NoSleep Podcast - Goat Valley Campgrounds Season 2 - Ch. 6

Welcome to Goat Valley Campgrounds. Looking for a place to escape your busy life and reconnect with nature?

Goat Valley Campgrounds features 300 acres of quiet forest and peaceful scenery for you to enjoy. Come meet Kate.
She runs the place like her parents before her.

We know you'll enjoy your stay as long as you behave yourself and follow the rules. Your survival depends on it.

The No Sleep Podcast presents Goat Valley Campgrounds Season 2 by Bonnie Quinn.

Chapter 6.

We don't make bargains with evil things. Not sure when that saying first started to spread around the town, but my personal theory is that my grandfather was responsible for it.

Perhaps it predated him, a family motto of sorts. But he was a hard, uncompromising man who enforced his will over both campground and town alike.
And that was his belief.

There would be no cooperation, no compromise with the inhuman creatures in this world. He wasn't entirely wrong.
Bargains with monsters always come with a cost.

However, he refused to deal with even the benevolent creatures. There was no nuance, no line between good and evil, or even the gray in-betweens.

They were only monsters, and monsters should be destroyed. My father didn't like grandpa very much.
He rejected most things he learned from his father.

His parenting style, his management style, and his absolute hatred of the things that inhabit our land. The town, however, is not willing to do the same.

That intolerance for the inhuman is a luxury they enjoy because of my family. We're the ones that dirty our hands to keep them safe.
I have to be more practical about things.

I have to make the hard choices. Because sometimes, when dealing with monsters, the only thing that can help you is another monster.

My name is Kate, and this is Goat Valley Campgrounds.

There's only one entity on this land that I actually like. I describe her in my rules as the lady with extra eyes, though perhaps that doesn't emphasize strongly enough just how many eyes she has.

Her face is covered in them. They're set symmetrically all across her cheeks and forehead.
They dot her jawline and chin. Even her earlobes have an eye each.

When she looks at you, all of her eyes look at you, and they all blink in unison. You get used to it, after a while.
I've known her since I was a child. I don't remember when we first met.

She's always been a presence in my life.

When I was in school and able to understand that our land was different from the land of my classmates, I asked my dad where she'd come from and why she was here.

She's been on our land for a long, long time. She's kind and has helped our family through the years.
That's all I know. She invited me in for tea the other day.

I said I had to ask for permission first. That's a good way to respond.
But you have my permission now if you see her again.

You can visit her whenever you want, as long as you're back to the house before sundown.

I loved going to her house. My brother went with me for a while, but after the horse incident, he lost interest, which I suppose is understandable.

He would stay inside doing his homework or reading a book while sitting next to the fireplace. She would serve him tea and cookies and then bring a plate out to me.

as I liked to spend my time up in the branches of a large oak tree that grew in her front yard. It wasn't a yard like we think of one, with cut grass and flower beds with carefully defined boundaries.

The ground was covered with dead leaves, delineated from the rest of the forest by a short wooden fence.

The entire area was carpeted with bloodroot, and I had to pick my way carefully to the tree, not wanting to trample the delicate flowers. The tree is gone now.

Only a shallow depression remains to mark where it once stood. It died during my freshman year of college.
I came home for spring break and found it gone. What happened to the tree?

It was sad because you no longer sat in its branches. When you left the campground, it decided that its time had come.
Its sap grew sluggish. It didn't put out new leaves.
And then, it died.

Oh, I'm sorry. Don't be.
All things change. All things die.

I didn't quite understand her words at the time.

But I think I do now.

I think the tree was someone I once knew. The lady is on my list of rules.
It's not as ominous as the others, quite the contrary. Rule number 15.
The woman with extra eyes will help you.

You can trust her. If she invites you to her house for tea, accept.
I think she's a bit lonely. So why is she taking up one of my precious rule slots?

I have said over and over that I only put the most dangerous threats on my list so that my campers are not overwhelmed and discard the rules entirely.

Why waste space on someone that's not going to hurt anyone? I need my campers to trust the people that are here to keep them safe.

That's why my staff all wear the same uniform to make them easily recognizable as a figure of authority and safety. They need to trust the lady with extra eyes as well.

