Content warnings for this episode include: Violence, Kidnapping and abduction, Death + Injury, Blood, Gun Mention, Drowning, Body horror, Religious Violence, Needles, Lips Sewn Shut
The Interrogation - Guilt
Nikignik
So there you have it. I admit to the murder of Marolmar. Are you satisfied?
Auditor
I have data for each of the points which I was asked to collect.
Nikignik
So we are finished.
Auditor
No. Now a process of review will begin. Your responses will be evaluated. Your guilt will be determined.
Nikignik
I have admitted to the crime.
Auditor
Your guilt will be determined.
Story 1 - Into the Fog
Brooklyn Williams moved through the darkness. Buck and Mr. Spade had been swallowed by the pitch-black fog immediately, but the fear that pulsed in her was not caused by the midnight storm or the threat of death, but the worry that Marco was about to be caught in the teeth of a threat bigger than any of them had anticipated.
Something moved in the fog ahead of her, she was sure of it, and she stumbled back as it lurched past her. She caught a silhouette for a moment, a wet cape wrapped around bulky shoulders. And then she hoped it was not Marco, because the body had been flung back, and it flipped over the deck rail, and vanished into the fog, leaving only drifting clouds in its wake. She could not hear so much as a scream, or the crash of the waves or the pelting rain upon the deck. It reminded her of activating the Dreaming Visor that had been built into her glasses once; the way they dampened sound and made the mind numb, left you dead to the world and so ready to dream.
It was no harmless dream, but a very real nightmare that she waded through, and she pulled her lightgun from her belt. It was a small thing, and kept for the last resort; if she was put in the way of a suspect, then their plans had usually gone wrong indeed. But the ship lights above her were not yielding any help down on the shrouded deck, and she could not tell in which direction things were moving around her. And when a large shape loomed in the darkness only steps ahead of her, she pulled the trigger.
The firearm had been salvaged from the remains of a Botco drone, and the first stage of its laser was only a red dot that illuminated a line through the black fog, and trailed across a black-cloaked chest, a chin with stubble, a scarred face. A few feet away from her, Marco winced as she shone the laser in his eye by accident. And he grinned, and she clicked the light off, and felt him move to her side, and she grabbed his arm. He was shouting, and his voice was a muffled blur, but she dragged him away from the railing, further into the deck, where she reached out and felt the scaffold leading into the array of shipping containers that formed the above-deck lodging. She grabbed a hold of the door’s long locking bars and pulled it open, and Marco fell in after her, and she was quick to bring the door shut afterwards.
“Did it work?” Marco said, as the sound returned. The light, on the other hand, did not, and they crouched in an unlit shipping container, unsure of what lay further within. “Please tell me it worked.”
“It’s gotten more complicated,” Brooklyn said. “It’s not some animal we’re hunting, Marco, she’s a killer. The Duchess of Boldt Castle. She’s onto the plan.”
Marco grit his teeth. “Well, that’s probably why she never showed up to sink her teeth into me. Damn. Where is everyone? Is Hope safe? Is Buck?”
“Buck was ahead of me in the storm, along with Mister Spade,” she said, and watched Marco tense up immediately. “I still wouldn’t trust Mister Spade, but he’s had some turn of heart. He’s the one who filled us in on the Countess.”
“And Hope is still hiding in the room where we left her?” said Marco. They were both quiet for a moment.
“She’s not going to be there, is she,” said Brooklyn.
“I was thinking as I said it,” said Marco.
“This fog is some kind of smokescreen,” Brooklyn said. “I think we’re going to have to split up. Can you find Hope? Make sure that she’s safe?”
“I can certainly try,” said Marco. “What will you be doing?”
“I’m going to try and find Buck,” she said, and clicked her pen. “And I’m still missing half of this story. I need to find where the action is.”
She felt a kiss on her forehead, in the darkness.
“You’re still thinking of the next novel,” he said.
“Of course,” she said. “I don’t think Buck could stop getting involved in other people’s business if he wanted to. And as long as he does, someone’s got to write it up nice. Spin a narrative out of it. Sell copies. Keep a roof over our heads.”
“Don’t get too close,” he said.
She squeezed his big-knuckled hand.
“In and out,” she said. “Like always.”
“On three?” he said.
And on three, they were out into the shadow again, black fog streaming through the air as the East Wind charged into the unheard storm.
