wont let it let me continue to dwell on that single stupid fucking dare I made as a kid. Ill make it up to Sean one way or another.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ArgiopeAurantia on 2024-11-25 00:44:11+00:00.

---

I've always been envious of other people's childhoods. The way they describe it, the country of the past was all golden sunlight and green fields and happy families and warm, safe blankets to curl up in. A longing sigh, the memory of starlight.

I didn't have that.

I don't remember much of my childhood. Only snatches of images here and there, burnt around the edges. The twist of a long, bitter night, November wind whistling through the cracks in my bedroom window as I shivered under a pile of dirty laundry. The whispering ghosts of bruises on my upper arms, my lower back, my pudgy little legs. The teeth in the memory of laughter which was never, ever mine. The whine of mosquitos and the squelch of mud as I weaved my way through the woods, sticking to the creek bottoms where no one ever came. It was safe there, among the sticker-bushes, the tight green tunnels with room only for an escaping rabbit or a small-bodied girl hiding from the big bad world that wanted to eat her.

Those are my happy memories. Among the biting insects and stinging nettles, I was safe. At least for a while.

I remember the day I first found the Hanged Man. I don't remember what I was running from, quite. It could've been anything. The world was full of things to run from, in those days. But I broke out of the drainage ditch I'd been following for what felt like miles into a space I'd never seen before. I stopped, shocked. I'd thought I knew these woods like the back of my hand, but this place was new.

I'd emerged into a tiny botanic cathedral, a dome of green vines split by golden pillars of light that filtered down through the canopy far above. A silver filigree of spiderwebs scrolled between brambles, ornamented with glorious gold and green garden spiders like jewels, bigger than any I'd ever seen before. I was familiar with spiders. I was friends with the ones who lived in the crawl space under my house. They listened to my whispers with silent sympathy, carrying on their incomprehensible arachnid missions in reassuring peace. I'd never found them threatening. But I'd never understood how beautiful they could be, either, until I saw them in the diffuse, watery light of this new place.

The floor of the chamber of vines was the bed of a stream, several drainage ditches flowing together. At this time of year it was mostly dry, puddles of standing water swimming with larvae and water striders and crayfish, but with plenty of large, flat rocks to skip between so my sneakers didn't get even muddier. It was dim in here, under the creepers, and I poked around the edges of the chamber first, in awe of the newts and jeweled beetles that skittered in the near-darkness. Maybe that's why it took me so long, on that first day, to notice Him.

I don't know why I decided that the Hanged Man was a Him, but the moment I saw it it seemed obvious. At the very center of the dome of vines, high above my tiny head, hung a lump of wood, entangled in a nest of creepers. It didn't look at all like a man dangling upside down, but my child's mind painted the picture, and it was immediately permanent, undeniable, and irrevocably named. I had found the Grotto of the Hanged Man.

I stayed for hours, that first day, until it was too dark to make out the print of the book I'd brought with me in my flight after school. As I wormed my way out through the tunnel I thought would lead me most quickly to my house, I hoped I'd be able to find it again.

I did. Nearly every day of that long, dark September I squirmed through the mud back to my chamber of safety and stayed until the light above went out. The spiders thickened and then disappeared one by one, until, by October, the place was bejeweled only by the changing leaves, and I brought an old blanket full of holes to wrap up in. And the whole time I talked to Him, to the Hanged Man, who ruled this place as surely as I came in supplication to it.

The drainage-ditch cathedral became my temple, my confessional. I would talk to the Hanged Man about my troubles at home, the children at school who pulled my tangled hair and laughed at my dirty clothes. And he would listen, I was convinced of it. Not like the spiders under the house, now mostly neglected except for the really bad nights, who didn't object when I talked to them as they wrapped up their prey, but weren't really paying attention. No, the Hanged Man truly heard me. He stored my words up in the rotting wood of his heart, and I poured them into him like the lonely child that I was. The Hanged Man couldn't speak back, of course. But sometimes, when the wind sighed cold through the brambles, I almost heard him.

It was only two months. But when you're seven years old, two months is so much of a lifetime that it seems endless. When you're seven years old, two months is such a big slice of everything you've ever been that it might as well be the whole cake. Two months is an eternity. When you're seven years old, two months can be a lifetime.

It was a lifetime with the Hanged Man before I thought to ask him for anything. I could consider regretting at this point the fact that I ever did, but I know it was inevitable. Those in need, no matter how battered, eventually figure out that it doesn't hurt as much to ask for help as it does to keep muddling on without it.

Unless, of course, the wish is granted. And that teaches a different lesson entirely.

I was bleeding, that day. I remember that. I think it was a split lip and a burning scalp, though all these years later I can't be sure. There were many small wounds, in those days. But this time I couldn't hold back the tears. This time I couldn't escape into a fairy tale. This time, I had to make my own.

So I cried, flat out. I told the Hanged Man what had happened. I sobbed, I nearly shrieked, and I begged him for help. Save me, I must have said, or something like it. Please help me. Please don't let this happen again.

I didn't think to place limitations. I didn't think to ask the Hanged Man for some things, but not everything. Not absolutely anything He decided to do. And even now, if I could go back and change it all, I'm not sure whether I would.

I fell asleep in the grotto that night, eyes aching, breath raw. I'm not sure when I awoke, but I know only blackness met my eyes when I opened them. No moonlight, no starlight. It was the darkness of a sinkhole, of the deep places under the earth where sunlight never comes. And before I turned, shaking, and felt my way along the black passage out to the real world I'd run from, I heard the chill wind whisper, from a thousand directions, in one voice:

Yes.

I picked my way through the woods, blind, until the sun peeped above the horizon. I was utterly, utterly lost, and I don't remember much about the morning until I found a road and a man in a car found me, tattered blanket around my shoulders, all out of tears and words. He took me to a police station, and they took me to the smoking ruins of the house I'd lived in all my life. And all they found were bodies.

Later, it was assumed I'd run from the flames and injured myself in my frantic flight. Later, it was assumed that a small child couldn't have caused the fire that started when the old, neglected stove shot a spark that ignited the tilting wooden house. Later, I mourned the poor spiders in the crawl space.

That morning, as the sunlight filtered golden and watery through the windows of the police station, I knew only that the Hanged Man had listened to my plea.

It did get better, though not much better. But when you're seven years old and all you've known is pain, any little thing can be enormous, can be everything. I cried myself dry a hundred times in my new, slightly-improved, home before I managed to escape and find my old familiar grotto again.

It was spring, by then, and the water was higher. My new sneakers splashed in the cold, clear water of ice-melt as I explored the room. I was slightly bigger, it was slightly smaller. But it was the same vegetable cathedral. Twisted and brown with the quickening of the year, not flowing and green with the end of summer, but very much the same place. It was only that the Hanged Man had gone.

A few vines swung from the roof, empty. But the hunk of wood that I'd poured my soul into was simply gone. I looked around the floor of the space, but I knew I wouldn't find Him. The Hanged Man had answered me, and the Hanged Man had gone.

I've grown a life since then. It's not a very good one. Maybe it never could've been. Maybe the curse placed on me when I was young was inescapable, no matter what happened. Maybe this is the best it ever could've been.

Or maybe it could've been better. Maybe, if I were older at the time, I could've phrased my wish more consciously. Maybe the Hanged Man could've granted me something else. Maybe I'd be a princess, now, in a castle. But I doubt it.

After all these years, after all this education, I still believe that the Hanged Man was real. I still believe he heard me and did everything a lonely forest spirit could to save me. And maybe that was the only wish I'll ever get.

I touch my scars, sometimes. I trace the spaces where the bruises used to be with soft fingers, and I remember. And I'm grateful that I found that space, that dim place in the woods. And I wonder what happened to the Hanged Man. I wonder what he was, to grant the deepest wish of a lonely, battered child who had no one else to run to.

I wonder ...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/BadandyTheRed on 2024-11-25 00:31:06+00:00.

---

I don't know how much longer I will have the stomach for this job. Sure the pay is good, but I find myself more and more troubled by the things I have to collect and the people who I have to interact with. It seemed like a great gig at first but the more I have been at it, the more my concerns mount. I will tell you about some of the encounters I have had as a debt collector, for some, well let's just say strange things.

Oh and if Mr. Salazar asks you about this, just pretend you never saw it. Anyway the first job I took that got me thinking about my reservations for this line of work was just the other day.

I had arrived at the location and parked my car outside the house of another target. A bit further down the road to not attract too much attention. I thought he would be home at this point and I had to make sure I was ready. I looked at the collection notice and almost did a double take. It was another weird one, though I suppose they have all been weird so far. I looked at the list to double check and sure enough it read just the way I thought I saw it.

“One teardrop from a shattered dream.”

The item seems very specific and if I had not been doing this for a few weeks now I might not have known what Mr. Salazar wanted. I read more of the writ of collection on the man I was to extract the item from. I sighed when I saw it was another poor and desperate soul who had made a “Deal with the devil” and lived to regret it. I winced at my own analogy and considered how on point it really was. Something was very off about Mr. Salazar, but he always paid well and I was not going to start reexamining his motives now, not when there was a job to do.

I got out of my car and grabbed my toolkit and walked towards the house. The light was on inside and there was a glimmer of lights and motion in the living room. Likely watching TV or something, I figured. That would make this easier, it would be nice if I could catch them off guard so a fight would not be necessary. I looked left and right to make sure no one saw me lingering on his porch and I pulled out the skeleton key and inserted it into the door. It slowly opened on loud hinges and I winced at the sound. I hoped he had not heard it.

I stepped in and carefully tried to close the door behind me. I paused and thought I heard motion in the living room but it subsides. He might just be shifting in a chair or something. I walked slowly to the living room and sure enough there he was.

Scott Bergman, client of Mr. Salazar and delinquent on an outstanding debt. It never seems to have actual monetary values printed on these collection writs. Only the name, the failure to pay and the strange item that is to be collected.

I took a breath and reached into my coat pocket to produce my Beretta. It might be overkill in this situation but a lot of the people I have visited so far have had firearms of their own and I have been shot at enough in the last few weeks to not take any chances.

I stepped into the living room and my footsteps are masked by the loud volume of the TV showing some college football game. As the sound dies down after a big play on screen, I clear my throat loudly and say,

“Hello Mr. Bergman, who is winning?”

He whipped around to see who was in his house and nearly fell out of his chair. I thought he was about to reach for something when I stepped forward to ensure the sight of my pistol was fully visible. He froze and I took a step and requested that he,

“Please sit down, I am just here to talk for a bit and inquire about what is owed.” He sat back down and glared at me, unsure of what to say and knowing that he was in a bad spot.

Despite the threat I had no intention of shooting him unless he gave me a reason, I was here to collect what Mr. Salazar wanted and it would require a conversation. He finally decided to speak and nervously said,

“Okay, okay. I know what Mr. Salazar said but I just needed more time. I can’t go yet I needed to see her one more time.” I tried to determine what he meant and found myself wishing I knew a bit more about these bizarre deals that Mr. Salazar struck with these people. Though I thought about some of the things I had seen so far and reconsidered wishing to know too much. I needed to find out more about who I was dealing with.

“What sort of work are you in Mr. Bergman? Or Scott, may I call you Scott?”

He nodded his head without responding directly as if he was considering if he should really talk about his work but he looked down at the gun pointing his way and managed a weak,

“Construction, I am in construction.”

I nodded my own head and responded, while looking around his living room to see rows of old high school football trophies.

“Construction, eh? Well, that is a nice honest profession, makes me wonder how you got roped into dealing with Mr. Salazar. No wait, please, don’t tell me I really do not need to know. Though from the looks of things it was not your first career choice.” I told him, while gesturing to the football trophies.

He looked over at them and back at me and did not respond. He was being a bit tight lipped and it was making this harder than it needed to be, to get what I came for. I kept the gun trained on him and set my case down on the ground and reached for the tuner. The tuner was what I called the strange oblong crystal that Mr. Salazar gave me. I did not like to use it every time since it gave me a killer headache afterwards, but I was breaking and entering and did not want to linger here for too long in case someone saw me here and things got messy. I rolled the thing over in my hands and stared intently at the center. Then I threw the tuner to Mr. Bergman and he caught it without thinking about it.

“Good catch, you did play college ball, didn't you?” I told him as I saw the refracting light washing over his face in the hypnotic pattern it always did. Scott Bergman was dead to the outside world for the moment and as he stared dumbly into the crystal. I took it back from him and braced myself as I stared into the object and felt my spatial awareness altering. I saw training, drills, formations and calling plays. Throwing, catching, running and everything over and over again. This guy had been a quarterback.

I continued looking on and saw a pretty girl. He spoke to her at lunch, he walked her home almost every day, they shared a kiss under the high school bleachers. Her name was Clair and Scott thought that he loved her. He wanted to be with her but he had to move away. He had to go, to make his dreams of going pro come true. I felt the guilt emanating from the decision. I saw the tears, the heartfelt appeal and the breakup. Then I saw the injury, followed by depression, then academic failure. The lost hope of what he wanted most in life and I knew I had what I had come for.

I felt bad forcing this man to relive those painful moments, but I tried to steel myself against it. I knew some of his story but not all of it. I am sure if I looked deeper, I would see something less appealing and sympathetic. At least that is what I always told myself.

I covered the crystal and snapped my fingers and Scott came back to his senses. He cried out and then remembered where he was and put his hands up before getting out of his chair. He asked again,

“Please, what do you want? I have nothing left to give. Just tell Salazar I can find a way to repay him without going. Please?” I braced myself for the worst part and spoke again.

“Now Scott I want to believe you, but I know you. I know you are lying to me and to yourself. Just like you did when you said that you would let her go and find her again when you were an NFL star. That is what you told Clair, wasn't it?”

His eyes widened and I could tell he could not believe I had known that. I saw a flare of anger cross his features and I cocked the hammer on the Beretta to cool things down and keep him from making any dumb decisions. Before he could respond with the inevitable, “How did you know?” I cut him off and spoke first.

“You said it would be worth it; you told her you had to try and follow your dream. Your dream was to be a star, Her's was just to be with you. You have achieved something impressive. Most people can only shatter their own dreams but you managed to destroy two for the price of one. Every day you think to yourself, what if? What if I had just stayed? Would she still be here? Well, no one can really know the answer but you wanted to know, you wanted to see. Now there is a price to be paid.”

I saw tears welling in his eyes and the pain underneath was difficult to look at. I found myself wishing I was just here to break his legs and take his wallet. Breaking a spirit is so much worse. I stepped forward and he flinched back but I grabbed his head and put a small vial up to his right eye and collected the teardrop from the painful reminiscence of a mans shattered dream. I stepped back and the man broke down and wept openly.

He continued crying softly and apologizing to the memory of his lost love even as I turned and left the house. His tortured mind too preoccupied with the past to even regard my own departure. I closed the door and walked back to my car clutching my head in pain. That damn thing always gave me the worst headaches. I tried to focus on my own discomfort to not think about what I made that man go through. I had no idea what Mr. Salazar would do with this grim trophy but after this one I felt worse than I normally did.

I tried to banish the guilt and drove away from the house and towards my employer. At least someone would be happy today.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Ok-Counter-9441 on 2024-11-24 14:09:19+00:00.

---

PART 2

“Alright,” Wes whispered. “Faculty office is down the main hall, near the principal’s office. Stay close and don’t make too much noise.”

I glanced back at Tommy, who was clutching his pocket knife like a lifeline. “You good?”

Tommy nodded, forcing a grin. “Let’s just get those keys and get out of here. Don’t wanna run into one of them again“.

We moved cautiously through the dimly lit halls, our eyes darting to every shadow and flickering light. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the faint sound of our breathing and the sound of our steps.

As we rounded a corner, Wes held up a hand, signaling them to stop. He squinted into the darkness ahead, where the faint glow of an exit sign illuminated the door to the faculty office.

“There,” he whispered.

Wes nodded and moved forward, but just as we reached the door, the sound of something shifting echoed down the hall behind us. All three of us froze, eyes widening as we turned to look back.

“What was that?” Tommy hissed.

“Probably the Lurker,” Wes muttered, fumbling with the office door. “We’ve gotta be quick.”

I tightened my grip on the wrench in my hand, my heart pounding in my chest. “Just get the keys, Wes. Tommy and I’ll keep watch.”

“Guys, it’s locked,” he muttered, stepping back.

Tommy let out a frustrated huff, gripping his pocket knife. “We don’t have time for this. Let’s break it down.”

“Don’t,” Wes snapped, holding up a hand. “You’ll just make too much noise. Give me your pocket knife instead.”

Tommy hesitated for a second, then handed it over. Wes crouched by the lock, squinting as he wedged the knife into the mechanism. “Keep an eye out while I work on this,” he muttered.

Me and Tommy exchanged a glance, then turned our attention back down the hallway. The silence wasn’t comforting—it felt alive, like it was waiting to pounce.

“You know how to do this, right?” Tommy whispered over his shoulder, his voice laced with doubt.

“Sort of,” Wes grunted, concentrating. “Saw my brother do it once. Could be worse, though—you could be the one doing it.”

Tommy rolled his eyes but didn’t respond. His grip on the screwdriver tightened as a faint noise reached our ears: a soft scraping sound, like claws on tile.

“Wes,” I whispered urgently. “Hurry up.”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Wes hissed back, frustration seeping into his voice.

The scraping grew louder, followed by a low, guttural growl that sent shivers down our spines. My heart pounded as i glanced over my shoulder. A shadow moved at the far end of the hallway, tall and hunched, its uneven gait growing faster.

“Wes,” Tommy said, his voice sharp now.

With a triumphant click, the lock gave way, and Wes pushed the door open. “Got it!” he whispered, motioning for us to get inside.

But before we could even move, the Lurker charged. Its claws scraped the floor as it lunged towards us.

“Move!”Tommy barked, shoving Wes into the room. I darted in after him, slamming the door shut just as the creature’s claws raked against it. The force of its attack shook the door in its frame.

“Block it!” Wes shouted, and Tommy and I scrambled to shove a filing cabinet against the door. I heaved one side while Tommy pushed the other, the screech of metal on tile echoing in the small office. Just as the creature slammed into the door again, they managed to wedge the cabinet in place, holding it shut.

The Lurker howled outside, the sound guttural and furious, its claws scraping relentlessly against the wood. For a moment, the three of us stood frozen, breathing hard and staring at the door, waiting to see if it would hold.

