S22 Ep16: NoSleep Podcast S22E16

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They're calling you

like me to call you back.

The phone is ringing.

A message from an unknown caller.

A voice unrecognizable.

Audio messages from the shadows.

But one message is clear.

And it says:

brace yourself for the No Sleep podcast.

It's relevant because it says to me that you find getting the truth to be more important than personal gain.

I'll give you the truth, the real truth, the full story.

You'll get to know all of it.

Here's the thing, though.

It's off the record.

You won't be allowed to print.

Hello, sleepless.

David Cummings here.

And who are you?

No, no, really.

Who are you?

I don't mean your name or what you do.

I'm not interested in your likes or dislikes, your social media accounts, or even your shoe size.

I'm curious about who you really are.

I think it's fair to say most of us go about our lives living and acting a certain way that doesn't truly reflect who we really are on the inside.

And why would we?

Deep, deep down, we all have some hidden traits or characteristics that we feel wouldn't be beneficial to share with others.

Therefore, we all live in a manner of untruth, right?

Or at least not being fully transparent.

Ah, but what is truth?

Is truth unchanging law?

We all have truths.

Are mine the same as yours?

I dare say that when a person we know is revealed to be completely different from what we originally thought, there can be a powerful emotional reaction to that.

And where there's powerful emotions, there can be intense fear.

And on this episode, we feature stories about people revealing their true selves and the secrets they have buried within.

And oftentimes, knowing the truth isn't the best thing.

Many years ago, some dudes said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

But for the people in these stories, they might feel that knowing the truth brought them anything but freedom.

Now, do you dare pick up your phone and listen to the voices calling to you?

In our first tale, we meet a husband who would do anything for his wife.

I mean, he'd do anything to his wife.

including finding a way to permanently end their marriage.

But in this tale, shared with us by author Amanda Liefeld, his best-laid plans don't turn out how he had hoped.

I guess they really were meant to be together.

Performing this tale are Atticus Jackson and Marie Westbrook.

So if you take the vows of marriage, make sure you pay attention to the line, till death do us part.

Although I was expecting it, the buzz of my phone sent a jolt of adrenaline down my spine.

I stiffened, sitting up straight in my narrow seat, no longer soothed by the familiar rattle of the train.

It took everything in my power not to open my phone and check the notification.

An alert from our home security system.

I already knew what what I'd see.

A man at the door of the house.

His identity obscured by dark baggy clothing.

The home security system had been my wife's idea.

As my business trips increased in both length and frequency, she started to feel nervous about being home alone all the time.

The extra layer of security helped her feel safe.

I mused on the irony on that for a moment.

Was it a little bit funny or was it just sad?

Huh.

As I tried not to imagine what was happening at home, a complex mix of emotions roiled through me.

Fear.

Things might not go according to plan.

Sorrow.

This was the end of an era that even I could admit was good as often as it was bad.

Regret.

That this was how it had to end.

Above all, relief.

Finally, finally.

All my meticulous planning was coming to fruition.

My wife had been a good companion for so many years.

I can admit that even now.

But as my career took off, it had become painfully clear that I was outgrowing her.

And as I traveled for work more and more, it quickly became apparent that there were plenty of truly invigorating options available to me.

She She was holding me back.

There was no getting around it.

And if I'm being brutally pragmatic about it, the insurance money would help with some other

expensive habits I'd picked up along the way.

Like any big change, this would be sad and painful.

But it was for the best.

Ultimately, I leaned back in my seat, repeating that thought to myself until every shred of self-doubt was eradicated.

It was tough to focus at first, but I managed to get through the trip successfully with the help of my usual distractions.

The journey home was...

significantly harder.

With each passing mile, the heavy knot of tension in my chest expanded painfully.

This was the most critical stage, the part of the plan that would make or break me.

Everything had to be flawless.

Finally, I was pulling into my driveway, mentally rehearsing each step I would need to take.

I visualized myself entering my ransacked home, imagined my frantic search through the house for my wife, pictured the desperate 911 call.

That was key.

It had to sound natural.

I tried to imagine any possible complications, contingency plans.

And then,

the one thing I had absolutely no plan for

happened.

My wife opened the door.

She stood in the doorway, beaming at me, cheerful as ever.

Very much

alive.

For a moment I froze, as though my brain was buffering.

No thoughts whatsoever.

Just the dull rush of my pulse pounding between my ears.

I could see her lips moving, her cheerful face twisting into a look of concern.

I shook my head, trying to force myself back to reality and just barely caught the tail end of her sentence.

Honey, are you okay?

I nodded, trying desperately to produce a normal facial expression.

Sorry, hon, just a little out of it.

Was a tough trip back.

She put on a familiar, sympathetic look that always drew a pulse of rage from me as though she had any idea what my life was like the stresses i faced i swallowed the feeling as she embraced me kissing my cheek she took my bag and held open the door ushering me into the house did you have a good weekend

i asked with some trepidation She turned, smiling brightly and nodded.

I ended up taking a last-minute trip to my sister's.

It was so nice to get to see her and spend some time with the boys.

Of course.

Of fucking course.

That woman and her two rowdy spawn never met a plan they couldn't ruin.

The first marital fracture that had sent me down my current path was seeing my wife pamper those little brats.

And knowing that soon enough, she would be begging to ruin our lives with some gremlins of our own.

I smiled warily, hoping it would seem genuine enough.

I gestured vaguely towards the stairs and turned, trudging away to our bedroom.

I'd probably have to come up with a convincing story of my arduous trip home to explain my behavior, but that was a problem for later.

Now.

To address the much more immediate problem.

What the hell had happened?

Why hadn't I heard from my accomplice?

