nosleep

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/jebstewart on 2024-09-22 20:41:02+00:00.

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It wasn’t entirely uncommon to see various stores come and go along our local strip mall. In fact, I recall purchasing a grill from ‘Armstrongs Hardware’ in the same building that had been a chinese buffet only a month prior. The stores came and they went, a tale of another family unable to make ends meet.

Not much changed around the Oakfield area outside of the carousel of businesses. The local skatepark remained dead and the bowling alley had become a hot spot for purchasing shitty weed and laced coke. School numbers had remained on the decline since the turn of the century as families filed out one after the other. 

Anyways, I suppose that’s a good enough history lesson on the quaint town of Oakfield, Illinois. A once promising city that would be lucky to be classified as a village now. 

Here I am, once a man, lucky to be classified as a bum now. 

I’d made a decent living and a good name for myself during my tenure at the Oakfield Cafe. The food wasn’t necessarily fancy but that’s okay, it brought the town comfort. Good ol’ fashioned soul food. However, things took a turn during Covid and we were forced to shut the place down. I’ve been unable to hold down anything ever since, outside of the occasional freelance job.

The morning I happened upon ‘Rileys Fungeon’ had been like many which had come before it, in fact, it had seemed markedly better. The air was cool and crisp, the Fall was easing in and washing out the heat of a long, dry Summer. A perfect day for some job hunting.

My parents had always told me that it’s better to apply in person than online. So that’s exactly what I did. I threw on my cleanest white shirt (all the others had paint stains from previous jobs) and a pair of blue jeans and out I went. 

I had been actively avoiding applying at the bowling alley so I decided to see if any new stores popped up at the strip mall since my last visit. My beat up, old civic bounced and lurched along the decaying roads, fighting the monstrous potholes along the entrance of the malls parking lot. 

In total, the row of buildings could house five stores, though it seemed one of them always remained vacant. Starting from the left was the longest tenured of the five, a laundromat which never seemed to have an employee present. No dice. 

Next to that was ‘Blue’s Supermarket’, which probably accounted for 90% of the traffic in the mall. Unfortunately, I’d already applied there at least half a dozen times and had yet to hear anything back. Might be worth another shot. 

Then, right there in the middle, was exactly what I’d hoped for. A new store, a new possibility for employment. 

‘Riley’s Fungeon’, the scarlet-colored sign read. Weird name, but it was worth a shot. 

The door to my Civic squealed in protest as I pushed it open and slid out. I peered up at the sign with the funny name again before pushing the door shut and making my way to the building. I wish I could say that I had felt some sort of the ominous foreboding as I walked up to Rileys Fungeon, but rather it was a sort of cautious optimism. Truthfully, I felt great, like I’d already got the job offer and my financial burdens would soon be a thing of the past.

Those dreams were promptly crumbled up and shot into outer space as soon as I made my way inside. 

A victorian-esque couch, the color of crimson, sat lonely in the middle of the vacant room. Several lamps, which hung from the wall, cast a golden hue over the dark, wooden floors. The darkness seemed absolute outside of the lamps glow. All the windows were shrouded by curtains which matched the couches' red hue. 

As odd as it all seemed, it was somewhat comforting. 

My footsteps fell especially loudly in the empty room. This may sound weird, but at that moment  I was sure that I was the only soul in the room. 

As I came closer to the red couch, I noticed a short, mahogany desk sat directly in front of it. Its top was no more than a foot above the floor. A metal box stood in the middle of the desk, with a yellow button protruding from the top. 

“Hello?”, my voice echoed much like my footsteps had. Nobody answered.

Against any rational judgement, I decided to take a seat.

Almost instantly, two more lamps directly in front of me turned on, revealing a chalkboard. In perfect cursive it read, ‘Welcome to Rileys Fungeon, where your wish is our command. Ask the box anything and press the button. Remember, it all comes with a price”. 

The creeps had thoroughly settled in by this point, my heart had begun pounding furiously. What did any of it mean? Anything? I mean, really, anything? 

I sat dumbfounded on that couch for a while, reading its message repeatedly. ‘It all comes with a price’, I thought, all too aware of the empty wallet sitting in my pocket. Though, even then, I had a feeling that wasn’t the kind of price it meant. 

“Hello?”, I called out once more, hoping somebody, anybody would come clarify what this all meant. Obviously, it couldn’t be real. This had to be some sort of gag store for some assholes Youtube channel or Tiktok. 

I looked around the room again, studying the shadows between the lamps glow. No matter how long I looked into those shadows, no matter how long I let my eyes adjust to that darkness, they couldn’t seem to penetrate through that pitch black. 

I shifted in my seat, suddenly aware of the fact that I was sitting alone in a dark room of a place called ‘Rileys Fungeon’. Maybe people in horror movies aren’t as dumb as people make them out to be… or maybe I’m just the perfect person to play such a role.

Once again, against any rational thought, I decided to press the button. As my finger lifted from the glowing button, I went still, expecting someone or something to emerge from the shadows and either snatch me up or laugh and scream that I had just been ‘pranked’. Neither happened. 

I returned my gaze to the chalkboard. ‘Ask the box anything’, it said. As greedy as this makes me sound, it took little time for me to decide on my wish. Rent wasn’t going to pay itself. 

“I need eight hundred dollars… please?”, I said. At first, nothing happened. I sat there feeling like an idiot, getting ready to hop up from the couch and continue my job search elsewhere. Then, from one of those inky shadows in the corner of the room, I could hear  the squeal of a door on its rusted hinges.

I froze.

A tall, slender figure began to materialize through the darkness. I wanted to bolt so badly, but it felt as though my body was frozen in time. 

A man, or what I assume was a man, emerged  from the shadows. He was adorned in a black suit with matching black pants. He wore a mask over his face, a mask which looked like it was straight from a Victorian masquerade party. The mask had a long, skinny nose and no mouth… its eyes appeared to be sewn shut.

In his hand was a large, silver platter with a dome concealing its contents. He walked swiftly and without hesitation. At once, he stood directly over me, his gaze never meeting my own. He lifted the platters sparkling dome. 

Upon it, were eight perfect stacks of hundred dollar bills… and a razor. As my shaky hands drew near my prospective rent funds, the man raised his hand like a cross guard trying to stop a car. 

Instead, he lifted the razor.

I looked at the razor and then at him, though he seemed to be fixated on something beyond me.

“What do I do with it?”, I asked, cringing at the weakness of my cracking voice. I turned my gaze back to the chalkboard, which revealed a new message. 

‘Shave one of your eyebrows off’, it said. 

“That’s it?”, I asked the man, though I was sure he wouldn’t answer. If I had to walk around for a month or so looking like an idiot, at least I’d  have an apartment to hide in the meantime. I plucked the razor from his gloved hand and promptly erased of my eyebrows. 

I set the razor back on the platter when I was done and scooped up the stacks of bills. My feet were unsteady as I walked haphazardly to the door, looking back one more time before thanking the silent man and leaving. 

Rent was paid on time that month. 

My insides felt slimy and sick for a while after using the services of Rileys Fungeon. Though I wish I could say that feeling had stopped me from ever returning. Over the following months I had returned for various things, ranging from more help with my financial burdens or the occasional steak dinners. All of the requests had remained fairly innocent.

Once I had to shave my entire head bald, another time they made me flip my eyelids open. Though, sometimes, they were a bit more… ominous. Once I had to smash one of my fingers with a hammer, which had broken it, though the money I got was able to pay for a doctors visit and more. 

They’d also made me pull one of my teeth after I requested a little help in the dating scene. But it was more than worth it after my recent influx of female visitors.

Truthfully, life was good. But, as it was programmed in my lizard brain, humans simply cannot let a good thing be. I figured if I got one big lump sum that I would never have to return to the Fungeon. But, I had to be smart, I had to be.

If I asked for a million dollars, could you imagine what horrible shit they’d make me do? I couldn't let that happen. I needed help.

The trees were barren at this point and a thin layer of sleet had taken up residence on the sidewalk leading to my grandmothers home. She was more than excited to see her seldom present grandson knocking at t...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/TheKillingJoke1991 on 2024-09-22 18:21:42+00:00.

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This morning I found some audio recordings on my phone. For whatsoever reason I’ve been recording myself at night. These recordings are my own narrations of what I’ve been doing after apparently waking up at 3AM. Truth be told I can’t vividly recall any of this happening. I woke up this morning and everything seemed so normal.

Have any of you ever experienced anything like this? Is something off? I can’t wrap my head around any of this so I decided to write down what I found.

 

20/09/2024 

 

It’s 3AM. 

Woke up from a bad dream. 

Can’t exactly recall what it was about, but it feels like I had that exact same dream before.

Only three more hours before my alarm goes off. 

God I hope that I will never ever have to experience that dream again. 

Have to calm my nerves and get back to sleep. 

I’ll go downstairs to have a glass of water. 

I’m in my pitch black room and all is quiet except for the occasional creaking sound of the roof. 

Found the lights. 

Going down the stairs. 

There’s a painting on the wall. 

Haven’t looked at it in ages. 

It’s a painting of the ocean. 

No wonder I haven’t looked at it in a long time. 

Entering my living room. 

Father’s asleep on the couch. 

He’s fast asleep.

Television’s on.

It’s showing footage from the eye of a cyclone. 

I go to my kitchen and pour myself a glass of water. 

Radio in the kitchen’s off, all is quiet. 

Television’s still on and still showing footage from the eye of a cyclone. 

Time to go back upstairs and get some sleep. 

Only three more hours before the alarm goes off. 

Going up the stairs again. 

Open the door to the left. 

Wrong room, it’s my brother’s. 

Brother’s not living at home anymore, but the room still looks the same. 

Hanging from the wall there’s a few pictures of exotic locations and a painting of a forest. 

He always had a thing for nature. 

Entering my own room now. 

A cartoon’s playing on my TV. 

Can’t remember leaving on the TV in my room. 

It’s an old kid’s cartoon. 

Can’t remember ever having seen that cartoon.

Switching off the TV and the lights.

I’m alone in my bed and there’s nobody else with me. 

Only three more hours before my alarm goes off. 

I hope the night will soon be over. 

 

21/09/2024

 

It’s 3AM. 

A yelling voice inside my head woke me up from a bad dream. 

Can’t exactly recall what it was about, but it feels like I had that exact same dream before.

Only three more hours before my alarm goes off. 

God I hope that I will never ever have to experience that dream again. 

Have to calm my nerves and get back to sleep. 

I’ll go downstairs to have a glass of water. 

I’m in my pitch black room and all is quiet except for a wheezing sound coming from the room next to me. 

Found the lights. 

Going down the stairs. 

There’s a painting on the wall. 

Haven’t looked at it in ages. 

It’s a painting of the ocean with a hand coming out of the water. 

Wonder how I never noticed that. 

Entering my living room. 

Father’s asleep on the couch. 

It looks like he’s staring at me.

Television’s on.

It’s showing footage from the eye of a cyclone. 

I go to my kitchen and pour myself a glass of water. 

Radio in the kitchen’s on, station’s playing some weird chanting gibberish. 

Television’s still on and it’s showing footage of a field. 

Time to go back upstairs and get some sleep. 

Only three more hours before the alarm goes off. 

Going up the stairs again. 

Open the door to the left. 

Wrong room, it’s my brother’s. 

Brother’s not living at home anymore, but the room still looks the same. 

Hanging from the wall there’s a few pictures of a few uncanny faces and a painting of a forest. 

He always had a thing for the weird. 

Entering my own room now. 

A cartoon’s playing on my TV. 

Can’t remember leaving on the TV in my room. 

It’s a rather disturbing old cartoon. 

Can’t remember old cartoons every being this disturbing. 

Switching off the TV and the lights.  

I’m alone in my bed and I think there’s somebody else standing at the doorway. 

Only three more hours before my alarm goes off. 

I hope the night will soon be over. 

 

22/09/2024

 

It’s 3AM. 

A terrifying screaming voice inside my head woke me up from a dream. 

Can’t exactly recall what it was about, but it feels like I had that exact same dream before.

Only three more hours before my alarm goes off. 

God I hope that I ever will be able to experience that dream again. 

Have to turn down my excitement and get back to sleep. 

I’ll go downstairs to have a glass of blood. 

I’m in my pitch black room and all is quiet except for a moaning sound coming from the room next to me. 

Found the lights. 

Going down the stairs. 

There’s a painting on the wall. 

Haven’t looked at it in ages. 

It’s a painting of a dead bloated corpse with open eyes drifting beneath the surface of the ocean. 

Wonder how I never noticed that. 

Entering my living room. 

A pile of dismembered limbs, organs and an eviscerated human torso is placed on the couch. 

A degloved skull is staring at me.

Television’s on.

It’s showing footage of a dead horse lying in a field. 

I go to my kitchen and pour myself a glass of bone marrow. 

Radio in the kitchen’s on, station’s playing some cacophonous noise of barking dogs. 

Television’s still on and it shows a man crawling out of a dead horse’s opened abdomen. 

Time to go back upstairs and get some sleep. 

Only three more hours before the alarm goes off. 

Going up the stairs again. 

Open the door to the left. 

Wrong room, it’s my brother’s. 

Brother’s not living at home anymore, but the room still looks the same. 

Hanging from the wall there’s a few pictures of atrocities being committed during multiple wars and a painting of a man standing in the middle of a forest. 

He always had a fascination for the morbid. 

Go into my own room now. 

My TV’s switching channels between multiple cartoons. 

Can’t remember leaving on the TV in my room. 

They’re all rather disturbing old cartoons. 

Can’t remember old cartoons ever featuring this amount of slaughter. 

Switching off the TV and the lights. 

I’m alone in my bed and there’s somebody else with me in my room. 

Only three more hours before my alarm goes off. 

I hope the night will last forever.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/googlyeyes93 on 2024-09-22 21:42:55+00:00.

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Previous

DAY 12

Beginning to wonder if there’s any point in keeping count of days anymore. The only way I know is by consulting the clocks around the facility and my computer, but who knows if those are accurate. I haven’t seen the sun since the shutters came down, and at this point, I don’t know if I’ll ever see it again. Wish I would have enjoyed my time outside more while I still had it.

The subjects are all still alive. I don’t know if we’ve passed some sort of advanced regeneration point, but we did take a blood sample for analysis from Two. He was still alive, something… torturing him. It’s like the invisible force that ripped him apart would wait for his wounds to scab over, taking their time then poking hard at the healing skin, making it bleed again as they pulled the it off. He couldn’t do anything but scream in pain.

One didn’t seem catatonic anymore at all. He had passed into a new point, one where he was bright eyed and awake for the first time in days. He started talking to us, with nobody in particular as his target, just open ended questions.

ONE: So, what are you in here for? What did you do? Wanna know what I did?

TWO: Shut up! Shut up! Stop singing!

ONE: Oh, that’s not me.

FOUR: Please let me go. Please just let me out of here. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

Three was huddled in his corner again, facing inward and muttering how he was going to teach someone a lesson, and they would listen to him after all was said and done. We got the answer on that pretty quick, because he was the first to respond.

THREE: I needed to teach that bitch a lesson. She wanted to get uppity, and I had to show the kids what happens when you get like that… how they should be a man. A woman is supposed to submit to her husband, dammit, and if she won’t I’ve got every right to punish her. What’s so wrong about living by God’s word?

ONE: Oooooh that’s the woman beside you. Huh, looks like she brought the kids for a visit. You show them their place, too?

THREE: They would have ended up just like her if I hadn’t saved them. They would’ve been ungrateful whores to any man they were lucky enough to have. I kept them pure. They died pure.

Taryn looked like she was going to throw up. I made a motion for her to leave the room, going back to her room for some quiet. She shook her head, refusing to be shaken once again. The woman was showing strength I hadn’t seen since my mother passed, and that was a high bar.

ONE: Damn, dude. At least I just shot up a school because they were bullies.

There’s two mysteries solved now. One was a shooter (and fit the stereotype, honestly) while Three was a family annihilator. I lost a lot of the pity I had for either of them through the experiment then, especially when One started describing his spree.

ONE: You know, it was REALLY easy to gat shots off in a school. Have they changed that yet:? I’ve been locked up for years so I’ve only been told hearsay. God, back in my day you could just walk right in with a twelve gauge in hand. I can see Erica standing right over there, speak of the devil. Not sure if she’s looking at me or not though, since there’s… well, there’s not much to her face anymore. OH! I think I get it now. They appear how they died, that’s why your family is soaking wet, right?

THREE: I drowned them…

ONE: What’d you use, bathtub? Baptise ‘em in the old river downstream? Come on, tell me!!!!

THREE: I tied cinderblocks to their feet and threw them in our pool.

ONE: (whistling) Damn, that’s intense. Good on you, buddy. Innovative. How ‘bout you Jeffrey Jr.? What’re you in for?

FOUR: None of your damn business.

ONE: Oh, the little group around you says otherwise. Lots of hospital gowns. They look fuckin’ delirious too, more than all of us.

FOUR: I was trying to help.

ONE: Help what? The Grim Reaper?

TWO: SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!

ONE: Calm down, boss. We know what you’re in for, look at all these girls. I lost fucking count, and they look pretty young. Care to explain?

TWO: FUCK YOU!

ONE: Yeah, don’t think we needed any explanation anyway. Honestly, I look like a saint compared to you fuckers.

FOUR: Please, shut the fuck up.

ONE: What do you guys think the other guy had? I saw a bunch of burning body parts around him. I know the default answer is probably arson, but MY personal theory is that he was in charge of some major war crimes. Those things looked obliterated and COOKED. Like, well done cooked.

He was relishing this at this point, even though he was missing half of his organs. This son of a bitch was commanding the room like a storyteller, spilling everyone’s darkest secrets. When he looked at us, I felt my blood run cold.

ONE: Now you, lady, I get. I understand that you’re innocent of any crime. I’m sorry you’re about to go through this. Now, you two though….

He looked squarely at Philip and I, leveling eyes at us like lasers set to stun. We were frozen in place, entranced by his act of psychological torture.

ONE: You have two people. Now, I don’t think a good guy like you would do something like that intentionally, right? They’re pretty mangled, after all. One only has a part of his head. Ha, we should be friends!

He gestured to his own head, the flattened part bulging out now from brain swelling. Philip wouldn’t answer upon hearing that, shutting down in fear while his mind pondered the ramifications. They were likely the friends he had killed in his drunken joyride.

ONE: Oh well, you’re probably going to see them yourself soon. You though, who’s the woman?

The electricity in my spine from the gas was nothing compared to the bucket of ice that was just injected right into my bone marrow. I know. I know who it is. I just can’t bear to fucking say it.

ONE: Kind of a dick move if you killed an old lady. Hell, the only one in here who doesn’t have something hanging around is that guy.

He pointed to Murray then, giving him a thumbs up.

ONE: Well, things are only about to get worse. Kirk over here is telling me that they’re going to torture me in ways I’ve never imagined.

Two was screaming for him to shut up now as One just started to laugh again, taunting all of us. He had passed the point of sanity, but just might have achieved something beyond it at this point.

All of us left, going back to. the dining table and sitting in silence for a time.

“I’m so sorry…” Philip started whispering under his breath. I don’t know if he was telling us, himself, or the things that were probably still following him, but he broke down sobbing eventually.

I wandered off to read for a bit, trying to find anything to calm my racing mind. Even after all this, I’m trying to come up with some sort of scientific answer. Despite all my logic though, the real evidence in front of me is supernatural, at least.

—-

DAY 13

I’ve had bad doses of irritability, but nothing like this. God, every small sound is terrible, making the headache I’ve been nursing for days only get worse.

Philip has taken to being a recluse in his cot, crying on and off in between long dissociative episodes. He would just stare at the wall, not even bothering to pay attention to the food we brought him.

We offered food to the subjects still inside, but all refused, saying that they weren’t hungry anymore. Every one of them is exhibiting the same symptom now, seeing other people around them that are, seemingly, from their past.

It’s… getting hard for me to focus. I’m having my own episodes of dissociation, sleepwalking is probably the best way to put it. Cognitive function isn’t doing so great either, so forgive me if there are words misspelled in future entries. Assuming there are future entries. I hope I can keep going.

—-

DAY 14

Five got up on his own today. After laying in the medical bay since he caught fire, screaming in pain as his skin started to slough and peel off, he got right up and walked out of the room. I don’t know what was driving him, but he started beating on the windows, now shuttered from the outside since the shutdown started. Bits of skin and streaks of blood left marks all over the glass, with his fists banging against it in vain like a solemn funeral drum. If only they could have funerals.

Examination of blood samples shows that, while the cells can be broken down and individually destroyed to the point of irreparable damage, they can’t outright die. It seems that something is keeping them here, making sure that they’re trapped in this hellish limbo. It’s my belief that this correlates with the healing process during sleep, with the lack of rest leading to cells going into a sort of preservative stasis instead of going through regeneration as they would during REM sleep. It’s essentially a state of conscious cryogenics, frozen to keep them alive while they feel everything.

Two is still being tortured by whatever is there. I fear once we get closer I’ll start seeing these… phantoms that they’ve been seeing.

Three began to choke earlier, coughing water from his lungs as he struggled for breath. It just kept coming from nowhere, gallons of it that at one point mixed with blood from the pressure on his lungs. The more disturbing thing was Four’s reaction to it, shrinking back in fear as he saw the water beginning to pool on the floor. He looked wild-eyed, terror in his face as he fell back, trying to get as far away as possible from it while beginning to choke himself, throat violently sp...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/toripope on 2024-09-22 19:02:08+00:00.

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My son will be one in just a few days, so my husband and I have decided it is time to sleep train. We have got to get our flare back, and the only way we know to do that is to get our son out of our bed. So one night last week, we jumped on the opportunity as our son was extremely tired, and it was now or never. I ran into his closet to find the unopened baby monitor, we have had no reason to use it so far. It is a nice little monitor, I had gotten it at the baby shower, brand new from my dad and step mom. I know you have probably all heard of the creepy stories of monitors that connect to wifi, and someone will connect to it and talk into it. So for that very reason as the “well researched” mother I am, I only asked for one thing NO WIFI NEEDED MONITOR! Of course my step mom and my dad heeded my wishes and grabbed a no wifi needed baby monitor.

