NoSleep Podcast - Sleepless Decompositions Vol. 20

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Greetings, sleepless listeners, and welcome to Sleepless Decompositions Volume 20.

I'm your host, David Cummings.

As we prepare for the launch of season 23 at the start of July, we're glad you're joining us for our sleepless decompositions episodes.

And when it comes to a new season, we remember the days when we had our season passes.

Well, similar to the notice I've already given about our early seasons on the Nanocast system, which is going away soon, I have another announcement for those of you who purchased season passes on the Glow system.

I've been informed that the Glow platform has been purchased by Supercast, and as such, the Glow platform is going offline at the end of August.

So please, if you haven't already, download the content you purchased with your season passes before the end of August.

And we're working with the Supercast team to offer Glow members a way to join our Sleepless Sanctuary membership platform at a reduced cost, thanks to your Glow membership.

Stay tuned for more details about that transition coming soon.

We promise.

And speaking of a promise, on our episode this week, we have tales of promise.

Now you might be thinking, promise is a word of hope, of good things ahead.

That doesn't exactly fit into the theme of horror, does it?

Well, it's true that when we have a promise of something good coming in the future, it can brighten our mood and make us look forward to what's to come.

But I'm sure we all know what it's like when that hope and promise ends up not happening.

When our hopes are dashed and we're left dealing not only with the disappointment but also with the fallout of what turns our hope to despair.

That's where true horror lies.

This is Jonas Knox from Two Pros and a Cup of Joe and on Fox One.

Now you can stream your favorite live sports so you can be there live for the biggest moments.

That means NFL Sundays, college football games, NASCAR, MLB postseason, and more.

With Fox One, you'll get it all live.

Edge of your seat plays, jaw-dropping, high-octane moments, and that feeling like you're right there in the action.

Fox One, we live for live, streaming now.

The No Sleep Podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Fiscally responsible.

Financial geniuses.

Monetary magicians.

These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds.

Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more.

Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it.

So your dollar goes a long way.

Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations.

Now, sleepless friends, we promise to bring you tales of horror that will dash all your hopes and leave you feeling bereft.

You're welcome.

And so, brace yourself for these sleepless decompositions.

In our first tale, we meet two men who are caught up in the promise of wealth.

Wealth which comes from striking it rich in the gold rush.

If only they can make it to where the gold is.

And in this tale, shared with us by author Maxwell Murray, the men find themselves lost in the wilderness on their journey, and as the freezing temperatures set in, their hopes of gold turned to the hope of merely surviving.

Performing this tale are Jesse Cornett and Atticus Jackson.

So in your pursuit of wealth, remember, that promise might be there, but it might also be just a few more miles.

We should never have come here.

Ernest spoke from across the fire.

I stayed silent.

We're not going to make it.

There's not going to be any gold.

Not for us.

There will be.

And just wait.

Just a few more miles.

It was much more than that distance to Dawson City or the Yukon River.

And I was beginning to get the feeling we were lost.

But I wasn't going to tell him that.

It would be just as far to turn back at this point.

And we had already ventured beyond the rest of the throng that had come up this way.

Henry?

Yeah?

I think I'm gonna die out here

I looked at him a long moment

and was late and the shadows from the firelight cut the bruisy hollows under his eyes in sharp contrast

made him look almost skeletal

the tip of his nose and the edges of his cheekbones were red and blistering as his frostbite thawed

why would you say a thing like that

i just.

I think I am.

If I die out here, promise you'll take my body somewhere they can bury it, won't you?

Not flexed my fingers in front of the fire, hissed in through my teeth.

This feeling began to return very painfully to my hands.

Henry,

are you listening?

I'm listening.

Tell me you're not gonna leave my body out in the snow.

You're not gonna die, Ernest.

Or at least, I didn't want to think about the possibility.

Say it anyways.

I need to know.

Just in case.

Fine.

Should you die, I'll take you someplace they can lay you down proper.

Now we both knew how unreasonable a demand it was.

Dragging his corpse and my own gear over the indeterminate miles to find a town or heading all the long way back to Skagway just to have him buried

might kill me before either of us could make it there.

But he seemed satisfied with my response, so I decided not to voice any further thoughts on the matter.

I slept very poorly that night.

I kept waking up to listen and see if I could still hear Ernest breathing, just to make sure

he hadn't been right.

In the morning, one of the packs we'd been using to carry food was missing.

I stared at the long indentation in the snow where it appeared to have been dragged out of the tent some distance, my grogging mind trying to piece together what could have happened.

I followed the line until I reached the edge of the small camp Ernest and I had made the night before.

Just past that, it disappeared entirely.

Like someone had picked it up, slung it over their back.

There were no footprints, though.

And we hadn't crossed anyone else in days now.

No paw prints either, for that matter.

And no sign any animal had torn the pack itself apart to get at the goods inside.

Henry!

What's going on?

I found I had very little explanation for what was going on myself.

Something got into the food, I think.

Animals?

I don't know.

You didn't hear anything last night, did you?

Ernest had moved from the tent to staying just to the side of me now, staring at the place where the trail and the snow vanished into nothing.

His breath fogged in my peripheral vision.

Not that I remember.

Not anything as loud as might be able to drag off a full pack.

I shifted on my feet, trying to warm them up after standing still.

Well,

we'll turn back to our last cache a little early and replenish supplies.

I'm not so concerned about replenishing as I am about what took the supplies in the first place.

We began doubling back to the cache some miles behind us.

When we made camp again for the night, an icy, howling wind whipped its way between the mountain peaks, making a fire near impossible to start.

In the frigid dark, I listened to the snow hissing against the canvas tent walls and wondered if I couldn't hear something else.

Something prowling just beyond my view.

The weather conditions meant it took us several days longer to reach the cache than it should have.

And it was already late into the evening by the time we got there.

