Feed Drop - Fear Daily

Rusty Quill presents

Good evening, gentlemen and gentle ladies of hell.

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Greetings, gentlemen and gentle ladies from hell.

We're excited to introduce to you a new horror podcast that we've personally come to enjoy.

Step into the shadows of yesterday with Fear Daily.

Fear Daily is the brand new retro horror series fans of the Magnus Archives, the Black Tapes, and Archive 81 have been waiting for.

Every weekday, Monday through Friday, you'll get two chilling tales of hauntings, cults, monsters, and killers, all drawn from the haunted world of the 1990s and earlier.

Some stories may even be true, if you know where to look.

Created by Brendan Storr, The Ghost Story Guys, and narrated by Brendan Schechsnyder, Southern Gothic, Fear Daily delivers handcrafted horror from two master storytellers.

With episodes running 25 minutes or less, this is horror you can devour in a single sitting.

Bite-sized nightmares five days a week.

Enjoy!

When the internet began, bulletin board services, or BBS, became the first online communities of the so-called information superhighway.

Using their phone lines, people logged in from all over America to talk about sports, games, movies, and on one BBS in particular,

share their ghost stories.

Over time, those communities all went dark, except for one lone server that continues to operate somewhere in an unknown part of Pennsylvania's Rust Belt.

A relic of the 1990s, veiled in mystery, it is a digital archive of humanity's strangest encounters with the unknown, as told by the people who experience them.

My name is Brandon Schecksneider, and you are listening to Fear Daily.

Subject: Night Hunting

User, Emmer1525.

Posted July 19th, 1996.

My old man served in Vietnam, and when he came back, a lot about him had changed.

The thing I noticed most was that he didn't have any fear.

It was a good thing and a bad thing.

Good because he didn't take shit from anybody.

Bad because he would sometimes get us into sticky situations.

The only bright side to all of this was that almost any situation dad got us into, he could get us out of.

The one time that wasn't true was on the final hunting trip we took with my little brother Gary.

And in dad's defense, I don't know there was anything anyone could have done.

It was in summer 1975.

After getting out of the service, Dad decided his new hobby was night hunting, which wasn't exactly legal in our state, but he never let that stop him.

He said he could tell the animals apart by how far above the ground their eye shine was.

Close to the ground was a hare, knee height was a boar, above that was a deer.

Mom wasn't crazy about dad taking us out into the woods at night with a gun, but she knew better than to complain.

Post-war dad didn't take criticism well, and besides, there was always meat in the freezer.

Nothing about this night seemed any different than the others we'd gone out together.

The sky was clear, it wasn't too cold, and the ground on the walkout was firm instead of spongy.

There was something different about Dad, though.

He seemed agitated and kept swinging the barrel of his rifle around behind him as if he was hearing something.

Gary and I looked at each other baffled.

Neither of us had heard anything.

In fact, it was a surprisingly quiet night with not much in the way of game or ambient noise.

Looking back, it was kind of like the forest was holding its breath.

Sometime around two or three in the morning, Dad raised his fist, which was a sign for us to stop walking.

He pointed toward a dark thicket maybe 100 yards ahead, and sure enough, we heard a rustling sound.

Gary and I knew what to do.

Quietly, we set out to establish a pincer position on either side of the thicket.

where we'd wait for Dad's signal to charge the bush and chase the animal out towards his rifle.

We'd done this a bunch before, but there was an electricity in the air.

The hair on my arms was standing up like we were walking into some kind of static buildup.

I couldn't make out Gary's expression in the dark, but his posture was tense.

At Dad's signal, we did what he'd trained us to do, but what came out of that bush was no boar or hare or anything like that.

It was huge, dark, and had wings big enough to brush both mine and Gary's face as it took off.

We're talking a span of maybe 15 to 20 feet.

The air it displaced as it flapped was intense, like an M80 going off on the 4th of July before you got far enough away.

Its cry was abrasive and painful to hear, like nails on a chalkboard, and I clapped my hands over my ears.

