Content warnings for this episode include: Ableism, Animal death (Shank as usual, Dogsmell as usual, a mouse), Suicide (mentioned), Violence, Death + Injury, Blood, Needles, Static (including sfx), Body horror
The Interrogation - Inconclusive
Nikignik
I do not lie.
Auditor
Your responses are inconclusive.
Nikignik
He was evil. I realized then that everything the Industry, everything my friends had ever tried to warn me of was right. He was corrupting and all-devouring and he would swallow the universe whole if given the chance. I came to realize as he spoke that he would never stop. That nothing would ever be enough. Not the universe, not me. There is good and there is evil, there is light and there is dark, and he was both the latter. So I did what I had to. To purify this universe. And I allowed Diggory Graves to wake, to place their hand upon the dark heart of Marolmar, and take his life away.
Story 1 - Dear Valerie
Dear Valerie,
I’m writing this to you because I think it will be easier for both of us. And because when you read this over and over again like I bet you will, I want you to remember me a particular way. It would be a lie to say that I’m okay. I’m dying. You know that. And it’s not a pretty process, and frankly if I had to say this in person I think the ‘me dying’ bit is all you would hear, and there’s more that I want to say.
I remember when I first met you. Neither of us knew it was the first time. I just knew that I’d been separated from you for weeks and I was going to see my mom. And those early weeks with you were still some of the happiest of my life—some of the most fucked up of my life too, because I didn’t know that I was some weird little Botco science project and I had never met you before and I was made with your daughter’s face.
Things got complicated for us when the truth came out, and Riot showed up from god knows where. And I wasn’t nice about it at the time. I didn’t really know how to be, or who to be, if I wasn’t your daughter. And to your credit, you didn’t do what any parent probably should have done, which was shove the cuckoo out of the nest and leave her behind at the megacorporation that made her. You let us both be your daughters, in our own ways. That gave me something, anything, when I needed it the most. And I can’t thank you enough for that.
I think Scout City is about to see some dark days. The files that I’ve attached with this letter contain everything I have on the Quartet, which admittedly isn’t much. And unfortunately I’m not going to be able to finish this case. Maybe it’s for Cole to finally get the credit he’s been hunting for his whole stupid life. But you’re probably going to feel like resigning as mayor or something, and I need you to know you absolutely cannot. I gave my whole life—well, all like fifteen years of it anyway—to Scout City. Don’t let the city destroy itself. It’s a pretty special thing, and it’s full of people who are afraid of losing this life that they have. They need you to be a leader. They look up to you. You need to kick some ass.
I worry about you because I don’t know that grief has ever come out of you. I think it all stays and gets added to a big grief reservoir and it stays there forever. I worry that me dying is only going to give you one more thing to fill it with, and one less reason to learn how to deal with it. I don’t know how you’re going to let it go. But I hope you break, and all the grief comes out, and when that’s done you can put yourself back together.
I hope Riot comes back, someday. I hope that I do, even if that seems impossible. But I was thinking about this—even if Riot comes back, she won’t be the same, will she? She’ll be older and different and grown up. We might not even recognize her at first. So I don’t think either of us can keep hanging onto the idea of her. Even if she’s alive, the Riot we knew is never coming back.
For what it’s worth, she loved you. She and I talked before she left. I know you never got to properly say goodbye, and I know you both regretted that. But I don’t think she hated you for it. You beat yourself up for that more than she ever would have.
I still wonder what they did up there. If they managed to complete their mission or not. You and I and all of Scout City have changed a lot in fourteen years, and the forest has gotten bigger and weirder every year, and I am not totally sure if they stopped the heart after all. Did the mission fail, and that’s why the world is the way that it is? Or did it succeed, and that’s why it hasn’t gotten even weirder? I don't know if we’ll ever know. But either way, Riot and the others went because they thought our lives here at Scout City were worth protecting. So don’t give up on that like it’s nothing. It’s what they probably all died for.
My life was pretty good, for the record. I didn’t ask for any of it, but I really made the most of it. So I don’t want you to remember me like I was some sad animal with a broken leg waiting to die or something. I bit back. I drew blood. I may not have gotten my deputy badge, but I’m proud of the work that I did instead. I may have disappointed you sometimes. A lot of times. But would I really be your daughter if I didn’t?
Please look out for Shelby, and for Violet and Bern, and for Danielle, and all my favorite people. I need someone to do that when I’m gone. They’ll need all the support they can get. I’m sure you will too.
