"The Windows Inside Clementine Mountain"

**"The Windows Inside Clementine Mountain"** is the second tale in the twenty-fourth episode of the twelfth season of The Nosleep Podcast. It concerns a man who tries to regain missing memories from his past. Written by Jimmy Juliano, it has a running time of 1:01:15 and was originally performed by Mike DelGaudio, Graham Rowat, Mary Murphy, Sarah Ruth Thomas, and Dan Zappulla. It is the 1543rd tale overall on the podcast.

## Summary

A man recalls a hill that him and his 2 other friends, Sophie and Patrick played on regularly. The hill, deemed Clementine Mountain, sat on an undeveloped lot. The trio regularly played games on the hill, ranging from sledding to tennis. One day, while digging a hole on top of the hill, Sophie discovers 3 triangular shaped windows. The windows have red frames and are joined at the end by an iron ball. They try to see inside the windows, but discover they are fogged up from the inside. Any attempt to peer inside is fruitless. As rain begins to fall, they decide to try and get inside the next day. The following morning when they return, the windows are buried again like they were never there. Eventually, the trio of friends move away from the street with the hill and slowly drift apart.

The man explains that the event was decades ago, and the adventure as 10 year olds had completely vanished from his mind until he got a friend request from Patrick. The request jogs his memory about the hill, causing a rush of nostalgia. However, he also begins to feel pain and worry that he cannot explain. He tries to remember more about Clementine Mountain, but is unable to. All he can recall is the sound of glass shattering and a scream, the memory going dark after that.

He accepts the friend request from Patrick, with the latter immediately veering the conversation towards Clementine Mountain. He mentions that either the man or Sophie drew a picture book about the hill, although the man is unable to recall. He enters his basement, finding a small cardboard box of some of his childhood things. Inside is an old viewfinder with a photo jammed into the slot, as well as a homemade picture book. Water damage prevents the man from being able to identify who made the book, with pages missing and stains obscuring most of the drawings. The cover page is nearly intact, save for damage at the top and bottom. The title reads "Three Friends", with Patrick, Sophie, and the man all smiling and holding hands while standing on a black hill. Under the hill drawing scribbled in red crayon is three triangles.

The man feels uncomfortable recalling the windows, but cannot explain why. He attempts to steer his conversation with Patrick away from Clementine Mountain. They talk about jobs, family, and kids until Patrick mentions something about one of the man's photos. Patrick says that in a photo of his wife and daughter on a street in Boston, all the windows of the buildings are triangular. When the man checks the photo, he sees that the windows are their normal shape.

Feeling uneasy at the strange occurrence, the man decides to tell Patrick about his memories of the windows in the hill. He attempts to rationalize Patrick's vision to him, although he knows that it isn't normal at all. In response, Patrick tells the man that he's been thinking about him, Sophie, and Clementine Mountain. He is also unable to recall anything about the windows.

Patrick then describes the event that caused him to have a phobia of mirrors. When he was a kid, his parents took him to a matinee performance. During the intermission, he has to go to the bathroom and explores the massive labyrinth of hallways. He comes across a massive bathroom with floor-to-ceiling mirrors covering every wall. While at the urinal, he hears the bathroom door open and shut, but no one is there. Even though there is nobody else in the bathroom, he feels like something is right behind him, staring straight ahead so as to not catch a glance at it. He begins to hear breathing, anticipating something grabbing him as he pulls up his zipper. He sidesteps to avoid it and quickly walks to the door, hearing footsteps behind him keep pace. As he nears the exit, he sees a figure behind him in one of the mirrors, moving so smooth it appears to be floating. Patrick can't recall anything else about the figure. He runs to the door, opening and slamming it shut, his memory ending there.

Patrick explains that he called his dad the previous morning and asked him if he remembered taking him to a matinee performance. His father doesn't recall ever taking him to a play. He says he doesn't know where the memory came from, but that his phobia of mirrors makes sense now. He wants to explore it further, but fears what may happen if he does, deciding to leave it be. The man simply sends a message of acknowledgement and promptly unfriends Patrick.

