NoSleep Podcast Summer Hiatus 2025 #2

She'd throw things, wander, and started hoarding.

Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard, but then we found out she had something called agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease. And that was a different kind of difficult.

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Report fever, stiff muscles, and confusion, which can be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent.

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I'm glad her doctor recommended Rexulte. Talk to your loved ones, doctor.
Moments matter.

Oh, hi there, sleepless friends. Cummings here.
Down the shore and enjoying beach life again this week. And I'm glad you've joined us for our summer hiatus, Volume 2.

Our two tales this week will get you high and share some ups and downs. Kind of like being here at the shore.
There's the boardwalk, saltwater taffy, and the best caramel popcorn you've ever had.

Just watch out for the seagulls. They like popcorn too.

The next two weeks we'll be presenting our sleepless decompositions series. I know it's tough to go from a summer beach vacation into the dark, decomposing world like that, but you'll be fine.

At least we're not taking you to seaside heights. So flick the sand off your beach towel, grab your hoagie, and settle in for some salty horror.

Just don't fall asleep in the sun, because it's always good to be sleepless.

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Then ask your doctor if CAR T cell therapy might be an option for you. You really want to be better with your finances.
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In our first tale, we dive deep into the miasma of mind-altering chemicals. Drug use is the way many try to avoid real life.

But in this tale, shared with us by author John Elias, we'll meet Adam, a man desperate for his next fix, and soon to discover a new high and a new low.

Joining me in performing this tale are Jeff Clement, Atticus Jackson, Dan Zapula, Catabelle Ansari, Jesse Cornett, and Peter Lewis.

So when just say no doesn't work, do what you can to avoid sampling the the milk of the Lilith Beetle.

The words rushed through Adam's mind like a wind through fog.

It was only a week ago when he had run into Skids down on the corner, down on the street.

Skids was under a street light, all nervous and curvous, all herky and jerky, sketching around like some ant under the solar laser of a magnifying glass. He was coming down from some kind of up.

Maybe Adderall, maybe Obertrol, could be Benzedrine or Seniline, maybe even Fioranol or Metrazole.

But more than likely, it was a cocktail of psychostimulants with a garnish of of crack, crank, or blow. Whatever it was, speed was Skid's trip.

Adam, my friend, Adam, my lost brother-in-arms, Adam, my finest client.

The words came hurtling out of Skid's mouth like a freight train barreling down a straightaway.

How is it within you on this crisp city night?

Adam grimaced at the barrage, but forced himself to speak. What's up, Skids?

You see see my people lately? Is that all you want out of me?

Skids clipped his nose with his thumb and forefinger and sniffed.

Definitely blow.

Adam scuffed his sneakers on the sidewalk, buying time for himself. He scanned the night.
The projects were pockmarked with vacant lots and piles of rubble.

In the distance ran a white and red river of car lights. The traffic blurred in his vision.
The traffic that never dripped into his part of the city.

Adam wanted to walk. He hated dealing with skids.
Skids was a lifer. Who knew how old he was? Sometimes the junk preserves a body.

Skids had been on the street for as long as Adam or anyone else could remember. He had somehow leapfrogged from habit to habit, never getting stuck on one, or maybe getting stuck on all of them.

Regardless, to Adam's eyes, Skids was the bad and ugly side of the habit.

Nothing like how it was early on, when he used to hang out with the blues musicians like Frankie the Fly, back when he and his crew first started flying with the fly.

Adam decided to leave, find another merchant, or maybe go clean for a while.

But then the thought of leaving without carrying made the flesh tighten around the scabs on his arms and the veins to shrink and shrivel under his skin. Can you float me a week?

Skids smiled, displaying a gutter of filthy teeth.

Not a problem. We got a special this week.
Skids looked over his shoulder. From the shadowy recesses of the street came the strangest sound, like some tap dance of cockroaches.
Nah, Adam's cool.

I know him and his people.

Then the flittering sound again, like razor blades scraping locust wings.

I know, I know. I'll tell him.

Adam squinted, staring into the shadows, seeing nothing.

Who are you talking to, Skids? That's...

That's just a guy, no. That was the language.
You understood that gibberish? He's got a thick accent is all. He comes from somewhere in

Asia.

Skids patted the air with his hands.

Just a sec.

Adam saw him then. A huge, rounded man in a hat and long coat.
He had been hiding out somewhere in the cracks and crevices of the corner tenement.

He moved fast when he walked, but in such a way that lacked all the accompanying gestures of ambulation. There There was no clap or clatter of footfall, only a wispy shuffling, almost a glide.

The shadows seemed to cling to him like sticky membranes. He was close, but Adam couldn't make out any features save that he was very hunched, as if he had no shoulders.

A hand came into the light, but only for a second. The skin was deathly pale and hung loose like a glove.

Skid snatched something from out of the hand and the man and the hand faded back into the shadows. This is how it is.
It's a package deal. You gotta take both.

Skids flashed low a tied-off condom that held the brown. With his other hand, he suspended a necklace whose leather thong bound a dull gray vial.

Just mix a drop of this in your spoon, and you'll fly like never before.

Adam's neck neck constricted in disgust. He hated it when someone else talked of the particulars of his habit.
As if they knew him, as if they knew of his love affair and his lover.

I like mine clean.

Skids looked him up and down, eyeing the two-month jeans and the sweat-stained t-shirt. Oh yeah, you're the king-a-queen.

Adam felt bile rising up the tubing of his throat. Here he was being called dirty from a man who still had grime from 1969 under his fingernails.

What is it? Oh man, you don't know? Then you ain't been around.

What is it? It's soul honey. Poppy nectar.
Scream cream.

Silk milk.

Betelgeuse, baby. Betelgeuse.

Adam scowled. He could begin to taste his mouth again.
And he didn't like that taste. Just the brown skits.
It's all I need. You gotta try this, man.

All your crew loves it. Jinx, Sugar Sadie, and even Berry Blue.
You've heard from them then? They've been around.

Last I saw, they were with Frankie the Fly. Frankie the Fly?

Nobody's seen him in years.

Where's he at? He's around.

Just like the others. Frankie loves the scream cream.
They all do. You gotta try it.
Adam's hand flinched in compulsion. His palms were beginning to itch.
He couldn't stay and talk much longer.

Maybe some other time, Skids.

How about just the dope?

Skids jerked a glance back into the shadows. It was the sound again, like the soft shoe scuttle of silverfish.
Sorry, Adam. It's both or nothing.

Adam shrugged. Whatever.

Skids smirked. He dropped the necklace and condom to his feet and walked away.
Adam looked around, trying to appear casual, then bent down to tie his shoes.

He picked up his tricks, stuffing them in his socks.

That was a week ago. Adam sat slumped against the cracked plaster of his apartment.
A naked light bulb burned incandescent.

His bed, just a mattress, lay in the corner, water-stained and heaped with rags like some beaten old whore.

But for the scurrying cockroaches, the rest of the apartment was empty. Adam could feel the floorboards pressing into the bones of his pelvis.
He was too skinny now to sit long on the floor.

He tried to get up, but his body was getting heavy. It felt like gravity was getting stronger.
He was coming down and coming down fast.

He fingered the necklace around his neck. Betelgeuse, baby.
Betelgeuse.

He took it off and let the vial pendulum before his eyes. It was terracotta with a cork for a stopper.
The hole of it no bigger than a thumb. There was something drawn or carved on the side.