I remember when I said goodbye to you. Neither of us knew it was the last time. But you did say goodbye to me, so don’t you dare start with a whole ‘I didn’t get to say goodbye to either of my daughters thing’. I remember it. You said goodbye when I got off the rootcrawler after we came home from Box Polaris, and I said bye. It was a little thing, but it still counts. I expected to last a little longer, to get to say it again. But maybe it was best that way—quick and simple and not crying and making a mess. And you’ll remember me like that, just back from an adventure. You were cool that day. The coolest you’d been in a long time, frankly. So it’ll be nice to remember you that way too.
Shelby’s taking me into the woods, and she’s going to come back without me. Please don’t come looking for me in some massive motherly manhunt. Just let me go with a little dignity. Frankly, I’m not sure I’d even be able to respond. I’m fading fast here. Shelby’s doing the handwriting for me.
Thanks for choosing to be my mom. I don’t think anyone would have done it better. Keep this place safe for me. Scout City is going to need someone else to look after it, with Clementine Maidstone off the case.
Love, your daughter
Clem
P.S. Gotta keep rolling, gotta keep rolling on.
Story 2 - The Witch
Clem was not in pain. If pain planned to introduce itself to her, it would have a long time before then. However, a strange feeling of vanishment had begun to assert itself. She felt like there was no world beyond the immediate horizon, that there was empty backstage behind the very convincing first layer of trees. The world was shrinking around her every moment, and sometime soon it would shrink so small that even Shelby would be gone, and she would be the only thing left in it. And she was not sure after that if she would either be alone forever, or would cease to be entirely.
She lay in a catlike heap in a wheelbarrow of sorts that Shelby had rigged to a kind of leather shoulder harness, which Clem thought was hot but could not do anything about from the wheelbarrow. She was missing an eye, and a few teeth, and her hands were destroyed, ribs buckled. Her skin was ripped up in a dozen places, her neck clicked at certain angles, her heartbeat could not decide between a hundred times a minute or three. She hoped her lost fingernail was doing well wherever she had accidentally planted it, and wondered if like a seed it would bloom into another Clementine someday. Or, perhaps just into a flower with her face. Or perhaps into one solitary potato. Or maybe it would lay there, like a piece of plastic, unchanged for all time. She hoped it was happy, wherever it was.
“You really shouldn’t have cut off your hand just to come rescue me,” said Clem, again.
“Wasn’t negotiable,” said Shelby, and adjusted the harness on her shoulders as she hoisted Clem in the wheelbarrow up a steep slope of roots and onto a plateau of soil stretching out into the forest underbrush.
“We should have taken a rootcrawler,” Clem said. “This was dumb. How are you even able to pull me around right now?”
“I’m not sure we’d be able to reach it by rootcrawler. Besides, the quiet is better. And I can pull you just fine.”
“Do we know what this witch is like?” Clem said, laying her head sideways on the edge of the wheelbarrow, so that the world wheeled by from top to bottom. “It would be funny if she’s like, a psycho killer in the woods, and you just brought me to her so she can make me into a lamp or something.”
“I’d put you by the writing desk in your office, I think,” said Shelby. “It’s a little too dim over there, since it’s right across from the fireplace. A lamp would be perfect.”
“Would I make a pretty skin lamp, do you think?” said Clem, and she used the hand where the fingers still worked to fish her little yellow tape recorder out of her jacket, and she played with the eject button.
“Your skin has a lovely kind of translucent quality,” said Shelby. “I think you’d be beautiful. And if you’re fully synthetic then you’d last a long time.”
“I love you,” said Clem, and closed her eyes.
“Right,” said Shelby, careful not to give her too bumpy a ride down the other end of the roots and into the forest again. “I love you too.”
It was hours through the sunlit afternoon, with beams of light passing through the layers of the titanic pines overhead, until finally they came to a stop. Clem looked up from the wheelbarrow to spy something ahead; it was a house, and not one she had seen before. It had been a little cabin of some kind, and still was, somewhere beneath all the roots. The roots of the titanic pines held it carefully, rather than trying to crush it as they did most things. A rocking chair sat beside a rusted swing on the front porch, and a green door with splintered paint was closed. Every window was dark, whether they had glass or not.
“Do we just knock?” said Clem.
“I guess so,” said Shelby, and she pulled Clem’s wheelbarrow all the way up to the front steps before undoing the leather straps around her shoulders, and stepping up across the porch to knock loudly. The breeze took a cold turn, the wind whispering in the needles of the trees high above. It was either that or evil spirits surrounding her on every side. The world shrunk another few inches. Full minutes of silence passed that way, with Shelby standing in front of the door, and Clem wondering whether to ask her to knock again, wondering if there would be any point.
And then there was a rustling from inside, footsteps, a clatter of dishes. And then the door was pulled open suddenly, and there was someone on the other side that Clem recognized, even from twelve feet away at the bottom of the porch steps, even from fourteen years later.