I slumped back onto our bed, pulling out my phone and opening the home security app.

Since I hadn't checked the previous notification, it automatically jumped to that recording.

I watched as a tall man, who I knew only as Wolf underscore Tooth91,

strode up to the door and picked the lock, just as we discussed.

I clicked through to the next recording.

He strolled through the entryway and into the living room, looking furtively side to side like a predator tracking a scent.

Next recording.

He strolled down the hall, past the tasteless guest bathroom my wife was so fond of.

Next.

He stepped into the kitchen and froze.

staring like a deer in the headlights at something out of frame.

He stood completely still for so long that the recording timed out.

For a moment, I froze too,

the unpleasant pressure of my accelerating heart rate causing a powerful wave of nausea.

I forced myself to click the next recording.

On the screen, the man turned, a panicked look on his face, and tried to run the way he had come.

A large dark shape launched after him, disappearing from the screen as quickly as it had appeared.

I scrolled back and forth through the few frames that the blurry shape was visible, trying to discern any details I could make sense of.

I finally managed to pause with the creature in the center of the screen.

Between the speed of the creature and the low resolution of the camera, it was hard to make out anything conclusive.

But the shape was large and vaguely canine.

The shape of the head could have been a coyote, but the proportions were just wrong.

The limbs were long and lean,

and the neck was almost snake-like.

It seemed...

big.

Maybe it was a trick of the light, or some quirk with the angle of the camera, but I had a feeling that when my co-conspirator had first come across it,

It hadn't looked up at him.

It had looked him dead in the eye.

I clicked through to the next clip, dreading seeing what had happened next.

But what flashed across the screen was my wife arriving home, suitcase in toe.

Puzzled, I clicked through again.

Another shot of my wife, busy with something in the kitchen.

I clicked back to the clip of the creature, as confused as I was scared.

It had to have gone somewhere.

When the realization hit, a heavy pit of horror opened in the bottom of my chest.

Of course,

it went somewhere.

There was only one place it could have gone.

I jumped off the bed, hurrying downstairs as quietly as I could, hoping not to alert my wife.

I had never been nervous to enter the basement before.

This time, Once I'd pulled open the awkwardly heavy door, I stood at the top of the stairs, feeling like a little kid afraid of the dark.

Eventually, I made my way down the stairs, wincing at every creak of the old wood.

Some part of me felt a little silly.

There would be nothing here.

This had to be some sort of prank.

A Wolf Tooth 91 messing with me before making off with my hard-earned cash.

But there he was,

lying motionless on the dusty cement floor.

There was no obvious injuries, but as I got closer, I could see that he was pale and his chest was eerily still.

I reached down, about to check his pulse, and then stopped, contemplating fingerprints.

There were two options here, and I would need to choose carefully.

And quickly.

I could rush upstairs, call 911, share with my wife the trauma of finding a dead stranger in our basement.

This option was so tempting.

Everything could just be over.

But

I had no way of knowing how well my partner in crime had covered his tracks.

If he had been sloppy, I'd be screwed.

The other option...

Deal with the body myself.

Not easy, not pleasant, and no plausible deniability if I made a single mistake.

But it was the option that left me with the most control.

I knew I could rely on myself to do everything right.

The creak of my wife's footsteps on the floor above me forced my hand.

I heaved the man's body onto its side, rolling it towards a dark corner crammed full of heavy-duty storage bins from when we had moved in.

I braced myself for the stench, the feel of rot beneath my hands.

But the body was stiff and cool and emanated only a faintly chemical smell.

I shook my head, trying not to give it too much thought.

One thing at a time.

I managed to stuff him into one of the larger bins, panting with the exertion.

I stood up, taking a minute to let my strained muscles rest while I looked around the basement.

No trace of any sort of animal.

No scratches or footprints.

Nothing disrupted.

No sign of how it had left.

It clearly wasn't here, so why was there no footage of it leaving?

I opened the app again, having a vague memory of reading something during the setup process.

Yeah,

there it was.

AI-powered detection.

It detects human shapes to prevent false alarms from animals.

Well, as far as the cameras were concerned, this thing didn't exist.

It could come and go undetected.

A knot of tension wound itself tightly around my core, filling me with an unshakable sense of dread.

I had to deal with both a corpse and some sort of intruding animal.

My life was supposed to be getting easier, yet here I stood on a wobbly tightrope over two steaming piles of shit.

Was it better to go to jail or get eaten by a monster?

The thought was so ridiculous that I let out a weak, strangled laugh as I made my way back up the stairs.

Maybe I'd get lucky and the monster would take care of my wife for me.

I let out another laugh, a hysterical giggle infused with delirious panic.

The rest of the day, my mantra was one thing at a time.

Normal conversation with my wife?

Check.

Eat dinner without staring ominously at the basement door, check.

Get ready for bed without running screaming into the night.

Check.

Sleep?

Check.

As if.

I laid awake staring at the ceiling, jumping at every creak of the old house settling around me.

In the morning, my wife would head into town for her weekly errands, leaving me alone to deal with what was left of my accomplice.

That problem, I could solve.

The animal, though,

I didn't know.

Burn the house down?

Flee the country?

Buy a bear trap?

Oh, God.

One thing at a time.

The morning crept by, agonizingly slow.

Finally, after what felt like hours of meaningless chit-chat and irritating procrastination, I watched my wife's car pull out of the driveway, leaving me to start my grim task.

I gathered the necessary supplies, gloves, heavy-duty garbage bags, an old saw from the back of the shed that wouldn't be missed.

I trudged down the steps into the basement.

and my heart dropped.

The basement was in a complete state of disarray.

The bins had been destroyed, and thick heavy shreds of plastic littered the floor.