Tommy broke the silence first, his voice shaky. “Please tell me it can’t get in here.”

Wes shot him a look. “You saw Greg’s car.”

I exhaled, wiping sweat from my brow. “Alright,” i said. “Now let’s find those keys first. We’re gonna make it somehow.“

We spread out, rummaging through drawers and cabinets as the Lurker continued its assault on the door. Every now and then, the cabinet shifted slightly, but it held firm. After what felt like an eternity, Wes let out a triumphant whoop, holding up a ring of keys.

“Got ‘em!” he said, grinning.

“Great,” Tommy muttered, “But how are we gonna—”.

Wes furrowed his brow, glancing at me and Tommy. “Is that…?”

I tilted my head, listening closely. A powerful, soulful voice echoed faintly through the halls, accompanied by the unmistakable rhythm of Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love.”

“It’s music,” Tommy said, his voice low, almost disbelieving. “Where the hell is that coming from?”

Wes’s eyes darted to the door. “It’s loud,” he muttered.

As if on cue, the scraping at the door ceased. The Lurker let out a sharp, guttural snarl, and we heard its heavy footsteps retreating down the hall, the sound fading as the music swelled.

My grip on the wrench tightened as I exchanged a look with the others. “Whatever that is, it distracted it. We can’t waste this chance.”

They nodded in unison, our fear temporarily overridden by determination. Wes cracked open the door just enough to peek outside. The hallway was empty, but the music filled the space, coming from somewhere deeper in the building.

“It’s clear,” Wes whispered, opening the door wider.

The three of us slipped out into the hall, moving swiftly but cautiously. The glow of flickering overhead lights made every shadow seem alive. The music grew louder as we approached the exit, the lyrics almost surreal in our clarity:

"Don’t you want somebody to love…"

Tommy muttered under his breath, “What kind of psycho is playing this right now?”

I shook my head. “No idea, but whoever it is, they might’ve just saved our asses.”

Just as we reached the main entrance, we stopped short. A figure stood in the middle of the hallway, leaning casually against the wall. The acrid scent of cigarette smoke wafted towards us as the man exhaled a cloud of smoke, the glowing cherry of his cigarette briefly illuminating his weathered face. Slung casually over his shoulder was a shotgun, its barrel gleaming faintly under the dim lights.

“Well, what do we have here,” the man drawled, his voice raspy but calm. He took another drag of his cigarette, his eyes narrowing at the us. “You boys got a death wish, or are you just stupid?”

Tommy gawked at him, his eyes darting between the shotgun and the man’s face. “You’re… the janitor, right?”

“Sharp as a tack,” the janitor replied dryly, flicking ash onto the floor. “Now, are you gonna keep standing there with your mouths open, or are you gonna tell me why you’re sneaking around my school while there are monsters out there?”

I couldn’t shake the odd vibe the janitor gave off. There was something too relaxed about his posture, like he wasn’t fazed by this whole situation. It didn’t add up. “We’re trying to get out of here,” I said cautiously. “Our car’s totaled, and we’re heading for the bus outside. The music...was that you?”

The janitor smirked, a faint glint of amusement in his eyes. “Guilty as charged. Got a little creative with the PA system to draw those freaks away. Worked better than I thought.” He lowered the shotgun from his shoulder, gripping it with both hands. “Now, I’m guessing you’re not the only ones here. Where’s the rest of your group?”

Wes stepped forward. “Yeah. We were just getting the keys.”

The janitor smirked. “Figures. Only reason anyone’d stick around this mess.”

I couldn’t hold back anymore. I stepped closer, my voice low. “You’re not freaking out like everyone else. Do you know what’s going on here? These things, you seem like you’ve dealt with them before.”

The janitor’s smirk faded, his eyes narrowing. “I’ve seen enough to know you’re in over your heads.” He leaned in slightly, his voice barely above a whisper. “You think this just happened out of nowhere? Ask your parents if you can find them.”

My stomach twisted at the cryptic response. “What does that mean?” I pressed. “Do you know what these things are? Why they’re here?”

The janitor straightened, his expression hardening. “Time’s running low, kid. I ain’t got the luxury to play twenty questions, and neither do you. You’ve got people waiting on you.” He let out a long sigh, his eyes briefly softening. “Just… do yourself a favor. Get your friends, get that bus, and get as far from here as you can.”

I didn’t look away, suspicion gnawing at me. “You won’t come with us?”

The janitor chuckled dryly, though there was no humor in it. “Because some messes don’t get cleaned up by running away.” He looked down at the shotgun in his hands, his face clouded with something unspoken—guilt, maybe, or regret. “Besides, I’ve got my own business to finish here.”

Wes frowned. “Business? You mean…?”

The janitor cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is you kids getting out alive.” He reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a small revolver. He flipped it open, revealing six bullets inside the cylinder, then handed it to me,

I hesitated but took it, feeling the cold weight of the gun in my hand. “I… I don’t know how to use this.”

“You’ll figure it out,” the janitor said. “Don’t waste your shots. And don’t let your hands shake when it matters.”

Tommy glanced at the janitor. “You’re really not coming with us?

The janitor slung the shotgun back over his shoulder, stepping pa...

---

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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/rimmy789 on 2024-11-24 09:39:25+00:00.

---

I sat at the edge of my father’s bed, the heart monitor beeping faintly in the background. Dad stared at the ceiling, his lips moving soundlessly. His body was still, except for his hands—always his hands. Even in his final days, they twitched, scratching at the blankets or gripping an invisible pen.

I hated seeing him like this. It was hard to reconcile this frail, hollow man with the father who had once carried me on his shoulders, who had taught me how to ride a bike. Those memories felt like they belonged to someone else.

Rachel wasn’t here. She hadn’t been for months.

“I can’t do this anymore, Marcus,” she’d said that night, standing at the doorway with her suitcase in one hand and our son Samuel in the other. “You’re not here. Not for me, not for him. It’s just you and your father, and it’s always going to be that way. I can’t live like this.”

I told her I was trying, that I could do better, that I would be better, but the truth was, I didn’t know how. She left the next morning.

The sticky notes started not long after that. At first, I thought that Rachel had left them:

Don’t forget milk. Trash goes out Thursday.

Simple reminders. But then I found one on my nightstand that made my stomach drop.

Ask him about the lake.

I turned it over in my hands, trying to make sense of it. Rachel didn’t write this. The handwriting was off—not hers, not mine. That’s when I started noticing Dad’s hands. He was writing, feverishly, even when he didn’t seem to know who I was anymore.

By the time he died, the house was littered with his scrawled notes. They were everywhere: stuck to the mirror, jammed between the pages of books, taped to the fridge. Most of them didn’t make sense.

They will take everything. The lake never forgets. Don’t let it take him.

It wasn’t until I found the letter that I began to understand.

I discovered it in an old cigar box while cleaning out the attic. Layers of sticky notes papered the floor like some long dead forest leaves.

I had been sorting through them in the weeks since Dad’s death. Even now their messages haunted me. The constant reminders served as mile markers of how fast dad’s dementia had progressed. I can’t remember how I started this clean up, but I knew I’d have to finish it. I could hear Samual’s deep breathing on the baby monitor that was hooked on one of the attics cross beams. How long had he been asleep? I’ve got to wake him up for a bottle soon.

It was in one of the last boxes I needed to go through before I moved on to… to whatever I was going to do next.

I opened the cigar box to find what looked to be a letter. The paper was yellowed and fragile, the ink faded but legible. I don’t know what I was expecting—maybe something sentimental from my grandfather or great-grandfather. But this letter was nothing like that.

To whomever bears this burden,

Our bloodline is cursed, and there is no salvation. My mistake—my sin—has doomed us all. I sought what was forbidden, and the price was this: to live, a father must sacrifice his memories to the lake. The memories grant his child years of life, but at the end, the lake takes everything. And the curse passes to his son.

There is no escape, no redemption. Only the choice: your life, or theirs. We all think we can beat it, but in the end, we all give in. The lake waits.

I didn’t believe it at first until my own sticky notes started.

The first memory I gave up was the night Samuel was born. I sat at the kitchen table with a blank piece of paper in front of me, trying to capture every detail: the way Rachel’s hand gripped mine, the way Samuel’s cry filled the delivery room, the warmth of holding him for the first time. I wrote it all down, knowing I’d never remember it again.

It wasn’t enough.

I gave up more: Dad teaching me to ride a bike, the summers we spent at the lake, Rachel’s smile when she said yes to my proposal. With every memory I surrendered, I felt less like myself. The house filled with my own sticky notes, written in handwriting I barely recognized. You were happy once. Samuel’s first word was “Dada.” Don’t forget your name is Marcus.

The worst part was knowing there was no end to it. The curse demanded everything.

That’s why I decided to write this letter. I think it started as some attempt to remember what I was losing- no, what I was giving up. As the years went by, I began to see my father in my mirror’s reflection. The gaunt look in my eyes had a hint of a misplaced light in them.

I was 46 years old when my doctor diagnosed me with early onset dementia. Rachel came back into my life, not for me, but because of the phone call. I had left my son in a hot car during the summer. I always checked my backseat but that day, I didn’t even remember that I had brought him. A passerby broke the window and saved his life. The investigation determined that while I was at fault for the incident, I was not competent enough to stand trial for child endangerment. I was also not stable enough to continue to be a dad. As Rachel packed his things, I remember trying to drink in every last detail. Every identifying moment. Everything that I could trade because even though I was losing Samual, I knew I would trade anything to save and prolong his life.

One night during a supervised visit, I found myself in Samuel’s nursery, staring at his crib. He was asleep, his tiny chest rising and falling in rhythm. I stood there, frozen, trying to remember why I’d come.

But I couldn’t.

I looked at him, and for a moment, I didn’t know who he was.

The sticky notes were all that was left of me. One was taped to the wall beside the crib, written in my father’s handwriting, shaky but unmistakable: When the memories are gone, the lake will take you.

I don’t know how long I have left, but I can feel it—the emptiness growing inside me, the pull of something cold and dark.

Somewhere far away, the lake ripples.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Ready-Elk3333 on 2024-11-24 08:42:25+00:00.

---

Hi everyone,

Something happened with my neighbors dog recently, and it has me freaked. I'm hoping there's a logical explanation.

I'm a grad student and I moved across the country to study history and hopefully become a professor one day. I know the academic job market is awful right now, but its always awful--so I'm trying not to let the current climate get me down. However, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't weighing on me. I talk to a therapist on campus, and she suggested that maybe moving to a new place, entering a new program, and all of the work that entails, is stressing me out, and that upping my amount of regular physical exercise would help me calm down. Something about cortisol working its way through the body via movement? I'm in history, not chem, so it's a bit confusing to me.

Anyway, I've been taking long walks after I get home from campus each day. I live alone and walk alone, but I'm a big guy and around here no one has ever really bothered me. Even on days when I walk in the dark late at night, I don't usually have problems. I'm 6 foot 5, so even though I'm out of shape and kind of fat, the size of me usually makes me safe. Usually I walk in the evening and get home right as its starting to get dark. But recently I was assigned to a late night recitation section. I've always tried to get mine first thing in the morning since that's when I'm most focused, but this semester my only options where at night. Because of unavoidable schedule conflicts, I got stuck teaching two recitations--one on Monday ending at 5:50 pm, and one on Friday ending at 9:10 pm. It's a real bummer to be teaching until 9:10 pm, especially because most of my students really don't want to be learning about history on a Friday night. It also means I take my walks really late on Fridays this semester--usually starting around 10:45 and stopping some time after midnight but before 1:00 am. This has actually been kind of cool, because I've seen things I otherwise wouldn't have. Like a family of raccoons out at night looking for food, or deer that have wandered into the area looking for grass to eat. Once I even saw a great horned owl. It's been really neat to see some of the wildlife here, since during the day it's pretty much just squirrels and pigeons. Well, until recently.

This brings me to a few nights ago. I was out on my usual walk when I saw a dog down the street from me. I'm not really a dog person, but I was worried it might be one of my neighbor's pets, so I called out to it. It looked towards me, I felt it lock eyes with me, and then it made this...yelp? Scream? It made a sound dogs don't make. And then it started walking away. I was confused, but started slowly after it. I thought maybe I could get a picture at least, and post it to the grad student facebook page or something. I followed it down the street and it paused under a streetlamp. It was a beautiful animal, large and sleek with patches of white fur and brown fur layered with splotches of black fur. Kind of like a calico cat. I held up my phone and was lining up the shot, when the app timed out and I had to re-enter my passcode. When I looked up, the dog was still under the streetlamp, staring at me. Then, as I watched, the dog rose up onto it's hind legs. It looked...comfortable, standing that way. Like it had been waiting to get back to its normal position. It's jaw was slack, not open and panting like I had thought, but loose, lolling. It's tongue hung out of over its teeth, dribbling saliva.

My skin crawled and my breath caught in my throat as the dog--it was definitely a dog--started walking towards me. It's steps were deliberate, but jerky. All the while its eyes were fixed on me and the dog never blinked. It just stared straight into my face and walked, jaw bouncing against its throat with each awkward lunge forward. I took several steps back, sweat running down my spine. My brain gave me the signal to RUN. I've never felt anything like it before. I've had anxiety attacks, I've been in stressful situations--but this was...different. I felt like I was...prey. That's the only way I can describe it. The thing in front of me posed no physical threat. The dog wasn't a big, muscular breed that I couldn't fight off. And it wasn't rabid. And yet every cell in my body was alert, and begging me to sprint away. Because it was wrong. And although it started off awkward, with every step on two legs the dog's movement became a bit more fluid, a bit more...right? With each step it seemed less like a dog and more like something wearing a dog. Right when I was about to run screaming back to my apartment, a door opened down the block and someone shouted, "Rex! What are you doing outside?"

This older lady stepped out with her hands on her hips. Rex stared at me for a moment more, and then fell forward and back onto four legs. It's jaw snapped back into the right position, but when the dog barked it was still wrong. It's mouth opened and shut, but the sound came after. A beat too late. The woman sighed and shouted down, "Sorry about that! He's a regular Houdini! I swear he's learned to open the doors himself." And the dog turned and ran back to her, darting inside. The door shut and I stared at the street light, the place the dog had been, for a few moments. Then I ran back to my place.After a few hours of trying to puzzle out what I had just seen, I finally fell asleep and woke up in the morning and felt pretty stupid. I thought I must have scared myself or something--made a normal situation seem really creepy.

But then it was time for another walk and I was nervous. I got into the swing of things, and had made it a few blocks, when I heard noises behind me. I turned around and this time, I saw a deer. Part of me was incredibly relieved that it wasn't the dog, but the deer felt off. I realized, with a start, it had the same color eyes as the dog had. Then it barked at me. Again, it wasn't even the deer that scared me--it was the wrongness. The fact that the deer was not a deer at all, but clearly something that was pretending to be a deer--was wearing a deer--but didn't know what a deer sounded like. Even though the mouth moved in time with the sound, it was the wrong sound. Then it's jaw fell open, slaw and hanging and its tongue fell out of its mouth. I saw its hind legs tense, ready to pull it into a standing position. I wasn't going to stick around for this. I've never run so fast in my life. I made it inside and locked the door. I even moved my dresser in front of it. I expected horror movie pounding on the door or a window breaking, but nothing dramatic happened. I finally got the guts to look out the window and there were no deer and no dogs in sight. I got in the shower to try and calm myself down, and that's when I heard something hissing. I wish I were joking, but I'm not. The drain. The drain was making a strange noise. It was making a wrong noise. The water was going down the drain, but it wasn't making a gurgling, splashing sound. Instead, it was making a noise like a whisper. I leaned my head down towards the drain and I swear that the whisper was just my name, over and over and over again. I shut the water off immediately.

Now I'm in bed, trying to force myself to fall asleep. What is happening to me? And why does it only happen at night? I can't figure it out. Maybe I'm just going nuts? But who hallucinates that and nothing else? I can't get the image of the dog out of my head. The slack jaw, the bloated tongue, the erect posture and deliberate steps. I'm dreading Friday. Because even if I don't go on a walk, I will have to walk home from campus. And the path can be long and lonely this time of year, that time of night. What is stalking me? And why does it need to wear other things to visit? Part of me wants to find out. And part of me hopes I never find out anything about this ever again. If you have advice, please leave it below. For now I'm going to try and think of anything other than dogs and deer and water whispering a name it shouldn't know.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Dopabeane on 2024-11-24 14:38:01+00:00.

---

In 1978, a late-night television broadcast of unknown origin aired on a public access channel serving the state of Missouri. No records of the broadcast exist. Witness testimony is all that remains.

The only concrete details regarding the broadcast include the following:

The show aired at 11:45 PM on a Wednesday evening in October

The name of the show was “More Than God is Here”

The host was a man called Reverend Moore. 

The content of the broadcast is less easy to determine. 

Different witnesses offered different descriptions.

One viewer claimed the show contained a vision of heaven itself.

Another insisted it was a standard televangelist grift.

Several more said the host spoke directly to them, addressing them by name through the screen, offering words of comfort and promises of a prosperous future just so long as they followed him.

A dozen viewers the content was a rousing sermon that galvanized and renewed their faith.

Others reported to have seen a man peeling his face off and leering into the camera. One witness went so far as to claim that the show host reached out of the television set with “hideous dead hands” and told her the end of the world was coming, but that he would save her if she would just take his hand.

As previously noted, no record of the broadcast exists. However, records of the response to the show are extant. Letters of complaint, praise, and question remain on file, maintained to this day by the owner of the now-defunct station. 

With the owner’s permission, the Agency made copies of all correspondence related to the broadcast. These copies remain with the Agency, and are available to review on request. (Please note that the Agency of Helping Hands has determined that the owner knows nothing of Notgod More, and simply keeps the correspondence due to the “local folklore” factor.) 

“More Than God is Here” continued to air Wednesday nights at 11:45PM. 

Interestingly, the longer the show aired, the more cohesive viewers’ memories became. By the eighth episode, the recollections of witnesses are similar enough that the Agency is confident each individual saw — or at least perceived — the same broadcast. (Why there were such disparities in recollections in the first place is still not known.) Detailed accounts and abridged summaries of the episodes are available upon request. 

 Under the circumstances, it is important to note that the otherwise lacking illusion of Notgod More’s humanity appears flawless on camera. For reasons the Agency has been unable to determine, any and every part of him appears perfectly human when photographed, videoed, or even simply viewed through a camera lens. This phenomenon undoubtedly allowed him to cultivate his popularity. 

