Midnight Narrative - Episode 5 - "Time and Shadows"

Episode 5 - Time and Shadows

Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:19 - I found the perfect apartment in the city. Something in it is stealing my life.
09:31 - In 1940, my friend's great-grandmother asked a Ouija board a terrible question, and it answered....
19:33 - The Thirteenth Child

Tonight on Midnight Narrative, we explore the terrifying costs we pay for things we never asked for. We start in a "perfect" city apartment where a young woman realizes her cheap rent is being paid for in years of her life. Then, we step back to 1940 to hear a family’s chilling warning about a Ouija board prediction that manifested in the most horrific way possible. Finally, we visit a village where a mother counts her children in the dark, and a 13th child waits in the shadows of a reality that has forgotten them.

Stories featured in this episode:

I found the perfect apartment in the city. Something in it is stealing my life. (u/Accomplished_Low7889)
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1sji9yj/i_found_the_perfect_apartment_in_the_city/

In 1940, my friend's great-grandmother asked a Ouija board a terrible question, and it answered.... (u/MattJowen)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghoststories/comments/1t0olel/my_friends_family_has_an_80yearold_unbreakable/

The Thirteenth Child (u/doradiamond)
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1t0w4go/the_thirteenth_child/

If you would like me to narrate your story, please submit to: midnightnarrative666@gmail.com