Story 2 - The Atlantic Factor
Buck Silver wiped a puddle of gathering water from the top of a metal crate, and laid his coat over that, and that was going to have to suffice for a desk. He leaned against it as he studied each of his gathering allies; the wolf woman had a seemingly supernatural ability to sense people through the black fog that blanketed the decks above, although whether it was based on heat or smell or some sixth and other sense, he was not sure. She and Hope gathered the rest in fairly short order—Brooklyn, rain-drenched and shielding her pad of notes beneath her coat, and then Marco, bewildered, and lastly Mr. Spade, eyes immediately as smoldering as his cigar when he found that the other Duchess of Boldt Castle was his guide.
“Mr. Silver, if you intend on working with this woman I recommend you reconsider,” said Mr. Spade. “She’s an accomplice to the murders happening upstairs.”
“There is very little time to explain what I already have, and I need much more,” said Buck. Hope nestled between Marco and Brooklyn at the foot of the stairs, and Yaretzi stood with her arms crossed, scowling at Mr. Spade.
“This ship is a complicated puzzle, and it is unfolding as we speak,” Buck continued. “On the one side, a family—yes, Mr. Spade, a family, although an unconventional and carnivorous one—from the Hallowoods. On the other, the Knights of New England, who have had Countess and Duchess alike in their sights for a while. Two kinds of hunters meet above decks right now. What I am missing is everyone else. This ship is full of passengers, one captain who is a self-professed monster hunter, another who has failed several large sea voyages, a tattooed first mate that connects them, a musician who impersonates Valerie Maidstone, the Humble Boot.”
“Don’t forget Mort,” said Hope. “He’s beneath the boat.”
“And one sea monster, beneath the boat,” Buck sighed. “We are, as far as I can tell, the better part of a day away from the coast of France. Working out what we need to do is going to require understanding how each piece of the puzzle above and below us fits together. Missus Yaretzi, Mr. Spade. Now is the time to put our heads together and prevent a massacre. What do you know about the rest of the factors I am missing?’
“Captain Shaw is a hunter,” said Mr. Spade, and Yaretzi returned his glare with equal grim candor. “He wouldn’t be here unless he thought there was going to be a challenge worth his while during the voyage.”
“And if, as you say Hope, there is a large being named Mort beneath the East Wind, I find it likely that his attention has been gained. I wonder if he suspects a connection between the disturbance in the water and the one on board the deck.”
“Almost certainly,” said Dashiell. “That’s what Notoriety is for. She’s keeping a watch on everything that happens aboard this ship.”
“I might have seen her withdraw from the window, the night of the death of the first nightwatch,” muttered Buck.
“The Knights of New England did not reach out to you alone, I think,” said Yaretzi. “I am no stranger to hunters. And once they set their sights on a quarry it is difficult for them to let go.”
“There is also Captain Branston,” said Buck.
“Each doomed voyage he’s led has plunged him into more debt back in Liberty City. But your friends the Knights have granted a substantial sum to allow them this hunt on board his ship. He needs that to clear his name. Well, that and having added protection to ensure this voyage doesn’t go sour, I imagine.”
“A bit late for that,” muttered Buck.
“We thought you were under his employ from the start,” said Yaretzi. “And ultimately the employ of our pursuers. I had some misgivings about the threats my partner made to you, but she believed it would keep you from harming our prospects of crossing.”
“Your partner is a bloodthirsty monster,” said Dashiell. “One way or another, she’s opening necks upstairs at this very minute.”
“The fake Valerie Maidstone, the Humble Boot,” said Buck. “Do they have anything to offer this.”
“I have not spoken to the Humble Boot,” said Yaretzi. “But I was warned that he would be aboard, and that he was not to be taken lightly. He fought the Count to a stalemate, although my partner would tell you that she is the more powerful of the two.”
“A vampire killer,” said Mr. Spade. “All I have on the false Valerie is that the more your books reach audiences and publicize Scout City, Mr. Silver, the harder it is for her to ignore the questions the public has about who she is and where she’s been. Across the ocean, you’re looking at a place where books about northerly detectives don’t reach—but also, there are no Dreaming Boxes there, and so no Prime Dream, no liberation movement, no Stonemaids. I don’t know what she expects to ride off on the other side.”
“Perhaps she seeks reinvention,” said Yaretzi, and her eyes flicked over to Buck. “Or, now that she has her ruiner in close quarters, revenge.”
There was a gasp of screaming that was briefly audible from upstairs, the rattle and thump of armored boots on metal floors, the shriek of the Countess and the rending of flesh, before the passing fog took the sound again.
“That didn’t sound good,” said Hope. “Someone’s getting crunched up there.”
“You’ve been thoroughly helpful, everyone,” said Buck, and closed his eyes, and lowered his head to the desk. “And now, let me think.”
The Tapes - Loaded Question
Shelby
Are you recording?
Clem
Yeah.