The show continued to air for a year. The one-year anniversary episode of “More Than God is Here” ended with the host, Reverend Moore, inviting his viewers to meet him in the flesh next Wednesday at 11:45PM at a local lake. 

Despite the strangeness of the day, hour, and the request itself, it is estimated that approximately seventy people turned up to meet Reverend Moore. 

Witness accounts are difficult to digest, each seemingly more fantastical and horrifying than the last. The one component on which all accounts agree is that this was an evening of miracles both great and terrible, an evening so profoundly spectacular that ended with an awestruck attendee asking the question that was on everyone’s mind by that point: 

“Are you God?”

To which the reverend responded, “I’m not God. I’m more.” 

What followed his pronouncement led to the creation of an off-grid cult dedicated to this copper-eyed miracle worker of unknown origin. 

A miracle worker and a god he may have been, but generous he was not. According to even his most devoted follower, Notgod was a demanding lord. In exchange for his miracles and favor, followers were required to surrender their money, belongings, dwellings, even their loved ones if Notgod asked. Those who did were rewarded beyond comprehension (or so it is claimed; to date, no witnesses have been able to provide concrete details regarding these rewards, and no evidence of any reward bestowed by Notgod More is known to exist.) 

Those who did not give what they were instructed to surrender were eaten. 

Notgod More’s diet was limited indeed: He drank lake water and cannibalized his less cooperative followers, who were butchered according to a specific ritual that involved all members of his cult. The ritual ended with Notgod More eating the brain and heart of the victim, then requiring his followers to consume the rest of the carcass.

The Agency possesses a full recording of one such ritual. Access is subject to clearance and permission from both Dr. Hyde and the requestor’s chain of command. 

Notgod More came to the Agency’s attention when a teenage escapee from the cult reported him to local police. The report was dismissed. As a minor, the witness was remanded to state custody. Due to the horrors he had witnessed, the youth was not able to achieve mental stability and as a result was eventually incarcerated at a secure inpatient facility.

From there, his story wound its way through the institution and eventually reached a Varangian agent whose prompt attention to the matter led the Agency to the compound of Notgod More. 

The details of the scene remain classified to this day, and as of this writing there are no plans to declassify them. Suffice to say the condition of Notgod More’s cult was so dire and the threat posed by setting them free so uniquely critical that—for the first and only time in Agency history— Administration issued an order to terminate each and every human being onsite. 

Agency personnel attempted to terminate Notgod More alongside his followers, but were unsuccessful. Fortunately, they were able to capture and transport him to the North American Pantheon, where he remains to this day.

Notgod More has alternately described himself as “Not God,” “The Worm in the Heart of the World,” “Your Destroyer,” “Their Creator,” and “The Nemesis Star.” He has not elaborated on any of these descriptors. However, it should be noted that Dr. Wingaryde has made a measurable amount of progress with him over the years.

To summarize, Notgod More is the chosen name of an entity that located, collected, and to an extent “farmed” his victims by employing the novel strategy of masquerading as a prosperity gospel televangelist. 

As is the case with several inmates in our care, the Agency has no idea what Notgod More actually is, where he came from, the true extent of his capabilities, or his motivations.

Here is what the Agency of Helping Hands does know: 

Upon casual inspection, Notgod More appears to be a middle-aged man of generally nondescript appearance with dark hair, a practiced smile, and notably bright eyes. He is partial to dark suits, shiny brown shoes, and a lightly feathered haircut that somewhat, if not perfectly, recalls styles that were popular in the United States in the 1970s. 

However, the normalcy of his appearance is entirely illusory. The longer and more closely one looks, the thinner the illusion becomes. 

Notgod More loves to speak. He is extremely charismatic and can easily mesmerize individuals as well as crowds, sometimes instantaneously. For this reason, all personnel assigned to Notgod More are issued with specialized ear protection and eyewear.

Immediate distraction of his targets is necessary because Notgod More is always smiling, and his teeth are the first major indicator that he is not human. He has front-facing “masking teeth” teeth that look like standard adult teeth. However, behind the masking teeth on both the upper and lower jaws are a set of short, small, excessively sharp teeth that curve back toward his throat. 

His eyes are the second indicator. Notgod More’s eyes appear bright brown at first glance, and appear so at all times to subjects under his influence. In reality, however, they are a highly unusual copper hue with mild reflective properties. While “humanity” is a difficult quality to quantify, it cannot be argued that this quality is missing from Notgod More’s eyes, which are very bright, very flat, and constantly moving. 

The skin of his face is the third indicator. While healthy-looking and natural for a man of the age he is projecting, Notgod More’s flesh veers into the uncanny valley in two areas: at the corners of the mouth, where observers note a peculiar “pinned” appearance, and around the eyes, where it is unnaturally loose in a way that recalls (as one agent described it) “a starched shirt that’s way too big.” 

The fourth indicator is the appearance of his hands. While the skin visible elsewhere on Notgod More’s body is a normal, healthy color, his hands are discolored. The tops are a uniform middling grey hue with a greenish aspect, while the bottoms are swollen and dark purple – that is, livid.

In other words, Notgod More has the hands of a corpse. 

Despite the myriad dangers and difficulties posed by Notgod More, Agency command is tentatively hopeful that Dr. Wingaryde’s collaboration with the organization’s newly-commissioned T-Class agent will produce new and important insights into the entity’s origins, abilities, and motivations, and hopefully provide information that can eventually be used to terminate him. 

That Notgod More must be terminated is not up for debate. However, other aspects of his case...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Random_User_499 on 2024-11-24 07:11:11+00:00.

---

It started as a joke, really. You know, the classic "Canadian girlfriend" bit — the kind of thing lonely guys say when they’re too embarrassed to admit they’re striking out. That’s what my friends thought I was doing, at least. I told them her name was Elise, and that we’d met during a trip up to Ontario last summer. When they asked where exactly in Ontario, I just shrugged and said, “Some small town. You wouldn’t know it.” I said it casually, like it didn’t matter. Like I wasn’t picturing her face every time I closed my eyes.

But here’s the thing: I can’t actually remember meeting her. Not the first time, anyway. I think... I was by the lake? There was fog, or maybe it was smoke, and her voice cut through it, soft and sweet, asking me if I was lost. I know it sounds crazy, but I swear I didn’t feel lost until she asked. After that, it was like I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

When I got back home, she’d call me late at night, whispering things that made my heart race and my skin crawl all at once. I never got her number; she just found me. My friends say it's weird that I don't have pictures of her or messages to prove she exists. My mom even gave me that sad, pitying look when I brought her up over dinner last week.

I get why they don’t believe me. I barely believe myself sometimes. But she’s real. She’s real. And tonight, she told me she’s coming to visit.

Elise arrived on a Thursday, just as the first snow of the season started to fall. I’d told her to meet me at this little diner near my apartment — a cozy, quiet spot where we could finally sit down face-to-face. I was nervous, but in an excited way, like the kind of jitters you get before a first date. My friends had laughed when I told them she was coming, of course. “Sure she is,” Matt said with a smirk. But this time, I’d show them.

When she walked in, the whole room seemed to shift. It wasn’t just me noticing her — the waitress stopped mid-order, and even the guy behind the counter turned to look. Elise was tall and willowy, her black coat dusted with snowflakes, her dark hair falling in loose waves around her pale face. She smiled when she saw me, and it felt like the air had been sucked out of the diner.

“You’re here,” I said, standing up so quickly I nearly knocked my coffee over. My voice came out louder than I’d meant, and a few people glanced our way.

“Of course I’m here,” she said, her voice soft, almost musical. She slid into the booth across from me, her movements impossibly smooth, like she was gliding instead of walking. I couldn’t stop staring at her eyes — they were this strange shade of grey, like storm clouds, and they seemed to drink in every flicker of light.

We talked for hours. Or at least, I think we did. I can’t really remember what we said, exactly. It all sort of blurred together, like a dream you only half-remember when you wake up. I know I told her about my life, about how boring it had been lately. She listened, smiling that same faint smile, her head tilted just slightly to the side like she was studying me.

At some point, I realized the diner had emptied out. The waitress was gone, and the only sound was the faint hum of the fluorescent lights.

“It’s late,” Elise said, her voice breaking the silence. “Walk me to my hotel?”

“Of course,” I said, grabbing my coat. Outside, the snow had stopped, and the streets were eerily quiet, the kind of quiet that feels too big for a city. As we walked, Elise didn’t say much, but her presence was... magnetic. She brushed her hand against mine a few times, and every time she did, a chill ran up my arm. Not an uncomfortable chill, though — it was more like the kind of shiver you get when someone whispers too close to your ear.

When we reached her hotel, an old, run-down building I didn’t even know was still in use, she stopped at the door and turned to me. “Thank you,” she said, her grey eyes locked on mine.

“For what?” I asked, laughing nervously.

“For trusting me.”

Her words didn’t make sense, but before I could ask, she leaned in and kissed me. Her lips were cold, colder than the snow, but I didn’t pull away. When she stepped back, there was a strange look on her face, like she was... relieved.

“Goodnight,” she said, and then she was gone, disappearing into the shadows of the old hotel.

I stood there for a while, staring after her. The wind had picked up, and for a moment, I thought I heard something carried on it — a low, distant sound, almost like someone crying. But it was probably just the wind. At least, that’s what I told myself as I headed home.

The next few days felt like a blur. I kept thinking about Elise—about her strange, magnetic presence, the way she seemed to understand me in a way no one else ever had. My friends were still skeptical. I couldn’t blame them. They’d never met her, after all. They laughed when I told them about our walk to her hotel, calling it “just another one of those Canadian ghost stories.”

But things started getting... off.

It started with Matt. He was the first one to go missing. I’d seen him the day before, just hanging out at the bar. He made a joke about me and my “imaginary girlfriend” and I told him he would see that she was real at our next poker night, which was tommorow.. But when I texted him the that evening to confirm, there was no answer. I figured he was just busy, maybe passed out drunk at home, but when I showed up at his apartment, the door was wide open, like it had been blown off its hinges.

There was no sign of struggle, no sign of Matt at all. His phone was on the couch, still buzzing with missed calls and messages. His keys were lying on the kitchen counter. The only thing out of place was a trail of wet, muddy footprints leading to the bathroom... and then, nothing. It was like he had vanished into thin air. I called the cops, of course. But they found nothing. No clues, no signs of forced entry, no explanation.

Then it was my mom. She was the next to disappear.

It was the strangest thing. I’d gone over to visit her, bring her some groceries—just the usual Saturday routine. But when I walked into her house, everything was normal. The lights were on, the TV was playing a rerun of some cooking show she liked. The smell of her roast chicken filled the air. But there was no sign of her.

I checked every room, called her name, even looked in the backyard. I thought maybe she was out with a friend. But no. The house was eerily still, and when I called her cell, it went straight to voicemail.

I waited for hours before finally giving up, the pit in my stomach growing deeper with every minute. I thought about her last words when we spoke, how she’d laughed when I told her about Elise, how she had tried to make me promise I’d stop seeing her. She didn’t believe me, either. She thought I was just lonely. Just imagining things.

But the thing is, I’m not imagining it. Elise is real. And now my mom’s gone. And Matt. And I think—no, I know—I’m next.

I didn’t go to the police. Not this time. They’d already looked at me like I was losing my mind when I reported Matt missing. When I went to my mom’s house and found it empty, they would give me that same look again. They'd just tell me to stop wasting their time. To them I was just making it all up, they had given me the same look my friends gave me when I talked about Elise. Like I was crazy, or desperate and lonely. Like they were caught between laughing at my “joke” or feeling sorry for my desperation.

But I wasn’t. Elise wasn’t some joke. She wasn’t just some girl I’d imagined. She was real, and I knew it now more than ever.

When I left my mom’s house, I tried to shake off the sense of dread crawling up my spine. I needed answers. I needed to know where they had gone. I thought about calling someone else—anyone—but I didn’t. It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t believe me, not after everything that had happened.

I came back to my apartment, exhausted, my hands still shaking from the search. I didn’t expect anyone to be there. But when I walked through the door, it felt like walking into the middle of something I couldn’t escape.

The living room light was on, casting a dull glow over the room. At first, I thought it was nothing—maybe I had left it on earlier, or maybe I’d forgotten. But then I saw her. Elise. She was sitting on my couch, her posture perfect, her eyes watching me with that same unnerving calm.

She just sat there, like she was waiting for me to say something. Her coat was the same as it had been the night we first met—dark, heavy, like she’d been walking through the snow. But the thing that struck me, that twisted my insides, was how... still she was. It was like she wasn’t even breathing.

“You’re the only one left,” she finally said, her voice like cold silk. “The only one who hasn’t... understood.”

I felt a chill run down my spine, but I didn’t move.

“You took them,” I whispered. “Where are they? Where’s my mom? Where’s Matt?”

She tilted her head to one side, her eyes narrowing slightly. “I didn’t take them, love. They’re just... elsewhere.”

The word elsewhere hung in the air, like it was something heavier than it should have been.

I felt my hands start to tremble. “Where? What the hell does that mean?”

“You’re asking the wrong question,” she replied, standing up slowly, almost like she was savoring the moment. “You should be asking yourself why you’re still here.”

I didn’t know what to say. My head was spinning. This didn’t make...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Theeaglestrikes on 2024-11-24 04:28:38+00:00.

---

Don’t read this book if it stumbles upon you.

I say that because you won’t stumble upon it.

My name’s Josiah, and I’m the single father of a two-year-old boy named Robbie. Named after his mother, Roberta. I hope Robbie feels some sort of connection, when he’s older, to the mother he never met — never will meet, thanks to the obstetrician who failed to perform that emergency C-section in a timely manner.

The last two years have trialled and taxed me; taxed my soul to bankruptcy. I’m deep in the red now, with nothing but pain left to pay my debts. Yet, this past week has been the most nightmarish. More nightmarish, even, than seeing my own wife’s body on that icy, steel examination table.

On Monday, Carl and Mary came over. They visit most evenings, actually. I teasingly call it their date night. Anyway, they gifted a children’s story titled:

Peek-A-One-Two-Boo: He Who Shows For Supper

It was a broad, hardy book with paperboard pages. On its cover, against a white backdrop, was a picture of a woman with one hand covering her right eye. She wore a sprawling and unseemly smile — wily, too, as if she were privy to some awful secret; a secret specifically about me.

Anyway, my eyes were drawn to small, black letters beneath her disembodied head and hand. Peek-a-one. And beside her was a man, grinning even more atrociously, with hands covering both eyes. Naturally, then, he was labelled: Peek-a-two. However, there was no Peek-a-boo. Given the name of the book, I had expected that to be the natural conclusion.

“Mary found this whilst cleaning out her grandfather’s attic,” Carl explained. “I said you might want it for Robbie.”

I didn’t, but Carl was a good friend and a sensitive soul; it would’ve hurt his feelings for me to reject the present. Screw me for being a people pleaser. And I know that sounds ungrateful, but it’s hard to articulate what unnerved me. I just didn’t like the look of the book; all frayed around the edges and ridden with mould from an attic untouched for years.

Most of all, I didn’t like what Mary had squealed before her husband passed the book to me.

“I used to love this story as a child. Would’ve kept reading it forever if Grandpa hadn’t hidden it from me.”

What an odd thing to say, I thought.

Only, it wasn’t odd. It was, in some unexplained way, downright terrifying.

I sent my two closest friends home around six in the evening, as I wanted to put Robbie to bed — also wanted to be alone. I love the heck out of Carl and Mary, but they fuss and fuss. Fuss until my head pounds and I reflexively reach for Mr Merlot, my dearest friend of all.

Anyhow, just before bedtime, I started reading Peek-A-One-Two-Boo to a giggling Robbie as he squirmed in my lap. The eight-paged book told the tale of a bizarre man named He Who Shows For Supper.

He shows when you need him

Shows for supper and rest

Peek-a-one, peek-a-two, peek-a-one-two-boo

On Page One, there was a home’s front hallway with an open door looking onto blackness. Blackness beyond night. It felt, to my eyes, painful. More than a printing error. Something was there, worming through the dark.

And should you not feed him

He’ll be far from his best

Peek-a-one, peek-a-two, peek-a-one-two-boo

On Page Two, there wasn’t a dining table, but a bathroom; hardly the right setting for crockery and dining utensils. A blue, floral shower curtain was drawn across the bath. A drape open only a tad at the side of the tub, but the gap was wide enough to reveal a head-shaped shadow on the tiled wall. The head of something sitting in the bath. At least, it looked like a head, presumably belonging to the visitor: He Who Shows For Supper. But I wasn’t convinced by that, and I didn’t like the image at all. Didn’t like any of it.

So set out the china

And a tall glass of red

Peek-a-one, peek-a-two, peek-a-one-two-boo

On Page Three, a set of manly hands cradled an empty wine glass and a white plate of some brown, indiscernible dish — like an artist’s unfinished afterthought or a haunting thing that the publisher had decided to censor. I leant towards the latter. But that unsettled me, so I tried to convince myself it had been either a misprint or an ink smudge from decades of damp.

The bath must be running

For the bump on his head

Peek-a-one, peek-a-two, peek-a-one-two-boo

On Page Four, through the lulling shower curtain, the bathroom light cast a silhouette of what still seemed to be a head. Unlike the third page, however, it had sprouted a large lump.

Just turn both your eyeballs

And keep his growth low

Peek-a-one, peek-a-two, peek-a-one-two-boo

On Page Five, the bathwater was overflowing — running over the upper rim of the tub in streaks of a murky brown; ink that I hoped, like the blurry meal on the third page, to be an unintended discolouration of some sort.

And once his head’s level

He should get up and go

On Page Six, there was an image staring down the barrel of the upstairs hallway, directly to the bathroom’s open door. And within that tall frame was only blackness, much like that very first image. Oh, believe me, I wanted to stop reading, but I didn’t. Couldn’t, perhaps.

But if not, then oh, no

On Page Seven, there was only white text against a black page.

Peek-a-one, peek-a-two, peek-a-one-two-boo

And in reverse, on Page Eight, there was only black text against white.

“Well, that was haunting, Robbie,” I said as the boy sucked his thumb and contentedly eyed me. “Thanks, Mary, for sharing your childhood trauma with us. Peek-a-boo.”

“Pikachu…” Robbie said, tittering away gleefully in my lap.