Art Credit: Instagram @unexpectedspecter

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

I found the perfect apartment in the city. Something in it is stealing my life. No one's always looking for that perfect place. Big enough, not too expensive, close to work. Somehow I actually found it. The building itself was old, the kind with narrow hallways and a slow elevator that always makes a faint noise on the way up. But it was well kept. Clean and quiet in a way that's hard to find in a city like this. The landlady lived in the same building, three floors above me. She was a tall, older woman, with a soft voice and tight shoulders, and seemed genuinely pleased to show me the apartment. It had two bedrooms, a big living room, and one balcony, was also just a few blocks from the office, which meant I could walk to work every morning instead of dealing with packed trains. I walked through each room, expecting there to be a catch. I had just graduated and still had student loans to deal with, so there was no way I should be able to afford something like that. But when she told me the rent, I just stood there for a second. She explained she gives a big discount to young women who are new to the city, because she had been one herself, and I didn't question it. I signed the lease that same day. Moving in felt good. My dad helped me bring my stuff over and fix a few small things, and for the first time it felt like I was actually starting my life. The only strange thing that first night was when I dropped a toolbox on my foot and cut the side of my big toe pretty badly. I cleaned it, put a bandage on it, and I figured I'd take a better look the next day, but when I woke up the cut was already gone. Like it happened a long time ago. The first month felt perfect. I used to sit on the balcony every morning, eating scrambled eggs and drinking coffee before walking to work. I was in my early twenties, living in the biggest city I'd ever been in, with a job I actually liked, and it felt like everything had finally worked out. The apartment was a big part of that. The first time something felt off was after a night out drinking with coworkers. I got home, opened Instagram, saw a picture of myself from earlier that night, and I looked different. Nothing obvious, just older. My face looked a little more tired, my skin dull, with faint dark circles under my eyes. I even pulled up older photos to compare. Same angle, same smile, but it didn't look like the same person. I didn't think much of it at first, but over the next week it got harder to ignore. My skin got drier, I started waking up exhausted no matter how much I slept. And one morning at work I couldn't stop yawning during a meeting. Later that day, during a presentation, I felt this weird pain in my back. At first I thought it was just stress. My first real job, new city, new routine, it made sense. I went to a doctor just to be safe, and he confirmed it was probably just fatigue. So I kept going. Day after day, I started getting used to feeling like that. I went out less, stopped going to the gym, and most nights I just stayed in watching random shows. Every month I'd slide the rent under the landlady's door, like we agreed. I almost never saw her after the first week, and she never reached out. About two months after moving in, I found my first gray hair. It was a Sunday morning, and I was brushing my hair while listening to some podcasts when I saw it. It honestly freaked me out. After that, things got worse fast. My coworkers started noticing. My face looked thinner, my skin dry and lifeless, and I must have lost over twenty pounds without even trying. The gray hairs kept multiplying. My boss even called me into his office and asked if everything was okay, if I needed some time off. I didn't even know what to tell him. Every doctor I had seen kept saying the same thing stress, burnout, something like that. But the truth was I wasn't even working that hard. Then Thanksgiving came up, and I decided to visit my parents back home because I couldn't wait to get out of that city. I kept thinking maybe I just needed that break. And for one day, I believe that was it. The first night back in my old room, my skin already looked better, I had energy again, and I felt like myself. But my parents didn't see it that way. They looked at me like they were seeing a different person, like they didn't recognize me anymore. And the worst part came when I stood next to my mom in the bathroom mirror. We looked the same age. That's when I knew it wasn't just stress. I ended up staying there for two weeks, and when I went back to the apartment, I already knew something in that place had changed me for good. The second I walked in, I started packing. I grabbed everything I could, threw it into two suitcases, and rushed to the elevator. There was another woman inside, a woman tall, athletic, wearing workout clothes and sunglasses, even indoors. She looked like she was in her early twenties. I barely paid attention to her at first. Then I looked again. Something about her felt familiar, the way she walked, the way she kept her shoulders tight, the shape of her face. I kept staring, trying to place it. She looked exactly like the landlady, only decades younger. I stared at her longer than I should have, and she noticed. She turned away quickly and tried to step out as soon as the elevator reached the ground floor, but I didn't let her. I grabbed her arm and turned her toward me. I didn't need her to say anything, I already knew. It was the landlady. I started yelling at her, asking what she had done to me. She tried to pull away, but I wouldn't let go, and we ended up fighting right there in the lobby. Of course she was now stronger than me, much stronger, and she shoved me hard enough that I fell and hit the back of my head on the floor. I don't remember losing consciousness. It just felt like everything cut out. When I woke up, I was in a hospital room, with bright lights and nurses moving around outside, and the landlady sitting next to my bed. She looked guilty, almost sad. She apologized for pushing me and said she didn't have a choice, but I didn't care about that, I just wanted answers. Through tears, she told me the same thing that had happened to her, that she had moved into that apartment about a year ago, and that there had been another landlady before her. I processed that information for a minute, then asked how the hell that worked, and she said she didn't know exactly. What the last landlady told her was only that the two apartments, hers and the one she rented out, had been connected since the building was constructed, and that one drains time while the other gives it, like a straw. I know