Dead Letter Bureau - Delta Green

Read by Bill Rafferty (billrafferty5811)

Ex Oblivione By H. P. Lovecraft

When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim’s body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods.

Once when the wind was soft and scented I heard the south calling, and sailed endlessly and languorously under strange stars.

Once when the gentle rain fell I glided in a barge down a sunless stream under the earth till I reached another world of purple twilight, iridescent arbours, and undying roses.

And once I walked through a golden valley that led to shadowy groves and ruins, and ended in a mighty wall green with antique vines, and pierced by a little gate of bronze.

Many times I walked through that valley, and longer and longer would I pause in the spectral half-light where the giant trees squirmed and twisted grotesquely, and the grey ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk, sometimes disclosing the mould-stained stones of buried temples. And always the goal of my fancies was the mighty vine-grown wall with the little gate of bronze therein.

After a while, as the days of waking became less and less bearable from their greyness and sameness, I would often drift in opiate peace through the valley and the shadowy groves, and wonder how I might seize them for my eternal dwelling-place, so that I need no more crawl back to a dull world stript of interest and new colours. And as I looked upon the little gate in the mighty wall, I felt that beyond it lay a dream-country from which, once it was entered, there would be no return.

So each night in sleep I strove to find the hidden latch of the gate in the ivied antique wall, though it was exceedingly well hidden. And I would tell myself that the realm beyond the wall was not more lasting merely, but more lovely and radiant as well.

Then one night in the dream-city of Zakarion I found a yellowed papyrus filled with the thoughts of dream-sages who dwelt of old in that city, and who were too wise ever to be born in the waking world. Therein were written many things concerning the world of dream, and among them was lore of a golden valley and a sacred grove with temples, and a high wall pierced by a little bronze gate. When I saw this lore, I knew that it touched on the scenes I had haunted, and I therefore read long in the yellowed papyrus.

Some of the dream-sages wrote gorgeously of the wonders beyond the irrepassable gate, but others told of horror and disappointment. I knew not which to believe, yet longed more and more to cross forever into the unknown land; for doubt and secrecy are the lure of lures, and no new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace. So when I learned of the drug which would unlock the gate and drive me through, I resolved to take it when next I awaked.

Last night I swallowed the drug and floated dreamily into the golden valley and the shadowy groves; and when I came this time to the antique wall, I saw that the small gate of bronze was ajar. From beyond came a glow that weirdly lit the giant twisted trees and the tops of the buried temples, and I drifted on songfully, expectant of the glories of the land from whence I should never return.

But as the gate swung wider and the sorcery of drug and dream pushed me through, I knew that all sights and glories were at an end; for in that new realm was neither land nor sea, but only the white void of unpeopled and illimitable space. So, happier than I had ever dared hoped to be, I dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the daemon Life had called me for one brief and desolate hour.

They went looking for answers in the dark, but the darkness was already inside them. A seemingly mundane dinner quickly turns peculiar when one agent develops a disturbing appetite. Following this unsettling omen, the team attempts a low-profile night mission into the local swamp, seeking signs of the strange gatherings they previously uncovered. The truth is out there, but this time, it came with teeth.

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/576NbWAEm1uOBDxlW1F4Os?si=c7228e49ddb94035

Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dead-letter-bureau-delta-green/id1826992923

Find us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@deadletterbureau

Find transcripts: https://dead-letter-bureau.captivate.fm/

Talk to us on Discord: https://discord.gg/2RFYaWHm33

Cast

Nick Sayers... Writer, Handler, and Editor

Kristina... Agent Ryan

Ryan... Agent Barone

Jordan... Agent Del

Podcast art by Studio Janie

Music and Sound Effects from Envato.

Here are some other shows we love! Search them up.

9mm Retirement Radio

RPG Reanimators

Black Flare

Hand on the Door

Sorry, Honey, I Have to Take This

Stories and Lies

This Line Isn't Secure

Published by arrangement with the Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual property known as Delta Green is a trademark and copyright owned by the Delta Green Partnership, who has licensed its use here. The contents of this podcast are ©Nick Sayers, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

Dr. Thorne, played by Liv from Sorry, Honey, I Have To Take This.

The agents find a fragile sanctuary at a decaying roadside motel, but the swamp's influence has followed them. While one agent tends to a festering, unnatural wound, another's mind begins to fray, consumed by a new, frantic obsession with the artifacts recovered from the bog. Paranoia takes root as they analyze their grim trophies—a severed finger, an ancient text, and a mummified brain in a sealed, alien cylinder. As they await a mysterious runner and plan their return to the black water, a tense confrontation at a lonely mailbox proves the true enemy may already be inside the room.