She helps more than just my family. One of the traits of a bad year is the creatures that already inhabit the land are more active or act in odd ways.

I was already seeing that with the man with no shadow. Another effect is that new entities are attracted to the campground.
So far I haven't seen that, much to my relief.

But the final trait of a bad year is that the lesser threats surge in numbers. These are creatures that aren't on the list because we can typically clear them out before they harm anyone.

My staff know to look out for the signs that they're around, and in a recent staff meeting, I told them to be extra vigilant. Their expertise paid off.
Found some jelly fungus. Oh, yay.

If you're not familiar with jelly fungus, it looks like yellow-white snot. Most of the time, it's just harmless fungus.
Some are even edible, though though supposedly they taste like dirt.

Sometimes it's not jelly fungus though. This is how you can tell the difference.
Prick your finger and let a few drops of blood fall onto it.

If the mass swallows it, contracting around the blood and absorbing it, taking on a fleshy pink color, then it is not fungus and you should return to your home and not go into the woods after dark.

I don't know if there's an official name for these things. They fit a number of descriptions, but only in fragments.
Or perhaps I simply haven't found the right name. My expertise is limited.

I went to school for a business degree after all, and my knowledge of folklore is limited to the books I've scraped together from second-hand bookstores. Is it yarn balls?

That's just the campground name for them. It sounds less terrifying than the more accurate description of arm balls, and we can reference them freely in front of campers without anyone being alarmed.

Arron, get out of my knife.

Yep, it's a yarn ball. Great.
How big do you think it is? It left a moderate trail of slime. It's probably got, oh, five or more arms.

Hopefully they're still gobbling up animals or raiding graveyards. Let's get the staff watching the roads leading into the forest.

Keep track of who goes down from the fields and make sure they're out by nightfall. I'll go around and talk to the people we have on site.
I don't like Kate.

I'm a little glad the dogs aren't on the campground right now.

They like to eat this stuff.

Just try to slope that off the ground. I think it looks like chunks of fat to them.
I really didn't need to know that.

Yarnballs are formed from a central gelatinous mass of flesh. Initially, they start with only two or three arms, but they seek more by finding human victims and ripping their limbs off.

They attach these stolen arms to their own body until they are all you can see, sticking out haphazardly from its core.

They're fast, clawing their way across the ground, half skittering and half rolling as their multitude of arms drag them along. The more arms they have, the faster they are.
And the more dangerous.

When they run out of room for more arms, they start disemboweling their victims and adding the loops of intestines to their core so that they can grow larger and have more surface area for arms.

My parents' notes say that if we start finding victims missing both their insides and their arms, the campsite needs to close and teams of five need to sweep the area until the yarn ball is found and dispatched.

Hey there, can I come in?

It was only polite to request access to someone's camp. It's their space, after all, and even a small cluster of tents can provide at least the illusion of privacy.
Oh, hi. Do you need something?

Yeah, just dropping by to ask people to stay out of the woods after dark. The sheriff called to let us know a mountain lion was spotted in the area.
We don't think it's anything to worry about.

They stay away from people, but we're just asking people to not go wandering about on their own and stay out of the woods after dark. Mountain lions won't go after people in groups.

This was not entirely a lie. Yarnballs do avoid large groups of people.
They prefer to pick off solitary individuals who are far from the safety of others. Oh, wow.
Okay.

How far away was it spotted? You know, the sheriff didn't say.

It might just be in our area because it's looking for water, but better to be safe than sorry. Besides, the woods are a great way to sprain an ankle if you go in them after dark.
Sure, sure.

I'll let the others know. We got plenty of beer and and s'more makings.
We'll be fine. Stay right here tonight.

I gathered volunteers from my staff to go hunting after dark. My shadow was starting to regrow.

The arm was a shade paler than the rest of my shadow, and I'd regained enough mobility in my hand that I felt I could handle a shotgun.

About an hour before sundown, I met with my staff volunteers to prepare for going into the woods. Same procedure as previous years.
Brian is in the office and will coordinate us.

We'll sweep from one end of the campground to the other and corner it against the road. Everyone got fresh batteries in their lights? Yarn balls are repulsed by light.

