"Paradise Pine"

**"Paradise Pine"** is the fifth tale in the fourth episode of the fourth season of The Nosleep Podcast. In it, a couple finds a sinister journal in a cabin they are renting. Written by C.K. Walker, it has a runtime of 32:00 and was performed by David Cummings and Jessica McEvoy. It is the 364th tale overall on the podcast.

It was later followed up with a sequel in Season 5, with the bonus episode "Blue Ridge".

## Summary

A couple, Lindsay and Aaron, decide to rent a cabin for the Thanksgiving holiday rather than spend it with friends and family. After searching, they settle on one built into the side of a hill high up in the mountains called "Paradise Pine". When they arrive, they notice several strange things. The fire axe is missing, the master bedroom's bathroom door is missing, and the mirror inside is broken. The couple clean up the messes before settling in for the week. Aaron goes down to the dark basement without a flashlight to light the furnace.

Lindsay finds a journal in the living room, written in by previous renters of the cabin telling about their experiences. The couple spends the next few days reading the journal until they arrive at the entry written by the people that rented the cabin directly before them, just a week previously. Lindsay reads it aloud.

A couple, Jason (the writer) and Sarah, rent the cabin for a week so he can focus on his writing. Though the first few entries are normal, such as the couple making snow angles and Jason claiming that he can't write anything because the scenery is so beautiful, they suddenly take a dark turn after the couple gets snowed in while trying to go back to their house to get things they forgot.

Jason sees a figure walking on the treeline near the cabin, but can't make any features out. The next morning, he finds strange, flat tracks in the snow outside. That night, someone bangs on the front door loudly. Sarah wants to leave, but the couple are unable to get their car to start. More tracks are found that afternoon.

Later in the night, Jason hears someone banging on the balcony door outside the bedroom. Grabbing the axe, him and Sarah run to the door in time to see a figure fleeing into the woods. It's an immensely tall, featureless stickman with no hands, feet, or face. Sarah is terrified and enters a cationic state. When he goes downstairs, Jason sees that the front door is wide open, meaning the stickman can enter whenever it wants.

The next morning, Sarah goes into a trance and says that the stickman "eats them". Jason finds more tracks in the snow, but brushes them away before his wife can see. He sees the stickman standing on the treeline in profile, thin as a piece of paper.

That night, Jason goes out to smoke a cigarette on the balcony and sees the stickman standing on the roof above him. He runs inside as Sarah locks herself in the bathroom. A few hours pass. Jason hears footsteps downstairs and realizes that the stickman is inside the cabin. He throws open the bedroom door with the intention of surprising the creature, but that only allows it to quickly run upstairs and enter the room. It emits an ear-splitting scream, causing Sarah to cry out from the bathroom and the mirror to shatter. Jason swings at it with the axe, but it does not damage. The stickman throws him against the wall and he blacks out.

When he wakes up, the bathroom door is gone and his wife is nowhere in sight. The car starts on the first try. He spends the whole afternoon looking for Sarah in the woods, only to come up with nothing. Jason muses on her words, that the stickman "eats" them, and realizes that the creature captures its victims to keep them. He wishes they had been able to grab his supply of haloperidol. In the final entry, he says he's going to park the car on the other side of the mountain and trek through the woods to search again.

Lindsay and Aaron are disturbed by the journal. Aaron begins piecing things together that corroborate the story, like the missing bathroom door and the shattered mirror. Lindsay claims the whole thing is a joke written to scare the next residents. Aaron realizes that haloperidol is used to treat schizophrenia, and claims that Jason was suffering from it.

Lindsay asks him what they've been burning this whole time if there was no firewood in the cabin. Going down to the basement, they find Sarah's corpse immolated inside the furnace. They call the police and a manhunt is sent after Jason, which ends weeks later when they find his body hanging from a tree in the woods not far from the cabin.

Lindsay concludes that the whole episode was a result of Jason forgetting his medication and murdering his wife during the withdrawals, later hanging himself out of guilt. The story makes national headlines, but the couple manages to keep their name out of the papers. The cabin's name is changed from "Paradise Pine", and is still available to rent. Lindsay wonders if the people staying there now know what happened inside.

## Cast

David Cummings as Jason/Aaron

Jessica McEvoy as Lindsay