Speaker 1: It's midnight at the manor and you're just in time.
Shake off the chill, leave your doubts at the door,
and enter if you dare.
Speaker 2: There's no turning back now.
Speaker 3: Welcome listeners to the Modern Horror Podcast. Today, we have
a chilling tale about ambition, obsession, and the price of dreams.
Need Eli a struggling delivery driver who just wants to
make it big in the music world. But when a
mysterious former music mogul starts sending him cryptic messages, Eli's
life takes a turn into the unknown. Will he make
it out unscathed or will he become the next pawn
in a dark supernatural game. Tune in for Delivering My Demons,
a story about how chasing your dreams can sometimes lead
you into the most terrifying places.
Speaker 4: Another day, Another route. I slouched behind the wheel of
my delivery van, the humm of the engine just as
monotonous as my thoughts. Three hundred and fifty one packages
not too bad. The weather is good, but I couldn't
shake the feeling that something was off. Maybe it's because
I'm pushing twenty nine and I still don't know what
I'm supposed to be doing. With my life. Music is
the one thing that keeps me going, the one thing
I can lose myself in. I've blasted as loud as
the delivery van speakers can handle, the songs, drowning out
the depressing chorus, the voices in my head telling me
I'm a loser and that this is as good as
life's ever going to get. I know deep down that
I'm never going to be a rock star. I dreamed
about it when I was younger. Honestly I still do.
But one too many people have told me I'm just
not good enough. Let me be your cautionary tale. Never
major in music accounting, that's the way to go. I
pull up to my next stop and grab a small
box addressed to Mason Ashford. I've delivered to this guy before.
He's always ordering vintage records and state of the art
sound systems. I looked him up online once. I do
this with the customers who have the biggest, most epic houses.
We're talking pools with little waterfalls, lion statues by the door,
you know, rich people stuff. Apparently, Mason Ashford was a
big time music producer back in the day. He'd worked
with some of the greats he has to be in
his eighties by now. But if I were a betting man,
of which I totally am, I'd bet that Mason Ashford
still has some contacts in the music industry. That's why
I have to do this. I just have to taking
a deep breath. I trudge up Mason's long winding driveway,
passing his swinky Mercedes and sick Corvette. Finally arriving at
his front door. I set down his package and I
can tell from the box it's an alley speaker, one
of those virtual assistants people use to play music and
turn their lights on and off and stuff. I feel
like they're a huge waste of money, Like, are you
really that lazy that you can't get up off your
couch to change the song? But whatever, dude, you do
you so anyway, Today, instead of just leaving the package
and snapping a picture for the delivery app, I also
leave a card under the package and has a link
to my website with my music and some videos of
shows I did. Is this a stupid thing to do?
Kind of a gray area? If Mason Ashford complains to
my boss, I'll get in trouble, but they won't fire me.
I'm a decent employee. I show up showered and sober
in my dumb blue uniform. The bar is low, you know,
and maybe, just maybe old Mason Ashford will be into
my music. The next day, I'm doing my thing again,
delivering on my usual route. When I get to Mason
Ashford Street, I see he's got another delivery, except today
there's a new note on his customer profile. You're a
very talented musician.
Speaker 2: I see good things ahead for you. Also, please place
the package by the back entrance through the gate. Thank you.
Speaker 4: My stomach flips and that gas station burrito I this
morning threatens to make an encore performance. Whoa he listened
to my music. He actually took the time to look
me up and listen. I head down the driveway, passed
the cool cars, taking a left towards his back gate.
Normally I don't open people's gates and go into their backyards.
Because I had an experience with the French bulldog two
houses down. The lady was all, Jimmy Choo is friendly,
you don't worry. Well, Jimmy Choo was a little too
friendly because he tore the pocket right off my shorts.