The man says that most nights he wakes up to the sound of glass shattering, and that he feels watched whenever he uses the bathroom at work. He begins to occasionally see an orange tint in his vision. His daughter also sometimes stares out her window, claiming to see something moving around in their backyard. His daughter says that whatever it is outside isn't ready yet, so it just circles the yard instead of coming closer. His wife begins to become more protective of Sophie, seemingly fearing what the man might do to her and their daughter. He becomes more absent in his own home, staying at the office longer and going on long bike rides. After reading several online articles and consulting a professional, the consensus is that he has to face his fears and return to Clementine Mountain.

He then calls Sophie, who asks if he even remembers why they called it Clementine Mountain. He says he doesn't to which Sophie responds that she loved clementine oranges and would eat them regularly, leaving the peels all over the hill. He then tells her Patrick's story about the bathroom, to which Sophie responds that it's a good thing Patrick can't see the man's photo album. He asks her if she saw anything in his photos, she says she hasn't. The man expresses confusion to how everything can be so muddled, Sophie telling him that the hill was always playing tricks on them. Whenever they'd dig up the windows and get an adult to show them, the hole would be filled in like they hadn't dug at all. Sometimes, the dirt they dug up was still there, like the hill had created new dirt to fill the hole. The man begins to recall, remembering that they then started to stay in shifts. Two would stay at the hole, the other one going to get a parent. Whenever the other one got back, the other two would be gone and not even remember going to the hill that day.

The man asks Sophie if she remembers anything else about the street they lived on or the hill, to which she says that all the strange occurrences are due to them being only 10 years old at the time. He asks her to remember anything, and Sophie recalls a night she stayed up late watching a horror movie. After going to bed, she wakes up in the middle of the night to hear a deep groaning sound. She feels extremely cold, only getting colder and colder, realizing her covers are being slowly pulled down. She jumps up from her bed and runs out of her room, diving into her parents' bed. When her and her father check in the morning, they find nothing except the window wide open. The man asks her if she thinks there was someone in her room, to which she says she doesn't know what it was.

He then asks her if she ever feels like something is coming for her. She doesn't answer the question, chiding the man and telling him to keep the past in the past. He tells her of the strange things that have been happening to him, feeling that something that they can see is coming for them from Clementine Mountain. He thinks that if they find out what it is it won't be able to hurt them anymore. The man asks her to call him if she remembers anything else, then hanging up.

He doesn't anticipate hearing from Sophie again, deciding that the only way to conquer his demons is to return to Clementine Mountain. Living only a 4 hour drive away, the man goes alone. The sun is nearly setting when he arrives, looking as if time has stood still. He turns to the old street that he used to live on, stopping the car in front of his old house. Across from his, Patrick's, and Sophie's houses is where Clementine Mountain used to be. In its place is a two story brick house with a for sale sign on the lawn. The man makes a point to recognize the chimney, which appears too large and tall for the house. Knocking on the door, a man inside asks if he's here to see the house, to which he responds in the affirmative. The man is shown around the house, although he notes that everything feels off. It feels half-lived in, everything a bit too tidy. The owner of the house tells the man that they've lowered the price twice as they go upstairs. The man stops when they come to the attic door, looking up at the cord to lower the staircase. As he reaches for the cord, he feels more memories of the hill flash back. He sees that he's with someone, the cold wind on his arms as he's surrounded by piles of dirt. The vision ends with him and the other person hammering at the windows with rocks until he's pulled out of it by the seller.

He tells him that it's clear that he isn't interested in buying the house, recognizing that he's probably been there before. The seller asks him if he knows that something is wrong with the place. He explains that he had bought the house to live in with his wife and kids. Everything was fine for the first few months, but after that they began to hear noises from the attic. The sounds were heavy and loud, like large things climbing over each other. They began to hear even more noises, including bumping, knocking, and scratching. The seller didn't pay it any mind at first, but soon his kids fear they are being watched at night, like something was there that they couldn't see. He asks the man if he knows what's up there, the man then tells him about the windows. The seller tells him there's nothing like that in the attic, just the chimney. He tells the man that his kids told him the noises came from the chimney.

The man asks if he ever looked inside the chimney, he says that he did but found nothing out of the ordinary. He says that after that he hoped that things would return to normal, but then learned of a missing girl. He doesn't specify anything else, simply giving the man a piece of paper. He doesn't look at it, simply shoving it in his pocket and leaving. Inside his car he opens the paper. It's a printout of a newspaper article from 27 years ago for a missing 7 year-old girl named Allison. It is upon reading this article that the man makes a grim discovery. There were never just 3 of them on Clementine Mountain, there were 4.