He looked close. It was a relief of a woman with wings and bird legs done in some archaic or primitive style.
The little vial could pass for a relic.

He set it down. He had to ration what he had left of his stash.
He found his hand reaching for his ankle of its own volition. He forced it back.

Quit screaming at me. You have to wait your turn.

Adam looked at the cheap watch that had replaced his stainless steel high school graduation gift. He had to wait a while longer.

He tapped his fingers on the floor, trying to think of something to do, rolling them this way and that.

God, how long had he been waiting here, just rolling his fingers?

He checked his watch. This thing has got to be broke.

He watched the seconds tick away. The digit six faded from black to gray and back to a black seven.

It was like watching the sun rise and fall.

A cockroach crawled up his shoe, stopped at the top and flicked his antennae about as if it was taking in the view. It crawled down and went straight for the vial.

Adam snapped up the necklace and tried to kick the cockroach.

Maybe the stuff wasn't so bad. Jenks and Sadie had tried it, and Frankie too.

Maybe it made it last longer. He needed something new.

Nothing was like it used to be. Lately, everything had seemed to stagnate.
He should start trying new things, experiment a little.

He let his hand walk down the seam of his jeans to his ankle. His fingers violated their way into his pant leg and clawed into his sock.
Adam pulled his kit out.

He spread it all out on the floor between his legs. He unstoppered the terracotta vial and set it carefully down.
He wiped some grime and sweat from his brow. It was all up to his hands now.

They had to be steady. He had to be in his hands.
He squeezed the heroin out of the condom so just just a little bit of the brown plopped onto the spoon. Not too much, just enough.

Then a drop of the scream cream. Now came the heat.
Heat it up and melt it down. When you see it bubble, you've got no trouble.
The needle next.

A proboscis into amber.

Suck, little mosquito, suck.

Take your fill. Opalescent white and dirty yellow swirls.
A milk and honey storm in a plastic tube.

Now, up with you. Up, up, and tap, tap.
The plunger's tight, the needle sharp. The potion's right for starving hearts.

Now,

where in all my continents do I put you?

He ran an eye up and down his arms. No.

The traffic had been too heavy there the last couple of weeks. He held the syringe up to the light.
The milky mix made a kaleidoscope of alternating gold.

He took his shoe and sock off, wiped the crud out from between his first and second toe, pried the toes apart, stretching the tender skin, and stabbed deep into the soft tissue.

He thumbed the plunger down.

His foot turned to gold.

Struggling against the billowing bliss, he extracted the syringe. It fell from his hand before he could set it down.

He breathed and his lungs puffed up with pleasure. Ecstasy followed.

Every cell of his body quivered with delight. The stuff was good.

Real good.

So

good.

It made it all better.

It made it best.

It made it so good that it was like,

well,

that it was like the first time.

The terracotta vial was empty in a week. After coercing every last iota of the white fluid out of the vial, Adam took to the streets.

He sought out skids in all the seedy places he knew him to frequent, but found him not.

When he started coming down, he shot up again. To his horror, the effect was negligible.
It only just put off the pain. It wasn't long after that that he finished the last of his stash.

Yet, even heavily opiated blood couldn't quell the panic rising in the frayed neural network of his mind.

He wandered the city for hours in his search for skids. He shuffled through islands of light and oceans of dark.
The spaces in between seconds stretched out into vast gulfs of time.

Emptiness spiral-bored his veins. His face became a contorted mask of the grotesque.
He walked beyond all physical endurance, driven on only by the slave-galley drumbeat of need.

The strength of his legs faltered before his onslaught of desire, and he collapsed in some shadowed haunt of vermin. He didn't sleep, but lingered in semi-lucidity.

His eyes were open, witnessing the microcosmic world of the gutter, a world that festered with minutiae that trekked on six or more articulated limbs.

He thought it was all a dream, but then he heard that sound again. It sounded like the slow waltzing of scorpions.
It became a chirruping gibber, the staccato crunching of aphids grinding leaves.

Adam rolled an eye up and saw the worn leather of a boot. Skids.

Skids squatted down next to him. I'll be honest, Adam.

You've looked better. Need.

I... need?

Well,

I'll have to ask the boss.

Skids disappeared from Adam's view. In a moment, he squatted back down.

Here's the situation.

You'll have to come back to the den.

Cance.

That sound again.

Fingernails rubbing together.

You're in luck.

Skids reached down and grabbed Adam by the hair, lifting his head off the ground.

I said you're in luck.

The Milkman of Mercy is making a delivery. My two-kind compatriot here is willing to set you up with one hit out of his own personal supply.
What generosity!

Of course, just enough to get you back on your feet.

If you want any more, you'll have to come back to the den with us. Anything?

I had had a suspicion you might say something like that.

Skids still held him up by the hair. A syringe suddenly came into view.
Skids' grimy finger laid alongside the needle to help guide it in.

Adam's eyelid fluttered like a butterfly pinned to a board. He looked down the barrel of the needle.
Skids moved it in.

He brought the tip a hair's breadth away, pressed and pricked the tissue, and drove it home into the pink pulp of Adam's tear duct.

Adam's mind turned to mush. He was a cotton pillow man in a cotton pillow world.

Get up.

Never keep the man waiting.

Skids lifted Adam by his shirt and walked him like a dog on a leash. For his part, Adam felt like a balloon on a string, bobbing up and down next to skids.

They walked through alley and vacant lot, by crumbling tenement and hollow church. Buzzing neon and flickering street light passed through Adam's senses, all of it haloed and disjointed from reality.

The city cooed with the hustling of midnight whores and reverberated with the cacophonic choir of after-hour bars.

They trudged on through a viscous miasma of sewage and cigarettes, vodka and vomit, always with the rounded shadow of the hat and long coat at their heels.

Reality finally began to crystallize back into place for Adam. They had stopped at a skeletal hulk of a building.
The man in the hat and coat stood at the top of a staircase going down.

He chattered out a dragonfly hum of words, and Adam could almost understand them now.

He could get pieces of words here and there, or almost catch a phrase. You're on your own, kid.

I don't go any further.

Skids merged back into the urban scape, blending in like his jeans and denim jacket were camouflage.

The rounded man said something, and Adam almost caught it.

See that again?

The man beckoned him down the stairs with a wave of his loosely fleshed hand. Adam followed.
They went down flight after flight, the hat and long coat always ahead and moving scurryingly fast.

Adam rounded the last landing to see the man disappear through a doorway. He had left the door ajar.

The outline glowed orange.

Adam floated down the stairs and passed within. Candles lit the place with a baleful light.
The floor was littered with rags, cast-off shoes and shirts, surgical tubing and needles by the thousands.

Rickety old bunks lined the walls, each one bearing a lounging junkie. Rusted cast-iron beds were strewn about the floor, also bearing attics.

Hung from the ceiling were dirty hammocks that slung dope fiends.

Adam looked around. The junkies were everywhere, wasting away in semi-somnabulent states of pleasure existence.
His kind of people.

Here was an opium den on a grand and modern scale. Adam spied close to a hundred occupants, but no attendants.
No cookies.

The man in the hat and long long coat was gone altogether. Adam walked in, past junkies cradled in hammocks or folded up in fetal positions in the bunks.

No one was up and about, yet he seemed to sense movement somewhere. Every now and then, out of the corner of his eye, he would detect a sudden frenzy of motion with an accompanying whirr.

But when he turned to look, all was still but for the hanging sheets wavering with the draught.