So fast forward to the day we began the sleep training, I was so excited. I knew I probably wasn’t going to be getting much sleep in these upcoming nights, but hey what mother really is sleeping anyways. Then 7 oclock hit and it was finally bedtime. We did our nighttime routine so baby boy didn’t suspect anything different, but after bath and lotion and one last nursing session, I laid him in his crib. Surprisingly, he fell straight to sleep (thank you daycare!), and I was so happy for him and even happier for the reconnection my husband and I were going to share.

Around 12am, I woke up naturally patting the spot next to me, but of course there was nothing there. My baby was in his crib and I should have been ecstatic, but I started to cry. I was going to miss this season of life and miss his sweet snuggles at night, but I knew this was something that needed to be done. I pulled my phone off the nightstand and started to scroll on Reddit, then I heard the weirdest thing coming from my end of the monitor. “Hi Mommy” I jumped but didn’t want to wake my husband, my baby is only 11 months, he doesn’t say much of anything other than the goo goo ga ga’s, mama, dada, and the occasional HAT (he loves hats). I rubbed my eyes, many times I had gone delusional in the middle of the night so I chalked it up to that. I did double check the monitor though, and saw my little angel peacefully sleeping.

Around 2am, my internal alarm clock woke me again. Not even knowing what to do at this point I again grabbed my phone and hit up all my usual games and social medias, but as I was scrolling something weird happened again. “Why are you ignoring me, Mommy?” This time I screamed, I know I definitely heard something as the monitor lit up green indicating someone was definitely talking. My husband groggily rolled over and barely even opened his eyes, and then drifted back off. I snatched the monitor so quickly and stared for what felt like hours, but in reality it was maybe only 5 minutes. Nothing was out of place, and yet again, my baby was happily in dreamland. Something in me told me to rush to the room and grab my little boy, but you know the age old saying “Never wake a sleeping baby”. So I didn’t, but mother’s intuition is always right, and I should have listened to it. Too late now, all I can do now is sit back and ponder all the mistakes I made that night, because somehow I slowly drifted back to sleep.

My alarm went off at 5:45am, I work at a local daycare and I bring my son along with me. I got myself dressed, and I brought the monitor into the bathroom with me just to make sure he wasn’t awake, while I was doing the boring morning things. I brushed my teeth quickly, went to the bathroom, and then grabbed a diaper and lotion to get my boy ready for his day. But as I was getting his clothes picked out, the monitor turned green again, but nothing was said just a hushed laughing sound. I thought for sure that was my little man waking up, after all he is a bubbly boy and loves to laugh. Then the monitor turned green again and I heard something that will forever haunt me. “You shouldn’t have ignored me, Mommy” I ran to my baby’s room in a panic, I did what I should have done the first time I heard a peep out of that thing. But to my horror, my son was nowhere to be found. He just had recently started pulling up on things, so I thought maybe he had managed to escape the crib. I searched everywhere, his favorite hiding spots, his closet, my bathroom, but he was gone. I yelled louder than I think I ever have, and my husband came running, again we searched but it was as if that sweet boy had just vanished. We of course called the police, but no leads yet. So for anyone reading. Should I call a priest, is this something paranormal, or was my son abducted. I guess I wasn’t as well researched as I thought.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/APCleriot on 2024-09-22 16:36:24+00:00.

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So the end had come. A hundred bucks and a quarter, my cut of the tips for Thursday night. Not even close to what I needed to pay rent and get some food - actual food, not pretzels and chips - for Sam, my brother.

His care cost a lot. He needed to be watched at all times. Mrs. George from the lower apartment would have done it for free but she needed to survive too. Taking care of kids in the building, and Sam, was her income.

“Need an advance, Charlie?” Jack, owner of The Cat and Cathedral, offered.

I smiled. “You've already advanced me a month.” I sighed and rested my chin on the bar. “It's just not enough these days. I can't keep up. Can you?”

He shrugged. “It's been slow. Times are tough all around.”

“Can you remember a time when they weren't? I asked.

“Early 90s maybe?”

“So, last century,” I observed.

He chuckled. “Guess so. Wanna drink?”

“Yes.”

He poured out two pints. Jack didn't know I had little taste for beer. I drank it for the calories. Without these nightly freebies, I'd waste away.

“Cheers.”

We drank a few. It tasted like coppery piss, but the alcohol dulled the anxiety or at least delayed it a little. Sober me could deal with the crushing responsibilities of life later.

He indulged my prolonged loitering till just after three.

“I'm off, Charlie,” he said.

“Mind if I stick around for one more? I can lock up.” Jack caught my straying glance toward the old office under the stairs.

His eyes fixed on the locked door. By his order, no one was allowed in there. Only me and one other bartender had been told what it contained. And the other bartender - Tyler - was dead.

“You stay out of there,” Jack said.

“What? I know.”

“It's only trouble. Tyler-”

“Died from an overdose, Jack.”

“But if he hadn't messed with the drawer,” Jack said, still watching the forbidden door, his expression pained, “he never would have-”

“I don't buy that, Jack, which is why I would never bother putting anything in there. There'd be no point. I stopped believing in magic at ten.”

He nodded and looked a bit teary eyed. I wondered if I'd been too blunt. Tired and stressed 24/7, I rarely made good company. Jack had always been a friend.

“I won't go in there,” I said. “I promise. Now go home. Shannon's gotta be wondering where you are, and tell her to come by every once in a while. I haven't seen her in years.”

Jack smiled at the mention of his wife. “She's probably been asleep since nine.” He said one more goodbye, spared another uneasy check of the old office door before reluctantly leaving.

Like most days, this would be my only time alone. I loved Sam. He waa my heart and my world. But the energy of my youth had been spent on him.

Our parents were old when they had us, and not healthy. They died within a year of one another. I was nineteen. Sam was twelve. Jack gave me a job and more than a decade flew by.

I helped myself to the house red, and ate a bag of chips in a dark booth. Mrs. George had texted that Sam had fallen asleep around eight. He'd be up by six am again. I had three hours. Sleep didn't call because it never did.

“I'm going to die if this goes on,” I said to the bar, and thought of the drawer in the old office. The Cat and Cathedral had the honour of being one of the oldest piles of bricks and mortar in Bridal Veil Lake. It predated the War of 1812.

And had once served as an apothecary and barbershop. Dark iron brackets for lanterns were still embedded in the beams. The fireplace was original too, though rarely lit, except on Christmas Eve for the lonely, the lost.

Despite the heat of a mid September night, I wished to build a fire so I could smell the ashes, and think of better days. Tips were plentiful around the holidays. Sam and I ate well and the rent would be paid.

“I don't know if I can make it to Christmas,” I said. “I'm tired. God, I am tired.” While I cried, I poured out more wine and began to really feel the alcohol seize control.

With so little food in my stomach, the beer alone had pushed me beyond a buzz. Wine gently guided me the resy of the way to totally fucked.

“Shit,” I said. “I'm drunk.” Then I laughed because it didn't matter. Drunk. Sober. Sleep deprived. I'd been so long past exhausted, it couldn't get worse. You can't kill what's dead.

“Oh, god, please help me.”

I thought he answered with the soft scraping of wood on wood. The noise came from the old office, and I could have convinced myself I'd imagined it if I weren't so desperate for something to go my way.

“Don’t mess with the old office,” Jack told Tyler and I years ago. I think I was twenty-two. Tyler and I had gone in there out of curiosity. The small room didn't hold much but a broken chair, and a drawer in the wall. Jack caught us as Tyler opened the drawer.

“Close that shit up!” Jack had yelled, and I'd never seen him so mad before. I didn't think he could get mad. He slammed shut the wide, shallow drawer, and physically dragged us from the room by our aprons.

Last call was hours ago that night. I remember a winter storm discouraged the trek home. Jack's hands were shaking as he struggled with an old key in the ancient lock of the office door.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“What’s the deal with that drawer?” Tyler ventured. “It's weird.”

Jack said nothing as he searched behind the bar for something strong. He came out with vodka and poured himself a shot. And then another. When he finally started to settle, he spoke quickly.

“Never go in there. Don't open that drawer, and for the love of fucking Christ almighty, don't you dare put anything in there.” He stared hard at Tyler as if he knew the far younger man could only be tempted by a warning.

“The drawer goes into the wall,” I said, “but… there's only the outer lounge on the other side.” I thought of the low ceilings in what seemed like an annex to the main room, and recalled the strange cylindrical stonework tucked into the left corner. It looked like an old timey bread oven without an opening. I figured that's what it'd been, and that it'd been filled in at some point. “The drawer goes into that bulge in the annex. That's weird.”

“It's just big enough for a person to stand in,” Tyler said, “uncomfortably.”

“I don't know about any of that,” Jack said, rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth. “But there's something in there, and it isn't good.”

Tyler laughed.

Jack looked embarrassed.

“What are you saying, Jack?” I asked.

He glared at Tyler. “I won't talk about it anymore except to say whatever goes in that drawer comes back out times three.”

Obviously, we had no idea what he meant, and it took some persuasion and another shot to get an explanation.

“So,” Tyler said, more interested, but no less skeptical, “If I put a loonie in there, when I open the drawer, there'll be three loonies?”

It felt like a set-up for more ridicule. Jack didn't take the bait. “You can't just put money in there. Part of you goes with it. It comes back at you three times as hard.” He leveled a finger at us both. “Promise me you'll stay out of there. Right now. Or you can pound sand.”

“Whoa, whoa, for real?” Tyler asked, grinning like a child. “You're gonna fire us? Sounds like a wrongful dismissal lawsuit. Should we get a lawyer?”

“I promise, Jack.” It was important to him, so it was important to me. “So does Tyler.”

“I do?”

I dug my fingernails into his forearm. “Ouch. Fuck,” he expressed calmly. “Fine. I promise not to play with your magic drawers.”

Jack studied our faces before nodding and abruptly leaving for the night.

“That guy's fucked,” Tyler said.

“That guy,” I said, “is my friend.”

“Okay, okay,” Tyler said. “You heading out?”

“Yes,” I said, “and so are you?”

He grinned again. “Oh come on, I've got to check this shit out. It's a magic drawer? Did you see his face? Dude is scared shitless of it. I can't not check it out. I. Can't.”

“You promised him.”

“Under the duress of your finger knives.”

He had a point there. I didn't believe in superstitious bullshit. Plus, I didn't see a way into the old office. Jack had the key. Tyler lacked a brain and had zero skills outside of slinging pints and flirting with customers.

“Goodnight,” I told him for the last time. He died from a combination of drugs and exposure that night. On the way home, he passed out in a snowbank and froze to death.

Jack found the old office and the drawer open. That was enough evidence for him. The “trading drawer” he called it, and it had killed Tyler, all of twenty-four.

I'd like to say I felt sad about Tyler's death. But I didn't feel much at all. Deep in my own troubles, I had no energy to spare on fools.

Jack took it much harder. He vowed to seal that room, and break the drawer. But he never did. He couldn't bring himself to go inside, and never stayed long near the old office door even.

If he could have sold the bar or closed it, I think he would have. Instead, he kept his head down and drank more. And didn't talk about the drawer or Tyler except for this night, this very night I thought about it and nothing else.

I needed money. I had a hundred bucks and a quarter. Three hundred and seventy five cents would be much better. My promise to Jack and what I was about to do stung through the fatigue and withdrew guilt usually reserved for Sam.

I could never do enough for my brother. I was failing him. Jack would be upset, but with a full stomach and a place to live. I owed it to Sam to try every damn thing to help us survive and more.

None of these thoughts...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Dizzy_Cucumber_9626 on 2024-09-21 17:06:24+00:00.

---

Have you ever had the feeling that you’re being watched, like eyes are prying into you, trying to dig their way deep into your soul? Because that’s how I’ve felt for the past two days. I don’t know what to do, or how I can make it stop. I’ve never posted on something like this before, but at this point I’m willing to try anything, I’m desperate for some advice.

I’ll take you back to the start, or what I assume to be the start of it all. 

I live a fairly ordinary life. I’m a 21 year old guy, living on his own in a bit of a rundown flat, commuting to work on the train everyday. This doesn’t leave me a lot of spare time for anything else, really, because my commute is an hour each way. My days consist of waking up at 6:30, getting dressed, walking to the train station, catching the train, walking to work, working, and then doing the same process in reverse. That’s it. I don’t really have any friends to hang out with, and I’m not exactly on the best terms with my family (for reasons I won’t go into here), so I sit on my own each evening, watching TV or playing video games. I keep myself to myself, and get on with my life.

Now, you may be thinking that my life sounds pretty miserable or boring, but to me, it’s perfect. I’ve always been a bit of a loner, so my daily routine suits me perfectly, and I’ve been living happily like this for the past year. 

That is, until a dream I had 3 nights ago.

Like all dreams, it didn’t have a beginning. I was simply there, no recollection of opening my eyes in this new place, or how I’d got there. I was standing in the middle of a large grassy field. I could feel the wind blowing gently on my face, and I ran my hand through the large grass strands that stretched up from the ground to meet me. I looked around, and realized I was alone. The field was empty, save for a lone tree, a few hundred feet away from me. I started to make my way over to it, not knowing why I was doing so, but just having the feeling that there was something there I needed to see. As I got closer, I could make out the faint shape of letters carved into the wood. From where I was standing, I couldn’t quite make out what they were, and so I decided to get closer for a better look.

And that’s when I felt it for the first time. Even in my dream, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and a chill went down my spine. I could tell that I was no longer alone. Someone else was here, watching me. I span myself around, and caught the first glimpse of them. They were far away, so far away that all of their features were obscured by the distance. All I could make out was a featureless shadow, standing in the grass, watching me. I stood for what seemed like hours, just staring back at them, unsure of what to do. 

And then they started to run.

The figure lurched forwards with impossible speed, heading straight for me. Instinctively, I span back around and began to take off in the opposite direction, towards the tree. The words on the tree were becoming clearer, but I still couldn't make out what they were yet. As I ran through the grass, trying desperately not to trip on the uneven terrain, I glanced behind me to ascertain how much distance I had left between me and my pursuer.

Not much. 

It had impossible speed, coming at me like a steam train, closing the gap between us in a matter of seconds. It would only be a few more until it was on me. I began to panic and tried to pick up my pace, but as is the curse of most dreams, I was running at a snail's pace. My foot slipped, and I was sent crashing to the ground. I flipped over just in time to see my pursuer pouncing on top of me. I could see now that it was not the distance that had caused it to look featureless. It was featureless. Just a black hole of pure energy in the shape of a person. It brought its ‘hands’ up to my face, placing them on either side of my eyes. I began to cry and plead with it, begging it not to hurt me. It didn’t listen. Instead, it plunged it’s dark thumbs into my eye sockets, blocking my vision and causing me to scream out in pain.

And then I was awake, screaming still.

I scanned my room, looking for the creature, but I was alone.

“Fucking stupid nightmare.” I muttered to myself as I led back down, trying to slow my breathing and calm myself down. I managed to eventually get back to sleep, and awoke at 6:30 to my normal alarm buzzing next to me. I got up and began to get ready for work as normal, when my mind drifted back to my nightmare. I tried to think of the letters I had seen carved into the wood of the tree, but all I could remember were,

“Erom ecno niks ym no enihs”

There was still a lot more carved into it, but in my panic I couldn’t make out the rest. 

“Whatever,” I thought to myself.

I left my building and began my walk to the train station, the thoughts of my dream already beginning to fade from my memory, chalked up t o nothing more than a stupid dream caused by a scary video game or something. 

You’d be surprised by how quiet the streets are in a big town at 7am. No one trying to sell you things, no one bumping into you or pushing past, most of the time it’s just me and the road. Nice and quiet. It was the same on Thursday morning, but as I got closer to the train station, I began to get a familiar feeling. The hairs on the back of my neck began to stand up, and I felt a chill run down my spine. I turned around slowly, hoping to just see another commuter making their way to work behind me.

The street was still clear, with no sign of anyone else having been there other than me. I breathed a sigh of relief and shook my head, thinking that the previous night’s dream was just playing tricks on my mind. However, as I began to turn my head back in the direction I was traveling, my eyes caught a glimpse of someone, standing behind a lamppost. Only half of their body was visible, the other half hidden behind the metal pole. They were standing about 200 meters from me, so I couldn’t easily make out any of their features. All I could see was an eye, glistening in the reflection of the streetlight. Whoever it was was watching me, motionless. I stood for a moment, debating what to do.

I brought my hands up to my face and momentarily covered my eyes as I rubbed them. When I removed my hands once more, the figure was gone.

I let out a faint laugh, cursing myself for being so stupid as to believe someone was watching me. It was most likely just someone making their way to work, just like me. They had momentarily stopped to look at me, the only other person on the street, just as I had done to them. And then they had moved on, got on with their day, just as I had to do now as well.

The rest of the day went by as usual, with nothing out of the ordinary to report, that is, until I was on the way home. I got on the train home as I normally would, and we set off back towards my home town. There are a number of stops between where the train begins and where it ends, with the carriages steadily becoming quieter and quieter as the journey progresses. By the time it reaches the final stop, I am normally the only person left in the carriage, which I am more than okay with, as it means no one has to sit next to me.

As the train slowed to ready itself for the next station, I felt my hairs stand on end once more. I sighed at myself. 

“Not again” I thought, wishing that my brain would stop playing tricks on me. It was clearly hanging onto the dream more than I had thought, and was not letting not go any time soon. The train slowed to a halt, and the doors hissed open to allow any passengers to get off. It was a quiet station in the evening, and so the platform was deserted, save for the shape of a lone person standing at the far end of the platform. It had been raining, and so my window was covered in thin streams of water, obscuring the figure and making it seem as though they were a strange shape - almost as if you were looking at yourself in a funhouse mirror. Their body seemed twisted and deformed, no longer even resembling the shape of a human. The thought of it sent more chills down my spine, and as the doors hissed shut and the train pulled off, I silently thanked the gods that we weren’t delayed.

When I climbed into bed that night, I prayed that my brain wouldn’t force me to experience another one of its concoctions, and that I would just be able to forget the whole thing had ever happened. But my mind, once again, had other plans.

I was standing in the middle of a crowded street, streams of people passing around me. I glanced down and found that I was dressed in my work clothes, consisting of a shirt, tie and smart pants. I felt at the tie, and let it slip through my fingers. The silk felt so real. I looked back up to the street and found myself surrounded by staring faces. Everyone had stopped what they were doing and were staring at me, their mouths hanging slightly open in a look of shock and awe. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. All those sat in coffee shops, in the flats above me, and in cars all stared at me through the glass of their windows, the same expressions resting on their faces. They were unmoving, unbreathing, unfeeling. All emission had drained from them, as though they were statues.

And then as one, they took a step closer. Faces squished against the windows as those inside the buildings tried to get closer, seemingly unaware there was something in the way. I beg...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CallMeStarr on 2024-09-21 12:30:58+00:00.

---

We drove.

The drive lasted forever. At first, I didn’t notice, I was too busy fidgeting with my shiny new phone. In my naivety, I figured this venture (rescuing my girlfriend from the hounds of hell) would take a couple hours, and I’d narrowly make it to school on time. Oh, how wrong I was.

The cop didn’t speak; no music, no conversation, nothing. Just the sound of the V-8 engine barrelling down an anonymous side road. Finally, I spoke up.

“Um, where are we going?”

The cop grumbled something under his breath, gripping the wheel tightly, and kept driving. Earlier at the coffee shop, he introduced himself as Doug. He didn’t say much else. Only that he knew of this frozen hell-world Rowan was trapped inside. And that we should go get her, before it's too late.

We drove.

I was getting fidgety, my phone no longer of interest. Ugh. Where was he going? We weren’t even in the city anymore. I began to worry. Maybe this disgruntled cop was going to torture me, and make me do unspeakable things. I imagined the worst. Many unthinkable scenarios played out in my mind. Doug was old, but he was tough as nails. His wrists were like logs, his eyes as cold as a killer’s heart.

I was sitting in the back, which somehow made it worse. It was an old car, with the old-style seat belts, and old car smell. I didn’t like it. The old car blundered onward, until finally we pulled into a plot of land next to a cabin so derelict, it should’ve had a sign declaring: Hillbilly Haven.

“Wait here.”

His revolver, clenched tightly within his large hands, made a good argument.

I waited.

My heart was leaping inside my throat. I hated myself for being so gullible. Like, why would I get into a car with some strange man? Yes, he was a cop (retired), and he claimed he could find my girlfriend. Still. I truly am an idiot.

I watched him disappear behind the makeshift cabin. The only sound was the squawking jays, warning others of our presence, and the endless chorus of crickets. By now, I’m freaking out. Clearly, I wasn’t safe. I scanned the old car, looking for a weapon. Anything. There was a ballpoint pen on the dash. I grabbed it and stuffed it inside my sleeve, just in case. When I looked up, he was standing over me. I nearly screamed. He tapped on the window. I rolled it down manually, which I’d never done before.

“Keep out of the bag.”

Before disappearing again, he tossed a large khaki backpack onto the passenger’s seat. Despite the warning, I considered rummaging through it. Just a peek, right? But I didn’t dare. When he returned, gun in hand, he got into the vehicle and drove away.

“Like, what’s going on?” I asked, trying to sound brave.

“Needed supplies,” he grunted. “You didn’t think we’d just show up unprepared, did you?” His laugh was as dirty as an ashtray.

I didn’t know how to respond, so I kept quiet. If this psychopath was gonna kill me, let’s get it over with. After a summer of depression (the guilt of abandoning Rowan weighed heavy on my heart. And why wouldn’t it?) I enrolled in college, taking a welding course. I wanted to improve my life. Whatever that means. Now, this?

He drove fast, trailblazing through a series of rustic roads. I closed my eyes, and must’ve fallen asleep, because the next thing I know we’re in the parking lot of Brews and Wash. To my surprise, the lot was empty, save from a few druggies mucking about.

“It’s closed,” I said, bewildered.

The cop rolled his eyes, like this was yesterday’s news. Maybe it was.