The huge wings beat one final time before the bird or whatever it was just went.

And I don't mean it flew away.

I mean it disappeared right in front of us.

That was the end of our hunting trip.

On the drive home, we tried asking Dad what it was we had seen, but he would only shake his head.

And it scared me, obviously, but in the chaos, it had actually scratched Gary.

I didn't see it happen, and he said it hadn't hurt at the time, but either way, when the truck's dome light came on, you could see a long, weeping red mark across his left cheek.

I used the sleeve of my jacket to wipe at the clear fluid seeping out of the wound, but it kept coming.

The only thing dad said to us as we wound back down the mountain towards Riley was to stop fussing at it.

I did as I was told.

Mom was still asleep when we got home, so trying to account for Gary's face was a tomorrow problem.

Of course, I had no way of knowing the morning would have problems of its own.

Back then, we shared a room.

My bed was underneath the window.

Gary's was against the far wall.

On bright nights like that one, the moonlight would fall across him him as he slept, and I always found that comforting.

I was too young to understand why.

All I knew was that looking at my little brother's chest rising and falling made me feel like everything was okay.

After that, I would always let out a big breath, close my eyes, and slip away into sleep.

That was the last night I was ever able to do that.

I don't remember the dream that woke me up, but I do remember the sickly ache it produced in my stomach.

Opening my eyes didn't make it any better because I quickly realized I couldn't move a muscle.

It was like I was paralyzed.

Worse than that, there was a man in our room standing over Gary.

The first rays of morning were beginning to stream through the window, giving everything a golden glow completely at odds with what I was seeing.

The man had no features.

He was all black, and where his face should have been, there was what looked like a pile of rags.

That's the best way I can describe it, at least.

Despite not having a mouth, he had a voice.

I could hear it.

It sounded male, and it was telling Gary to come out to the forest.

I tried so hard to move, to tell this person or whatever it was, to stay away from my little brother, but my body wouldn't cooperate.

Helplessly, I was forced to watch as Gary sat up in bed.

The man blocked my view of my brother's face, but from his movements, he was going willingly.

There was no tension, no fear.

Gary pushed back his blankets, swiveled until I saw his pale legs hanging over the edge of the bed, then stood.

That's the last thing I remember.

I must have passed out or fell back asleep or something because next I remember is waking up to chaos.

Dad screaming Gary's name, mom screaming at dad.

We never found my little brother.

Sometimes I dream about him, though, and I wish I could say they were good dreams.

Subject: The Day It Didn't Rain.

User, Illinois Dad Guy.

Posted May 23rd, 1997.

Last Thursday, Springfield got hit with the biggest thunderstorm I've ever seen.

It had to have started sometime around lunch because when the first big peal of thunder brought my head up from payroll, there was no one else in the office.

Your company occupies the third floor of the Hampton building and my desk is along the floor-to-ceiling windows with an expansive view of an industrial park and past that, all the cornfields a guy could want.

When I looked up on Thursday, ugly black thunderheads were moving towards us from the north.

There hadn't been anything about a storm in the forecast, I thought, but then that's the weatherman for you.

Our youngest son, Thad, had been dealing with an ear infection all night, and consequently, there hadn't been time for either me or Shelly to make my lunch before I left for work.

If I was going to get something to eat and beat the rain, I'd have to run out to either the Arby's or Noggles nearby and do it fast.

Quickly, I pushed back from my desk and pulled on my jacket.

The elevators were out again, so I double-timed it down the stairs, not seeing a single other person the entire way.

Outside on the sidewalk, the air was heavy with ozone.

That storm was going to be a big one.

Noggles was nominally closer than Arby, so I turned left out of the building lobby and started speedwalking.

The glass frontages of the office park reflected heavy clouds bearing down.

The air was muggy and still, like the whole town was in a bell jar.

The click of the traffic light was dull and muted, but as I crossed the street a block away from Noggles, that was all I heard.

No traffic, no pedestrians, nothing.