My carefully constructed shelving lay in a sad heap on the floor, along with the rough chunks of stone that had been torn from the foundation.

The body

was

not here.

This...

This might work out for me.

My wife was sharp enough to notice a body eventually, but some new shelves and bins?

I could explain that.

I looked around carefully, starting to feel optimistic for the first time in days.

But something had caught my eye.

Something off about the shadowy corner of the room where my shelves used to stand.

Hidden in the shadows, there was a rough, narrow hole in the foundation.

A tunnel, or

some sort of burrow?

I tapped erratically at the screen of my phone, fumbling to turn on the flashlight.

I crouched down, using the light to illuminate the rough passageway.

A few feet down the narrow tunnel, I could see the rubber soles of a pair of sneakers.

As I watched, the left foot twitched, followed by the right, as though the owner of the feet was slowly rousing from a deep sleep.

I flicked off the light, a wave of nausea rising through me.

This was too much.

Too much for me to deal with.

I didn't deserve to have to deal with this.

I didn't want to deal with this.

I had planned everything so carefully.

Everything neatly controlled so I could finally have the life I deserve.

This wasn't right.

None of this was right.

Uh, what happened down here?

At the sound of my wife's voice from behind me, I jumped up with an undignified yelp.

I whirled to face her, stammering.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

She stood just outside the dim glow above my head, her form a dark silhouette against the light from the top of the stairs.

From behind me, a soft groan of pain and confusion emanated from the mouth of the tunnel.

She cocked her head to the side, and I could imagine the look of concern and confusion on her face.

I stammered, grasping at any plausible explanation.

I dum sort of weird hole here.

Do you do you um

do you know about this one?

Have you seen this hole?

She cocked her head further, her neck bending strangely.

She shrugged nonchalantly, and then her shoulders kept shrugging upwards, her Her torso seeming to stretch and elongate.

Bile rose in my throat, and my pulse rushed through my skull, threatening unconsciousness.

Her long neck twisted to the side, and the light from behind revealed her profile.

Where my wife's face should have been, there was a long, canine snout, jaw lolling open in the predatory grin of a fox in the doorway of an unguarded henhouse.

The narrow jaw moved, and my wife's voice poured out sweet as honey.

After all these years,

you finally sent me the perfect gift.

I need it somewhere safe to keep it.

I'm not nearly done with him yet.

She took an awkward heavy step towards me, like a dog propped up on its hind legs.

And I heard the unmistakable scrape of claws against concrete.

I took a step back instinctively, pressing my back against the cool stone behind me.

The jaws opened wider, and my wife's laugh came rushing out, morphing into the hair-raising cackle of a coyote.

What are you so scared of, silly?

I'm not going to kill you.

What kind of monster would kill their spouse?

The monstrous head quirked to the right in a sharp little jerk.

Oh god, the dorky wink I had seen a thousand times before.

She dropped to all fours roughly, as though she could no longer maintain the bipedal stance.

A canine form loomed before me, still shrouded in darkness.

I leaned my head back against the cold stone behind me, pressing my eyes shut and trying to block out the thought of the sharp teeth that had caught the light as the jaws moved again.

You're all mine, till death to us part.

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Suffs, the new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

When you live in a seaside town, you get used to the way the water draws people to it.

But beyond the fishing and swimming, the water can hold dark secrets.

And as we'll learn in this tale, shared with us by author Christian Riley, a man named Sully tells us how one fateful event has shaped the lives of many people in the town.

An event that is the darkest of secrets.

Performing this tale are Mike Delgadio, Alante Baraket, Aaron Lillis, Mary Murphy, and Marie Westbrook.

So listen closely to this story as we'll find ourselves getting to the bottom of Port Hollow.

A confounding twist is that every time Chester makes an appearance, my dreams alert me.

A few nights before he shows up, in my sleep, I see his bloated face on the day they pulled his body out of the harbor.

Looked like blue cheese tangled in strands of black seaweed.

Chester had this long hair.

He He was one of those, a listener of hard music that went well with hard liquor.

He was 15 or 16 when he died, so maybe he'd sample the old bottle.

Not that it matters any.

The day I met the boy, I knew there was something odd.

A transplant from a bigger city, halfway through the school year, and looking like he did.

It was a while before he made any friends, and the ones he did make were those D ⁇ D nerds nobody paid attention to.

Mr.

Hah assigned Chester the empty seat next to mine in our junior English class.

He was a reader, a poet of sorts.

He would ask the questions nobody even thought about, let alone understood.

He was an artist, too, and he would draw these wild pictures in his notebook while Mr.

Hahn lectured.

Pictures not of the sea, but from the sea.

That's the best I can describe them.

Extremely detailed illustrations of creatures and mermaids and and fish and other things.

Crabs' viewpoint of a shoreline with kelp.

A seagull's perspective of a rocky outcrop pounded by waves.

He'd pencil anything and everything related to the old mistress in his notebook.

And there was something about that that I couldn't figure.

Chester had come from the city, but was now one of us, or trying to be.

And it was like, Incidentally, he'd been here all along.

His first mistake, not counting the long hair, was a comment he made to Bud one morning, after my friend called him a loner stoner.

You're wrong, man.

I get stoned with your mom all the time.

Chester paid for that one.

See, Bud was a wrestler.

I watched as he pinned the boy to the ground and shoved his nose into a rock, cutting the bridge of his nose.

Chester didn't say anything.

He just took it.

Took it all.

And then Bud finally got bored, and so we moved on.

But the next day, the picture Chester had drawn in his notebook was one of this hideous giant octopus pulling Bud apart, limb by limb.

And then the look he'd drawn on Bud's face.

I'd never imagined seeing my friend so terrified.