He felt his skin start to crawl on the back of his neck. He shot a glance back at the door.
He was relieved and surprised. It was still open.

He was still up from the shot Skids gave him, but he could feel the golden hum begin to wane. He passed his gaze over the bunks and recognized a face.
Barry Blue.

Barry was out, and no amount of shaking would rouse him. Adam scanned the beds and hammocks.
Cradled in a dingy hammock a foot above the ground was Jenks.

Wake up, Jenks.

Adam pushed on the fabric. Jenks's head rolled about on his neck.
Whoa?

Huh? Jenks, it's me. Adam.

Wake up. Jenks opened his eyes.
Dude, you here too? Where's the man? Aren't there any attendants? Isn't there white staff or something? I don't know, dude. Who sets you up? It just happens.

Hey, man, Sadie's in here somewhere. Adam scanned around the room.
Again, there was a sudden flurry of motion out of the corner of his eye and gone again as soon as he looked.

Jenks had passed out again.

Adam shoved his hammock.

Dude, how long have you been in here? I don't know. Not long, dude.
We just wanted to get out of the cold. Jenks, it's July.

Yeah,

awesome. I'm just gonna take a little nap now, dude.
Adam swept a dismal gaze over the floor. He could barely see the cracked tiling beneath the layers of garbage.

It must have taken months or years to accumulate so much trash. He bent down and examined a syringe.
Empty. The plunger was pressed tight.
He picked up another. The same.

He was in arm's reach of 30 syringes, and not one had a single drop left. He stood up and kicked the debris out of his way.

The motion again.

It came from the back wall. Adam serpentined through the obstacle course of attics.
At the far wall, he shot a nervous glance back at the entrance, then relaxed a little as the door was still open.

Hey,

Adam.

The voice came from a bunk on the wall. It was a girl.
It was Sadie, sugar Sadie.

He sat down next to her and looked her in the eyes. They were dilating fast like a star going supernova.

Did you just dope up?

He could feel the heat pulsating through her skin. She licked her lips.

You can't believe how good it is.

Are you on Betelgeuse?

It's the divine milk of mercy, Adam. You've got to try this.

Her words came out slowly, all the sounds merging together like it was one long word.

Sadie,

where are the cookies? Where are the attendants? Who runs this place?

They're around here somewhere. Just find a bed and they'll find you.

Adam scanned the room again, but couldn't see a single empty bed. Is there another room? Are there more beds somewhere?

Sadie uncrumpled a finger and pointed down the wall. There was a doorway curtained with squalid linen sheets that ruffled with the draft.
Adam stood up.

Sadie softly clawed his arm to get his attention. He passed her a brief glance.

Adam, it's so good to see you again.

She wrapped her fingers around his wrist in a feeble grasp.

Really, I've missed you so much.

Yeah,

I miss you guys too.

He unlocked her fingers from his wrist wrist and made for the doorway. The threshold breathed out a humid heat that bathed Adam in cloying vapors.

He pushed aside a sheet, only to find another, and then another.

The fabric draped over his face. He pressed on, slipping through sheet after sheet until the last veil fell from his eyes.
He beheld the second room.

It was darker than the first, yet also lit with candles. It was an old-fashioned steam bath with steam boxes from the turn of the 20th century.
The boxes were set up in rows and along the walls.

Again, there were no attendants, and again, every box was occupied. Steam flooded the air and obscured the ceiling and back wall.
Atop every box was a candle and human head wreathed in vapors.

Hello?

His call was muffled and lost in the steam. Some of the heads opened their eyes, gave him a caustic glare, and shut them again.

These faces weren't as familiar as those of the first room, and they were all of an older caste, 50 and up.

Their deep grooves of wrinkles and sallow cheeks made them look shriveled. like the steam had somehow withered them.

Adam walked down the rows, trying to see the end of the room through the gray clouds. The further in he went, the more steam boxes appeared.
He looked back and could barely make out the door.

He turned around, and as he did so, he recognized a nearby head. It was an old man with silvering hair.
It was Frankie the Fly.

Hey, Frankie.

Hey, Frankie, do you remember me? Tremulously, Frankie's eyelids scrolled back. His pupils had dilated out to the size of dimes.

Who's that? Frankie, it's me, Adam. We used to hang together at the blues room.
You taught me those wicked riffs, remember? Frankie's eyes quivered in their sockets.

His brow creased as if in great mental strain. Yeah.

I remember you, boy. Now listen to me and listen good.

You get get your cell phone out of here. Don't ever come back.
No, no, no, Frankie, it's cool. I'm just looking to score a little.
Stay yourself away from the Scream Cream kid.

You got

to leave before they find you. No, no, I came with somebody.
It's cool. It was somebody who knows the place.

I just lost track of him somewhere. I'm all about the Betelgeuse.

I'm just surprised I didn't hear about it before now.

It's been around forever, boy.

Now,

you got to go!

Adam looked around nervously, checking if anyone else was watching.

Hey, Frankie, is it really Betelgeuse?

I mean,

does it come from a beetle? That's right. A beetle.
The Lily Toe Beetle. You know what Lilyto is.

It's a catidian.

Supina Sumerian.

Purple poppy Persian.

Baby-bombed Babylon and all that.

It means...

Lilith, boy.

Lilith.

Like the first wife.

Just you remember,

wherever there be poppy, there be the tenters of the harvest.

You don't happen to have any that I could score off of you, do you?

Frankie chuckled a hollow laugh.

Come a little closer, boy.

Adam took a step forward.

Closer.

Adam stepped up next to the steambox.

Just

a little closer.

Adam leaned in. He could see the black abyss of Frankie's eyes.
He suspected that Frankie couldn't even see him. He was so far gone.

Adam turned his head so his ear was right next to Frankie's sweat-beaded lips. Listen to me, boy.

I want you to open me up.

Adam leaned back.

Huh?

Open me up, boy.

Open up these doors, and I'll show you my dope kit.

Adam nodded for a few moments in curious contemplation.

Okay,

sure.

He grabbed the handles on the steambox, but jumped back in pain. The metal was blisteringly hot.

Come on now, boy.

Open me me up.

See what Frankie's made of.

Adam pulled his shirt off and wrapped it around his hand. He turned the latch and opened the door a crack.
A scurrying sound slipped out through the aperture.

It was just like the other sounds, like a dentist scraping teeth. or someone planing the edges of a scalpel across an insect's carapace.

Do it quick, boy.

Adam flung wide the door. His eyes recoiled in their sockets.
All the breath went out of him. It was a husk, a desiccated and dry husk, and there were things crawling all over it.

They were large beetles, as black as the mouth of midnight. They took little pieces of Frankie, bits of skin and dried flesh in their pincers and gobbled it down.

Other beetles were mounted on little terracotta terracotta vials in the bottom of the steam box.

There, they oozed out a white, gluey substance into the bottles. It was a row of toilets for bugs.

Frankie let out an empty laugh that seemed to come from a long way away.

It's a pretty sight,

isn't it?

A tremor took Adam and shook him to the bone. He stumbled back, his eyes wincing, his stomach turning.
He was running, running for the door. The linen sheets billowed and ballooned with the draft.

Fear alone fixed him now and he saw nothing but the exit.

He pulled to a stop paces from the threshold. There was someone, something in the doorway.
He could see its shape through the linen. It was a rounded figure, like a man with no shoulders.

It stayed behind the curtains, wholly blocking the exit. Adam studied his silhouette, uncertain where his arms and legs were.
Once more, that sound.

