Speaker 1: Welcome listeners to Tales, a podcast that brings your short
stories to life through narrations, sound effects, and more. These
stories will be brought to you by different authors with
different writing styles, but with the same spooky vibes. So
lock your doors, check your closets, make certain there's nothing
lurking under your bed, and enjoy there. There's something about
Richewell that doesn't sit right in the bones a small
town's sun glow between hills that never dry out and
woods that never thin. Fog doesn't just pass through here.
It lingers like it has nowhere else to be. But
it wasn't just fog. It was something heavier, clinging to
the guthers like it new where blood likes to settle.
Light dim, quicker here, sound full, short of where it
should go. People go about their normal lives a smile
here and there, but the smiles never quite reach their eyes.
Conversations hover around them, mundane, like small talk as a
ritual to distract from something deeper or darker. It's as
if keeping things shallow helps them believe their lives is
supposed to be meaningful, and talk of the town's past
rarely spoken, often silence always avoided. Ridgual is the kind
of town you drive through without noticing. One street light,
a diner with flickering bulbs, and a post office that
hasn't updated hours in years, just enough to keep the
wheels turning. But one building stands apart, too large, too quiet,
the rich wal Psychiatric Hospital. It looms on the ouskirt,
wrapped in ivy and shadow like. The town grew around
it and then tried to forget it. No one talks
about it. They never did, but it is always dear,
and somehow everyone still walks a little faster when they
passed the road that leads to it. Ridge Real Psychiatric
Hospital was shut down in two thousand and eight after
a fire swept through the east wing. They claimed faulty
wiring or a stroke of bad luck. They also claimed
that there were no casualties, but everyone knows that fire
didn't start on his own. But long before the fire,
people whispered about the place, Whispers about a room that
they didn't appear on the hospital's map, a room with
no listing or no label. No doctors were assigned to it,
no orderlies entered, and no patience ever came back out
Room thirteen. He was found just after dawn, wandering the
edge of Quarry Road, barefoot, dressed in an hospital gowned
with soot and something darker. He didn't resist, he didn't speak.
He just stood there, shivering and waited to be found.
A crew tattoo marked the inside of his wrists, etched
in faded black ink that looked like it had been
done by trembling hands. The officers who found him noticed it,
but gave a little thought, just another strange detail in
the night already full of them. The two officers who
picked him up try to keep it light. They thought
maybe he was on something, lost and confused. But when
Officer Michaels offered him a cup of coffee, the man
looked up, eyes wide, almost black. Anna doesn't drink coffee,
he said softly. She likes strawberry tea, no sugar, just
a bag steep too long. Michaels went pale. He hadn't
heard his wife's name spoken out loud in six years.
It dropped from the stranger's lips, too easy, like a
name from a grocery list, not a grave. The memory
surged back, her limp hands in his the antiseptics thing
of the hospital, the cloy and Lily's At the funeral,
every one of the department knew, but no one ever
spoke her name, not out of fear, but out of
respect for the silence it left behind. But this man,
this stranger, he said it would, no hesitation, no trum
in his voice, as if he had every right to it.
Michael's hand curled into a fist before he even realized it.
His bread caught somewhere between memory and rage. How do
you know that name, he asked, his voice low, cracking
at the edges. The stranger tilted his head, not in confusion,
but as if he were listening to something behind Michael's
something just out of view. She remembered me, the man said, quietly,
almost like an apology. Even at the end. Michael's mouth
went dry, his brain clawed for an explanation. Old cases,
blurred faces, things left unset. She didn't she didn't know you,
he mothered. She couldn't have. The man didn't argue, just
stared past him, like he wasn't really even there anymore.
She knew what they were doing in that place, before
the fire, before they erased everything. Michaels felt it then,
something sharp and old, waking, up behind his ribs, the
late night calls, the way she stops sleeping the final
weeks when she kept the journal he never found. His partner,
Office of Bread had to snap him out of it. Michaels,
he said, firmly in the hand on his shoulder. Don't
listen to him. Then he turned to the stranger, eyes hard,
and you keep your mouth shut until I say otherwise.
Let's go. Brett reached for the man's arm, guiding him
towards the police department, which was shared with the Social
service department. The moment he touched him, a chill ran
off his spine, sharp and cold, like icy fingers brushing bones.
He tensed, instinct kicking in, but forced himself to shake
it off. Ghost stories didn't belong on his shift report.
