[Intro Plays]

[The sound of a campfire is accompanied by bass heavy droning in the background, and the sound of a beating heart. Echoing whispers and screams punctuate the notes. A metal door slams in the distance and sinister laughter fades in from the background]

[Sound of Campfire in background, a car pulls to a stop. Handbrake engages]

Tales Under A Broken Sky – Episode 01 – Spiders

The three am darkness was dense and close as he turned off the road and into his driveway. He sighed in relief as the motion sensor triggered the exterior lights. He let the engine die and sat back in the seat, closing his eyes and letting the silence sink in.

His heart was racing. And sitting in the darkened drive, it was easy to imagine that he could hear it thudding against the nighttime chorus. His mind had settled on the drive, but now it was going into overdrive again.

[Breathless Tone] ‘That had just been a pothole, right?’
Except there had been no dip. Just the bump. No, no.

[Dreamlike sound of car hitting bumps]

Two sickening bumps. He’d checked the mirror, but there were no streetlights on the road to his house and the moon was riding too low in the sky to provide much illumination.

He’d driven on regardless, but couldn’t shake the feeling that was boring into the back of his neck. His eyes kept flicking to the reviewer mirror, not to check the road, but to assuage the feeling that he wasn’t alone in the car anymore.

The beacon of light as he pulled off the road had felt like a godsend, but that feeling had quickly faded. Now, his eyes glanced towards the keys, still sitting in the ignition. Was there still time to go back? Maybe. The road was dark, but at this time, it was sparsely travelled.

He could probably get away with pretending that he had never left the scene. It was unlikely anyone else would pass by.

[Sound of car starting and pulling out of driveway]

Another reason to go back, he thought. And before he realised the decision had been made, he was reversing out of the drive and turning back down the hill.

[Internal sounds of car driving in background]

It had happened only a half mile from his house, so it wasn’t long before he slowed to a crawl and leaned forward over the wheel peering into the circle of light cast by his headlights. His heart was a drum in his chest now and he couldn’t remember when he had taken last breath.

[Sound of car pulling in on dirt road]

[Tone of Slight Surprise] Nothing.

The road was clear. He had felt the bump just after a turnoff to a nearby farm, so he pulled in off the main road when he reached that point and stopped the engine.

[Sound of rummaging in glovebox followed by car door opening and closing]

He took the torch from the glove box and started back up the road.

[Sound of footsteps on gravel and leaves. Nighttime sounds in the background]

He flashed the light from side to side nervously as he moved. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. He felt his back tensing against imagined fingers trailing along his spine.

Still nothing though. The road was clear.

He spent a few minutes tentatively looking into the hedgerows and fields, but there was no sign that there had been anyone else on the road. He didn’t examine the dark patches on the road too closely, convincing himself that there was plenty of runoff from the recent rain.

[Sound of car door opening and closing. Outside sounds cut off abruptly as door closes]

He returned to the car feeling relieved. Just a bird or a rat, the carcass had probably been carried off by a fox or some other creature of the night.

[Sound of car starting and driving away]
He slid back into the car and laughed gently to himself as he pulled off the side road. Stupid. Stupid, he chastised himself.

[Sound of sound of car arriving and stopping in a driveway]

This time when he he pulled into the drive and triggered the motion sensor, the light was warm and welcoming. He was tired after the long shift at work and was looking forward to falling into bed. He shivered again, residual traces of those imagined fingers still tickling his spine.

[Sound of car door opening and closing. Nighttime sounds restart as door is opened. Followed by the sound of footsteps and then a front door opening and closing. Nighttime sounds cut off as door closes]

His nerves peaked again as he crossed the threshold. The feeling of being watched was back

[Sound of lightswitch]

He flicked on the hall lights and glanced around nervously.

[Hushed Tone] The house was quiet and felt empty. He had been out all day and there was a chill in the air.

[Sound of indoor footsteps, followed by the sound of a jacket being removed and put on a chair]

He shrugged off his jacket and slung it over the back of a chair as he passed.

[Sound of glass and bottle being removed from cupboard and put on table. Pouring sound follows]

He pulled a glass and a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet in the corner and poured himself a generous measure. If he hadn’t earned one today, he never would.

[Sound of TV in background]

He lingered for the next half hour in front of the TV, leaving the background noise drone on as he flicked through news on his phone and sipped his drink. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, but he was tired and the whiskey had started to take the edge off.

He began to doze and forced himself to rise stiffly from the chair before he could fall too far into sleep. He knocked back the last half measure

[Sound of TV being turned off and glass being put down]

and felt the welcome warmth bloom in his chest.

[Sound of front door opening/closing and being locked]

He checked the front door again as he passed, once more happy that he had secured it. The uneasy feeling that had dogged him was fading again.