“Nearly,” I laughed. “Boy, do I wish we were watching Pokémon.”

“BOO!” my son loudly responded, making me jump; making himself chuckle more noisily.

“Are you proud of yourself for that?” I asked, stifling a laugh. “I’m glad one of us enjoyed it.”

“Bed,” Robbie yawned, mashing his eyes with tiny, balled-up fists.

“Is it bedtime for me?” I teased. “Or for peek-a-you?”

“Peek-a-one-two-boo,” hissed a voice small, child-like, but false.

Instinctively, my fearful eyes shot down to Robbie. Mid-yawn, the boy dozily eyed his racecar bed. Now, it could’ve been him who whispered those five horrid words in quick succession, but it wasn’t. Robbie rarely strings more than a pair of words together. He occasionally stretches to three words, and perhaps even four, but not five. And not those five. Certainly not in such a clear, eloquent manner. And not in such a hushed whisper.

I blamed it on sleep-deprivation, like everything else; everything that happened to me, and everything I made happen. Then I put both the book and Robbie to bed. I don’t remember what I ate or watched on the television from there onwards. My life has been a series of motions for a long time. I live so that Robbie lives.

I blinked, then it was Tuesday. I invited Carl and Mary over, and they didn’t need to be asked twice. It’s a rarity for me to reach out. Of course, they weren’t expecting to be apprehended.

“This isn’t a children’s book,” I said, waving Peek-A-One-Two-Boo in their faces before they’d even taken off their coats. “It’s a horror story about a stranger eating supper in the bath.”

Mary raised an eyebrow, eyed her husband, then she laughed. “I don’t know what you read last night, but it wasn’t Peek-A-One-Two-Boo.”

“What?” I asked.

She smirked, then replied, “Grandpa read that book to me every single day. I remember the story. It’s about a picnic on a train.”

I answered by thrusting the book into my friend’s hands, and she rolled her eyes before skimming through the pages. But her face quickly whitened.

“What?” she whispered. “Josiah, this isn’t… I don’t understand. This must be, I don’t know, some other book in the Peak-A-One-Two-Boo series?”

“Well, you tell me,” I said. “You gave it to me. This haunting thing.”

“You sound just like Grandpa,” Mary smirked. “He hated it too. I even caught him throwing the book out once. It ended up right back in the living room though. Gosh, you should’ve seen the look on his face when it showed up. Like he’d seen a ghost.”

Something deeply unnerved me about that anecdote. And I was so focused on Mary that I didn’t even realise Carl had the book in his hands.

“He shows when you need him,” he read. “For some—”

But before my friend made it any farther, he was interrupted by knocking on the front door. Something that made Mary and Carl chuckle. And part of me — the part that still believes, in some way, that monsters live under my bed — expected to see a man at the door.

But it was the pizza delivery boy, standing in the rain and frowning. Frowning as thick, murky water poured off the lip of the awning onto his face. It was, strangely, muddying his face, and he quickly shoved the boxes into my hands before scurrying away.

Well, obviously, I thought my home’s exterior might need a clean. However, when I stepped off the porch to take a look, I was also muddied; muddied by rain from the very sky above. Water just as filthy as that trickling off the edge of my awning. Brown paste marring my skin. And strangely, as I looked out at the neighbourhood beyond my property line, the rain looked clearer. As if some dirty cloud were hanging only ...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CreepyStoriesJR on 2024-11-23 18:02:51+00:00.

---

I've been working the night shift at this run-down motel for a few months now. It’s the kind of place you’d expect to see on some ghost-hunting TV show, with its dimly lit corridors, outdated decor, and eerily quiet atmosphere. I never thought I’d end up here, but after my last job fell through, I was desperate. The motel sits just outside of a small, nearly forgotten town, nestled far enough from civilization that cell reception is barely a thing. And as if to add to the ominous vibe, tonight I’d be the only staff member on duty.

It was a typical shift, starting at 10 PM. The manager told me earlier that day to expect a large group check-in around 10:30 PM. A bit unusual, considering we almost never have full bookings. The motel is small and usually quiet, its rooms accessible only from the inside hallway. There are no outdoor entrances like the ones you see in cheap roadside motels. So, when I learned that an entire group had booked every single room, it felt strange.

I tried to shrug it off and focus on my usual tasks, straightening up the front desk, ensuring the register was in order, and preparing the keycards. But an unsettling feeling crept into my gut. Something about tonight felt... off.

By 10:30 PM, I was on edge, waiting for the group to show up. I kept looking toward the entrance, expecting to see a crowd, but only one man walked in. He approached the front desk slowly, his steps almost silent against the old, faded carpet.

The man looked odd. He wore an outdated suit, and his face was partially hidden by a wide-brimmed hat. His eyes, though barely visible in the dim light, seemed to hold an unsettling gleam. He walked up to the counter and set a bundle of cash on the desk.

"I'm here for the check-in," he said, his voice smooth but lacking warmth.

"Right," I replied, eyeing the stack of cash. "You're with the group, correct?" I glanced around, hoping to see others entering behind him. But the entrance remained empty.

"They'll arrive later," he answered, his lips curling into a grin. "No need to worry. I'll handle everything."

Normally, we require IDs for all guests checking in, but paying upfront with cash? We usually turn a blind eye, especially when business is this slow.

"Okay, I'll get you checked in. Here's the key to room 105." I pushed the keycard toward him, still feeling uneasy. "So, when are the others arriving?"

"They'll come in due time," he replied, turning to leave. "Oh, one more thing." He stopped mid-stride, glancing back at me, his grin widening. "I'll need to give you some... instructions. I'll be back in ten minutes."

Before I could say anything, he disappeared down the hallway. I watched him go, his figure vanishing into the shadows cast by the dim hallway lights. An eerie silence filled the lobby.

Ten minutes passed, and then fifteen. I glanced at the clock on the wall, its ticking suddenly louder than usual. An eerie silence filled the lobby, broken only by the occasional creak of the old building settling around me.

That’s when I heard it, the faint sound of children giggling. My head snapped up, my eyes darting toward the entrance. I stood up from my chair, straining to see through the glass doors, but the dim light from the parking lot revealed nothing. I felt a prickle of fear rise on my skin. Maybe some of the guests had brought kids with them? I told myself, trying to rationalize it, but I knew something was off.

Suddenly, the man appeared in front of the desk, almost out of thin air. I jumped, my heart slamming against my ribs. "Did I scare you?" he asked, a smirk curling at the edges of his lips. His eyes gleamed under the shadow of his hat.

I forced a laugh. "No, not really," I lied, trying to play it cool.

He leaned forward, his gaze piercing through the dim light of the reception area. "Listen closely," he began, his voice low and deliberate. "This group I’m with… they’re a bit different. There are certain... rules you need to follow for the rest of the night."

With that, he pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to me. "Read it," he said, his grin widening as he watched me take the paper. The look on his face sent a chill crawling down my spine.

"Okay," I replied hesitantly, holding the paper between my fingers.

"Pay attention," he added before turning and walking away, his head still turned towards me until he vanished into the hallway. I stared after him, my mouth dry, feeling like I’d just been dropped into some kind of twisted game.

Shaking off the feeling, I set the paper down on the counter and added it to a pile of other documents, thank you notes, customer requests, things I usually ignored until the end of my shift. I had other work to do, like finalizing the check-in, so I turned my attention back to my paperwork, hoping to lose myself in the monotony.

Minutes passed, and the eerie silence returned. Then, I heard it: the sound of footsteps coming from the hallway. I sighed, knowing the strange man was the only guest at the moment. Great, I thought, not looking forward to any more interactions. The footsteps grew louder, coming closer, but then... they stopped, abruptly, just at the edge of my line of sight.

I waited, expecting the man to appear around the corner, but nothing happened. Seconds ticked by in eerie stillness. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and a wave of anxiety washed over me.

Maybe I was just being paranoid. I needed to make sure everything was okay. Slowly, I stepped away from the reception desk and crept toward the hallway. I held my breath and peered around, half-expecting to see the man standing there.

But there was nothing. An empty hallway greeted me, silent and dimly lit. I felt a knot of unease tighten in my stomach. I had definitely heard footsteps. Shaking my head, I turned back toward the reception, telling myself I was just imagining things.

But as I walked back, my eyes fell on the desk, and my heart skipped a beat. The piece of paper the man had given me was now lying face-up on top of the stack. I froze, staring at it. I knew I had placed it beneath a pile of other papers, yet here it was, almost as if it wanted me to see it.

Taking a deep breath, I approached the desk. My hand trembled as I picked up the paper. Maybe it was time to read whatever was on it.

I unfolded the paper with shaky hands. I swallowed hard and started to read the neatly typed list.

GUEST'S RULES FOR THE NIGHT

RULE 1:

If you see any of us standing in the hallway at night, do not acknowledge us. We are there for a reason, and it has nothing to do with you.

RULE 2:

If you encounter a crying child in the lobby or hallway, do not approach. Simply turn around and hum softly to yourself until you are out of sight.

My eyes widened as I remembered the faint giggling I’d heard earlier. I glanced nervously toward the lobby, half-expecting to see a child standing there, but it was empty. My grip on the paper tightened as I continued reading.

RULE 3:

If you hear multiple voices coming from a single guest room, do not be alarmed. Speak only when the voice you recognize asks you a direct question.

RULE 4:

Do not leave the front desk between 1:30 AM and 2:00 AM, even if you hear screams for help, or for any other reason!

I felt a cold sweat break out across my forehead. I checked the clock, it was just past midnight.

I paused, looking over the remaining rules on the paper. There were more, but I couldn’t bring myself to continue. This whole situation was spiraling into madness, and I wanted no part of it. I set the paper aside, shaking my head. No way was I going to deal with whatever sick game this was. I just needed to get through the night.

I leaned back in my chair, trying to calm down. I closed my eyes, taking a few slow, deep breaths. It was almost midnight. The “group” that the man mentioned still hadn't arrived. Maybe he was just pulling some kind of bizarre prank on me. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. I just had to get through the night.

As the minutes ticked by, the lobby grew eerily quiet. The silence pressed in on me, heavy and thick. I was staring at the clock when the sound of footsteps filled the hallway again. Slow, deliberate steps, growing louder and louder, until they stopped at the edge of my vision.

“Oh no… not again,” I muttered under my breath. My heart pounded, and a cold chill ran down my spine. I braced myself, waiting for what would happen next.

From the hallway emerged a tall, thin man. His face was obscured, partially covered by a cloth or mask of some sort. His limbs were unnaturally elongated, his movements jerky. I froze, my mind racing in that moment.

The tall figure approached me with slow, deliberate steps, his head tilting slightly as if observing me. I felt every muscle in my body tense up. "Can I help you?" I stammered, trying to keep my voice steady.

He didn't respond. He just stared at me, his presence oppressive, as if he were sucking the air out of the room. A faint buzzing noise began to fill the air, emanating from the man. It grew louder, worming its way into my ears, vibrating through my skull.

I glanced down at the desk in an attempt to break eye contact, and there it was, the list of rules. My eyes darted across the page until I found what I was looking for:

RULE 5:

If a guest stares at you for more than 5 seconds, close your eyes and count to five. When you open them, they should be gone.

The buzzing intensified, growing almost...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Relative-Obscurity on 2024-11-23 23:25:29+00:00.

---

I was sitting back at my desk with my feet up, reading one of my students' three hundred page dissertations, entitled "Ruminations in String Theory", when I heard a knock on my office door.

But before I could even answer, a middle-aged chap donning a baseball cap and a five o'clock shadow, casually let himself in.

"Professor Windsor?" He asked, in a fairly heavy Boston accent, as he closed the door behind him.

"Last time I checked." I replied, in an even heavier British accent, my regal accent contrasting with his… well… less regal accent.

I smiled…

...But he didn't smile back.

That’s when I noticed the golden badge that was dangling from around his neck.

"Detective John O'Brien." He introduced himself with a gruff voice, before continuing, "Hear they flew you all the way out from England, to head the physics program?"

"That they did." I replied.

"Well, Professor… We have reason to believe that there's a serial killer stalking the city... and we need your help."

“My help?” I laughed. “That’s rubbish. I haven’t heard any reports of a serial killer.”

“That’s because for all intents and purposes… there’s nothing to report. The people he kills… are from the outskirts of society. No IDs. No family. And based on how he’s killing them… the department’s decided to… keep it under wraps.”

"How’s he killing them?" I asked, confused by where he was going with it.

That's when he reached into his pocket, removed something, and tossed it onto my desk. "Found this on his last victim."

I put on my spectacles and took a closer look.

It was a photograph of a blood-spattered body, atop of which was placed a handwritten note containing a series of equations…

...Equations that I was all too familiar with.

"Physics." I said, "I see your killer fancies himself something of a science enthusiast."

"We’re fairly confident that these are clues to his next murder. And we were hoping that you might be able to help us... decode them."

“How many have there been?”

“Ten so far. And we think there are only two left.”

“What makes you think that?”

“He wrote us a letter. Apparently each death represents one of the 12 basic laws of physics. And after the 12th, he plans to disappear.”

“Which laws are left?”

“Well, there were 3. The 3 laws of motion. But your buddy here,” He said, pointing to the photograph. “He was the first of the 3… Inertia. The last 2 are-”

“Acceleration and Action-Reaction.” I interrupted, finishing his sentence.

“And that’s exactly why we need your help, professor.”

I laughed. "Despite the stereotype, Detective O’ Brien, I'm afraid this British chap is far from a sleuth. And I really must be getting home. I wish you the best with your investigation-”

"Listen, Professor," He interrupted, "I'm just gonna be straight up with you. This wasn't my idea, getting you involved. But the chief's got it in his head that someone like yourself... an expert in your field… could help us find this guy. So do it or don't do it… either's fine by me. It's my job to find this sicko either way. Just let me know, so I can get back to work."

He had given me an out. An out, which I happily accepted.

"Well then, if it's no skin off your back, Detective. I'll have to regretfully decline." I said decidedly, before throwing on my overcoat, and gesturing to the desk. “As you can see, I have far too many papers to catch up on.”

He started to open his mouth, as if he was about to argue, but stopped himself, before tossing his business card onto my desk and saying, “Call me if you change your mind.”

And with that, he simply shrugged his shoulders and walked out of my office, the door slamming behind him.

—

I honestly didn't think much of the encounter at the time, and, by the next day, I had already forgotten about it, much too preoccupied with what was now a heaping pile of dissertations on my desk.

“Ryan Murphy.” I said aloud rather unapologetically, as I picked up the report at the top of the stack, trying to recall which of my students he was. After all, there were countless students in my classes that year, let alone over the years. How was I ever supposed to remember them all?

After reviewing Ryan’s paper, I marked it with an ‘F,’ before muttering a single word under my breath, “Rubbish.”

I took a deep breath and reached for the next report, but before I could, something caught my eye on my bookshelf.

It was a copy of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, and containing his 3 laws of motion.

The book immediately brought me back to my conversation with the detective. For a moment, I sat there, wrestling with the decision to entertain O’Brien’s invitation, or forget it altogether.

Well fuck me. I thought to myself, as I leaned back in my chair, and let out a conflicted sigh, eventually caving in, and picking up my mobile phone. Fuck it.

RING. RING. RING.

“O’Brien.” He answered, in his thick Boston accent.

“Evening, Detective. It’s Professor Windsor.”

"What happened to regretfully declining?" He replied, with a smug smile on his face, that I couldn't see… but knew was there.

I simply replied, "Send me the equations."

—

Later that night, whilst treating myself to a cheeky drink at the Irish pub that was conveniently located below my flat, I stared down at my mobile phone, desperately trying to make some sense of the killer's puzzle.

They were physics equations for sure. But they didn’t make any sense. The killer was surely familiar with science, but had purposely arranged the symbols in a haphazard way, as if spelling something out with them.

What the fuck could these equations, in combination with one another, possibly mean? I wondered, as I took a sip of my stout. At the time, pubs in the states weren't necessarily known for the quality of their stouts, but this one was a special kind of foul. Nevertheless, I drank it anyway, the closest thing to a taste of home that I was going to find.

"What's that symbol for?" The patron sitting next me interjected, in yet another heavy Boston accent.

Instinctively, I moved to cover my mobile phone, assuming that he saw the clue, but I quickly realised that he was actually pointing to the patch on my sweater.

"Oh this?" I replied, "It's for Tottenham... Where I'm from. Or its team I should say."

"What kind of team?”

“Football.”

“You a Pats fan?” He asked.

“Oh, not that football...” I began, before realising that it wasn’t worth attempting to explain to him that, to the rest of the world, football was actually played with your feet.

"Tottenham’s in England?"

“Yes, sir.”

“Your English accent. It’s pretty subtle.”

“Well, I spent some time in the states as a kid.”

"They got snow like this over there?" He asked, pointing out the window to the falling snow,  which had now amounted to about an inch. The first inch… of what was predicted to be one of the worst blizzards on record.

"Not like this." I replied with a smile.

"How long you been here?"

"Just a year now."

"Well fuck… welcome to Boston." He said, before turning to the bartender. "Hey, Danny, get my friend over here a beer on me."

"Cheers, mate."

But despite the friendly gesture, I couldn't help but still feel melancholy, empty, alone. It had been a year since my fateful voyage across the pond, but I still couldn’t help but feel haunted by the life I left behind.

I spent the rest of the night frantically attempting to solve the killer's riddle, eventually passing out on the floor with my mobile phone on my chest, my body unintentionally resembling the photo of his last victim.

—

When I woke up the next morning, it suddenly hit me. Somehow, after a night of banging my head against the wall, the clue suddenly made sense.

“Acceleration.” I said aloud, remembering the theme of the next murder. “And an equation for gas, PV = nRT. That's it! He's gonna strike someone with a vehicle!”

I reached for my mobile phone, which had fallen to the floor beside me over the course of the night, and picked it up, excited to inform Detective O’Brien of my findings. But before I could dial his number, I heard a knock on my apartment door.

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

CLICK.

I opened it, to find the detective himself simply standing there, with a disapproving look on his face.

"I did it!" I cried out, excitedly.

"Did what?" He asked, with a foul expression on his face.

"I solved it! He's gonna hit his next victim with a car!”

But O’Brien couldn't have been less impressed. Instead, he simply chided me.

"Hit his next victim with a car? Too little, too late, professor."

My jaw dropped.

