Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign I'm Ben and welcome to the show where you and I gather around this campfire to hear some of our fellow campers scariest experiences. Whether you're a new or returning one, I'm glad you're here. If you've been a camper for a while, you'll know one of our episodes went missing.
Episode 38. That episode I thought was special, so I went scouring the woods looking for it.
So without any more delay, here it is.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Very rarely do I read email submissions exactly as they were sent in.
For all you campers who have sent in the story, you know, I typically offer to take your submission and give it a little more narrative bite to ensure that we as listeners of your story have the best experience possible.
But when I received this email with the subject heading you don't know me, but I need to tell you this from an anonymous looking email. Do not try to find me,137-86598 mail.com I was curious. So now without further ado, do you want to hear a ghost story?
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Ben, you don't know me. And if you're smart, you never will. You'll forget this email. Block the address.
Good. I'm not writing for your belief, though you'd be wise to caution this tale I'm writing because I needed out of me. Because I need to warn you. Because I need someone else to carry a sliver of this with them so I don't have to keep holding it all alone. I am a creative like you, though. I write songs, not stories.
And that's where my story begins. No fame. No screaming fans. No black candles or summoning circles. No. Though I'd see why you might suspect that based off the rest of this email.
But I was just a kid in a one bedroom apartment with a broken keyboard and garage sale mic. I wrote the kind of songs you only ever heard in your dreams. Songs that pull you under like warm water, leave you aching when they end.
And that would have been enough, I think, if the silence hadn't followed me. It started in my mid-20s. The music within me dried up, went quiet.
Everything I wrote sounded hollow, like a poor imitation of myself. I started going to sessions just to sit in the corner, nodding along, pretending that's where I met him. I won't name him. He wouldn't believe me anyway. But you know his music. You've cried to it, probably danced, maybe even kissed someone under the influence of a cord he stitched together. You know, that's the thing about the really successful ones. They're everywhere. And they never say how they got there, but sometimes they'll hint at a party. Once. He leaned over to me. You ever think about what you'd trade for another hit? Another song? What you'd give, he said. And then he laughed like it was nothing, like we were just two people joking about selling our souls at a Hollywood Hills mansion over champagne and caviar.
He gave me a number, just a number, put it on a piece of paper and slipped it into my jacket before he left, like he knew I'd be desperate enough to call it eventually. I waited, I think, a year. I didn't believe. Maybe I forgot or maybe I just didn't want to believe. But the silence within me kept getting louder, so I called the number. Whoever it was picked up after the first ring. Their voice was calm, deep, not menacing or dramatic. The man on the other end of the line sounded like he sold insurance.
He told me to meet him at the parking garage of an old hotel, but it burned down in 94 and was never rebuilt. No address, just that description and a time. I went. Of course I went.
The man wore a navy suit and ate an apple like some biblical cliche. And when I arrived, he smiled like he'd been waiting for me all my life.
This isn't the part that scares people. That comes later, he said. The deal was straightforward. I get what I wanted. Success, influence, the ability to write songs the way I used to, only better. Effortlessly. Music would pour out of me like water and people would feel it in their bones.
I'd be remembered. And the price? I asked.
He said nothing about my soul, not directly. He just nodded, like we both understood what was implied. He leaned in, just close enough, but I could smell the smell of apples on his breath. You will lose the nights, that's all, he said.
The nights, that's all.
I laughed. I actually laughed.
I thought it meant insomnia, hell, maybe nightmares.
I was so naive at first. It was beautiful. The music within me came in waves. I didn't sleep because I didn't need to.
Every second was inspiration. I'd hum in elevators, somebody would weep, I'd touch a piano and everyone would stop mid conversation to listen. I got the deals, the contracts, the fame. I got it all. And it came fast.
Like this man, whoever he was, opened a dam inside me and the flood would never end. But the nights, it began with dreams I couldn't remember. I'd wake up drenched in sweat, fingernails cracked, throat sore from screaming, my sheets torn, always exactly at 3:33 in the morning. I started recording myself in my sleep.
But what I saw wasn't me. Not exactly. My body moved, but wrong. Stiff. Unnatural.
Sometimes I sat right up and stared at the door. Other times I whispered in languages I didn't recognize. Once I stood beside my bed in saying something.
Something otherworldly. It didn't sound like a song, though. It sounded like a calling. I don't know who answered. But ever since that night, I've never felt alone.
It got worse. I started losing memories. Not big ones, though. Stay. But the little ones. The taste of my mother's spaghetti. The smell of my first apartment. The sound of my childhood dogs bark gone, like someone snipped the strings that tied me to a life I no longer owned.
Worse still, people started forgetting me. A friend I'd known for a decade or more asked me who I was at a party.
My sister didn't recognize me at a family reunion. And then I noticed my reflection lags behind my movements. Sometimes just a second, just enough for whatever's there to let me know it's there. Watching me. Waiting. I tried to write a song about all of this once. Played the chords, let the lyrics form. But the walls began to hum with the song. The lights in my studio flickered and my cat hissed and clawed at the air and wouldn't stop until I destroyed the recording. Not delete, but smash the computer.
I've learned not to write about the deal. Not to speak about it, even. But lately my nights have been creeping into my days. I lose time. I black out during meetings. I wake up in strange cities with no idea how I got there. Sure, the deal worked. My bank account is full and you probably know who I am.
But I don't remember any of it anymore.
The man still calls me sometimes. Never from the same number. And always at 3:33 in the morning, just after I've awoken. You're doing so well. They love you, he always says. I think he's proud. Like a parent watching their child perform at a recital. Like a spider admiring the food caught in its web. I'm telling you this, Ben, because I can see it in your writing. I know you dream of more.
And I have this feeling I have read your name, your work, in places you haven't published yet.
That's how I knew where to send this. That's how this works. If I've seen it, so was he.
Please. If you ever get handed a scrap of paper with a number, burn it. Run.
Because the devil won't come at you with horns and flames. He's gonna come at you with an offer that feels like mercy. He comes when you're starving and says, eat. But the price is every night you thought was yours, every dream you thought was safe and what happens when there are no more nights left to lose? Well, you'll begin to wonder if the day was ever really yours either Signed your friend.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to this story.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: I don't know what scares me more, the supernatural horror of this email, the part of me that understands the Submitter Whenever you create something, you always have moments of desperation. You have this fear of what if nobody likes it? What if I put myself out into this world and no one cares?
Everyone I know who creates has a longing to be remembered, a longing to matter.
But this submitter has a good point. There are many prices that aren't worth it.
I have no show announcements this week, but if you'd like a shout at the end of an episode or access to our camp's monthly bonus episodes, head over to patreon.com do youear a ghost story?
As always, I'm just glad to have you all as campers on this journey. Please keep sharing the show with anyone you think might like these stories or someone you're just trying to scare. If you are enjoying it, please leave for review. I would love to hear from you. Until next time.