“We’ll enter through the rear.”

Those words didn’t sit well with me. I still did not trust this man. My heart was pounding so loud, I’m sure he could hear it. He stepped out of the vehicle and tapped on my window, rolling his fingers impatiently, until I got out. Above us, the sky was bleak; a storm was brewing. Surely, a sign for things to come.

“How are we gonna get in?” I asked.

Grinning, he licked his lips. This is a madman, I realized, not happily, as he produced a golden key.

“This here’s the City Key. It’ll open anything.”

“We’re…?”

I didn’t have the heart to ask. Nor did I need to. Of course we were breaking in. It’s not like Ray would voluntarily let us pass through the door that declared: DO NOT ENTER! Besides, for whatever reason, Ray closed shop. He’s owned the laundromat for as long as I can remember. Nothing made sense. The cop rammed the City Key into the lock and turned. CLICK. His eyes danced with possibilities.

“You go first,” he said.

I can’t believe I’m going through with this. Like, I should be in class right now! Ugh. With a pouty face, I flicked on the light. No light came. Something was wrong. All the machines were gone, replaced by piles of black soot. The smell was like burnt plastic. The cop nudged me onward.

“Take this.”

He reached into his bag and handed me a flashlight. The light was welcoming, as we descended into the dark and dingy basement, careful not to wack our heads.

“What the…?”

I stopped and stared, not believing my eyes. It looked like a nuclear bomb had detonated. The cardboard boxes were obliterated, the mop bucket now a pile of ashes. The basement stank worse than upstairs.

“Get going.”

The cop nudged me towards the door. The door with the DO NOT ENTER! sign. Only now, the door seemed different. Smaller somehow. The skull was colorless. It seemed sad, like its hopes and dreams were shattered.

I was handed the skull key.

“Open the door.”

I didn’t appreciate being ordered around. I should jam the key down his scruffy throat. Instead, I took the key and shoved it into the large lock.

Nothing.

I tried again, and shrugged. Doug’s face was blazing red, his eyes burning with rage.

“Lemme try!”

He snatched the key and fed it to the lock and turned.

Nothing.

We stood side by side, crouched awkwardly, while staring at the door with the DO NOT ENTER! sign. Doug’s face took a sour turn. I didn’t trust what he’d do next.

An idea came to me. “Try the other key,” I said.

“Other key?” His eyes lit up. “Of course!”

The City Key worked! Finally, something was going our way. In the excitement, the cop shoved me aside and disappeared through the strange door, gun in hand. I turned and smashed my head and swore. Oh, how I hated this basement.

A layer of mist was rolling in. The door was shimmering. It’s now or never. So, with a million thoughts crashing my mind, I entered the frozen hellscape. The door slammed shut behind me.

The cold hit me straight away. Why didn’t we bring warm coats? I could kill myself right about now. Ugh. My eyes were slow to adjust. Torrential winds pelted me from every direction. The snow was merciless. I could barely see my own hand in front of my face. The flashlight did nothing.

“Doug!” I shouted. “Where’d you go?”

My voice was flattened by the oncoming storm. Shivering, I scanned the vicinity, shocked that the door we came through, now closed, was floating midair. Behind it, only snow.

As my eyes adjusted, I noticed something resembling a snowy cave. I went towards it and slipped, falling flat on my face. Ugh. When I looked up, I groaned. Something was circling above me. Something huge. It looked like a Pterodactyl, with a long beak, spiky teeth and glowing red eyes.

“Doug!”

Anger enveloped me. This was stupid. We were walking into certain death. Then it hit me: The cop has no intention of helping me. Clearly, he has his own agenda. Whatever, I’m here now. The least I could do is try. I jumped to my feet and shouted as loud as humanly possible.

“Rowan!”

Something struck the back of my head. Rocks. That stupid Pterodactyl was dropping rocks! I was on my knees, cowering, when a series of tortured screams startled me. The sound was abhorrent, like the screaming of a billion tortured souls, bellowing in despair. One thought sprung to mind: ESCAPE.

Admitting defeat, I turned back, thinking the door was behind me. It wasn’t. In the confusion, I must’ve gotten turned around. Oh, why didn’t we bring markers, or something. This was stupid. I wondered what the cop was up to, and if he was having better luck. I scanned the area, looking for the dreaded door. There! The door was to my right. Lying flat on my belly, which kept me warm, I crawled towards the door. Meanwhile, the dreaded dinosaur continued dropping rocks the size of Texas.

I heard a familiar voice call my name.

“Rowan!”

“Jackson! Is that really you!”

My heart found my mouth. I couldn’t believe it! She’s actually alive! Deep down, I thought she was dead. The only reason I went – besides the fact that I was ambushed and put on the spot – was to alleviate the life-destroying guilt, gutting me. The ground trembled. The wind and snow whirled. The terrifying screams reached a fervor.

“Jackson! It’s a trap! Go back!”

Her voice was coming from below me. I tried following it, but I was stuck, frozen to the ground. The Pterodactyl swooped down and snatched me up; and the next thing I know, I’m high in the air, trapped inside its massive beak. The beak, as sharp as a surgeon’s blade, dug deeply into my back and neck. The pain was tremendous.

A shot rang out.

The high-flying creature went berserk, flinging me like a toy in a dog’s mouth. I jammed the ballpoint pen into its eye. It made a sound like a Harley. Then it dropped me, and I crashed onto the icy surface.

The ground below me groaned. The ice was cracking. Before I could move, the ground opened up and swallowed me. While falling, I saw the cop, revolver in hand...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/croww_0 on 2024-09-22 16:59:03+00:00.

---

Dad was always kind of a weird guy.

Weird and strict.

I always thought this was just because he was a single parent, but even that seemed to only barely cover his odd behavior. He expected the best of me, expected my chores to be done, expected the rules to be followed, and, if I didn't, there was only one punishment that would do. 

Dad never hit me with a belt, he never spanked me with his hand, he never took my stuff or put me in time out.

No, Dad had a different sort of punishment he used.

He didn't introduce the jar until I was six, and it was revealed with a lot of serious contemplation.

I remember coming home from my first day of Kindergarten and finding my Dad sitting in the living room, the jar on the little end table where the magazines and rick rack usually stood. The jar may have begun life as a pickle jar, it always smelled a little of brine, and inside were beans. These were spotted pinto beans, the kind I had used on art projects and crafts since before I could remember, and I noticed they had been filled up to the brim. All in all, there were probably about three bags of beans in there, and a piece of scotch tape declared it to be my jar.

"Take a seat, we need to have a very serious talk," he said, and I ended up just sitting on the floor of our living room and looking up at him. He looked very serious, more serious than I had ever seen him before, and that scared me a bit. Up until now, Dad had always been this goofy guy who played pirates and astronauts and Mario Kart with me, but now he looked like a judge ready to sentence me to death if I didn't have a pretty good defense for my crime.

"You are six now, long past knowing right from wrong. In this family, it is customary to use The Bean Jar to punish children. Do you see this jar?" he asked like there was any way I could miss it.

I nodded and he smiled, seeming pleased.

"The Bean Jar symbolizes You. It is everything you are, and everything you might be. So, from now on, when you are bad, or insolent, or you disobey my orders, I will not yell at you or send you to your room. I won’t do anything but take a bean from The Bean Jar."

I almost laughed. Was this a game or something? Was I supposed to be scared of a jar of beans? This had to be another one of Dad's jokes. Dad was always doing stuff like this, telling me how the monsters in my closet could be kept away by a teddy bear or that the Cavity Creeps would eat my teeth if I didn't brush them twice a day. Dad was a goofball, he always had been, but I think it was his face that made me wonder if he was joking or not. Throughout the whole thing, he just sat there, deadly serious, and never averted his eyes from me.

"You're a smart kid, just like I was, and I see now that you'll need an example. You may think this is just a regular jar, but you're wrong," he said, reaching in and picking up a bean, "dead wrong."

He didn't even take it out. He just lifted a little, hovering it over the pile, but he didn't need to do anything else. Suddenly, miraculously, it felt like someone was touching my brain. It was the feeling of getting a sudden sadness, a sudden bit of anxiety, and I wanted him to drop that bean back in the jar. I needed to be whole, I needed all my beans, and he must have seen that on my face because he dropped it back in and I trembled as I tried to make sense of what had just happened.

"I'm sorry, but you have to know what's at stake here. You're my last chance, I have to make sure that you are perfect, and the Bean Jar knows perfection from flaw. My own father used this method, and his father, and his father before him. The Bean Jar is always used until the child's eighteenth birthday, or until all the beans are gone."

I was panting when I asked him what would happen if all the beans were gone.

He looked at me without mirth and without any sign of a joke or a goof, "You don't want to know."

That's how we started with the Bean Jar. Dad didn't suddenly turn into an ogre or become a villain overnight. He went back to being the same guy he'd always been. We would play video games together, build with my Legos, and play pretend after school. My Dad had never scared me like that before, he and I were always really close, but I remember how he would get when he had to take beans out of the jar. His face would become completely neutral, and he would walk to the jar and take out a bean before crushing it between his thumb and forefinger. 

The Bean Jar was utilized even for the most trivial of infractions. 

Forgot to wash my dishes? Lose a bean.

Forgot to put my clothes away? Lose a bean.

Stayed up too late on a school night? Lose a bean.

There was no escalation either. There was never any difference between forgetting to clean up my toys or yelling at Dad because I was frustrated. It was always one bean at a time, ground to dust between his large, calloused fingers. He would look at me too with this mixture of pain and resolve once it was done, his stoicism only going so far.

Those times he took a bean, however, were unbearable. 

It felt as if each bean were a piece of my psyche that he was turning to dust. As a child, every bean made me hyper-aware of my actions, but I was still just a child. Sometimes I forgot things, sometimes I was lazy, and sometimes I thought I could sneak around and get away with not doing what I was told. I was always caught, always punished, and I always fell into a state of anxious, nervous emotions once it was done. I hated the way it felt when he crushed those beans, and I didn't want to lose another one. I didn't want to lose them so badly, that I trained myself to perform the tasks expected of me without fail. Five am: start the laundry. Five twenty: make breakfast. Five Thirty: wash my dishes. Five forty: dress. Six o'clock: clean up my room. Six thirty: backpack on, fully dressed, waiting by the door to leave. Three ten: Get home, do homework. Four thirty: Clean house. Five: Start dinner. Six: Eat dinner when my father got home. Nine o'clock: brush teeth, take a shower. Ninethirty: Bedtime. Every day, without fail, these things were done or I would be one bean shorter.

This manifested itself as a kind of mania in me. Not only did I have to get all my chores done, but I needed to get good grades too. After a while, good wasn't good enough either. What if Dad decided that C's and B's weren't good enough? I strove for all A's, and Dad seemed happy with my efforts.

To the other kids, however, I was a weirdo, and I didn't really have any friends.

Dad was my only friend, but it was a strange kind of friendship.

Like living with someone who has schizophrenia and could change at the slightest inclination.

I didn't have any real friends until high school when I met Cass.

Cassandra Biggly was not what you would consider a model student. Her parents had high expectations for her, but she was a middling at best. She came to me because I was the smartest kid in school, at least according to the other kids, and she begged me to help her. I helped her, tutored her, showed her the way, and soon her grades improved. That was how we became friends, and how she was the first to find out about the Bean Jar.

"So, he just takes a bean out and crushes it?"

"Yes," I said, not sounding at all mystified about the process.

"And...what? It means you have less beans?"

I thought about it, Dad had never actually told me what would happen, only that it would be terrible.

"When he takes out all the beans, then something awful will happen."

"Like what?" Cass asked, "No dessert for a month?"

"I don't know, but I know that when he crushes those beans, it's like a piece of my sanity is mushed. I feel crazy after he smooshes a bean. I don't like feeling that way, I don't like it at all."

I started crying. I hadn't meant to, I was sixteen and I never cried anymore, but Cass didn't make me feel bad about it. She just held me while I cried and eventually, I stopped. It had felt good to be held. Dad hugged me, but he never really comforted me. I didn't have a mom, someone whose job seemed to be comforting me, and as Cass held me, I realized what I had been missing all these years.

I had been missing a Mom that I had never even known.

We hung out a lot after that, Cass and I. Despite our age, it never became inappropriate. She gave me something I had been missing, a friend without the threat of punishment looming over our relationship. The realization made me feel differently about my Dad. He was still the lovable goofball that he had always been, but I started to see how our entire relationship hung under the shadow of that bean jar. As I pulled away, he became more sullen, and more suspicious, and I saw him holding the Bean Jar sometimes as if he wished to smash them. If I wasn't misbehaving, though, he couldn't, that was always the deal. He knew it, I knew it, and he knew that as long as I abided by the rules, he couldn't punish me. 

Despite how it will sound, Dad was never cruel about the Bean Jar. He never used it to take out his frustrations, he never came home and punished me simply because he’d had a bad day. The rules were established, we had both agreed to them, and I knew that by following them I would be safe. I think, deep down, Dad really did think he was doing the best for me, thought he was molding me into something better than I could be, and I guess he was right, though it wasn’t fair, not really. 

Then, one day after coming home from Cass's, it all came to a head.

D...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/BlairDaniels on 2024-09-22 16:58:42+00:00.

---

There is a video on YouTube simply titled “White Noise, Black Screen.” It is a 10-hour-long video, designed for playing while you’re asleep.

It stands out among the other white noise videos though, because at around the 6-hour mark, there is a huge spike in the “most replayed” section.

In case you don’t know—”most replayed” is a feature on YouTube that shows what part of the video other people played over and over again. For most videos, it makes sense—on a creepy urban explorers video, the “most replayed” might be where the person encounters a ghost or creepy person, etc. Or a funny skit video might be most replayed at the punchline.

But for a video that’s playing white noise and a black screen for 10 hours, why would there be a most replayed section?

But there it was. A 30-second portion of the video at the timestamp 6 hours, 18 minutes.

Out of curiosity, I jumped to that part of the video and played it. But it looked and sounded the same as the rest of the video: black screen, white noise. No blips in the audio or change to the visuals, as far as I could tell.

Maybe that’s when most people get up. I mean, that was six hours of sleep, right? Maybe a lot of people woke up about 6 hours into the video and shut it off.

That wouldn’t really be replaying it, though.

And also, 30-seconds in a 10 hour video was too accurate. Some people would wake up six hours in, six hours five minutes in… etc. The “most replayed” feature showed a spike at exactly 6:18:14. A huge, narrow spike—specifically at that time—not a broader hump that would imply a range of wakeup times.

Maybe someone linked the video at that time by accident, and shared it to a lot of people?

Comments were turned off, so I couldn’t check if people were saying anything else about it.

Despite the weirdness, that night, I decided to play the video while I slept. That’s how I found the video in the first place—I really did need white noise. My neighbor’s dog kept barking at 6 AM and I needed sleep.

I pressed PLAY on the video and went to bed.

And woke up with a start in the middle of the night.

I didn’t know what woke me up. My phone said it was 3:37 AM. My room was pitch black, except for the dark-gray glow of the “White Noise, Black Screen” video playing. I rolled over, pulled the blanket over me, and tried to fall back asleep.

But my body was pumping with adrenaline. It was like I’d woken up from a nightmare or something, even though I didn’t remember having one. I tried to relax, slowly counting in my head.

That’s when I heard something else.

It’s hard to describe, but I’ll try. Some white noises are computer-generated, so that they truly make a uniform rushing sound the entire time. Others, however, especially in older “sound machines” are actually a clip of white noise repeating over and over again. Listening to it long enough, your brain starts to pick out a pattern of the subtly changing tone, and it gets really annoying.

That’s what this felt like. My brain was suddenly picking out a pattern, a sort of rhythm, to the white noise.

Even though I hadn’t heard it when I fell asleep.

The longer I lay there, tossing and turning, the more my brain picked up on the pattern. A series of whooshes and clicks. It was really annoying—I’m one of those people who can’t sleep in the same room with a ticking clock, and that’s what this felt like. Whooosh. Wup. Click.

Whooosh. Wup. Click.

My nerves grew ragged.

Whooosh. Wup. Click.

Just when I couldn’t stand it anymore—just when I was about to get out of bed and turn it off, because anything, even barking dogs at 6 AM, was better than this—I heard it.

A growling sound.

“Who’s there?” I shouted.

Nothing.

I sat up—and my heart dropped.

A pair of white eyes floated in the darkness.

On my computer screen.

I watched, frozen, as the eyes shifted—off the computer screen. They hung in the darkness a full foot away, staring me down.

Then it moved.

The eyes blazed white as the thing leapt for me, shadowy hands reaching across the bed—a shock of pain as something tightened around my wrist—

I scrambled away, kicking. Grabbed my phone off the nightstand, turned on the flashlight.

Nothing was there.

I ran to the door and turned on the lights. The bedroom was empty. I grabbed the laptop—and saw that I was just past the 6:18 mark in the video. The most replayed part.

I rewound it, replayed it.

Nothing was there.

No growl.

No shadowy figure.

No blazing white eyes.

I ran to the bathroom and splashed water on my face, trying to calm myself, to break myself out of the panic. It was just a dream. You were half asleep. That’s all it was.

But when I looked down at my arm—

I saw a purple bruise just above my wrist.

In the shape of a slender, skeletal hand.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ramslie on 2024-09-22 00:58:54+00:00.

---

I am still a lawyer! For now.

My disbarment hearing was postponed for another two weeks. Something about a last minute witness, unlikely to be good for me. Not that it matters, I’m not exactly in the headspace to be practicing law at the moment so being barred for two more weeks is neither here nor there.

While I have the time, I figured I’d share another story to take my mind off my impending disbarment. This one takes place after I left the public defender’s office.

I had recently joined an (almost) full-service private law firm. They handled EVERYTHING (except for family law and criminal law). I wasn’t sure what practice area I wanted to join, they just liked that I had trial experience. Funnily enough, I ended up handling very little trial work during my tenure but that’s beside the point.

My first year or so there was spent in their estate planning unit. I won’t bore you with legal jargon (and will explain it as necessary) but I’ll split it up into two parts. There’s (1) the planning side and (2) the administration side. We handled both. As you can imagine, the planning side involved a lot paperwork, hours dedicated to pushing paper and writing lengthy legal clauses. The administration side, on the other hand, was drama-central. 

I remember when my managing partner popped into my office and dropped the subject case file onto my desk. She didn’t knock, it’s rare that someone does in an active legal office, and unless we were on a client call, the door had to be open. Something about making sure we were available.

It was a thick manila folder, no client name on the label, stuffed with papers. And yes, I understand in the 21st century that everything is online, and we DID have an electronic case managing system. Old habits die hard and this particular partner LOVED printing things out. So I got the paper file, inclusive of every thought, email, memo, or otherwise about the estate.

“You remember the estate?” She asked nonchalantly, without a glance up from the phone in her hand, no doubt putting out another fire (read: checking email, texting your spouse, scrolling social media, etc., anything that wasn’t actual work).

“Whose estate?”

“Well he died. Son’s asking for us to administer it.”

I repeated, “Whose estate?”

“Client agreement’s signed, bill under the Kellerman matter. Should be in the system, and use the timer please.” (We bill every 6 minutes for our time, less than 6? Round up.) I had a bad habit of not using the timer and letting minutes slip through the cracks here and there. It’s tedious, okay, this is a no judgment zone, if anything, be happy that I never overcharged a client… even if it only resulted from forgetting to do so.

I’ll break down the client file for you. Dead Kellerman had a Will. In theory, that allows someone to divide their property in whatever way they want. This can make some people angry, for obvious reasons. In short, my job was to read the Will, collect all the stuff, notify all relevant parties, and distribute it. 

This Will was a doozy. Three ex-wives, eight kids split between them, three more step kids, too many grandchildren to list, and one illegitimate child. 

I stared at the open manila folder, feeling a sense of dread settle in my stomach. Outside of my overwhelming caseload, the complexity of the Kellerman estate was daunting. I flipped through the pages, noting the numerous names and the tangled web of relationships. Each connection held a potential grudge, a whispered resentment, or a long-buried secret that I desperately did not wish to know.

Over the next few weeks as I delved deeper into the intricacies of the Kellerman estate, a nagging sensation that I was missing something crept over me. I began receiving strange phone calls from the various members of the Kellerman family. My phone would ring once but when I went to answer I was greeted by nothing but silence. At first, I brushed it off. I’ve death with my fair share of clients and I understood that most people’s first interactions with lawyers is on the worst day of their lives, so trepidation is expected. 

But the calls started escalating, becoming more frequent, targeting me at home at all hours of the day and night. Then the letters started, again from seemingly every member of the family. Each letter containing blank pages of paper.

I thought it was some sort of cruel prank — an odd family ritual or a manifestation of grief, trust me, I’ve seen weirder. But the silence was unnerving. Each time I opened a fresh envelope, the blank pages seemed to taunt me, their emptiness a haunting echo ever-present in my mind. 

One night, unable to shake the feeling of being watched, I began digging deeper in the Kellerman files, scouring every document, every email, and any hint of the family’s history that might offer some explanation for this strange behavior. As I pored over the estate planning documents, I noticed something odd about the Will. In the section detailing distribution of assets, there were handwritten notes in the margin — scribbled words that felt like whispers from beyond the grave. They were almost illegible but I could make out a few words, here and there, “betrayal,” “revenge,” “never forget.”

Suddenly my phone rang, causing me to jump. I checked the time, 1:05AM. I rubbed my bloodshot eyes, wondering who could be calling at this hour. I picked it up, cautiously, half-expecting silence, but this time a voice crackled through the line. A raspy, disembodied voice that sent chills down my spine. 

“Stop looking. You can’t afford to know.”

I dropped the phone, paralyzed with fear. My heart raced and my instincts told me to abandon this case, to let some other unfortunate associate take it on, but I was in too deep. The thought of losing my position, my reputation, haunted me more than the calls or the letters.

The next morning, I returned to my office with a sense of dread. My managing partner greeted me with a strange, knowing smile that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. 

“Figure it out yet?” She asked, voice low, a hushed whisper, almost… conspiratorial.

“Figure what out?” I stammered. 

