The Sam Hain Halloween Spooktacular | SCP-6592 (Part 1)

Want to hear brand new horror stories brought to life? Live? Join me every Sunday at 7pm Eastern Time on the Doctor No Sleep Podcast YouTube channel, where I narrate fresh, never-before-heard stories in real time. Just search Doctor No Sleep Podcast on YouTube, and make sure you're subscribed with notifications on so you don't miss it. The muffled hum and thump of the opening band comes through the wall as I lie on the couch in my dressing room. One hand wrapped around a bottle of champagne, the other swiping through old pictures on my phone. There's a knock at the door. I ignore it, absently dragging on the cigarette dangling from my lips. The knock comes again, followed by my drummer's voice. Rory, we're on in five minutes, and there's a nice young woman out here who wants to finish your makeup. I kicked the makeup girl out before she finished. Now, all I have is a partial glow-in-the-dark skull on my face, missing the upper left portion of the head. I ignore my drummer, raising my right hand to grab the cigarette from my mouth, accidentally dumping champagne all over my shirt. Son of a bitch! I shout, erupting in a rage that comes so suddenly, I don't have a chance to quell it. It's been happening more and more lately. As if from afar, I watch myself sit up and hurl the champagne bottle at the mirror over the vanity. Glass shatters. There's a sharp pain in my crotch that brings me back to myself, and I look down to see that I've dropped the cigarette between my legs, and the cherry is burning through my leather pants. I drop my phone as I lurch to my feet, tottering drunkenly while swatting at my crotch to put the embers out. Rory, you okay in there? Fuck off! Asshole. My drummer mutters through the door. As I'm reaching down to pick up my phone, another knock sounds. I ignore it, retrieving the device and looking at their picture again. It's one I took, back before the band got popular, when we were struggling to fill a shitty basement venue on our tours. Now we're filling fucking stadiums, yet I can't bring myself to care. The mad energy of the tens of thousands of people out there, waiting for us to come play our songs, used to make me feel alive. Now it just makes me sick. How many times can you play the same songs over and over, until you never want to hear them again, much less play them yourself? Turns out, in my case, it only takes eleven years. I don't know how Jagger has been doing it for so long. I can hardly stand it, and I'm not even forty. The thought of still doing this when I'm eighty makes me want to put a gun in my mouth. The only things I care about now are the two people in the picture on my phone. But I fucked that up long ago. The knocking starts up again. I stomp toward the door and bang on it. Fucking leave me alone! The knocking continues, and I realize it's not coming from this door. It's coming from...the closet? Turning around, I walk to the back of the room, where a small closet with a white door sits. As I approach, it becomes clear that the knocking is coming from inside. But that would mean someone has snuck into my dressing room, and they've been in there the whole time. Putting my phone away, I dash over to the vanity, snatching up the broken neck of the champagne bottle to use as a weapon. At the closet door, I grip the knob with one hand. The knocking continues. I can feel it through the door. There invades me, and I have a moment of clarity in which I feel alive and excited, much like I used to feel when I started playing packed stadiums full of screaming fans. Part of me wants to open the door on a crazed fan with a knife in his hand, so I'll have an excuse to jam the jagged glass into his neck, so I can watch the blood spew from his body, so I can feel something again. Grinning madly, I rip the closet door open and meet another grinning face staring right back at me. It's not a human face. It's a carved jack-o'-lantern with triangular eyes and a large mouth emitting a flickering orange glow. The figure is frozen, one leather-gloved hand raised as if in mid-knock. It wears a brown burlap blazer over a black shirt with a glow-in-the-dark human ribcage on it. Its neck is made of fleshless vertebrae, like the neck of a human skeleton. And brown slacks complete its ragged look, with bits of straw poking out of torn holes. If it weren't for the skeletal neck, I would think this is some crazy asshole dressed up for Halloween who snuck into my room. It is all Hallows Eve after all. Half the audience is dressed up. But this can't be a costume. The neck is too skinny, and I can see right into the jack-o'-lantern head, although the source of the orange light eludes me. Inside is just an endless orange cavern. A suit bag containing my after-concert attire hangs in the closet, along with some other clothing items the roadies brought in. But there aren't enough clothes to hide behind, and I see no one else in the small space. The fuck is this? I wonder aloud, studying the figure, thinking it's a statue. Maybe a prank perpetuated by my bandmates. Faint alarm bells jangle in the back of my mind. There's something frighteningly