Shine a flashlight on them and they'll scatter, but they're agile and will promptly try to attack you from another angle.

Our solution is a heavy-duty lantern light mounted on a pole so we could hold it above our heads and encompass the entire area around us in light. It works very well.

And if you attach the pole to a harness, you can still carry a gun, allowing us to hunt them with almost no risk to ourselves. Great.

Make sure you know exactly what you're firing at before you pull the trigger. I warned the campers not to follow the lights, but you know how well that rule is obeyed.

Once the yarn ball is incapacitated, stop shooting and burn it. Let's not spook the campers any more than we have to.
Ryan's already going to get panicked phone calls at the first gunshot.

Okay, let's get going.

We dispersed into the woods just as the sun dipped over the horizon. It was a slow, methodical process to sweep the woods.

I was confident that we'd find the yarn ball, though, because it would be hunting us as much as we were hunting it.

I was more concerned about the man with no shadow and whether he'd try something on my isolated staff, or even me. But this was a risk I had to take.

I couldn't let the yarn ball roam loose on the campground. It only got harder to kill with every victim it claimed.

Not to mention, I didn't want to be issuing refunds to campers that were down an arm or two.

I was investigating a white clump of some congealed mass, trying to determine if it was a part of a yarn ball, a kind of mushroom, or leftover vomit from a camper that had drank too much in previous evenings when my radio crackled.

I just had a camper stop by the office. She wanted us to know that someone from her camp hadn't come back from the woods.
Did our sentries miss someone?

He apparently went off the road specifically to avoid them.

His campmate said that he's looking for the mountain lion because, in her words, he's a damn fucking idiot. This is the bullshit I have to deal with.

Everyone Everyone is like, oh, Goat Valley Campground is so dangerous. But honestly, most people are fine unless, unless you're willfully stupid like this fucker.
What block did he sneak off into?

N22.

Kate, you're in the best position to intercept him.

Got it. I'm on it.
Everyone else, slow your pace until he's found, and then we'll resume the sweep.

My light swayed erratically around me as I zigzagged through the plot of land we designated as N22 on the map.

The man wasn't actually that hard to locate, on on account of how he was noisily crashing through the forest, breaking branches and stumbling over the uneven terrain with every step.

Certainly he'd tried for stealth by leaving his flashlight behind, but if there was a mountain lion in the area, the racket he was making would have hopefully scared it off.

It had also attracted the yarn ball. He wasn't stumbling like a drunk through the woods because he was clumsy.
He was trying to flee. Help!

Help! I broke into a run for him. He was flailing, trying to fight his way through the forest, blinded by the darkness.

Behind him, a rolling, tumbling ball the size of a large dog continued to gain on him.

It clawed its way forward, each arm snapping out and seizing the soft earth with its fingers, yanking it forwards, and then another hand latched onto the soil, and another and another.

Here! I'm over here! This way!

He veered towards me. I saw his face, pale white in the scant moonlight, and saw the pink mass of flesh behind him and knew he wouldn't make it.
Faster! Hurry! Get to the light!

Then the lady with extra eyes appeared, like she'd stepped out of the night, like it was a curtain that had been drawn across her and she'd nearly shrugged it aside.

She touched his shoulder, grabbed his arm just above the elbow, and spun him about and pulled him close to her.

Her dark hair was a tangled halo around her, nearly indistinct from the darkness of the forest. There you go.
Nothing to worry about now.

The yarn ball stopped where it was, dragging its fingers into the dirt to halt its momentum. And then it reversed its course and

fled.

Oh, thank goodness.

That was close.

We're good. I found him.
I also found the yarn ball. The lady with extra eyes saved him from it.
It ran off. I need to make sure the camper gets out of here, okay, before I go after it, though.

Okay, everyone, head for N22. We'll set up a perimeter so it can't escape.
I went to where the camper stood with his hands on his knees, doubled over, wheezing and coughing.

The lady had her hand on his back and all those eyes furrowed in concern over the camper in front of her. So the mountain line story is bullshit, but you're safe now.
I can take you back to camp.

Oh, thank goodness.

What was that thing? Just some local wildlife?