But I'll risk a dog bite for the sake of
my hopes and dreams. Whatever you say, Mason Ashford, you'll
get the best darned delivery service in the world. And
you know, if you wanted to give me a record deal,
I wouldn't say no. I opened the latch on the
gate and make my way to the back door. The
sprinklers must have just turned off because the grass is
soaked and my feet sink into the soggy earth, leaving
a trail of footprints behind me. I drop off the package,
and feeling bold, I grabbed my sharpie and I write,
thanks for listening to my music. I've got some new
stuff I'm working on that I think you'll really like.
Then I scribbled down my email, a dress, and my
phone number, because you know I'm subtle like that. The
truth is, I haven't written anything new in years. There's
nothing that cool happening in my life until now. I'm
so psyched to do my route today, even though I
barely got any sleep last night. Before bed, I checked
my website and saw someone had bought digital copies of
all my music. And that's someone. Yep, you guessed it
was Mason Ashford. I can see his name and address
on the payment processing software. So when I roll up
to Mason Ashford's house with another package, I checked for
any new delivery notes. He doesn't disappoint. On his customer profile,
it now says.
Speaker 2: I've shared your contact info with someone at Knee on
Pulse records. He said he'd reach out this week and
set up a meeting. Also, please go through the back
entrance and enter the mudroom, no need to knock. Please
place the package underneath the bench.
Speaker 4: Okay, so the no need to knock thing is a
little weird, but whatever, I'm willing to go the extra
mile for him. Except when I opened the gate, I
notice there are little holes in the ground where I
left footprints the previous day. I feel bad now had
I crushed his new grass? Did his gardener have to replanned? Oh, well,
can't undo it now. I step around to peek into
the window of the mudroom. I mean, I wouldn't mind
meeting Mason Ashford one of these days, but I don't
want to bust into his house and surprise him. What
if he's one of those people who walks around naked.
What if he's got a gun or worse, a French bulldog.
But the ghost is clear. I opened the door and
spot the bench he mentioned in the notes. I crossed
the room and kneeled down to shove the package underneath.
How something pokes me hard. I get up and brush
off my knee. A piece of metal falls bouncing on
the marble floor. You know those pushpins you use on corkboards,
That's what it is. But imagine my knee as the corkboard.
I'm not thrilled about getting stabbed on the job, but
even if I get some disease from that pushpin, nothing
could get me down. I'm going to get a meeting
with an actual record label. My dreams are coming true.
The next morning, right before I leave for work, it
pops up in my inbox. Matt from Neon Pulse is
asking if I'm available for a call this week. It's
pretty hard to hide my excitement at work. I find
myself at Mason Ashford's house again. I check for any
new notes.
Speaker 2: Good luck with your meeting with Matt. He's a good guy.
Please bring the package through the gate and into the kitchen.
Set it on the counter. No need to knock, so
I do it.
Speaker 4: I go through the gate, pass the holes in the lawn,
past the mud room, that pushman is gone, by the way,
and finally I end up in the kitchen. As I'm
setting the package on the table, my stomach lurches and no,
I can't blame the gas station burrido this time. In
the center of the counter is a pair of scissors
with a note.
Speaker 2: Please use Please use these scissors to cut a lock
of your hair and leave it on top of the pack.
Speaker 4: I stand there, staring at the scissors for what feels
like ours. The note is so simple, so casual, like
it's no big deal. I glance around the kitchen. The cold,
polished countertops stare back at me like they know something
I don't. I mean, this is weird, but music people
are weird, right, But this definitely is crossing some boundaries here, like,
come on, man, what are you doing with my hair?
Did Mason have a thing for me? Is this some
creepy fetish or is there some other more sketchy reason
he wants my hair? Like something you'd read about on
a Reddit thread that gives you nightmares? What should I do?
Do I want to be a rock star or do
I want to be stuck delivering packages for the rest
of my life? I grab the scissors, feeling the weight
of them in my palm, The shiny metal, the sharp blades.