It was a fast sound, brittle and hollow, and came as the clip of a telegraph. And Adam now understood it.

Are you leaving us, Adam?

Adam's breathing was short, almost vacant.

I've got to go.

I've got to do.

But Adam couldn't think of anything he really had to do.

The figure made a shrill grunt, as if it understood.

Well, if you have to go, you have to go.

Adam took a tentative step forward.

It's okay?

You won't try to stop me? Of course not. Everyone here is free to leave.
The doors are never locked. The figure turned to his side to allow Adam room enough to pass.

Its rounded shape now became half an oval, but still there was no clear indication of where the arms or legs were.

It cleared its throat with the sound of chattering teeth. I only just came to say that there are some beds free now in the other room.
Some of our clients have moved up.

Adam passed a glance at the rows of heads atop the boxes. Count me out.

I'm going clean.

The figure made a clicking sound that followed the rhythm of laughter. Of course you are, of course, you are.
But surely you'll want just one last fix before you go.

Adam's features twitched with tension. His empty veins echoed with the call of the milk of the lilith beetle.

Um

may be

Good. You'll find your bunk just past this threshold, two rows down and to your right.

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Go to rocketmoney.com/slash cancel or download the app from the Apple App or Google Play Stores.

In our final tale, we meet Dan, a man looking to distract himself from his overwhelming grief. While working as a maintenance man, he decides to try restoring an old elevator in the building.

But in this tale, shared with us by author Michael Winter, Dan soon realizes the elevator is more than what it seems, and that's not a good thing.

Performing this tale are Mike Delgadio, Ellie Hirschman, Graham Rowett, and Atticus Jackson. So don't try to explain or understand how it works unless you're familiar with the laws of aberrant motion.

Love makes almost anything endurable.

I learned this the first time two years ago when Lisa hung on long enough to see our daughter Sam graduate from high school. Despite the cancer burning its way through her, she refused to let go.

Not until she was ready.

Love was why she was there in the front row when Sam walked across the stage.

My wife was little more than a husk by then, hollowed out.

But she smiled and clapped and gave Sam a hug that was somehow both heartbreakingly feeble and terrifyingly fierce.

Squinting up at our daughter through the mid-morning glare and morphine haze, she kissed her cheek and whispered, Promise me you'll grab life by the throat.

Promise me, you'll squeeze until it gives you what you deserve.

Two days later,

she was dead.

Lisa asked to be buried next to her parents in a cemetery four states away.

On that long drive home with Sam after the funeral, I came to understand two things.

First, a huge part of me, maybe the best part, had been pruned away, and I would forever be smaller because of it.

Second, witnessing Lisa's final act of love had been like staring into the sun.

Exposure to willpower of such intensity had left me nearly blind and groping my way forward with outstretched hands, shuffling through a succession of days that felt like years,

but only extended through the summer.

Sam handled things in her own way. Her mother's death didn't unmoor her like it did me.
She was starting college in the fall, a state school about an hour and a half's drive from our house.

Close enough for weekends at home, but far enough that living on campus the rest of the time made sense.

Her transition from one life to another had been set into motion before Lisa's diagnosis.

And although she wouldn't admit it, probably not to herself and certainly not to me, Her mother's passing didn't change the trajectory of her plans.

It only only gave her packing and prepping the soft violet overtones of melancholy.

Maybe that's unfair, but the hell do I know? Under that veneer of tranquil somberness, she could have been raging.

Once my daughter went off to college, my fog began to lift. Sam had her freshman year to throw herself into.
I had my work.

As one of three senior maintenance technicians at a historic downtown Midrise, I had plenty to keep me busy.

Broken pipes, rotting supports, warped window frames, outdated wiring, there was always a new priority.

And on those rare occasions when nothing was jammed or clogged or making mysterious buzzing noises, Bill Tony and myself tackled proactive projects to keep the Summerland from succumbing to the constant weathering of time.

Built at the turn of the 20th century, it had been one of the most most prestigious apartment buildings in the city, a monument to late Belle Epoque sensibilities, with neo-Moorish exterior flourishes, a glass-domed atrium, and enough wrought iron staircases to create the distinct impression of being inside an enormous birdcage.

In the mid-60s, the Summerlin was converted to offices, but the relics of its residential past were everywhere, from the wall of lobby mailboxes to the plastered-over dumbwaiters lurking behind a hundred walls.

The Hollister Whitney was an artifact of those early years.

The elevator had once ushered residents from the north lobby to any of the nearly two dozen floors above, and during that time, it had been the epitome of luxury.

I've seen a few pictures of it in its prime. Oiled walnut paneling, mirrored ceiling, marble tiled floor, brass railings polished until they seemed to glow with an inner light.

Of course, the pictures I'd seen were black and white, but in my mind's eye, the elevator bloomed with the decadent hues of a gold-foiled bar of Bavarian chocolate.

After the Summerlins' conversion to an office building, the interior had been reconfigured. The north lobby became a storage area, and the Hollister-Whitney was relegated to freight service.

By the time I joined the maintenance team 30 years ago, the elevator was a faded shell, barely up to code and sliding toward permanent decommission.

And yet, something about the Hollister Whitney attracted me from the start.

Maybe it was the allure of being able to interact with a piece of machinery that was as much an expression of artistry as it was technology.

Maybe it was my assumption the elevator would be gone in a few years, a notion that gave my appreciation a sense of urgency. like admiring the iridescent swirls of a soap bubble before it burst.

Or maybe I just liked the way the inner gate and deadman control lever felt in my hands. The sound of the motor clearing its throat at the top of the hoistway shaft before the car began to move.

The defiance of mechanisms refusing to break down long after they should have.

I guess you could say

I was smitten.

Which is why the Hollister Whitney was still in operation the year Lisa died. Despite its proximity to obsolescence, or maybe because of it, I had taken it upon myself to keep the elevator up to code.

Nothing too labor-intensive, just the light maintenance needed to ensure the electrical system kept working, the gears stayed balanced, the cables remained pliant.

Most of the work was weekly visual inspections. For larger jobs, I would recruit Bill or Tony to lend a hand, but those instances were surprisingly few.

It was as if the elevator was fighting to stay operational.

It went on this way for decades.

All that changed the first autumn without Lisa.

With nothing but an empty house awaiting me after work most nights, I began to spend more time at the Summerland. I found excuses to stick around after my shift.

At first, it was random projects I convinced myself needed immediate attention.

It wasn't long, however, before the Hollister Whitney became my singular focus. Keeping the elevator running no longer seemed enough.

I got it into my head that a more substantial renovation was long overdue. Not a superficial refurbishment appropriate for a freight elevator, but a full restoration back to a passenger car.

The more I tried to dismiss the notion as unrealistic, if not outright impossible, the more I circled back to it. Mr.
Ross, the building superintendent, would never be okay with such a thing.

Our maintenance budget was already stretched to its limits, keeping up with essential repairs. Taking on what amounted to a vanity project? No.

That was out of the question.

Still.

If I did the work on my own time, if I paid for materials out of pocket, who's going to stop me?

Ross and the rest of the management team were out the door by six.

The security staff, what would they care if they found me puttering around in some decrepit elevator at the end of a sparely used hallway?

And I could continue enlisting Bill and Tony when needed.

They knew I was struggling after Lisa's death, and they would understand what this project really was:

therapy.