But Chester, he nailed it.

And how I know is because a few months later, I witnessed it.

I saw that look of terror on Bud.

You see, Port Hollow has this fishing element that's just impossible to ignore.

Everyone here participates in the activity, whether for commercial reasons or subsistence.

A person may not own a car or truck in this town, but it seems everyone has at least one boat.

Now, Bud had two.

An unreliable trawler that his dad had given him to fix up, and a ready-to-go hard charge and skiff, which we used for fishing two or three days a week.

My friend was a natural with handling that skiff through the waves and the swells.

Maybe that had to do with his wrestling experience.

I don't know.

And he knew where to fish.

I mean, we all did, but it seemed that Bud had an extra sense on the matter.

We never came home empty-handed, man.

Rockfish, halibut, salmon.

We caught them all thanks to him.

Even on the day Bud lost his life, we had fish in the boat.

Two 15-pound kings were sitting in the middle of the skiff.

leaking blood and eggs as one of them was a female ready to spawn.

So the skiff was slippery as hell because of the mess.

And coming around a rocky point, we hit a deadhead, a log floating just below the surface.

I was driving at the time, and Bud was arranging tackle, and that log, man, it sent us five feet into the air.

Happened so fast.

Bud came down hard and lost his footing on all that salmon gore and then went overboard.

Went between the rudder blades and that floating log, man.

I think Bud was dead long before I managed to fish him out.

But he felt something.

He must have known his fate.

Because when I finally pulled his body into the skiff, that's when I saw that horrifying look on his face.

It was as if Bud had been scared to death.

Like I said, Chester had nailed it.

Lost another one, we did.

My God,

that's true this month.

It was Miller's boy, the redhead.

What a shame.

What a tragic shame.

Ruth and Betty, old ladies whom I've known my entire life, they're sitting two tables away from me sipping tea.

They're as old as Redwood, and it's a wonder they're still alive.

I mean, I'm getting up there myself.

I guess you could say I'm sort of retired now, although I do a little fishing and construction on the side.

A parent should never live to see their child die.

Especially their only child.

That comment stabs me in the heart.

Ruth shakes her head, and then eventually they both get up to leave.

I sip coffee, and I watch him amble outside, and my gaze finds the harbor lying out there, blue as a sky, calm as glass.

The most patient thing in the world is the sea, even when she's having a fit.

But no tantrums on this morning.

She's peacefully asleep, lying in wait.

Miller's boy was named Derek, and he died two days ago, while spearfishing in the harbor.

It's not clear what the cause of death was, as his body was found whole, so no shark bite or boat and accident.

But he died nonetheless, and that's all that matters.

And of course, the night before this happened, Chester paid me a visit.

Is it time, Sully?

When is it your time?

He often says this to me.

And I know what it means and what he wants.

He took a five-year-old girl two weeks ago.

I can't remember her name, but she got sucked up by a sneaker wave right in front of her dad while they were beachcomb in the sand.

Poor Bastard almost died himself, rushing out into the water to save her.

They never did find that girl, but I know where she is.

Chester showed me the following night.

She's tangled up in a nest of kelp 20 fathoms below.

Shrimp and crabs crawling all over her, feasting away.

It was another one of his drawings, there in my mind yet clear as day.

And yes, like Bud, she looked terrified.

Anytime now, Sully.

Shortly after Bud died, I got to thinking.

I got to thinking about that picture Chester had drawn and how he must have known something would happen to my friend.

Or maybe he made it happen.

I wasn't sure back then.

Not as sure as I am now.

But I got to thinking, thinking hard, so much that it almost tore me apart.

Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore.

How'd you know?

I asked Chester one day after English class.

Hmm?

Know what?

How'd you know Bud was going to die?

And how'd you know about his face?

The face he made when he died.

Then that poet in him came out.

See the sea the way I see it.

And you would see, Sully.

You You did know, didn't you?

Chester smiled.

So then you killed my friend.

You killed Bud Lewis.

And that was the end of our conversation.

Presently, it's a cold morning, crisp and clear, the blue November sky reflecting off the harbor, as I'd mentioned.

I'm walking the boardwalk now.

coffee in hand, puzzling myself over the details and nuances spread out over the years.

I've had an important job to do most of my life, one I haven't been able to get started.

After that little girl and then the miller's boy, you'd think the time has come.

What am I waiting for, right?

It'll rain soon, despite the beauty of this day, tomorrow or the day after, soon.

Then we'll have a gray landscape covering the land and the sea.

with a huge fog bank resting firmly over us, like a giant tombstone settling in.

I walk some more, past the docks and the firehouse, past the old church, two bars, the post office,

and then the liquor store.

Here's where I stop.

Afternoon, Sally.

Hey, Fred, how's the liquor business doing?

Uh, you know.

I pick out my purchases, the daily paper, bottle of jack, package of Twinkies.

and then leave the store and head back home.

Later, friend.

Fred's voice fades in the distance, but my mind is captured, so I don't respond.

All I see and all I think about is the young picture of that red-headed boy on the front cover of the newspaper.

I barely make it home.

My hands are trembling, and there's a shake in my knees.

Breathing is difficult again for whatever reason.

I sit down at the kitchen table and crack open the whiskey and take a quick swig.

It's a good taste.

A lonely taste.

A wipe-the-slate clean taste.

I'll have this bottle finished by noon, and that's fine by me, because then I'll forget the words old Betty and Ruth had mumbled.

Two weeks before my 17th birthday, I murdered Chester.

Took me a while to get things figured out, how to plan the killing and whatnot, without getting caught.

Two weeks for the planning and that same amount of time to drum up my nerves.