The woman had dark skin and the frizz of her hair was tinged with streaks of grey, and if her forties were encroaching on her body, centuries had already passed in her ancient eyes, which were magnified several times by bottle glasses and surrounded by crow’s feet. Her shoulders and neck were bent as if perpetually reading. Despite all of these marks of age, Clem recognized her from their brief meeting. She had been riding a broomstick, which seemed fitting for her profession now that Clem thought about it, and they had watched Riot and Olivier Song dance around a bonfire far below at the end of summer, and regretted all their mistaken identities.
“Hey,” said Clem. “I don’t know if you recognize me. I was the wrong Riot.”
“She needs help,” said Shelby. “She’s dying. Shank told us to find you.”
The woman was silent for a moment, wide-eyed and taking in the bitter present. And then, she swung the door fully open, dark dress blowing in the wind, black rain boots.
“Please,” said Clara. “Come in. I think I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”
The Tapes - So Good
Clem
But I feel it. And you feel it. That drive to keep going. Just one more step. Just one more mile. Until it’s done. Until everyone is safe.
That’s why I think you’re going to be good at this. That’s why I think you’re going to be so good…
Story 2, Continued - The Witch
Clementine sat in an armchair that had been dragged up to a small dining table—it wrapped around her in a way that made her feel like her bones would not all tumble apart, even if the world outside was shrinking down to the very corners of the cabin. The witch’s house was more forest than home; vines broke the windowpanes and curled around inside on the walls, and a berry bush had sprouted amidst a moldering pile of pans and dishes on the kitchen counter. However, there was tea, and it was hot, and although Clem was more of a coffee person she’d take what she could get. Shelby sat in a taller chair beside her, and the witch rummaged around in rusted tins and jars collecting objects to toss onto the dining room table—a lace doily, a dried mushroom, a collection of buttons, the bones of a mouse. Everywhere there were books, piled in precarious rain-ruined stacks, holding up shelves and table legs. There were other tables, further back throughout the cabin, with sheets draped across what Clem was sure were corpses.The entire place smelled violently of wet dog.
“It’s, uh, quite the decor you’ve got going,” said Clem. “I was just saying to Shelby the other day, I think we need more brambles in the office. We don’t have enough brambles.”
“Oh,” said Clara, looking up and pausing in her rummaging. “I suppose it’s gotten a little messy in here. I’ve been busy. There’s not usually brambles.”
She plucked a berry off the kitchen bush, and popped it in her mouth, and went back to her inscrutable gathering.
“Riot talked about you,” Clem continued. “Although she didn’t always have nice things to say, full disclosure.”
“Go figure,” said Clara. Wrinkles congregated around her thousand-year-old eyes. The wind carried through the cracked windows and rattled in a hundred objects that hung from the ceiling; pots and knives and curved surgery needles and strings of garlic. “Nothing but nice things to say about you, though. How long has it been?”
“Been since what?” said Clem, and exchanged a glance with Shelby, who had said very little to the witch.
“Since she died,” said Clara, who tossed a candlestick and a bit of chalk onto the table as if to indicate she had found the last of the junk she needed, and came to drape herself over the remaining wooden chair.
“Riot is dead?” said Clem.
“Ah. Sorry,” said Clara, blinking. “I didn’t mean to drop that on you.”
“Fourteen years,” said Shelby. “Since she left Scout City.”
“Scout City?” said Clara, and pursed her lips, as if the tea were bitter. It was. “Fourteen years. Lord. What does that make me now? Could be worse I suppose.”
“We came here because Shank says you fix people,” said Shelby, shifting the bone saw strapped to her arm in a way that indicated she was tired of the small talk. “Is that true?”
Clem smiled, and leaned back against the armchair, and grinned at the ceiling. It was already so painfully clear. This was a dead end. And of course it would be, because Shank was a gross murderer who wore a pig head and was probably not going to recommend any first class doctors. But it was a funny note to go out on, in this doddering woman’s cabin. Truth be told, she hadn’t been holding out much hope to begin with.
“Well it depends on what’s wrong,” said Clara. “I have a lot of expertise on certain topics. But I’m not a doctor.”
There was a clatter; a pot came disconnected from its chain on the ceiling and bounced across the entry hall.
“Stop that,” said Clara.
“Here’s my problem,” said Clem. “The Botulus Corporation made me as a fully grown clone of your girlfriend, with a limited time free trial of life. And my whole body is not healing. It’s breaking down. I’ve tried science, but my evil science dad couldn’t do anything to help me. So, what magic do you got?”
“There’s no such thing as magic,” said Clara, and she crossed her gaunt hands on the table. “There’s just the world, and the types of energy that live in it. Learning how to guide them, change them, is a kind of science too. Spirits are my specialty. I’ve spent years, centuries, learning. Preparing.”