She stepped closer, her breath reeking of coffee and cigarette tar. “The reason for the letters, the calls. The family — oh, they’re dying to get to know you, to let you in, to share their secrets, but they’re afraid. So very afraid of what might happen if the truth were to — let’s say — get out.”

I stepped back, confused. “What truth?”

She smiled, but instead of answering, simple turned and walked away. Heels clicking on the tiles of our polished office floor. 

Determined to get to the bottom of it, I abruptly left work, heading home to conduct more research without the watchful eye of my managing partner. I spent the evening researching the Kellermans, diving into local newspapers, public records, and any other source I could get my hands on. 

It was a twisted tale — murders, disappearances, allegations of abuse. As I pieced together their history, I came to the realization that the estate wasn’t just about money or property; it was a minefield of long-buried grudges, and the Kellermans had buried more than just their dead.

That night, staring blankly at article after article, surrounded by the weight of the Kellerman files, I felt like Sisyphus. As I poured myself another cup of coffee from my third pot of the day, my computer screen flickered and went dark. I cursed under my breath and got up to check the breaker. A cold draft brushed past me causing me to stop in my tracks, despite the still air of my apartment. 

And then, my phone rang. I picked up, not even eking out a yellow before a voice so raspy it was as if I was being spoken to by a fork in a blender, whispered, “You’re in over your head, lawyer.” And the line went dead.

I felt a chill crawl up my spine. I felt like I was being hunted.

The next day, I summoned the courage to confront the surviving family members, one by one. Each encounter sent me sprawling deeper into their madness — eyes flickered with fear, anger simmered just beneath the surface, and each family member mirrored the others’ paranoia. They all spoke in hushed tones, as if someone was listening, as if the walls themselves had ears. 

By the end of the week, I could no longer eat, I could no longer sleep. 

I was a ghost of myself, consumed by the need to understand. The calls grew more frequent, the letters felt heavier, more menacing, each one taunting me with the emptiness of their pages, the secrets they threatened to spill. I was drawn into a darkness I couldn’t shake off, despite my rational mind screaming for me to walk away. 

On the day of the asset distribution, the family gathered in the conference room of my office. It was the first time I had stepped foot back in the office since the last encounter with my managing partner. 

The tension was palpable, faces glared across the polished conference table, each relative a simmering pot of resentment, of hate. I had prepared to confront them as a whole, to lay bare the pieces I had picked up from each of them, to unravel the tangled web of their lives, and to bring some clarity to the chaos that was the Kellerman family.

As I began outlining the distribution of assets, the atmosphere shifted. A woman — Kellerman’s second wife — stood up, hands trembling, and stuttered out, “y-y-you have n...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/BuddhaTheGreat on 2024-09-22 07:51:06+00:00.

---

Okay, I think this needs a bit more context. You wouldn’t know it if you saw me walk down the street, but my family owns a village. This village is somewhere in Bengal, but I won’t tell you where for reasons that will quickly become clear. My ancestors were given the zamindari, or feudal rights, over the settlement by the Pala kings all the way back in the 11th century. Yes, it’s been a heck of a long time. What did we do to deserve this honour, you ask?

 

Well, there isn’t a simple answer to that. Kings used to give away lands and villages for practically anything back in the day, from marrying the princess to curing the prince of an illness to bringing over the neighbouring king’s head. I haven’t had the time or the inclination to rifle through what little family chronicles have survived to find out which one we did. I live miles away from that place anyway, in Kolkata. My father left the ancestral manor in the care of my grandfather and his brothers and moved away with his family when I was barely learning to open my eyes. Since then, I have only visited Chhayagarh a total of five times. That’s the name of the village, by the way. Chhayagarh.

 

The last time I visited the village, I was ten years old. My father was still alive then. My memories are dim, given that it was more than a decade ago, but I remember the important details. I remember my grandfather’s glowing face as he sunned himself in his recliner, watching me play with the weeds in the courtyard. I remember his hefty walking stick, and enjoying the loud clacks it made as he walked around the corridors. I remember Ram Lal, the manservant, chasing me around the backyard to force me into taking a bath. I remember my grandmother’s delicious cooking on my tongue.

 

I remember other things too. The pale lady in a white sari, smiling at me from the parapet of the boundary wall. The unnaturally tall man whispering to my grandfather in his study, his broad-brimmed hat scraping the ceiling. He had turned briefly to smile at me; his face had nothing on it save the grinning mouth. I remember the shaggy thing I used to play fetch with near the family grove, built like a dog but not quite. I remember my father sending me back to my room with a harsh noise, old rifle in hand, before joining a small group of villagers with flaming torches and wooden staves at the front gate at midnight.

 

There is something off about Chhayagarh. I can’t find a better way to explain it. It is a normal village, with all the trappings you would expect: playing children, women with water pots, charming little trees and huts. But alongside that world, there is another world that lives there. A world many of us would rather not acknowledge. That world was somehow centred around us. Each time my father took us there, something was always happening: villagers filtering in and out to confer with the family, mounds of dusty books and manuscripts lying open on tables, weapons being brought out and maintained. Each of these buildups would inevitably have a climax: a loud struggle at midnight, gunshots in the forest, a massive ritual bonfire in the atrium, or something similar. I never saw these climaxes; everyone made sure to give me a wide berth whenever funny business was involved. After everything was over, my father would pack us up, and we would be back in Kolkata, none the worse for the wear.

 

The last time we went there, it was different. I was too young to ask questions, but something went wrong. That night, my father returned three hours later, his face white as a sheet. He was alone and without his gun. He said nothing, he did nothing. He merely went into a room with my mother and my grandfather, and closed the door. Fifteen minutes later, my mother came to put me to bed as usual. I am pretty sure she said nothing out of the ordinary, but there were streaks of tears running down her face. The next morning, we packed our bags and returned to Kolkata.

 

Two days later, there was an accident. Thirty cars piled up on the road. Only one casualty. Even at the cremation, my mother said nothing. She only cried silently as she handed me the torch and let me burn my father’s mangled corpse to ashes. We haven’t been back to Chhayagarh since. In fact, she has actively kept me away from visiting, despite more than a hundred letters from my grandparents (old-fashioned people; apparently, they never could figure the telephone out).

 

Not that I’m complaining. Without the rose-tinted glasses of childhood, it was kind of a shitty place anyway. The land was dry and hard, and the villagers struggled to farm in the best of weather. The water table was deep and stony, and the nearest well was over two miles from the manor; the servants had the near-constant duty of running pots of water to the house for cooking and cleaning. I’m pretty sure there still isn’t a mobile tower, bank, or post office in the entire block. In hindsight, the only thing that made it worth it was the pure joy on my grandfather’s face whenever he saw us. But that can only take you so far.

 

My life in Kolkata is good. I just finished my law degree, and a career in litigation looks to be on track, though my senior still insists that five thousand rupees is plenty of money to live on for a month. I’m not sure he has purchased anything since the fifties. My mother is running a successful interior decoration business, so that helps with the finances. My father also left behind a decent estate, and for all our neglect, my grandparents do not skimp on sending over the revenue from the property. I dimly knew that I was going to come into the zamindari eventually, given that my father was no longer in the picture, but it was not something I really thought about. In any case, I was planning to pawn the damn place off to the first feudal enthusiast I met with more money than sense. Chhayagarh did not feature in my top fifty priorities list.

 

Until yesterday. This time, the letter that came did not bear my grandfather’s characteristically elegant handwriting on the envelope. It was the harsh, angular script of a lawyer, just in case the starched brown envelope did not make the official nature of the communication clear enough. Apparently, our family has an estate manager.

 

He was writing to tell me that my grandfather was dead. There were no details as to how, just strict business: in accordance with ordinary rules of succession, the zamindari should devolve to one of my uncles, but my grandfather had made his wishes clear. The family customs had to be followed. The land and the village must pass to his firstborn son, my father, and through him to his firstborn son. Me.

 

He had also insisted that I come to the village immediately, and take charge of the manor and the surrounding properties. The estate lawyer would meet me there and hand over some articles he had bequeathed to me. I had sole and absolute ownership over the ancestral house, but he had requested that I allow my grandmother, my uncles, and their families to continue their residence on the premises and take care of their needs.

 

When I showed my mother the letter, I was expecting she would say what was already on my mind: toss the letter in the bin, surrender the property to some relative or, failing that, the government, and go on with my life in peace.

 

Instead, she sighed, put the letter face down on the table, and asked, “When are you leaving?”

 

“What?” was all I could say.

 

“Chhayagarh. When are you going over to take possession?”

 

“Mom. Are you serious? That place is a dump. I have no interest in roleplaying a medieval landlord in some godforsaken hamlet in the middle of nowhere. I have a career here. We have a business here!”

 

She sighed. “I wish I could have kept you here forever, but I can’t. You have to go. Our family must take up the mantle. It is our duty to Chhayagarh, to our ancestors, to ourselves. Go.”

 

I paused. “That place killed my father. I’m not going. I’m going to write to the lawyer, and—”

 

“Chhayagarh killed your father. And it killed your grandfather.”

 

“Grandfather? How can you be so sure?”

 

“It killed him, just as it has killed many of your ancestors before him. I know it, somewhere inside me. Just as your father knew, that day. He knew he was going to die. He could not keep winning. But he did his duty. Just as you will. Because if you don’t, Chhayagarh will kill many more.”

 

I leaned forward and grasper her hands in my own. “Mom… You’re not telling me something. What do you know?”

 

“Not enough. Only they can explain it to you. Those who have lived on the land, and worked with it. But I know this. There was a reason your family, our family, was given that land. No, a reason they were placed upon that land. It wasn’t wealth, or favour, or martial skill that won us Chhayagarh. It was something else. Something to do with… them. The others. You know of what I speak.” Her hands trembled in mine. “You must go.”

 

She would say no more after this, only insisting that I go, and that all will be clear once I reach the manor and take over affairs. I will be frank. After this conversation, my desire to go to Chhayagarh had only lessened. But right now, I am in a rattling bus, travelling through territory that I’m pretty sure does not exist on any map you have access to, on a road you will probably never see. A road that leads to Chhayagarh. I am here because of what hap...

---

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/RoseBlack2222 on 2024-09-21 11:04:37+00:00.

---

Deep in the mountains of Georgia is a remote town called Dead Leaf Falls. You won't find it on any map, except Google Earth, if you happen to come across it at just the right time of day. Even if you knew exactly where this town is and went over to it, you would find nothing except trees for miles. How do I know it exists? The answer is simple.

It's where I was born and spent the first twelve years of my life. If you happen across it while on a road trip, you may think it a nice little place, quiet, lots of scenery, and a community so self-sustaining the idea of outside contact is laughable. The issue is that this comes at a price.

“Tommy! Psst, Tommy!”

Groggily, I lifted my head up from my desk to find my best friend, Amanda shaking my shoulder. Our math teacher was explaining some word problems. I wasn't paying attention, being focused on Amanda and wiping the drool off my face.

“What?” I snap back, louder than I intended.

“Mr. Ballard, were you sleeping again?” our teacher asked.

“No, Mrs. Hooper,” I answered, suppressing a yawn.

Her narrowed eyes studied me for a moment before she returned her attention to the board. When she did, Amanda immediately picked up where we left off as if we hadn't been interrupted.

“So you know the Equinox is coming up, right?”

“What about it?”

Leaning into my ear she told me, “I think we should get a picture of the Fall Fairy.”

Mrs. Hooper dumping a cup of ice water in my head wouldn't have made the tiredness leave my body faster than those words did. Amanda had the foresight to put a finger to my lips before I could have another outburst. She glanced at Mrs. Hooper who was watching another kid in our class trying to solve a problem on the board. Amanda lowered her finger.

“Are you crazy?” I asked her.

The Fall Fairy was the local legend. Here's how it went. In the forest outside of town, lies a cave that only appears during the equinox. That's its home. On the first day of Fall, it comes out to play.

Everyone says it's friendly which is why we always found it strange that everyone stays inside during this time. I never thought to question it. Any excuse to be up in my room rotting my mind with movies and video games was always welcome. Amanda, though, was different, more adventurous and curious. She was a social butterfly with plenty of friends.

Contrastingly, I could count the number of kids I regularly interacted with on one hand. Some may say I was antisocial. While I don't disagree, I think it's more that I simply wasn't a social seeker. I didn't shun people who tried talking with me, but I never struck up conversations. Hell, I hardly raised my hand in class unless it was to be excused.

To this day, I'll never understand what quality I had that made her want to spend so much time with me. Before you make assumptions regarding “young love”, let me assure you that our dynamic was entirely plutonic. In fact, if nobody in town knew us we could’ve been mistaken for siblings.

“So what if I am crazy?” she scoffed. “It's better than being a wuss. Anyway, I already got it all planned out.”

She explained that she had nabbed her dad's camera and wanted us to sneak out and search for the cave. There was an excited glint in her gaze that was at odds with the “bad idea” feeling I was currently experiencing.

“Amanda, I don't mean to dash your hopes, but how would we even begin to find this thing? All the stories just say that it's in the forest. That's not a lot to go on.”

She grinned, indicating that she'd been expecting this sort of response. She unzipped her backpack, pulling out what looked to be an old journal.

“This belonged to one of the settlers.”

“Where did you get that?”

“I found it in the attic. My parents were making me clean it.”

“Wait, so it belonged to someone in your family?”

She smiled, nodding.

“That's right. Isn't it exciting?”

I looked at the journal again, the leather worn from age and cracking in several places.

“Have you already read that?”

“Someone bookmarked a page. I only read that part. Why? Do you want to borrow it?”

“No, that wouldn't be fair to you.”

“It's fine. I already got what I wanted to know out of it.”

She dropped the book into my lap. The rest of our school day was uneventful only being punctuated by the occasional remark from Amanda when our teachers weren't paying attention. We lived in the same neighborhood and on the bus ride home, she caught me up on the latest gossip, having overheard her mom talking with her dad about it.

“You know Mr. Turner?”

“Kind of, he lives across the street from you, right?”

“Yeah, anyway, his wife caught him kissing another woman and kicked him out.”

“That's pretty crazy.”

“That's not the crazy part. You'll never guess who he was with.”

“Shoot.”

“Mrs. Hooper.”

I thought about how irritable she'd been the last few days.

“That explains a lot.”

“It sure does. Then Mr. Hooper ran into Mr. Turner at the store and they got into a big fight. It was bad. They had to get the cops involved. One of them got a black eye and the other had to get stitches.”

As I was making a mental note to stay off the Hooper and Turners' radar for a while, the bus brakes were screeching as we came to our stop. We and some other kids got off.

“Remember, the Equinox,” Amanda said.

I nodded, then she was yelling for her friends to wait up while jogging after them. I watched her mingle with them before turning around and walking to my house. When I got home, my parents greeted me with the usual questions, “how was school?”, “Have you been talking with anyone new?”, that sort of thing. Dinner that night consisted of pumpkin chili and apple nut muffins for dessert. It was common for people in our town to have seasonal foods in the days leading up to Autumn.

“Hey,” I spoke up, prompting my parents to look at me, “I was wondering something about the Fall Shut-in.”

“What about it?” my dad replied, returning to his book.

“Has anyone actually seen The Fall Fairy?”

I may as well have questioned the existence of the sky with the way my parents were staring at me then.

“Of course, people have seen it, that's why we stay inside,” my mom answered.

“What does it look like then?”

My dad slammed his book shut. Growing up, he was an intimidating man. He never beat me or anything. It's just that he carried himself in a very authoritative manner. When he spoke, there was always a finality to his voice to let me know he was entirely in control of the conversation.

“You've never cared about this before,” he said. “Why the sudden change?”

“I heard someone at school talking about it and got curious.”

That was technically true.

“Well, that's why you shouldn't eavesdrop,” my mom told me. “We thought you would have learned that by now.”

This was coming from one of the biggest gossipers in town. I decided to drop the topic and finish eating my food. My dad talked with my mom about seeing if he could squeeze in a hunting trip with his buddies the day before the shut-in. Meanwhile, my mom was going shopping with one of her friends. Our town was behind the times in terms of technology so cell phones or the internet weren't a thing for us.

With my parents out of the house, it was going to be me by myself which is something I have gotten used to. Reading was a big part of my childhood. It was always fascinating to catch these little glimpses into the outside world even if the stories were out of date. I spent that night and the day before the Equinox pouring through the journal. Part of me is glad I read it before her.

There were passages in it that would have made her ashamed of her family name. The short of it is, the natives (Likely Cherokee based on the region. Though, the journal never specifies) lived here before our ancestors settled and well, the transition of ownership wasn't peaceful. There was a name mentioned in one of those harrowing passages that was familiar to me. Going through my stuff, I realized it was the same as someone on a family tree project I did for school. That means someone I’m related to assisted in that slaughter.

As if I wasn't already dealing with enough. I thought about bringing this up to my parents. However, I knew they would deny it. Everything had to be perfect. I'm not bringing this up to alleviate familial guilt, by the way.

I do it because of the subtext present in those pages our ancestors chose to ignore. When our ancestors first invaded the land that would become Dead Leaf Falls, they noted how strangely the natives acted in response. They said of them it was like they were fighting to try and warn them away. I wish I could be surprised. If there's one thing people in our town were good at, it was ignoring problems staring them in the face.

There are only two passages I can share verbatim due to them having been burned into my mind. The first is below.

We have finally managed to clear out the last of these savages. Now we can utilize this land as our Lord intended. I know in my heart this was right and yet I am troubled. We looked into the eyes of our enemies in their final moments and saw no resentment, only relief.

The second was written months later.

We were blind.

That's where the journal ends. I wanted to tell Amanda, but she was so excited for our trip. I didn't want to deter her. There was something else I could do to ease my worry. My dad kept a gun cabinet in his trophy room.

He never kept it locked because I never had any interest in weapons up to that point. ...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/sleep-taken on 2024-09-22 03:45:34+00:00.

---

My friend told me to try and post here to see if I could get any help. My mom and dad got divorced a few months ago and once she got full custody, my mom moved my sister and I into this old house halfway across the country. And I don’t use the word “old” lightly. I feel like if I breathe too hard the house moves with that air. Every board creaking and groaning under the strain of the roof on top. 

For the first month, I was mad. Mad at every single change going on around me. I wanted to go back home where my friends were, where my life was. I didn’t eat for days, didn’t talk for weeks in protest. Maybe if someone saw how hard this was for me, I could change something. Make my mom take me back. But I gave up on that idea after my little sister broke down and begged me to stop. 

I tried to make some friends at school, I really did. But I was just the weird girl in a small town that enrolled in the middle of the year. The only one brave enough to talk to me was this short, scrawny girl who only dressed in all black. Bella soon became the only thing keeping me from going insane here. Although I’m not sure she’s enough anymore. 

Things finally started feeling normal that second month, school on weekdays and hanging out with bella on the weekends. I even thought about looking for a part time job, just to have some spending money. When I came home from my first job interview, that’s when I first heard it. That’s when the whispers started. 

I walked through the door and thought I heard my mom call my name. It was quiet enough that I had to strain to hear it so I assumed she was calling from her bedroom just to make sure it was me walking in the door. I called out a response and sat in the living room to study for an upcoming test. She walked in the front door 30 minutes later with bags of groceries. She went shopping right after work and I was home alone. That freaked me out a bit at first but I wrote it off from being tired. I wasn’t sleeping well from trying to catch up on lesson plans at school so it was easy to let it go. I got more worried when I started hearing more sounds outside my bedroom door, But it was always explainable, I would be about to go to sleep or I would hear my name or some shuffling outside my door when I had headphones on. 

I looked it up and it turns out those things happen to a lot of people. I chalked it up to being paranoid in a new house with new surroundings and it was putting some of my senses in overdrive. Everytime I heard a noise it freaked me out more and then I would hear more phantom shuffling and knocking. I just got used to ignoring it I guess, I hoped that as I got used to the house, my nerves would settle and I would just have a funny story to tell Bella about how I thought my house was haunted for a few weeks while it was settling. 

The shadows were harder to explain. The first time I saw it, I was doing homework in the living room. In the corner of my vision, I saw something peeking out of the kitchen doorway. As soon as I snapped my head towards the figure, it wasn’t there anymore. I laughed. I thought it was funny how some stupid math assignment was making me so stressed that my brain was creating weird shadow men to try and distract itself from it. It wasn’t so funny anymore when I turned back to my laptop and saw it walk past the doorway. I didn’t even think, I got up and  ran outside to call my mom. She left work and raced home with the police right behind her. They searched the whole house, but nothing was found. For days after that I did my best to try and convince my mom I didn’t lie. She’s convinced that I just want to leave and this is my next option. And the problem is that I could see myself coming up with this idea when we first moved so I don’t know how to get her to believe me. I mean, I barely believe me. But I’m not making this up. Either there was someone in this house or I’m going insane. I honestly don’t know which one I want to be true. 

My sister got a kick out of this. She made a game of sneaking under my bed and whispering my name when I walked in. making tapping sounds with her hands. Once she even grabbed my ankle when I got off of the bed and I swear if my mom didn’t pull us apart, I might’ve killed her. It was a big joke for the family that I was losing it, that crazy Ally was so upset about moving that she was inventing ghosts and shadow men. 

For the next week, I saw the shadow in the edges of my vision. Usually peeking out of a doorway like it was checking on what I was doing. I’m pretty sure I even saw it standing at the bottom of the stairs once. But everytime I try to look right at it, It’s like it was never there to begin with. I can’t talk to my mom about it, then it turns into a fight because she’s positive I’m trying to run us out of this house. I feel so alone, disconnected from reality. But all of this is almost explainable. Yeah, it’s concerning but I could justify all of this if you give me enough time. I can’t say that for what happened two nights ago. That’s the reason I’m coming on here, I can’t explain this away. 