familiar about the scarecrow jack-o'-lantern figure. Being hovering just beyond a mental haze generated by years of drug and alcohol abuse. Now that I look closer, I see that the edges of the carved eyes and mouth are rounding, like the pumpkin is in the very early stages of rot. As I reach out to touch its held-up hand to see if there's some kind of mechanism that would allow it to knock, that same hand darts out and fixes like a vice around my neck. The jack-o'-lantern's eyes shift, and its grin widens as it steps out of the closet, growing taller and effortlessly lifting me off my feet by the neck. Happy Halloween, gory rory! It says in a raspy, I-pitched-clowns voice. I gotta say, I'm a big fan. Such an honor to see you again! Its words strike me as strange, but I'm so concerned with the lack of air that I don't dwell on them. My legs kick uselessly as I grip its bone-hard arm underneath the sleeve of its burlap jacket. It laughs insanely, before whipping me around and throwing me into the closet. I smash into the back wall, taking the clothes with me as I drop to the floor. Then the floor tilts, opening underneath me, and I'm tumbling down a twisted black-and-white slide into utter darkness. The creature's laugh follows me down, growing louder the whole way. Soft whimpering brings me back around. I jolt awake, kicking something lightweight in metal, which clatters to the hard floor. It takes me all of one second to realize that I'm tied up, hands bound in front, ankles together, a ball gag in my mouth. But instead of a rubber ball, there's a mini pumpkin shoved between my teeth. Whipping my head around, I see a dozen other people nearby, all of them bound and gagged just like I am. They're kids and adults of a variety of different races, all of them terrified. Some of them are wearing Halloween costumes, while others are dressed in regular clothes. Looking the other way, I see what appears to be a television or movie set, lit up with orange and purple lights. The set is the front of a one-story suburban house, with a front door, a portion of the roof, and a yard complete with fake grass and a fake maple tree with bright orange and yellow leaves. The backdrop behind the house is painted to look like the house continues, but it's a poor job. A single camera is pointed at the set, and there's a camera operator behind it. But the lights are so bright, I can't make out what they look like. What's all the racket? A voice calls. It's that same voice, the jack-o'-lantern. The door to the fake house opens, and the creature emerges. It's carved pumpkin face scowling as it looks around. The rock star kicked an old folding chair. The camera operator says, Who bought a chair near him? What am I paying you bustules for anyway? Let's get quiet on the set. We're going live in just ten drips of a dying man's blood. Come on, come on, we only get one shot at this. As the jack-o'-lantern creature turns around and heads back to the fake house, muttering to itself, the camera operator comes out from behind the equipment and into the light. My eyes go wide, and I squirm, trying to get away from the approaching beast. All the other captives react similarly. Together, we make a terrified chorus of muffled whimpers and screams. The creature's head is a giant, lidless eyeball with a blood-red iris and a pupil the size of my fist. It has a mouth under the bottom curve of the iris. All sharp yellow teeth, no lips. Its body looks to be a humanoid skeleton, coated with a thin layer of rotting white-gray skin. Long arms, ending in sharp-fingered hands, swing swiftly as it approaches. It grabs the chair I kicked, and it throws it into the darkness on the other side of what must be a warehouse of some sort. The other captives and I are all packed into a corner, made from rusting tin walls and thick metal supports. The chair clatters, and a gruff voice calls out, Watch it, asshole! from the darkness where it lands. The eyeball creature crouches near my feet and looks at us for a long moment before speaking in a surprisingly calm voice. If you all don't shut up, I'll start taking limbs. Understand me? The last thing you want to do is piss Sam off. Nobody wants that. So just shut up, no matter what. The frightened noises die down as the creature watches with its massive eye, waiting. Once we've been silent for a good thirty seconds, it nods and stands up. As soon as its back is turned, I struggle against the strange ropes that bind my limbs together. It's sticky and strong and almost silky. We're live in ten, nine, eight. The eyeball creature counts down. When it gets to one, a red light on the front of the camera comes on. For a moment, nothing happens. Then the jack-o'-lantern creature bursts out of the fake house and starts shouting into the camera. Happy Halloween, you infectoids and insectoids! I'm Sam Hain, and I'm going to teach you how to decorate for the most horrifically holy holiday in the sight of hell. The jack-o'-lantern creature, Sam Hain, dances a crazy jig and sings a short song about blood and spiders and ghosts and goblins. What good is Halloween if your decorations don't scare the eyeballs out of your neighbor's