"Already?"

"He moves fast."

"But you must admit. I was right."

"You were late."

"But the victim. He was hit by a car?”

"Yes."

"So what you're saying is, late or not, I was right."

"Nope."

"Why not?”

"Cause I'm never gonna give you that satisfaction."

"Fair enough. So now what?"

"Let's take a ride."

—

Fifteen minutes later, we were driving through the city on I-93, on our way to Southie, where, from what Detective O’Brien had told me, the killer’s 11th victim had, sure enough, been crushed to death by a vehicle.

For most of the ride, we sat in silence, the only sound to be heard being that of the windscreen wipers swishing back and forth, as they cleared the rapidly falling snow from the windscreen.

Detective O'Brien occasionally sipped away at a styrofoam coffee cup that he'd bought from what I'd deduced… must have been the only coffee chain in the Commonwealth.

"Ever see a...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CreepyClothDoll on 2024-11-23 22:53:15+00:00.

---

I didn’t scream when Deb brought out the platter. The dish was large, white, and decorated with little porcelain angels– the ‘good china’ for special occasions. I had thought there was something grotesque about those little porcelain angels before Deb set her masterpiece upon it. 

It was the conflict-avoidance in me that stopped the scream. But it didn’t stop my jaw from dropping. 

“Mom, you said you weren’t going to do this this time,” Derrick said through his hands. 

“Well, no, I told you on the phone, we had a surprise visitor yesterday,” said Deb.

“Bet you never saw a thanksgiving turkey like that in Minneapolis,” Trent grunted at me, before smugly, theatrically stabbing into a roast arm with his fork. He seemed pleased that I didn’t have a response. My mouth just wouldn’t form words. I couldn’t move, or speak. 

“I didn’t–” Derrick finally took his fingers off of his nose. “You said, last month, that you were going to do a turkey this year.”

Trent stuffed an enormous forkful of stringy grey meat into his mouth and chewed, staring at me all the while without blinking.

“No, sweetie, you’re remembering wrong,” Deb, who would not look at me at all, argued in her gentle sing-song voice. She was short and thin with a fading blonde bob and grey roots. She wore a beige sweater over a beige dress. “I said your dad wasn’t up for it, with his hip, and with my sciatica and your brothers gone, I just didn’t think we could manage it this year. But then yesterday, around four, just about when I was unwrapping the frozen turkey, the doorbell rang! Trent, please.” Deb slapped Trent’s hand as it reached for another big forkful of meat. “Wait till I carve some for everyone first, for Christ’s sake. Poor Lexi is sitting there thinking ‘oh, these redneck McCabes, bunch of barbarians raised in a barn.’”

“It’s fine,” I said automatically. This was the first movement of my muscles since Deb brought out the platter. “I don’t think that.” 

“You don’t have to be so nice,” Deb replied. “I can take it.”

Derrick was staring at me now, too. His hand passed under the table to squeeze mine.

“Why couldn’t you just carve it in the kitchen?” Trent huffed.

“That’s not how Thanksgiving dinner works, dear,” Deb replied. Her thin fingers worked to saw thinner slices of cooked flesh off of the bones. The meat seemed to be somewhat tough, because she was going very slow at it. “Anyway, I ask this fellow where he was coming from, and he said Rindley. Lexi, that’s a whole county over. He’s a door-to-door JW, I forgot to say. He’s got this stack of flyers, you should see them, they’re funny. Anyway. I say, ‘don’t you JW’s always travel in pairs?’ and he says, ‘no m’a’am, that’s not a requirement, that’s only for safety.’ And I say, ‘well aren’t you worried about crazy hicks out here in the boonies taking shots at you?’ And he says, ‘I never had a problem out here before.’ And I say–”

“Godammit Deb!” Trent blurted. He let out a long, excruciated grunt as he stood up laboriously, taking great care to make sure we all knew how much it hurt him. He pushed his walker around the table and grabbed the carving knife from his wife. “I’ll show you how to carve a roast. Christ almighty, I swear to god.” He sawed the meat with violent speed, splashing grease on his old navy checkered flannel. 

“And I say–”

“Mom, maybe save it for another time?” Derrick said. He made a big show of secretly nodding towards me so his mother knew why. 

“It’s a funny story,” Deb frowned

“I want to hear it,” I said. Deb only sighed and sucked her teeth. Then she sat down.

“Well, it’s not that funny. It’s dumb, actually.”

“I still want to hear it,” I said. My phone buzzed in my dress pocket, and I pulled it out instinctively. 

I’m so sorry this is awful, the message read. It was from Derrick. He squeezed my hand again. I took mine away. 

“She’s calling the cops,” Trent said. “Told ya.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I just got a text.”

“Surprised you can get texts out here,” Deb said. “Most people can’t. Too far out in the sticks.”

“I can get them through wifi,” I said. I’d gotten the password off of their fridge when I arrived. It was under a magnet that said Never Mess With A PISCES WOMAN Who Was BORN IN MARCH And Is Allergic to STUPIDITY, They’ll Never Find Your Body! “I also think I still have bars, though, too.” 

I was getting sick of Deb acting like this suburban mcmansion was so far from civilization it might as well be the middle of Alaska. We were thirty-five minutes from Grand Rapids, tops. 

“Gals try to call the cops sometimes,” Trent continued, breathing heavy now as he struggled with the roast. He wasn’t doing much better than his wife at it. Sweat dripped from his wispy brown crew cut into his piggy eyes, but he refused to slow or stop. “They don’t last very long. By the time the cops get to our door, we’ve already got a whole new Thanksgiving meal to serve up to them.”

“Okay,” I said. He raised his eyebrows, as if to accentuate that there was an implication there that I should pick up on.

“Dad.” Derrick said. “She’s not calling the cops.”

The thing I didn’t like about Derrick’s dad most was the way he said everything like he’d rehearsed it in his head a lot beforehand. Sometimes, Derrick could sound just like that. He’d say something and raise his eyebrows with a smile like he was expecting a big reaction. He wouldn’t move past it until I gave some acknowledgment that yes, I did “get” the implication. I never realized how much that annoyed me until now. What do you want, a round of applause?

“God dammit!” Trent threw down the knife. “God damn roast is tough, Deb. What about ‘low and slow’ don’t you understand?”

“Well, there was a lot of meat, dear. If you just fixed the grill this summer–”

“Oh, don’t go bringing that up.”

“Men.” Deb tutted. “Nothing is ever their fault. You know what I’m talking about, Lexi. Us women take the blame for all their stupid mistakes. But that’s life. Cleaning up our men’s messes without complaint.” Deb smiled conspiratorily at me, and I smiled back, even though I didn’t relate to or agree with the sentiment. The front door was just down the hall behind Deb, just a few square meters of grey carpet and beige walls smattered with tacky and vaguely threatening Hobby Lobby signage (Grandma’s Shit List: Don’t Say Shit, Don’t Do Shit, Don’t Expect Shit! and House Rules: ACT RIGHT or get a trip to the woodshed!).  I kept glancing at it, measuring the distance in my mind, wondering if I could run fast enough to get to my car before one of Derrick’s parents caught up to me. Or drew a weapon. 

Another buzz in my pocket.

I love you, Derrick had texted me. I could see him out the corner of my eye trying to make eye contact with me and shoot me his own conspiratorial smile, but I did not look at him. Trent slapped a pile of rubbery grey meat on a plate and passed it to me. 

“Breast or thigh?” He joked without smiling. I took the plate. The meat was wet, as if it had been boiled, and the thin ring of white fat and skin around the edge jiggled as it separated from the muscle. I thought I could still see blonde arm hair on the skin. 

Derrick took his plate of grey meat from his dad. As Deb took hers, Derrick leaned over to me and whispered in my ear,

“Don’t forget to say thank you.”

“Thanks, Deb,” I said. 

“And my dad?”

Deb passed a basket of white grocery store rolls around. There was a low white ramekin of canned cranberry sauce on the table, and a big blue bowl of salad with russian dressing. There was an extremely mushy and condensed soup-forward green bean casserole. In an effort to make a good impression, I had brought candied sweet potatoes. 

I took a generous helping of the salad, which was somehow also very wet. The russian dressing water from the lettuce pooled with the unthinkable and loathsome juices of the grey flesh at the bottom of the plate. I also took a generous helping of the sweet potatoes. No one else did, though. 

“Let’s wait until we say grace,” Deb said through her smiling teeth, watching me take a deep swig of my wine. “Thirsty, aren’t we?” She chirped. She poured me some more wine, filling it almost to the brim this time. I think she meant this as an insult, but I was going to do that myself anyway, so the joke was on her. “Would you like to lead the prayer, Lexi?”

“Uh… I don’t really know what to say,” I said. 

“Just say what’s in your heart.”

“Um.” I cleared my throat. I looked to Derrick. He nodded encouragingly at me, a sign he wasn’t going to step in and rescue me. “Thank you, God, for bringing us all together, here.” Deb and Trent both bowed their heads and touched their palms. Derrick followed suit. “I’m so glad I got to meet Derrick’s lovely parents. Thank you for this amazing… meal.” I felt the wine come back up into my mouth a little bit and had to gag it back down. “We’re all grateful to be here, rather than anywhere else. Uh. Amen.”

Derrick wasn’t religious, as far as I knew. But he gave a reverent nod before he opened his eyes and picked up his knife and fork. 

“That was a beautiful prayer,” Deb said. She sniffled. “You picked a good one, sweetie. Don’t let her go.”

“No thank-you for carving your dinner. I see how it is,” Trent mumbled. 

I watched Derrick take a small mouthful of meat. It was sinewy, and had come from the hand. He chewed and chewed. I’d never been less attracted to him. 

My family ate Thanksgiving dinner in the earl...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Long-Turn3354 on 2024-11-23 18:37:30+00:00.

---

Last post -

They're looking for me.

I made a mistake in my last post by disclosing the name of what I saw. I think I pinged their watch systems, and they are now running internal investigations internationally. What was in that box was a bigger deal than I thought. I hope this storm passes over me. 

Regardless, here's the strange thing among many other strange things.

They haven't found me; or N for that matter. He's still around, still acting like he can't see me at all, but he's still around. Some comments asked if he was trying to protect me and honestly, maybe? I'm not completely sure. He's locked away in his office most of the day and only leaves to use the bathroom, eat, and do some small duties he has to do around the office.

But what doesn't make sense is how they seem to have no record of how the item got into one of the facilities in the first place. If they brought it in, they would have a record of that and would have found us already. And, I don't think N archived the game into the company system yet. If he did, they would have already come and kicked my door down to take me away. But I’m still here. They don’t know which branch location we’re in. 

I know they are reading these posts. I'll have to be more careful with what I say.

I tried to give him his invitation to my family's Christmas party yesterday. After everyone left I caught him out of his office and stood directly in his way with the card in my hand. I wasn't going to let him go without at least having engaged with him once today.

That was a mistake. 

Have you ever bitten your tongue while chewing something? I mean REALLY bit down. So hard your eyes start to water? Or, have you ever stubbed your toe on the corner of a table or something? Like so hard, you swear you just obliterated your pinky toe and sent it to hell? That unconscious force we exert in the day-to-day can be the most destructive force we ever face in our entire lives. Because of this force, I've come to believe that N actually can't see me. I stood in his way to give him the card, and He slammed into me with no expectation of stopping; crushing the card against my body and driving me onto the floor, sending us both into a fall that ended with the back of my head slamming onto the tiled floor.

I passed out for about 3 or 4 minutes before I opened my eyes to find myself lying in a pool of blood.

N was gone. I stood up slowly. I’m in a dazed state. I could only hear the hum of the building's HVAC unit. It was too loud. The lights were off. A single computer was on. It was my computer. I stumbled over. I tried to focus. The blue light was too much. I may have a concussion. 

As my eyes began to focus, I noticed there was something taped on my monitor. It was the now creased and folded Christmas card. I peeled it off the monitor and saw that someone had written on it.

“I'm sorry, I won't be able to make it to the Christmas party this year. Unfortunately, I've been having some eye trouble. But I know that my Mother would love to go with you. Maybe you should give this letter to her.”

-N

I think I know what I have to do. I'll update you all when I do it.

Should I go to the hospital?

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Saturdead on 2024-11-23 18:06:02+00:00.

---

[1] – [2] – [3] - [4] - [5] - [6] - [7] - [8] - [9]

 

I wish I could give you more detail. I wish I could give myself more detail. But what happened was that they draped a black hood over my head, and that was that. I was to be taken somewhere, and no one would tell me anything. And why would they? I didn’t need to know where I was taken, or why. They had their own agenda.

There was a bumpy car ride, the sound of sliding metal, and an elevator. Firm hands gripped my arms to the point where they bruised. Apart from the occasional ‘go’, there were no words. The elevator had gone down, so I guessed I was somewhere underground.

When the hood came off, I was in a brightly lit concrete room. There was a simple bed, a toilet, a sink, and a metal door. There were no indicators as to where I was. No clocks. No phones. The only thing to keep my mind busy were a couple of magazines next to the sink. They were mostly about things like fishing and camping, from the turn of the millennium.

 

Time passes differently in a place like that. You start to imagine things, and you lose track of yourself. From the point where you go to sleep to when you wake up, everything looks the same. It’s like no time has passed at all. You start to doubt yourself. Did you sleep for six hours, or ten minutes? Has it been five minutes since your last drink of water, or two hours?

At times, there’d be commotion outside. People grunting and struggling with something. They’d swear, or scream. You got used to it after a while.

It must’ve been three or four days before I got to see another person. By that time I’d read through every magazine dozens of times, counting how many times each letter showed up. I’d counted every ceramic tile on the floor, walls, and ceiling. I was desperate.

 

It was a stranger that opened the door. She looked nice enough, a tall woman in her 50’s with combed-back hair, like she was fresh out of the shower.

“You’re not gonna cause me trouble, are you?” she asked.

“Should I?”

“I wouldn’t advise it. I’m just here to check on you.”

I didn’t fight her. There were plenty of guards outside; I’d just put myself in a world of pain. Instead she checked my pulse, shone a light in my eyes, and asked to check my throat. She had these thick gloves and a pair of protective goggles – possibly to make sure I wouldn’t accidentally infect her with SORE.

 

“I can’t believe it is stable,” she said. “I’ve never seen that.”

“But you’ve seen it… unstable?”

“Oh, several times. This type of affliction is more common than you think.”

She put together a couple of pills in a small cup and handed it to me. I didn’t take them.

“It’s just vitamins,” she said. “See?”

She downed one of them without a drink of water, like a lunatic. I decided that, for now, I’d trust her. She seemed harmless enough.

 

As she was about to leave, I panicked a little. I didn’t want to be stuck in that room for more time than necessary, and I was practically climbing the walls at that point. I followed her to the door, and watched the guard outside tense up with his taser.

“Please,” I said. “I’m going crazy in here.”

“Sorry about that,” she sighed. “Most people in your condition aren’t as… mentally stimulated.”

“Are there others like me down here?”

“A handful,” she said. “Most of them just sit there or stand in the corner. So I suppose none of them are really like you.”

“Miss, I’ll… I’ll go crazy in here. You gotta do something. I’m not like them.”

 

She looked me up and down. There was a sort of sympathy there, for sure. She was hesitant.

“Dudley brought you in, right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “I don’t even know what you want from me.”

“Well, we’re going to do tests. We’re going to see what the difference between you and the other infected are.”

“For how long? What’s gonna happen to me?”

She opened her mouth to say something, but changed her mind. She gave me a pat on the shoulder.

“You have to understand,” she said. “Most people who come here don’t leave. They can’t. You’re something new, and I don’t think anyone has figured out how to deal with that yet.”

“Listen, I’ll play ball,” I said. “Just don’t stick me in here like an animal.”

“Fair enough.”

 

I agreed to do some preliminary tests. I was taken to an examination room where the lady collected some basic samples. Blood, saliva, urine. She also checked my ears and feet. It wasn’t all that uncommon for those infected by SORE to have very dark nails, apparently.

She already knew my name, but she introduced herself as Allie. She’d been with Hatchet for over 12 years, and before that she’d been a professor at UC Berkeley. I didn’t have to tell her a lot about myself – she’d read the files.

“What I don’t understand is how all this happened in the first place,” she said. “SORE doesn’t just stop on its own. You must’ve done something.”

“I met this woman out by St. Gall,” I said. “Had a blue kaftan. After speaking to her, I was just… fine.”

“I’d love to meet her,” Allie said. “But I suspect that whoever that was wouldn’t be all too eager to  work with us.”

 

I had a couple of x-rays taken, and then she emerged with a massive syringe. Seeing my reaction, she put it away.

“We’ll take the bone marrow some other day,” she said. “But I’m afraid that’s all for today.”

“Please don’t put me back in there,” I said. “It messes with my head.”

“How about this. I ask the guards to turn the lights off at 9pm, and I get you a couple of books to read. Would that help?”

I shrugged. It’d help, but it still wasn’t an enticing thought.

“And we’ll talk again tomorrow,” she added. “Deal?”

“Sure, yeah. Deal.”

 

For the next few days, Allie tried to make sure I was as comfortable as possible. Lights out at night, books to read, and she came by at least once per day. Mostly just to get a couple of samples, or to discuss results. For example, the iron value in my blood was a lot lower than it ought to be, so I had to take some extra pills for that.

Days would pass. Maybe weeks. The only people I’d see were Allie and the guards, and Allie was the only one talking to me. We developed a sort of quasi-friendship, where she’d get me out of my cell and I’d provide her with answers. And sometimes, we’d just sit and talk for a while. She’d tell me about her sons back in California, and about her messy divorce a year or so back. It was nice to hear something ordinary.

Then there was that one day when she wanted to show me why they were doing this to begin with. To give me some context.

 

We wandered around the other cells. There were about half a dozen in total. There were more rooms, but most were empty.

“We can’t go in without full hazard gear,” she said. “They may look calm, but the slightest provocation can set them off.”

She walked up to a door and opened a small hatch, protected with plexiglass. There was middle-aged man in there, lying on his bed. There was something coming out of his mouth. Little white strands.

“Looks harmless enough,” I said. “Is it really that bad?”

Allie knocked on the door, once.

 

The man shot out of his bed and threw himself at the door with complete abandon. He had this long wound across his neck where more white strands protruded, and now that he was provoked I could see more coming out of his nose, ears, and eyes. Just like what’d happened to me.