Something about them makes me feel like they're more than
just tools. Is it just me or do they feel
unnaturally cold. I snip off a chunk of hair and
watch it land softly on the counter. I'm sure years later,
this will all be a hilarious story I tell my
famous friends at the Grammys after party. But my heart
races as I stare at my hair. A part of
me wants to snatch it up, throw it in the trash,
and run out of this house and never come back.
But instead, I leave it there because I really do
want to be a rock star and I need Mason
Ashford's help. But the next time he asked me for
my hair, I'm gonna say no. I can't sleep, partly
because I'm excited about my meeting with Matt on Friday,
but mostly because I'm imagining what Mason's doing with my hair.
I forced myself to close my eyes. The next thing
I know, I'm standing in Mason Ashford's mudroom. What's going on?
I hear myself mutter. I shouldn't be here, but somehow
I am here, and that's super messed up, because I'm
definitely one not supposed to be here for starters. It's
dark outside except for that insanely bright full moon, so
I'm pretty sure it's not within the normal delivery window.
Then there's the fact that I'm wearing what I wear
to bed boxers, with little glow in the dark guitars
and a Nirvana T shirt. I want to turn around.
I need to turn around. I hear a voice somewhere
in the house.
Speaker 2: I was afraid you'd lost your way without the guide
of your GPS.
Speaker 4: This should have been offensive to me. I've driven through
this neighborhood a hundred times. I know my way around,
But right now I am scared out of my mind.
Am I about to meet Mason Ashford? Somehow? I hadn't
pictured it like this.
Speaker 5: Join me in the basement.
Speaker 4: He says, his voice echoing through the halls of his
otherwise silent house. I'm really questioning my judgment right now,
but I know without a doubt it's a bad idea
to join him in his freaky murder basement. Except I
can't seem to stop myself. I'm walking through the living room,
where a hundred candles flicker. They're covering every flat surface
in the room. They're even on top of the grand piano.
Down the stairs, I go until I reach the bottom,
and that's when I see him. His face is lit
by the soft glow of one hundred more candles, and
I'm pretty sure I'm the one who delivered those. But
I can't dwell on that thought because my mind is
not processing what I'm seeing. Dudes got what can only
be described as an altar set up in the middle
of his sprawling, unfinished basement. There are lines of coarse
salt crisscrossing over the floor, creating a star shape. It's
definitely the kind of altar you set up if you
plan on sacrificing things like animals or I don't know,
idiot delivery drivers.
Speaker 2: Well, if it isn't the wannabe rock star, it's so
nice to finally meet you. I'm Mason Ashford.
Speaker 4: The man in the basement isn't anywhere near eighty years old.
Dude's probably thirty five forty, but that's the least of
my concerns right now.
Speaker 5: Take your place on the altar. Please.
Speaker 4: He smiles, and his eyes remind me of that French
bulldog feral, predatory, pure, unadult, rigid evil. Are you like
a Satan worshiper? I thought you were a record producer,
I managed to blurt out.
Speaker 2: We can be more than one thing, just like how
you are a delivery driver and a means to an end.
Speaker 4: I'm slinking toward the altar, my body moving all on
its own. I keep trying to fight it, but before
I know it, I'm standing in the center of the
salt pentagram. I lower myself to the cold concrete of
the unfinished basement. Yep, I'm totally getting sacrificed tonight.
Speaker 5: What did you do to me?
Speaker 4: My voice comes out shaky. I wish I could summon
some kind of courage, but that's never really been my thing.
Speaker 2: It's called witchcraft, You mediocre fool. Don't bother resisting. It's
too late to stop what you've set into motion.
Speaker 4: Mason Ashford tears open a white parcel and I know
from the label that it's yet another package I delivered
to him, and he pulls out a very sharp, very
shiny machete. I didn't set this into motion. I try
to squirm away from the blade. As Mason approaches the
altar with slow deliberate steps.
Speaker 5: But you did.
Speaker 2: A ritual is only successful if the person being sacrificed
offers himself freely, and you were practically begging to die.
