The Reader & The Shape in the Shadow

This is creepy.

“A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling”

and disturbing creepy pastors and urban legends in the world.

Whether these stories truly happened, or on simply fabrications, is for you to decide. These stories make contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Hey, y'all.

Anyone else ready for a summer to be over? I can't wait for October. Not just Halloween. I mean, that's just one day. When I say I can't wait for Halloween,

I mean, that time of year when the air gets a little chill and you need to pull on a hoodie, maybe add a blanket to the bed, start making more soups and stews, watching horror movies all day, doesn't get so many strange looks from people.

Constant trips to spirit Halloween, leaves that crunch like potato chips when you walk over them. That's what I mean. Also, the 31 days of horror.

“I'm literally shaking right now thinking about it.”

Or could be the two red balls I just drank, or the coffee, or the bag of nerd gummy clusters? What's it to say? Now I'm not a doctor. Or am I.

And along those lines, I should say that submissions for the 31 days of horror are officially closed for the year. I'll fill up with stories. Thank you to everyone who submitted

whether we accepted your stories or not. We got a lot of great stories that just didn't quite fit the show.

And we always appreciate people sending them in.

So please, keep sending them in. We always need stories. We're only close for the 31 days of horror. Otherwise, submissions are still and always open. Okay, enough business.

Let's talk about fun stuff.

“Like a first story from writer AJ O'Suffer,”

narrated by J.V. Hampton Vansam, Creepy Presence, The Reader. You want a story that will keep you up? I got one. And the worst part is it's the kind you can't prove.

So you'll just have to take my word. And by the end, you'll wish you hadn't. I'll tell you about my neighbor. Terrence. He read my cards once.

That's how it started. And that's the whole reason I know any of this.

So let me sit on it a second.

New guy next door. Friendly enough. Kept odd hours. Did tarot out of the back of that consignment shop on pen. And one warm night early on.

He's out on his porch with a couple of beers and him. And he waves me over. Says here. Let me read you. No charge.

Neighbor rate. And I'm not a believer. Never have been. So I figure what's the harm. It's a nice night.

The man's being friendly. He had this little folding table out there. And a deck so worn the corners that gone soft. He shuffled them slow. Asked me to cut.

Then he laid them out. One at a time. Face up. And here's the thing. I keep coming back to you.

He never looked at them. Not once. He laid out a card and kept his eyes on me. Layed out another. Eyes on me.

The whole reading he's looking at my face like the cards are just something to keep his hands busy. Like the real readings happening somewhere behind my eyes. And the cardboard's just for show. And about halfway through, I felt it. I don't have a good word for it even now.

Something brushed up against the inside of my head. Soft. Like a hand closing around a door knob from the other side. Real gentle. Just checking is it locked? Is anybody home?

I want to be clear. It didn't hurt. That was the worst part. It was almost nice. The way it's almost nice to fall asleep when you're not supposed to.

Said, get up. So I got up. And I said, thanks, man. This is great. I got to let the dog out.

“And I walked back to my side of the wall on legs that didn't feel like mine.”

I locked my door that night. Front and back. I didn't even know why. I just knew I didn't want that door knob to turn again. So I kept an eye on him after that.

You feel a thing like that come in under the door. You watch the door. And this is what I found. He could put things in your head. Not read them, put them.

That didn't believe it at first, either.

So don't look at me like that. I walked it happen two minute times to count. A lady came to his table downtown. I heard about it after.

“Wanted to know, should she leave her husband.”

And he didn't tell her a thing. He just looked at her. Same as he looked at me. And she got this look on her face like a lock being forced. And she stood up and said, I already know what I have to do.

Flat, like she was reading it off a card she couldn't see.

And she left him 40 bucks and she walked out and she never looked at the cards once.

The way I figured, he didn't read her future that night. He reached in and made it for her. And she walked out that door thinking it was hers. And here's the part that took me the longest to understand. When he put a thought in, something came back out the other way.

He told me as much once before I learned to keep my distance. He was half in the bag on the porch again.

“And he said, you know what it feels like.”

And I said, what? And he just smiled and said, good. It feels good. And he wouldn't say another word about it. But I worked it out watching.