The elevator's conversion to freight service had been an inelegant process that involved gutting the interior down to its metal frame and repaneling the walls and ceiling with 14-gauge steel, now dented in a dozen places and corroded along the rivet lines.

The floor was a mat of vulcanized rubber, permanently stained and so worn in places the sub-floor was visible.

Only a few components from its days as a passenger car remained. Dingy metal decoratives tarnished to a lackluster dark brown.

I started with these. The cast bronze push-button backplate.
The copper half-circle floor indicator. The chrome-plated direction indicator.
Its up-down arrows shaped like arrowheads.

I cleaned and polished them all before storing each in my office closet. Why these relics remained became a minor mystery.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized how out of place they were in a freight elevator. They should have been updated to something bland and utilitarian during the conversion.

It seemed likely someone before me had decided to save them. Someone who might have shared my appreciation for the elevator's storied past.

In six weeks, I had completed the superficial renovations and moved on to the motor cabin at the top of the hoistway on the 17th floor.

The control board I spent the next month refurbishing was a large slate slab festooned with fuses, motor terminals, call buttons, and relays.

In the upper left corner was a signed inspection log dating back to the elevator's commission.

For the last 30 years, the only names on the log sheets were mine, Tony's, and Bill's.

But many others had come before us. Samuel Fletcher, Emmanuel Gabel, Zachary Cooper, more than 20 in all.

Which one had felt the tug of nostalgia enough to leave the elevator's decoratives in place?

Which one had spared the Hollister Whitney from a completely graceless existence?

Or was it more than one?

Maybe I was just the latest in a line of admiring caretakers who had done more than the bare minimum to keep the elevator operational.

After six months, I'd reached a turning point in the restoration. The minor jobs were complete, and only the major ones remained.
Removing the 14-gauge paneling was more than a one-man project.

Tony and Bill agreed to come in on three successive weekends to help.

We rode the elevator down to the storage area with the metal sheets and pieces at our feet, watching the brick walls of the newly exposed shaft slide by.

The motor, no longer muffled by the paneling, a distinct rumble far above.

Can you imagine Ross's face if he saw this thing right now?

He'd just assume this is the way it always looked.

Bill and I snorted in agreement.

Taylor Ross was a fidgety man, more comfortable with Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations than hand drills and soldering irons. I had nothing against him.

His aversion to getting his hands dirty kept him in his office most of the time, which kept him out of our way.

So, as far as any of us knew, he'd never laid eyes on the Hollister Whitney.

The rebuild wasn't cheap. I wanted the restoration to be as accurate as possible.

That meant plenty of long nights googling specialty suppliers for the items I didn't have and couldn't fabricate on my own. Light holders, gate handles, a period chime mechanism.
They added up.

The filigreed marble flooring wasn't as costly as I had feared, although it did have to be backordered from a supplier upstate.

The walnut paneling, however, was another matter. Each piece would need to be custom-made to exact specifications, and the shipping costs alone were enough to make me lightheaded.

I spread the order out over several months to give myself time to acclimate to the spending. It wasn't as if I was splurging on anything else.
Lisa and I had always been frugal.

Sam was riding full scholarships through college, and the insurance policy death benefit paid out after my wife's passing had been sitting untouched in my savings account ever since.

Yeah, I caught Tony and Bill exchanging looks the first time I took delivery of one of the panels. I knew they were concerned about me paying out of pocket for the restoration, but they said nothing.

They knew trying to discourage me from completing the project would have been a waste of time.

I'm not sure when I started thinking of the Hollister Whitney as she.

Happened gradually.

Alone in the car, working in a sort of trance, I started catching myself talking out loud. At first, it was little more than a stream of thought mutterings.

You know, the kind of thing I'm sure everyone has engaged in from time to time. Then it became sort of a running commentary, my thoughts verbalized in an increasingly conversational tone.

I began articulating anything that came to mind. Rhetorical questions, daily observations, personal opinions, half-remembered song lyrics.

A constantly percolating monologue of unshaped and unrelated impressions.

It was only natural to want to direct these utterances to something with the ability to absorb them, and the elevator became a combination psychiatrist's couch and a confessional booth.

I talked, she listened, and the work progressed.

And so it was that on the first anniversary of my wife's passing, I was atop a stepladder in the Hollister-Whitney, installing a new chime for the floor indicator.

As I slid the semicircular indicator back into its housing above the inner gate, I cleared my throat, suddenly and absurdly self-conscious about the words I was about to say out loud.

Well,

it's been a year since Lisa, you know, her passing.

I shook my head and fished a screw out of my pocket.

She's buried in Michigan. Did I tell you that? Little town called Sturgis.
She wanted to lie at rest next to her parents, and I agreed.

Of course I agreed.

She could have told me she wanted to be buried on the moon, and I would have found a way to make it happen.

I slid the Phillips head from my tool belt, and as I gripped the screwdriver, my self-consciousness began to fade, the comforting and familiar feel of the tool in my hand recentering me.

But I have to tell you, I wish she was closer.

God,

I haven't visited her grave since the funeral.

Ah, God, there's something not right about that.

I.

I swallowed hard, taken aback and more than a little alarmed by the sudden tightness in my throat.

I miss her.

More than I ever thought I would.

Today.

I fell silent as I tightened the screws.

Today.

Well, today would have been a good day to visit her, is all.

But Michigan is a hell of a long way down the road.

I descended to the floor, closed the ladder, and propped it carefully against one of the newly repaneled walls.

I should plan a trip.

A summer visit before Sam starts her sophomore year.

Felt like wishful thinking even as I said it.

And a surge of guilty anger followed.

I could have visited her grave by now. Nothing was stopping me.
I had plenty of time off and a reliable car. Hell, I could fly to Fort Wayne and rent a car, be back the next day.

The only thing holding me back was my own.

The Hollister Whitney's outer door gently swung closed.

I'd recently oiled the hinges, and for a moment, I thought maybe some errant current from the hallway's air conditioning vent had set it in motion.

I made for the exit and three things happened in quick succession.

One, the inner gate clattered shut.

Two, I was overcome with a sense of vertigo so strong it dropped me to my knees with a soft groan of nausea.

Three, my newly installed chime dinged.

Even as I swallowed back a dry heave, I noticed the remarkable quality of the tone it produced, like the finest crystal goblet being tapped by a tuning fork.

After several seconds of staring at the marble floor, I struggled back to my feet.

What the hell?

I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth and took several deep breaths.

Did I just have an aneurysm?

I wiggled my fingers, touched my face. Everything seemed normal, and the disorientation was quickly fading.

But I was far from reassured and already assembling a list of symptoms I would be googling as soon as I got back to my office.

I pulled open the inner gate.

Had it really closed on its own?

I opened the outer door and stood, dumbfounded.

The hallway was gone.

The Summerland was gone.

Instead of bland beige walls and bargain basement linoleum floors, a soft green carpet of manicured grass swept out before me, interspersed with stately sugar maples and white oaks

and gravestones.

What?

I took a tentative step forward, my hand against the nearest wall to prop me up.

This wasn't real.

Couldn't be.

Not an aneurysm, then. I must have fallen off the ladder and hit my head.

I was most likely lying stupefied on the elevator floor. Maybe in an expanding pool of blood.

I needed to wake up, call for help, at the very least, resist the impulse to embrace this dream and lose myself in some final delusion.

Wake up.

Wake up!

I slapped myself across the face, hard.

That felt real enough.

My cheeks stung, but the view outside the elevator did not waver.