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/576NbWAEm1uOBDxlW1F4Os?si=c7228e49ddb94035

Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dead-letter-bureau-delta-green/id1826992923

Find us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@deadletterbureau

Find transcripts: https://dead-letter-bureau.captivate.fm/

Talk to us on Discord: https://discord.gg/2RFYaWHm33

Cast

Nick Sayers... Writer, Handler, and Editor

Kristina... Agent Ryan

Ryan... Agent Barone

Jordan... Agent Del

Podcast art by Studio Janie

Music and Sound Effects from Envato.

Here are some other shows we love! Search them up.

9mm Retirement Radio

RPG Reanimators

Black Flare

Hand on the Door

Sorry, Honey, I Have to Take This

Stories and Lies

This Line Isn't Secure

Published by arrangement with the Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual property known as Delta Green is a trademark and copyright owned by the Delta Green Partnership, who has licensed its use here. The contents of this podcast are ©Nick Sayers, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

Stolen Dreams by Loluan/Lukas of 9MM Retirement Radio.

The leaves made a crunchy sound as they cracked under my boot. The sound cut deep into the surrounding night and felt as unnatural as what we pursued. With baited breath, we moved forward, trying to calm our nerves. It was only the two of us, me and Agent Serena, and we both felt as if we weren’t up for the task.

Our shaky hands held the submachine guns as we moved ever closer to our target, our sounds masked by the running river close by and in the cover of the night, which only the moon dared to break up when the clouds stopped harassing it.

It has already be en two weeks since we entered this village hidden from the world behind old trees and located right where the river looped. If we hadn’t been there on an assignment, I would have called it beautiful, but something was not right here.

We noticed the moment we set foot into it: Everything felt wrongly colored. The trees moving in the wind didn’t produce any sounds besides their creaks, which sounded like cries against the ever-changing world around them. The grass felt dry, and for every step, I held my breath, fearing it would cut my skin once it came in contact.

The first few days went by fast. We mainly stayed on the outskirts of town to stake out everything. We saw who lived their lives and where they remained during the day and night, and found out their rhythm.

See who didn’t belong and felt as wrong as the whole thing.

Lastly, we moved closer, deeper into this town.

The orders we got were clear. Carpenter told us about a defective scientist who got cold feet. There was also something about a facility amid these huts and shelters that calls itself a village. They seemingly told just enough to get Carpenter's attention, but not enough for us to know what was happening.

Some branch of the government seemed to be conducting experiments, and here was all we were told. Find out what it was, get the scientist out of there alive, so they can tell us what the fuck is going on, and stop all of this.

They made it sound simple.

The second night was when I felt it for the first time. Serena took the night and continued to watch while I lay down, tossing and turning. The little barn we had hidden ourselves in didn’t grant the luxury of a comfortable bed, so we collected the old hay together and improvised some beds.

The hay always pricked me with every move, but dug into my back once I started to lie still.

But for a bit, it all made sense. While I layed there trying to sleep, everything felt as if two images of this world had been perfectly superimposed on each other.

The wrong colors vanished, and all sound felt as if it started to hit the exact frequency my brain had always longed for. It felt as if I had achieved everything I had always wanted.

Serena woke me up roughly and commented something about having the best sleep of my life, but I didn’t even listen as she told me about her findings during her watch. I was still there, or rather, I wanted to stay there. I was clawing at this reality that felt so wrong.

The next days only made it worse. They went by in a haze as I always longed for sleep again. The moment of absolute serenity always felt further away, as if it was slipping through my fingers every time I got ahold of it.

Serena must feel it too; she never overslept, but waking her felt harder every day.

We knew we had to do something.

When the fifth day rolled around,, we were sure who lived here and who was outside personnel.

We just recognized the looks, the dissociated look that goes through everyone they met, the short hours of activity and the long hours of silence that fell over the town.

We saw their parched bodies because they slept more and more and ignored every other thing their body needed, they had been doing it for months probably.

We understood.

The outside personnel were easy to spot for the fact that they never stayed for longer than 24 hours at a time and always came in after staying away for at least that long.

Always moving in with some that looked like scientists and at least two or three spooks, probably something federal, no badges, uniforms or openly carrying weapons but we just knew they were here to watch for any outside interference. They waited for us.

We noticed changes during the second week. We felt a pulse as if something was dragging us down, our brains through the mud playing with our senses, and we grew tired with every pulse.

If Serena hadn’t brought some amphetamines, we probably would have been fast asleep. I swore to myself to never take that shit again after our last operation which almost got me addicted to that shit.