Rather, by the time we got to where it should

been,

I looked back and forth between my map of the region and the mark I'd made where the cache was and the empty patch of land before my eyes.

Maybe we made a wrong turn somewhere.

It sounded naively hopeful, even to my own ears.

The area was the same.

I could see where we'd cleared away rocks and brush when we'd first made the cache, though it had been smoothed over by fresh snowdrifts now.

I thought the trail was a straight shot.

It is.

There was a type of nagging annoyance growing in the back of my mind.

Then, where?

Well, we must have made one somewhere.

How else it...

I swept my arm around the space.

Do you explain

this?

He looked almost wounded.

I guess I can't.

I crouched, nug my hands into the snow, searching for the bags and crates of food and gear we'd left behind.

Maybe they're just buried.

I was speaking too fast.

Maybe all that wind just buried them a little, is all.

Even through my gloves, the cold and damp of the snow was beginning to make my hands ache and go numb.

Eventually, Ernest walked over and put a tentative hand on my shoulder.

Henry, stop.

They're not buried.

I let my hands fall limp.

He was right.

I knew.

There was nothing here.

The weight of the ideas sat heavily, like a stone in the pit of my throat.

Slowly,

I willed myself to stand.

Then what?

Where Where are they then, Ernest?

Who in the hell took

I stopped myself from yelling at him outright,

but there was still something,

some part of me that felt furious in my helplessness to it all.

All I know, Henry,

is they're long gone now.

The wind picked again then,

strong enough to sting as it bit at my skin.

We didn't speak as we set up camp on the flattened ground where the cache should have been.

I didn't want to have to make the decision to turn back.

It was miserable.

The situation we were in, but there was always this constant feeling that we were so close.

That if we could just keep on a little longer, we could make it.

That if we turned around now,

we would miss our one opportunity at a fortune.

It was, I supposed,

something very similar to what a particularly foolish type of gambler feels right before he is about to lose everything he owns.

But I would not be fooled, I thought.

This was no gambling den.

There was only the elements and myself and my own willingness to survive it all.

And of course, there was Ernest, who had already bet on his own own death.

I didn't like the part of me that thought these things about him.

I didn't want to be angry with him.

I never had been before all this.

Not seriously.

And it wasn't as though I didn't feel bad for it now.

But there was something about him.

Something in the parts of him I'd always viewed as intelligent and perceptive, and generally

better

than me,

that now seemed leery and nervous and weak.

He had mentioned it again the night we lost the supply cache.

In fact, he thought he was going to die.

I think more than anything,

I was most upset that this time

I thought he might not be the only one.

Can't you hear that?

We tried to press forward through the pass for several fruitless days.

A blizzard had kicked up the moment I'd suggested not turning back yet.

Now,

our remaining supplies were nearly gone.

When I looked at Ernest, he had the same expression of quiet despair he'd always seemed to have lately, which I was rapidly coming to loathe.

He looked up, like it had only just occurred to him that I was speaking.

I could hear it, in any case.

Footsteps circling the camp out there in the dark.

Uneven loping like something four-legged would.

But it wasn't quite that.

It was

only two footfalls, I thought.

They stopped intermittently, like the thing was pausing to watch us.

And I waited until the footsteps sounded again.

That.

There.

You don't hear that?

I can't hear anything.

Never mind it then.

I poked at the coals of the dwindling fire.

For just a moment, something darted by in my peripheral vision.

It was already gone by the time I looked up.

It was about one week later that I began to suspect we were not actually moving forward,

but making some sort of meandering circle.

Though, where we were looping back,

I had no idea.

There would be no sign we'd made a turn anywhere until we came upon some landmark we had seen before.

And one of us would say to the other,

Didn't we cross that yesterday?

And neither of us would want to know the answer.

There was a gnawing hunger in me now.

In both of us, I would imagine.

Hunger and exhaustion and fear.

For being so far from absolutely anything.

I don't think I had ever felt so trapped.

It had finally struck me one night, listening to some faint rattle that had developed in Ernest's breathing, that

we were both beginning a slow but persistent decline into death.

And then I heard those footsteps outside again.

Just a little closer now.

And I knew I was right.

Eventually,

I was able to force myself to say it.

We have to turn around.

Ernest only nodded.

I think

that thing

out there doesn't want us here.

I think if we go back,

it'll leave us be.

Henry, there is no thing.

Not blanked.

I know you think you've been hearing something, but there just isn't any...

How do you explain all this?

How do you explain all our missing gear?

How do you explain all the wrong turns you know we never made?

How do you- Henry, listen to yourself?

We're lost.

We're lost, and that's it.

We'll turn back, and you'll forget about whatever you think you hear out there once we're back in civilization and these delusions.

Delusions?

His eyes were downcast.

Forget I said it.

We'll turn back.

That's what's important.

He didn't believe me.

I had never heard such distrust from him.

Didn't he hear?

Didn't he understand it was keeping us here and making us starve?

Making us freeze, desperate, and half dead.

We packed up what was left of our equipment and prepared to make the long journey back the following day.

Even then,

knowing we were headed home, the anger that had been slowly eating away at me every time I looked at Ernest

did not subside.

It was still following.

It was still following.

And I could still hear it.

Beneath the cold wind and beneath the blowing snow, and even beneath my own footfalls, just out of step,

just behind me.

Had we not done enough?

We had turned back.

We were going away.

And yet still, it dogged our every step.

My every step.

Ernest continued to deny hearing anything.

Was he lying?

Did he know?

The hunger and the fatigue made us slower by the day.

It had to be waiting, I thought.

Waiting until we were slow enough so it could catch us.

Maybe it could catch us any time it wanted.

Maybe

it was toying with us.

With me.

But why me and not him?

What did he know that I didn't?

Why did it favor him and not me?

What was I doing wrong?

What

was

he

doing wrong?

I could not pretend any longer not to hate him for it.

We were dying.

And he denied the thing I knew would kill us in the end.

