Content warnings for this episode include: Animal death (bird souls), Violence, Kidnapping and abduction, Death + Injury, Blood, Gore, Strangulation/suffocation, Static (including sfx), Drowning, Bugs, Body horror, Alcohol Use, Religious Violence
Intro - To Someone Else
No one can hear you. If they could, surely the screaming would have summoned them from the outside. You are alone in the darkness, so confined that you can barely move, and each breath you inhale is laced with the copper of your own blood. Is this a test of the quality of your soul, your patience, your virtue? Or have you simply been left to die in the dark? You never thought it would happen to you. To others, yes, somewhere.
You did not expect the abstract to surround you in the night, to make your heart beat wild with fear, to reach out to bind you and lock you away. Have they won, you wonder? They have hidden you away, from the world, from the sun, one more evil waiting for a chance to breathe, to be, praying for an end to your torture, for the light of hope and sun to grace you again, for the call of a comforting voice, the welcome sound of a Hello from the Hallowoods.
Theme.
Right now, I lurk in a screen one inch by two. It is looking for thumbs, but beyond it only sees a collapsed highway overpass and a still dark pool filled with debris, and this is all that it has seen for over a decade. It is the keeper of a hundred lives below, but it has no regard for them if their prints are unfamiliar. The theme of tonight’s episode is Vaults.
Story 1 - Waking Mr. Riddle
Darkness. Flame. A curse. A gift. Goods. Services. A raven. Several dozen ravens. Several dozen ravens in the shape of a person. The Omen was all of these things, and also, in the moment, what Penny referred to as a backseat driver, although it perched on the shoulder of her dreadful sister instead of any automobile chair.
“We are caught up in doldrums again,” croaked the Omen, presently in the form of a single raven. “Good luck getting out of doldrums again, doldrums again.”
“Stop whining,” said Friday. The woman’s hair was full of bones, and a rusty black nail ran through the soft flesh of her nose. Crow’s feet had begun to form near her eyes when she frowned, which was often. Her lipstick and hiking boots and long coat and her sunglasses and her trailing hood and scarf were all black, as black as the Omen’s wicked wings. “You’re not even the one doing the walking.”
“You worry too much,” agreed the second daughter. The years had written golden streaks in Penny’s red hair, which escaped in strands from the white scarf that she wore wrapped around her head and shoulders. Their journey had been made on a long sequence of vehicles, and their latest had followed the same fate as the rest of them, breaking down a few miles back on the road. There was no activity, from patrols or road-rovers or vanguards or pelicans, to give them pause, and so they walked along the side of the disintegrating highway in desolate stretches of urban wasteland. The sky was all strange pinks and yellows above them, clouds blossoming up from the horizon.
“Better to worry too much than too little,” muttered the Omen.
“Is any of this looking familiar to you?” said Friday, ignoring the bird.
“In a way,” said Penny. “The whole road does. I only saw it once from the outside, when we were leaving. I feel we’re close. But finding the exact spot is troublesome.”
“Let’s rest,” said Friday, leaving the roadside. On the other side of a collapsed highway overpass, there was a place where a rippling pond lay beside the highway, eating away at its concrete and asphalt. Friday sat, cross-legged, on a large wedge of concrete that sat at its edge, and then opened her mouth and stared at the sky. Long, brushlike black shapes rose out from her throat, peeling upwards into the air like a dreadful weed until the thirty-foot spider’s hairy legs had found purchase on the stone, and it pulled its gigantic abdomen out of the shadow between her teeth. The Omen sniffed. Soul-parasites were wretched creatures, even by the Omen’s standards, but the soul weaver had only eyespots for Friday.
“Find some lunch, Edgar,” Friday said. “But don’t wander far.”
The eater of souls took its feathery legs and went stalking away from the pond, up the hill that held one side of the overpass, to search for wayward birds or travelers to feed on.
“Look,” the Omen croaked, anxious to shift attention from the blighted bird-eater. “There is a Sleeper in the water.”
It was true, and both Friday and Penny came to kneel beside the dark pool. It was wrapped in tatters of black fabric instead of the green weeds of the lakes of Ontario, but the skeleton beneath the water dreamed, green light whispering in its dead sockets.
“I thought they were all supposed to be far north,” said Friday.