As if the world had decided to go home for the day.

A creeping unease began to worm its way into my brain, a niggling feeling like something wasn't right.

When I stepped into the restaurant, that unease wriggled its way down into my belly.

Everything looked normal, the same blindingly white tiled interior with its triple stripes of yellow, orange, and red, the same menus hanging behind the counter, the same smells of taco meat and grease.

Above me, the fluorescent lights buzzed, and from the back, I could dimly hear the coolers humming, but there wasn't a single person there.

there.

I called out a greeting, then a second later, the sky went dark and the rain started to fall.

Biblical torrents, roaring like a river.

The next crack of thunder was so loud I felt it in my chest.

Outside the window of the restaurant, the light had taken on a sickly yellow color and huge drops were bouncing off the asphalt, forming deep pools in the gutter.

Something wasn't right.

That much was obvious, but I couldn't quite get my head around the fact that the restaurant was empty.

Had there been some kind of evacuation notice?

Did the entire office, help, the entire office park head for higher ground without telling me?

Carefully, I approached the counter and looked back into the kitchen.

Whatever had happened, it was fast because everything had been left.

It was like the fast food equivalent of the Mary Celeste.

Tritillas half filled with beef and lettuce, a spoon-dug mid-scoop into the refried beans.

The unease was now full-blown panic and every thought in my mind fell away except for one.

Shelly and the kids.

There had to be a phone here, I thought.

I had to warn them or at least find out what was going on.

I walked down the hallway toward the bathrooms until I saw a door marked office and it pushed open noiselessly and I picked up the cheap plastic receiver that sat on the edge of a desk cluttered with paperwork.

The rain was battering down on the roof so hard I was sure it was going to come through the ceiling.

Putting the phone to my ear, I was about to punch in our home number.

when I realized there was no dial tone.

The phone lines must be down, I thought.

I was so concerned about getting in touch with Shelly, the strangeness of all this, the suddenness, the emptiness, didn't even register.

That something was wrong was obvious, but I thought it was in the storm of the century kind of way, not whatever it was that was happening.

Back in the dining room, the yellowness of the air had deepened to the point where it looked like the rain was beating its way through mucus and pooling inches deep in the road.

My car was three blocks away.

There was nothing to do now but get there.

Pulling open the restaurant's door, I immediately felt an intense wave of humid air wash over me, my clothes instantly wet.

The rain was actually painful, a thousand tiny needles pelting pelting me as I stepped into the flooded street.

The clouds were a cancerous mixture of black and yellow, spider-webbed with near-constant flashes of lightning.

I'd never seen anything like it.

The scale of the storm was such it made everything around me seem insubstantial, the office park reduced to the set of a cheap disaster movie.

In the corridors between buildings, wind blew the rain into great solid walls like giants on the march.

My shoes were waterlogged, squelching with every step.

Even worse was my jacket, a soaked-through albatross I discarded halfway down the block from Noggles.

At this point, I couldn't possibly get more wet, and without it, I was at least 10 pounds lighter.

Back at the car, I slumped into the driver's seat, soaking it with my ruined clothes.

Somehow, the rain had gotten even heavier, and turning the wipers on to their maximum setting barely made any difference at all.

Carefully, I nosed my corsica out of the lot, squinting to see anything at all through the deluge.

The clouds were knit together in a single squamous mass, scales separated by strobing flashes of multicolored lightning.

Out on the state road, road, the wind was worse, and my car bucked constantly, tires fighting for traction as it was pushed relentlessly to one side.

I gripped the wheel as tight as I could, trying to stay between where I imagined the yellow lines to be.

Not a single vehicle passed the entire time, and I knew something was deeply, possibly permanently wrong.

This wasn't just a storm, it was an apocalypse.

I wasn't sure there was anywhere safe to take my family.

I just knew I needed to get to them.

A burst of static from the radio startled me enough I let go of the wheel just for a moment, but it was long enough.

The world spun, and I felt the tires lose traction as the car began to hydroplane.