Shelby
It’s funny. Probably our future selves will be listening to this. Hi guys.
Clem
Shelby, can I ask you something?
Shelby
What’s up?
Clem
Why are you here?
Shelby
Because you’re warm and it’s cold outside of the covers. And my hands are always cold.
Clem
Not that. I mean… why are you still solving cases with me?
Shelby
That’s a loaded question.
Clem
Yeah.
Shelby
Well. A few reasons. Because I’ve seen some terrible things and I don’t want them to happen to anyone else. Because I like when things work out for us and we fix something. And because I love you.
Clem
I was afraid of that.
Shelby (whispering)
I’m afraid. I’m so afraid, of losing. But if I have to, I’d rather be here.
Clem
Until the end.
Shelby
It’s not the end. That’s it, gritty detective, I’m taking your tape recorder. It’s bedtime.
Clem
Hey-
recording cuts out
Story 2, Continued - The Atlantic Factor
Buck could see it all, in the darkened palace of his mind, and it was the zenith where finally he had enough to operate with, could picture clearly a hundred if not a thousand moving parts. Where they must be, how they set each other into motion, and how each piece affected the next in the grand game of life and death being played aboard the East Wind. And from it all, he had to derive the answer: what did they need to do?
There was, at the dark epicenter on the deck above, the Countess. A trail of blood ran in her wake and stained the nights of the voyage. The fog that she summoned was her saving grace, the veil that allowed only one or two armored Knights to strike at a time. He could picture her ducking beneath the flash of a silver sword, claws seeking a soft space between the helmet and shoulder, and finding none, wrenching an arm off entirely before casting the knight away like a broken toy. And Sir Fen, standing on a higher balcony of the crates, earth falling from her armor, and the armor of a half dozen other knights rising to enclose their prey. And the Saint Loris, standing wide with her frail feet turned in, barely able to lift the edge of her long and thin rune-etched silver sword from the ground. The sheath’s rubies gleamed with light, and the runes of the blade with holy fire.
“What is it with you people and your swords and your creeds,” said the Countess, her nails and teeth and wings all of a flexible sharpness.
“We are nothing but the words we live by,” said the dragon-slaying saint. “And our words are the writ of the Almighty God. What word do you serve, spawn of the empty heavens?”
“Your words are tired,” said the vampire. “I’ve heard them before, at abandoned abbeys and castle doors and hotel lobbies. And I can’t tell you how dreadfully bored I am. Or how many times I’ve had to begin again to find a little peace and quiet. And you know, I never feel much like evil until some self-proclaimed righteousness comes knocking on my door.”
And the vampire would pull the black fog around her in a mighty upward leap, and Sir Fen would cast a silver net, and the Saint would put all her flagellated might into a sweeping strike with her silver blade, and holy fire would leap from it in an arc to cut through deck and safety rail alike. And their battle was a matter of time—the leaping, vicious strikes of the Countess against the unified and relentless rise of the knights and the cruel invention of their silver weapons, that burned the Countess at the slightest touch—but they did not have time.
Nor, in the black fog, could they hear the increasing uproar of the thunder above, or see the lightning burning high in the heavens, or the size of the waves that were beginning to rise and fall beneath the East Wind’s hull, or the rising miasma of black ichor and bone in the water below, as though the very sea was cursed with death.
No one would see the Humble Boot, with nip and pliers in one hand and a firearm in the other—a vampire-hunting gun with a crucifix engraved on each side and the last six silver bullets of its case loaded, and a necklace of garlic blooms around his neck. His cape and battered boot hat drenched by the silent pour of the rain. He would close his eyes, feeling the pitch of the deck beneath him and the rain above, and hum a ditty to himself as he felt for the kind of presence he had spent half a lifetime learning how to anticipate. And when he felt that the harmony had been achieved—deck and wind and the swirl of the fog and the figures in a dance of death on the other side of it—he would fire into the darkness, and the silver bullet would sail like a wayward thorn towards an unknown heart.
The sound of the gun would be loud enough to wake the sleeping close by, even through the fog, and someone who looked much like Valerie Maidstone would rise to find that she could not see or hear the world outside. She might not believe it, at first; might assume the fog swimming around her was like any psychedelic trip she had embarked on before, and that the only defense lay in music she had stolen. She might, barefoot and in her night-dress, plug in her amp, charge up her electric guitar, and play an anthem against the darkness pouring into her room, and the chords at full blast echoed through the housing stacks, deep into the ship as she crooned and denounced the darkness.