“Some people change more, some less,” she explained. “Long before my time, they tried experimenting with specific dosage in volunteers, to see if the transformation could be steered.”

“Could it?”

“Not really,” she sighed. “But boy, could it do some terrible things.”

The man pressed his face against he plexiglass. The white strands poked and prodded at the edges, trying to find a way through. Allie didn’t back down.

“Most people already have a miniscule amount of the catalyst in their system,” she explained. “Sort of like… microplastics.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“I think the layman’s term for it is Blameless. Stupid name, but it seems pretty ingrained by now. But there was a Danish-American philosopher that had another name for it.”

She closed the hatch and looked me straight in the eye. Maybe just for effect, or to drive a point home.

“He called it the soul,” she said. “He claimed that this material was what gave our ancestors that first ability to speak, to think, and to reason.”

 

I was shown a handful of other patients. I didn’t think all that much of it, until I saw a young woman. She had this black pixie-cut hair. I just blurted out my thoughts. I’d gotten so used to talking to Allie that I didn’t consider what I was saying.

“Elizabeth,” I said. “Salinger, right?”

“You two know each other?”

“In a way,” I said. “I knew her dad.”

“He’s been looking for her,” she said. “It’s horrible, really. She had a particularly gruesome infection.”

Allie looked throug...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gy5qzj/where_the_bad_cops_go_part_9/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/02321 on 2024-11-23 19:11:25+00:00.

---

I’ve worked at a Thai restaurant for a few years as a dishwasher. That was my job on paper, but over time I started to pick up more duties between the time of people quitting and getting hired. It got to the point where I could cook anything off the menu if needed. 

During a hectic shift one night, I helped packed some takeout orders and handed them over to the waiting Door Dash drivers. My boss spoke in broken English but is one of the funniest guy I’ve ever known. It was hard to get stressed on busy nights like that with him forgetting words making his jokes ten times funnier. Takeout orders flew out of the door and we tried to keep up with the rush inside the restaurant. A snag hit when we ran out of cooked pork belly. One last order of a pork belly bowl needed to be sent out right away or else we would lose our driver to a different order, and risk a bad rating. I told my boss we should send a message out or outright cancel the order. Instead, he placed the last strip of pork belly in the take-out order and sent it off. The bowl should have had at least five pieces, not one. We honestly didn’t have time to send a message and deal with a single order with ten waiting on the kitchen. I hated the idea of sending out meal lacking the main ingredient but got so busy the rest of the night I totally forgot about it. We received no complaints or negative reviews that night, so we put it out of our minds. 

The next night was just as busy. At least my boss cooked extra pork belly in the morning so we wouldn’t run out in the middle of the rush again. At the end of the night, I volunteered to clean up and lock up the restaurant. He trusted me enough to do so. I liked doing the end of shift clean up. My apartment was within walking distance, unlike everyone else who needed the last bus home. I put on some music and got to work putting the kitchen back in order after our long two nights of running around. 

I just finished up and shut off most of the lights, ready to leave. The kitchen dark with only the exit light showing the way out. I doubled checked my keys were in my bag hanging off my shoulder and was about to take a step toward the door when I heard something. I felt positive someone just took a few steps inside the kitchen. That was odd. I knew for a fact everyone left. Did the owner come back in and check the stock and I just didn’t hear him over my music?  

“Hello? Boss?” I called out in the dark room, my voice shaking slightly. 

I strained to hear, thinking I just imagined things. Just when I went to move again, I heard something behind me. A sound of fabric moving.  Two massive hands come out of nowhere to wrap long boney fingers around my arms from behind. I jumped and let out a small squeak of fear, unable to move from shock. I wanted to run and yet my body refused to listen. Those hands looking human but the black skin and the pointed fingers simply couldn’t be anything besides a creature from nightmares. I'd wished this was a robbery instead of whatever stood at my back.  

The sound of fabric came again. A hot puff of breath moved my hair near my ears and the back of my neck crawled. What the hell was this thing going to do? I really didn’t want to get tore apart because I stayed late at work. It could do anything to me and no one would find out until the morning. Hell, if it didn’t leave any traces behind no one would ever find out I’d been killed. My body shook as so many gruesome images came through my mind and I silently prayed for it to just go away. 

“I ordered extra pork belly but only got one...” The voice came right next to my ear. 

I shuttered from it being so close. It sounded low and hoarse and impossible to pin down a gender, if this monster had one. I couldn’t believe I might be killed because we sent out one order short. I searched my mind trying to think of anything to say in order to save my life. When I didn’t respond fast enough, it spoke again. 

“Do you have more in today?” It whispered. 

I risked turning my head slightly to see a face of pure darkness with a mouth showing rows of white teeth shining in the darkness.  

“Uh.. Yes...?” I said cautiously. 

It removed a hand from my shoulder and dug around in the darkness of its body for a moment. It looked like a tall figure dressed in some sort of black hooded fabric. The creature so large it really shouldn’t fit inside the small kitchen. It pulled out it’s hand with long deadly claws and held out a closed fist. I carefully held my hands out to accept whatever it was offering. Some bills and change dropped down into my expecting hands and I stood frozen to the spot confused and scared as hell.  

“One Pork belly bowl please. Extra pork belly.” It whispered with a wide grin that caused my body to shake again. 

I looked around the empty kitchen not expecting that kind of request.   

“Now?” I asked knowing that was a dumb question. 

It tightened the grip on my arm to the point where it hurt a little. This thing could tear me apart without any effort and made that fact clear. 

“Now, please.”  

It did not need it repeat itself. 

I nodded, shoving the money in my pocket not even checking the amount. My arm was released and I hurried along to get started on cooking. I knew how to make everything and we already had most of it prepped. I just needed to cook the rice. I flicked on a light, and heard a small hiss. The monster nowhere in sight when the light came on. But I didn’t trust it left for good. That was confirmed when I took out the lettuce and heard it ask to not have any in it’s bowl. I hurried along, warming up what was needed and finished making the largest pork belly bowl the restaurant had ever seen. After all, we only had large rice pots. It was easier to make a large bowl. I made sure to load the bowl up with the desired meat, wondering how I’ll explain the missing amount to my boss. When everything ready, I looked around trying to find the monster wondering if I just imagined the whole thing. 

“Light please...” Came a voice somewhere in the room. 

I quickly went over and turned off the kitchen lights again, and expected the massive creature I’d seen before show up. Instead, a small thing appeared at the counter sitting in a chair I took from the restaurant. It looked exactly like the dark creature from before... Just smaller. Only four feet tall, if that. Hands extremely small and tiny feet dangling off the chair.  

“Another empty bowl please.” It spoke in a softer voice that sounded much like a child. But I knew it was still the creature that could kill me so I listened. 

I set a bowl down on the counter and the small thing went to work filling it with some of it’s meal, making a smaller pork belly bowl. Tiny hands pushed the second bowl towards me, and patted the counter next to where it sat. Then the creature started to dig into the meal, feet kicking happily. This thing... Was sharing the meal I just made. After coming all the way here and requesting food after hours it put aside some to share. I still felt some fear towards whatever that broke into the restaurant, but it was making it really hard to be overly worried for my life. I didn’t eat dinner yet either so I took the bowl and started to nibble on it, keeping my eyes on the creature. It ate fast but also acted as if the food was too hot. Which made sense. If it ordered food any meal would have cooled down by the time it reached the creature. This might be the first time it ate so soon after the meal had been finished cooking. 

Halfway through the meal, it placed some more change on the counter requesting and egg. We soft boiled eggs a head of time so I grabbed one from the fridge. They normally warm up while sitting in with the rest of the hot dish. The monster didn’t seem to mind the cold egg. In fact, in hesitated before placing more change down requesting another egg. By the time it was down to the last bite of meat, the monster looked like it struggled to finish.  

I already finished my own and got started on washing the bowl. It didn’t make sense to waste some take out containers. I looked over my shoulder not seeing the creature in the dark. I let out a very high-pitched scream when I felt something touch my leg. The thing had gotten off if it’s chair and held out the empty bowl to be washed. My heart slowed back down to normal and I accepted the dish from those tiny hands. 

With everything washed and out away I wanted to leave as fast as possible. A tugging came at my pants and I regretfully reached down to take the creature's small hand so we could leave. I found it didn’t walk fast enough so I needed to pick it up. It wasn’t pleasant holding the creature. It may be the size and shape of a small child but it felt like it was just meat wrapped in fabric without any bones in its body. Like holding a room temperature pork roast wrapped in plastic. We made it outside but now I was left holding a dark creepy as hell monster in my arms unsure of what to do next. 

“It’s late. No more buses. I can walk you home.” It offered. 

The small thing slipped from my arms, and the body shifted into a taller shape almost looking like and adult in a robed Halloween costume. The feet still appeared far too small to support the tall body.  

“No, it’s fine! I can walk home alone just fine.” I said hands out front trying to refuse the offer as politely as possible. 

“It’s not safe. Monsters come out at night.” The thing responded in the same low tone that c...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gy79r2/running_out_of_pork_belly_can_be_dangerous/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Top-Investigator4629 on 2024-11-23 16:22:17+00:00.

---

My boyfriend and his roommates don’t understand the privilege of not having to lock their door.

When I come to visit, it’s like they experience culture shock when they try to barge in and they find it’s locked. None of them even carry keys. I once accidentally locked one of his roommates out for the night and he had to walk to a friend’s and sleep there.

They never got mad at me for it, they all understood why it was a habit I wasn’t willing to break.

My boyfriend and I were long distance. Since I worked from home, and he and his roommates were out of the house for the majority of the day, I would come and stay for a week at a time.

They all worked Saturdays, but I had weekends off, so I was laying in my boyfriend’s bed, in the room closest to the front door, having locked it and snuggled back in to relax until I felt like getting ready for the day.

The apartment complex they lived in comprised of buildings that connected, but had separate staircases and entrances pertaining to that section of apartments. My boyfriend’s apartment was all the way at the top left of the last building, nearest to the woods. It was in a nice neighborhood in the suburbs of two busy metropolitan areas.

The front doors of the buildings were never locked. The residents didn’t even pretend that they locked. They would even leave them propped open with large rocks for most of the day and night. On the occasions the door wasn’t propped open, when someone came into the building, it would slam loudly before bouncing back to an ajar position.

My boyfriend always told me to never answer the door, especially if I was alone.

On this morning, about an hour after the guys had left, I was reading a Tumblr post on my phone when I heard the door slam and what I swore was a cry for help.

I sat upright in bed and listened again, sure that I had gotten it wrong. I was prone to anxiety, diagnosed OCD, and knew I could let my thoughts twist and turn into the worse case scenarios that frequently went beyond realistic.

As I listened, there were no more cries, but it sounded as though someone was laboriously attempting to climb the stairs.

There were two flights between the entrance and my boyfriend’s front door.

As the sounds of fumbling footsteps, high-pitched panting and grunting, and palms on concrete neared the door, I heard another cry for help, and I knew for certain I heard it this time.

Instead of concern, my blood ran thick with fear at the sound. Something about it seemed off - wrong.

I quietly crept out of bed and neared closer to his bedroom door. I heard the woman clamber to the top of the steps and cry for help again. Instead of going for my boyfriend’s front door directly to her left, I heard the woman start pounding on the door of the person across the landing.

Guiltily, I felt relieved.

There were only two doors between my boyfriend’s and the person across from him. After having tried the two in the middle, the woman finally came pounding on the front door. I gasped and jumped, and my hands flew up to cover my mouth.

I pushed my boyfriend’s, thankfully silent, bedroom door open and peered into the hallway. I weighed the risk of checking the peephole, for I knew if she noticed a shadow she’d know I was in there ignoring her.

Also, I was scared of what I would find on the other side of the door.

To my further shock and horror, the door handle started to jiggle as well. The pounding was frantic, and louder and longer than she had done on the other neighbors’ doors.

I gathered all my courage and took careful footsteps toward the entryway. I tried my best to make no noise even though I doubt she’d hear me over her violent knocks.

Once I was close enough that I was confident I could check the peephole, whilst also not casting a shadow under the door, I leaned forward and squinted into the tiny glass circle.

My mouth went dry and I had to suppress a scream-turned-cough.

Standing unnecessarily close to the peephole was a man. A grown, disheveled beard, cracked lips, runny nose, crazy eyed man.

I cursed myself for leaving my phone in the bed when all of a sudden the noise stopped. I was paralyzed in my spot. I waited to hear him give up and walk away, but he never did. I wanted to sprint and grab my phone to call 911 but was scared he would break down the door if he heard me.

With nothing else to do, my morbid curiosity and flight instinct propelled me to look back into the peephole.

He was just standing there, breathing heavily at a high pitch with a wide, delirious smile on his face. Some of his lip started bleeding from a crack being split open again. He barely had any teeth, and the ones he did have were either completely black or a combination of brown and dark green.

He took a large inhale through his nose, and his eyes rolled in his head.

“Why won’t you help me?” He cried out in that near-perfect impression of a woman’s voice.

It took every ounce of my self-control and patience to let me go back to my boyfriend’s room at a pace that didn’t expose me. Once inside, I hurried across the carpet to sift through the sheets and blankets for my phone.

Once I had it in my hands, I immediately moved to call 911, but a different idea popped into my head last minute.

With swift fingertips, I searched ‘man angry someone at door audio.’ I turned down my volume so only I could hear and quickly sifted through my options. Having chosen one I hoped would work, I went back and held my phone through the doorway and into the hall, volume on full blast.

“Who the hell is pounding down my door at this hour?! They must be crazy! You know what?! Let me grab my gun so we can both say good morning,”

There was the sound of a gun clicking at the end of the track, and that was the one thing that finally made the man flee down the steps. I heard the door slam as he left the building.

Shaking, I went back and checked the peephole to confirm he was actually gone. I considered still making a call to the police, but knew I wouldn’t have much else besides my story.

I decided to head into the kitchen and dining area to grab a bottle of water and take a seat. On the way, I passed the small balcony that was rarely ever used. Suddenly filled with fear again, I ran over and moved back the curtain to find… nothing.

I finally let out a sigh of relief when I remembered the apartment wasn’t on the first floor.

Still, I reached up my fingers and turned the lock.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Obvious-Secretary151 on 2024-11-23 15:19:11+00:00.

---

It started with the newcomers.

A family—a mother, father, and two children—moved into the old house at the end of Maple Street a month ago. It was the kind of house that everyone avoided. People whispered about the strange disappearances that had occurred there over the years, the odd lights seen flickering in the windows long after the place had been abandoned. But when the family moved in, the rumors stopped. The house was suddenly normal again, and the neighborhood sighed in relief.

At least, that’s how it seemed.

The family—Robert, Claire, and their children, Sarah and Lucas—seemed perfect. Robert was tall, athletic, and friendly, always willing to chat with the neighbors. Claire was quiet but kind, with a way of making you feel at ease. The children were well-behaved, polite, and always on their best manners. They didn’t act like normal kids. They didn’t play loudly or run around. They were always together, and always a little too quiet.

I first noticed it when I walked past their house one evening. Sarah, the older girl, was standing by the fence, staring into the street. Her eyes were wide open, unblinking, as if she was watching something far in the distance. I waved, but she didn’t react. I felt a shiver run down my spine, but I brushed it off. It was just the oddness of a new neighbor.

But over the next few weeks, the unease didn’t go away. It grew.

The family was always together. Robert and Claire never seemed to go anywhere without their kids. They were always in the yard, always walking to the park, always... perfect. But something was wrong. Robert never seemed to sleep. I’d often see him sitting outside, staring at the stars for hours, his eyes unblinking, his posture rigid. It was unsettling.

And Claire—she never seemed to make eye contact in a normal way. Her smile always felt a little too wide, her expression a little too calm. I remember seeing her in the grocery store once, walking down the aisle, and for a moment, I could have sworn she wasn’t even looking at the shelves. Her gaze was fixed on something far beyond what was right in front of her.

The kids, too, were strange. They never laughed or argued like typical children. They played, but it was always in perfect synchronization—swinging on the swings together, pacing around the yard, but never a sound. It was almost like they were doing it out of habit, like puppets pulling at invisible strings.

One evening, I walked by their house again, and this time, I saw Sarah standing in the same spot by the fence, staring at me. But she wasn’t just looking at me. She was watching me. Her eyes seemed to follow my every movement, and I felt a chill crawl up my back.

When I turned to look away, I heard her voice, soft, barely a whisper, "You don't get it, do you?”

I froze, heart racing. I turned back quickly, but she was gone. There was no one in the yard.

It was then I realized that something wasn’t right. Something had always been wrong with them. But I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

The days dragged on. I tried to talk to Sophie, my wife, about the family, but she just shrugged it off. “You’re overthinking it, honey,” she said. “They’re just new neighbors.”

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly off. Every time I saw them, I felt watched—like something was waiting for me to notice. The longer they stayed, the more unnerving it became.

Then, one night, I had a visit.

It was late, past midnight, when I heard the knock at my door. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and Sophie was still working late. I hesitated for a moment, but curiosity won out. I opened the door, and there stood Claire, holding a basket of freshly baked bread.

“I thought you might like some,” she said, her voice too smooth, too soft. “It’s homemade.”

I smiled, trying to hide my unease. “Thanks. That’s very kind of you.”

She handed me the basket, and I noticed her eyes—too calm, too intense. I looked down at the bread in my hands, feeling a strange pressure in the air.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, almost without thinking.

Claire tilted her head slightly, her gaze never leaving mine. “Yes,” she said softly, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Everything is perfect.”

There was an awkward silence, and I forced myself to look away. “Thanks again. I’ll let you get back inside,” I said quickly, trying to close the door.

But she didn’t move. Her smile didn’t falter. “We’ve been watching you,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

I froze. My heart hammered in my chest. Watching me?

Before I could say anything else, she stepped back into the shadows, disappearing into the darkness. I closed the door and locked it immediately. My hands were shaking as I stood there, the basket still in my hands.

What the hell did she mean, “we’ve been watching you”?

The next day, I went over to the house to confront Claire. I needed answers. But when I knocked on the door, there was no answer. I tried again, but the house remained silent. I peeked through the window, but the blinds were drawn.

That was when I noticed something strange: the windows weren’t just dark. They were empty. No furniture, no signs of life—nothing.

I stepped back, confused, my pulse racing. Where had they gone?