I woke up in the middle of the night and had to pee. I turned over and saw a shadow shoot away from against my doorway. I know it sounds weird but that's become a normal thing for me so I just ignored it. I went to the bathroom and did my business and trudged my way back to bed. I made sure the hallway light was on, a habit I’ve been doing for a while because I don’t want to be in complete darkness with everything my mind has been doing to me. As soon as I got back into bed and faced the wall, I heard it. The whispers got closer, I could hear the sounds of the wood creaking as if something was crawling towards where I was laying. I’ve never heard the sounds of my name being called this clearly before, like something was whispering right in my ear. If I focused, it was like I could feel someone’s breath against my cheek. I was frozen, facing the wall, afraid to open my eyes and see what was calling for me. It felt like forever until the sounds stopped. It was even longer before I got the courage to turn around.

I saw it. At first it blended into the pile of blankets on the side of the bed but when My eyes adjusted to the light, I saw the outline more clearly. It was against my bed, peeking up just enough that I could see its eyes. Staring right at me, not even blinking. It was my sister's eyes. That’s when I felt anger. This was different from hiding under my bed when I got home from school. This was a new level that was just plain awful to do. I went to rip the blankets off and get up to yell at her. But then I got a closer look. They were my sisters eyes but that was it, the face surrounding them looked like black ink. Almost like this thing was molding its face as I was looking at it. Swirling features around a silhouette that looked vaguely human. The lights came on and it disappeared, just like that. It wasn't until my mom came in that I realized I was screaming. I told her I had a nightmare. I didn’t have enough energy for another fight. 

The next day I told Bella what happened, she recommended I post here for help. I don’t know what to do or where to go. I know I wasn’t dreaming and I don’t feel crazy. If I was crazy then I would see this thing everywhere. But it’s only at this house. I can still hear it whispering now. I’ve been sleeping with the lights on every night and I haven’t seen it since but it’s still calling for me from the shadows. It’s getting better at sounding like my mom or my sister. I almost can’t tell the difference now.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Wild-Tea-9242 on 2024-09-21 17:38:24+00:00.

---

This is going to sound insane, but I'm so sick of keeping it to myself. I was witness to something of a homicide, and very few people know what truly happened that night. If you ask me, the government is purposely preventing it from spreading worldwide because it..

Well, it sort of involves supernatural. Very obviously so, to the point it would probably create mass panic, so big details were hidden and it has very little, next to none, news coverage. I've honestly been afraid that if I speak out, I'll go 'missing,' if you catch my drift.

But, I'm tired of staying silent about this, it's like a huge weight on my chest. I don't care about sounding crazy anymore, this experience has ruined my life. I startle at my own shadow, every creak of an old building, and I've developed a severe panic disorder and a case of PTSD.

Maybe if I speak about it, it'll offer me a form of closure?

Well, make yourself comfortable, and I don't know, maybe grab a snack and a drink, because this is going to be a bit of a doozy.

My name is Grace. I'm currently 30 years old, and this happened when I was 16. My friends and I had been planning to explore this abandoned, supposedly haunted house for about a week. It was October, and we were feeling pretty festive. Halloween Eve fell on a Saturday, and we already had plans to go to a Halloween party the following Sunday, so we decided that would be the day we would go ghost hunting in the infamous ‘Eye Ripper House.’

I know, it certainly sounds like a fun time, doesn't it?

I would've never gone if my best friend, Yazmine, hadn't peer pressured me into it. You see, I was a dorky chick with brown hair and big glasses, a late bloomer who kept her nose stuck in books and was always regarded as the teacher's pet. I wasn't exactly the daring type.

When I moved to town I had virtually no friends, until Yazmine came and sat next to me at lunch out of the blue one day. She had light brown skin and long curly dark brown hair. I remember she called me pretty, said I looked like one of those girls in movies who would take off their glasses and suddenly become the hottest girl in school, even though they were just as pretty when the glasses were still on. I blushed and said thank you, not used to being complimented, and then she just kept talking up a storm, no matter how short and bland my responses were she carried the conversation nonstop. That's how we became friends, she almost sort of adopted me, like a pet, and dragged me everywhere with her. Others who didn't like me were forced to get along with me in her presence and I was invited to a lot more parties.

The thing about Yazmine was, while on the outside she seemed like a cliche popular cheerleader all the boys drooled over, she was an absolute geek for the paranormal. She ran a vlog where she talked about ghost stories, folklore, and tried to commune with spirits on her bedroom floor via a ouija board. Her parents didn't know of course, and she kept it a secret generally from our classmates. But a week before the incident, she had complained about her viewers pressuring her for more… risky content. They wanted her to explore abandoned and haunted places like other content creators did. And while she didn't have a lot of subscribers, they were very loud and demanding and threatened to leave her with none if she didn't follow their suggestions. She had drawn them in with her personality and now she had to keep them hooked by spicing things up a bit.

The only people she told about this aside from me were her other friends, John, Zack, Bryce, and Vanessa. Well, Bryce was her boyfriend, he was on the football team with John and they were inseparable and among the kids who were popular because they were cute looking, athletic, and outspoken. Vanessa was a relatively new friend, she was kind of a lot to take in and no one really liked her, but Yaz had adopted her the same way she had done for me so I have no room to talk. Zack was sort of a social reject and everyone believed John became friends with him out of pity, mostly because they couldn't believe John, the quarterback heartthrob, actually had an interest in Dungeons and Dragons, which they had apparently bonded over.

Yazmine had broken down the plan to us while we were in her house after school one afternoon, watching a movie on her couch with her parents at work.

“So, you know the house those kids were killed in some years back?” Yazmine spoke with a mischievous grin.

“Oh, God,” I said with a groan.

“You mean, that freaky ass house where those kids were found with their eyes ripped out? That house?” John asked incredulously. To describe John, he was tall with dark brown skin and short black hair. He often wore his bright red varsity jacket.

“Oh yeah!” Vanessa pitched in with a sick grin of excitement. “Sign me up for that, baby!” She was a true crime fanatic, to an annoying extent, at least in my opinion. She almost seemed to fangirl over serial killer cases as if she were gushing about celebrity drama. She was pale from powdery foundation with blonde hair dyed black at the tips, and mascara always ringed her gray eyes.

“Well, count me the fuck out,” Bryce said through a mouth full of popcorn as he dug his hand greedily into the bowl we were sharing. He had sandy blonde hair with blue eyes and really liked wearing hoodies most days, even in the summer.

“Baaaabe,” Yazmine whined as she wrapped her arms around him, “are you really gonna let me explore some abandoned house all by myself with no big strong jock to protect me?”

“Yaz, why the hell would you want to go there?” I asked, rubbing my temples stressfully.

“I told you,” she rolled her eyes, “ghost hunting in spooky, abandoned places is what's hot with paranormal vlogs nowadays.”

“You have a ghost hunting vlog?” Zack, who hadn't spoken in a while from his secluded spot in the armchair in the corner, suddenly piped up. He was skinny and naturally pale with shaggy black hair and thin-framed glasses. He always seemed to wear band tees and skinny jeans, and he barely talked outside of his circle of video game nerds at school.

“I do now!” She smiled at him. “Come on you guys. This Saturday, Halloween Eve. Don't be pussies, it'll be so fun. Oh, and pack your sleeping bags. We're gonna be spending the night!”

“Hell no!” We all, except for Vanessa and Zack, shouted in unison.

“Come on, what's the worst that can happen?” Yazmine seemed to be getting frustrated at our refusal. “Casper jumps out at you and goes boo? There's six of us. It won't be that scary with such a big group.”

“I'm in!” Vanessa said. “But what are we supposed to tell our parents?”

“Tell them you're all at my place.” Zack said, smirking deviously. “My dad works the graveyard shift and my brother will cover for us if anyone calls. There won't be any trouble.”

“Don't tell anyone where we're going!” Yazmine snapped. “I'm serious, not one soul! I don't want this getting out to people at school! My mom would snap my neck if word got out and she found out I was doing this.”

Zack raised his hands up defensively. “I'll tell my brother we're going to a party. Chill.”

“Wait, so you're actually doing this?” Bryce asked, finally turning his attention away from the movie.

“Yes, I'm serious. I wanna catch some creepy paranormal shit on camera.” Yazmine gave him a hard stare.

“You're out of your mind.” John shook his head and laughed.

“If you're scared, just say that.” Yazmine crossed her arms.

John and Bryce exchanged annoyed glances. “Ain't nobody scared.” John replied indignantly.

“It's just childish,” Bryce defended weakly.

“Are you two really gonna let Zack prove he has bigger balls than you?” Yazmine smirked and raised an eyebrow at them.

John and Bryce glanced over at Zack, who tensed awkwardly under their gazes, then back at Yazmine.

“Fuck, fine.” Bryce's shoulders sagged as he gave up.

“Whatever,” John shrugged, “but if I die, I'm definitely haunting you.”

“I don't think it's smart to go to some abandoned house where people were murdered.” I said shyly.

“Please?” Yazmine held my hands in hers and stuck her bottom lip out. Her eyes grew big.

As much as I tried not to, I cracked a smile.

“Come on, Grace, show everyone you're not the square they think you are,” Vanessa took a subtle jab at me with a sneaky smirk.

“Fine!” I shot a glare at Vanessa, absolutely hating to be called a square. “But never again!” Yazmine squealed happily and hugged me. It felt nice to be shown affection and included, and at the time that was worth risking a visit from a ghost.

And so, fast forward to the night of Halloween Eve, we were parked in John's car on an abandoned street on the outskirts of town. It was located on an unfinished suburb, where the house was at the end of what was meant to be a cul de sac, with at least two other finished houses and the rest half-built. The exact address of the ‘Eye Ripper House,’ as it was dubbed, was 52 Magnolia Way.

Nature was quickly reclaiming the semi-rural land, the yellowed grass on different sectional plots of land where houses were originally going to be built were high and swaying in the autumnal breeze, and the shivering trees crowding in too close for comfort. We were the only sign of life out there, six teenagers stepping out of the car and looking up at the two storey single family home looming over us with dark windows that may as well have been empty eyes sta...

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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Federal_Machine692 on 2024-09-21 16:30:45+00:00.

---

When we arrived at the Renfield residence, the first thing I noticed was that the front door was left half open. This was supposed to be my first visit to their home. I could see that there was no car parked out front, but the driveway still bore visible tire marks.

 The garden around the house also showed mild signs of neglect, with overgrown bushes, a few scattered weeds and grass that had become somewhat unruly. It was hard to tell whether this was a sign of unexpected abandonment or simply lazy upkeep. 

 My husband Richard gently knocked on the door, his fingers idly brushing the handle of his gun at his side, just in case.

 "Mr. and Mrs. Renfield?" he shouted, his voice echoing across the front patio.

 I stood right behind him, with our six-year-old son peeking out from behind me. 

 There was no response. After almost a  minute of waiting, my husband decided to go in and take a look. 

 “Stay here,” he said, as he unholstered his weapon and stepped inside.

 When he pushed the door wide open, I immediately caught a glimpse of the living room. It appeared as though the Renfields had left in a hurry, leaving most of their belongings strewn about. The back screen door, left ajar, slowly creaked open and shut with the breeze.

 “Mr. Renfield?” he called out again as he surveyed the room. “This is Sheriff Parkins. Is anyone home?”

 Richard next instinctively pointed his gun at the ceiling when he heard footsteps emanate from the upper floor. The sound seemed to move away and gradually fade as it eventually led toward the staircase across the living room.

 “Whoever you are, be careful now!,” he cautioned loudly. “Please make your way down the stairs slowly and calmly.”

 I honestly didn’t know what to expect as I held onto my son Alex tightly near the doorway. 

 Maybe it was one of the Renfields themselves coming down the stairs, or perhaps a burglar who had slipped in through the open door, or even a homeless person seeking shelter for the night.

 But instead, a large German Shepherd appeared, his eyes locked on Richard as he descended the stairs. He looked menacing with each step he took, his fur bristling, muscles coiled, as though preparing for a confrontation.

 “Easy there, boy,” Richard said in a low, soothing voice, his weapon still pointed at the animal. “I’m not here to hurt anyone buddy. Let’s keep things calm, alright?”

He took a cautious step back as the dog reached the foot of the stairs, trying to signal that he meant no harm.

My husband glanced briefly at me and Alex, then refocused on the dog, careful not to make any sudden moves.

The German Shepherd barked twice, baring his teeth, his gaze locked on Richard as it took a tentative step forward, almost expecting him to retreat further in response. 

But Richard didn’t budge this time, and the dog’s stance grew more aggressive. A deep growl rumbled in his throat as he bared his teeth even further, taking another deliberate step forward, poised to attack at any moment.

In an instant, my six-year-old suddenly broke free from my grip and rushed into the house. 

“Alex!” I yelled after him, panic surging through my chest. 

I’m not sure what exactly happened next, but the dog’s stance immediately relaxed. He sat on his hind legs,with his tail swaying slightly as he looked at Alex.

Before either of us could react, Alex placed his hand on the dog’s head. “You must be Kripke. Nice to finally meet you,” he said, patting the dog gently. 

 The German Shepherd's ears twitched, but he remained seated, his tail wagging more vigorously as Alex stroked his fur. My heart raced, unsure of what was happening, but the tension in the air had shifted entirely.

 Richard heaved a sigh of relief and cautiously lowered his weapon, looking equally confused.

 Before we had any time to process the situation, Kripke suddenly bolted up the stairs, prompting Alex to chase after him, with Richard and me quickly following suit.

 He led us straight to the last room on the upper floor and stopped next to a closet.  It was clear the room belonged to a little girl, with pink-colored walls and a small bed dressed in fairy-patterned linens. 

 Yet, it had an air of neglect—unwashed plates and bowls of cereal lay scattered across the floor, adding to the sense of disorder.

 Richard, with Alex now by his side, silently motioned for him to stay back.  Slowly, he opened the closet door, and I immediately recognized Lily. 

She was sitting inside, crouched on her knees, her index and middle finger in her mouth, and her eyes wide with nervousness. Her gaze darted between the three of us as she continued to suck on her fingers, looking vulnerable.

 Finding her in such a state, the reality hit me - she had been abandoned by her own family. The thought of her enduring such isolation made my heart ache with sadness. 

 The Renfield family had moved to our town only six months ago. I first met them during Mass at church, where they appeared to be a typical, if somewhat private, couple who mostly kept to themselves.

  Their six-year-old daughter, Lily, was in the same class as my son. The two kids quickly became friends, and when Lily missed three days of school in a row, Alex grew concerned.He kept insisting that we check on her family at their home. 

 Richard had just then returned from a grueling overnight sting operation with the city police and was already looking exhausted and worn out. Despite his fatigue, he agreed to come with us to check on the Renfields on our way to school.

 “But what happened to the girl’s parents?” I wondered silently as my thoughts returned to the present. “Why did they leave her alone in the house with no one to care for her?”

 Meanwhile, Alex knelt in front of Lily and gave her a gentle hug, while Kripke calmly stayed by their side, his tail wagging softly.

 Richard and I then helped Lily climb out of the closet and onto the bed. She continued to suck on her fingers, a clear sign of her distress. I gently took her hand away and wiped it with a towel. Her pajamas, which hadn’t been changed in several days, looked crumpled, and soiled with food stains.

 Richard then left to check the room across the hall that belonged to the parents. When he returned, his expression revealed that it had been completely cleared out. 

 I couldn't help but wonder again why the Renfields would suddenly abandon their only child.

 With no immediate answers available, I quickly packed a bag with some of Lily’s clothes and toys from her room, and escorted the kids and Kripke back downstairs to get to our car. 

 We decided it was best to let Alex skip school for a couple of days so that Lily felt comfortable while she stayed in her home.

When we finally arrived at our residence, I saw tears trickling down Lily’s face. In this new and unfamiliar environment, it seemed to dawn on her that things were changing faster than she could process. She was already starting to miss the comfort of her own home. 

 Lily slowly stepped out of the car, holding Kripke’s leash, while Alex took her other hand and gently led her inside the house.

When I stepped into the living room, a foul smell immediately hit me, wafting from the kitchen. I silently gestured for Alex to take Lily to the spare room at the end of the hall. Richard and I then cautiously made our way to the kitchen to investigate the strange odor.

There, on the kitchen counter, we found a gutted pigeon, left for dead. Next to it, a family photo of me, Richard, and Alex lay flat, with a single bullet placed ominously on top. I saw the color immediately drain from Richard’s face.

He had been working with the FBI to take down a regional drug cartel, and just hours earlier, they had raided their base. While they seized millions in drugs and arrested over a dozen people, a few key members, including the ringleader, had evaded capture. 

Richard assured me he would deploy deputies around the house and that they would also soon catch the ones on the run. We then quickly cleaned the kitchen to ensure the kids didn't walk in on the disturbing scene,

A few minutes later I helped Lily change out of her old clothes and gave her a quick bath, while my husband tended to Kripke, ensuring he was well fed and comfortable. We did our best to make Lily feel at home, but it was clear she was missing her parents.

She handed her dad’s number to Richard, asking him to call it and contact her father, her eyes all the while brimming with hope. Somehow she felt with him calling, the outcome would be different. 

However, when the number proved unreachable, Lily simply sat in a corner with Kripke and refused to eat. No amount of cajoling by me or Richard seemed to make a difference. Even Alex tried to help by bringing her a plate of food, but it remained untouched.

Fortunately, things started to look up a couple of hours later when Alex pulled out a wooden top from his pocket and dangled it in front of Lily to grab her attention. 

 With careful precision, he wound the string tightly around the grooved, pear-shaped toy, then yanked it sharply in one fluid motion. 

 The top bobbed in the air for a moment before landing on its metallic tip, spinning smoothly on the ground. The trick worked—Lily's eyes followed the top as it danced in graceful arcs, looping and wobbling across the floor in mesmerizing circles.

 But Alex was not done yet. He expertly looped the string around the spinning metallic tip and yanked at it again wi...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1fm6xc8/the_waltz_at_the_gas_station/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Glittering-Test-3763 on 2024-09-21 07:39:43+00:00.

---

For years, I lived in a charming old house that my grandmother had left me. It was filled with antique furniture, faded photographs, and an unsettling sense of nostalgia. I loved it, despite the whispers of the neighbors who claimed it was cursed. They told stories about strange occurrences—objects moving on their own, shadows flitting by the windows at odd hours, and the air growing thick with tension at night. I brushed it off as local lore, believing that my grandmother's spirit was simply protecting her home.

One evening, as I settled into bed, I felt an overwhelming sense of dread. The air seemed heavier than usual, and shadows danced across the walls. I quickly fell asleep, only to awaken to the sensation of being watched. At first, I attributed it to my imagination, but the feeling persisted, leaving me anxious and restless.

The next day, I found a dusty old journal hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the attic. It belonged to my grandmother and detailed her life in the house. As I flipped through the pages, I stumbled upon a horrifying entry dated years ago: “The house has ears. It knows my secrets. If I don’t confess, it will consume me.”

Chilled, I continued reading. My grandmother had written about how the house seemed to know her thoughts and fears, twisting her own words against her. Every time she had a negative thought, an unsettling event would follow. Items would go missing, her reflection in the mirror would smirk back at her, and she’d hear whispers in the dead of night, recounting her darkest secrets.

That night, I decided to test the journal’s claims. I lay in bed and whispered my fears into the dark—my regrets, my failures, my hidden insecurities. I felt a shiver run down my spine, and the house creaked ominously in response. I dismissed it as paranoia.

But then, I woke in the middle of the night to a voice echoing through the halls: “Confess... or be consumed.” Panic surged through me. I bolted upright, glancing at the clock—it was 3:33 AM. The same time my grandmother had mentioned in her journal, the hour of the witching.

The next morning, I awoke to find the journal lying open on the floor. A new entry was written in my grandmother’s handwriting, though I had never touched the journal since last reading it. The entry read: “You did not listen. Now it knows your deepest fear.”

Heart pounding, I flipped to the last page. The final line was scrawled in frantic letters: “It will come for you when you least expect it.” As I read those words, the lights flickered, and a cold draft swept through the room.

That evening, I decided to leave the house. But as I packed my belongings, I discovered something horrifying: all my possessions had been rearranged in ways I couldn’t explain. My clothes were folded in neat piles, yet the furniture was out of place, as if someone—or something—had been watching and waiting.

Finally, I made it out the door, convinced that I had escaped whatever malevolent force resided within those walls. But as I drove away, my phone buzzed with notifications. I pulled over to check my messages, only to find a photo that sent chills down my spine. It was a picture of me, taken from inside the house, standing in my bedroom with my back turned. The timestamp showed it had been taken just minutes ago.

I never returned to that house. To this day, I live with the knowledge that it knows my secrets—and perhaps it is waiting for the day I let my guard down, just as it did with my grandmother.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/googlyeyes93 on 2024-09-21 21:34:54+00:00.

---

Previous

DAY 10

I cursed us by thinking the worst was over. Everything’s gone to hell again as we’ve reached the tenth day, everyone else catching up to where One was days ago and now showing the same signs. Four has managed to scratch his way out of his casts, though he’s no longer self mutilating. Five was hyperventilating in a corner, staring furtively around as he complained of the burning smell still.

I didn’t sleep peacefully, probably too much to ask after the past few days events. Instead, it was fitful, with constant thoughts back to what my own mother had gone through when fighting her own insomnia. She constantly spoke about others appearing near the end, with hallucinations taking hold hard as the condition worsened. In a way, she was lucky. The disease only took a few weeks to take her after the total insomnia took hold of her, and didn’t suffer any of these kinds of issues. Of course, it was it’s own hell, just like watching my grandfather pass from dementia years earlier, she broke down mentally and was barely my mother by the end…

Five began to scream in pain, saying that they were grabbing him all over, writhing on the floor in agony. I called Murray and Philip in, telling them we may be having a medical event, and they came rushing. I did a quick gas cycle, hoping it would clear everything before we stepped in, and we ran through the door as the room refilled with oxygen.

I don’t know how it happened. Five suddenly combusted, hot flames bursting forth from his body in a raging inferno. My theory is that the sudden influx of oxygen must have lead to it, but I wasn’t sure where the source of the ignition could come from. Murray pulled a fire extinguisher from the outside wall, spraying him down, putting the flames out.

Philip and I carried him out to the medical bay, trying to get some semblance of dressing on the wounds. They were pretty bad, skin charred and still giving off whisps of smoke. His screams were the worst though, like he was being tortured in the pits of hell while laying burnt before us. Despite the shock he should have been in, he was still screaming, begging us to get them off of him.