He'd push a thought into somebody. And all the worry they were hauling around all the years of it would come loose and float up out of them and into him. And it didn't weigh him down. He carried it like it was nothing. Like a man walking around with his pockets full of cold keys and not one of them opens a door he owns.

He tested it small at first. There was a kid at the gas station handed him the wrong pack of smokes. The one behind him on the shelf, not the one Terrent had asked for. And then stood there staring at his own hand, like it had reached back and done something on its own. A guy at the bus stop stood up and walked off in the wrong direction, fast like he had left the stove on it home.

Except he hadn't. There was nothing. Terrent just wanted to see if he'd get up and go. And not one of them ever knew.

That's the thing I could never get past.

There's no defending against it. Because the thought comes in feeling exactly like your own. You can fight off a man's fist. You can't fight off your own idea. There's no door to slam on that.

He was the one thing in this world. You cannot lock out. And I'd felt his hand on the knob, so believe me. I knew. And a man holding all that.

It's got to go somewhere. You can't just keep feeling a glass forever. So he learned to pour it out. Somebody got in his way, told him no. And he'd take everything he'd been carrying and pour the whole cold weight of it onto them.

There was a lone officer turned him down on something. And called him back two days later to say he'd reconsidered. And the word around that was that the man had been found sitting in his car in the lot with the engine off.

That was Terrence. That was some dead woman's grief and some strange Hispanic going into a man at a red light. Settling behind his ribs, feeling exactly like his own sadness. And he'd carry it for the rest of his life and go to his grave.

Never knowing it was never his to begin with.

Now here's where it turns.

“And this is the part I really think about.”

The people closest to him went first. His brother stopped coming around. I noticed because the brother used to park his truck in front of my place every Sunday. And then, one week, the truck just wasn't there anymore. And it never was again.

The car games got quieter, few are cars on the drive. And the friends who did still come, I'd see them out in the yard and something was wrong with them. Something you'd catch from across the street before you could put a name to it. A half second slow to laugh. Eyes going to Terrence first before they'd land on anything else, checking him the way a dog checks your hand before it decides to trust you.

He'd warn them down, smooth. Every time he reached in to win a stupid argument or smooth the night over the way he wanted it, he took a little more of the grain out of them. He got easy, they got agreeable.

“They said yes to him the way water says yes to a hill.”

And here's what I can't shake.

The way I figure it, he knew. He saw exactly what he was doing to the people who loved him. And it never once slowed him down. That's not a man who lost control of a thing. That's a man who looked at the price tag and kept right on by him.

Everyone. But Emma. His wife. She was the last one in his whole life with any ads left on her. And God, she had edges.

And I knew Emma, a little, the way you know a neighbor, over the fence at the mailbox. Hey, how are you, cold enough for you? She was sharp. Quick.

“The kind of woman who'd catch you in a lazy little lie just to let you know she could.”

And then let it go with a smile. She kept a garden along our shared fence. And she'd be out there in the evenings with her hands in the dirt. And we'd talk about nothing. And she was the one who told me laughing that parents had the gift.

That's what she called it, the gift. Like it was a party trick. She didn't know. Back then, she didn't know what I knew. She just thought she'd married a man who was a little too good at reading people.

And she said it like she was proud of him. And I stood there on my side of the fence and couldn't think of one single thing to say back. He never used it on her. That was his one rule far as I could tell. She was the one room in the whole house the weather didn't get into.

And you could see why. She was the only person left who'd argue with him. I'd hear them through the walls some nights. Her giving it right back to him full voice. And I'll be honest, it was a relief to hear.

It meant somebody in that house was still all the way there. But over that last year, I watched her change too. And not the way the others did. The others went smooth. Emma went watchful.

I'd see her at the fence and the quickness was still there. But there was something underneath it now, something careful. The look of a person who's starting to understand that the house she lives in isn't safe. And can't yet say how or why. She stopped telling me about the gift.

She stopped laughing about it. One evening, she was out in the garden and she asked me out of nowhere real quiet. Did parents ever read me. And I lied.

I said no, never got around to it.

And she looked at me for a long second, like she knew it was a lie.

And she went back inside.

And I think she was close.

“I think she was right on the edge of saying the thing out loud.”