I knew where the boy lived, and I knew that he walked home from the YMCA every Thursday night.

He went there every day after school, and his dad picked him up after work.

Every day except Thursdays.

The old man bowled on that night, so Chester had to walk.

And I knew the path Chester took on his way home.

Straight down Fifth Street, left at the J Mart, then on the boardwalk along the harbor.

That's where I got him.

Right at the library and then four more blocks to his house.

I was sitting on a bench when Chester came by.

I had a beanie on and my hood pulled up.

I looked like a bum, unrecognizable and unapproachable.

I was nervous as hell.

Of course I was.

My hands were like wet tortillas, and my vision was a thousand-yard tunnel.

Chester was taking his time when he came past, his gaze out at the boats and the sea.

The timing was perfect.

There was nobody around.

Dusk was settling in, bringing the darkness of the impending night.

My skiff was docked below the boardwalk a mere 10 feet from where I was sitting.

When Chester walked by, I clubbed him like a baby seal right across the back of the head with tire iron.

It worked, just like the movies.

I caught his limp body before it hit the ground.

Then, I dragged Chester over to the edge of the boardwalk and dropped him 20 feet onto the deck of my skiff.

It was dark by the time I took him out to sea.

I didn't go that far, just enough to get into deep waters.

Once I got there, he started coming to.

What?

Why?

He was broken, I could tell.

Something in his neck, keeping his head cocked at a weird angle, and he was breathing rapidly, short breaths.

I picked up the tire iron and looked at him.

You killed my friend, that's why.

Somehow, you did it.

And then I hit Chester right on the forehead, just like I did with the fish I'd caught.

One hard blow, followed by a hollow, crunching sound, and Chester was out.

Dead?

I don't know, but out.

Then I tossed him overboard and went back home, knowing that between his injuries and the coldness of the water and the distance from the shore, there was no hope left for that boy.

Come,

see the sea, Sully.

I wake suddenly.

The clock says 9.47 p.m.

There's a bell clanging in the distance.

One of the boats moored not far away.

I hear a car chug by on the street outside.

And my ears, tooling with engines, tell me there's something wrong with that vehicle's intake.

As if that matters any.

Which it doesn't.

Come, see the sea.

I blink my eyes and get up off the couch.

The room swirls like ice in a cocktail glass.

I stagger to the bathroom and do the business, remembering more than I care to think about.

You're taking children again, I say into the darkness of the room.

Why?

You know why.

You're ruthless, evil, and ruthless.

Am I?

The hell you aren't.

And what about you, Sully?

Where's the rub, the soft spot, the nerve-ending, the crux crux of the matter?

I ignore the voice in my head, the ghostly murmurs of a boy who's been dead for so long.

I ignore Chester, then walk into the kitchen and read the clock.

It's now 10, 10 p.m., and I'm wide awake.

That is one horrifying combination.

With no choice other than to go insane, I rummage through my house looking for something to dull the world.

Because I know it won't be long before I see their faces again.

There's a bottle of red wine in my bedroom, and it'll have to do.

I pop the cork and take a swig.

My thoughts are a cruel echo of my sorry life.

Three more swigs, and I'm trapped under ice now.

I can see myself peering up with bulging eyes, gasping for air.

That horrified look on my face, pounding desperately from under a frozen tomb.

And all this while, the dead people of my life blindly skate over my freezen soul.

A year after Chester's death, I took his first payment.

I had a terrible dream about my high school PE teacher.

In it, Mr.

Jenkins was panicking.

That old, terrified look on his face, same as Bud's.

He was trying to swim up from the deep water, but he was way down there.

the pressure keeping him.

There was no hope for the coach, but he knew it.

I saw the horror on his face, and I watched that horror fade into the blackness as his body slowly sank further into the depths.

And the next day, they found him floating below the pier.

The news was a shock to my system.

I immediately thought of Bud and a Chester, but it was too soon for me to make the real connection, you know?

Too soon for me to pin the deed on Chester.

He was dead after all.

Then, several months later, Floyd Harris's skiff capsized while he was out fishing for halibut.

They found him washed up on shore 10 miles south of Port Hollow, his body wrapped in kelp, on his back, arms laid out as if he were on a cross.

His eyes had been plucked out and eaten by critters.

But the empty black sockets on his dead face stared up at the heavens in that familiar look of dread.

I still didn't make the connection.

I didn't want to.

People die, and the sea gets them all the time.

But then I had another unsettling dream, shortly after Floyd had bought the farm.

Can you see now, Sully?

I figured it was my guilty conscience playing tricks on me, forcing the recent death by sea as something that had to do with my past.

I dismissed the dream and moved on.

And life moved as well.

I met a pretty woman, and we got married.

Her name was Sarah.

We fell madly in love, and our wedding was on a beautiful summer day up near the old old lighthouse.

We rented a small cottage a few miles north of town and I kept busy commercial fishing and Sarah worked at the library and had plans to get a degree in accounting, but she never got around to it.

Life kept us busy.

Too busy to pursue future goals, so it seemed.

Within three years of our marriage, she was pregnant.

But damn it if Chester didn't get him.

And damn if he didn't foreshadow the event in a dream the night before it all happened.

The dream was of my wife flying passenger in a small Cessna, soaring over the islands of southeast Alaska.

There were troubles.

The pilot kept fighting with the plane, kept trying to keep it in the air.

Something's got it, he kept saying, but in Chester's voice, something's pulling her down.

Then my dream zoomed in on Sarah's face.

She was terrified.

My wife and unborn.

They were both terrified.

And the plane took a long, slow dive down through the clouds in the sky, all the way until it hit the Pacific.

I woke from the dream and reached for Sarah lying next to me.

And I held her tenderly, fearful of what may come.