I retook control of the wheel and pulled my foot off the accelerator, gently tapping the brake.

It didn't help and the car whipped out of control.

I closed my eyes and tensed, waiting for a collision with either oncoming traffic or the guardrail, but neither happened.

Instead, I opened my eyes to bright sunshine and wide open cornfields.

The wipers were still beating a frantic tattoo on the windshield, but there was no longer any rain.

I could still see drops on the side windows, but it wasn't coming from the sky anymore.

My ears rang in the sudden quiet.

The soft beep of a horn startled me, and I looked out the driver's side window to see a black forerunner pulled up.

The driver was a woman I vaguely recognized as a cashier from one of the local supermarkets, and she was saying something I couldn't make out, so I rolled down my window.

I'm sorry, what?

I asked.

I said, are you okay?

She replied.

Do you need help?

I looked at her completely dumbfounded.

Do you?

She frowned, taking in my soaked clothes before giving me a look that suggested she thought I was either drunk or high.

You're the one facing the wrong way.

You need help getting home?

My brain was completely fogged.

How was she acting so normally?

Wasn't this the end of the world?

The storm, I said.

Where's the storm?

She pulled back a little.

No one wants to be party to a trunk driving, I guess.

Look, it's none of my business, but maybe you should pull over and sleep it off a little before you drive on, hey?

It's the end of the month.

The stadies are going to be looking to write all the tickets they can.

I just looked at her.

You take care now.

With that, she rolled up her window and drove off.

I sat there for a moment, listening to the drip of rainwater from my sleeves down onto the console next to me.

Fear Daily is an independent podcast hosted by Brandon Schechsnyder and written by Brennan Storr, with Joanna Smith serving as the consulting editor, audio production by Rachel Boyd, and sound design by Southern Gothic Media.

This podcast is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to real events or locations, is entirely coincidental.

Ad-free versions of Fear Daily are available now on your favorite podcast apps.

For more information, visit FearDaily.com.

But move fast before the server goes offline.

When the internet began, Bulletin Board Services, or BBS, became the first online communities of the so-called information superhighway.

Using their phone lines, people logged in from all over America to talk about sports, games, movies, and on one BBS in particular,

share their ghost stories.

Over time, those communities all went dark, except for one lone server that continues to operate somewhere in an unknown part of Pennsylvania's Rust Belt.

A relic of the 1990s, veiled in mystery, it is a digital archive of humanity's strangest encounters with the unknown, as told by the people who experienced them.

My name is Brandon Schecksnyder, and you are listening to Fear Daily.

Subject together.

User, Alt Melody.

Posted August 9th, 1998.

From the ages of 11 to 14, I used to have to spend summers at my aunt's house in Great Neck.

It wasn't by choice, not that kids that age get a whole lot of choice in how their affairs are managed.

My mom looked after me for the rest of the year while working full-time, so I guess she figured it was a way for her to get a little time off without having to take me out of school.

She probably also worried about the kind of things I'd get up to if I was left alone in the city.

It makes sense to me now that I've got a little distance from it.

Back then, I hated it.

In the run-up to the holiday, my friends would talk about the things they were going to do together, seeing Madonna and Bon Jovi at the garden or having sleepovers.

And what did I have to look forward to?

Piano Piano lessons and walks along Manhasset Bay with Aunt Amy.

It wasn't that it was torture or anything, it just wasn't Madonna.

I never minded going there with mom for Christmas because not as much was happening at home when my friends would disappear into the cocoon of their family lives for a couple weeks.

Besides, Aunt Amy had lived alone since Uncle David died in 1975, and even a selfish teenager knew you didn't leave family alone on the holidays.

They had a beautiful house across from Plum Point with big windows that looked out over the water.

Sometimes at night, the three of us would all just sit there in the living room with lights off, Aunt Amy playing David's favorite songs on the piano while outside, snowflakes blanketed the bay.

This past Christmas, we got a call from the Great Neck Police to let us know that Aunt Amy had passed.