And I think he felt her getting close. And I think more than anything in the world he wanted to reach over and smooth that look off her face the easy way. The way he'd smoothed everybody else. But he didn't. For a long time he didn't.

That's the one decent thing I can say about that man. For a long time with her. He didn't. Then one night I heard them going at it. In the kitchen.

Dishes, money. The regular married stuff, the kind of fight that's really about everything underneath it. And she said something sharp, something true. I couldn't make out the words, but I could hear the shape of it. She was getting close to naming what he was.

And then she just stopped. Midward. I heard it through the wall. This silence come down like somebody reached over and pulled the cord out of the back of her. The way I figured it.

He didn't even mean to. That's the pot that scares me worst of all. He'd been so careful with her. Both hands on it, holding it back. And just a little thought got away from him.

Just stopped talking. The kind of thing every single person thinks in the middle of a fight.

And never says and would never.

And a hundred years actually do anything about. But his thoughts didn't stay his anymore. It went out of him anyway. In the one direction he swore, it never would. And it crossed that kitchen and it landed in the one person on earth.

He'd built his whole secret life around. Keep in safe.

“And that's when he found out the truth about himself, I think.”

He'd spent all this time believing he was the one doing it. The one in charge. He wasn't. He was just the place it got done through. The door was never his.

It only ever wore him like a coat. And a thing like that doesn't wait around for you to say yes. After that, she went the way all the others went. Only worse because it was her. I'd see her out at the fence.

And her eyes would drift a little to the left of me. Off to one side. Nothing at all. She'd say the right words. Hey, how are you?

Cold enough for you. But there was nobody behind them anymore. The garden went to weeds. He'd taken the edge clean off her. There was no putting it back.

Because every time he reached to give it back, he only reached in and took a little more. I should have stopped watching right then. I didn't. I don't have a good reason. You don't look away from a thing like that.

Even when every part of you is telling you to. The last time I ever went over there.

“I had some reason I generally don't remember now.”

A package of theirs left at my door. A ladder out borrowed. Something neighborly. The front door was standing open. And I looked in and saw the whole thing in about one second.

And I have never gone back.

Terrence was at the kitchen table. There was a cup of coffee at his elbow. Gone cold. You could tell, by the way, it sat. And Emma was at the sink.

Washing a dish. And the dish was already clean. You could see it was clean. It caught the light. She was just running her hands over it.

Around, and around, and around. The show of a woman doing dishes. And a house with nobody left home to do them for. And here's the part I can't prove. The part that's just what I know down in my gut.

Where it finally got to be too much even for him.

“All that pain he'd taken off all those other people.”

And for once, the grief that came up in him was his own. Real earned his fault. And he wanted to keep it. Hold onto it because it was the only honest thing he had left in the world. And the glass was already full.

And the door did what the door does. It opened on its own and emptied the whole works into the nearest open thing. And the nearest open thing was Emma standing right there. And that was the last of her. Not her body.

Her body kept right on washing the dish. Just her. The Emma part. Gone up the line into him with all the rest. One cold thread among the thousands.

The one he'd feel forever and could never ever send back.

So that's where he is. Right next door to me tonight while I'm sitting here with you. A man who can't feel a single thing he ever took off another living soul. Because it all went out into other people in the end. Except that one thread hers.

“The only way he's got left in him because it's the only pain in that whole house”

that was ever his own doing. He keeps that one. It's the one thing the whole arrangement lets him keep. He can't get out of it. He can get out even if somebody showed him the door.

And there's just not enough of him left and there anymore to let himself out. I see his light on some nights through the wall we share. And every so often real quiet, real gentle. I hear him say it to her across that kitchen. There you go.

I never got my cards right again after that night.

Not by him, not by anybody, anywhere, ever. And I keep my doors locked, front and back. You want another round? Yeah. Yeah.

And I think I need one too.

“And next, from either Nicholas Samuel, Stemper, and narrator by Megan McGoffey, creepy presence,”

The shape in the shadow. You just have to open your eyes. I told myself as I lay there, not wanting to get out of bed. And once read that talking to yourself was a sign of neurosis. But I had found that every time I've lived on my own, it's a habit that I fell into.

I hadn't always lived on my own.