There was another wind, but this one shook every chain in the rafters, and hundreds of objects fell out of the ceiling, pans and hammers and saws and skulls, and the cacophony only lent to the disarray of the cabin floor.
“Alright already,” Clara said loudly, and stood up from the table, and stomped over to one of the covered corpses in the back of the cabin. Shelby’s hand moved to the trigger of her saw, and Clem peeked up from the table to try and see what lay as Clara yanked the sheet away.
A body that looked much like Clementine’s, minus the wolf cut and plus an untended buzz cut, lay on the table. Riot’s corpse shone with small white runes that were printed across her skin like tattoos, and shone like the frost on a winter morning.
“Why is she here,” Clem said. The wind spun in the cabin, dragging the fallen hoard across the ground.
“It’s not easy to put a ghost back in a body,” said Clara, pushing up her bottle glasses, and her eyes were ancient and electric. “But I think I’ve finally solved it. And it might be a solution that saves both of you.”will tell.
Story 3 - Stick Around
Compact, labyrinth, fishbone, table, transformation, binding, wards, charms, worms, rot, mend, thread, vessel, soul.
After a while, the words began to blur together, and Shelby rose silently, gave Clem a quiet squeeze on the shoulder, and then trudged through the piles of fallen objects and out the front door. The fresh air was an immediate relief, and the quiet; there was only the rush of the forest and the cries of distant songbirds as twilight fell on the witch house. That, and the creak of the rocking chair under the massive weight of its occupant.
“I thought you’d come by sometime,” said Shank, gloved hands folded in his lap, and his lopsided pig head staring empty-eyed off into the forest. “Sounds like you’re gonna make a deal.”
“If that’s what Clementine wants,” said Shelby, and her hand stayed close to the trigger and lock of her bone saw, but she drifted away from Shank, and sat on the swing beside the rocking chair. The rusted chains creaked under her weight. “What about you, what’s your deal with the witch?”
“I want it off,” said Shank.
Shelby glanced over at him; the clown suit was burnt and stained beyond recognition, and the head of the pig as charred as the rest of him.
“Your mask?” she said.
“Ain’t a mask,” said Shank.
“Have you ever seen anything,” Shelby said, and shivered, “to make you think that this woman knows what she’s doing.”
“I seen things that glow,” said Shank. “I seen dead flesh melt back together. I seen ghosts and spirits dance. But I’ll tell you a secret, I kinda hope she don’t find the time for me for a while yet. I don’t know what’s on the other side. I been like this for a lifetime.”
“I don’t know what’s on the other side either,” said Shelby, quietly. Shank moved, and she jolted, but he only reached down to pick up a coarse black blanket and toss it in her direction. She glared at him, and then pulled it around her shoulders with her remaining hand.
“Someone cut you up pretty good,” said Shank.
“Same people that framed you as the new Instrumentalist,” said Shelby.
“Seems we both got beef with somebody.”
“Seems so,” said Shelby. “But they’ll pay, by the time I’m through.”
“You gonna stick around?” said Shank, and the rocking chair stopped as he leaned forward, head tilted in her direction. “I smell death a mile away. You came here with your sweetheart and you ain’t leavin’ with her. You gonna keep going? Or you gonna put your own lights out? I can help, if you need. I can break a neck real quick. So fast you wouldn’t feel it. If you wanted. Bury ya together in the back garden ‘neath some nice daisies.”
“I’m gonna stick around,” said Shelby, and she stared back at him. Shank shrugged.
“Suit yourself,” said Shank, and folded his hands again, and looked out to the woods. Darkness had swallowed up the world, and it was filled with fireflies. Shelby sat out there for another hour, quiet beside the pig-man, and listening to the faint voices from inside, talking of how to cheat death, or how to pay him twice his due.
The Conversation - Temporary
Nikignik
So this is how it ends.
Marolmar
Haven’t you learned by now? Endings and beginnings are the same.
Nikignik
I have experienced endings without beginnings. I am about to cause another.
Marolmar
End. Beginning. Life. Death. They each grow from the other. If any of them existed without its counterpart, it would be a dreary eternity indeed. What would there be for you to watch, with all those wonderful eyes of yours, if not for change?
Nikignik
I wish it could be how it was before. When it was just you and I and things were simple.
Marolmar
You can never cling to anything forever. It’s all temporary.
Nikignik
I hate that.
Marolmar
You shouldn’t. There’s beauty in it, if you look closely.
The bonus story that goes with this episode is called 'File 17: Clara Martin', and is available on Patreon.com/hallowoods. Because Hello From The Hallowoods is created without advertising or sponsors, we rely on patronage to make this show possible!
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