“Some got stuck,” said Penny, and she leaned over the edge of the concrete shore and touched the surface of the water; ripples spread out from her fingertip. “That happened to Mr. Raven and Mr. Writingdesk’s partner. He would come up out of the water, sometimes, to knock on the door to the Institute. Not that I was supposed to know about it. His name was Mr. Riddle. ”
The Omen flinched; the skeleton in the lake had shifted suddenly, head tilting up as the twin green fires burned brightly in its eyes.
“Riddle or query, question or theory, it’s waking up dearies so best we get cleary,” burbled the Omen. Neither Penny or Friday moved, however, and the twins remained sitting nonplussed on the shoreline as the skeleton broke the surface, the pale white dome of its head and its phosphorous-fire eyes and the black fold of its business tie drifting on the surface of the water.
“Riddle me this,” said the sleeper. “What can you see, yet can never touch? Eats time, eats space, eats what reaches for it? Flees from all that is, yet hungers for it? To nothing is born, and will be all at the ending?”
“Time,” said Penny. “No wait, the answer wouldn’t be in the riddle.”
“Death,” said Friday. “Or nothing. Or old friends who are too talkative.”
“I give up,” said Penny, to the floating skeleton. “What is it?”
“You’ll find out soon,” said the sleeper, the green fires in its sockets sputtering brightly. The tatters of a suit drifted in ribbons around its bones. “Very soon. The watcher will bring it.”
“Are you Mr. Riddle?” said Penny, crouching on the shore.
“I have riddles,” cried the Omen. “Better riddles than that.”
The sleeper’s gaze turned over to it, snidely.
“Why is a raven like a writingdesk?” said the Sleeper.
“Don’t care!” said the Omen. “Stupid question!”
It was Penny’s turn to frown. If Friday chuckled, she gave no outward indicator of it.
“Riddles,” said the sleeper. “All our work is riddles. But will we ever see answers? The sphinx has grown forgetful. What happens when the spinner of fates drops our stitches?”
“I think that’s a yes,” said Penny, and stood up, and looked down to Friday. “Do you think it’s good, or bad, for me, that I’m going back?”
“Probably bad,” said Friday, looking up at her and lifting her dark sunglasses. “Wish we’d stayed at the coven. This road trip will probably be the end of us. And the world. Everyone will die because we didn’t stay tending to Grandmother Briar’s bedside.”
“Don’t be morbid,” said Penny, and smiled slightly. “But good.”
She closed her eyes, and put a hand out in front of her, and turned to wander across the road, occasionally tripping over a chunk of fallen overpass. The Omen gave a last glare to the drifting skeleton and hopped over along the ground to follow her, fluttering from one perch to the next, studying her journey. It led her to a hill of debris on the other side of the road, where a glimpse of a concrete wall was piled with rubble. She came to rest with her hand against its surface, and stood there for a moment before opening her eyes.
“It’s here. Look at this. It reads fingers,” Penny said, brushing a small bit of glass set into the wall with her hand.
“I don’t suppose you kept any fingers from your captors,” said Friday. “I wanted to. Perhaps I have something in my bag.”
“The door was made to withstand nuclear explosions,” said Penny. “Even if you have dynamite in there, I don’t know that it will help.”
“Worry not,” cried the Omen, and leapt into the air, becoming a flurry of flame and darkness. “A task I can surely assist with!”
It barraged the door with flame and flapping, first, and when it found no purchase, expanded to search the hill, searching for any crevice it could contort through. It was in the end a gap of a half-inch, a ventilation passage of some kind near the top of the hill, that allowed it to flee through a series of fans and open gates to arrive in a hall illuminated only by the fire of the Omen’s heart. It materialized into its full shape, legs and hands made of claws and beaks and feathers. On this side, there was not a touchscreen but a control panel with a large lever, and the Omen wrapped a claw around it and pulled.
Sunlight flooded the space, and Friday and Penny cast long shadows into the hall of concrete and cold metal grating, and a yawning dark passage that led down into the earth. The Omen bowed, flexed its iridescent feathers.
“We won’t be able to burn this one down,” said Friday, disappointed.
“No,” said Penny. “But we’ll destroy it from the inside out.”
Interlude 1 - The Strangeness of the Age
Your world, dreamer, has been transformed, and you may not even recall that there was a day only decades ago when rain that twisted flesh would have been considered unnatural, when ghosts did not commonly haunt your abandoned condominiums, when the trees did not grow eyes to watch you. That is not to say that these strangenesses did not exist in the decades prior to the Black Rains, but they were isolated, contained by divisions of your governments, and buried in holes in the ground belonging to the CPE Institute. The key to burying treasure, however, is to remember where you have stowed it, and over three decades past the collapse of those governments, not every vault is still manned with personnel. They are left, contained, silent, waiting for the day that they might return to a world made new, to a world that has begun to accept the strange as part of everyday life. We go now to one responsible for the strangeness of the age.