Me used to be married more than once, in fact, but it sadly never stuck. And before I knew it, I was on my own again. It was always an adjustment period, getting used to solitude. But first, there would be feelings of liberation, no compromises on what to do for the evening, what to watch, what to eat, but in the end, I always wound up talking to myself out loud.

I still didn't want to get up, but I need to pee. And there's no one around to ask to take care of that for me. Letting out a sigh, I forced my eyes open and slowly adjusted to the dark in my bedroom. It was never fully dark there. I have a clock that gives off an ambient blue light,

plus the media center across the room always has some lights flickering, casting low green lights of its own. They used to have a light on the nightstand next to my bed, but I found I never used it. So it gave up its spot for a charging pad for my iPhone, not that I was worried. My bedroom has its own bathroom, and it wasn't hard to stumble my way there.

That's when the feeling hit me. I wasn't alone in my room. For a moment, my mind raced. Who else had a key to my condo? My second ex-wife, her daughter, once during my breakup with my first ex-wife.

She had scared the crap out of me by coming into the bedroom after we separated. I awoke to her standing over me staring at me. These things leave scars. I'm imagining things. I said as I slipped out of my bed, but that's when I saw it.

I thought of it as an it, because I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman on the far side of my bedroom. The room was dim, lit only by soft blue and green electronic lights, but there was a deeper shadow across it.

Someone was there. Who are you?

“They asked, quietly at first, because that was the best I could muster.”

I hoped it would be a voice I recognized.

But no, I realized I was rationalizing. Who are you? I repeated louder this time, practically shouting. The shadow shifted slightly in my eyes flushed to the wall by my bed, where my replica civil war cavalry saber hung.

I seriously considered grabbing it. But then my cat stretched, catching my eye. He was a very dark gray cat, part Russian blue breed, and as my eyes adjusted more, I realized he was on my bed. Half asleep until I woke him with my shout.

Do you see it? I asked the fear at least in my voice, but his only reply was a yarn, as he most likely decided. I was being a stupid human and went back to sleep. Yeah, I would talk aloud to my cat as well.

No, I didn't expect him to answer me. Though in this case, he kind of did.

As I began to relax and realized that if a stranger were truly in the room,

he'd react. He's no guard dog, but he hates strangers.

“I looked again at the shadow within the darkness.”

No longer sure it was someone, so I mustered the courage to cross the room to the light switch and turned it on. No one was there. The room was empty, other than my cat, who was annoyed at me for turning on the lights.

After I finished in the bathroom, I stopped in the middle of my bedroom and scanned it again. Still nothing, but I had been so sure. For a moment, I considered leaving the lights on for the rest of the night, but I hate sleeping in bright lights.

Off went the lights, and the room returned to a pitch black, so I crawled back into bed. I quickly glanced around the dark room, no strange shadows, and the cat was eyeing me lazily. Sorry, Merlin.

I said, as I flashed him a guilty smile. He gazed at me with his green eyes, brighter in the light of my clock, then let out another yon in my back to sleep. If only I could go back to sleep, too. I have to work tomorrow.

I can't stay up all night. I lay there, closed my eyes, and tried to will myself back to sleep. But now my mind was full of everything I'd have to take care of tomorrow. Have you ever tried to count sheep? I'm not sure who came up with that idea,

but it's crap and doesn't work. Suddenly my mind was off playing through some memory, and a feeling of relief came to me when I decided that I was dreaming.

“Except could I be dreaming if I was thinking that I was dreaming?”

Am I asleep? I asked aloud. I didn't expect the cat to answer, but boy, wouldn't it have been great if he had? I didn't, of course.

But that wasn't what felt strange. I couldn't hear my voice either. Merlin? Silence? I wasn't speaking, even though I was sure I was,

but now I was absolutely sure of two things. I was awake, and the shape in the shadow was back. My eyes opened and flipped about the room, adjusting to the soft glow of the electronics.

At first, I tried to look down to where Merlin was sleeping,

but I couldn't quite see him yet. Then my eyes gazed over the far side of the room. It was too dark. I couldn't make anything out, but I still felt something there again. I tried to sit up, but couldn't.

I blinked a few times, confirming I was blinking just fine, but my muscles weren't responding to my will. Come on. You've moved your arms and legs up as silly in times before. You know how it feels?