If anything, it grew more tangible. I could feel the late afternoon sun spilling across my face.
A light breeze stirred the air around me, carrying with it the scent of freshly cut grass.

A bee buzzed into the elevator cab, circled lazily, then flew out again.

I followed its progress as it passed the nearest markers.

And that's when I realized where I was.

I'd only been here once before, but I would never, could never forget the plot where Abigail and Jervis Montgomery were interred alongside their daughter, Lisa.

This was my wife's grave.

No.

I slowly extended my hand out through the elevator door.

This can't be real.

I steeled myself and stepped out onto the lawn.

The graves were about 10 feet in front of me.

Lisa's stone was still adorned with the three vases of plastic flowers Sam had left after the funeral.

They were toppled now and a bit sun-faded.

I knelt and writed them.

I touched the marker, still warm in the late afternoon sun.

I read the engraving.

Lisa St. James, beloved wife of Dan and mother of Samantha, taken too soon from us.

So fucking true.

I turned to look back over my shoulder.

The elevator car waited, a square opening rising from the ground.

Circling it, I discovered it could only be seen from the front.

From the back, it did not exist.

I walked through the space where it should have been and met no resistance.

Shit, was I trapped here?

I spun around, panicked, but there she was, the Hollister Whitney dutifully waiting waiting my return.

Stepping back inside, I ran my fingers down the wall.

Did...

did you do this?

I half expected the chime to sound an affirmation, but there was nothing.

Just the faintest hum of air from an elevator shaft 600 miles away.

Sound I might have imagined.

I was about to close the outer door. It still existed, at least from this side, when a notion struck.

I walked back to my wife's grave, picked up one of the vases, and brought it back with me.

Once I closed the outer door and inner gate, the elevator seemed almost normal, except for the quality of light filtering through the door's small window.

The slanted amber beams of approaching sunset.

Take me home, please.

As soon as I spoke, I knew the words had been carelessly chosen. I gripped one of the brass handrails and squeezed:

Take us

home,

and she did.

Our trips became almost routine.

I realize how absurd that sounds considering the circumstances, but it's true. Once I accepted the truth, I found it remarkably easy to embrace the situation.

The plastic flowers from my wife's grave were still on the kitchen table the morning after my visit, right where I had left them.

Undeniable proof that what I had experienced the day before had been real.

I'd made a wish, and the Hollister Whitney had heard it and granted it.

The next evening, when I returned to work on the elevator after my shift, I was nervous. The good kind of nervous, like someone about to give an acceptance speech at an awards ceremony.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I set to work removing the emergency callbox assembly.

It was the next project on my list. A polish and rewire that would take several hours.

I don't think I thanked you properly yesterday.

I paused,

expecting, what, a response?

Not quite. More like

an indication of attention, the impression that something was listening. I thought there might be a certain hushed expectancy in the cab, but I couldn't be sure.

I was shocked all. When those doors opened, I thought,

well,

I don't know what I thought.

I paused again, this time to emphasize what I was about to say.

So,

so let's make this official.

Thank you.

I emphasized the last words, speaking them slowly and precisely, then said once more,

thank

you.

Over the next year, we traveled to places I never thought I'd see.

I strolled under the Champs-Élysées. Paris was the first destination Lisa and I had planned to visit after our retirement.
And as I stared up at the stone arch, I fought back tears.

I picked a bouquet of krachiao and jasmine in Ayutuaia, Thailand.

I watched hippos wallowing on a muddy bank of the Langua in Zambia. The foothills of Everest, the terraces of Machu Picchu, the cafes of Vienna.
The entire world was just outside the elevator's door.

Never more than a few steps away.

Part of Holly's magic was that no matter where her doors opened, They never parted to reveal a stunned onlooker gaping as a room appeared out of thin air and a middle-aged man emerged.

We were always alone, or concealed enough that our arrival drew no attention.

I tried to research her more thoroughly, investigating her mechanics, where the materials had come from, who designed her, anything to explain her extraordinary qualities. I couldn't find much.

Her counterweight was a recycled cast iron from a steamship's boiler, the SS Choctaw, a Great Lakes freighter decommissioned in 1915.

Her guide rails were modified I-beams, a little unusual, but nothing that would raise eyebrows.

The motor was a three-phase GL-20, one of only a dozen produced by Hollister Whitney between 1916 and 1925.

It was overpowered for the elevator's rated weight capacity, and the motor housing was configured oddly, but with the outboard stand mounted below the motor shaft rather than adjacent to it.

But again, these relatively minor variations didn't seem to amount to anything monumental.

Was the magic an emergent quality, like consciousness? Something only present when a multitude of interdependent systems functioned in unison?

I'll probably never know.

I did find something that suggested the elevator's uniqueness was known to at least one other person soon after she became operational.

Under the inspection log in the motor cabin, there was a signature on the wall.

It was written in dark ink, and the wall itself was dark and usually in shadow, which is why I had missed it on my first inspection of the log.

The signer was Theodore Reddington, the elevator's installation supervisor. And under the name were the words, Dice bene legis motus aberrantus et omnis metas patere.

I had Google translated from the Latin. It said,

Learn well the laws of aberrant motion, and all destinations are within reach.

It took another six months to finish Holly's restoration. In all that time, only Tony and Bill were aware of what I was up to.

Or so I thought.

As I explained before, the elevator was at the end of a seldom-used hallway in a wing of the Summerland that was mostly storage and empty rooms.

Would-be office space so outdated it couldn't possibly attract tenants without a major overhaul.

What I didn't realize was that my evening departures, usually after eight, had attracted the attention of someone on the security staff who wasn't content acknowledging my apparent chronic overtime with a sympathetic nod and an occasional, another late one, Dan?

I was giving the elevator's back wall a light rub down of tongue oil to bring out the wood's luster when I heard an admiring whistle behind me.

So this is what you've been up to all this time.

I turned to find a tall, skinny security guard leaning into the car. I'd seen him a few times before.
He was relatively new, just three or four months into the job. And young.

Somewhere in his mid-20s, I guessed. I didn't know his name, and I scanned his shirt for a name tag.

Just finishing up, I said, instantly on the defensive.

I gave the wall another swipe with the oil-soaked rag and began gathering up the few items scattered around me.

What brings you to my little corner of the building?

I usually have the place to myself.

I was trying to act casual and unconcerned, but to my ears, the words sounded painfully artificial.

I looked again for his name tag, and this time he noticed.

Shifting his shoulders, he presented his chest more fully and pinched the tag above his right breast pocket, pulling it out slightly for me to read.

Dustin Alexander.

His lips turned up at either side. Not a smile, exactly.
More like a mild twitch. I noticed his forehead was sheened with sweat.
Although now, in the dead of winter, the hallway bordered on chilly.

Daniel St. James.

I extended the hand, not holding the rag. Dustin made to take it, but in the last instant, he brought his fist to his mouth as a coughing struck.

Sorry. The change in the weather is really fucking with my asthma.

Before I could offer a word or two of polite sympathy, he swept his hand out, indicating the elevator's carriage.

This is something else, dude. I've been watching you on the cameras.
Always coming back here with bundles under your arm. Figured you were up to something, but I thought you were stealing shit.

He coughed again into his fist and shrugged.

Copper wiring, maybe? Brass fittings? Maybe even toilet paper.

Dustin reached into his pocket and pulled out a small inhaler. With a practiced motion, he gave it a shake and took a hit from the mouthpiece.