The article reads out the nature of Allison's disappearance. While her parents were out of town, Allison went to play at Patrick's house. After that, she stayed at Sophie's house, sleeping in Sophie's bed. The next morning she isn't there, the window in Sophie's bedroom wide open. The man stares at the photograph of Allison for a while, eventually dialing Sophie's number to ask about her.

After accosting her with information about Allison and how they made their memories of her disappear, Sophie explodes and tells him to stop. She doesn't want to remember any of it, admitting that she's been lying to the man. She says that she did see the triangle windows in the man's photo like Patrick, and that the story about why they called it Clementine Mountain was false; She doesn't know why they called it Clementine Mountain. When he asks her why she lied, she says that it was just easier. The man begs Sophie to come back so they can sort out the memories and lay it all to rest, but she says that she doesn't want to go back home. Sophie hangs up.

The man sits in his car for while, watching the seller get into his car and leave. The man starts to drive away, but turns back and returns to the house. He parks his car, calling his wife and explaining everything about the hill and Allison. At the end, his wife tells him that he's known about Allison for weeks. He's been reading about her every night, obsessing over her disappearance. The man has no memory of it, getting angry and exploding at his wife. He hangs up, his wife calls him again but he turns his phone off.

In a heavy rainstorm, he breaks into the house and walks up to the attic. Inside he finds a few boxes of toys, as well as the chimney. Next to it is some tools, which the man approaches. As he does, he feels himself getting younger, watching his hands shrink to the size of his 10 year-old self's. A flashlight appears in his right hand and he sees he's wearing pajamas. The house vanishes around him as the rain stops, seeing himself at the top of Clementine Mountain with piles of dirt surrounding him. To his right he sees Allison on her knees bashing at one of the windows with a rock. The man, now his 10 year-old self, crouches down next to Allison and hits the window with a rock as well. Allison is barefoot, her orange pajama pants stained with dirt. After more attacks, the window shatters. The pair look down inside the window, seeing an iron ladder. Allison goes first, descending the ladder into the darkness below. The man lowers his leg to enter as well, but quickly retracts it. He instead shines his flashlight down on Allison with a trembling hand, revealing a large cavern. The floor looks ancient and rocky. Allison shouts at the man to come down, but he remains rooted in place. The walls of the place appear to move and pulse like they're alive. The man catches some movement to Allison's left, finding a shower drain-sized hole. Allison stoops down to look down at the hole, to which the man yells at her to come back up the ladder. A hand reaches out from the hole and grabs Allison by the throat and pulling her into the hole. Her body folds and stretches like putty to fit inside the hole, screaming as she's pulled down. The man looks around the room, finding no evidence of Allison ever being there. He hears the sound of the window glass reforming, quickly pulling his head out to see the broken window reform itself. The man falls onto his back, looking up to see the roof of the house. It's now morning, the man questioning if his vision was real or not. He runs his fingers over the bricks, seeing them shift slightly like they're alive. He thinks he hears the sounds of someone screaming behind the bricks.

The man returns home to find his wife missing. He asks his daughter what happened to her, his daughter responds that she left with "the girl in the orange pajamas with a face like play-doh and arms like spaghetti". His daughter calls her the clementine girl, saying she took his wife by the hand and they left in her car. The man explains that his wife hasn't been seen since, but her car was found on his childhood street. He says that people think that he caused his wife's disappearance, and he agrees with them.

He says that everyone else is starting to forget about Clementine Mountain, but he's determined not to. He explains that he now realizes that the old picture book was drawn by Allison, and that the full title was "My Three Friends". He also finds the viewfinder does not have a photo reel inside, but instead a Polaroid photo of the four of them smiling, Allison in an orange dress. He says that she always wore orange, always being a "little clementine".

He returns to the house often, thinking he can hear the sound of his wife screaming for help inside. He says that he always uses the tools to try and remove the bricks, but passes out every time. Whenever he wakes up, the bricks are back to normal like they haven't been touched and he can't remember why he's there.

## Cast

Mike DelGaudio as the man

Graham Rowat as Patrick

Mary Murphy as Sophie

Sarah Ruth Thomas as the wife

Dan Zappulla as guy selling house