Kill us and pick us clean until we were nothing but bones and sinews sunk in the snow.

Yes,

I thought

it must be starving just like we were.

We were already headed back through the pass

when I heard a soft thud in the snow behind me and looked back to see that Ernest

had fallen to his knees.

I can't feel my legs.

It seemed like he couldn't believe it himself.

I stared at him.

Henry?

He looked up at me with the horrified expression of someone who understood they did not have long to

He tried to stand, unsuccessfully.

Henry, help me, please.

You were right,

Ernest.

The words came out of my mouth before I even knew what I was saying.

What

you were right.

You're going to die out here

He opened and closed his mouth once

dumbfounded

What

no, please, I just need your help

His gloved hands scrabbled in the snow as he tried to rearrange his own paralyzed limbs beneath him

Tried to reach out to me.

What?

Please, I just need your help.

I just need you to help me up.

He trailed off when I didn't respond.

You're gonna leave me here, aren't you?

No.

The air felt still,

but I could hear the wind howling in my ears.

I thought of the hunger and the cold and the desperation

of the thing that stalked in the night, ever closer.

Ernest's eyes were wide and wild,

like a frightened animal.

What?

I told myself

he wouldn't live long anyway.

That if I didn't get to him,

it would.

It made it all a little easier

when I dragged his frozen body to my next campsite

and sharpened my knife.

When I came back to myself again late that night, I was too sick to keep anything down.

The smell of old blood in the camp made me feel nauseous.

And when I rose, the world seemed to spin before my eyes.

Until I vomited a reddish slurry of half-digested meat into the snow.

Seeing it there

did not make me feel any less ill.

The tent flamp fluttered in the wind.

It was watching me again.

I almost thought I could see it this time.

The faint shine of nocturnal eyes in the darkness.

a hunched-up and emaciated silhouette.

My throat felt raw from the acrid sludge I'd spat up.

Finally,

I asked it,

Why

are you doing this to me

to us?

there was no us anymore,

but I said it anyway.

There was no answer

but the wind.

I shouldn't have

I didn't want to.

You made

me do this

The footsteps outside were slow,

meandering circles around the tent.

I felt I was being laughed at.

I did not even have the strength in me to be enraged.

Not anymore.

I just sat there, awake,

until the sun came up, feeling hollowed out inside.

The footsteps circled round and round,

like they knew it wouldn't be long for me now.

I tried to drag myself back to civilization alone.

I really did.

But I was covering less and less distance by the day.

And I was starving.

And

I was so very, very cold.

I did not think it possible for a man to feel so close to death without dying outright.

My feet were blackened

and felt made of wood.

My hands were screaming in agony when I tried to warm them.

Sometimes when I lay alone in the tent late at night, I wished I had not been such a coward as to get sick.

Sometimes I wished wished I'd just sunk my teeth into that bleeding flesh

and eaten.

Truly eaten.

Tore through the meat and sinews without a second thought

or remorse.

And then

Usually realizing I was thinking that,

I wish the thing out in the darkness would come and kill me already.

So no other living creature would have to cross someone as wretched

as myself.

I was

on death's door.

The night the footsteps finally approached.

I can hear them before I saw

they were slower now

deliberate

I watched the tent flap where I lay

I found I did not care enough to raise myself up to look directly at it

If it would kill me now,

that was for the best.

Maybe Ernest had been right about my being delusional.

I must have been to see what I saw.

I knew that even then.

Frostbite black fingers parted the tent flap.

Then a forearm

flayed and blooded.

Carved to the bone.

And then...

It was him.

Him, like on the night I had killed him.

Parts of him desperately hacked away.

Old blood crusted black and brown around the wounds.

I sat up then, but found I had no words I could say to him.

I felt sick.

I felt furious.

I felt like I could cry.

I opened my mouth to speak and only managed a choked, heaving sob.

He stooped down next to me.

And then...

He held out one hand

mechanically,

staring at me with eyes that were glazed over and whitish,

crusted with sharp crystals.

When I took his hand,

what else could I do?

His fingers felt as though they could crumble like frost.

I could feel the last warmth remaining in my body beginning to drain.

He walked out then,

and

I could only follow numbly along.

It was eerily still outside the tent.

The wind and the snow had stopped.

Everything was silent,

muffled.

The sky was clear and filled with stars.

We walked until my camp disappeared into the night.

I'm sorry.

I should have helped you.

Please

forgive me.

Please.

His frozen grip tightened around my hand.

It sounded just the way he had said it the day he had fallen in the snow.

just as terrified and frantic.

But his expression was slack and empty-eyed.

The cold was biting.

I wanted to run,

but I didn't think I could force my own limbs to do so.

I'm not.

I tried to say

I'm not.

Are you gonna kill me

for this?

He only stared,

but

I knew he wouldn't.

No,

the cold would take care of that.

Now that I was this far from any hope of return,

you should never have come here, come here.

And we began the long walk

into the icy,

empty

night.

This is Jonas Knox from Two Pros and a Cup of Joe, and on Fox One.

Now you can stream your favorite live sports so you can be there live for the biggest moments.

That means NFL Sundays, college football games, NASCAR, MLB postseason, and more.

With Fox One, you'll get it all live.

Edge of your seat plays, jaw-dropping, high-octane moments, and that feeling like you're right there in the action.

Fox One, we live for live streaming now.

The No Sleep Podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians.

These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds.

Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more.

Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it.

So your dollar goes a long way.

Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates.

Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations.

In our final tale, we meet an heiress living in her wealthy family estate.

It might sound like her promise has already been met, with her living in luxury and wealth, but the promise she's holding out for is something very different.

You see, in this tale, shared with us by author K.A.

Collings, she knows all about the reason for her wealth.

Her father developed the popular medicine of the day, and now she must deal with those who discovered exactly how the medicine worked.