heads? If you want the most dastardly devious decorations, don't change that channel. I'm about to show you how. But if you want the full course in Halloween decorations, you need to order my tape. Sam Hain's Halloween guide to demonizing your domicile. More on that later. For now, let's get to decorating! Sam Hain turns and struts directly toward us, speaking as he comes. It doesn't matter where you get your people to decorate with, there are people everywhere after all. That's one thing they keep making more of. For some reason I'll never understand. The camera follows Sam as he approaches. Everyone, including me, screams through our gags. I squirm along the floor, trying to get as far from the monster as possible. Since my hands are bound in front of me, I use them to drag a teenage girl out of her position, throwing her behind me and in the creature's path. I got my decorations from many different places. You may even recognize one of them. Yes, the one with the skull makeup on his face, the blood-stained white shirt, that's fake blood by the way, and the leather pants. You guessed it, that's Gory Rory, lead singer of the Velvet Coffin. Insanely and automatically, I think. It's Velvet Coffin, not THE Velvet Coffin. But terror quickly drowns out that thought. This thing is talking about me, it's coming for me. I continue to scramble away, but Sam grabs my legs and yanks me toward him. With the quick movement of his other hand, he releases my pumpkin gag, freeing my mouth. He stands up, tossing the gag aside. What do you have to say to your fans, Rory? I say nothing. Instead, I grab a woman from nearby and pull her in front of me by the neck to use as a shield in case he comes at me again. Wow! Sam Hain says, staring at me with his glowing triangular eyes. Never meet your idols, huh? Shrugging, he reaches down and grabs the teenage girl I threw out of my way. With his other hand, he grabs a corpulent, middle-aged man and drags them both to the front yard of the fake house, the camera following him as he goes. I relax a little, and then the woman I'm still holding elbows me in the chest. I groan in pain and let her go. She looks at me like a more of a monster than Sam Hain. You want to make sure to use the blood, as that's a big part of the decoration. The pumpkin-headed creature says. He now holds an oversized axe in his hands as he stands over the two captives. What I like to do is go for the smaller parts first, because they're easier to maneuver as the blood spurts out, like so. He slams the axe down, lopping off the man's arm at the elbow. The man screams into his gag, staring with bulging eyes at the wound. Dropping the axe, Sam Hain reaches down and grips the severed forearm, yanking it free from its binds with the parentese. Now, spread the blood around. He says, taking the leaking arm over to the front of the house and whipping the severed end around so blood splashes the structure. Be quick about it, because you're losing blood. He points at the severed elbow. Of course, you can use a belter, a rope to slow the bleeding, but I prefer to do things quickly. All this and more is in my tape, which you can get for the low-loat price of just one Sam Hain sacrifice. Whether it's an animal, a person, or an otherworldly entity, you can sacrifice them to me to get your tape now. I stare as Sam Hain chops the rest of the man apart, ending with his head. He continues his spiel the whole time, giving tips on where to put the body parts once they're done bleeding. While Sam is dismembering the man, the sobbing teenage girl crawls slowly away. By the time Sam Hain is ready for her, she's covered in the man's blood, which has leaked out all over the fake grass. He drags her back away from the edge of the set and lifts the axe, getting ready to chop her apart. Stop! I shout, take me instead! Sam Hain freezes and looks at me, surprised on his face. Take you instead? Did you really just say that? Well, okay, if you insist. The creature drags the girl back over with the others and then pulls me onto the set. Where should we start? He wonders. Then, that grinning pumpkin mouth widens. I know! The naughty bits! Before I can do or say anything, he swings the axe blade, embedding it in my crotch. A scream rips from my throat. Sam Hain cackles insanely as he raises the axe for the next chop. This imaginary scenario whips through my head in a heartbeat. It's what a better person would do. A less selfish person. Someone with a moral compass. But that's not me. I don't shout. Don't make any kind of move to save the girl. He swings the axe down, severing her leg at the thigh. Her gag comes loose and her screams invade my skull. I shut my eyes and try to think about the old days before everything changed. I think about Heather and Brennan and I try to block out the screams. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. At EDF, we don't just encourage you to use less electricity. We actually reward you for it. That's why when you use less during peak times on weekdays, we give you free electricity on Sundays. How you use it is up to you. EDF. Change is in our power. Households to ship weekday peak usage by 40% could earn up to 16 hours of free electricity for which is subject to fair usage care. All season series with the EDF energy.com forward slash high high power. The next set they build resembles a suburban kitchen with an island in the middle. The big difference is that the island has four holes in its countertop and four of my fellow captives have their heads sticking out of those holes, their bodies and the cabinets below. It's not hard to see where this one is going. A familiar numbness has settled over me. It's like I'm watching a movie now. Life has become a TV screen. I sit in the corner, surrounded by half a dozen other captives and wait for my turn to die. Despite this numbness, I can't stop thinking about how easily Sam Hain ripped that man's severed arm from his binds. I've been messing with mine and they haven't budged. Is he that strong? Of course he is. He lifted me off my feet as easily as an adult lifts a toddler. Like back when I lifted Brennan and carried him with me around the house or the studio, feeling his tiny warm body against mine. Smelling is nothing else like it, baby smell. Once again, the eyeball creature counts down from 10. Sam Hain is nowhere around. But as soon as that broadcasting light on the camera turns red, the pumpkin headed creature bursts out of the fridge on the kitchen set. Hello simpletons and wimpletons. I'm Sam Hain and today I'll be teaching you how to carve jack-o-lanterns. If you want the most scream-worthy carved pumpkins on your block, you've come to the right place. The patented techniques I'm about to show you have never been seen before by the public. But there's so much more that I can explain in one short infomercial, which is why you'll have an opportunity to get my exclusive Sam Hain pumpkin carving tape for the low, low, low price of one's sacrifice. Sam Hain pulls a large blade from the knife block on the counter and approaches the four terrified people whose heads are sticking up from the island. But for now, let's get started. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any pumpkins, so I'll have to use these little human heads. And that's tip number one, kiddos. If you really want your friends and neighbors and gods to scream, use a human head for your jack-o-lantern. Personally, I like to start with the eyes. He grips a 20-something man by his hair, making sure the camera can see what he's doing. Then he eases the tip of the knife toward the man's left eye. The guy screams and struggles, but it's no use. The blade sinks in, blood spews out. Sam Hain carves the man's eyes out, narrating the whole time. Again, I close my eyes and turn away. I don't want to think anymore, so I try to shut my brain down. But before I have any success, the floor shakes like an explosion has just gone off nearby. My eyes shoot open and I look around. Sam Hain is peering toward the warehouse wall opposite the kitchen set. The eyeball creature is doing the same, the camera pointing absently down. A door I hadn't seen before because of the dark bursts open. Several armed and armored men rush into the room, weapons up. The eyeball creature shrieks and rushes toward them, only to be shot to pieces by the man. Sam Hain slips back into the refrigerator as the cops spread out to secure the area. Two of the soldiers approach us and I sob in relief. As they grow nearer, I notice that they have strange badges on their arms that say SCP Foundation. What the hell is that? I have a moment of panic before quickly realizing they don't care if these people are from the Kaiser Permanente Foundation, as long as they're here to help us. The two soldiers begin slicing through our binds with their knives, as the others create a perimeter. Their flashlight illuminates much of the cavernous warehouse, but not all of it. The far end is still shrouded in shadows, and most of the officers kneel, pointing their weapons into that mass of blackness. One of the rescuing soldiers, a young man with a short brown beard, skips over a couple of other captives to kneel beside me. Is that really you? Gory Rory? He asks. It's me, I say. I'll give you all the signatures you want, just as soon as you get me out of here. Holy shit, man, I'm a big fan. I saw you guys back in 2016, it was... The guy stops talking and presses one finger to his ear, half turning to look over his shoulder. A stocky, older man is getting worked up as he paces behind the other troops. His voice carries as he speaks into some unseen radio. Do you have a solid lock on our location? I repeat, Eagle One. This is Bravo 2. Do you have our location? The pacing man waits a moment before repeating everything he just said. What's your name? I ask the young man, drawing his attention back to me. Eaton. Okay, Eaton. What's going on? He shakes his head. Our radio and tracking equipment have been acting buggy ever since we got here. What does that mean? It means our transport might not know where we are, unless we can get a hold of them over the comms. I glance into the darkness across the warehouse. Something is over there. I can feel it. How about you finish cutting me loose, huh, Eaton? Right, sorry. As the young man saw us through the