The piano had been a focal point of her life, so I suppose it's only fitting she died sitting there, her hands resting on the polished ivory keys.

Being in Amy's house without her there wasn't as strange as I had expected.

At least once during every visit, she'd run out to what had been David's favorite deli deli on Middleneck Road and bring back dinner.

Standing in the living room with mom as the afternoon light faded, I half expected her to walk in shaking the snow from her hair.

Of course, she was never going to walk back in there again.

The kitchen was empty, countertops wiped clean before her heart had given out.

Mom and I couldn't bring ourselves to touch Amy's belongings that first day.

Instead, we decided to have a meal in her honor.

The deli is still there, so we ordered the same things she always used to.

A pound of turkey, a pound of roast beef, a dozen slices of seeded rye, gravy.

The elderly man behind the counter looked up from where he was writing our bill.

He knew exactly who we were and offered his condolences.

When our order was bagged and ready, he held his finger like he'd forgotten something.

He kneeled down out of sight, knees popping audibly, and when he came back up, there was a can of baked beans in his hand.

Sometimes, he said, David used to like beans.

No charge.

Back at the house, mom and I ate silently in the high-ceiling kitchen.

We'd made it back just ahead of the blizzard the radio had been threatening all day, and now wind howled at the double-paned windows.

Once dinner had been finished and the leftovers packed up, we turned off the potlights above the kitchen island, plunging the house into total darkness.

Together, we went into the living room and sat on the bay window's long bench seat to watch the storm.

I leaned my head back against Mom's chest, listening to the tick of the clock.

I miss her.

Mom wrapped her arm around me.

Me too, baby.

We cried ourselves to sleep.

I had a dream.

In it, I was laying on the bench seat in Aunt Amy's living room as wind whipped thick snowflakes back and forth across the bay.

Next to me, I could feel the rhythmic rise and fall of mom's chest as she slept.

Behind us, Aunt Amy was playing Leo Ornstein's A Morning in the Woods, my chest clenched with emotion, and the tears came again.

Wiping them away, feeling the hot liquid against my fingertips, I realized it wasn't a dream.

I was wide awake, but the music continued to play.

I so desperately wanted to look behind me to know if Aunt Amy was there sitting at her piano the way she always had, something told me not to turn, that To see would be to bring this moment to an end, and I knew I didn't want that.

Instead, I lay back on mom, who shifted against me, getting comfortable again.

Could she hear the music too?

I wondered.

Would she remember it all as a dream?

I'd never ask.

I breathed deeply, letting the music fill the silence as the three of us watched the snowfall one last time.

Subject: Gumdrops

User: Quiet Witness

Posted October 3rd, 1996.

The parking lot was full of media vans this morning, a pack of blow-dried hairdos trying to get as close to the apartment building as the police cordon would allow.

Word had spread quick, the gumdrop killer strikes again.

This time, he left behind more than his usual locked door mystery.

He left behind a living victim.

Cops hated the whole gumdrop killer name, so the fact it was their own fault is kind of funny.

After details of the first couple killings broke in the news, residents of high-rise apartment towers found dead in their beds, poisoned by an unknown toxin, their eyeballs missing, A reporter from the Times had managed to catch one of the lead detectives when he was half in the bag.

The reporter asked if the police had any idea what the killer wanted with the victim's eyes, to which the annoyed cop responded, maybe he eats them like fucking gumdrops.

I don't know.

The rest was history.

Who am I?

I'm nobody, unless you're a fan of comic books, in which case you might recognize my name as the inker on one of your semi-favorite series.

If you're not familiar with my business, an inker is someone who interprets the original artist's graphite work and, you guessed it, ink.

There's more to it, but I'm not here to give lessons on the finer points of the comic book industry.

You've got Kevin Smith for that.

I'm here because I'm one of only two people alive who's seen the gumdrop killer.

No, this isn't a confession.

I'm not a killer of anything.

It's hard for me to swat flies since I've always figured they've got as much right to be around as I do.