It felt as if they were cast in cement. They weren't numb. I could feel my hands under my sheets and my toes, but they wouldn't move. By now, my eyes adjusted to the darkness,

and the shape in the shadow was definitely there. Why are you? I called out, but still no sound. I tried to nudge my sleeping cat, but again, my legs were frozen.

They weren't numb. I knew in my mind that my body should work. Sleep paralysis. I whispered, soundlessly. I fret about this, you're awake, but not fully.

When we sleep, our brain shuts off connections to our voluntary muscles, so we don't hurt ourselves. But with sleep paralysis, we are in the process of waking up, and the signals haven't turned back on yet. My clinical analysis of my situation didn't really make me feel any better.

As my eyes flipped from trying to see where my cat was, just out of sight, back to the shape in the shadow that was by the far wall. Only it wasn't there anymore. It was closer to my bed.

Move, move. A yelled at myself, but no sound came out. Wake up, damn it. I was up and out of my bed as a rush of relief swept through me. And I scanned the back towards the shape in the shadow.

I could almost make out a person.

My eyes went back to my sleeping cat,

“crawled up in a nice tight ball and snoring.”

I let out a sigh of relief and figured I must be dreaming. But then I realized I was still in my bed. I had gotten out. But there, I next to my cat was me. My eyes were open and staring at the shape in the shadow.

This was crazy. I thought as I quickly crossed my bedroom, coming dangerously close to the shadow as I reached for the light switch. To heck with worrying about sleeping with bright lights on, if there were bright lights, there would be no shadow for the shape to be in.

But my hand couldn't flip the switch. I wasn't really here. I'm back there in the bed, unable to move. Wake up, my yelled back at myself, but of course there was no sound.

I couldn't quite make out the shape in the shadow.

It was too dark within that shadow, but I could still see movement. It was staring at me in the bed. And I could see my eyes were open, frozen, staring back at whatever it was.

“My heart was pounding so hard now that I could feel it in my chest.”

Like a drum. My throat was clenched tight. And for a moment, my mind wandered weather. I had remembered to take my night time blood pressure medication. Can I have a heart attack over here by the bedroom door

while my body is laying in my bed over there? Again, I didn't make a sound. But I was certain that the shape in the shadow was turning to look at me. Where I was by the light.

But Merlin was sleeping soundly.

Nothing could really be wrong.

Calm down. I tried to say the shape in the shadow. Took a step closer to me. I was angry at me. I didn't know how I knew this,

but I knew it in my heart. I was not supposed to be up and around. I was supposed to be back in my bed. Frozen and sleep paralysis. It made a sudden move toward me.

And then I was back in bed. I didn't remember moving. But I was there again. Calm yourself.

“I said as I tried to force myself to breathe slowly.”

I could do that much, it seemed. I could look about. Blink and regulate my breathing. I could see the shape in the shadow more clearly now. As my eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness.

I thought it was a person. But it wasn't. People don't have arms that long. Legs. Nick.

It was as if he was stretched out like a shadow. But that's all it was. A shadow with a shape inside. I shut my eyes tight and tried to move again. I almost felt the ability to move.

Was coming back. My limbs. No longer felt frozen in concrete. Instead, they felt as if there was a very heavy weight upon them. As if layers of blankets far more than I had.

Or piled on top of me with people lying across them. I could almost move. My hand just a bit. But it was hard. So very hard.

And now the shape in the shadow was next to my bed. What are you? I screamed in my head. What do you want with me? It's a dream.

I'm in the process of waking up. And this is some kind of night terror that has me. And any moment I wake up and this will just be a dream. The shape in the shadow shook its head. And though I couldn't see its face, I knew it was smiling.

That's herable grin far too long and wide for a head that size. It's just a dream. I said again, as I will, my hand to move another centimeter. But was it really moving? Or was I just thinking it was?

A grin grew longer and more twisted as it reached towards me with fingers that were far too long. Catched to an arm even longer still. Just a dream. That's when I saw my cat. He was awake.

His ears were flat and his face twisted into a terrified his. He was looking at it too. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypard.com.

You can also follow us at creepypard on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through creative comments share a light licensing, or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent or the creepypard-cast production team and the story author.

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