Didn't think you were rebuilding an elevator.

Restoring.

Dustin nodded.

Restoring.

I don't know what it looked like before, but this thing is like the inside of a music box now.

Know what I mean?

Like there should be a wooden ballerina right right in the middle, turning on her toe while chiming music plays.

I did understand.

There was something undeniably precious and feminine about the car.

But I also detected a mildly contemptuous undertone in his comment. More sensed than heard.

I didn't think Dustin was a big fan of music boxes.

What's management think about this? Those guys are hardcore bottom-liners. I can't believe they sprung for frillifying an old freight elevator.

I took a step forward, but Dustin remained blocking the elevator doorway.

I noticed, with alarm, that his lips had darkened since his coughing fit, as if wine-stained, and his face was paler than before.

They've never complained.

I thought I was being clever. Dustin, however, saw through my evasiveness immediately.

He gave a knowing smile, a real smile this time, although I wouldn't have called it friendly, made his index finger and thumb into a gun, and pointed it at my chest.

Ah,

that explains the slinking around.

You're doing all this on the down low.

He tried to draw the final word out into a foghorn-like note. A mistake.
It sent him into another coughing spasm, this one more pronounced than before.

He took a hit from the inhaler, but the coughing did not subside. He shook the bottle again, made another attempt.
A puff sounded, but he shook his head.

Empty.

His coughing subsided into a struggled wheezing. To his credit, he didn't look panicked, merely annoyed.

Back up!

He reached into another pocket and removed a second inhaler.

I supposed I should have felt relief that he took such precautions, but the fact that he did suggested his asthma was more than a minor inconvenience.

He took a shot, and we both waited, eyes locked.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three.

Dustin inhaled, a labored, low hiss that petered out long before it should have.

I, on the other hand, wasn't breathing at all.

Fuck.

This one empty too?

He gave me a look, half apologetic, half terrified, and nodded.

Do you have another with you, maybe in your locker?

He shook his head. His face had become a study in contrasts with dark circles under his eyes and blue lips set in the white canvas of his cheeks.

He staggered forward and I waltzed him against the nearest wall, propping him upright. Where's the nearest place you can get what you need?

Apartment.

Your apartment?

He nodded hopelessly.

Cross town.

I didn't think as I yanked the inner gate closed. Dustin's wheezing was simultaneously weakening and growing increasingly desperate.

I was supporting more and more of his weight, and his legs began to give out.

Take us to Dustin's apartment. Hurry.

The outer door closed closed dutifully.

There was no sensation of movement, just a subtle change in the light filtering through the gate.

I'd long since grown accustomed to the inner ear disorientation of Holly's trips, and Dustin, but he was too far down the rabbit hole of his asthma attack to notice.

A moment later, the elevator's chime sounded, and I pulled the gate open to reveal the living room of an apartment. An uninspired cookie-cutter bread box of white walls and an open kitchen.

The sort of place typical of complexes built in the mid-80s. Dustin ogled the room as I dragged him out of the elevator, but he could say nothing.
Where's the inhaler?

I managed to position him over the threadbare couch before he collapsed onto it. Dustin pointed to the doorway.

The bathroom.

He nodded.

Medicine cabinet or closet or someplace else?

A moment later, I was back with what I prayed was a functional inhaler. I almost laughed when I saw the middle shelf with five unboxed inhalers lined up neatly next to each other.

Jesus, it was a miracle this kid made it past grade school. Dustin shook the bottle and took a hit.
The puffs sounded the same as the empty, but this one took immediate effect.

His lungs opened into a series of gulping breaths that grew deeper with each inhalation.

A few more squeezes on the inhaler, and he was breathing almost normally, although it was still rapid.

This is real?

He looked around his living room.

I'm not in some final hallucination before I die.

I was tempted to tell him that this was a hallucination. that he hadn't gone to work that day and was just waking after a night-long binger.

You're not dead.

He looked over his shoulder to where the front door should have been, the space now an opening into the elevator's cab.

Oh, please,

fuck.

I didn't want a confidante. Certainly not Dustin.
It felt like we were in a tawdry threesome.

One I had dragged Holly into. And I quickly came to resent the security guard's endless questions.
At first, they were all the queries I expected.

He wanted to know if I was some sort of genius inventor like Doc Brown. Instead of turning a DeLorean into a time machine, I'd turned an elevator into a teleporter.

I assured him, All I had done was restore. The magic had always been there.
But to call Holly a teleporter sounded like a slur, something akin to calling a nun abroad.

I didn't like his tone, and I grew increasingly uncomfortable with his assumption we were now in a brotherhood of some sort, sharing a secret that bonded us in a way nothing else could.

As far as I was concerned, the only connection between us was that we both worked in the same building. I would have been more than happy to leave it at that.

Dustin, however, well, he had different plans.

He wanted to know how the elevator worked, what he needed to do to make it take him where he wanted to go.

I bristled at the thought, but managed to sound neutral as I explained that I didn't make the Hollister Whitney do anything. I just asked nicely, and she took me there.

You shitting me?

We were in my office, a cramped room with a metal desk, a few filing cabinets, two uncomfortable chairs, a computer, still running Windows XP, and the accumulated detritus of a thousand repair projects.

You just say, please? You don't have to pull the lever or press a button or chant a spell or anything?

I shook my head, already knowing what his next question would be.

I just step in and tell it where I want to go.

I hesitated long enough for Dustin to answer his own question.

You don't think it will, do you?

He gave a brief snort and settled deeper into the chair.

I don't know.

Dude, relax.

He held up one hand, palm out. The look on your face.
It's like I just asked if your girlfriend would put out for me.

I'm just curious, is all.

You can't blame me for wanting to understand how this thing works.

If she wants to take you somewhere, she will. If she doesn't, she won't.

The conversation was bordering on an interrogation, and I wanted it to be over. I knew there was nothing I could do to stop the other man from attempting to use Holly to take him places.

I suppose I could have padlocked the inner gate, but... Dustin would have simply cut it off.

No,

there was nothing I could do to prevent him from trying. And, to be honest, a part of me wanted him to make the attempt.
To make the attempt and fail.

Magic isn't something that's dispensed upon demand. It's a gift that's got to be earned.
And this kid, he hadn't earned Holly's trust, not yet. And I doubted he ever would.

Well.

Dustin slapped his hands against his thighs in a let's get to work show of resolve. resolve.

Only one way to find out.

She took him nowhere. And I admit I took a tremendous amount of satisfaction in that.
Was my reaction based on jealousy and insecurity? Of course, but it changed nothing.

Holly had judged him unworthy, and that was enough for me.

But not for Dustin. When it became obvious he could not get the elevator to do his bidding, he turned back to me, this time with a proposal.

Do you know what we could do with this? We have an opportunity here. That elevator is the key to unlock any room.
Think about it, Dan. Any room.

We could have it take us to some douchebag billionaire's vault or a drug lord's stash, clean them out and be gone before they know what's happening shit we could waltz into fucking fort knox and walk out with enough gold to set us up for life for life

he pounded the desk with a fist

for life

he must have read something in my expression because his tone abruptly turned incredulous

you mean to tell me something like this never crossed your mind that it never once occurred to you to do more than just sightsee

i'd I'd never considered using Holly in such a way. It would have been a violation.
But I could see that Dustin wouldn't have believed my denial.

I also sensed that setting myself up on some higher moral plane would be a mistake. The security guard's incredulity already had a strong undertone of anger.