PHILIP: We’re going to try and fix you up, okay? Did you have matches, a lighter? Anything that could have caused the fire?

FIVE: They grabbed me. The hands grabbed me. All of them. Please get them off of me. Please!

As we stripped what remained of his clothes off, checking the extent of the awful burns, we noticed patterns different from the majority of his body.

Around his ankles and wrists were handprints, or more hand indentations, with even deeper burns, nearly down to the damned bone. Everything was cauterized nearly immediately at least, the heat searing blood vessels closed before any could escape.

We bandaged him as best as we could, leaving him to lay in the medical bay, hell with keeping the gas administered. One’s injuries were already giving us cold feet about the experiment, but after seeing a man spontaneously combust with nothing flammable in his reach… then seeing the awful marks of hands… I think we’re seeing something much, much worse than deprivation take hold.

We were shaken from each of our fearful contemplation by the sound of the gas alarm. It was getting ready to start pumping in more, alerting us to make sure the door was closed and sealed properly. We made a fatal error.

Though we were successful in sealing the door on time, Murray forgot to remove the spent fire extinguisher when we carried Five out. We only spotted it after the gas began pumping into the room, and by that time Two saw his chance at escape. There was no way of stopping the gas cycle once it was in process, and it wouldn’t stop until the sensor saw the air was totally saturated. Two smashed the extinguisher into our observation window, breaking through it in only three good hits. As glass burst inward, we all shrank back to the back of the room, Philip and I shocked, both immediately aware that we were, in scientific terms, fucked. The gas would take hold quickly, and as of yet, we were only administering more as a safeguard, unsure of the efficacy and time that it would last.

Whenever Two tried crawling through the broken glass into the room, he cut himself deep on the shards still in the window sill. Deep cuts down his forearms gushed blood as he made his way toward us,

Murray whipped a gun from his belt, pointing it right at the hulking man. He wasn’t able to fire off a shot before it was snatched from his hand by an invisible force, something determined he wouldn’t be killing Two.

In only moments we found out it was because whatever was there didn’t want us killing him because it wanted to do the honors. A whole chunk of flesh was ripped from his neck, blood flowing from the wound and soaking any still dry parts of his filthy clothes. He screamed, but that wasn’t the end of it. Before our eyes, he was knocked backward into the room, flat on his back on the tile floor. In only moments he was spread-eagle on the floor, arms and legs stretched to their limits and only being pulled further. Before long, the invisible force was pulling him like a damned drawing rack they would torture people with before electricity.

The gruesome pop is something I’ll hear for the rest of my life. As his limbs stretched, joints began to pop from his ankles and wrists, moving inward as elbows, knees, hips, and shoulders were pulled apart slowly, maximizing the pain he felt the entire time.

The other subjects were too stunned to do anything themselves, and now we had a whole different problem- the gas sensors outside the lab were alerted, initiating a lockdown procedure. Steel shutters came down over the only exits out, with windows getting the same treatment as emergency lights began to flash on. Through the red strobing, we could see the limbs on Two completely separate from his body, pulling off with one last sick POP before blood began flowing.

An intercom came on, giving a safety announcement. ALERT! Nerve agent has escaped outside of lab confinement. Please remain calm, and help will be with you shortly.

That was… five hours ago. Help hasn’t come, nobody will be either, I don’t think. I’ve been talking to Philip and Taryn, Murray’s been listening in too, and we all agree this was something planned all along. The bastards that gave us this grant and facility… think they wanted a true test of their nerve gas, and they got a great sampling of people to use it on in here.

Every time we try to call the emergency line we were given, even for the security guys, there’s nothing. Just a canned response of “Please remain calm. Help will be with you shortly.”

If the bastards wanted to help they would have done it by now. Looks like we’re just gonna be another casualty of Uncle Sam’s morbid curiosity though. Doubt we’re the first.

Jesus, the gas is… terrible. It feels like I’m back in college, on a permanent version of the coke and adderall cocktail that would keep me up for a couple of days to get through finals. This was more intense though, like an electrical wire running up my spine that kept me from sitting still.

The real tell that makes me think this was part of the plan all along- there’s no way to shut off the gas from in here. It’s controlled by a remote output apparently, with us only allowed to do the air cycling when needed. Otherwise it goes in ten minute intervals, though the sensor that tells it when it’s saturated isn’t going to make it stop anytime soon. It has to fill the entire facility now, after all. But nobody installs something like this without a killswitch if they’re not planning on fucking over everyone inside.

Despite mine and Murray’s attempts at breaking through the door, it was useless. We tried waiting for the dinner cook to arrive, hoping they would be able to get us out of here, but it looks like they were told to take the night off.

So, looks like I’m dying from insomnia before my own genetics can even take me. How fun.

—-

DAY 11

Two is still alive. His wounds where arms and legs were pulled off have scabbed over, but he’s definitely in insurmountable pain. One has left his room to watch him, saying that the girls are enjoying their retribution. He’s still complaining of the kids around him, but otherwise he hadn’t shown any more injuries. Maybe the injury to his skull was helping keep him safe somehow, but that’s a whole other matter.

All of us, the non-subjects at least, though I guess we’re all subjects now, have given up on any semblance of sleep or shifts. We’re trapped in here, and even if I wanted to tell anyone reading this where we were to come and rescue us, I have no fucking clue. They picked me up at the Denver Airport and carted me off into nowhere, so my guess is as good as yours. They knew what they were doing. Taryn says Philip and I are paranoid for thinking it, but it makes the most logical sense.

Despite the now-open observation window, the subjects didn’t make any effort to leave their area. Perhaps they know it’s pointless, that we’re compromised too and just as unlikely to make it out. Hell, maybe their karma is that we now get to experience this hell ourselves firsthand. I’m furthest along when it comes to time awake, with my time at three days straight now. To be honest, it’s not the worst I’ve gone through. The worst is that I feel tired, but I can’t settle my...

---

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1fmdj7m/the_american_sleep_experiment_has_gone_straight/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/TumbleWeedPasses on 2024-09-21 22:19:19+00:00.

---

A few years ago, a friend of mine was caught up in a slew of messages from a time when smart phones weren't a big thing and email wasn't a feature on everyone's phones. This topic came up when we were discussing the worst thing we've ever gone through, and my friend went quiet, before pulling out her phone to present the chain of e-mails.

This is what she showed me.

Sunday, 5th July 14:53

From: HelenPC To: Mia_Home

Subject: Apologies

Hi Mia,

Sorry I couldn't make it to the party yesterday, won't go into details but I had a really bad mental health day. Grant rushed me to the doctors who prescribed me some new pills to try for 9 months and suggested I start therapy as soon as possible (which I'll hold off on until October as I'm so busy!) Hope you and the gang had a great time, and I've still got your present here for next time I'm in town!

Best wishes,

Helen

Monday, 6th July 12:17

From: HelenPC To: Mia_Home

Subject: Unlucky day!

Hi Mia,

You won't believe the weekend I've had. Me and Grant had a huge, very heated argument Sunday night while cooking which resulted in me slapping him (something I've NEVER done). But he was being so hostile towards me, I've never seen him look so evil.

He locked himself in the study for the rest of the night and I've felt awful.

Then, on my way into work, a huge deer runs out in front of the car and I swerve and hit a tree. Thankfully I'm fine but the car's in bad shape and Grant didn't even answer the phone even though he works from home. I had to call work and ask to work from home for a while whilst the car's being fixed.

I'm hoping Bobby's garage can fix it like they fixed yours when you went down a ditch! I'll figure out how to send you the dashcam footage of the deer once I get the car back, it was massive!

Hope you're having a better time than me.

Miss you,

Helen

Tuesday, 7th July 17:04

From: HelenPC To: Mia_Home

Subject: Husband problem!!

Hi Mia,

Sorry to keep emailing, I know you're away this week so I don't expect a reply but I need a friend's opinion.

Grant has been "off" since our argument on Sunday. I understand what I did was very wrong, but I've apologised and it wasn't very hard.

He usually likes to cook us both dinner, but he's only been making food for himself. He's usually first in bed and last to get up but now he just stays locked in his study all morning and evening. Then his hygiene has done a 180, he usually enjoys a shower every evening and keeps the house spotless but now he leaves dishes and washing up for me and hasn't bathed since Sunday.

He also whispers threats of violence in my ear when I'm doing something.

Does your husband ever do this after a fight? Is this his way of getting back at me? I don't know what to do. He just looks at me with such...evil in his eyes now.

Chat soon,

Helen

Wednesday, 8th July 19:28

From: HelenPC To: Mia_Home

Subject: FUMING

Hi Mia,

Just me again for the daily rant.

It's a nightmare living out here without a car, I feel so isolated. What's worse is I'm trapped here with someone who's trying to make it as uncomfortable as possible.

Grant has upped his game at trying to upset me. He's now taken to leaving dishes and food out until they begin to stink. I called him out on it but he just smiles and laughs with that same hateful expression.

I've decided I'm not cleaning up after a grown man. If he wants to leave everything out to stink and live in a filthy house then fine by me, he's the neat freak out of us.

I don't know where this hateful malice has come from, there's no love in his eyes anymore.

Hope you're all enjoying your holiday, send my love.

Have fun,

Helen

Thursday, 9th July 18:47

From: HelenPC To: Mia_Home

Subject: I'm getting a divorce

Hi Mia,

I don't know how else to say it. Grant and I are planning a separation. I'm in tears as I write this. Things have been amazing for over 15 years but one small stupid fight is what's ending us.

It happened earlier today. I finished my work and went downstairs to find YET MORE filthy dishes and food left out. I couldn't do it anymore. I tried to open the study but as usual he's locked it. I was furious and banged on the door. Grant ignored me, so I tried to pick the lock with a coin. I could hear Grant laughing at me, so in the end I bashed the thin door down. He was sat in his office chair, looking towards me with his mouth wide with shock. The whole study smelled foul where he hasn't washed for days in this boiling weather.

I laid into him, and told him this behaviour has to stop or I'm leaving. He continued looking at me with his stupid expression, and I told him I guess that answers it then and walked out.

I expected him to call me back or come after me, but he didn't. I've shut myself in our room since, crying nonstop. My once loving husband has never done anything like this before, I'm devastated.

I've packed a bag and I'm leaving tonight. I will see you soon.

Regards,

Helen

Saturday, 11th July 21:49

From: Mia_Home To: Amber@Mobile

Subject: I'm worried about Helen

Hey Amber,

Sorry it's late back home. I'm currently at the airport in Greece on a public computer but my flight's been delayed until tomorrow afternoon, so we're spending the night at a nearby cheap hotel.

I'm very concerned about Helen. I've just seen the multiple emails she has sent me through the week (I'll forward them to you now).

I've tried calling her and Grant multiple times but neither have picked up.

If you're free, would you be able to drive up to her and see if she's alright? She's quite vulnerable and usually Grant helps her with her mental health but I'm not sure what's going on with them.

Thanks.

Lots of love, Mia

Saturday 11th July 22:01

From: Amber@Mobile To: Mia_Home

Subject: I'll head up there

Evening Mia, hope you had a good trip.

Yes that does seem a bit concerning, I'll head up to Helen's now.

I'll keep you posted!

Amber

Sunday 12th July 16:12

From: Amber@Mobile To: Mia_Home

**Subject: *NoSubject***

Mia, it's Amber

I need your help, please.

I got to Helen's at around half 11 and the front door was wide open. This was already concerning as Helen and Grant always keep the doors locked.

I called out but got no answer so I went in.

The whole house was HOT, like the air conditioning hadn't been on for ages. And the smell was horrific. There was food left out rotting in the living room and the kitchen was a mess.

I then walked down the hall and the smell grew much worse.

Then I walked into the study and couldn't believe what I saw.

There was a rotting corpse sat at the desk, its head turned towards the door and its mouth wide open. I honestly can't get that image out of my head.

I fled from the house and called the police. I stayed in my car in the driveway for hours, just wanting to see what was going on and if Helen was ok.

I've been at the police station since last night. I showed them the emails you forwarded to me which seemed to help them.

The body in the study was Grant. They think he died from a stab wound in his neck from a small kitchen knife.

But what I don't understand is they believe Grant has been deceased since at least Sunday, how can that be if Helen was with him all week?

The police even managed to speak to someone from Bobby's garage today, who gave them the dashcam. There was no deer, Mia. It just shows her suddenly swerve off the road into the tree.

They also found an empty box of pills on her bedside table, from the email she sent you.

I don't remember what they were called (they had a long name) but whatever they were, the investigators said these were in no way what a doctor would've prescribed someone these as they were banned due to patients 'seeing demons and evil everywhere' and exacerbating any symptoms they already had.

The medication causes severe delusions and hallucinations, along with strong side effects of paranoia and anxious moods. These pills basically alter your brain, essentially making side effects permanent if taken for more than 3 months.

They're not sure if it's a detrimental mix up at the pharmacy, or if the doctor needs investigating.

They think Helen stabbed Grant and he locked himself in the study terrified, where he died. But she said she only slapped him, right? Oh god Mia tell me they're wrong.

Nobody knows where Helen is, and from the empty pill box it's believed she's packed all the medication with her wherever she's gone.

The police suggested she could've gone to yours from your last email, I don't know your address so I'm not sure where to tell them to go.

Please read this Mia.

Please, don't go home....

My friend Amber was in therapy for a long time after this event.

Mia and her family managed to get an earlier flight home, meaning sadly Mia did not read Amber's e-mail.

Mia and her family didn't even make it into the house before Helen, under influence of the medication, emerged from their back garden with a large weed sickle and slaughtered the unexpecting family on their doorstep.

Amber has since moved far away from the sleepy town which this experience took place.

Helen has never been found.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Theeaglestrikes on 2024-09-21 16:22:13+00:00.

---

I have u/TucsonTank to thank for my ill-fated adventure. A week ago, this nameless, faceless Redditor posted a picture from his road trip. And two days later, I saw it for myself. That’ll be the first and last time I dip my pinkie toe in the deceptive pool of urban exploring. Fuck him, and fuck me for pursuing something that shouldn’t have been pursued.

Something, it turned out, that was pursuing me.

Why didn’t I take up stamp-collecting like every other forty-year-old sad-sack wallowing in a mid-life crisis? Then I never would’ve looked for the ‘FREE CANDY’ staircase. And maybe it wouldn’t have ever found me.

Sorry, any stamp collectors out there. I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m envious of those who live the quiet life. My snarky, buffoonish sense of humour was born from trauma. I’ve been deflecting from my past for decades. Trying to outrun it. But even in those gentle lulls, that come from time to time, Hell is always waiting to resurface. And that was exactly what happened five days ago.

The anonymous poster told me the rough area in which he took the picture. I didn’t face a word of resistance, in spite of some voice, deep within my subconscious, begging for him not to tell me anything. It only took me a little research to find the building, and I immediately booked an overseas flight for the following day. I’m purposefully leaving place names out of this post, so don’t bother asking. I don’t want this horrifying misadventure to be repeated by any other adrenaline junkies with more cash than sense.

What’s down there? I asked the photographer.

No idea. I just took the photo then headed on my way, he replied.

And with that, the nameless user had sealed my fate. I was always going to visit the location, of course. I was drawn to it. But knowing that the photographer hadn’t even taken a step into the jaws of the staircase? Well, that only loudened the groan in my stomach. The mouth-frothing hunger to see this place with my own eyes. I imagined myself to be some twenty-first-century explorer on the verge of a monumental discovery.

And in fairness, that may have been so. But I don’t want you to find out by visiting the staircase for yourself.

I’m trying desperately to be as descriptive, yet non-descriptive, as possible. If anybody out there does possess the means to track down the location of the ‘FREE CANDY’ sign, I would seriously advise against using that skill.

After reading this story, it won’t take much to dissuade you.

The staircase’s entryway, which spanned the width of a typical household door, stood like a lonesome pillar amidst a mound of waste. Misshapen sheets of metal, shattered crumbs of plaster, and shredded plastic bags littered the abandoned floor of that forgotten building. I know what the place used to be, but I’m not going to tell you, obviously. What I will say is that it isn’t a place which should’ve sat above the horror I uncovered.

I shone my torch-light at the downward-sloping ceiling of the slender, enclosed staircase. Sketched on the underside of the slope, with black crayon, were the words: ‘FREE CANDY’. An abnormal advertisement written above an arrow which pointed down. Urging me to walk down the steps into the darkness. It didn’t take much urging, of course. I’d started the descent before even taking a picture of my own.

It was the muddy, maroon smears across the yellow walls which really unsettled me. Ominous marks that coated the interior of the claustrophobic passageway. In certain lights, the marks looked, to my eyes, like blood-painted handprints, but I tried to shake that notion from my head.

You’re just frightened, and your imagination’s running wild, I reassured myself.

I don’t know how many steps there were. I didn’t count. But it took roughly two minutes for me to reach the bowels of the abandoned building, and I was a little winded.

I won’t tell you what I expected to find downstairs, as that might reveal the nature of the semi-demolished building above, but I will tell you that my eyes widened disbelievingly when I found myself in the lobby of an underground cinema. It was not a derelict mall. I’ll tell you that much. The cobweb-ridden, crumbling theatre did not belong down there.

And, as if that weren’t unnerving enough, the cinema slowly revealed a series of horrifying traits. Firstly, I noticed that a solitary lightbulb shone brightly above the concession stand.

“How the fuck… Who the fuck is powering this place?” I whispered, inching forwards with the torch in my trembling hand.

More strangely than that, I didn’t even need the torch. The single bulb, swaying perpetually on a stringy, splaying cable, somehow illuminated the entire lobby. Revealed, beneath the dust and grime, a well-maintained establishment. The red-carpeted floors, donning a diamond pattern that both belonged to a bygone era, appeared eerily vibrant and untarnished. It was as if the place were simply in need of a little spring cleaning to look brand new once more.

The posters on the walls were inconsistent. Some were faded and dated. Others bore quite modern graphics. But what bound them all together was that they advertised films which had either passed me by or never existed.

Shards of Space

The Exacter

Archie Bolton in The Real World

“Hello?” I called.

The place didn’t feel abandoned to me. Old and forgotten, perhaps, but oddly well-preserved. The most disconcerting thing, of course, was the fact that electricity still powered the cinema. The abandoned cinema below an abandoned building. And everything about the place set my hairs on end. So, in spite of my urge to find out what was happening, it was an absolutely batshit-bonkers play to cheerily utter a yoo-hoo to the large, unnatural place.

Thankfully, there came no reply. No menacing door creaked open to reveal a mysterious figure. No malicious giggle echoed from the backroom of the establishment. Nothing called out in response.

Still, none of that settled my gut. It made things worse, though I did not know why. And as I crossed the red carpet towards the concession stand, I noticed something. Something which, disturbing as it may have been, at least felt consistent with the untoward sign at the top of the staircase. A piece of card was propped above the containers of sweets, and it read:

First time at Cine Cinema? Help yourself to FREE pick ‘n’ mix! We won’t tell if you don’t.

DISCLAIMER: 1 well-portioned bag per visitor. No more. No less.

Smile. You’re always being watched.

Terrified by that final sentence, I snapped my head around and searched the expansive lobby for a couple of watching eyes in the darkness. There was nothing. But, again, that did not slow my heartbeat.

I feared the unseen thing in the emptiness of the cinema. If I were going to meet my end, I wanted to see it coming. I remember that strange thought ringing in my head.

Will you calm the fuck down? I thought. There’s a reasonable explanation for all of this.

However, that lie wasn’t working anymore.

As I squatted to eye the assortment of sweets in the glass casing, I gulped at the fresh licorice, gummy bears, and cola bottles. Unless they’d been encased in futuristic preservatives, the candy should’ve rotted after only a year of the building being abandoned. And that fact, along with the many other facts surrounding me, solidified what I’d known since entering the cinema.

This place was not abandoned.

“Hello?” I called again, voice breaking.

Will you stop that? I asked myself, slapping my forehead with the heel of my palm.

I kept forgetting that instinct in my belly. That feeling of unevenness. A human wasn’t going to answer my calls. This was no cinema. It was an illusion that had lured me across an ocean.

I’m quite a spontaneous man. There’s no denying that. But even for me, this was a rogue move. I’d flown across the world to investigate a staircase. Was it a disturbing staircase that gained traction on Reddit? Sure. But at the end of the day, that hardly warranted an international flight. I’m not so brain-rotted that I’d believe otherwise.

I started to sense that I’d been intoxicated by the image. By the ‘FREE CANDY’ sign. The photograph had been alluring in some perturbing way.

Before I followed that thought to some sort of grand conclusion, there sounded a roar of brass instruments, like fanfare to signal the arrival of royalty.

I stumbled back from the concession stand, in fright, and rose to a standing position once more. My eyes darted to the side hallway as I searched for the source of the sound. Above the passage’s open doors, a sign displayed:

Screens 1-11

Another lightbulb, midway along the corridor, shone from the ceiling. This one, however, did little to illuminate the full length of the hallway. There were dark cavities untouched by the bulb’s glow, and I once again sensed the Watcher, whose warning had been printed quite clearly on the slip of card above the pick ‘n’ mix.

I didn’t want to enter that hallway. I truly didn’t. In fact, I’d wanted to turn and run the second I reached the bottom of the staircase. It wasn’t ego that kept me in the underground cinema. It was the invulnerable power that had pulled me across the ocean in the first place. The same power that pulled my legs, one after the other, in a stilted, unwil...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/1000andonenites on 2024-09-21 15:31:53+00:00.

---

I had to agree with my girlfriend Emily that videocalls were not as good as being together in person, but there was no way around it. Emily had just travelled back from a foreign destination where she had spent a month for work, and the Public Health rules stated that a ten-day isolation period was required upon return from that particular spot.

 

Rules were rules. I was desperate to touch her, to hold her, to feel her in my arms, and the extra ten days seemed a cruel extension of our already month-long separation, but at least she now had good internet connection, and we promised each other long quality videocalls in the evenings- a luxury after having to deal with the flickering, poor quality internet of where she had been.

