The Tall Dog of Barrow Heights | Part 3

Scary Horror Stories by Dr. NoSleep

In the final chapter of 'The Tall Dog of Barrow Heights,' a monster hunter confronts the entity responsible for trapping children in a hidde

Key takeaways

• The Tall Dog is not just a predator but a sentient force that manipulates time, memory, and reality through drawings and psychic influence.

Main topics

• Psychological horror
• Entity-based terror

Notable quotes

"It's pouring itself into me, filling the spaces between my thoughts, between my cells, between the atoms of my blood."

Conclusion

The episode ends with the protagonist fully consumed by the Tall Dog,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Part 3 The Second Drawing Speaker 1 (0:04) The three-dimensional world is ripped away, replaced by the lines of a child's drawing, shuddering crayon strokes against a white void as if the paper itself was afraid. Florence sits in her cage, knees to her chin, arms wrapped around her shins. She's drawn herself small, smaller than the pipe above her, smaller than her own dress, as if to disappear entirely. Above her, a crooked pipe. drips blue teardrops into her upturned mouth. That pipe was all she had, the only thing keeping her alive after her father's heart gave out. She didn't know he was dead, and the footsteps had stopped coming because there was no one left to make them. She just knew the food stopped and the water kept dripping, and the thing in the dark kept watching. The same darkness begins to move. The black scribbles near the edge thicken, layering over themselves. Building density the way a child darkens a corner of a page by pressing harder and harder and harder until the crayon snaps. Something steps out of it. Fur is rendered in short, vicious strokes. The ears droop past its shoulders in long, precise curves, and the face That elongated equine face with its two wide mouth and its perfect rectangle teeth, each one drawn individually, each one the same size, filling the grin from edge to edge like piano keys. A child didn't draw this. This drew itself. It's too tall for the frame. The skull breaches the edge and into the white void above, that empty nothing space where the drawing ends and some other dimension begins. Its body is visible from the chest down. The bent, Mantis-like posture, the arms that hang well past its knees, the fingers that taper into points thin enough to pierce skin. But it's the eyes that chill me. Two hollow circles, round and empty, like someone pressed pen to page and twisted until it punctured reality. It stands there, watching. It's studying my outline. Empty eyes, crinkling smaller than wider. It grins. It's the look of a creature that spent a long time searching for something it's finally found. It lurches toward me, arm outstretched when, oh, it stops, looks down. Florence has lifted her head to face the beast. The speech bubble above her is faint, the letters small and unsteady. You're back. I didn't hear you. The tall dog's gaze drifts away from me with the unhurried patience of something that exists beyond time. It opens its mouth, closes it, its teeth click-clack. Did you stop him? Florence asks. Did you make sure dad can't hurt anyone else? The tall dog's head dips, rises. It's a slow marionette nod, a learned gesture. Can you help me out of here now? She asks. It moves. One frame it's across the room, and the next, its face, presses against the cage, close enough that its teeth touch wire. Here, girl, it says. One long finger reaches up and taps the blue pipe above the cage. The dripping stops, and from inside the copper, a voice spills out that's tinny and distant. Speaker 1 (3:34) It's a six-year-old Agnes, calling into the building's plumbing from some bathroom or kitchen ten floors above, not understanding why the pipes carry sound so well, not understanding anything except her twin is gone and nobody will tell her why. The campsite, but there's no sign of you. Stop crying. I don't, I don't know what to do, Floor. Please come home. We miss you. Florence's stick figure body vibrates with urgency, the lines blurring at the edges. Agnes? Agnes, I'm here! I'm in the... A branch-like finger presses against her lips. The tall dog holds it there, gently, smiling. With its other hand, it slides a drawing beneath the cage door. The drawing is its own. It's dense, nearly abstract, a thicket of dark strokes that make me sick. Florence studies it, and her expression shifts, her mouth flattening, the circular eyes widening. Her speech bubble narrows, the text inside shrinking as though she's lowering her voice to keep Agnes from hearing. You want Agnes to send the boy next door to the basement? Why? The tall dog taps the page. Florence pulls the drawing closer, studying it through the bars. Oh, Billy's uncle is a police officer? I didn't know that. She looks up, brightening. You want to show him the ways we can tell his uncle, and they can help me, is that it? The smile widens. The nod comes again, slow and stuttering. Speaker 1 (5:05) Florence agrees. She turns toward the pipe, tells Agnes she's all right, that she's hungry and scared, but safe. That she needs Agnes to do something important, to find the boy who lives next door and tell him about the basement, to come when the building is asleep, to find the entrance at the bottom of the stairs. Agnes's voice comes back, cracked and desperate. Forget Billy, I'll come myself. No, Florence's speech bubble is firm. though the letters inside it shake. The doll dogs kept me safe this long. We should do what it says. We'll see each other again soon, okay? A pause. Rip's silence. Speaker 1 (5:48) Florence wraps her arms around herself, hugging the closest thing she has to her sister's voice. I promise. The tall dog reaches up. It wraps one long hand around the pipe