Story 2 - A New Life
“Are you sure you want us here?” said Riot, looking up from her cards. “We could, you know. Give you some space.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Danielle, who held her fold of cards in one hand and took a strawberry drag with the other. Her parlor was dim, and confined, but warmed by several candles. Diggory tried not to scratch the surface of the cards they held, although both of the other players were watching them instead of the game table.
“Why would I not wish you here?” said Diggory. “We are all friends of Percy. And it is Danielle’s abode.”
“Well, it’s just that it’s your first time meeting his new partner. Or really spending much time together. I figure you might want to catch up without an audience.”
“Shh,” said Danielle, and there was a thump that indicated a kick under the table. “I want to be the audience. And I’m as excited to meet Percy’s mysterious beau as Diggory is. Maybe more. It’s your turn, by the way, Diggory.”
“Ah,” said Diggory, and looked down to their hand. Some of the cards were square and had the names of properties on them; others had creatures and inscrutable numbers and abilities. They had a pile of small wooden houses, glass gems, a pewter dragon and a porcelain token in the shape of a diving helmet in their corner of the table. “Let me consider.”
“Besides, it’s not like our friend group is exactly free of weird dynamics,” said Danielle, yawning and setting her hand of cards facedown. Riot laughed uncomfortably, and Diggory shook their head.
“Remind me,” they said. “On my turn I can… play this animal?”
“Oh, don’t show me your hand,” said Danielle. “Too late. I memorized it. But that’s a level four lightning otter. You can only play it once you’ve bought at least four properties to devote.”
“Or own the electric plant,” said Riot. “That’s its utility. Or if you have any power resource cards to discard.”
“So I wish to buy another property,” said Diggory.
“You have to roll your dice and then move and see if you land on a vacant one,” said Danielle.
“And you need to have the money for it,” added Riot.
“Ah,” said Diggory, and rolled the dice. “I got a three and a… shield symbol.”
“That means you move three, over here to Balcomes Place, and you’re safe from my hazard effects on that property,” said Danielle. “Which is good. I had a booby trap card ready to go.”
“Why am I so bad at this,” said Diggory, and rested their chin in their palm.
“I’m still learning too,” said Riot. “And I’m pretty sure Danielle just makes up the rules as she goes.”
“I don’t make up the rules,” said Danielle, with a grin. “Well, I do. But none of these games have all their old pieces anymore, so I thought I would give them new life.”
“Are you nervous?” Riot said, looking up to Diggory.
“I think then I will trade my little metal dragon to the bank for five hundred dollars,” said Diggory.
“I wouldn’t do that,” said Danielle. “Your Dragon Raid token is the only reason I haven’t initiated a raid on Elm Avenue over here.”
“Diggory,” Riot said again, softer. They paused.
“When Percy and I met, we were as two drowning,” said Diggory. “And we clung to each other, believing that the other would float. We clawed for the other’s throat and lips and eyes. We shared the same breath, and could not breathe without the other. And we called it love. Looking back, I do not know if that was because it was the only tenderness we had ever known. But if we clung to each other any longer we would have drowned together. I hold in my heart nothing but happiness for him. That he survived, that he has had a happy life, that he has people who love him without drowning. And although the love we shared has changed, he is still my oldest friend. And I am pleased to have him in my life again, when I thought perhaps we would not ever meet. What has changed is not lost. And perhaps it lives in a better way, now that we can both can breathe.”
Riot and Danielle both looked at them blankly.
“I’d say maybe a little nervous then,” said Riot.
“Oh definitely,” said Danielle. “Diggory, are you buying Balcomes?”
They were interrupted by a far-off laughter, although Diggory heard it long before the others. And then two faces in the window, which was open in the vain hope that the night air would be cooler than the air inside.
“Hi everyone,” said Percy, and Danielle and Riot looked up to notice him. He was cast in dappled silver light that traveled and shifted across his face, but the sweater, the dots in his lips where thread had once bound them shut, the abyssal eyes were the same as Diggory had always known. They raised a hand to wave to him, but his eyes were focused on the second person in the window. She was a ghost, cast in a similar faded light, and her head was shaved except for the mullet and one long strip of hair that drifted in the air from each sideburn. There were pieces of silver jewelry caught in her spectral shape, in her eyebrows and lips and silver dollars in her earlobes. When she winked, it was with eyes all-black except for tiny white pupils, and when she stuck out her tongue, it was forked.