Speaker 4: What. No, you've got this all wrong.
Speaker 2: You brought me everything I needed for my spell, the packages,
each one containing objects for my ritual.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it's my job, It doesn't mean I want this.
Speaker 2: You weren't just doing your job. You went the extra
mile above and beyond. Every new request brought you closer
and closer to your ultimate testee, your true life's purpose.
Speaker 4: He does a slow walk around the altar, sprinkling bits
of dirt on my body.
Speaker 2: This is the dirt he walked on. It holds your
youthful energy, which I will be taking from you.
Speaker 4: Next, his hand disappears into his pocket and comes out
again with my hair.
Speaker 5: This is your hair.
Speaker 2: It holds your youthful appearance, which I will also be
taking from you.
Speaker 4: He opens his fist and it floats down.
Speaker 5: Over me and your blood.
Speaker 4: He pulls out the pushpin, the end of it still
red with my dried blood. It holds your life force,
which you'll be taking from me. Yes, I get it,
I mutter.
Speaker 2: Too bad, it took you this long to figure out.
I was never going to help you. You are going
to help me.
Speaker 4: He bends down and makes a cut across my right wrist,
my strumming hand. I try to rip it away, but
it's pointless. The blood bursts from my arm like a
ruptured guitar string, each pulse a sharp, chaotic note that
screams through my.
Speaker 5: Why me, because you have what I want?
Speaker 4: My talent.
Speaker 2: You're seriously delusional. I've worked with legends, the best in
the industry, and you your songs are nothing but timid,
boring cliches.
Speaker 4: For some reason, this hurts worse than the gaping wound
on my wrist.
Speaker 2: The one thing you do have is your youth, relatively speaking.
Shut up, excuse me.
Speaker 4: You're going to kill me anyway, So why do you
have to be so mean?
Speaker 2: It's not mean, it's the truth.
Speaker 4: Mason looks at me with pity, like I'm a literal
sad trombone sound.
Speaker 2: Then he says the spell only works on those who
are truly insignificant, the weak, the worthless, the broken.
Speaker 4: Then he straightens up and strolls to the stairs. Where
are you going?
Speaker 2: Upon elogies? I don't particularly care for this part. It's boring,
but don't worry. It will all be over soon. I
hear the.
Speaker 4: Basement door shut. I'm crying now. I can't even die
with dignity. I am a loser. My body weakens, my
head falls to the side. Dark spots cloud my vision.
That's when I see it. The Ali speaker on the
shelf across the room. Alie called nine one one.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry that feature has been disabled.
Speaker 4: No, Allie enabled the nine one one feature.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry that feature has been disabled. Would you like
to hear a song instead?
Speaker 4: What song did I want to die to? I wondered.
Enter Sandman by Metallica. It's my favorite song, the song
that made me beg my parents for a guitar, the
song I listened to before I went on stage and
won my high school Battle of the Bands, And now
it's the last song I'll ever hear play.
Speaker 6: And Go the Extra Mile by Eli Jennings.
Speaker 4: What No? First of all, I didn't ask Ali to
play one of my songs, and second of all, I
didn't even have a song called Go the Extra Mile.
But I'm two weeks to correct her. All I can
do is listen. It's a song I've never heard before,
but it's also familiar, and I know I can't die yet.
I need to stay alive and hear the whole song.
It's epic, it's perfect. It's not playing from the alley speaker.
In fact, the alley speaker isn't even plugged in. But
where's the music coming from? From me? It's in my
head and I'm determined to get it down on paper.
I don't care if I'm hallucinating or if I'm a ghost,
and this is heaven. I need to write this song
down now. I'm sitting up and tearing up my shirt,
using the fabric to stop the bleeding on my wrist.
It's like I just chug three energy drinks. I stagger
to my feet up the stairs, through the living room,
where I find Mason Ashford tickling the ivories of his
grand piano. He stares at me in utter.