I tried to shake off the creeping dread that was crawling up my spine. But when I turned to leave, I heard it—the sound of someone whispering, just behind me. I spun around, but there was no one there. Only the empty house staring back at me.

The next morning, I woke up to find a message on my phone. No caller ID, just a text:

“You’re part of the game now. Come and find us.”

My blood ran cold.

I tried to call Sophie, but she didn’t pick up. I ran outside, panicked, and looked toward the house at the end of the street. It was still empty. But something was wrong. The air felt heavy, and I could feel it—they were watching me.

Just then, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned, expecting to see Sophie or a neighbor, but instead, there was nothing. Just the stillness of the street.

Then, the whisper came again, but this time it was louder, clearer:

“You should have never asked.”

I spun around, heart pounding in my chest. But the street was empty. The house was empty. And yet, I knew—they were still out there. Watching, waiting.

And I was part of their game now.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/LoreWriter8 on 2024-11-23 17:02:21+00:00.

---

When I was about 7 years old or so in 1974, my dad owned an old Victorian somewhere in Massachusetts. Well, I don’t know if he exactly owned it outright, but we lived there after my grandfather, who did own it, died and my grandma took the inheritance with her all the way to Florida. And I say ‘somewhere’ because, for the life of me, I can’t remember what the name of my hometown was.

I’ve done some searching online but the only thing that turns up for the area is a thing called the ‘Bridgewater Triangle’ which is supposedly what the land in the middle of three particular towns in Massachusetts is called.

I looked up several landmarks I remember about the place, and they all seem to be there, but the town is just… gone. I know the town had something along the lines of ‘veil’ in the name, but nothing came up for it.

But I digress, that’s only half of the reason I’m writing this. The other half is that, well, I figure the events of my childhood in that house should be suitably gruesome.

Let me just start by saying my father was not a good man. Don’t get me wrong, he never specifically did anything bad or abusive to me that I can remember. In fact, it was quite the opposite. He cared for me as best he could and he always put food on the table. Even though we were struggling to get by, there was always food. Meat, specifically. Plenty of meat.

Once I asked him if we could get fruit and veggies, but he just shrugged and said he’d see what he could scrape together to afford it. I suggested not spending so much on all the meat, but he told me that the neighbor was a hunter and was cutting us a portion of his catch as a good samaritan.

I never met that neighbor, and as far as I knew we lived alone on that street. I didn’t push the issue at that point, though, the dilapidated houses peppered on the various rocky hills around the area very well could’ve hid surreptitious old hunters or the like, for all my knowledge as a seven year old. It all seemed okay for the most part, because my dad said so.

I don’t know.. exactly when I started to notice the smell in the basement, but one day it was just there. It was a putrid, burning sort of smell like harsh chemicals, but organic, like a carcass on the side of the road.

One day the scent led me to the side room in our basement, where a rug laid at a random point against the wall. It was so strong in that room that I had to hold back wretches, feeling the tingle of vomit entering the back of my throat.

I crept closer to the rug and the smell of purifying flesh invaded my nose that much more. I was almost touching the thing when the sound of my dad clearing his throat broke the silence. I hadn’t even heard him come down the stairs, but there he was, looming in the doorway, as the light of the only hanging bulb behind him cast stark shadows over his face.

For the first time, in that very moment, I was afraid of my father.

He said, in a very calm voice, that I shouldn’t be in this room, because it was the yucky room. He said that yucky things happen in this room, and that I was too young to know about them. I don’t know what I thought he meant by that, but the blind trust and sudden fear was enough to make me go back upstairs.

That night, just as I was falling asleep, I heard it. The voices of what must have been dozens of people, all talking at once in a hushed tone. My eyes bolted open, and I looked around my room for the source of the sound. As I stared into the shadows surrounding my bed, it entered my mind, and I knew exactly where the whispers were coming from.

A storm approached the old house, and distant thunder rolled as I snuck into the hallway and past my father’s room. I couldn’t see a thing until the storm got a bit closer, and the flashes of lightning that entered the windows lit up the house.

I crept down to the basement, making sure not to make any noise at all. Each quiet creak of the cellar stairs sent shivers up my spine, but they were masked by the now heavy rain. I reached the bottom relatively quickly, and noticed something strange. From under the thick wooden door of the yucky room, there was a pale red glow shining onto the floor.

The light was static, but almost seemed to pulse brightly, like a heartbeat. As I got closer it started to feel.. warm, and slick. My skin became slightly tacky; clammy. But in that warmth there was no comfort, rather it was hot, like an infection. There was hate in it, and pain.

I tried to open the door but it was locked, and tugging on the handle didn’t work. It was at that moment that the voices, at their loudest, stopped suddenly, and from the other side of the door the handle twisted once and the door opened. I stared into the room as that same pale red light covered everything.

I couldn’t discern any clear source of the light, but it illuminated the whole room, and seemed to accentuate the horrible smell of death. In the light I could see a stone table in the far corner, splattered with what looked like dry blood, which also covered the floor beneath it. The table itself was sturdy and rough, covered in what appeared to be some kind of sigils and a language I couldn’t read.

In the other far corner there were all sorts of sharp tools hanging on the wall, stained and chipped. Over everything was a thick mucusy membrane of some kind of gristle that squelched every time I picked up my feet. I was on the edge of vomiting when my attention went swiftly to the rug against the wall.

One voice permeated the room now, a muffled, soft voice which called me over to the rug, telling me to lift it and see. The rug jostled as I crept toward it and I could see those same sigils from the table, now lining the edge of what looked like a hole.

I lifted the rug to see just that, but it wasn’t only a hole. It was a gaping pit in the stone, and now the room was filled with the voices again, but they were screaming and pleading and choking. Inside the pit there were all sorts of mangled body parts and extremities.

Bodies were twisting and writhing in what looked to be the most horrible pain imaginable, and the faces that stared back at me with wide, crusty eyes and gnashing teeth filled me with mind-numbing horror. They called out to be eaten, and, remembering all of our previous meals, I felt the oddest twinge of… hunger.

I shook off my trance and turned to run, but my father stood in the door once again, and that pale light showed his face, which was the same in appearance as the ones in the hole. He was smiling, and in one hand he held a lit match. I could see that he was covered in what must have been oil, and the only thing he said to me before dropping the flame was “You’ll come back. When it’s time.”

Needless to say, he set himself ablaze, and I ran as fast as I could away. I ran and ran until I was well into the woods, looking back only to see the flames reaching over the trees and into the night sky as thunder rolled and lightning flashed around the house.

I made it to the town over, when I stopped running. I must have collapsed in fear and exhaustion because the next thing I knew I was in the hospital. I started sputtering things about my father and the town… but no one knew what I’d been talking about, and the town was gone.

I couldn’t believe it when they said it. But I was starting to forget too, and every moment that passed took away more and more of the town. But I will never forget that night, and what happened. I’ve tried to look for an obit of anyone, or any missing persons reports. All nothing.

Sometimes I still hear those voices before I go to sleep, and my dreams are a mess of writhing limbs most nights. Who knows, maybe I will be back when it’s time.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Emergency-Bicycle496 on 2024-11-23 14:47:53+00:00.

---

i used to laugh it off when my five-year-old would talk about “the whispering man.” kids have wild imaginations, right? she’d tell me he would sit by her window at night and whisper things to her—stories about “lost kids” who needed friends. she’d say he was “lonely” and “didn’t like grown-ups.”

it was creepy, sure, but i brushed it off. i’d say things like “wow, that’s spooky!” or joke that she was going to be a writer someday. i figured she was piecing things together from cartoons or stuff she overheard.

then, about a week ago, i heard it too.

i was up late, sitting on the couch in the living room, scrolling on my phone. it was around midnight. i suddenly heard this faint, scratchy voice coming from her room, barely above a whisper, like someone was struggling to speak. my heart started pounding, but i told myself it was just the wind or some late-night TV echoing from a neighbor’s house.

then it got louder. this strange, raspy murmur, almost rhythmic, like someone softly chanting. i walked quietly down the hall to her room, barely breathing. when i peeked in, i saw her sitting up in bed, staring straight at her window.

when she noticed me, she put her finger to her lips, like she was warning me to stay silent. then she whispered, “don’t scare him, mom. he gets mad when you see him.”

i felt a chill crawl up my spine. her window was open. i could’ve sworn i had locked it before bed.

the next morning, i asked her about it as casually as i could manage, but she just shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal. “he likes it when you don’t believe in him,” she said. “it makes him stronger.” she didn’t say anything else, just went back to her breakfast like it was the most normal thing in the world.

i wanted to chalk it up to a dream, maybe even my imagination playing tricks on me. but ever since that night, i feel like there’s something wrong in our house. i keep finding her window unlocked, no matter how many times i check it. and the whispers… sometimes i hear them even when i’m alone. late at night, just barely there, but constant.

i started sleeping with my door cracked open so i could hear if she got up. last night, i heard her talking again. when i went in, she was sitting on the floor by her window, having what looked like a full conversation in whispers.

i asked her, “who are you talking to?”

she didn’t look at me. she kept her gaze fixed outside, like she could see someone just beyond the glass. then she said, “he doesn’t want you to know him, mom. he only talks to me.”

that’s when she finally looked at me, and her eyes… i don’t know how to explain it, but she looked different. empty, almost.

i don’t know what to do. every night i hear him. every night her window’s unlocked. i’m terrified to sleep, but even more terrified to stay awake, waiting to hear that voice again.

has anyone else gone through something like this? i’m not sure if i’m losing my mind, or if something’s actually here.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/judgement_cometh on 2024-11-23 07:06:29+00:00.

---

“Attention: The library will be closing in fifteen minutes.”

The voice coming from the building’s speakers startled me a few hours into my uninterrupted studying in the library’s silent area. I glanced at the clock on the wall, only to realize that hours of screentime had made me lightheaded and caused anything over two feet away from me to look blurry. Regardless of the library closing, I took this as a sign that I should probably wrap it up for the night. Besides, after snapping out of focus, I noticed the air flow in the library had at some point shut off, ending the comforting hum of the vents above. I liked the silence of the library, but without the vents running, it was almost too quiet. I packed up my computer and notepad, trying not to disturb the other sleep-deprived students around me. I had been studying in this same area nearly every Friday since the beginning of the semester, and it was clearly becoming more popular as midterms approached. Even I found myself staying later and later each week. It was easy to focus there, and I wish I had spent more time there during my first year. As I wandered towards the main doors of the library, I smiled to myself when I saw a committed gathering of students in one of the dimly lit conference rooms, clearly engrossed in whatever they were studying and likely to stay there until security threatened to carry them out. I wasn’t feeling great about the next day’s Differential Equations midterm, but historical class averages for Math 235 told me that was a common student experience.

When I received my midterm grade the following week, I realized I should have been a little more worried. Sure, a 68% average isn’t great, but the bright red 33/60 scrawled under my name on the returned test was considerably worse.

“How’d you do?”

I looked up at Harrison’s curious expression, his tone telling me that he didn’t do so well either.

“Not great. You?” I responded, offering my test in exchange for his. He silently handed his over, and I felt a bit better after reading his 31/60.

“Well, at least neither of us failed! Considering that I still don’t even know what question 3 was asking, I’d say that’s pretty good.”

I laughed at Harrison’s optimism as I handed his test back. I didn’t love this class, but at least I had someone to struggle through it with. As we gathered our things and left the lecture hall, I asked what he’d be up to this weekend.

“Uh, just catching up on work. I might try to go to that mid-semester club night I keep hearing about on Saturday, but tickets are so expensive I can’t decide if it’ll be worth it. You?”

“Same. Too much going on to do anything interesting."

“Ain’t that the truth. Well, enjoy what you can, and for what it’s worth, have a good weekend, Eliza.” With that, he zipped up his coat and headed out into the chilly Fall air. I gave him a mock salute and headed out in the opposite direction, taking a detour to Timmies before heading to the library.

 ------------- 

“Attention: The library will be closing in fifteen minutes.”

For the second Friday in a row, the voiced startled me out of my study stupor. I was sure I’d get used to it as my late nights continued, especially since my current grades were motivating me to really pick it up before finals. Once again, I noticed the eeriness of the completely silent study room and absentmindedly wondered when exactly the vents turned off. I figured it was a good thing that I was so focused on my work that I completely tuned out my surroundings. Trying to shake off my screen-induced dizziness, I started to exit the library, looking for a garbage bin to toss out my long-empty Tim’s cup on my way out. I spotted one around the corner from the water fountain, right outside one of the occupied conference rooms. As I made my way over, I recognized the group of students I had seen huddled around the room’s table the previous week. Throwing out my garbage, I realized they were considerably older than me, closer to the age I’d expect most professors or possibly mature PhD students to be. I guess I had just assumed everyone in the building past 11pm would be undergraduates fighting for their academic lives. I saw through the glass walls of the conference room that all three windows were open, and I wondered how the room could still feel too hot at the end of October. Glancing at the room’s booking schedule, I saw that it was reserved every Friday from 10pm to midnight for “Anonymous”.

“Hey! Can I help you?”

I jumped, turning to look at the demanding voice behind me. It had come from a middle-aged man who I hadn’t noticed walk up behind me. Man, was he quiet.

“Oh, uh, I was just reading the room’s schedule.” I started to walk away from the door when I heard him again.

“What’s your name?” he commanded. I didn’t appreciate his question. It was dark out, he was at least 6 feet tall, definitely looked stronger than me, and I was well aware of how dangerous campus can be to young female students at night.

“I don’t need to tell you that.” I retorted, barely turning around to face him

“If you’re going to peer into my group’s private session, I want to know your name.” he snarled. At this point, I was starting to get annoyed.

“Dude, this library is open to the entire university. If you want somewhere private, go somewhere else. I was literally just reading the schedule.” I could see him starting to reply, but I turned and put my headphones on before he could say anything. Some people think they’re so important.

 -------------- 

The next Friday, I found myself squinting at the clock multiple times before 11:30pm. I cursed previous generations for developing technology. I’m sure I wouldn’t feel so dizzy and nauseous if I could study from regular paper every day instead of staring at a computer. I had finished all my midterms for the semester, but I needed to make sure I didn’t fall behind over the next month and a half before finals, so I turned to Google in search of quick remedies for dizziness and nausea. I rolled my eyes at the typical fearmongering that greeted me on the first website I clicked on. I scrolled past multiple links warning me about “The Increase in Patients Suffering from Coronary Artery Disease in Canada’ and “Number of Surgeries for CAD Seeing Exponential Growth” and saw recommendations for various prescriptions. I figured it would be too much trouble to get a prescription, and besides, I wouldn’t even get the pills for another few weeks, so I settled on stopping to fill up my water bottle on my way out. I sighed when I remembered the most convenient water fountain was located right by “Mr. What’s Your Name” ’s booked room, but I needed water and as I had told him the week before, the library doesn’t belong to him. Also, I might be able to avoid him seeing me, as the fountain was around the corner from the glass doors of the room. I left my study area right at half past, noticing a couple of the sparse students around me rubbing their eyes or laying down on their desks for a break, and headed in the direction of the conference room.

I bent over to take my water bottle out of my backpack and felt a rush of light-headedness. Taking a deep breath, I took a moment to close my eyes and lean against the wall beside the water fountain. I could hear hushed voices travelling through the wall from the group inside.

“….system…blockages…transmitted….” my head felt better and my vision was no longer blurry, but hearing those few words made me curious about whatever Mr. What’s Your Name was being so pretentious about. I admit, our encounter was still annoying me, so I figured a bit of eavesdropping could be my way of secretly getting back at him. I turned my head and laid my ear directly against the wall.

“…increasing subject…cabbage…implantation…high recovery rate….” Cabbage? Were they studying gardens? I pressed my head harder into the wall, wondering what kind of gardening meeting would be such a secret.

“…continued artery…under radar…donor…” This voice was quieter, and while I could make out less words, what I did hear was enough to confuse me further. Arteries had no place in gardening… I would think? Then again, I figured this could easily be some sort of animal testing study. The voices went quiet, so I decided to give up my efforts and finally fill up my water. I really hoped hydration was the issue. I did not want to deal with health problems in the middle of my second year.

 --------------

“Eliza, can you grab me a Gatorade while you’re at it?”

I nodded at Harrison as I stood up to go to the vending machine. He didn’t usually like to study on campus after class, especially in the middle of the week, but this week’s Math 235 assignment was kicking our asses, so we decided to work on it together in the collaborative zone in the basement of the library. As the time went on, I started to ask myself why I ever thought it was a good idea to become a physics major.

“Here you go.” I tossed Harrison his Gatorade and cracked open my Coke Zero.

“Are you sure you want caffeine this late at night?” he asked.

“Yeah, I mean, I’m so tired these days it’s not like it’s going to keep me up. If it can help me get this assignment done tonight, that’s all I care about.” I rubbed my temples, staring at the equations on my screen as if doing so would make them solve themselves.

“I feel you. Leave it to uni to drain us of our lives *and* our health.” lamented Harrison. I smiled i...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/abiroadwrites on 2024-11-23 06:54:25+00:00.

---

A few nights ago I went camping with my cousin Theo, and our friend Leilani. The three of us are all travel bloggers or journalists (I freelance, Theo and Leilani work for the same magazine), and a lot of what we do is just going to various locations together, then writing about whatever aspect of it our readers are interested in. Theo does all nature stuff (hiking, camping, survivalist stuff, remind me to tell you about our trip through Appalachia last year, yikes).

Anyway, Theo wanted to branch out of the mountains and try an excursion in the desert, near Navajo territory. We found a remote camping spot, set up tents, and started a campfire.

Leilani has been reading a lot about protective rituals (we run into a lot of weird stuff, what can I say) and felt really confident about some advice she got. So as we set up camp she burned some white sage and palo santo in the fire, then mixed the ashes with salt and spread it out in a rough circle around our campsite.

The three of us laughed about it as she did, not really believing it would do much, (except Leilani) but willing to waste the time if nothing else. It was well after dark when I offered to run back to the car to grab the food we had brought for dinner. The car was parked a ways off from our campsite, and I left Theo and Leilani chatting and laughing by the fire, feeling comfortable in the warm desert night.

Just as I locked the car and started making my way back to the fire, I heard Theo shouting my name from somewhere off in the desert. I yelled back, asking what he wanted and heard him respond, this time his voice coming from the direction of our campfire, "Don't say anything else, get back to the fire as fast as you can."