Hundreds of passengers, waking to the uneasy tumult of the ship and the rasp of Valerie Maidstone’s warning voice echoing through the metal walls of their containers, pouring out of their containers into the silent fog, crowding the deck without knowing it, finding upon them knights in silver and pools of rain-spattered blood streaming across the grates, rising into a panic.
Above it all, Captain Branston, standing stern at the helm of his ship, high over the waves of the fog, praying that he has made the right choice, and that the Knights and nightwatches under his employ can deal with one beast aboard. But he has faith, despite everything, and despite every foul turn that the wind has ever handed to him. That the Knights of New England are strong, and the detectives at his beck and call are the most cunning men that he knows, and if anyone can stop this evil that floods blood and shadow across his ship, then it is them. And so he plunges recklessly into the storm, lightning bursting in the sky above, and laughs in the face of death.
First Mate Notoriety Shaw, covered in written passages from a hundred books, preserved in case Notoriety outlived them. Hammering the button to open communications with the Little David, hiding any fear in her voice from her father. About the darkness that dwells on the deck, and the ship in uproar.
Captain Shaw, listening from the Little David, but only halfway. For sure as he can see the darkness drifting from the deck of the East Wind, he can see the bones and ichor in the water, keeping pace beneath the waves, oozing tendrils and pseudopods grasping along the ship’s hull, and he knows that as surely as Notoriety has found her mark, he has found his, and he barks orders to his crew, and readies great projector discs and mine launchers and the all-important harpoon. The Little David surges forward, cresting the high waves behind the East Wind, closing in on its underwater quarry, and when the time is right, and he can see green fires burning in a hundred skulls in the sea, he fires. The harpoon strikes deep into the miasma, and he shouts for victory as the chain goes taut. The projector discs send vibrations into the sea, and the miasma heeds the warning, pulling away from the Little David, and Captain Shaw readies the mines that will launch straight for the monster at the end of the harpoon’s cable. He looks up too late as he realizes the mass is moving, not away from the East Wind, but beneath it as it flees, dragging the Little David relentlessly forward.
“Mr. Silver,” said Mr. Spade, glancing up at the ceiling as a gunshot went off somewhere above. “What do you make of it? What do we do?”
“Get to a lifeboat,” Buck breathed, blood draining from his face. “The East Wind isn’t going to reach France.”
And then there was a titanic roar of rending metal and flame as the Little David buckled into the side of the East Wind, cratering the hull, and knights and passengers went flying, and above all the others, the one factor Buck had forgotten, the all-consuming Atlantic, seized the ship.
Story 3 - Old Selves
When Clementine woke in the Witch House, it was to Shelby’s tousled head in the bed beside her, and her little yellow tape recorder on the bedside table. The bed was lumpy and not particularly comfortable, but then again, that described her too. There was a divot in the middle where it felt like someone had lain for years, and the blankets had a dusty familiar smell. Clara had slept on the moss-grown sofa in the living room. Clem could hear a clatter of dishes, and the hiss of a kettle, and groaned. Shelby pulled her a little closer, and she studied the bandage-wrapped end of Shelby’s wrist that lay so close to her. For being two broken puzzle pieces, they fit together nicely. It was another hour before they braved the uncertain morning to join Clara for breakfast.
“Good morning,” Clara said, an apron over the previous decade’s dress, frying bacon and mushrooms on a griddle. Half of the dishes that had piled the counters had been washed; the others had been moved unceremoniously to the floor. “Hope nothing kept you up.”
But there was another presence in the breakfast room which gave Clementine pause, and she blinked twice with her remaining eye to make sure he did not disappear. It was a white outline of a boy, a sweater and collared shirt, curly hair flowing in an unseen current. There were marks above and below his lips where thread had once bound them, and his eyes were dark voids. He was cast a little differently than she had known him; back then he had been bright on all edges, equally illuminated. For a brief time, anyway, until he had taken to hiding in a suit of silver. But now, the light that flickered across his form was dappled, like the shifting sunlight at the underbelly of a river. But he burned bright, and smiled at her as Shelby helped her into the room.
“Hi, Clementine,” said Percy. “How are you feeling?”
She staggered at that, and Shelby almost dropped her, and she was promptly helped over to a chair where she could sit down and study the ghost.
“Pretty terrible,” she grinned. “How is being a ghost? I’m halfway there myself.”
“Has its ups and downs,” the ghost shrugged. “I’m definitely happier with it now than I used to be.”
“Percy, this is Shelby,” said Clem, looking over to her. Shelby had a fight or flight response going on in her eyes, to which Clem poked her in the arm several times. “She’s my partner in life and in crime-solving. Say hi, Shelby.”
“Hello,” said Shelby. “Clem’s talked a lot about you. And Olivier and Diggory and Riot, of course.”