Danny Vego worked in Ridgewell's Social Service department. She wasn't
on call that night, but they said that law enforcement
had brought in a man who was asking specifically for
her by name. No one can explain how he knew it,
but by the time she arrived, the front desk clerk
was pale. She didn't meet her eyes when she pointed
towards the back. He hasn't moved, she whispered. But he
keeps saying your name like a prayer all morning. The
hallway stretched longer than it should have. Fluorescent lights above
buzz faintly. One of them flicker in every few seconds,
like I couldn't decide if it still belong in this world.
With every step, Danny felt her pulse in her throat.
She didn't notice man. She didn't think she did. She'd
reached the door at the end of the hall. The
observation window was narrow, but she didn't need much to
see him. He sat perfectly still in the chair, unmoving,
eyes fixed forward. He looked like he was waiting. Then,
without shifting his gaze, his lips parted, and Danny swore
she heard her name, soft, like he'd been speaking to
her the entire time, like he'd never stopped. And suddenly
she felt cold, not because of what he said, but
because part of her wanted to answer. The door click
shut behind her. Theo was quiet, too, quiet, like sound
didn't behave properly. Here. The stranger sat still, hands resting
on the table in front of him, eyes never leaving hers.
His clothes were damp with forests, sweat and dirt. There
were scratches on his forearms, like he'd run through bramble.
But he wasn't trembling, He wasn't disoriented. He was just waiting.
Danny didn't sit. She stayed near the wall, heart pounding
against her ribs. How do you know my name? She asked.
The man tilted his head just slightly. I I didn't
think you'd come. His voice was calm, too calm, and
felt like it should have came from a man twice
his age, someone who'd seen too much and learned to
whisper through it. You said my name, Danny said, steadier.
Now you ask for me, so talk. He blinked slow,
then nodded. I remembered you. I remembered from before, how
Brett caught before what? He looked down at his risk,
at the faded tattoo there, His fingers hover over it
for a moment, like he wasn't sure whether to show
it or hide it. Listen, you don't remember they've made
sure of that. Do you even remember why you're here?
Remember leaving them? Danny didn't respond. She didn't even know
what to say. You left her, You left them, they
went out. Listen, I think you've mistaken me. I have
not mistaken you. You've just forgotten. But it's waking up now.
He reached across the table, slowly, deliberately, and turned her
risk over with two fingers. She flinched. His skin was
ice cold. He tapped a spot just above her pulse,
right here. That's where it was before they moved it.
His eyes lifted and locked onto hers. There was nothing
in them, but knowing they're still in that room, Danny
and you. You may not remember, but they do, and
I do. Danny left shaken. She told the officers he
needed psychiatric care, but Richwell's psychiatric hospital didn't take patience anymore.
It hadn't in years. She couldn't explain why her hands
were trembling, or why her name and his mouth felt
like splinters under the skin. But that night the dreams came,
not just strange but wrong. She saw corridors lined with
cracked tiles and flickering lights, rusted color stains and patterns
didn't make sense of. Danny heard screams behind doors that
shouldn't have been locked, and she saw a man restrained
to a gurney, mouthgag, eyes wide open, not from fear
but from recognition. There were other moments, flashes that didn't
feel like dreams at all, like memories trying to claw
its way back. She saw itself in a white coat,
clipboard in hand. She was walking into a room without
a number. She heard a voice behind her whisper, don't
let her talk too long. She gets inside. Danny woke
up in sweat, sheets, twisted bread caught in her throat.
The clock read three thirteen am. She went to the
bedroom and turned on the faucet, the splash of cold
water on her face, washing away the dreams and dread
that clung to her. And as she leaned in towards
the mirror, she saw it something just behind her left ear,
a mark, three vertical lines, one broken in the center,
Small and almost delicate, but she couldn't look away. She
knew that it hadn't been there before, but yet there
it was, and yet it felt familiar, like an old scar.
She'd forgotten how she got the skin around it. Tingled,
but there was no pain, not exactly, but something was
stirring beneath the surface. Danny didn't sleep again that night.
She watched the sun rise through her bedroom window, and
when she finally walked in the next morning, at work.
Something was sitting on her desk, a Manila folder. No note,
no envelope, no message, just a name, a photograph and
a date admittance March eighth, two thousand eight, patient Eli Merca.
She flipped the folder open. Taped to the first page
was a picture of the man from holding to the Stranger.
His face was younger and bruised, and standing in the background,
just behind his shoulder, slightly out of focus, was Danny