Performing this tale are David Ault, Erica Sanderson, Andy Cresswell, and Jake Benson.

So, if you're not feeling well, I'd advise against using Dr.

Warwick's Miracle Powder.

England, 1899.

There was no escape from Blyton Hall.

A blanket of fog stretched over the grounds in every direction, blocking even the stars.

The widow, Mrs.

Enid Warwick, had no memory of the fog's arrival, nor could she recall how long it had clung to the crevices of the manor house.

The mist seemed to stick to her mind as well, smoothing out the edges and leaving a wall of white.

Every time she reached for a memory of this morning, or the one before, it turned to smoke in her grasp, her thoughts just as hazy as the world around her.

But there were two things she knew for certain, deep in her gut.

One, She must leave Blyton Hall forever, and two, the fog would sooner drown the widow than see her escape.

It proved nearly impossible to walk through, clouding her eyes and pouring down her throat viscous like cough syrup.

Each step was met with resistance, as though she moved at the bottom of a vast ocean, but still, the desperate feeling crawling up her throat screamed at her to keep going.

As a girl, her father had warned her of such mysteries.

The rare times he wasn't off doing business in London, he told her stories, dark tales of twisted creatures that lurked in the moors, and a fog that would swallow you whole and spit out your bones.

But it seemed to Mrs.

Warwick that her current predicament was not so much a fairy tale as it was something biblical, for even the darkest of fairy stories allowed for a glimmer of starlight.

The longer she walked, the clearer it became that this was not her first endeavor to escape.

Though her mind remained hazy, there lay memory in her muscles, weak as they were.

And they remembered this march, this eternal struggle forwards.

No,

this was not her first attempt.

It had been far more than even a hundred times.

It was at least a thousand, a million, an endless lifetime of fruitless ventures to leave her family home.

But every time she ended up right back at the beginning.

She wasn't back there yet, though.

She knew something came next.

It was the part that sent hot bile creeping up her esophagus.

Oh,

of course.

The hands.

They emerged from the nothingness, their bodies lost in a sea of white, and pulled at the widow Warwick.

There were at least a dozen, all dragging her back to Blyton Hall.

She needn't look down to know that they were covered in boils, each secreting a black separation.

They dug deep into her wrinkled skin, clawing at her collarbone, her navel, hooking their fingers into her mouth.

They tasted of fetid pork.

Her screams burned sharp acid in her throat, but it was no use.

The grounds spanned acres and no one would hear.

The hands grasped at her desperately, like a pack of starved dogs fighting for a scrap of rancid meat and knowing they had nothing left to lose.

But the widow too was desperate, and so she fought against the hands and the fear that threatened to close her throat shut, pushing ever forward even as her nightgown ripped to shreds.

Out of the gloom, a familiar, broken face appeared.

Mrs.

Warwick turned her gaze, unable to stomach the sight of it.

When she opened her eyes, Lighton Hall had consumed her once more.

The widow reached for the handle in front of her, tears of frustration and horror pricking her eyes.

But by the time they'd rolled down her face and her hand was wrapped around cold brass, the memories of the fog were already slipping away.

She wiped at her wet cheeks, blinking away the rest of the tears.

Goodness, you silly old thing.

A pit of dread still soured in her stomach.

A whispering tickled her ears, coming from somewhere within the manor.

When she turned, she had the distinct feeling that someone, or perhaps several people, had just hidden behind a corner.

Florence?

Anderson?

Is that you?

She hoped the housemaid or the butler might help reorient her.

A draught prickled at her skin.

There was a bit of coldness about the place that burrowed into her, reaching past muscle and bone, until it wrapped itself around her heart.

Thick motes of dust drifted through the air, and she breathed shallowly to avoid them sticking to her tongue.

I'd like to take my tea now, Florence.

There was no response, only the constant stream of whispers.

A flash of anger cut through the sour dread.

I will not tolerate teasing from any of you.

Do you hear me?

Not under my roof.

Not under my employ.

But the whispers did not waver, and under that there was another noise.

A ragged sound like a tattered sail.

She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stiffen, as though she was not alone.

But she could see no one else in the foyer.

She shuffled forward into the cavernous entry hall, intent on finding the culprits.

Barely a few steps in, she yelped when a shard of glass pierced through her silk slipper, drawing blood.

A bottle lay smashed on the floor, its powder spilling over the warped hardwood.

From the broken green label, Father's portrait stared back at her, as stoic and solemn as he'd been in life.

Only she could recognize the haughtiness in his eyes, an expression that, in a mere second, had judged you and found you wanting.

The letters spelling Dr.

Warwick were jumbled with the broken glass.

Even still, she felt it was a strong name, a name that could hold an empire on its back, Father used to say.

A name so strong, in fact, she'd carried it into her marriage.

Taking on another name felt like welcoming weakness into her life.

Elsewhere in the house, a grandfather clock began to chime.

The joyful Winchester melody only made the place feel emptier.

Mrs.

Warwick counted the bells, hoping that if she knew the time, she wouldn't feel quite so adrift.

But the clock did not stop after 12 bells.

It continued steadily onward, like a heartbeat, or a funeral march.

Anderson, will you make that blasted thing stop for heaven's sake?

Still no reply.

Indignation bloomed into fury like a bruise.

Mrs.

Warwick chased the noise up the grand staircase, the heels of her slippers clicking against warped wood and echoing through the the foyer between gongs of the clock.

Blyton Hall was a place of high ceilings and dark corners, and despite its size, there was little room for comfort.

The manor had crouched in the moors for over three centuries, built under the reign of another great queen.

Mrs.

Warwick could not imagine a time in which it bustled with activity or warmth.

The family bought Blyton Hall when she was no more than seven years old, and here she had lived for the next seven decades.

Her father left her to her own devices as a child, busy as he was building a business empire, and Nanny did not allow for noisy children.