Speaker 2: Shock, how did you break free?
Speaker 4: But I don't stop to answer. I have a song
to write. It's blasting through my skull, pumping through my veins.
I'm out the door and I hear him behind me,
chasing me through the soggy grass. I burst through the gate,
down the driveway, down the street. That's when I feel it,
the cold, bony hand on my shoulder.
Speaker 5: Get back to the altar.
Speaker 4: Mason grabs me with a surprising amount of strength and
pulls me to the ground.
Speaker 5: You are worthless.
Speaker 4: His hands are around my neck and he squeezes. I
try to focus on the music, but it's starting to
fade as Mason's insults grow louder.
Speaker 5: We both know the truth that year nothing.
Speaker 4: His grip on my neck tightens.
Speaker 2: Now get back to the altar before it's too late.
Speaker 4: Too late for what I wonder.
Speaker 2: Don't argue, Get back to the altar.
Speaker 4: He shouts, smacking me across the face. The music is
nothing but a soft vibration in the back of my brain,
and it's quickly dissolving into static. That crushing pain of
my wasted potential settles over me again as the spell
begins to take hold. Then bark, A deep, growling snarl
breaks through the noise. I turned just some time to
see a French bulldog charging across the yard. It's small
body full of fury. It's Jimmy too, from two houses down.
I brace myself, but hold my ground. Every delivery driver
knows you never run from a dog, but apparently Mason
doesn't know this because he's the back and scrambles away.
The little dog zeros in on him. He sinks his
teeth into Mason's pant leg and pulls him backward. Mason's
eyes widen and shark, his hands flailing as he's dragged
towards the ground. The song in my head swells to
a deafening crescendo as Mason's features twist and horror as
his skin begins to wrinkle, sagging like a rotten fruit.
This must be what he meant by too late. Whatever
spell was keeping this guy from aging is not really
working so well anymore. It's legit horrifying, but I can't
look away. Even Jimmy Chew, that bloodthirsty killer backs away
with an uneasy whimper. Mason's hair falls out and patches,
turning gray and brittle as his body shrivels. His eyes
bulge out, clouding over with a kind of terror a
man gets when he realizes he's losing control. His skin
stretches naturally tight over his bones than I watch, frozen
in disbelief as he visibly ages decades, unraveling like a
warped vinyl record, its grooves skipping and cracking, the sound
of his life disintegrating before me like a forgotten melody.
His body folds in on itself and shrunken and brittle,
until all that's left of him is a dusty pile
of nothing, and then he's gone. A few months later,
I stand in front of the towering building. I'm about
to walk into my meeting with a major record label.
It was a meeting I got after my new songs
went viral, amine the songs that came from the deepest, starkest,
truest part of me. I had Mason Ashford to thank
for forcing me to confront my worst fears. I had
met my own worst enemy. And it wasn't the man
who tried to murder me for everlasting youth or even
that faroh friend heep. No, my worst enemy was me.
Speaker 3: And that's where we'll leave Eli for now. Throughout his journey,
he learned a hard truth. He spent so long searching
for approval and external validation, but all along, the talent
and strength he needed were already inside of him. Eli's
story reminds us that sometimes the biggest optacles we face
are the ones we create in our own minds. What
do you think could Eli have found his way without
the dark twist of fate or was he always meant
to face.
Speaker 6: His own fears?
Speaker 3: Drop us a message or leave a review to share
your take on today's story. Delivering My Demons was written
and produced by your host, Julie Hopkins. Thanks for listening,
and remember sometimes the greatest battle is the one within yourself.
Speaker 7: If you've enjoyed tonight's story, don't let it be the
last time you step into the dark with us.
Speaker 5: Follow the Modern War.
Speaker 7: Podcast on your favorite podcast platform so you never missy.
Speaker 5: Episode, and if you'd be so kind, please leave a review.
Speaker 7: It helps the podcast grow, brings more brave souls into
the manner, and ensures the stories keep coming.