He looked up at me in abject relief, and he turned to face his rescuer. Hello there.

She smiled at him, her cheeks dimpling around the eyes set closest to her lips. They all blinked in unison.

And the man screamed, turned, and ran back into the woods, out of the circle of light that would have kept him safe. Are you kidding me? Stop! Get back here, you idiot!

Wait, it's too late. The others have arrived, and you're outnumbered.
Outnumbered? Oh no, it's a nest!

A mass fell from the trees overhead and onto his back, dragging him screaming to the ground. Another skittered out of the darkness, and then a third.

And I understood why the lady had kept me from going after him.

They quarreled over their prey, grabbing at each other as much as they grabbed at his limbs, until finally he wiggled forwards enough on the ground to free his upper body while two clawed at each other by his legs and the third seized the opportunity.

It grabbed his shoulders, then his elbows, and ripped both arms free with the sickeningly wet sound of meat tearing, almost drowned out by the man's shrill, agonized shriek.

Then the yarn ball ran off into the darkness, quickly followed by the other two, intent on stealing its prize from it.

Brian, we need an ambulance. It's a nest.
Everyone, group up. Groups of two at minimum.
Hurry.

Ambulance is on the way. It's too late, kite.
If I stop the bleeding, it's too late.

She patted me on the shoulder and walked away. I tried to stop the bleeding long enough for the ambulance to arrive.
For whatever that's worth.

We told his friend that he had found the mountain lion after all and sent his maimed corpse back home for burial. We couldn't recover the arms, we told them.
Then I closed the campsite for a few days.

Sheriff Sabota came by the campground, as he always does when there's been a death. I was in my office moodily coordinating the search efforts.
This time we were scouring the woods during the day.

The silver lining of a nest of yarn balls was they had a place they went during daylight hours, and with enough searching, we could find it and burn it with them all still inside.

Well, another day, another death at Goat Valley Campgrounds. I'm not in the mood for this.
Let's just get the paperwork over with. What's that you've got there? A needle?

Why are you rolling a needle around? Nerves, I guess. I flicked it into a drawer.
Erkta had said I could save them all. Clearly, that was a lie.

This is the kind of stuff the town is going to have to deal with if I sell the land. Yarnball nests in their backyards.
The buyer has been seen around town quite a bit. People seem to like him.

Being likable doesn't do shit against the monsters. We found it.

Kate, do you want to bring the gasoline out here? Yeah, I'm on my way. Need help? No, I can handle it.
It's my job, after all.

It was located in a mass of fallen trees, some freshly uprooted, no doubt, by the yarnballs themselves. My staff had already cleared out the surrounding brush when I arrived.

We emptied gasoline over top of it. Then I set it on fire.
Four yarnballs tried to drag themselves out, flesh melting like wax, dying in silence with no mouths with which to scream as they burned.

We watched impassively, standing a short distance away with our guns, just in case one looked like it could escape. One did make it further than the rest.

It reached the edge of the cleared dirt, dragging itself forwards by only one arm, the rest trailing limp behind it with cracked black skin that wept clear liquid.

It stretched quivering fingers out towards me, and then collapsed and went still. The lady with extra eyes came walking out of the woods in that abrupt way the inhumans do.
She was simply just there,

stepping out from between the trees. She walked past me and stared down at the dead monstrosity, gave a small sigh, and knelt.

She produced a pair of shears and grimly cut the arm free from the fleshy core.

I'll take care of him. I couldn't save him that night, but I can do this much for him.
Not even you can scare off a nest, huh? We all have our limits. You should remember that.
I suppose.

I rubbed at my arm, still slightly numb from having its shadow torn away. You've helped our family before.

Is there anything you can do about the man with no shadow? I can think of some ways to help. Come find my house tomorrow morning.
I'll have something for you.

She took the arm with her when she left, gently stroking the blistered flesh of the arm's wrist.

I went to find her in the morning as she'd requested. Her house can only be found when she wants it to be found, so I had no trouble locating it as soon as I descended into the deep woods.

I went up the narrow path between the flowers and knocked on the door. It creaked open, and the lady with extra eyes smiled at me, the corners of her multitude of eyes crinkling.
I brought you a gift.