So there we were, craving completion but refusing to fall asleep while the pulse echoed through the town. They were doing something more, and the experiment moved into a testing phase.

While we didn’t fall asleep, it still felt good, as if the pulse had sent a part of us to sleep, the world was whole once again, but we knew we needed to finish this operation or otherwise we would not be leaving here, ever again.

I do hate myself for not staying.

We waited for them to leave town again and prepared everything. It took us some time to notice that we were both crying while assembling the cold metal. It felt as if we were holding a sledgehammer, preparing to smash the only trophy we had ever gotten.

Serena opened first. She told me that every time she falls asleep here, she continues this long dance with her husband, who was gunned down two years ago. Every time she closed her eyes, a big piece of her life's puzzle fell into place.

I told her that for me it felt as if this hostile world calmed down, I took in more than I ever knew existed and we both talked. This could be the last time.

Protected by the night we arrived, the crunchy leaves already long behind us, we saw the slightly illuminated entrance to a house just on the outskirts of the little town. One of the spooks stood in front smoking.

As if we already knew where to step, our feet continued to move forward.

I don’t remember how he even died. I remember the splats on the wall behind him, a deep red mixed with gray matter streaking down the wall and I could swear the face inside of the splat was smiling at me.

The next two also fell fast. As we moved down the metal steps into a basement that must have been built new, they stood there with their backs turned towards us.

A single moment later, two more faces smiled upon me, staring out of deep red stains on the concrete walls. We felt good, and the closer we moved, the stronger we felt connected to how the world really was. We could feel the concrete breath beside us, the souls of those we had left behind rejoicing in their freedom now that they had left the small confinement they had been stuffed into when coming to this world.

All the euphoria crashed once we entered the final room.

We found the source of what we thought would be salvation. We thought we found what could make the world breathe again and be filled with all the right colours.

I stood there watching as Serena started hitting the scientist, who screams something about protection and a deal. She said she had to do it.

But none of it made sense to me. Now, as I stood so close to what I felt would right the wrongs in my world, it did the opposite.

I started crying, and not even the scientist's happy soul could calm me down as I turned her head into a happy spray of red and gray.

How could I be happy when the child in front of me was hooked up to a machine, inducing a coma to let them sleep until.. I don’t know till when.

Serena found some notes. They wanted this as a weapon, the innocence of a child, the lush colours, and the right sounds. Everything I had been craving was the innocent view of this world that this dreaming child had.

Projecting his hopes for a wonderful world outside onto us as it lay here, dreaming of a life it never had.

We knew what had to be done, but I couldn’t do it. As much as I knew, I just could not bring myself to do it.

Serena ushered me out, something about telling the superiors.

I knew she would finish this.

I knew I wouldn’t see her after this.

The last two shots that rang out were among the loudest I've ever felt.

It has been months since then. I feel like a part of me was left under this city, hidden in a concrete and steel basement.

My dreams got stolen, just like the child's time.

I just hope we did the right thing in stopping their experiments so they can no longer inflict this on someone.

What is a small part of me in exchange for so many others who never need to experience this?

Tonight, I will sleep well. I bought every sleeping pill I could. Carpenter’s been calling. He will find my report once they check up on me.

But today I hope I can dream one last time.

By Caleb Stokes

Read by Fae Kells

The following is the first chapter of Performance, a novel set in the world of Red Markets: A Game of Economic Horror.

Purchase the entire novel!

When the tired joke of the zombie apocalypse clawed its way out of the subconscious and into terrifying reality, society's cultural obsession killed as many as it saved. After the chaos finally subsided, the apocalypse ended up unevenly distributed... just like everything else. The world is now more divided than ever: haves and have-nots, living and dead, The Recession and The Loss. It's a world ruled by the Red Market, where supernatural terrors born of nightmare join forces with the inexorable pressures of undying capitalism. 

Nickel, Bloom, Dono, and Bait, four strangers barely surviving in the shadow of the system, find their grim futures cut short as an undead terror shakes the foundations of their dystopian reality. As the Crash leaves them even more marginalized and dispossessed, they must join together as a crew of Takers, mercenary entrepreneurs risking their bodies and souls to trade between the monstrous wasteland and a civilization that abandoned them. Even as their shared trauma insists they find a new family in their co-workers, the market demands they profit from each other's suffering. Can the crew survive the snapping teeth of the hordes, the strangling hands of the market, and the madness inspired by their never-ending struggle against both? 

Performance is a novel set in the world of the Red Markets RPG by Hebanon Games. For more information, visit redmarketsrpg.com

Drawn by the memory of an unholy hymn and an impossible craft seen at sunrise, the agents push deeper into the swamp's suffocating gloom. Their pursuit leads them to a site of recent ritual, where a trail of degenerate, human-like tracks disappears into the black water. When the agents brave the murky depths, the swamp does not give up its secrets.