[Sounds of undressing]

He pulled off his clothes, and draped them over the mirror. He’d fold them properly in the morning, before his work suit got covered in wrinkles, but that would do for now. He was tired and after his earlier scare all he wanted to do was fall into oblivious.

[Sound of bed sheets rustling]

He lay on the bed and hesitated briefly as he reached to turn off the light, but shook his head with a nervous laugh and flicked the switch.

[Sound of light switch]

He was asleep soon after.

~~~~~~

His eyes flicked open. It was still dark outside, so he mustn’t been asleep long, but he was wide awake.

[Tense, hushed tone of voice] And that feeling was back, creeping up his spine, reaching icy tendrils up the back of his neck. He was not alone. He could feel the eyes on him, watching malevolently. He moved to turn on the light but his arm didn’t respond.

[Hushed Whisper] He was terrified. Afraid that if he moved, whatever was watching him would attack. His mind flashed back to his first camping trip when he was ten.

[Sound of tent blowing in the wind and branch scraping on fabric]

Lying awake inside his tent, that first night. The wind rustling against the fabric.

[Slow Punctuation] A tree ranch, scraping, scraping, scraping against the tent flaps.

The absolute, undeniable idea that if only he could stay still long enough, the moment would pass.

[Sound of whispers in the background]

That was when the whispers started. At first, he couldn’t make out what they were saying. The sounds overlapped, clashing against each other, drowning out the words.

But slowly they coalesced and took shape, a rustling noise, like dry leaves in autumn wind.

Four words.

Utterly convincing and undeniable.

[Sinister Whisper] Spiders in your bed.

He froze. A soft tickle ran up one leg, then the other. Then across his stomach and along his chest and arms.

[Narration increases in intensity] He screamed, his paralysis forgotten and leapt from the bed.

His fingers tore at his bare skin, trying in desperation to dislodge the nocturnal visitors. But the room was in darkness, and he could not see that there were no spiders.

He yelled in pain as his nails broke skin but he continued to scratch and tear and pull.

More whispers.

[Sinister Whispers] ‘Spiders in your hair.’

His screams pitched higher and he tore at his hair, pulling it from his head in clumps, desperate to get away from the unseen bugs crawling along his scalp.
He fell to the floor and thrashed about.

[Harsh Tone of voice] They were everywhere.

[Sinister Whispers] ‘Spiders in your ears.’

He tore at them too, tearing into cartilage and shredding his ear lobes.

[Sinister Whispers] ‘Spiders in your eyes.’

[Higher Intensity and Tempo, harsh tone of voice] His screams echoed in his own ears now as he jammed his thumbs into his eye sockets and felt the terrifying pressure and terrible release.

[Sinister Whispers] ‘Spiders in your mouth.’
He stopped screaming and wheezed as he struggled to breathe, clawing at his throat with bloody fingers. He forced himself to open his mouth and started to reach.

[Sinister Whispers] ‘Spiders in your dreams.’

The voice laughed,

[Sound of distant screams in the background]

like dry leaves in autumn wind.

[Background]

Welcome Folks, to Episode 01 of Tales Under A Broken Sky. I am your host Keith, and I hoped you enjoyed this week’s episode, the first of what I hope to be many more to come.

The origin of this story is both mundane and interesting. The idea first came to me as I was playing with one of my daughters. I was chasing them around the house, tickling the top of their head and whispering “Spiders in your hair”.

Sometimes that is all a story needs, just a line, or maybe even just a word. And from there, the story unfolds, sometimes bit my bit, sometimes in a raging torrent. Sometimes, it needs time to ferment and change and grow, other times, it simply flows onto the page.

The latter, which was the case with this little piece, most often happens when I can connect the story in some way to the world around me. As we had been running through the rooms and hallways of the house we were renting at the time, the physical architecture of the building became part of the story’s foundation. It also just so happened that the house was located a twenty minute walk outside the town, up a hill, with a narrow road, no streetlights and fields to every side.

I was working as a manager in a local hotel at the time, and I had gotten quite used to walking that road home late at night, with only a small torch for illumination and a hi-vis vest as a necessary precaution. It was a different world at night. Silent, dark, nocturnal animals rustling in the trees and hedgerows, every now and then, the beam from my torch would catch the eye of a roaming cat, and periodically I’d even get lucky enough to see a fox, because who doesn’t like foxes. But that first glint of light from the night-adapted eyes was always disconcerting.

Insects, bugs, and spiders were also another feature of this nighttime world. Slugs and snails would almost cover the road at that hour, leaving silvery trails in their wake. Spiders would string impossible webs across the narrow road, and scuttle boldly along the footpaths. The shadows they cast in the narrow beam of my torch always made them look bigger. Or perhaps that is simply what happens at night, when no one is looking. Perhaps they are, and the smaller size during the day is simply camouflage.

It also didn’t help that I was doing a journey through Stephen King’s work at the time, audiobooks are fantastic when you have a 20+ minute walk home after work, although King probably isn’t the best listening companion when you’re walking along an unlit country road at three am. Never mind that I read the first reports of Coronavirus, while I was walking along that road, listening to The Stand.

