Stick around after this episode for an announcement. Hey, I'm Sapphire. Wanna hear something scary?
We closed this volume with a story from the No-Sleep SubReddit.
Written by username, 'The Thing that Will.'
I grew up in a tiny town in Vermont.
Tiny, in terms of population, not size.
There were huge sprawling farms and wooded areas, but almost no people. My only close friend was Tina,
we spent almost all our time with each other constantly dreaming about life outside of Vermont.
The people in our town were of strange folk.
Different than in other places.
One thing I didn't realize about small towns, until I moved to the city, is how incredibly superstitious that people could be.
They believed in the strange the paranormal, they believed in Lluvia.
Lluvia was an older French-Canadian woman who had moved to Vermont when she met her husband.
And everyone in town, wholeheartedly, believed that she was clairvoyant.
So Tina and I
decided to go see her one evening for a reading.
I was skeptical, but it seemed like a fun thing to do, as a joke.
We dropped by her house in the early evening, and she opened the door as we walked up the pathway to her house.
Before we even had a chance to knock. Tina elbowed me hard in the ribs and whispered that Lluvia was clearly a psychic.
"She sensed us coming to the door!"
I whispered back that it probably had more to do with her house being full of windows,
and the fact that she probably saw us coming from a long way away.
Either way, I started to feel strange the minute we got close to her.
She was very very old. Very tiny, and kind of...
sunken?
Sunken eye sockets and sharp cheekbones and, a sort of concave chest cavity. It was more than a little unnerving.
But she smiled and was sweet to us, and I started to warm up to her.
Nothing about her or her house screamed 'creepy psychic' to me. Just a well-dressed older woman in a cabin-style house.
We told her that we were interested in a reading, and handed her about $20 that we had gathered together between the two of us.
"What can you tell me about my love life?"
Tina asked.
Lluvia had no crystal ball, tarot cards, or tea leaves. She just closed her eyes and sat silently for about two minutes.
"Michael Carton. The man you're going to marry,"
"Michael Carton."
Tina thanked her and repeated the name to herself a few times,
"Michael Carton.."
"... Michael Carton."
Lluvia, then turned to me.
She looks straight into my eyes, grabbed my hands, and said, "The thing that will kill you is shedding its skin,"
"The thing that will kill you is sharpening its teeth. The thing that will kill you is washing the blood off of his claws,"
"The thing that will kill you is gathering skins, the thing that will kill you... You won't see it coming."
The three of us sat there in silence for quite a while.
I felt sick,
shaken up.
Lluvia looked as if she wished she didn't have to tell me that.
"Is there anything I can do to stop it?"
Lluvia slid our money back across the table to us "No charge for the reading." Tina and I slunk out of Lluvia's house quietly.
We didn't say a word on the way back to our houses.
Tina just found out the name of the love of her life.
I got to listen to a horrifying cryptic message about my death, I was only 12 years old.
For years, I looked for it. The thing that will kill me.
I could almost feel it.
Sensed it just behind each car, swaying behind the trees at night. With every step, I hesitated.
Every time I tried to sleep, I could almost see it. What has she said about its teeth? But I never found it.
When I was 18,
I left for college in California, to get far away from the snow and the cold and the thing that will kill me.
People in California laughed, when I told them the story and it stopped seeming real.
Just the ramblings of a tiny ancient French-Canadian woman.
It wasn't real. When I was 27, a wedding invitation came in the mail. Tina was getting married!
This was the first I had heard of it. I was still in California and barely kept in contact with anyone from back east.
It seems like a past life. "You are cordially invited to the wedding of Michael Carton and Tina." ...Wait.
No..
She had the name in her mind,
Michael Carton. And she sought him out. It had nothing to do with Lluvia, her predictions weren't real! They couldn't be...
Clairvoyance don't exist... Right?
I went to the wedding. Tina, Michael and I laughed about the whole thing, "The psychic knew, she predicted it."
Of course, she didn't. Tina and Michael decided it was nothing more than a funny story to tell their future children.
"Just tell us if you run into some beast with razor-sharp teeth that's gathering skins. Okay?"
I left the wedding, as sure as I ever was, that the thing that will kill me, wasn't real.
I didn't know why I had been scared so long.
The best thing about Tina's wedding, was that we got back in touch, for the first time, in a very long time.
We were very different people than we had been as children, but we still shared more of a bond than we realized.
She was happy, living in Vermont with Michael. As the years went on, her calls and emails got less and less frequent.
She always seemed to be busy.
Soon, they tapered off completely. I missed her, of course, but I had my own life.
One winter, I came into town to visit my parents for the holidays and decided I'd swing by Tina's house.
I normally never just drop by but she was pretty bad about answering her phone and I really wanted to see her.
I pulled up to her in Michael's house two cars were in the driveway. So, I figured they were both home.
I walked up and rang the doorbell.
Michael opened it, dressed in several layers in a large coat, as if he had just come in from the snow.
He looked very surprised to see me. He invited me inside.
He took off his coat and hung it on a coat rack by the door, and asked if I had talked to Tina recently.
"I haven't actually, not in several months."
"Sorry for the invasion. I don't usually just drop by like this, but I just wanted to see her. Is she here?"
"I... I figured you'd know, that you might have heard.."
"... She left me, a few months ago."
"Hasn't spoken to me since." "Oh god. I'm so sorry, I had no idea. (Then whose car was in the driveway?)"
"I'm sorry, I was about to get ready for bed. I've got an early work day tomorrow."
"Do you mind..?" He kicked off his shoes, pulled his sweater off and headed toward his bathroom. I settled in and looked around their home.
"So, do you know where she lives now?"
"I don't. She didn't call me after she was gone."
He started flossing and when he saw me looking toward him, close the door for privacy.
When I heard the shower water start running,
I pulled out my phone.
Figuring I take this time to look through Tina's last messages to me, to see if she gave any hint to where
she went, any clue.
My phone fell out of my hand as I grabbed it out of my bag, and I saw it drop beneath the couch.
As I felt around under the couch for my phone, my hand hit something else...
A massive clump of long hair.
"Brown hair..."
"Like... Tina's."
"Hair with the piece of scalp still--" "The thing that will kill you is gathering skins," I turned toward the bathroom door.
Michael was still showering. "The thing that will kill you is washing the blood off of his claws,"
Flossing,
Brushing, "The thing that will kill you is sharpening its teeth," Slipping off his outer clothes,
"The thing that will kill you is shedding its skin,"
Oh God..
...The thing that will kill me.
The water in the shower stopped.
I ran, out the door, slam the door, sprinted into my car, shaking, watching the door, my hands fumbled with keys.
Shaking, shaking. The door to the house opened. My car started, I drove. I didn't look back. I just kept driving, all through the night.
Through most of the next day,
only stopping when I absolutely had to.
I had no idea if he was following me.
I had no idea what I had just seen, my heart didn't start beating normally again until I was two states away.
I went home. This was months ago. I called the police, they investigated.
Nothing turned up. They're sure she just left him, moved away.
Maybe she did. Maybe she's far away, safe.
Maybe nothing's coming for me. Maybe Michael is just a poor guy, whose wife left him.
Maybe it's nothing behind the trees, in the snowdrifts, underneath the cars,
outside my door at night, and the windows. Maybe it's nothing probably, it's nothing. Lluvia has been wrong before,
hasn't she?
"The thing that will kill you... You won't see it coming."
This is the last episode of something scary, for now.
I've truly enjoyed bringing your stories to life and giving you the chills for the past year and a half.
If you want to stay updated on my future endeavors, take a moment to make sure you're following me and your notifications are turned on.
Until next time, sweet dreams.