Lord knows, Lord knows I wouldn't have made it out of short pants if the rules allowed for beating me to death as soon as I got annoyed.

The detective who interviewed me till sun up asked me not to speak to the media and I won't.

The last thing I need is that kind of attention.

The only reason I'm posting this here is because if anything happens to me, I like the idea of my story not getting buried in some cardboard box at an LAPD lockup.

Why would anything happen to me?

Because the gumdrop killer saw me too, and I'm not convinced the cops can do much against something like that.

I'll start at the beginning.

I moved into this a year ago after one of my dates pointed out that an invitation back to the house a grown man shared with his mother was always going to get an automatic no.

It's a two-bed, two-bath, and a 20-story new build, so I'm the first person to live in my apartment, same as my neighbors and theirs.

The Comstocks, the couple visited by Gumdrop last night, had only bought their place last month.

I hadn't met them before last night when I watched him die as something barely human plucked out his eyes.

The thing about living in a modern building like this is that everything looks the same.

Same carpet on every floor, same gray paint on the walls, even the same apartment numbers, just with a two-digit prefix beforehand to denote the floor number.

I'm 1020, my neighbor is 1022, and so on.

The Comstocks have, or at least had, apartment 1122, one floor above me.

That's why, when I stumbled out of a cab into the lobby of our building last night and hit the button for 11 instead of 10, I didn't notice for a while.

You know that feeling when you've really got a load on, like your field of vision narrows to a point and all you can do is move toward that point?

It doesn't matter if you're on a crowded street with cars whizzing past, the only thing you see is what's at the end of that tunnel, a burrito cart, a bathroom, some poor woman who hopefully spots you before you can bother her with your idiot drunkenness.

That's where I was last night, completely boofed on Singapore slings and desperate to get into my place so I could take a leak.

I weaved my way down the featureless hallway, saw a 20, and went for the doorknob.

The competing interests of gin and a need to urinate completely bypassed any thought of a key, and walking into a darkened apartment laid out exactly like my own meant I didn't see anything to suggest I was anywhere but home.

Inside the bathroom, I flicked on the light and halfway through a deeply gratifying piss, it occurred to me that someone had redecorated in the few hours I'd been gone.

There was potpourri on the toilet tank instead of stacked up issues of wizard, and the bar of soap next to the taps was a bright pink instead of the hairy white bar of dove that did double duty between my shower and sink.

Nothing will cut through a gin fog like panic and that's exactly what I felt in that moment.

This wasn't my apartment.

I had just broke.

and entered.

Well, I didn't break anything, but I doubt the cops would be that discerning when they laid charges.

My stream finally reduced to a trickle.

I wondered about the etiquette of flushing while committing burglaries, and that's when I heard sounds coming from next door, the bedroom going by the layout of my own home.

First, I thought it was people fucking, so I listened a little more.

It's been a while since I've had feminine company, but even drunk me knew that the process didn't sound like what I was hearing.

It sounded like struggling, whimpering, and something else.

Something wet.

Carefully, I stepped out of the bathroom, wincing at how long a shadow I was casting thanks to the bathroom light.

The noises continued like I hadn't been seen, and I debated just sneaking back out the door and believing whoever lived there to wonder if they were being haunted by a ghost with an enormous bladder.

My curiosity won out, however, and I creeped toward the open bedroom door.

My footsteps were almost inaudible on the linoleum floors.

I inched closer to the black doorway, hearing the struggling more clearly.

Something was wrong.

Really wrong.

Dread blossomed in my chest.

A spike of adrenaline burned away the rest of my drunk.

Placing my hands on the doorframe, I leaned into the room just enough for my eyes to start adjusting to the dim.

The patio door was open, curtains across it fluttering in a slight breeze.

On the bed were two people.

No, three, two in the bed and one.

The third figure was barely a person.

Enormous, muscled arms pinned the couple under the blankets like butterflies in a display case.

The body was thick too, seeming rigid like the body of a beetle.