how insane that sounds, because my first instinct was to call it a lie, but she stood up, wiped her eyes, and put a key in my hand, telling me that both apartments were mine now and that she was moving out. I asked her what I was supposed to do with it. She gave me a small, tired smile, and told me to rent it out. I thought about going to the police, I thought about trying to find the landlady, I thought about going back to my parents, but none of that would give me those months back, or the years. I am twenty-two, but my body is decades older, and every time I look in the mirror, I can tell it won't just reverse on its own. In desperation, I listed my apartment on the same website where I found it and moved to hers. The messages started coming in almost immediately. The first showing is today. That's why I'm writing this out of guilt. One part of me keeps saying I don't have to do this, that there has to be another way. But the other part screams that I don't have a choice. That it's either this or accepting that I've lost all my youth. The girl coming to see the place sounded young and hopeful on the phone. She's excited to find a spot where she can have the best time of her life in this city. I remember sounding just like that. As someone who seems to attract these interactions more than most, I'm well used to the standard fare, unexplained bumps in the night, sudden cold spots, or the classic shadowy silhouette moving just out of sight. But occasionally, something is shared with me that really creeps me out. This time it found me in the form of some very old family folklore. The report that follows comprises a chilling prediction, a catastrophic event, and a family secret passed down through the decades, serving as a harsh warning against messing around with things that should be left well alone. A very talented musician and good friend of mine, Josh English, recently shared this account with me. It's a massive piece of lore in his family, and a story his Nan used to tell with absolute seriousness. While most of our nans warned us about the everyday dangers of playing too close to deep water, or crossing busy roads, Josh's Nan had a very different, far darker danger she wanted him to be cautious of. The exact dates of what followed have been lost to time. While deep archival research might uncover the hard facts, for this report, we are going to focus purely on the chilling folklore itself. Josh's Nan sadly passed away a couple of years ago, taking the finer details with her to the next place. But to set the scene, the sequence of events unfolded sometime in the 1940s. To set the scene, we are looking at Josh's great-granddad, Joseph, and his great nan, Jane. They had a young daughter together named Elizabeth, who would later become Josh's beloved nan. Before Joseph met Jane, he had been married previously and had a daughter from that relationship called Caroline. From what Josh's family remembers, Caroline usually lived with her biological mother. However, for a period of a few weeks during the 1940s, she came to stay with Joseph, Jane, and little Elizabeth. And if you've ever navigated the complexities of a blended family, you know how high tensions can run. Jane and her stepdaughter, Caroline, were no exception, and simply did not get along, clashing constantly under the same roof. The atmosphere in the house grew thick with resentment, and Jane was rapidly reaching her breaking point. She desperately wanted Caroline to return to her mother's, but time seemed to drag. As each day slowly rolled past, the energy within her home grew suffocatingly heavy. Jane needed a vent. She was rapidly reaching her wit's end. She decided to invite some friends over one evening to clear the air and restore a little normality to her everyday life. They had the house to themselves and were complaining, gossiping, and sharing a much needed laugh. Things were finally beginning to feel normal again. Then, whether out of boredom, morbid curiosity, or just the spiritualism of the era, someone suggested indulging something a little more taboo. Let's turn the lights down, close the curtains, and get out of Ouija board. At first, it went exactly as you'd expect. Nothing profound happened. It was entirely lighthearted, just a bit of a parlor game while they sat around chatting about random things. Someone asked a silly question, and the board spelt out an equally silly answer. Eyes narrowed and smiles widened around the table as they playfully tried to guess who was pushing the planchette. But then Jane asked a specific question. Frustrated by her living situation and feeling a sudden spike of anger, she spoke out loud. When will the daughter be gone? She meant it purely in a physical sense. When would Caroline finally pack her bags and go back home? Nothing happened. She asked a second time. The same stillness followed. The atmosphere in the room started to tighten, her friends noticing the shifting energy. A few snighty remarks were thrown around the table at whoever was supposedly pushing the planchette. Not so brave now, are we? Has Jane scared you? Followed by some giggling. Everyone assuming the group's prankster had just lost their nerve. But Jane wasn't laughing. She had become focused on the board. She asked for a third time, but this time with conviction in her voice. That was the moment the energy in the room turned ice cold. Josh said his nay and described it as an instant, full-body chill, hitting everyone at the exact same time. The planchette, which had just been lazily sliding around spelling out jokes, violently darted across the board with everyone's fingers still glued to it. It spelt out S H E W I L L B E G O N. S O O N. The lighthearted vibe completely vanished. Everyone was instantly unnerved. It felt wrong. It felt dark. They immediately packed the board away, mutually agreeing that they'd had more than enough of that game for one night. And it was probably best to just leave the evening there. By the next morning, Jane had convinced herself to dismiss the entire ordeal as a prank and terrible taste. She rationalized that someone at the table must have been harboring a grudge against her, and she'd have to do some digging later to find out who it was and why. However, just a few days later, the message on the board started to bleed into the physical world. An emergency situation arose back at Caroline's mother's house. Details on what the emergency was are lost to history, but it was urgent enough that Caroline had to get home immediately. Given the urgency and the distances involved back then, she was booked on to a flight. The family traveled down to the airport to see her off. Joseph and Jane stood watching as Caroline boarded