Then she grew of age, and it was much the same with her own family, she and her late husband continuing the legacy her father had built through blood, and her children growing up quietly until they slipped away, one by one.

to start lives of their own.

Along the mezzanine, towering portraits of long-dead keepers of the manor watched her ascent with stony expressions.

Her neck bristled when she turned her back on them, imagining their gazes fixed on her as she followed up the left-hand staircase.

Nanny had once told her that late at night, the portraits whispered the sins of those they watched, and that she need only press her ear to them to know all of Enid's wicked deeds.

Atop the landing sat an intricate grandfather clock.

But as Mrs.

Warwick drew closer, she realized the chiming of the bells must be echoing from much deeper in the manor.

Loud though they were, the bells did not appear to be coming from this clock in particular.

Still, she paused to examine it.

It was French, its face inlaid with gold apples and pears and laurels, gilded abundance.

It had been one of Father's first extravagant purchases when his cosmetic business finally began to bring in the kind of wealth he had always dreamed of with the success of his star product, his miracle powder.

Thick layers of dust lay on the hands which were stuck at 12.43.

Something nagged at the back of her mind.

Anderson!

Her mouth had grown dry.

She swallowed, dust sticking to her throat.

Anderson, this clock is stuck.

Fix it at once.

She tried to maintain the acrimony in her voice even as the anger in her faltered.

She could not shake the feeling that something was not right in Blyton Hall.

Mrs.

Warwick ventured deeper into the manor, each step feeling not so much like she was being swallowed, but stepping willingly into the belly of the beast.

The gonging of the clock grew ever louder, the mechanical heartbeat marking each passing second.

Panic bit at her heels.

She grew increasingly desperate for a candle as her weak eyes struggled to adjust to the ever-deepening blackness.

Darkness suffocated the air.

The gas lamps, empty of oil, could only watch uselessly as she passed.

She made her way frantically from room to room, fingers jamming against doorknobs and armoires.

Finally, she found a box of matches tucked in the drawer of a sideboard.

She struck the match head, but her relief was short-lived.

The shadows skittered to the corners like rats.

When When she turned, they ducked behind doorways, half a second slower than the light.

She wished then for the anger to return to smother out the now suffocating fear.

The widow brought the flame to the clock standing down the hall, though she knew the bells lay deeper still.

It, too, was frozen.

Her hands stuck at 12.43.

That time again.

Coldness pulled in her stomach right as the flame bit at her finger.

She dropped it, stamping it with her foot and lit another.

Once again, the shadows skittered.

Mrs.

Warwick longed for her bed, a cup of tea, and a warm fire.

But the bells, those bells,

how they lured her, taunted her.

And there was something,

something at the back of her mind.

Besides, she did not recognize this part of the manor.

It seemed she had walked for longer than she should have.

And Florence and Anderson, the useless dalts, clearly had something more important to preoccupy their time than helping the mistress.

The widow did not think she could find her way back.

And so there was only forward.

Thick moats of dust drifted in the air like snow flurries, sticking to her shoulders, her hair, her eyelashes, as she moved through the halls with increasing frenzy.

Had the shadows been banished by the light, she may have blamed the building paranoia on a trick of her eyes, but they merely hid from it.

The shadows had begun to take shape and they were watching her.

Room after room she passed, her periphery crowded with people, but every time she turned her head, they disappeared.

Blyton Hall was empty, save the dust and the covered furniture.

And the bells.

Oh, the bells.

Their chimes bounced off the walls, growing louder and louder, drowning out even the whispers, even the beating of her own heart.

Her pulse of life was no longer the blood coursing through thin, weak veins, but the roar of the bells echoing through her body, pulling her forward.

And still, every clock she passed stood frozen in time, all stuck at 12.43.

Finally, she reached a set of double doors at the end of the eastern wing and the bells screamed against her eardrums.

The noise should have made them shake in their frame, but the heavy oak stood utterly still.

Slowly she pressed her palms to the cold brass of the handles and pulled.

The noise

stopped.

Father's study looked almost exactly as she'd remembered it.

She had not stepped foot in here in a decade, not since he passed.

and she entered now with caution.

An inch of dust had settled over everything so thick it looked like snow.

Rare books lined the walls, collected for their value, not the knowledge contained within their pages, and a mahogany desk in the center of the room spoke to the commanding power her father once held.

The wingback desk chair was turned backwards, and the widow averted her gaze out of habit.

A small bottle sat on a shelf, just as dusty as everything else in the room.

Dr.

Warwick's Miracle Powder, the product father gave his entire life to.

And then, once he passed, so had she.

Father was not, in fact, a doctor, but that hardly mattered.

He'd created a true cure-all, something that would not only keep food fresh longer, but also brighten paints and dyes, strengthen cleaning agents, and even soothe a sore throat.

The powder really was a miracle.

one that had earned them unimaginable riches.

And here it sat, untouched, abandoned.

Once again, Father's haughty eyes bore into her own from the Emerald label, a king's seal printed a hundred thousand times over, and for a moment she could not tear her gaze away.

His expression seemed to shift from solemnity to disapproval, to disappointment, to sneering revulsion.

His disgust wormed into her, leaving a trail of slimy cold across her tongue and all the way down her throat until it reached her stomach, filling it with slick, wet shame.

The whispering started up again, or perhaps it had started minutes ago and she was only now noticing, along with a new noise, a ticking.

The widow blinked, following the sound to the center of the room.

A grandfather clock stood directly in front of the marble fireplace.

She could not recall if this clock belonged in this room, but she knew for certain that if it did, it certainly did not belong in this spot.

Unlike the others, it was not frozen in time.

The second hand ticked steadily, the time reading 1.06.

She didn't know if she was disappointed or relieved.

The clock was unremarkable, except for the fact that it was horrifying.

It was a study in heaven and hell.

Hand-painted in the center dial, the great beast straddled all the damned souls of hell, a roiling sea of rotted flesh and agony clambering for an escape that would never come.