Cast

Nick Sayers... Writer, Handler, and Editor

Kristina... Agent Ryan

Ryan... Agent Barone

Jordan... Agent Del

Podcast art by Studio Janie

Music and Sound Effects from Envato.

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/576NbWAEm1uOBDxlW1F4Os?si=c7228e49ddb94035

Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dead-letter-bureau-delta-green/id1826992923

Find us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@deadletterbureau

Find transcripts: https://dead-letter-bureau.captivate.fm/

Talk to us on Discord: https://discord.gg/2RFYaWHm33

Here are some other shows we love! Search them up.

9mm Retirement Radio

RPG Reanimators

Black Flare

Hand on the Door

Sorry, Honey, I Have to Take This

Stories and Lies

This Line Isn't Secure

Published by arrangement with the Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual property known as Delta Green is a trademark and copyright owned by the Delta Green Partnership, who has licensed its use here. The contents of this podcast are ©Nick Sayers, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.

Written by Rhys Aled Owen

Read by Ryan Murphy

Check more of Ryhs work on his SolumProtocol Substack.

The Hand of Glory Cycle by PC Bilbee.

prologue

murder's lost meaning;

i've realized my potential...

in this form.

my evolution awaits.

it is but my death away.

fit, the first: vellum

i scrive my soul's deed,

both with word and with action;

this fresh vellum fills both roles.

it holds fast the pact,

and seals it with unborn life...

i still hear the mother's pleas.

fit, the second: candles

i can now reap my harvest; months of gluttony paid full.

the tallow vat before me and the scalpel in my hand...

after rendering and wicks my tapers will be ready.

fit, the third: promise

i asked no promise,

but i made one of my own.

no threat, a promise.

secured: my disposition.

may my Patron's will be done.

fit, the fourth: anticipation

i have set my path; signed, with blood, the pact;

bound with promises, bound men by contract.

and now i shall step into hell's cataract.

my grin spreads,

glee spills from my eyes;

glee ablaze.

fit, the fifth: domino

her head in my hands,

i walked up to the bobby;

the man nearly swooned.

"i must confess,"

i told him, "i am unfit for this world."

fit, the sixth: escape

the noose bites,

breaking, clean, my neck-

then darkness.

fit, the seventh

my eyes fly open.

then i have been disinterred…

and all contracts have been met.

i am become death;

these binding spells unbind me

from this world i now predate.

epilogue

my hand of glory:

holding sticks of rendered self,

casting empty light

The Tailypo: A Ghost Story

Read by Jordan Railsback

Told by Joanna Galdone

Illustrated by Paul Galdone

Tailypo is a North American folktale about an old man who cuts off the tail of a strange creature, cooks and eats it, and is then haunted by the creature demanding its "tailypo" back.

Published by Clarion Books, a Houghton Mifflin Company imprint, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003. Text copyright © 1977 by Joanna Galdone. Illustrations copyright © 1977 by Paul Galdone. All rights reserved.

The agents push deeper into the primeval gloom of Boggy Depot, following a trail of incongruous, barefoot tracks through the suffocating humidity. The path leads them to a shunned chapel at the heart of a ghost town, a place sealed against a decay that seems to emanate from within. As a strange, psychic pressure begins to exert its influence on the team, one agent's investigation into a fungal anomaly culminates in a terrifying, ecstatic communion with a vast and hungry intelligence. When night falls, an unholy hymn rises from the bog, a lover's desperate call to a silent, watching sky, and the agents learn that some prayers are answered by a geometry that does not belong to our world.

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/576NbWAEm1uOBDxlW1F4Os?si=c7228e49ddb94035

Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dead-letter-bureau-delta-green/id1826992923

Find us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@deadletterbureau

Find transcripts: https://dead-letter-bureau.captivate.fm/

Talk to us on Discord: https://discord.gg/2RFYaWHm33

Cast

Nick Sayers... Writer, Handler, and Editor

Kristina... Agent Ryan

Ryan... Agent Barone

Jordan... Agent Del

Podcast art by Studio Janie

Music and Sound Effects from Envato.

Here are some other shows we love! Search them up.

9mm Retirement Radio

RPG Reanimators

Black Flare

Hand on the Door

Sorry, Honey, I Have to Take This

Stories and Lies

This Line Isn't Secure

Published by arrangement with the Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual property known as Delta Green is a trademark and copyright owned by the Delta Green Partnership, who has licensed its use here. The contents of this podcast are ©Nick Sayers, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.