“Have you been here this whole time?” said Clem, as Clara dropped a beverage of something hot in front of her.
“It just takes time, and practice. Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Percy said, looking up past her to the air. One of the pots that had fallen the day before went flying across the ground into a corner. Percy looked back down to Clem. “No, I just got back last night. I’ve been traveling with my girlfriend. I… there’s so much to talk about. I don’t want to get carried away. The important thing is, Clara reached out to say that you were here, and that you’re not doing great. And I knew I had to come back.”
“Yeah it’s crazy. If you’d come to visit like, a few months ago, you would have found me with all my eyes and teeth and fingernails in the right places and managing a successful detective agency,” Clem said, and took a long sip of her brew, and stuck her tongue out at the taste. “But you know what the morticians say. Better late than never.”
“You’ve been alive,” said Shelby, sitting down beside her. “Or. Around. This whole time, you didn’t return to Scout City? We’ve been wondering for years. What happened to you, to everyone. In the north.”
Clem put a hand on Shelby’s knee as if to say, now’s not the time, but Percy settled down to the table, mimed the gesture of putting his elbows on it and his hands under his chin, although his silvery form phased through the hard surfaces.
“It’s a good question,” said Percy. “I don’t fully know, but I’ll explain what I can. There were the Northmost woods, and those were freaky, and we were chased by a giant zombie bear and some kind of dimension storm and we lost track of Hector and Jonah in there. Then when we’d made it through, there was a sort of icy wasteland. The true north, I guess. And there was something up there that lived beneath the ice, and turned the whole place into a death trap. Olivier caused a storm, like power I’d never seen from them before. We all got separated. Diggory was buried beneath the ice, and I broke my last string. The connection that was keeping me stable. Safe. I went to go get help. Cindy and Mort, I haven’t seen. I don’t know where Olivier is, if they’re alive. The last I saw of Diggory was they were planning to dive into the ocean and try to reach the heart, and I’m pretty sure that was a suicide mission by then but I couldn’t change their mind. And Riot… the storm was intense. Enough to freeze the sea back together, stop that evil ocean from attacking us. Riot was alone, and she didn’t make it. Clara’s been working on getting her back into her body.”
“Is she here?” said Clem, as several forks on the ground flipped positions to spell an offensive word. She glanced to the body on the back table, which was covered again with the white sheet.
“In body and in spirit, yes,” said Percy. “Although being visible like I am to you right now, it takes time. And energy, and that’s a resource you don’t get back.’
“Unless you have ghost eyes,” said Clara. “I can see and hear her just fine. Too fine, actually. Stop complaining, we’re going to fix this soon. I mean it this time. Everyone who can eat, breakfast is ready.”
“I’m not hungry,” said Shelby.
“I’m really glad you’re here, Percy,” said Clem. “I wish the others were too. You… you never thought about coming to visit? Let us know what happened?”
“No, I did,” said Percy. “A lot. And I kept saying, soon I’ll go back. But I wasn’t ready. I mean… when you knew me, I was pretty much the same person who died on a table during the black rains. I was just hanging on to anything at all that I could, and I was selfish and desperate and… let’s just say I didn’t handle conflict well. I needed time, to make a new life. And I have. It’s been really nice. I’ve been working on myself, a lot. I didn’t realize how fast the time was passing, honestly. I was always going to come back someday. It probably should have been sooner. But I worried in some way, I’d be coming back to an old me that still lives in the Hallowoods. As silly as that is.”
“Not silly at all,” Clem muttered around a mouth full of bacon, glancing at the body beneath the sheet. “Happens more than you might think.”
“So,” Percy said, and looked between her and Shelby and some unknown point in the room where Riot’s soul dwelled. “Let’s talk about dying.”
The Conversation - Undying
Nikignik
You’re not going to try and stop me?
Marolmar
No.
Nikignik
Why?
Marolmar
I realize when I’ve made a mistake. I counted on all the variables staying consistent. My elaborate death, my shocking return, all hinged on a string of factors going correctly. And I planned for all of them. For my death at the hands of the Industry, for my heart to be buried in the ice, for it to prepare the world for my return, to someday be free. That no feeble life would be able to stop me in time. But what I didn’t count on was you. I thought I could trust you. I thought your love was undying.
Nikignik
It is.
Marolmar
I thought it would never change, and that is a mistake I realize that I of all people should not have assumed. And now it will cost me everything, but that is the price of arrogance.
Nikignik
I do not want to do this.
Marolmar
It is too late now to stop. Look at them. They’re waking.
The bonus story that goes with this episode is called 'File 24: Percy Reed', 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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