I had finally made the connection.

At least, I thought I did.

But I wasn't fully convinced until my wife died later that morning.

You're selfish, Sully.

Most selfish.

Now, how can I argue with that?

I know he's right.

Of course I'm right.

I awake to a brand new day.

The wine is worn off, and I'm sober enough to recognize it's almost noon.

There's thunder in the background, and the steady drone of rain outside on my roof is all I hear.

Perhaps this is the day.

The

day.

I stagger out of bed and slowly get myself going.

Like always, I got no plans, such as the life I live now.

I'm nothing but a lonely bum living on my meager pension and inheritance, contributing nothing to society or myself.

It's worse than that.

With every day I continue to breathe, it seems Chester's punch clock keeps ticking.

This has to be the day.

It is Sully.

It most certainly is sully.

I get myself together, put on my raincoat, then head outside.

I fire up a smoke, then start walking, figuring out pay another visit to Fred.

On this day, how can I not?

I get three blocks down the rainy street when I hear the low rumble of thunder.

They died 30 years ago, but almost every day I see their faces.

And I see all the others, too.

The many souls who've been swallowed up by the sea.

Because Chester's happy to remind me of my mistake.

But it's the faces of my wife and unborn child that haunt me the most.

There was nothing as dramatic as a crashing plane.

I don't know how they died, in fact, because my wife was never found.

Well, she was never retrieved, I should say.

But I know where she went.

A solo excursion in her kayak later that day.

The last day I woke up next to her.

And then something happened.

Something unknown.

A mystery.

Like so many others, she just...

disappeared.

I know Chester got Sarah.

His tentacles reaching up and grappling the kayak, spinning it, pulling it down.

And he took her and my only child down there into the coral and the kelp.

Worst of all, I often imagine they're still alive, howling in silent horror among all that black water, waiting for me to come join them.

Hell, maybe they are.

I make it to the liquor store and stop outside.

Fred's in there arranging bottles, tidying things up.

Oh, no, not today, Sully.

You have to be alive.

I have to be alive.

Yes, alive.

I blink, then turn around and keep going.

I walk through the rain and wet streets, feeling the coldness of the approaching winter seep into my bones.

My stomach churns at the thought of all the people he's taken.

And...

My heart aches at the thought of my family stuck down in that watery grave for so many cold years without me.

Quit thinking, Sully.

Just get on with it.

I walk the boardwalk until I get to my slip, then climb into my skiff.

There's an inch of water in the boat, so I start bailing using an old coffee can I keep in there.

I work at it for a few minutes, knowing it doesn't need to be perfect.

Just enough to get me into the deepest part of the bay.

Satisfied now, I fire up the engine, as well as another smoke, and then let things idle.

Where should I go?

Which spot should I stop the boat, tie the anchor to my waist, then jump in at?

Gotta be at least 20 fathoms for good measure.

Let's do it already.

Hold your horses.

I tie off from the dock and putter out.

It's a cold and wet afternoon, but it's light enough, which gets me thinking again.

Maybe I should wait until night.

Someone might see me.

Don't be ridiculous.

It is ridiculous.

I agree.

A lifetime of living here, I know this ocean.

I get 100 yards north of Patrick's Cove, and I'm in deep water now.

Here's where Bud and I caught our first 80-pound haliban three days after my 15th birthday.

It took both of us working frantically to get that thing into the skiff and then tied head to tail before it could wallop us into oblivion.

Yeah,

this place will work just fine.

I cut the engine, then look around.

I don't see anything.

Anyone.

So I unsecure the anchor from the stern and start wrapping it around my waist.

I tie a good knot and then hear what I think is thunder in the distance.

Blinking my eyes, I look at the horizon and then the sky.

All the godly nature surrounding me.

Oh, this is it, Sully, you old bastard.

Chester's Redemption Day.

I put my hands on the rail and look over.

I wonder what it feels like to drown.

They say it's cold.

I heard it's suffocating, and that I'll panic something awful.

But not for long.

Should I hold my breath on the way down?

Or maybe just get things over with?

By sucking all that green, salty sea right into my lungs.

There's only one way to find out.

Yep.

One way to find out.

All right, then, asshole.

Here goes nothing.

I stand up straight and take one last look at the sky and the world before I...

Help me, please!

I pause and look around.

Did I just hear something?

Please, someone!

Over there, 100 yards off the starboard side, I see a turquoise kayak bobbing erratically with the waves.

A lone kayak.

With nobody in it.

Help!

Oh,

but there's a person 20 yards away struggling in the kelp.

I don't think, I just do.

In seconds, the anchor is off my waist and the engine is back on.

I take hold of the motor and spin the skiff towards the person in the water, then open it up.

I get there in less than a minute.

Help me!

Please, help me!

I cut the engine.

Don't worry.

I'm right here.

I'll help you.

She's caught up in the kelp real good, with lengths of seaweed wrapped around her neck and arms.

In her struggle to get free, she's got her life life preserver half off.

And yes, she looks terrified.

Thank God.

I reach over and get a hold of her arm and then start cutting away the kelp with my knife.

It doesn't take long to free her, and then I pull her up and into the skiff.

She lets out a heavy sigh and just melts right there in front of me.

All her tension and fear sliding back into the sea.

What happened?

She shakes her head.

I have no idea.

I just...

just got pulled over.

I don't know.

Maybe something flipped my kayak.

I don't know.

I nod my head.

Well, you're safe now.

Don't you worry, ma'am.

She looks at me, and all the terror on her face has been replaced with hope and relief.

And with that, I see a world of possibilities open up.

I'm Liza.

Good afternoon, Liza.

You're new in town, aren't you?