Just some tea that I ordered online. I appreciate it.
The kettle should be ready. Come in.
I have scones. Is it the cranberry-orange ones? I love the cranberry-orange scones.
Blueberry, sadly.

Oh, well, that's good too. Hey, that man died.
Uh, what did you do with his arm?

He's in the garden. Go see.
Her house had a backyard with the carpet of small white flowers that were eternally in bloom, no matter the season.

I went out there and found that a tree overshadowed them now, spreading its branches with vivid green maple leaves that shone in the sunlight. He can finish out his life now.

Perhaps not as he'd wished, but it is life nonetheless. The least I can do.

I placed my palm on the bark and wondered if it was a heart that I felt beating beneath my palm, or if it was merely a trick of my mind. Is he suffering? No.

He is different now. He thinks as a tree, though perhaps a little more.
He feels the wind and the sun and drinks deep of the earth.

When he is tired of this life and ready to pass on to the next, he will wither and his leaves will fall and he will die, as is the nature of all things.

If you're truly concerned about him, you can always bring him a bit of tree fertilizer from time to time. Just some from the local hardware store will be fine.
Thanks for clarifying.

I get a little nervous whenever something that's not human starts talking about fertilizing a garden.

but I don't think you came here specifically to talk about this.

No, I didn't. The man with no shadow.

She smiled sadly.

I can help you defeat him. But then, I will never help you again.
That's a higher price than I expected. Are you willing? Will you still help the campers? Yes, I will.

But you will be on your own. Why?

Okay, I.

Yes,

forgive me, but

I accept. I don't know why these creatures make the demands they do.

I could only consider my options, weigh the more immediate threat against a future that has never been certain of anything except the little girl and the beast, and then decide.

Take this. It is nettled tea mixed with the earth from around the roots of the tree in my backyard.

If you drink it in the morning, you'll be immune for that day from the man with no shadows' silver silver tongue. I recommend you don't share it.
I can only give you so much.

I have to admit that I was disappointed. Such a high cost for little gain.
I knew how to deal with the man with no shadow. I kept my conversation short, and that's all that's needed.

But my disappointment was short-lived, for the lady was not yet done. I have one other thing: look straight ahead and do not blink.

Ow!

I hadn't been able to see what she gently pushed into the whites of one eye. Felt like a splinter.
My eye filled up with tears. Don't rub at it.
It'll only make it worse. It's in my eye!

Yes, a splinter from one of my trees. So you can see the shadow of your enemy.

I kept staring at myself in the mirror. I wonder when these white hairs started showing up.
I feel like my mother's staring back out at me. Her image in my mind is frozen in time.

She'll never age, never change. I wonder if she would have made the same choice I did, if she'd be staring at the mirror with one eye bloodshot from the splinter embedded inside.

I feel like I've completed the work the man with no shadows started years ago, when he sent my best friend to kill me. I've severed away everything from my childhood.

Those happy days spent peacefully in the trees outside the Lady with Extra Eyes cottage.

The town no longer recognizes me as anything other than the campground manager, a tool to keep the monsters at bay.

Even my own brother has moved on and started a new life outside of the campground's boundaries.

Now I've given up the knowledge that among all the monsters inhabiting these lands, there was one creature that would look kindly on me, that would be there to help when I was desperate.

Well, I'm at my most desperate now.

And whatever happens next, whether I overcome this current trouble or if the bad year continues to escalate, or whatever else comes my way,

I'm on my own.

Goat Valley Campgrounds Season 2 was written and adapted for audio by Bonnie Quinn.

Produced for the No Sleep podcast by Phil Mikulski.

Musical score composed by Brandon Boone.

Starring Lindsey Russo as Kate, David Cummings as Sheriff Saboda, Kyle Akers as Brian, Jake Benson as The Camper, Ash Millman as The Lady with Extra Eyes, and Mike Delgadio as Kate's dad.

Join us next week for Chapter 7 of Goat Valley Campgrounds Season 2.

This audio program is copyright 2025 by Creative Reason Media. All rights reserved.
No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the expressed written consent of Creative Reason Media.

The copyright for Goat Valley Campgrounds is held by Bonnie Quinn.

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