So all of this context made the story an easy one to write, the dark road, the dark pools of runoff, the small side roads leading to farms, even the internal layout of the house, were all easy to visualise, because they were taken almost verbatim from my life at the time. Even the motion sensor in the driveway, which was triggered every time a cat walking through our garden.

One of the things that I enjoy most in horror writing, and in particular the supernatural variety, is the sense of the unknown. What is happening is often plain to see, but it is the lack of a why, the lack of reason, that most often makes my hairs stand on end. Because, no matter how much we think we know, or at least we tell ourselves we know, we don’t fully understand the world, never mind the rest of the universe. And there is a good chance that complete understanding will always be beyond us. Veiled by layers of abstractions and theories.

To think that something might happen, not only that we don’t understand, but also that seems without reason is almost taboo. We look for reason and patterns, and to think we might never understand, is akin to looking into a dark abyss. Therein lies the hopelessness that only comes with loss of agency.
There are many questions left unanswered in this story. Did the protagonist actually hit something on the road? And if it was the owner of the disembodied voice, why were they even there in the first place? Was it truly an accident, a twist of fate or fortune, or was it premeditated to put the protagonist in that position. Was the protagonist merely a chance victim, or was he actually the hunted?

And what really happened in the end? Was it all real? Or was it all a dream? And if it was a dream, does he wake from it? Or is it played on a never-ending loop, night after night?

There are many things that we don’t know the answers to. Some of these things we crave to understand, possibly even need to understand. But of the others, maybe there are some things that are better left unknown.
Until next time.

Thank you for listening to Episode 01 of Tales Under a Broken Sky, I hoped you enjoyed this weeks production as much as I enjoyed writing and recording it.

If you did enjoy it, please consider subscribing to the podcast on your platform of choice, and leaving a rating and/or review.

Thank you again for your time. Stay tuned to hear a brief trailer for the next episode

[Episode 02 Trailer Plays]

[Sound of Campfire in background]

Tales Under A Broken Sky – Episode Two – Ghosts

When he first started to see the ghosts, he was terrified.

[Sound of waves thrashing against pier. Wind in the background. Seabirds in the air. Whispers in the background]

The first time had been on the small walkway hugging the side of the bay. Out for an early evening walk, he had been engrossed in an audiobook, and was paying little attention to his surroundings. Turning a corner, something had caught his eye, and looking up, his breath caught in his chest.
It was standing by the cast iron railing, staring out across the water.

Silent and unmoving.

For a moment, he didn’t know what to think. His eyes slipped past it, as if they couldn’t grasp what they were seeing. His mind tried desperately to make sense of what was in front of him. Struggling to find meaning in the faint, shimmering form, that was somehow both there, and not.

In the moment of incomprehension, part of him wanted to reach out and and see if it was really there. If it was something that could be touched. Something tangible. Something real. The other part wanted to run, and was already searching for ways to rationalise the sight out of existence.

But he did neither. He was utterly transfixed by what he saw.

He could feel the sea breeze tugging gently at his jacket, ruffling his hair. He could feel his cheeks warm and slowly redden from the cool touch of late autumn. But the figure before him was untouched by the environment.

A small wave splashed against the side of the promenade and threw spray over the railing. He felt the fine mist against his skin. Cold and salty. But it had passed right through the apparition.

He shivered, torn between the desire to run, and a growing reluctance to turn his back on the apparition. There was an overwhelming feeling of being watched, tickling the back of his neck. He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder; afraid of what he might see.

He didn’t know how long he had been standing there, looking at the pale ghost, but when he finally managed to draw his attention away, the sun had started to sink below the mountains, and the railings cast long shadows across the cracked cement walkway.

The ghost still hadn’t moved, it just stood by the railing, looking out across the water. Against his better judgement, he had begun to feel a kind of kinship with the pale figure. The rest of the world had faded into the distance, and it was just the two of them, the slow lapping of the waves, and the gentle spray carried by the soft evening wind.

A profound sense of sadness overtook him as he finally turned away, and started back along the promenade. He looked back once, just before he tuned the corner and she disappeared from view. She looked lonely, and he surprised himself by reciprocating the emotion.

[Narration fades to Outro]

[Outro]

[The sound of a campfire is accompanied by bass heavy droning in the background, and the sound of a beating heart. Echoing whispers and screams punctuate the notes. A metal door slams in the distance and sinister laughter fades in from the background. All of the sounds are louder and closer, the atmosphere is more claustrophobic]