I didn't want to say anything that would set him off.

I'm not going to use her to steal.

Think of it like a redistribution of wealth.

We take from some undeserving piece of shit and give it to the little guys, like us. Or whoever you want to give it to.
Pick a charity. Make a big anonymous donation.

You could be the next Mother Teresa.

I told him no again, and he stormed out of my office.

Unfucking believable.

For the next few weeks, there was a tense equilibrium between us. He would drop by my office or find me on a job and make a half-hearted attempt at small talk.

But sooner or later, he would always turn the conversation back to taking advantage of our opportunity. At first, he cajoled.
When that didn't work, he pleaded.

Not all of us are sitting pretty, waiting for retirement to roll around. I've had to struggle for everything I have.
You think it's easy scraping by on a security guard's salary?

You know how much my asthma meds cost a month?

When that didn't work, he threatened to go to the building superintendent and tell him about my unauthorized elevator project.

I'd always assumed that sooner or later Ross would find out anyway. I wasn't concerned.

Considering the work hadn't cost the company a penny and that no building codes had been violated, I knew his reaction would be, at the very worst, a puzzled shrug and, at best, an admiring pat on the back.

Ross hated drama as much as I did. Nah, my job was secure.
Dustin's threat was empty, and he knew it.

I suppose what happened next was inevitable. It certainly didn't come as a surprise, but I've always been a glass half-empty sort.
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

I was in the elevator car mopping the marbled floor when Dustin appeared behind me. Before I could turn to face him, he grabbed me by the collar and slammed me up against the wall.

I tried to reason with you, man, but you're too much of a dumbass to know a good thing when you have it.

The floor was still wet. I didn't think it would take much to send him sliding backwards.
I began to struggle, dropping the mop and pushing against the wall with both hands.

That's when he brought the gun up to my face. He wasn't pointing it at me, not yet, but he made damn sure I could see it.

I'm not here to fuck around. I'm going to give you a list of places, and you're going to make this box take me there.

Or what? You'll shoot me? You won't be going anywhere if I'm dead.

See, that's part of your problem, Dan. You're always underestimating me.

I'm not going to shoot you.

He pointed the gun at the far wall.

I'm going to shoot her.

The sound of the shot was deafening in the cab. I instinctively brought my hands to my ears and turned to stare at the smoking bullet hole next to the button panel.

I expected blood to begin seeping from the wound, but it was just a round opening surrounded by splintered wood. Under the ringing in my ears, I thought I heard a groan of pain or despair.

Maybe it was my own.

Or maybe not.

It felt like I was outside myself, a distant future, me watching things unfold over a television screen salted with static.

Dustin pointed the gun at the floor, one arm still pinning me to the wall.

You want me to put another round in her? I'll turn this elevator into a block of fucking Swiss cheese. You know I will.

I did know.

I also knew that as far away as we were from the occupied section of the building, it was unlikely anyone had heard the gunfire.

What makes you think she'll listen to me?

Because if she doesn't, I'll do more of this.

His fist jabbed up, breaking my nose with a precise blow that didn't feel all that powerful.

I remember thinking, you really do see stars.

And feeling the blood beginning to soak my face when the inner gate closed on its own.

Dustin smiled.

Well, all right. Seems we're all in agreement now.

The security guard had been doing his homework over the prior week. The places we visited were all meticulously chosen.
After donning ski ski masks,

just put it on. It's not worth losing a couple of teeth over.

We went to three pawn shops, all in time zones that were currently in the small hours of the morning. We took handguns, diamond rings, gold chains, and power tools.

After that, he had Holly take us to several private residences, sprawling affairs that might be more accurately called compounds.

How Dustin knew about these places was a mystery I had no desire to solve. But the amount of loot we pilfered was enough to fill the elevator nearly to the ceiling.

The spree ended with trips to four pharmacies where he stole every inhaler he could find, as well as enough opiates to start a cartel.

The next to last trip was to Dustin's apartment.

We offloaded everything into his living room, then he was back to the summer.

When the doors opened, he grabbed my wrist before I could take a step.

Wallet.

I stared at him in genuine perplexity. He snapped his fingers in my face.

Wake up. Hand over your wallet.
Chop, chop.

I fished the wallet out of my back pocket and he snatched it from me.

Good boy.

Dustin planted his foot behind my leg and gave a push, sending me sprawling backward into the hallway.

I hit the floor hard enough to bounce my head off the linoleum, and the stars were back in force.

This is where I leave you, Dan. I can handle it from here.

Your travels are over. She'll never take you anywhere.

All I need is for this thing to take me to the first floor. I'm pretty sure I can figure out how to make that happen.

He eyed the dead man controls.

Pretty fucking basic.

Dustin opened my wallet and began thumbing through its contents. The gun drifted toward my chest almost absentmindedly.
After a moment, he let out a small whistle.

Who do we have here?

During the previous hour, I had floated through our escapades escapades in a dreamlike state that was close to a stupor.

Now, however, real fear clamped icy fingers around my throat. He pulled the photo from the sleeve and read the back.

Samantha's first day at Slippery Rock.

His lips turned down, and his head tilted in a not bad expression.

Your daughter, I presume?

Niece. She died in a car crash last year.

Hope you don't fuck like you lie.

I see enough of a resemblance to know she's your daughter.

Still, she's a tasty little dish.

Maybe after I finish with you, I'll pay her a visit.

Go to hell.

He raised the gun, leveled it at my chest. But before he could pull the trigger, the inner gate closed, knocking his hand aside.

The bullet took a chunk of plaster out of the wall behind me.

I want to think that in the last instant before the outer door swung closed, I saw a flicker of realization in his eyes.

But it was probably just wishful thinking.

Dustin never did strike me as the type who knew where he was headed.

There's not much left of the elevator's interior. The walnut paneling is a charred ruin.
Most of the metal decoratives are either melted or blackened. The marble flooring is cracked.

The gouges are the worst. Deep grooves clawed into the walls in groupings of three.

Holly was still smoking when her doors opened again.

I found the nearest fire extinguisher and doused every inch of her.

It's bad.

All my work burned away.

But beneath her ruin, her frame is sound.

She's still functional.

And I'm going to take care of her.

I've already removed most of the damage. I'll make her beautiful once more.

I can't begin to grasp what she's been through.

The pain

when I believe she does feel pain.

The horror, the loss,

the sacrifice she made for me.

Well, that's something I'll carry for the rest of my life.

But I take comfort in knowing she is still with

and that her suffering, hers and mine,

will be finite.

Love makes almost anything endurable.

Well, that's it for our summer hiatus. Back to the darkness.
But that's okay. My sun-drenched skin could use a break.
We'll be back next week, so until then, stay sleepless.

The No Sleep podcast is presented by Creative Reason Media. The musical score was composed by Brandon Boone.
Our production team is Phil Michalski, Jeff Clement, Jesse Cornett, and Claudius Moore.

Our editorial team is Jessica McAvoy, Ashley McInally, Ollie A. White, and Kristen Semito.

To discover how you can get even more sleepless horror stories from us, just visit sleepless.thenosleeppodcast.com to learn about the Sleepless Sanctuary.

Add-free, extended episodes each week, and lots of bonus content for the dark hours, all for one low monthly price.

On behalf of everyone at the NoSleep Podcast, we thank you for joining us in our darkness.

This audio program is Copyright 2025 by Creative Reason Media Inc., all rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors.

No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc.

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