Its legs were long and thin, folded up under it like it was doing some kind of isometric hold.

One of the figures, I'd later learn it was the husband Johnny, wasn't moving.

The other, his wife Anne, was shaking.

side to side, losing power with every moment as the third figure's head got closer to her face.

the more the curtains blew, the more the light of the city filtered in, outlining the tableau in front of me.

Something emerged from the third figure's mouth, long and slick, like a mosquito's probiscus.

My stomach turned, threatening to announce my presence with a fire hose spray of slightly fermented Singapore sling.

The rest of me was frozen.

Turns out, that's the third aft to fight or flight.

Freeze.

All I could do was watch as the long, rubbery tube split into two, one settling on each of the struggling woman's eye sockets.

There was that wet sound I'd first heard in the bathroom.

I knew what it was now.

Sucking.

The probiscus withdrew, tugging until the eyes popped right out, trailing long, thick cords of their own that could only be the optic nerves.

The figure withdrew the probiscus quickly, snapping the stalks and sucking the stolen treats into its own mouth.

I heard them popping wetly as it chewed.

Oh,

I thought dumbly, that's the gumdrop killer.

Hey, that cop was right after all.

Having that conscious thought brought me back to my body, and the first thing I did was scream.

Gumdrop's head snapped in my direction, his eyes a bright silver in the dark.

I reacted by turning to run.

At the same time, as I vomited, what must have been a bright red fountain of pineapple juice, gin, and benedictine across the wall in front of me, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gumdrop throw himself on the floor, landing on his powerful arms.

He moved toward me at an impossible speed, thumping forward like a combination of gorilla and insect.

I couldn't outrun him.

There was no way, but I was going to try.

I passed the bathroom with gumdrops close behind.

I was only feet away from the hall door.

He was faster.

I knew it in my heart.

This was it.

Instead of feeling gumdrops landing on my back, I heard a grotesque, wounded cry, and I turned in time to see him scuttling back into the bedroom.

Why wasn't he coming closer?

It only took me a moment to figure it out.

The shaft of light cast from the bathroom cut the hallway in half, his half and mine.

Did he not like the light?

He was still there, hiding in the dark.

I could hear him breathing.

To test my theory, I reached behind me, fumbling for the handle as I kept my eyes on the bedroom doorway.

When I found the door latch, I pressed down and pulled it open, brightness pouring in from the overlit hallway, pushing the darkness further back.

For an instant, I saw Gumdrop's face, and it's going to haunt me until my dying day.

If his figure had barely been that of a person, his face was barely that of a man, pale, blotchy, shot through with blue veins, his silver eyes full of a deep hate I'd never known before.

Another roar followed by more frantic thumping and what sounded like one of the curtains being ripped down.

People were coming out of their apartments now, drawn by the war cries next door.

The cops were not far behind and I was held on suspicion for a couple of hours.

Then, a witness who lived in one of the apartments across the street came forward to say they'd seen a man with huge arms and tiny legs climbing down the balconies on our building shortly after the screaming started.

After giving my statement, I was released from custody with the aforementioned stern warning about not spreading my story to the press.

All the cops would tell me about Ann Comstock is that she survived the attack and had a crazy story about a monster kissing her husband before sucking out his eyes.

My guess is it wasn't a kiss.

I bet next month's paycheck on the creature using that probiscus to inject something like a paralytic agent into his victims so he can take their eyes and whatever else it is he does to them.

Something he didn't get a chance to finish with Anne because I'd wandered into the wrong apartment.

Now, the big question is:

does Gumdrox know which apartment is the right one?

And is he gonna come back before I can move?

Fear Daily is an independent podcast hosted by Brandon Schecksnider and written by Brennan Storr, with Joanna Smith serving as the consulting editor, audio production by Rachel Boyd and sound design by Southern Gothic Media.

This podcast is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to real events or locations, is entirely coincidental.

Ad-free versions of Fear Daily are available now on your favorite podcast apps.

For more information, visit feardaily.com.

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