Moved here last fall, am I right?

That's me.

And what's your name?

I'm Sully.

I start the engine and turn the skiff.

Let's go get your kayak, Liza.

She scoots closer to the middle of the skiff.

Sully.

She smiles.

My hero, Sully from the sea.

Once we're back at the dock, I help her out of the boat and set her kayak next to her.

She's looking at me graciously.

Thin smile on her face.

She's alone in life.

I know this.

I've heard the rumors.

Well, thank you, Sully.

I can hear the pause in her voice.

A simple, let's get together sometime, shall we?

Would be the thing for me to say right now.

And I don't believe she'd turn me down.

But as I look up at her, with those very words now sitting on my tongue, her face twists into a sudden maze of agony and ghastly horror.

For a brief, transient second, I witness a host of shrimp and maggots and sea lice squirm in and around the holes on her face, in her mouth and out of her eyes, while her ears sprout black coral and her hair swirls up in a flux of greasy kelp.

Then a quick blink and the terror of this show vanishes.

What are you doing later this evening?

I hear it exactly as it is.

An invitation.

I, uh...

Hesitating, I glance over my shoulder and get a peek at the ocean beyond.

I'm sorry.

I sit down once again in my skiff.

But there's something I just have to do.

Then I turn the engine on and head out to sea for the last time.

Not saying goodbye, not even looking back as I leave.

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When we think about truth, we can't help but think about religion and how certain ones claim to be the one true faith.

Kind of like that, truth will set you free, guy.

But some have found truths in more obscure spiritual pursuits.

And in this tale, shared with us by author Joe Prosset, we discover a house of worship unlike any other, one offering a unique kind of communion.

Performing this tale are Jesse Cornette and Sarah Thomas.

So let's join the service and begin our worship with the saints of Skid Row.

Come in from the cold, my brothers and sisters.

Welcome.

Welcome to the house of God.

You who are weak and heavy laden, I beseech thee, come

and sit.

For the Lord said, Bring the homeless, the jobless, the addicted, the rejected, and the exiled unto me.

And so today, all of us modern-day lepers will be healed.

We've been cast aside from the world's feasts.

So come to mine.

We'll make our own table and upon it set the most satisfying meal.

Listen Listen to me, my scabs and scrubs and drooks, and I will tell you how we came to this place.

I am not the beginning nor the end,

but I was here when it first began.

A young girl was standing where I am now, at the front of this abandoned basement of an animal shelter.

The light was dim.

The air was hot and thick from the smoldering fires.

Smoke crept from the open mouths of the furnaces then, just as it does now.

There were rows and rows of rusted and bent folding chairs salvaged from the trash, just like those who would occupy them.

This pulpit was up here at the front.

exactly where it stands now.

The altar, a cardboard box standing upside down on its open top, just as I'd found it that day.

And upon it stood this child's pretty pink plastic tea set.

Tiny cups and saucers and a pot with flowers printed on its belly sat ready for service.

She, Dorothea, our Messiah, stood behind this pulpit on a milk crate.

She had to step up before seeing over the edge.

This place looked nothing like the holy grounds it is.

Even now, it doesn't look like a sacred place to the uninitiated.

I was at the back entrance, not yet with enough courage to come before her, to join the feast, to sup, and receive her grace.

But I watched from the back.

I won't be honest honest with you, my fellow nameless, placeless, unseen, sick, and insane wandering hordes.

I didn't believe my eyes when I first came here.

Dorothea was such a diminutive and feral thing.

What I walked into,

it should have been a nice little tea party.

Her at a small table surrounded by her stuffed animals, pouring tea for her guests.

And I wanted to be that loving father who wouldn't be too manly to sit with his daughter and put on a big sun hat and sip water from a plastic cup to make her happy.

I would have killed for that opportunity to provide her that comfort.

But we do things differently in this community.

She had much larger ambitions in mind.

But just like a father, I was was captivated by her magic, by the pouring of the enchanted tea.

She was dressed in her Sunday finest, a billowing dress, lightly colored, flowers printed on the fine material, lace blooming from the collar and wrists.

Just like her, the dress had once been pristine, but was now marred with the filth of the streets.

Just like me.

Just like us.

And she had brought animals to her meal as well.

Some of them are still here tonight, dressed in equal elegance.

She brought them here and set them up in the chairs.

How lucky they are to be found by her, hauled out and brought back from the dead, and set in this place of worship and able to receive her redemption.

This was a kill shelter before it was shut down.

The worst kind of animal shelter in the nastiest part of this putrid city.

A shelter most unworthy of its name.

A place that understood nothing of redemption and renewal.

A place that specialized in discarding the unwanted.

But lo,

She set a table in the house of our enemies.

It was clear from the start that this poor, homeless girl, no parents or siblings to comfort her, saw the uncremated dead left behind when the doors closed as her very own collection of stuffed animals, as her friends.

She must have been so lonely, so desperate for companionship, that when she found them in the freezers, waiting for all eternity for their turn in the kiln,

She pulled them out and placed them in the chairs they are in today.

Look upon our honored guests.

Her first converts sit among us, donned in gay attire, in dresses and suit jackets, with hats and bows, just as she prepared them.

I admit it, When I first came through that door and saw her standing behind this podium and saw them seated in front of her as her attentive congregation.

I was dismayed.

I recognized them immediately for what they were.

House pets put to sleep by their previous owners.

Cats and dogs mostly.

A boa constrictor here in the second row.

An iguana in an aisle seat.

I'm not sure if you can see them, but there is a queue of passed-on guinea pigs and hamsters between the altar and the front row, lined up like soldiers on guard duty.

All of their eyes are fogged over.

Their hair or scales are still wet with frost.