strange bindings at my ankles, I glance over at the darkness again. Movement near the high ceiling catches my eye, and I whip my head up. A massive, hairy-legged spider with a jack-o'-lantern body scurries along the ceiling toward the area directly over the soldiers. Look out! I scream. The ceiling! This shout startles Eaton, who whips around without having freed my arms. The air is suddenly filled with the sound of gunfire as the soldiers see the creature and fire their weapons. As the spider drops from the ceiling, I spot the same jack-o'-lantern face as the host, Sam Hain. It grins as it falls, landing a few yards away from the firing men. The bullets blast away pieces of its huge pumpkin body, but it doesn't seem to faze the creature. It lurches forward, using its front legs to snatch a soldier up and feed it to the sharp-toothed jack-o'-lantern mouth, which slices the man in half at the waist with all the effort of a tissue and a paper cutter. The other officers retreat toward us as Eaton joins the fight. The darkness births more creatures at ground level. A massive flying bat with a humanoid body rockets out, flapping leathery wings before it crashes into a soldier, sharp teeth ripping into his neck. A werewolf sprints out, leaping through the air to land on the soldier with its feet, smashing the man down and shattering his ribcage. All semblance of order among the soldiers breaks down, and it's every man for himself. I'm about to get to my feet and make a run for it when the werewolf claws a man's face off in one savage swipe. The soldier spins around, screaming and still firing his weapon. I throw myself flat against the floor as bullets punch into other captives around me. I cover my face and sob, yearning to be back in my dressing room at the concert. I'll do the show! I murmur through my tears. I'll sing my fucking heart out. Just get me out of here. Please, get me out of here. I'll do anything. The gunshots and screams slowly die down, sensing movement nearby. I open my eyes and see one of the freed captives making a run for it. He's a hail-looking 20-something wearing an orange t-shirt that simply says, Costume. I whip my head around. All the attacks die down with no monsters in sight. It's a trick, I think. Watching as the guy jumps over severed limbs on his way toward the door the soldiers came through. It's a trick. He's not going to make it. He slips on freshly spilled blood and almost goes down, but catches himself at the last moment. Then he's brushing through the warehouse doors and out into the night. Outside is a neglected parking lot with a flickering street light and weeds and fested asphalt. The door swings shut. He made it, I think, getting to my feet. He made it! I look around once more and then down at the only remaining captives still alive, an old lady with a skewed wig and a little girl of 10 or 11. They clutch at each other, looking up at me as if I'm going to help them. Better run if you want to live. I whisper before darting away toward the door. I follow in the young man's footsteps, jumping over body parts and trying not to slip in blood. The door gets larger and larger as I get closer to escaping. There's only one last obstacle in my way. The top half of a soldier who was chopped into by the massive pumpkin spider, Easy. I can't count how many times I've launched myself off the drum riser to leap over my basest during our shows. Compared to that, this should be a piece of cake. As I jump, one of the soldier's hands shoots up and grabs my ankle. With my hands bound together, I hit the floor hard on my forearms. Ignoring the pain, I try to yank my hand out of the dying man's grasp, but he's too strong, too strong. I look over my shoulder and directly into pupil-less yellow-eyed eyes with thick red veins around the edges. The zombie growls and opens his mouth, teeth dripping black saliva. He goes to bite my calf, but I kick him off before he can. As I scramble to my feet, I come face to face with Sam Hain. His glowing triangle eyes fix on me as he smiles. His head seems to have rotted even more since he first abducted me. You can't leave yet, Rory. We have some unfinished business. Whipping one hand out, he yanks me into a headlock and bends me over, walking me back toward the two remaining captives. As we pass the growling zombie, Sam Hain slams one foot down on its head, popping its skull like a rotten pumpkin. Well, what a shame. Sam says when we reach the two remaining captives. Looks like we'll need more volunteers. Oh, I have an idea. How about your ex-wife and son, Rory? How would you like to see them again? No! I scream, struggling ineffectually to free myself from his steely grip. No! Leave them out of this! Wait, you don't want to see them? I thought for sure you did. Anyway, it's too late now, because here they are! Sam yanks my head up so I can see who's now standing in the fake kitchen. It's my ex-wife, Heather, and my 12-year-old son, Brennan. A werewolf stands behind them, massive paws on their shoulders. My son is crying, hugging his mother, who stares at me with a mixture of accusation and terror. What the hell is going on, Rory? She says, voice shaky.