 

The first few days, however, she ended up being feverish – just some bug she must have picked up from the airport, she assured me in a weak voice. But by the sixth day, she was feeling much better, and I could barely wait to get home and call her. That was the highlight of my day, when I could finally lock the door and enjoy her virtual company, without the connection dropping or colleagues interrupting or any other distraction. Even online, I felt I couldn’t get enough of gazing at her beautiful face, now in crystal-clear high definition, and even her most innocuous statements aroused a deep emotion in me.  

 

Emily seemed also as delighted to spend quality time on video with me, luxuriating in my gaze and declarations of affection.

 

It must have been on the eighth day when it first happened.

 

I rushed home, opened up my laptop and placed the call.

 

Within a few seconds, she flickered in sight, wearing some kind of black zip-up sweater, zipped up to her neck. I felt mildly disappointed- during our previous calls, she had usually been dressed in what I called “date night” attire- revealing tops and lovely lacy things that barely brushed her skin- a wonderful change from the standard working gear that she had been wearing every day while she was away for work. But her face was glowing, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining with an odd light.

.

“You want a peek babe?” she said, mischievously.

 

I felt almost as eager as if she were before me in flesh. “C’mon darlin’, lemme see. Please” I begged.

 

She unzipped the zipper with her freshly painted nails, just down her neck. “This good?” she teased.

 

She unzipped a bit more, I could see her jutting collarbones. Something was wrong with the internet quality - she flickered, her head was replaced momentarily by- what- no - her face - something glistening was under her sweatshirt -

 

“Liking what you see?” she cooed and pulled down a bit further.

 

I peered in- my face almost touching my laptop screen- a scaly greenish-black texture was becoming visible on her skin. Her face flickered again, and I caught glimpse of flaring eyes and sharp teeth in a scaly face. I leapt back as if stung, and  slammed the laptop shut.

 

My cellphone dinged.

 

-babe what happened?

 

I thought a bit, then responded.

-Idk my internet isnt working

 

-ok lmk when u get it back I rly wanna show something you

 

I didn’t go back online that night. Emily was not happy about that- she sent me some more text messages, but I pretended that my internet was still out, and went to bed as soon as I could, pleading a headache.

 

The next day she bombarded my phone with loving messages and gorgeous images of herself as never before. I put the scaly vision of last night out of my head, again feeling that old passion to at least see her online if I couldn’t actually be with her. I raced to my laptop at home as soon as I could.

 

She was waiting for me online, again covered to the neck.

 

“Here we go babe” she said, and in one swift motion pulled the zipper down, revealing for one tiny instant her beautiful body.

 

Then the image flickered, and a scaly glistening greenish-black creature seemed super-imposed on the body, with flaring yellow eyes and sharp protruding teeth.

 

I cried out, blinked, and the creature vanished, and I was once again staring at the body and face of my beloved Emily before me on my laptop screen.

 

“You likey?” she asked, smiling at me expectantly, her pink soft lips curving in what I would have thought until two seconds ago the world’s most beautiful smile.

 

“Yes- oh- yes” I whimpered. Did she not know what was going on?

 

She leaned in so far her soft lips almost touching the webcam- “It will all be yours, very soon, my sweetheart. All yours. We will finally be together. Oh, I can barely wait for tomorrow” and she ran her tongue over her lips in what was supposed to be a seductive gesture.

 

But her tongue was narrow and forked and her teeth fanged.

 

I jumped back.

 

She frowned. “What is it Matthew?”

 

“Nothing- I mean- oh, I can’t wait.” And despite myself, her suggestive movements started arousing me, and the image of what I had seen -or thought I had seen? once again receded from my mind, as I allowed myself to enjoy her virtual company.

 

It was only when we were almost done, saying our last long lingering goodnights to each other, that her image flickered again, and for a whole two seconds, while I was paralysed by fear, I saw on the screen a scaly glistening greenish-black shape, with fanged teeth and flaring yellow eyes.

 

I spent the next day at work in a fog of confusion and fear. I kept trying to dismiss the terrible vision as some hacking prank gone wrong, but it was too vivid, the scales glistening and the eyes flaring too brightly for me to convince myself.

 

The day after, she was out of isolation.

“Im coming over babe” she texted, as soon as I got home.

 

“Emily u dont have to” I texted desperately.

She texted back immediately “?? U got a new gf while I was stuck inside?”

 

My heart sank. “Don’t be ridiculous”.

 

“ok Ill be there 30 min”

 

Heart racing, I knew I couldn’t be alone with her. Frantically, I texted.

“Hey I was just going out to grab coffee meet at the usual?”

 

Barely five second passed “youre gonna a dump me! And ur too coward to do at home, ur doing it at coffee shop like a wuss on a first date!!!”

 

“I just want a coffee! I’ll meet you there- already outta the door!”

 

She arrived within five minutes of me seating myself outside, on the small pavement patio. Despite her red teary eyes, she looked as beautiful as ever, and the now-familiar doubt of what I had seen on screen crept in. I took her hands.

 

“Emily” I began.

 

She began ugly-crying. “You’re dumping me – I can’t believe- you started sleeping with someone else while I was away-“ she sobbed. Other customers furiously pretended to mind their own business, and the server discreetly stood away.

 

“No- I swear-“ I said, feeling helplessly. “It’s just-“

 

“Just what?!” she slammed her hands on the table, and stopped crying. A horrible hush fell over the patio. The server rattled his tray.

 

She leaned towards me. “Just what, asshole?” she hissed.

 

As I stared into her eyes, I saw her pupils swim and change shape. I swear I saw them become vertical slits, suspended into the greeny-blue of her eyes.  

 

I cried out in fear, jumped up from my chair and began running. I had no idea where, I just knew I had to get away.

 

Emily slid out from behind the table in a lithe movement and immediately began following me.

 

“Matthew!” I heard her cry- “please- stop- I love yo- “

 

Her voice was cut off by horrible skidding brake sound, followed by a high-pitched scream. A great shout went up. For a split second, everything was completely still, and then the spell broke. I looked back, in time to see the crowd surge to where her crushed body was lying on the street.

 

And then, with sirens wailing, everything seemed to heave on the street. The sun was shining in my eyes but I know I saw two men dressed in regular jeans clear the crowd. I saw them pick her up and take her, not to an ambulance, but inside a plain black van.

 

I never saw or heard of Emily again.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Jaylaserina on 2024-09-21 15:56:51+00:00.

---

As a young child I trusted my mom. Fully. I believed everything she said. After all, she’s my mom. She wants what’s best for me. She loves me more than anyone in the world. I never thought this innocent and natural perception would be exploited to the degree it was.

On my 3rd birthday my father stood waiting for me outside a McDonald’s. He had planned my birthday. A party I never attended. He waited and waited, called and called but she never showed up. Meanwhile, she was getting on a greyhound with me. The passengers learned it was my birthday, I imagined that she probably told them she was escaping an evil man. One passenger bought me a small birthday cake at one of the stops (my mom said). I wonder where that person is. If only they knew I was being kidnapped, and it wasn’t a happy day to celebrate but a day that would change my entire coarse of my life.

Once we arrived on the other side of the country she entered into DV programs and changed both my name and SSN. Then she began to fill my developing and innocent mind with her grandiose lies. At 3.5 years she told me she saved me from my father. That he was an evil man who was physically and emotionally abusive. She told me he molested me. And if I ever met him that he would kill her and take me to Africa where my family would rape me.

By this time my infantile amnesia had kicked it and I forgot everything up before this point. I forgot my dad. I forgot what he looked like. I forgot our bond. I forgot that I was a daddies girl. I forgot that I couldn’t sleep without him. Yet, even though I had forgotten him there was an intuition that led me to begin to becoming VERY misbehaved purposely toward my mother. I felt rage towards her but I didn’t know why. That’s when the physical punishments began. Daily spankings. Biting. Fingers being bent back. Trauma symptoms kicked in. I began to wet the bed (something I didn’t do anymore even at this young age), night terrors about witches and running away became regular by 5 years old. Then the hallucination I saw of a demon telling me to kill myself. I gathered knives under my bed not fully knowing why but knowing I should listen to this presence in my room. How does a baby already want to die? It was because I was dying. Then, I was dead.

My old self with my old name was gone. And instead in its place was a traumatized and angry shell of a child. Not knowing the old me would remain a member of the cast in my mind forever. Screaming to be let out. To be free. To be allowed to be me. I hated the person she forced me to be. I hated myself.

My mom met her new husband and told me to call him dad. I did for a few days and something felt wrong. I stopped and for the rest of my life she would refer to him as “your dad.” She pressured me to take his last name. She told him I was so misbehaved because she didn’t punish me cause she felt bad I didn’t have my dad. When the reality was I was punished so often I grew to see her as an enemy worth fighting. Once he arrived in my life the physical punishments became less frequent and he became the one to punish me. Much more level headed, he would normally ground me. I would often take my frustration out on him saying “Your not my dad!”

Time passed and I did petty things. Like stealing makeup which earned me a year long grounding. Eventually everything was removed from me. My phone, TV and computer and any devices and I was told I can have them back when I buy my own. Realizing I had no positive reinforcement to behave anymore by my teens I had basically “defeated” my mom’s punishments. Going out and not coming home for days. Drinking. Having sex. My mom wasn’t interested in my life. She only shamed me for my deplorable actions. Regularly calling the cops on me for petty things like drinking and smoking. Time after time I would feel the suicidal rage come back, I would think to myself “I just want my dad” not knowing who I was even wanting. Not knowing that these were forms of covert abuse masked as discipline.

I became the “problem child” she would gossip about to anyone who would listen, telling them how mentally ill I am and how hard it is as my mother. In trouble again and again, “How could you after everything I’ve done for you? I risked my life to keep you safe. You’re a psychopath just like your dad. Soon you’ll be 18 and you need to find somewhere else to live because I’m moving across the state.” 18 creeped up and I felt the fear of abandonment coming I knew I had to do something or I would be in the street. The day after my birthday I was kidnapped by a stranger on Craigslist claiming to have a room share. He raped me. Come to find out, he was a serial rapist and there were others. While the court process began I found a roommate a friend from high school. My mom step dad and little brother were gone, they rarely called.

I felt safe to start to look for my dad. I found him on Facebook and messaged him. This is where the suspicion began. He told me he has been looking for me. That he loved me and was hurt every time my birthday came around. He was so hurt that he told people I died because he couldn’t explain my mom took me every time someone asked where I was. He was shocked when I asked him about her allegations of rape. His wife and new daughters defended him saying your mom is absolutely lying.

He bought a ticket for me and my bestfriend so I wouldn’t feel alone. Meeting him was a beautiful memory filled with happy tears. But the suicidal rage, bad behavior became too much for him and he got me a ticket back home writing me off as being “like my mom”.

No one was with me in court when I faced my rapist. NO ONE . He got 56 years the only justice I ever had.

2 years passed before we both apologized to eachother. He told me that was his biggest mistake and he would forever be sorry. A apology? Very weird. My mom had never apologized to me for anything. I felt so seen and validated. Our relationship remained distant but he was supportive. Helping me every time I was in a financial crisis or abusive relationship. My mom was never willing to help me. I learned to not ask for help or tell her about my problems.

The opposition of their conflicting stories created cognitive dissonance that I couldn’t settle. It drove me crazy not knowing who the crazy person is. It has to be at least one of them, someone is lying. But I made excuses for my mom and wondered if maybe she was right and my dad had fooled me. I was scared to confront her I didn’t want to victim blame sold I was wrong. Because if I was wrong that meant she was abused and a victim herself. I had no memory so how can I tell?

But their behaviors told a story I couldn’t ignore. I never felt loved by my mom whereas my dad had empathy for me, he was interested in my life and helped me when I needed him. Qualities my mom ALL lacked. My boyfriend told me it’s obvious who is wrong. The more I studied her behavior I seen consistent manipulation patterns: victim mentality, guilt tripping, blame shifting and then love bombing. All classic narcissistic traits.

It has been 9 years since I met my dad. Only a few days have passed since I realized my mom kidnapped me. She was the crazy one all along. She abused me psychologically, emotionally, physically and neglected me. That realization is so overwhelming that I feel nothing but emptiness. I can hardly cry.

Why is this my life? A life she curated FOR ME.

A few days ago I went no contact. I blocked her on everything. She barely speaks to me yet her response was to call everyone she knows I know and ask “why did she block me I can’t figure it out” as if my acquaintances are her resource for information.

Now I’m looking into finding a lawyer. I’ve been educated that there is no statute of limitations for federally kidnapping children across state lines. Since it is between multiple states it would be an investigation by the FBI. I don’t want to punish her, I just want acknowledgment of her disregard for my life.

I struggle mentally, I can’t focus. I have issues sleeping. I overthink and overcompensate. I have had an evil voice in my mind that tells me to kill myself as long as I can remember. At first I wanted to punish her and then it became because life is so unbearable. The confusion drove me mad until I finally realized.

All I ever wanted is a family and a home. So I have no practical dreams or career aspirations. I just want love. I have to rebuild the person I was born to be. I hope to become someone who inspires others like me.

She changed my name, took away my family, my culture, my identity. She killed me. I will never be who I was meant to be. But I know I am not a mentally ill troubled person but a person who was psychologically abused, who has empathy for others, who deserved a chance a peace. A chance she took from me. She took my true destiny and identity away from me. Something I will never get back. One filled with family, love and compassion. One where I would be validated and valued. One without abuse.

She took all of that, she erased an essential part of me. But she can’t take my soul. I know the truth now and I know who I am.

I hope my story can help someone who is going through or who has been through the same. I searched and search for other kids like me, I felt like the only one. We have to start telling our story. We have to fight for change in the system so that we can be protected. My name ...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/1morey on 2024-09-21 04:24:59+00:00.

---

This is my personal account of an incident that occurred in Alaska back in 2019. I haven't spoken of this incident to anyone but my therapist and my best friend. Despite many sessions, and even attempts of exposure therapy (which I will explain later), this event still haunts me. Maybe if I post this here, I can gain some semblance of peace.

So, like I said, it was 2019, I was twenty-five at the time. I had been saving up money to do on some backcountry camping up in Alaska. I live on the East Coast, and while my job was paying alright, I was taking up some under the table jobs (house painting, housesitting, petsitting, and what-have-you) to help me out financially for the trip. I also had a friend set me up with their uncle who is a bush pilot to handle getting me to and from my camping location.

This was my first and biggest mistake. Now, I had very little experience with camping outside of occasional weekend camping at state parks, and I did some camping excursions (nothing super challenging) when I was in Boy Scouts. But my friend's uncle, Mark, knew some good spots that were remote to an extent, but easy to get to in the event of an emergency, by bush plane standards, that is. So yeah, no trekking to the nearest highway or road, unless I wanted to walk for a day or so through rugged terrain.

My parents helped me out with getting me some emergency supplies (food/hydration packs, first-aid kit, bear spray, etc.) Mark loaned me a spare rifle of his, in case I would need it. Even though I was a non-resident, I could still carry a firearm under state law. I've hunted before when I was a teen, so I had experience in that regard, plus I didn't have to worry about the hassle of transporting a firearm and dealing with airport regulations. Mark also hooked me up with a satellite phone as well, so my cell phone was going to be nothing more than a camera. I didn't have the money for a good camera for photography or anything, so I had to make due.

The plan was to be dropped off at where I was camping, camp out for five days, and be picked up on day six. I didn't want to use up all two weeks of my allotted PTO at work, so I kept the trip condensed.

Because this was my first time out, Mark helped me pick out a site, based on his recommendations. The spot he chose wasn't one he went to often, as he typically flew in hunters and anglers who typically were going to areas with more rugged terrain. It was relatively flat, not a lot of dense forests, maybe some patches here and there further in, and my campsite was going to be set up near a small lake with a good view of some mountains in the distance.

Now, I'm sure a lot of people would like to know where I was specifically, but Mark no longer takes people to that location, regardless of their experience or not, and he no longer does fly-ins for anyone who isn't a hunter. It hurt his business a bit, because fishing is so popular in Alaska, but he ended up retiring altogether due to COVID the following year.

As for why I won't mention the location, as far as I am aware, the location didn't have a name on an official map, and if Mark had ever flown near that area, it was just a tiny blip during a scenic sight-seeing trip. The other reason was because of what I experienced on that trip. What I saw, I wish I could get it out of my head, out of my dreams.

After Mark dropped me off and helped me unload my gear, I spent most of my first day setting up camp, not far from the lake, a good eighty-five yards or so (or a little over 77 meters). I found a nice and remarkably dry dead log that had some good size branches, so that was my main supply of firewood.

A short walk away there was small grove of trees inland from the lake that I set up as my food storage location. Mark said bears were not uncommon in this area, though not necessarily the best place to see some, but it was still advised to keep food hanging from a tree, out of reach from any potential bears.

The lake had a rather unique shape to it, which made it easy for me to set up a good spot for a cooking area. For those unfamiliar, the campsite, food storage, and kitchen area should form a triangle, which some people refer to as a "bear-muda" triangle.

Day two and three were not entirely uneventful for the most part. Day two, I was eating lunch at my campsite while watching a bull moose dive into the lake to eat the plants at the bottom. Day 3, I did some hiking. Found a small hill with only a couple trees on top, and I decided to sit down and observe a herd of elk grazing for a good while. Exploring around the lake, I found a small rusted boat buried under some branches. It was in rough shape, but could still float on the water. So I dragged it back with me to camp and put it near the lakeshore. Figured I could go out on the lake and take some good photos from it.

Day Four is when things started to get weird. It got unnaturally quiet that morning, the birds were not singing, and the only sounds were from the lake, and the bugs. Despite making sure I packed mosquito repellent, the bugs were a big nuisance if I was near the lake. I hesitated to travel away from my tent, outside of walking to the lake. I tried not to let the silence bother me, and I occupied my time with reading inside my tent.

As the sun dipped down and darkness began to creep in, I was starting to feel uneasy. Like a primal kind of fear. I decided I was going to make my campfire a bit bigger than I normally make it, enough that the light shone further away.

As I turned in for the night, I made sure my bear spray and the rifle were within reach inside my tent. But I had trouble sleeping. The silence was unnerving. I was fighting myself not to toss and turn, because I was too afraid of the noise attracting something I did not want to encounter alone at night.

Just as I was about to close my eyes, I heard a branch snap. That woke me up faster than a bucket of ice water, and I immediately froze. I could heard something coming into my campsite. I reached for the bear spray and held it tightly to my chest. As slowly as humanly possible, I turned over, and saw the shadow of an animal on the wall of my tent, illuminated by the glow of the moonlight.

The animal was big, about the size of a trophy brown bear, but the silhouette looked off. I just figured it was from some sort of distortion from the angle I was looking at. But the noises it made, were not like that of a bear. It made huffing noises like a bear, but the sound wasn't exactly the same. I could tell it was starting to approach my tent, so I had my thumb ready on the safety catch of the spray.

Suddenly, the creature tore through the tent like tissue paper, and grabbed my sleeping bag in its jaws. The strength of the animal caused me to nearly hit my head off the ground, and for a brief moment, I caught a look at the animals face.

The animal's head look similar to a bear's. But there was something uncanny about it, uncanny in a way that I can not entirely articulate. It wasn't malformed or anything, it just looked off.

As the animal dragged me out of the tent, I popped off the safety catch, and sprayed it in the face. The animal reeled back, groaning in pain. It was a horrendous noise, not like anything I have ever heard. I heard it run off into the thick brush, and as I went to head for the remains of my tent, I could hear this crashing and cracking noise from the animal. I was too scared that it was going to come back, so I ran for the boat.

As I was pushing the boat into the water, I turned back, and from the fading glow of the campfire, I saw the animal begin to charge. I wasted no time in getting the boat into the water, and I begin to paddle as quickly as I could. I knew the creature would be faster, but I was praying that I got far enough away from shore, it wouldn't attempt to chase me.

The creature didn't stop at the lakeshore, and it made its way through the water, at least up to its chest and stopped. I could faintly see it from the moonlight, and then it ran for my tent. While I couldn't see it all that well, I could tell from the horrendous noise that the animal was thrashing around my camping supplies. I hoped to God that the rifle and satellite phone were intact.

I curled up in the boat, and tried my best to sleep, but I was drenched up to my waist, and I was shivering like crazy. After a good fifteen minutes, the noises from my campsite died down and everything became still again. I never slept through the night, but occasionally would paddle the boat to make sure it didn't float off towards shore during the night.

When morning approached, I was still too afraid to go back to my campsite. I waited until around noon, when my stomach began to protest. I picked up the paddle, and slowly and as quietly as possible, paddled back to my campsite.

As I reached the shore, I still waited for several minutes, just to make sure I didn't hear the creature approach. I slowly walked back to what remained of my campsite.

The tent was nothing more than snapped poles and tattered fabric, and what was left of my sleeping bag was unrecognizable as belonging to a sleeping bag. Unfortunately, Mark's rifle had a busted stock, and the wooden forearm had a big crack down it. My backpack had been torn apart, and clothes and gear were scattered all around.

I found my binoculars laying in the firepit, luckily, it looked like the fire had gone out before they landed in it, as there were no sco...

---

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Haunted-nightmares on 2024-09-21 03:26:06+00:00.

---

The northwoods winters have always been quiet. The wide stretches of pines and hemlocks combined with a couple feet of snow meant that almost no sound traveled through the air. Still, even in the dead of winter, some sounds could always be made out. The wind whistling through the trees, the scuffling of creatures who had not gone to sleep for the winter, the occasional howl from a distant wolf, all sounds that could be picked out amongst the silence. Somehow there was always some sort of noise. Yet, the forests of my land made none. 

The silence is somehow more deafening than any bustling city or crowded suburb. I find myself straining my ears, desperate for noise… but there is none. Only silence.

Nothing dares to make a peep while the fawns are stalking.  

I live alone in a cabin in the northwoods of Wisconsin. Just a small wooden cabin with ten acres of wilderness surrounding it, untouched for generations. This land has been in my family since my great great grandparents immigrated here from Germany. It has never been logged or altered in any way, as my family preferred to use it for game hunting. The pelts and furs of the various wildlife species that roamed our property kept my family alive for two centuries. 