No doubt you've discovered their smell.

Perhaps they had gotten too old and were no longer house-trained.

Or maybe they bit.

Or maybe they were just unloved.

She found them.

And with them, this perish of misfits.

She filled the hole in her soul.

When my heart reached that epiphany, that this was not a thing morbid or macabre, I was no longer shocked by the sight or the smell or the taste of the smoke rolling from the furnaces.

This was a thing of pure unadulterated beauty.

No, my fellow panhandlers and pimps and perverts,

I was not repulsed.

I was enamored.

I was enraptured.

And then she called me up from the back of this room to her altar in that sing-song voice only little girls have.

Come on, I see you back there.

You're not hiding very well.

Come have some tea with me.

And so, I shuffled past the Roadkill Calco, the dead-eyed dachshund, the frozen boa constrictor halfway through shedding its last skin.

I avoided eye contact with the painted turtle peeking from his shell.

I pretended not to smell the black lab wearing the pink and blue sundress.

I ignored the black soot around each of their mouths.

There were no chairs in front of this cardboard box altar and its tea set, so I knelt as any supplicant should.

When I set aside my bottle of booze, it clinked against the concrete.

She either didn't hear or chose to ignore it and poured from the teapot into my cup.

The stream was black and dusty.

Tiny granules, not fluid, filled my cup to the brim.

She tapped the spout against the rim of my cup, and a few more grains of ash fell in.

What is it?

I asked her.

It will make you feel better.

It's like medicine.

Ashes.

I could tell that much before putting the cup to my lips, and it was clear where she'd gotten them from.

But I didn't yet know if she understood what the ashes were before entering the kiln.

Where are your parents?

Don't you have a brother or sister who could?

She twisted her head no, meaning she had none.

Or perhaps meaning she didn't want to talk about the subject.

I used to have a family, I confessed.

In order to receive the sacrament, one must be in a state of grace.

Not anymore.

I don't have anyone

anymore.

They say the cops, when they want you to keep going and confessing more than you should, won't respond and will just let you fill the void of silence with more things you shouldn't say.

In the same manner, she said nothing.

When I got in my accident, I didn't even remember getting behind the wheel.

Why my wife didn't stop me, why my kids didn't kick and scream until I realized the shape I was in,

I don't know.

Or maybe they did fuss and fight, and I was just too drunk to listen.

I don't know.

But I got behind the wheel, and they rode with me.

I poured my broken soul out to this girl, and she listened more attentively than any therapist or judge or jury.

And she understood, because...

Of course she would.

It was clear she'd been through something similar.

This pretty young thing.

She had pains and losses as well.

That one irrevocable decision, that one mistake,

it cost me everything.

My family, my car, my license, my job, my house,

my life.

All from that one choice.

Everybody makes mistakes.

Then she shot me that enigmatic smile of hers.

Drink it.

You'll like it, I promise.

But

it's from one of them, isn't it?

I gestured to the animals in the old folding chairs behind me.

Not because I didn't know, but to see if she knew.

If she understood what she was asking of me.

There's no food here, so we have to feed each other.

Dorothea had such a simple way of stating the complex.

That was her wisdom.

Clear, concise, and almost clairvoyant.

Of course, she knew where the ashes came from.

See, when they shut down the shelter, it was done so quickly, it was as if the workers had been taken up by the rapture.

Paperwork dropped to the floor by hands taken into heaven.

Chairs not even pushed back from their desks before being vacated.

Legal pads only half full of notes.

Animals waiting in cages to be adopted or killed.

until they starved to death.

The once-beloved pets, spared from the torture of starvation, sat in freezers waiting for the sweet release of the flames.

The ones who'd made it into the fire still remained in the bottom of the ovens as unremoved ashes.

Dorothea found those forgotten souls too,

and, as was her way, she brought them before us.

You could feed them too, you know.

I immediately comprehended comprehended the dual meaning of her words.

She understood the cyclic nature of the world.

How we feed off of others until it becomes our turn to be the feed.

It was her fate.

My fate.

Eventually, the fate of the whole congregation.

Fear found its way from those pleasant eyes into my heart.

I'm ashamed of of it, my fellow vagrants and tramps.

She intimidated me with her steady, easy gaze.

But Dorothea also stealed my spirit and nailed my courage to the sticking place,

as they say.

I knew what I had to do if I was to carry on.

I tipped back my cup.

I coughed.

A haze of carbonized house house pets floated into the air.

Dorothea laughed.

Nothing could ever be as dry and hard to swallow as that first communion.

But as I tried again and managed to move the first swallow down my throat, she put a finger under the teacup, urging me to go on.

So I took

and I supped and I gave thanks,

for she had filled the empty part of me.

A man's stomach can only be filled for a day, but as for his soul, my cup runneth over.

So come to me, you sick, you lame, you speed freaks, you living dead, all of you derelicts and degenerates, you lost and broken souls, come unto me and I shall get you your fix.

Commune with me, O ye saints of Skid Row.

Where is Dorothea, you ask?

I assure you, She's here with her pretty pink tea set.

Come and partake with me.

devour her purity of essence her spirit her wholesome untainted soul

she will fill the voids inside of you

just like she fills in the things missing from me

she made me whole again

And she'll make you whole again as well.

Take,

eat.

This

is her body.

Take,

drink.

This

is her blood.

Our phone lines have been cut.

The cell signals are lost.

But we will return to delve into your darkest hang-ups when the calls will be coming from inside your house.

The No Sleep Podcast is presented by Creative Reason Media.

The musical score was composed by Brandon Boone.

Our production team is Phil Migulski, 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 No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for taking our nightmarish calls.

This audio program is Copyright 2024 and 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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