the plane. I tried to imagine what was going through Jane's mind at that moment. Relief that her stepdaughter was finally leaving, or a lingering, uneasy memory of the board's rapid spelling just days prior. The plane began to flift off on the runway. It was at this point, right before their eyes, that disaster decided to strike. The plane suffered a catastrophic engine failure, it completely lost power, dropped out of the sky, and crashed right near the airport. Caroline was tragically killed in the wreckage. Just days after the Ouija board emphatically promised Jane that the girl would be gone soon, she was dead. When Josh finished telling me the story, I was genuinely creeped out. Naturally my first instinct was to put on my researcher hat and start digging into the few facts I had to go on. But here is where the story gets frustrating and a tad bit more mysterious. Without exact marriage certificates, death records, deep genealogy files, and unrestricted access to historical aviation crash databases, unearthing the hard truth of that day is almost impossible. We also need to refactor in the age of the story and how perception can change over time. During the 1940s, civilian air travel was heavily restricted due to the war. If Caroline was placed on a small, privately chartered flight, an emergency military ferry, or if she was traveling under her mother's maiden name instead of her father's surname, the official records would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to track down today. Furthermore, as stories are passed down through eighty years of family history, the exact decade or the mode of transport can sometimes shift. Details are lost as the memory begins to fade, but the core trauma remains. The lack of definitive proof makes the story ten times scarier in my opinion. It elevates it from a tragic historical fact to a deeply personal, chilling piece of folklore. It's a tragedy that slipped through the cracks of the official archives, living purely in the memory of the family who experienced it. One thing, though, is certain. To those who witnessed the tragedy unfold before their own eyes, it was absolutely real. My friend Josh believes the story to be absolutely authentic. To this day, Josh's family has one golden, unbreakable rule do not mess around with Ouija boards. The trauma of that prediction was drilled into his nan, who drilled it into her children, who passed it down to Josh. That warning is still spoken today, nearly a century from its author. Reflecting on it all, I can't help but wonder, did the board simply predict an unavoidable tragedy? Or in a moment of anger and frustration, did Jane unknowingly invite something much darker to intervene and grant her wish in the most horrific way possible. The thirteenth child The village agreed never to speak of the thirteenth child, though every mother counted a fourteen in secret. My mother was a hard woman made of acid, fire, and a twisted wire. She counted in the mornings when the light was thin and brittle, and made everything appear unfinished. One, she says, sometimes and then again one, as if the first attempt had not taken. I do not always hear the rest, I do not want to. She never seemed troubled by this. We stood where we meant to stand. It was easy to know where that was. Father had marked the places with a willow switch dragged through black charcoal. Even now, I think I could place each of us exactly, though I could not say how many there were without first deciding what I mean. At the table there were twelve bulls. This was correct. It had always been correct. At least I think so. It would be a simple matter to count them, but I find I'd prefer not to. The idea of twelve is a steady one, it holds. I did not think about it until I noticed that I was sometimes still hungry after this. It is a small thing to be hungry, a quiet thing that gnaws at you. Sometimes I would pause in the doorway, not quite knowing if I was coming or going. I would hover there, one foot raised as if in dance. My second brother hated it when I danced. Don't stand there, he said. I'm not, I told him, even though I was. He considered this and nodded, as if I had agreed with him. There's a portrait in the sitting room that I do not like to look at directly. It contains all of us, or nearly. It is us as we were. There is a place near the center that I avoid, because it feels slippery and coarse at the same time. If I look too quickly, I think I see a hand. Since then, I have avoided looking at it directly. They seem to prefer it. My seventh sister used to keep a diary, its leather stained dark along the edges with perspiration and longing. I remember finding it, though I cannot say when because she made me promise. The writing was repeated, or perhaps I only recall it that way because repetition makes things easier to hold. We are as we are, as we are, as we are, or something like that. Later I tried to find it again and could not. The book was still there. The space where the writing had been was not. You shouldn't read things that aren't yours, my sister said. I wasn't, I said. There are marks on the inside of the pantry door. I have always liked them. They are irregular, but not careless. Sometimes I press my lips against the grooves and feel their warmth, as if someone had just breathed into the wood. I have tried to count them, I do not recommend it. The numbers refuse to settle. It is difficult to explain. I was midway through a number, I did not remember starting. When I stopped, the sense of interruption was so strong that I felt I ought to apologize, though to whom I'm not sure. Maybe to my mother's eleventh son. We gather sometimes in the village, it's nice. We stand close enough to feel each other's warmth, and far enough that we are not obliged to acknowledge it. There is a place I am usually not, which is how I know it is mine. This morning, when the sky was new and grey, and heavy with the promise of rain, I helped lay the table, twelve bowls. This is correct. I know where each goes. My hands remember even when I am not thinking. This scares me. I laid down the final bowl and did not feel finished. I counted them again, more slowly. One, two, three. It seemed to come out differently. I cannot say how. She looked near me, her eyes unfocusing on a spot just over my left shoulder and nodded. That will do, she said. I tried my hands and went to stand with the others. It took me a moment to find my place, which is unusual. I'm generally quite good at it. It used to be easy to know where I belonged. Still, I paused before stumping into it. Just long enough to be certain no one spoke. It would be worse, I think, to stand where I belong and discover that I do not know.