To this day, it is still used for that same purpose. Ducks, rabbits, pheasants, and quail all end up on my table every year. However, the deer on my property are the best of the bunch. My land produced some of the biggest bucks and does this side of the Mississippi. I sell the meat to local restaurants and the pelts and antlers online. I also keep chickens and have a small vegetable garden whose products I sell at the farmers market during the warmer months. I have made a good life for myself up here… but that life is no more. 

It started off small a couple years back. I noticed a lot of the deer I spotted on my property starting to look a little sickly. They were skinny and often seemed disoriented. Sometimes they would just wander in circles in forest clearings, wheezing in distress. Even weirder, I began finding a lot of the deer in the lake.  

I couldn’t understand it at first. What could possibly be dragging them into the lake and drowning them? No big aquatic predators existed like that this far north. No way in hell. 

It wasn’t until I personally witnessed a buck walk straight into the lake and drown itself that the mystery was finally solved.

The final straw came when the hunting season came around. I was sitting up in my stand one morning and watched as a doe stumbled out into the clearing. I raised my bow and took aim, but stopped before I fired. 

God, she looked just awful. She was practically a walking skeleton. There wasn’t a single ounce of fat on her whole body. She was foaming at the mouth and barely able to stand, her knees wobbling beneath her. Looking at her then, I bet a slight breeze could have knocked her to her side. I was so distracted by her grotesque form that it took me a while to realize that…

She was looking right at me. 

She stared straight at the tip of the arrow I was pointing at her heart, and did nothing. It's almost as if she couldn’t register that she was in danger. 

Or, she just didn’t care. 

We stayed like that for a while. Just staring at each other. Eventually, I lowered my bow. I couldn’t bring myself to shoot her, she was just too pitiful. Looking into her eyes, I could have sworn I saw disappointment cross her gaze. There were a couple more moments of silence between us before she suddenly dropped to the ground.

She was dead. 

It was at this point I knew I needed to call someone to help me figure this out. I normally hate having other people on my property, let alone the government, but I had no choice. I called the DNR and they sent someone to take some samples of the doe. 

If you are familiar with deer, then you may have recognized the signs of the now well known chronic wasting disease, or CWD. 

Chronic wasting disease is a contagious, always-fatal brain disease affecting animals in the cervid family. CWD is a prion disease, meaning that bacteria and viruses play no role in the infection. Prions are proteins and healthy prions are found lining the cells of healthy animals and humans. However, a disease like CWD causes those prions to warp. It starts off with just one prion, but it slowly spreads throughout the entirety of the cervids body over time. Sometimes, it can take over two years for the disease to finally kill off the deer. In the meantime, they will be afflicted with symptoms such as emaciation, excessive salivation, lack of muscle coordination, difficulty in swallowing, excessive thirst, and excessive urination.

The excessive thirst drives them to water, but they often struggle to drink. They will dunk their entire head into rivers or ponds because it is the only way they can get any water into their mouths. This often results in them accidentally drowning themselves, hence why I found so many drowned deer in my lake. 

These prions can be spread by 1v1 contact or be transmitted into the environment—such as soil, food, and water—through feces, urine, and other bodily fluids of an unhealthy deer. CWD can spread to deer if they ingest these unhealthy CWD prions from their environment. These prions can live in the environment for years at a time. This makes managing the disease incredibly difficult, if not near impossible. 

Once it has spread, there is no going back. 

I was given the go ahead by the DNR to kill any infected deer on my property on sight, whether it was during hunting season or not. I tried my best to rid my land of the infection, but it was no use. Things only seemed to get worse. 

A couple years passed and it looked like my land was almost barren of deer. The last season I had was pitiful. The only thing I shot was one scrawny, diseased doe who’s meat or pelt would be no use to anyone. I was distraught, but there was nothing I could do. 

The infection had won. 

I had just about given up ever having healthy deer on my property. That was… until spring came. 

The snow had just started melting outside. The birds were beginning to arrive in droves from their vacation south and lit up the forest with their song. I was happy that the long winter had finally ended, but I couldn’t help but feel down. 

Usually, my land was alive with the arrival of new fawns at this time. Big healthy does would wander my property, trailing one or two beautiful baby fawns with them. The promise of the next generation soothed something in my heart. If I saw fawns, it meant my land was fertile and my livelihood would continue. 

That contentment had not entered my heart in some years. 

As I gazed depressingly out my window, something caught my eye. A doe. She was scrawny and exhausted looking, much like all the other deer I had seen these past years, but behind her trailed… a surprise. 

A big, beautiful baby fawn followed her. It seemed perfectly healthy. It was plump, clean, and happy as could be. It trotted happily after its mom, not seeming in the slightest bit bothered by her deteriorating state. 

I couldn’t believe it. 

How is this possible? I had not had healthy fawns in years. On the rare chance a fawn was born, it would always die before summer's end. Either taken by disease or starved because their mother died before they could be weaned. 

At the time, I figured that the fawn would only remain healthy for a little while. Eventually, the ruin of my land would take its life too. Except… it didn’t. Not only that, but it wasn’t the only healthy fawn to be found. 

By the time the summer ended, I had at least a dozen happy, healthy fawns. All of which were led by a scrawny, diseased doe who looks at those she was seconds away from her painful end. 

I couldn't understand it. How were they so healthy? It should be impossible. Their mothers certainly couldn’t be producing enough milk to sustain them. Even if they could, the milk would be diseased, The fawns should be infected by this point and starting their decline. 

Yet, they weren’t. 

At the time this made me happy. I disregarded any nagging concern with halfhearted excuses. Maybe the mothers weren’t as sick as I thought, or maybe the fawns were immune to the disease somehow. If I had been paying closer attention, maybe I would have seen the signs sooner. 

The first time I sensed something may have been off with the fawns was around the time hunting season came around. Last year my hunt was pitiful, as previously mentioned. This year though, I had the slightest glimmer of hope that I may be able to kill something worthwhile. 

I never even made it to my stand though, as I was stopped in my tracks by a grisly discovery. Well, stopped in my tracks might not be the best choice of words. I mean, I literally tripped over the damn thing.

While trekking to my stand in the dark of the morning, I tripped over a large, warm body. As I fell forward, my hands landed on something warm, fuzzy, and… wet. I yelped in surprise as I fell, getting up as quickly as possible once the fuzzy texture hit my hands. As I was trying to regain my footing, the most horrid stench hit my nose. It was so bad it almost caused me to stumble back to the ground again. I managed to keep my composure and took a couple steps back to get a look at the creature. 

Below me was one of the most grotesque sites I had ever seen. 

It was a doe. Not just a doe, but one of the does I saw with a fawn earlier in the ye...

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BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

I was barely awake, still nursing my first cup of coffee, when I heard a monotonous noise outside. The garbage doesn't run this early, nor was I expecting a delivery. I leaned back into my leather couch, taking a sip of my favorite medium brew.

The noise persisted with an annoying beep, sounding closer by. Curiosity finally got the better of me. I peeked outside to see if a truck was backing into my driveway, albeit clumsily.

"What the hell is this?" I asked as I rushed to the front door. Forgetting I was wearing a wrinkled gray shirt and jogging shorts, I stepped outside to find a battered delivery truck. Its green paint was cracking, and rust was peeking through. The beeping continued as I stood there, puzzled.

The truck continued to back up, crushing my shrubbery. I darted to the driver's side, shouting, "Stop the truck!" It screeched to a halt, the engine rattling and the exhaust sounding like a gunshot.

The door rattled open, and a short, stocky man with a full beard, dressed in flannel and dark cargo pants, hopped down. His feet thudded on the concrete driveway. "How are you doing this morning?" he asked.

"Fine, at least better than my shrub," I complained as he walked towards the back of the truck, releasing the lever. It rattled and crunched from its rusted chains and bent frame. "So what is this?"

"It's a delivery," he replied, pulling out the ramp. He trudged up the ramp, heavy-footed, the metal thumping and thudding as he ascended into the truck. I walked over to see the truck was almost empty, except for a long, heavily taped box that looked ragged and damaged. 

"I'm not expecting a delivery," I noted, hearing the sound of wheels from a pallet jack banging against the floor of the truck. The box began to lift a few inches from the ground as the delivery driver turned to face me, pulling the jack like a horse pulling a carriage. "Especially not a larger delivery."

"Well, this is the address I'm supposed to bring it to."

"What is it?"

"I'm just the delivery driver. I just pick stuff up and drop things off."

He rolled the box down the ramp on the pallet jack. "Can I see the invoice?" I asked. As he paused and secured the pallet jack, he shuffled over to the truck. After a brief search, he returned with a couple of crumpled papers.

The invoice listed my name, correct address, and simply said "package." I was still puzzled, especially when I saw the words "DSM Fulfillment," a company I had never heard of. "This is the address and you are the person on the invoice, right?"

I nodded. "It looks like it, but I didn't order anything."

He stepped next to me and pointed to the bottom of the invoice, where it showed that the order had already been paid for. "Listen, if you have any questions, just call that number and they'll sort it out," he said. "I've come back to some of these places to pick up packages for returns."

"Alright," I answered, examining the box and wondering what could be inside. "I have no idea where to put it, though."

"Listen, I'm paid per delivery, so I don't have time to sort all of this out," he huffed. He looked around the house and saw the two-door garage. "How about you put it in there while you figure this out?"

"Alright, but expect to be back in the coming days," I said as I walked over to the garage and pressed a button. The door opened, revealing the bare concrete, organized shelves, and other items I stored there. "Put it over there, close to the door to the house," I directed.

The man began pulling the mystery box, placing it gently next to the door as requested before digging through his pockets for a pen, “Do you mind signing this real quick?” he requested, as he handed over a pen that looked dirty.

“Sure,” I said as I winced a bit from grabbing on to it, quickly signing to get it out of my hand. I scribbled a signature hastily and crudely before handing it back over to him. As I turned back to the box, pondering the contents that laid inside.

"Alright, then, if you have any concerns, just call the number," he stated, pulling apart the invoice and handing me a yellow copy that looked even more thrashed than the one I had just signed. I watched as he loaded the pallet jack and closed to door. He let out a wave as he walked off and jumped into his truck, it struggled to start, misfiring loudly again before he pulled away.

I looked over the box again before heading into the house, pulling out a pair of scissors from the drawer and returning to the garage. Quietly, I debated whether to open the box or just call the number, but curiosity, as it does with most people, got the best of me.

I sat on my knees and began cutting the massive amounts of tape from the corners, before working my way to the flaps. I cut down the middle, but the scissors struggled with the amount of adhesive coming from the tape. Finally, I said to hell with it and started ripping at the cardboard, seeing a large dark object inside. As I pulled both flaps open, feeling the cardboard bend and tear, I exclaimed, "What the hell is this?" stunned by the contents inside.

A coffin.

I stood up seeing a beat up and dented coffin lying inside the remains of the box. Was it a threat? Who sent this to me? I reached into my pocket pulling out the copy of the invoice as I walked quickly to my living room, grabbing my phone from the coffee table.

I scanned the paper for the number, my fingers fumbling and trembling as I punched in the digits incorrectly. After a few tries, I heard the phone ring. What felt like an eternity later, a female voice crackled as I put the phone on speaker. "DSM Fulfillment, how can I help you?"

"Yes, I received a package from you today," I said weakly. As I looked out the window again, checking for anything unusual, I added, "I didn't order a package from you guys."

"What's the invoice number?" she asked, sounding annoyed. I looked over at the paper, trying to find it.

"What does that matter? I didn't order a damn package and I want to return it!"

"Sir, this will go much faster if you just give me the invoice number."

I slowly read the number: "V0UGS05PVYBXSEFUIFlPVSBETW." As I spoke, I heard a strange noise coming from somewhere nearby. The sound of splashing became distinct as I walked around to find the source. "Can you hold on a second?"

The sound grew louder. It was coming from the kitchen. As I looked over, I saw water from the faucet pounding the marble sink. I didn't remember leaving the sink on, I thought to myself. Turning to see the garage entrance, I noticed the door was wide open.

"Sir, I have other calls," the voice on the phone said as I walked into the garage. The box was further tattered on the floor, but something else stood out even more: the coffin was open.

"What the hell is going on?"

“Sir, are you still there, the name I have here is—” I heard before felt hard plastic rubbing harshly on my neck, I remember briefly, the white color and indentation on it, it looked like a power cord. 

– 

I coughed loudly, my eyes blurred with tears, and my mouth dry. The smell in the room: rancid and lingering. I looked up to see a pair of bare feet stained with brown and red. I tried to move but both my arms and legs felt bound as I looked down to see a familiar white from the power cord tied. It mumbled while my eyes began to focus.  

“Three more times, the garbage hits the dump. Three more times, then it’s over. Three more times, then I get to go home.”

I looked up to see a man, heavily disheveled, his hair matted in tangles and grime. His beard was equally unkempt. He wore dark coveralls stained with the grime that mirrored the marks on his feet leaving tracks on my living room floor. “Three more, Robbie, just three more,” he muttered.

“Take what you want, I have money and jewelry upstairs,” I shouted as he paced the room, grumbling incoherently. I squirmed with each step he took. “Listen, you look rough, man. I have some drugs that might help take the edge off? You can have them if you just leave.” 

He turned, his eyes wild like an animal’s, and stomped over to me. “What did you do?” he yelled, kneeling down and looking me directly in the eye. I continued to struggle, writhing like a worm on my own floor.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I stammered as he came closer, looking at me. He had heavy bags under his eyes, his breath smelled awful, and he was trembling. “Just take what you want, man.”

“WHAT DID YOU FUCKING DO!” he shouted, grabbing a handful of my hair and pulling me up slightly. He continued to stare at me with his eyes locked directly with mine.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" I cried out. As he released me and began pacing frantically, I looked down at my legs and saw that the power cord I was tied with was loosening.

"They don't send me here unless you deserve it," he yelled loudly. "That's how this works!"

"How do you know I deserve it?"

"Because I wouldn't be here if you didn't deserve it!"

"I don't understand."

"The coffin, they send the coffin to people who deserve it!"

"You were in the coffin!" I shouted back. He continued walking back and forth, this time slapping himself in the face. I continued to slowly wiggle my leg, feeling the cord slipping. "What are you going to do?"

"What do I have to do?" he shrieked, a tear rolling down his cheek. I realized he wasn't a professional killer or a crazy murderer. He was desperate.

"How long were you in that coffin?" I asked, trying to show empathy. His sobbing intens...

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Previous log

DAY 7

I slept fitfully last night. This morning though, I found out that Philip had a similar experience as I did. One was speaking to him in the same way, under his breath and laughing. Though he wouldn’t tell me what he was saying, he was shaken to the core because One called him by name, too. We decided to sit in with Taryn during her shift this morning, just in case anything happened.

It didn’t take too long. One was still sitting in his bunk, muttering under his breath, when he mentioned Taryn by name this time.

ONE: Do you miss it, Taryn?

Taryn didn’t know how to reply, obviously. She wasn’t quite sure what was happening, since she hadn’t had the experience Philip and I had.

ONE: Do you miss the way he touched you?

She grew pale, running from the room and barely making it into the hallway before throwing up whatever breakfast she had.

ONE: He does. He misses it!

He was laughing now, chuckling under his breath.

ONE: He’s right here, if you’d like to say hello! Daddy misses you, Taryn!

”Jesus fucking Christ…” was all Philip could manage to get out. I ran out after Taryn, trying to console her from the massive anxiety attack she was now having. The poor girl was crouched in a corner of the hallway, hands over her head like she was in a tornado drill, hyperventilating hard.

”Please make him stop.” She sobbed, begging anyone that would listen.

One of the other subjects started shouting at One as he laughed louder, pressing on their already frayed nerves. Philip shouted for me to come back as Two walked into One’s room, ready to fight. I called Murray over, getting him on standby in case things got bad.

TWO: Would you shut the FUCK UP!

He grabbed One, bashing his head into the wall like he was throwing a bloody alarm clock to shut it up. One didn’t stop laughing, despite another hit right into the wall. Murray ran in, trying to keep One from being killed as Two grabbed him again, going for another hit. One didn’t stop laughing, now looking at Two.

ONE: They found me. They’ll find you soon too. You’re out of your cell.

TWO: The fuck are you even talking about you little shit?

ONE: How many girls were there?

TWO: What?

ONE: I can’t count them all. The room is getting crowded.

TWO: (smashes One’s head into the wall again) Shut up! Shut UP!

Around this time Murray ran in, another guard on duty following him to help restrain the big man. One was still laughing, now counting out loud. Honestly if it wasn’t for the caved in part of his head, it would be hilarious. He was letting out a laugh between every number like the damned Count on Sesame Street.

Murray grabbed Two, pulling him back and throwing him into his own room before shutting the door, pulling out keys to lock it so he would have solitary time to chill out. For the first time, we had to pull a patient out, bringing One into the small medical bay to assess his injuries.

By every part of science that I know of, he shouldn’t have been alive, much less conscious right then. There he was though, sitting on the medical table and laughing, muttering under his breath about all the lovely people coming out to make sure he was okay.

I got chills then, because he started saying names as he looked around the room. Our exams were showing that he was in perfect cognitive shape still, other than the lack of sleep. Hell, it looks like he was starting to come back around into a more clarified state. What better time to get some direct answers, right?

ME: One, what are you seeing right now?

ONE: The other kids. Classmates, friends, bullies…

ME: What kids?

ONE: The kids I buried.

My blood ran cold, wondering if he could be delusional by this point. He was ahead of the others when it came to time awake, so his symptoms were definitely going to be more advanced than the others.

ONE: Oh, hi Coach. Mitchell!

Suddenly, as I was exampining his pupils to see if they were still reacting to light, he began to seize on the table. Before I knew what was happening, a mass of blood and organs erupted from his stomach, seemingly being grabbed and torn from the outside.

MURRAY: Jesus! What in the hell?! Mike, did you do that?

I was backed away from the table now, blood spattered across my face and clothes. On the table, One was laughing harder now, looking around his surroundings wildly.

ONE: Ahhh, that feels so much better.

I rushed forward, desperately trying to fit his organs back into his abdomen and keep him alive. He looked more peaceful now, in some kind of relief from before. Despite the blood gushing from his insides, he wasn’t showing any signs of trauma or stress in his psychological response. His body, at this point, should have been shutting down from shock, but he was almost refreshed, like he had just woken from a satisfying nap.

ME: One, can you still hear me?

ONE: Oh, yes. I can hear you. Sorry about that earlier.

ME: What exactly happened, One?

ONE: They want to keep me here. They’re still mad.

ME: Who’s mad, One?

ONE: I told you, the people I buried. The people I loved. I didn’t want anyone else to get them, and now they don’t want anyone else to get me.

ME: Get you? What do you mean?

ONE: The jailer.

I don’t really… know what he’s talking about. After that he just laid on the table while I did what I could to stitch him up. Whatever happened, it looked like he had been pulled every which way from the inside until his guts finally burst through his skin. Some organs were shredded, with his spleen in at least three different pieces that weren’t going to do anything for him anymore. Despite all, he just stayed there, catatonic but smiling like he was finally comfortable.

I stitched and bandaged his stomach, finally getting some of the bleeding under control. I wasn’t sure what to do with the shredded organs I found, just removing them so they didn’t go necrotic inside. The next thing he did is something that I, before now, would have thought was something from a horror movie.

One got up, walking right to the door with only a little bit of a limp in his gait. His skull half caved in, blood already oozing through the bandage, he walked from the medical bay, going to the door back into the subject room. As he passed by Taryn in the hallway, he briefly looked her way.

ONE: I’m sorry about earlier. He was a very angry man, very intimidating. I see how it happened so much.

TARYN: What is wrong with you! How the hell did you know that!?

ONE: He was whispering in my ear. (He looks back down the hallway to Murray and I) Can someone let me back in? I’d like to apologize to the bad man.

What else was I supposed to do? We let him in, and he went straight to Two’s door, looking through the glass at the angry man, now banging on the thick glass of his door to try and get at the scrawny boy. He stopped in shock when he got a good look at him, noticing the massive amount of blood and caved in head.

ONE: I feel bad for you. I don’t feel bad for many people, but you’re about to have a bad time.

TWO: Who the fuck are you? What do you know about me?

ONE: Everything. They told me all of it. They said they’ll see you soon though, so I don’t need to do anything.

Three, Four, and Five were backed against the farthest wall they could be as One spoke. I think this was the first time I saw Five break the cool exterior, genuine fear in his face as he looked at the mangled One. The worst though was Three, who was now pale and looked like he had seen a ghost. One turned to the rest of them, now that his apology was over. His flattened skull was unnerving, even watching over a security monitor as the other three subjects looked on in horror.

One went into his room, smiling as he sat back down on his cot, going into a near catatonic state.

Taryn was able to compose herself enough to tell us about why she had that reaction. I won’t go too into her personal trauma, but to put it short, she was molested by her father as a child. At some point in her teens, she fought back, pushing him hard enough that he fell in their bathroom, cracking his head on the toilet and dying. She was in tears as she told us this, saying she had never told anyone but the cops and her therapist about this, and there shouldn’t be any way that One would know.

We compared notes, finding out that each of us had something he shouldn’t know about. My disease, Taryn’s trauma, and Philip, who confessed he had killed two people in a drunk driving accident, one that his father managed to get him out of thanks to some money and a prosecutor friend.

Philip took over the rest of Taryn’s watch while I tried to rest in preparation for mine. It was useless though, as all I could see every time I closed my eyes was One being ripped to shreds from the inside out, smiling the whole time. He was thankful for what had happened, like they were protecting him some great evil that we didn’t know of. I needed to figure out who this Jailer he spoke of is. It’s all my mind could think about as I tossed in bed for hours, expecting Philip to call me in at any moment about some new insanity.

He didn’t, much to my surprise, and I dragged myself in to prepare for my watch, getting up to speed from him as I poured a cup of coffee in the kitchen. For the most part, things were slow compared to the usual. I don’t know if the chaos of the day already was a sign of peace for the rest, but I would take it at this point. ...

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