Above the clock face, celestial bodies ticked slowly in rotation, the sun and moon dial turning with each passing minute.

Golden-haired cherubs lounged on fluffy clouds, perpetually watching the heavens shift from day to night and back again.

The parchment sun grinned at Mrs.

Warwick with a mischievous, almost whimsical expression, a jarring contrast to the scenes of hell just six inches below.

It was in staring at the painted sun that she noticed the clock had started going too fast, time accelerating consistently so that the sun dipped below the horizon in only a few minutes, when it should have taken half a day.

The moon, just as mischievous as its counterpart, disappeared even faster.

Then the sun again, faster still.

Day chased night and night chased day, and Aura bore us that would never consume its tail until the two blurred into indiscriminate twilight.

Panic swelled once again in the widow's chest.

Meanwhile, the hands of the clock spun just as quickly as the hours passed in seconds.

When the little hand hit 12, the clock slowed.

The faces of the sun and moon were different now.

The sun broken, bruised, and bloody, the moon bloated purple, eyes and tongues swollen to the point of bursting.

The hands of the clock stopped at 12.43 and everything froze.

No ticking, no whispering, only the moon staring at her with bulging eyes.

And as she watched, they ballooned even more, veins straining and irises bleeding their colour, expanding until Mrs.

Warwick was not staring at the face of a clock.

but the face of a dead man.

A scream ripped from her throat, terror seizing her heart.

She stumbled back, or at least she tried to, but something was anchoring her in place.

Turgid grey fingers wrapped themselves around her wrists and yanked her into the clock.

She fell into an endless fog for an eternity, or perhaps a minute, plummeting both down and up and nowhere at all.

Her feet were rooted to nothing, her hands grasped at nothing, her lungs sucked in nothing.

The swirling white made everything an impossibility.

Time, space, life, feeling.

But not memory.

That stayed with her.

She quickly recognized that for the curse that it was.

Without it, at least she could have lost herself in the nothing, forgotten Mrs.

Warwick entirely.

Instead, she was a person who used to be.

And that was agony.

And then her feet found solid ground once more, and she was in Father's study as if nothing had ever happened.

Except the study had changed.

The furniture all stood in the same position, each book remained in its place, but the dust no longer covered every surface, and the grandfather clock stood sentry in the back corner, the great beast and all the cherubs paying her no mind.

But more importantly, the heavy velvet curtains were drawn back, revealing not fog, but stars.

A A low cough broke the silence like a jagged knife.

Mrs.

Warwick turned to see her father sitting at his desk, writing in a ledger with a steel pen.

His brown hair was slightly thinner than on the label, having receded a bit in his middle age.

But he still styled it with his signature swoop, and his mustache was just as full and proud as ever.

Father?

Her heartbeat stuttered in astonishment.

She stepped forward, standing directly in front of him.

Father!

He did not move, did not acknowledge her presence.

She reached out for his shoulder, but the air around it burned so icy hot, she flinched back.

The same happened again when she reached for a paperweight and then a book.

And Father never looked up, never even blinked, not until there came a knock at the study door.

Come in.

His voice was sturdy enough to fill a room full of sturdy things.

The door creaked open and a fresh-faced woman in a nightgown and rag curls entered, followed by the butler.

You wanted to see me, father?

The widow Warwick clutched her chest in shock at the sight of her younger self, perhaps only 19 or 20.

Father gestured for her to sit in the armchair beside his desk, but kept his attention on the butler.

Please bring in our guest, Anderson.

Enid sunk into the tufted leather, revealing the large, pregnant belly her nightgown had previously hidden.

Twenty, then, the year of her firstborn.

I'm not dressed to see guests, father.

That won't matter, my dear, don't you worry.

But there's something very important that I want you to see, though you must keep quiet.

Do you understand?

Enid nodded, but the widow Warwick shook her head.

No.

No, I don't want to see this.

She ran to the hellish clock and placed her hand on it, only to draw it back when icy hot pain bit at her once more.

A moment later, the study door opened again, and Anderson entered the room, dragging a man by the ankles.

Enid gasped, and Mrs.

Warwick remembered her shock and horror at the sight of it.

But her trust in her father never wavered.

Anderson left him in front of the fireplace, and its yawning moor looked as though it might swallow the man whole.

Tight, thick ropes bound his ankles and wrists together, while dark rags covered his eyes and gagged his mouth.

The man was still, almost deathly so.

Anderson grabbed a crystal decanter from the mantle and slowly poured the brandy over the man's face.

He shuddered at first, then bucked and recoiled as consciousness set in.

He struggled to cough, but with his mouth bound, the sounds of choking filled the room until Anderson finally removed the gag.

Father stood from his desk, arms held solemnly behind his back as he approached.

He nudged the man with his shoe.

Can you hear me, Mr.

Morris?

Yes.

Very good.

Now, what were you doing skulking about my warehouse at 10 p.m.?

Mr.

Morris let out another wheeze, but did not answer.

I'm sorry, Mr.

Morris.

I didn't catch that.

Silence.

I'm afraid that won't do, Mr.

Morris.

You will answer me when I ask my questions.

Father unclasped his hands from behind his back, revealing an ornate cane.

With several quick jabs, he struck the cane against the bound man's stomach and head.

The man released a howl, his body crumpling as much as it would allow.

Let's try again.

What were you doing in the warehouse, Mr.

Morris?

Investigate!

I see.

And for which entity do you work?

Scotland Yard?

There was no badge amongst your belongings, though your name was found easily enough in that little notebook of yours.

Perhaps you work for the Morning Chronicle.

Or the Times?

He pressed his cane against Mr.

Morris's side and leaned his weight into it until the man cried out in pain.

I don't work for no one!

These are very detailed notes for no one, Mr.

Morris.

Father pulled out a small black notebook along with a pair of spectacles, which he delicately placed on his nose.