and pulls. The copper bends, winds, then snaps free from the ceiling. Water spatters across the caged floor, a few final drops, and then nothing. The creature tosses the pipe behind it, the way a child discards a toy it's bored with. It meets my eyes again, smiles. Speaker 1 (6:18) It whistles as it leaves, a throbbing melody in my head and the sound of satisfaction. Florence stands at the bars. Agnes? She calls into the broken stump of pipe. Agnes, can you still hear me? Silence. She grabs the bars, shakes them. The cage doesn't move. It was built to hold winter coats and boxed up memories, but it holds a six-year-old girl just as well. Agnes? Her speech bubble is enormous now. Can anyone hear me? The final panel holds, holds and holds and holds. It's just Florence at the bars, her mouth open, her arms reaching through the wire toward a pipe that's no longer there, toward a sister she'll never see again, toward a world she'll never rejoin. The drawing ends. There is no next page. Speaker 1 (7:09) the paper slips from my fingers. For a moment, I stay crouched by the cage, my forehead resting against the wire, breathing the stale air of a 90-year-old secret. So that's how Florence Hollis died. Five days of calling into a broken pipe and drawing pictures no one would ever see in a cage no one knew existed beneath a building full of people who walked above her every single day, wasting away slowly. and the tall dog let it happen. I press my hand flat against the cage. It ends tonight, I promise quietly. My knees protest as I rise. My head swims. The whistling is louder now, powerful, battering the door like a gale. The tall dog is on the other side. It knows I'm here. It's been waiting since before I fell down the elevator shaft. It saw me in Florence's drawing almost a century ago, and it's been very patient. The knob twists. The door flies open, cracking the concrete wall. The wailing whistle pours through like a hurricane. I take cover. The basement trembles. For a second, I worry the whole building might come down. But then the storm becomes a whisper. A voice crawls through the doorway, muffled, choked, unmistakable. Let the light out. Speaker 1 (8:32) into fists. The damn kid. I told him to find the pails, deliver the message and stay put, not follow me into this bloody nightmare. I'm charging into the room before I can finish the thought. It opens around my flashlight in pieces. Rust-eaten washing machines are hunched in rows like tombstones, the floor slick with decades of condensation. My beam swings left, right, cutting trenches through the darkness, but there's no sign of the kid. Tyler! A whimper answers, small, afraid. coming from the far corner. I train the light there and my hand goes still. A shadow sits with its back to me. It's folded in on itself, bowed like a dead tree, its skull scraping the ceiling, long ears hanging past its shoulders, its outline shivers, edges stuttering as if three dimensions can't hold it. Patches of dark fur bristle along its spine in irregular clumps, scribbled with the manic pressure of a crayon pushed past its breaking point. It's cradling something in its lap, stroking it with long, patient strokes, the way you'd pet a cat. Get away from him. I raise the revolver, angling it, so the flashlight catches the barrel, but not the bend in it. I've already put down one monster tonight. Don't test me. The sound it makes is soft, like the laugh of a toddler who's been told something delightful. It rises, slowly, limbs unfolding one after another, arms first, then legs, then spine. straightening in a sequence that suggests it learned how to stand by watching humans do it and recreating the steps from memory, slightly out of order, like a sentence translated through three languages and back. Here, Inquisitor. That voice, it doesn't belong to it. It's Tyler's. Come and get it. Speaker 1 (10:16) I think a lot of people have a business idea they'd genuinely like to try. But they never actually start because they think, I don't know how to build a website. I don't know how to set up payments. I don't know how any of this works. And honestly, you don't have to know all of that before you start. That's the main reason we use Shopify for our no-sleep coffee storefront. They've basically taken all of the complicated stuff and made it simple. 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So if you've already put in the work, it can give you more flexibility around when you access your money instead of always waiting for payday. It's a simple way to make payday timing feel less restrictive. Download EarnIn on the App Store or Google Play. Spelled like earning money, but without the G. And when you sign up, type in Scary Horror Stories under Podcast. It really helps support the show. Earnin' is a financial technology company, not a bank. Access limits are based on your earnings and risk factors. Standard cash outs take one to two business days with no mandatory fees. Expedited transfer is available for a fee. Tips are voluntary and don't affect the service. Available in select states. Terms and restrictions apply. Visit earnin.com for full details. My stomach drops through the floor. There's nothing in its lap. Its hands are empty. Those long, stroking fingers were petting air. performing a pantomime of tenderness for an audience of me. Tyler was never here. It turns. The face is exactly what Florence drew. The elongated, horse-like skull. The rectangle teeth packed too tightly into an ear-to-ear grin. So that's how you did it. My voice is steadier than I feel. Agnes, you kept her loyal for 90 years by copying Florence's voice through the pipes. But you needed Florence alive first. Needed her to speak. to give you the raw material. I'm breathing hard, my flashlight trembling across its crayon outline. Because you