Welcome to Haunted Road, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Erin Minky.

Listener discretion is advised.

The fire had burned low. A sense of loneliness crept over me.

I arose and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I had to do,

as if I were enviroment by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it would be fatal to break.

I covered up in bed and lay listening to the rain and wind in the faint

freaking of distance shutters till they lulled me to sleep.

I slept profoundly, but how long I do not know. All at once I found myself awake

and filled with a shuttering expectancy. All was still. All but my own heart.

I could hear it beat. Presently, the bed clothes began to slip away slowly toward the foot of the bed,

as if someone were pulling them. I could not stir, I could not speak.

Still, the blanket slipped deliberately away until my breast was uncovered.

Then, with a great effort, I seized them and drew them over my head.

I waited, listened, waited. Once more that steady pole began, and once more I lay

torped, a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. At last, I roused my energies

and snatched the covers back to their place and held them with a strong grip. I waited,

by and by, I felt a faint tug and took a fresh grip. The tug strengthened into a steady strain,

it grew stronger and stronger, my hold parted, and for the third time the blanket slid away.

I groaned. An answering groan came from the foot of the bed. Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my

forehead. I was more dead than alive. Presently, I heard a heavy footstep in my room. The step of

an elephant, it seemed to me. It was not like anything human, but it was moving from me.

There was relief in that. I heard it approach the door, pass out without moving bolt or lock,

...