Let's see.

Ah, yes.

18 dead, all with black blisters.

And of course, you've included the names of the dead.

Eleven of the 18 worked at the Surrey factory, etc.

Most were bottling Dr.

Warwick's Miracle Powder, etc., etc., etc.

Several more factory workers have gone missing with even more dull names.

Though, yes, and here's the lovely bit where you stalked and harassed my customers, interrogating them on their private health information, seeming to imply that an outbreak of plague is my fault somehow.

And then it says, and you circled this bit several times, the words, he knows.

What, pray tell, does he know?

There was a pause, and then Mr.

Morris's wheezing voice spoke up.

All of it, Mr.

Warwick.

You know all of it.

Father nodded, licking his lips slowly.

Right.

Well, I think you're quite confused, Mr.

Morris.

And I'm sure after a talk with whatever editor you work for at the Times or the Morning Herald or whatever it is, they'll see that these deaths are all purely coincidental.

And I'm sure they'll understand my decision to hand you over to the constable for trespassing.

I told you, I don't work for any of them.

I work

for you,

you horn-swoggling, cowardly bastard.

You're poisoning us, your workers, your customers, and we're all gonna die for your mountain of gold,

Dr.

Father smashed his cane against the man's head before he could finish his sentence, and he did not stop until blood pooled around his shoes.

Enid flinched, but her eyes did not widen in horror.

Mrs.

Warwick knew there had been no horror to express, only surprise at the noise.

All fear had left her in that moment, though she'd been terrified during the interrogation.

She'd realized then that the fear was not of her father, formidable though he was, but of the man on the floor and of all he threatened to take from her.

Slowly, Enid lifted herself from the chair and approached Mr.

Morris.

Her father stared but did not stop her as she straddled the dead man and removed the remains of his blindfold.

His face was a ruined mess with bone shards and brain matter and hair sticky with blood.

His cornflower blue eyes stared forever in different directions, one gazing up at the ceiling, the other, hanging limply by the cheekbone, stared for the first time at his own mouth.

There he was.

Mrs.

Warwick could not turn her gaze from his broken face this time, not like she had in the fog or when he'd perverted the face of the once mischievous son.

Father stepped forward and rested a hand on his young daughter's shoulder.

Empires are not only built with blood, my dear Enid.

It's how they keep their power.

Though your witless husband will be the face of this company once I am gone, only you have the cunning to do what it takes to carry an empire.

You are the heir.

You carry the next generation in your womb.

And if you are willing to do what it takes, you can give them everything.

Princes and princesses of industry.

But only if you're willing to protect this empire by whatever means necessary.

Even if you must spill a little blood.

Even if you must spill an ocean of it.

Enid cupped Mr.

Morris's good cheek, stroking her belly with the other hand.

Mrs.

Warwick remembered how she felt her child's life kicking in her and knew how close they'd been that night to losing everything.

She'd looked then at the grandfather clock, with its damned souls and celestial bodies, and swore not to God or Satan, but to to the Warwick family name, that she would stop at nothing to protect their empire.

I will spill all the blood in heaven and hell if I must.

The minute hand ticked forward, and the clock read 12.43, and once again, Mrs.

Warwick fell through endless fog.

The memories flashed by quicker this time, never landing solidly like the first one, and each time she returned to the fog, she begged it to take it all away.

To let her lose Mrs.

Warwick to the nothingness.

But the memories kept coming.

Through the years, Enid played the perfect heiress, her belly swelling 14 more times, though only 10 survived the birth.

In public, she and her witless husband attended countless charities and society functions, the perfect, happy couple in a perfect happy family, representing all that was good about Dr.

Warwick's cosmetics.

And in private, her witless husband did his job of giving her babies for their empire, while Enid learned all the dirty, bloody realities of doing business from her father.

Mr.

Morris was not the only dead man to grace Father's study.

With time, Enid learned how to aim a bullet right between the eyebrows so the screams wouldn't wake the children.

And when her eldest grew old enough, she taught him too.

As promised, the empire grew in its power until only Queen Victoria herself could rival their dominion.

But then came the headlines, first about the missing journalists, then investigating the string of murders.

Then the whispers, the speculation, and the political cartoons of her father adorned in a crown, sparkling with jewels, sitting atop a dragon's hoard of gold and bones.

And when the expose, Miracle Powder Kills, rippled through England, the end had finally begun.

Enid was 65 years old when she found her father hanging from the rafters of the stables.

He'd been hanging for hours, and his purple, bloated face was unrecognizable.

She'd called for Anderson, the new Anderson, nephew of the first Anderson, to cut him down and bring him to the study.

He'd sat him at the desk and left at Enid's command.

Dr.

Warwick, once emperor, had looked shrunken in his throne.

He slumped forward, his bulging eyes staring at the newspapers scattered on his desk, all with some version of the same headline about the expose.

Enid hit her father's body, beat him with his own cane, her cane now.

She'd inherited it, along with the rotted, infected corpse that was Dr.

Warwick's cosmetics.

He'd taught her how to reign over an empire and keep her crown through blood.

He had not taught her how to rescue a business crumbling faster than Boudica had burned London to the ground.

Enid swore before all of England, the Crown and God, that her father had simply died of old age.

He was 94 years old after all.

And with him had died the company's legacy of death.

For all their controversy, or perhaps because of it, half of proper English society came out for his funeral.

And there they had the chance to see how she and her healthy children were turning a new leaf, a new chapter for Dr.

Warwick's cosmetics, and a new formula for their miracle powder.

The new formula was very much like the old formula, but with the added health benefit of white chalk, which, of course, did nothing at all.

The dozen or so doctors and scientists she'd paid handsomely, however, had assured the public of the safety of the new formula.

This bought her another seven years.

The widow Warwick returned to the dust-filled study.

The grandfather clock was back in its rightful place.