From behind me, closer to the car, I heard Leilani's voice calling softly for me to come back. I felt cold dripping down my spine and broke into a run. I got to the fire just in time to hear my own voice calling out for Theo and Leilani to join me in the desert on the opposite side of the fire.

I yelled out that it wasn't me, and for them to stay where they were, and jumped across the threshold of salt and ash. Just as I did, I heard my own name being called again. I'm still cold thinking about it; my own name being said in my own voice, followed by deep throaty laughter.

Theo, Leilani, and I stared at each other in horror and huddled closer to the fire as Theo threw more sage onto the fire, scooping white ash onto his wood chopping ax.

The voice hissed derisively from the darkness as a pale face came into view. It was clearly human but looked all wrong. The face was stretched and thin in all the wrong places, while wrinkled and leathery as if it had been stretched out and pressed back into place over and over. The body was covered in different animal furs and skins, as well as more than one variety of leather, most of which looked disturbingly human.

The creature smiled, and crouched a few feet away from the ring of ash. It grabbed a stick and leaned forward, an amused look in its eyes as if about to tell a joke, then pushed the ash with the stick and said "Oh. Oh no, your border is broken, friends."

Its voice was amused and light, as though simply making a joke amongst friends. I looked at Theo and Leilani who were both as deadly pale as I felt. Theo stepped forward and brandished the ash covered ax, the creature grimaced and dropped the stick, putting its hands up in surrender and sitting back on its haunches.

I grabbed more ash and salt and redrew the boundary line. The four of us stood there in a silent standoff, Theo, Leilani, and I silent and horrified while the creature sat cross legged and smiled as if it was spending a relaxing night with friends.

It gestured to the cooler bag full of food, and said "aren't you going to eat? Please, don't allow me to impose."

I looked back at Theo and Leilani again and cleared my throat, "What are you?"

The creature laughed, and spoke back first in what I assume must be its own voice, changing slowly between its voice, my own voice, Theo's, and Leilani's as it talked.

"Oh child, I am older than the trees growing around your camp. Older than the sage in your fire, I am sharper than the blade of your ax and stronger than the ironwood trees you burn in your fire. I am only one of my kind, but I was one of the first and expect I will be one of the last."

Leilani took the bag from my hands and opened it, moving purposefully as if the creature wasn't watching us intently, and began pulling out food to heat over the fire. Theo leaned down and handed me my sketchbook, nodding for me to sit by the fire with a silent message: draw while you can, and keep the sage at hand. I sat down, trying not to shake as I slowly began to sketch, while Theo knelt across from the thing, ax still clutched firmly in hand.

It leaned forward, letting the firelight dance across its face and glow in its eyes, but maintaining a respectful distance from our boundary lines. "Ah, it's been a long time since my portrait was taken. What a lovely group for me to find myself in company with."

Leilani glanced over, looking at the thing as if it were simply an unwelcome guest overstaying his welcome, and gestured at it absently with a kebab. "What do you want?"

The creature smiled again, reminding me jarringly of my grandfather. Not that my grandfather was a nightmarish voice stealing creature, but something about it seemed almost paternal, as if he really was just chilling by the fire with his grandkids. "Not your food if that's what you're asking me. I find far better nourishment in other ways."

I looked up from my sketch, trying to keep a casual expression, and looked at Theo and Leilani out of the corner of my eyes to see their stony expressions. None of us asked for clarification and the creature offered none, instead watching the three of us silently. As Leilani finished cooking it sighed, and stood up like it was stretching, and walked slow circles around our campsite.

"Pay no mind to me. I had no intention of ruining your night. I merely like to listen."

We sat in silence for a while, then slowly resumed a stilted conversation, trying to pretend that nothing was wrong. Discussing the day, our plans for the next leg of our journey, and finally choosing to talk about the scenery.

Occasionally one of our voices would chime in from the darkness with a comment or a suggestion that we all go for a walk, and we would sit in silence as the ancient being would chuckle at its own jokes. We spent the entire night that way. The three of us awake and on edge, a shifting voice in the darkness beyond our campsite beckoning for us to join it.

Late in the night, it rejoined the firelight with a friendly smile that made my blood run cold.

It said, "Don't young people like to tell stories anymore? Whatever happened to the old legends of the stars and gods?"

Theo, his specialty being storytelling, perked up at this, but a warning hand on his arm from Leilani kept him silent.

I spoke up instead, "I'm sure you have stories of your own, don't you? You must know more about the old legends than any of us."

It smiled, like I had said something wonderful, and gestured to the three of us. "How about this? Each of you tells a story, a legend of any kind. If you entertain me, I'll tell my own story then I'll leave you in the morning. But, on the sole condition that you never return here again. These are my lands, and while the company has been pleasant this evening, I rarely find myself in such a generous mood."

We stared at each other, and finally Leilani spoke. "You just want to hear campfire stories? That's all we have to do for you to guarantee we leave here alive?"

The creature nodded, skin pulling back from its face in a wide smile and waited. The three of us silently agreed, and Theo nodded for me to take the lead. I looked down at the sketchbook in my hand and smiled.

"Would you like to hear an illustrated story?" The creature looked hungrily at my sketchbook, and I opened it with a shiver. Going through the pages one by one and telling the stories of the things we’ve encountered. Theo and Leilani chimed in occasionally, and we relaxed into the stories as though simply recounting our adventures to a curious stranger. I found myself enjoying the stories more than I had expected, while he was terrifying the creature was also a surprisingly good listener.

He would nod and laugh, ask questions with genuine curiosity, and sat back with a smile when I closed the book. "Oh yes, I chose the right fire tonight."

It turned expectant eyes on Theo and Leilani, and Theo leaped into his favorite legend about the marriage of the Norse goddess Freya. He had always loved the Nordic legends, since we were kids, and he told it the same way he had told me stories as children. Every character had a voice of their own (which seemed to delight the creature to no end), and he waved his hands in the air with animated excitement. The creature listened intently, chuckling occasionally and repeating sentences back in Theo's voice when it found them particularly amusing. It especially seemed to enjoy mimicking the strange voices Theo would do for each character.

I felt a shiver watching them interact, in another world I could imagine this being one of Theo’s friends.It was hard to see the thing in front of us as anything other than a monster, but the story telling seemed to be bringing out its human sid...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Reasonable_Exam9591 on 2024-11-23 05:04:24+00:00.

---

Let me start off by saying the ocean and my father make me feel the same way.

My mother drowned in a riptide when I was barely out of diapers, and her loss left my father a volatile, alcoholic shell of himself. Then, when I was the ripe old age of twenty-four, both he and the ocean made me a widower.

I tried to tell myself it wasn’t my father’s fault. Even in the absence of an apology, the guilt of being at the helm when the sea turned over like a slumbering monster must somehow be torture. After all, taking my new wife on that boat with him was supposed to be an act of trust and moving on.

I forgave that man for so much. It wasn’t fair that I survived and Sally didn’t. Fuck, it wasn’t fair that he survived at all.

Existing without my wife in a town I hated felt like sitting still in a burning house. So I left, and for three years I never looked back. It was hard at first. I fell into the same alcoholic vices as my father, but I like to think I made it to a better place.

I might have even eventually rebuilt my life if my sister hadn’t called.

It started when my work buddies invited me out for drinks, which I declined in favor of sprinting to my car. City traffic meant time was limited, and I hadn’t missed a meeting yet, just as the court ordered. My hard earned six-month chip was so close, I could almost touch the proof I wasn’t just a huge pile of shit and wasted potential.

A shrill ring from my coat pocket nearly made me drop my keys, and when I saw the caller ID, my stomach sank.

Jenny never called. We texted occasionally, but after I got arrested for the final time, it was too much energy for either of us.

“Hey, Jenny,” my voice came out tight. “I-Is everything-”

“Dad’s dead.”

“Oh.”

She told me he took his boat out in the middle of a storm the night before and it washed up that morning in pieces. The coast guard wasn’t hopeful that his body could be found with how rough the seas were.

After losing Sally, I couldn’t take hearing his voice let alone the sight of him, but now William Briggs was gone. Time ran out to salvage anything, and I had no way to prepare for how much that hurt despite the conscious choice I made to let that timer run out. He was never going to see me make something of myself, even after all he did to ruin me.

“I need your help going through the house.” Jenny sounded tired. “Pack his things away.”

My throat tightened. “Shit, Jenny, I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?” Her words carried an edge that made me flinch.

“I mean, I have work and Betty doesn’t travel well…” I trailed off. Those excuses sounded hollow even to me. Jenny, having never left the trenches of our hometown except to deal with me, was not impressed.

“Are you kidding me? Who the fuck is Betty?”

“Oh, um, sorry. I forgot to tell you. She's this cat I found.” I didn't add that she was what stopped me from jumping off a bridge. “You know, to give myself responsibility or whatever.”

My sister’s weary sigh reverberated in my bones. “Billy, I hate asking you to come back. I really do. I’m sorry. I…have a lot going on and I need help.”

“You and Dave having problems again?”

It took her a moment to answer with a quiet, “What else is new?”

Jenny wasn’t the crying type, but unlike me, she hadn't given up on our Dad. No surprise her dipshit husband gave zero shits about her grief. Jenny was raised by the decorated sea captain our father was before our mother drowned. I wished I knew that guy. Maybe if I had things would be different.

The last thing I wanted to do was return to that godforsaken town, but Jenny wouldn’t ask me to come back unless she was desperate.

“I can’t.” My attempt to be final about it was a feeble wheeze, and Jenny’s rage permeated through the speaker as she ground out,

“You owe me for what you’ve put me through.”

I had no grounds to fight her on that, humiliating though it was. It sucked to be reminded of how recent my latest fuck up was, and how Jenny, like always, showed up when I called.

“Okay,” I finally breathed. “I’ll be there.”

There was no sign of my father’s body over the few days I took to prepare. I packed up Betty and a few other necessities, and the three-hour drive back to Hell on Earth commenced.

As the city gave way to trees and crop fields, it was impossible for me not to be reminded of all the times Jenny made this drive to get me out of trouble. All while pursued by a flood of passive-aggressive calls and texts from Dave.

Betty was content as could be sitting in the passenger seat. Despite being a street cat, not a great many things bothered her. It made me feel like more of an ass using her as an excuse not to show up.

I opened the top of her mesh carrier and she purred, happy as a clam within it as we passed the old, water stained sign that read, “Welcome to Fisherman’s Bay” in faded font with a peeling mermaid lounging beneath.

Fisherman’s Bay was as gray and bleak as ever, but if you asked Jenny, she swore up and down that the sun made a regular appearance through the storm clouds that blanketed the town. Surely it had to, but I never remembered seeing it. Sometimes it felt like this place warped itself depending on whose eyes it was filtered through.

Even with my windows rolled up, the faint stench of fish managed to force its way through my air filter. I drove through the shops and I slowed the car to a crawl when I saw the state of the police station.

The entire front of the building was covered by an absurd amount of paper, and upon a closer look, they were missing posters. So many, they overlapped, the top layer shriveled by the perpetual dampness in the air.

“What in the world?” I whispered. In a town of only 6,000 people, this amount of loss was substantial, but vandalizing a police station wasn’t something I thought the people here had in them.

The door to the station opened and an officer went to work scraping off wads of posters. He must have sensed my staring, because he looked over his shoulder at me with a glare that said it was in my best interest to move along.

So I did and tried to put it out of my mind. This place wasn't my business anymore.

Past the houses, swaths of rocky cliffs and pine trees, I took the main road down to the ocean side. I had to steel myself with a deep breath at the massive expanse of water that stretched endlessly into the horizon.

I promised myself I wouldn’t panic. I would help my sister with our father’s affairs and then be back in the city by the end of the week. I’d never step foot in this town again.

I pulled up to my childhood house to see Jenny pacing around on the porch. Her dark, curly hair fell around her shoulders as she waved to me.

My dormant memories stirred, and for a moment, Jenny was no longer an adult, but a chubby teenager in overalls. The circular window at the top center of the house was where I often watched her and my dad's front lawn screaming matches.

It all came back so clearly, Jenny’s knock on my window startled me back to the present.

I zipped Betty back into her carrier and exited with her.

“Hey, Jenny.” I got out and we stared at each other for a few seconds. The last time I saw her in person I was bruised, drunk, and frankly, a total asshole. The finality of her disappointment when she posted bail hung over us both.

She cleared her throat and diverted her gaze to the carrier.

“I thought the cat didn’t travel well,” she said.

“Yeah, I just didn’t want to come.”

Her lips thinned as if she were contemplating something to say, but, after a second of deliberation, drew me into a quick hug that felt like a bear trap. She was always physically strong, but working on commercial lobster boats had given her muscles her teenage self could only dream of.

“Thanks for showing up,” she said as she pulled back. “I couldn’t do this without you.” I eyed the house, my chest tight. “Yeah, sure. It’s just weird to be back here.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll only take a week tops.” The reminder eased the anxiety, but only slightly.

“How are you holding up?” I asked.

“Shitty, but what can you do?” She shrugged, then followed my line of sight to the house and back. “You can stay with me and Dave, you know. You don’t have to torture yourself by sleeping here.”

“It’ll get done faster if I’m here,” I said. “Besides, it’s bad enough I’m back in this hellhole. Last thing I need is to be another reason you kids are fighting.”

My hope was to make her laugh, or at least lightly exhale through her nose, but before she could react, the front door swung open.

“Jenny!” Dave shouted, “Jenny, is your brother here yet?”

I glared over Jenny’s shoulder as Dave descended the steps to stand next to her. His beady, far apart eyes peered at me from beneath furrowed brows. “William.”

“You know it’s Billy, Dave. William was my dad, but good to see you as always,” I said.

Dave was a few inches shorter than me, but wider with more muscle. A beard clung to his cheeks, scraggly and probably peppered with his last few meals. An uncharitable observation, I know, but a good chunk of the walnut between his ears contained far worse thoughts about me.

Dave caught sight of the cat carrier and scoffed.

“The hell is in there?” he asked.

“My emotional support cat,” I said.

Dave’s upper lip curled. “Let’s get this over with.” He turned and immediately trudged back into the house.

I looked at Jenny. “What's his problem? He feeling okay?” ...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Professional_Ruin709 on 2024-11-23 03:44:03+00:00.

---

"Help," I read in the sand, helicopter blades whirring above me. I don’t see any movement, but I can’t just leave. I radio the pilot. 

"You think this is them?" 

"Only one way to know," he responds. 

We may have finally found them: the two women who disappeared a few weeks ago after they went overboard on a boat somewhere in the Atlantic. The helicopter begins to descend. Sand blows in all directions as we touch down. 

Stepping out, a faint rhythmic hum drifts through the forest, too distant to be natural. I shake it off, blaming the heat and nerves. As I get closer, I realize the sign is made from heaps of old seaweed. 

"Clever," I whisper. "But who makes a 'help' sign just to leave?" 

I walk toward the run-down hut, searching for signs of life. 

"Hello?" I shout. 

No answer. Inside the hut, I find charred wood and scraps of bone. Whoever was here knew what they were doing. 

Paul, the pilot, walks up behind me. 

"Find anything?" he asks. 

"No. Just piles of wood and bone. Promising, but not conclusive." 

Paul and I venture into the dank tropical forest, searching for signs of life. Suddenly, I spot someone—a woman. 

"Hey!" I call. "We’re here to help!" 

She tilts her head, like a dog trying to pinpoint a sound. Then she bolts toward me, her grimace unnervingly wide. My instincts kick in—I turn and run, branches scratching at my legs, rocks sending me stumbling. By the time I reach the helicopter, gasping for breath, I turn back. Nothing. 

What was that? Was it one of the missing women? 

"Paul, get back here," I radio. My voice shakes. When he arrives, I blurt it out: "I saw someone. She matched the description, but when I called, she ran—no, sprinted—at me. Inhumanly fast." 

We search the cargo and equip ourselves with tasers. We return to where I saw her, but there’s no sign. Paul finds a trail of broken sticks, and we follow it. An overwhelming sense of dread clings to the air, but I don’t tell Paul. I think he feels it, too. 

As we near the end of the trail, I notice what looks like a ritual site. Stones are arranged in strange patterns, charred leaves and sticks litter the ground. Symbols are carved into the nearby coconut trees, jagged lines catching what little light filters through the canopy. 

Paul tries to lighten the mood. "You believe in this ritual stuff?" he mutters, kicking dirt, his eyes darting to the carvings. I hear the tremor in his voice, despite his attempt to sound calm. 

"I don’t know," I reply. "But isn’t it a bit suspicious that this is here right after I was chased?" 

I continue to investigate, but then I hear it—a deep, animal-like groan. My head snaps back, along with Paul’s. 

There she is—the woman I saw earlier. But this time, she has a partner. One leaps at Paul, knocking him out before he can even reach for his taser. I equip mine and aim at the closest woman. As I discharge the taser, she grows visibly agitated—but not by the weapon. It has no effect. She grabs the taser wire with a snarl, yanking it from my hand. Before I can react, the other woman tackles me to the ground with a strength I didn’t know was possible. 

Everything goes black. 

----- 

When I awaken, I’m lying on a rock in the center of the ritual site. My hands are bound, and the air feels thicker, darker. I scream, "Where’s Paul? What did you do to him?" 

One of the women approaches. Her expression is blank, but her eyes gleam in the dim light. "He is... elsewhere," she says with a slow, eerie voice. 

The other woman joins her, and they begin to chant in a low, guttural language that reverberates in my chest. The words twist around me like a smothering fog. I shout, "What are you doing?" But they ignore me, their voices growing louder, the chant quickening. 

Suddenly, their eyes snap open, looking past me as if something unseen had arrived. Their jaws unhinge slightly as they smile in perfect unison—teeth sharper than they had any right to be. Their lips stop moving, but I hear their voices, clearer than before: "He has come for you. He will show you the way." 

A shiver races down my spine. I pull against my restraints. The woman on my left draws a knife and steps closer. She tilts her head, watching me with an almost curious gaze. "Don’t worry," she whispers, her smile chillingly gentle. "You won’t be alone." 

In the distance, I hear a familiar voice—Paul’s voice—calling my name. But it sounds wrong. Distorted. Like an echo through a tunnel. My heart pounds as I realize the voice is coming closer, but I can’t see anything in the darkness. The air cools as the malevolent force nears. 

The woman raises the knife above me, her eyes glassy, almost devilish, as if she’s looking at someone—something—just behind me.