Father's corpse sat in the wing-back chair, now shriveled with years of decay.

She had never moved him, not from the first moment Anderson placed him there.

The witless husband took her father's place beneath the dirt.

He'd done his job just fine, and now his work was through.

Father, on the other hand, he wasn't done.

He couldn't leave her to deal with his mess all on her own.

He couldn't just walk away from it all.

No,

she wouldn't let him.

He would sit there and stare at those headlines at the mess he made for all eternity.

The whispering started once more, and this time their message was clear.

Blood for gold, blood for gold.

You knew, you knew blood drenched your gold.

The study door rattled, heavy though it was.

Mrs.

Warwick hardened her heart and opened the door.

The living dead packed the corridor.

The shadows finally made flesh.

Their bodies littered with black boils.

Some oozed pus from open wounds.

For others, the pus had melted skin down to muscle and even bone.

Their fury was a storm.

They pushed her through the sea of bodies.

Fingers clawed at her clothes and skin and hair, tearing, tearing, tearing.

Heels ground into the bones of feet until they snapped.

She was drenched in the black pus that poured from their boils, and the fetid smell of them made her eyes burn.

And all the while they chanted, Blood for gold, blood for gold.

You knew, you knew blood drenched your gold.

But we never lied.

The air was mostly crushed from her lungs.

The powder does everything we promised.

We didn't

lie.

Her words fell on uncaring ears.

They pushed her between stinking, rotting bodies all the way to the grand staircase, and as she emerged from the roiling sea of the damned, her broken body collapsed, tumbling down each step.

She landed in the foyer in a heap, and she heard breathing.

Ragged gasps came from the bottom of the right-hand staircase.

Mrs.

Warwick didn't want to look.

She knew deep down what she would find, and she didn't want to see.

Still, her mind brought forth two final headlines.

Warwick Empire crumbles.

Parliament bans miracle powder.

And Letter to Daughter reveals Warwick's new miracle powder kills.

Below the headline of the second, a woman covered in pustules danced with a hooded figure of death.

The final killing blows of their empire.

After that had come the mob, packs of their pustule-covered victims and their loved ones banging down the gates of Blyton Hall.

They barricaded the gates for days, then weeks.

Most of the staff slipped away, but the loyal few stood by the widow.

Not even her children, safe in their own homes, attempted to rescue her.

Eventually the food ran out and Mrs.

Warwick grew hungry.

She'd never known hunger before, only want followed by satisfaction.

It had consumed her, her decency, her rationality, the last vestiges of her humanity.

The ragged breaths continued in the foyer, and Mrs.

Warwick lifted her head, peeking through short lashes.

Bones littered the floor, gnawed clean by weak teeth.

Florence and Anderson no longer looked very different from one another.

You were still hungry, though, weren't you, Enid?

After all that, you still had to fill that gnawing void in you, didn't you, dear one?

Father pulled her up, dusting the thick moats of white from her shoulders.

His face was neither bloated nor decayed.

It was haughty and alive.

He grabbed her chin, lifting it to look into her weak old eyes.

There it was, that judgment.

But there was only one thing left, wasn't there?

Mrs.

Warwick broke his snobbish gaze, focusing on the dark corner of Blyton Hall behind him.

Enid, now old and frail and wearing nothing but a nightgown, lay slumped against the grand staircase, surrounded by several empty bottles of miracle powder.

She stared into the middle distance, either unable to see her other self, or unseeing of anything at all.

Her body was riddled with pustules.

Rivulets of the black seepage spilled down her skin, and in the places where the sludge was thickest, her flesh eroded down to bone.

A pustule the size of a hornet's nest pulsed at the base of her throat.

Below that, her entire chest had collapsed.

All the skin and fat and muscle eroded away completely, and all that was left were the crumbling remains of her ribcage.

Her bones were stained with black, and the matter was already burning holes through the now exposed soft tissue within her.

Her lungs fluttered weakly as she drew in breath like a tattered sail.

Mrs.

Warwick trembled, and as she did, dust fell from her shoulders.

No,

not dust, she realized as she rubbed the substance between her fingers.

It was too thick, too chalky.

Miracle powder.

It fell around them like thick snow.

Pustules erupted across Father's skin, dark boils that swelled quickly.

One blistered beneath his eyes, bulging and ballooning until it ruptured.

The pus carved through his cheek, a river cutting through a canyon of flesh.

Mrs.

Warwick recoiled, disgust and horror yanking at the base of her spine, but he held her still.

She felt a faint pulsing at the base of her throat.

Do not despair, dear one.

The last vestiges of his cheek flapped uselessly.

I made you an empress, did I not?

The pulsing at her throat grew stronger now, like a second heartbeat.

We brought the world to its knees.

A beatific smile stretched across one side of his face, sagging on the other, and his eyes clouded with the mere memory of power.

And look at what we wrought.

Her gaze drifted almost of its own volition back to her other self.

The hornet's nest-sized pustule throbbed in sync with the pulsing at her her throat.

A scream built in her chest, but when she opened her mouth, all that released was a sound like a tattered sail.

Escape.

She must escape.

The widow Warwick ripped herself from her father's grip and fled through the front door, out of Blython Hall, and into an endless fog.

As your time with us has come to an end and you can now finally escape these sleepless tales, we thank you for joining us here at the No Sleep Podcast.

Join us next week for another volume of our sleepless decompositions.

The No Sleep Podcast is presented by Creative Reason Media.

The musical score was composed by Brandon Boone.

Our production team is Phil Michulski, Jeff Clement, Jesse Cornett, and Claudius Moore.

Our editorial team is Jessica McAvoy, Ashley McInelly, Ollie A.

White, and Kristen Semito.

I'm your host and executive producer, David Cummings.

Please visit theno sleeppodcast.com for show notes and more details about the people who bring you this show, along with hundreds of hours of audio horror stories in our archives.

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