“Everyone, this is my girlfriend Ratty,” said Percy. “Ratty, these are my friends.”
“Hiiiii,” said Ratty. “I’m Ratty. My pronouns are she/it. I’ve heard so much about all of you! Sorry if I bite anybody, I bite people when I’m excited and I have been like, super excited to meet everybody. Ooh. What are you playing? Can I join in?”
Marketing - Mallory for CEO
Lady Ethel Mallory:
You can feel it, can’t you? The way that the Botulus Corporation has withered? Dryed up, run stale of new ideas? Expanded their ego-driven space program, for what? The future of the human race, Oswald says in the mission statements he gets his marketing croneys to write. I would know, I’ve been one of those cronies. Ethel, write me something that will make me sound like a hero. But I ask you this, if he cares so much about the future of humanity, shouldn’t he care about your future? Aren’t you the future? While his attention drifts to the stars, you are languishing in his dead dreams.
But the reason you’re hearing me now, interrupting your tired old nightmares, is because there is hope for the Botulus Corporation. And it doesn’t lie with its founder anymore. It lies with me. Years ago the Stonemaids rallied and fought for change, and they got what they wanted. Are you willing to fight beside me, dreamers? Are you willing to stand for your future? Are you willing to support Mallory for CEO?
Story 2, Continued - A New Life
No.
We return now to Diggory Graves.
“Okay. So I’m going to arrive on Diggory’s Elm Avenue, but then I’ll discard the gremlin invasion to avoid paying the rent energy. Then I’ll tap eight properties to play my four eyes white dragon, which will immediately destroy the hotel on Elm for one victory point, and since my Exploring Party lets me propagate an exploration in the central island hexes every time I play a creature, I’ll push my Mr. Admiral Robot to the last unexplored hex, drawing a mystery card from the exploration pile. And that mystery card is Marie Curie, who is going to be my third female scientist and fulfill the Science Achievement, for my last victory point. So with ten victory points, I win.”
Diggory barely registered her words; they had been lost as to what was happening for several rounds by now and they only knew they liked their little pewter dragon. Their senses instead lingered on colors, movements. The bubbles in Danielle’s martini glass working their way to the surface of the liquid. The sparkle of the light through the transparent red movement dice. The electric hum of the presence of both ghosts, sitting together on the bench at the end of the table, manifesting brightest where they applied enough presence to become real, to hold the cards, and to hold each other’s hands under the table. It was emotion that allowed spirits to hold form, to interact with the world without passing through it, was it not? What had propelled Percy when they first met? It had been pain, Diggory thought. It could not be pain that moved him now to so easily hold his light.
Danielle leaned back, tossing down her cards.
“That was wild,” she said. “I’ve never seen someone pick this up so quickly.”
“You’re not used to losing at your own game, is what,” Riot said.
“We play a lot of board games back home,” said Percy. “And yeah, Ratty usually wins.”
“Which, I don’t know how, because I’m terrible at most kinds of math, but games just make sense somehow,” said Ratty, crossing her transparent arms, and her abyssal eyes shifted to Diggory. “Did you guys play a lot of games back in the day?”
“Not so much,” Percy said. “Partially because it took me a while to figure out how to be… tangible. I wasn’t very good at it. And what with all the serial killers and road trip rescues and world-saving business, there wasn’t always a lot of time for fun.”
“I had fun,” said Danielle, refilling her glass. “Once I learned how to eat like, real food and breathe without tubes. We played road trip games. Spotting shapes in clouds, that type of thing.”
“Olivier was often accused of cheating, but they would say their powers did not work that way,” reflected Diggory. They watched as Ratty stretched, rose up from her chair, and hovered over to the kitchen.
“Where did she end up?” said Percy, looking around. “Couldn’t make it to the reunion, I guess?”
“If I have any clues, they’re lost in the fog up in here,” Riot said, tapping her head. “I haven’t seen them since the blizzard.”
“I spent whole nights looking sometimes,” said Danielle. “But I wasn’t as strong then, either. I still hope they’ll make it back here one day.”
“After all,” said Riot, “it didn’t seem like any of us would be back, and yet here we all are.”
“And we could use a little rain,” said Danielle, deflating in her chair.
“Hey guys,” said Ratty. “Who wants to watch me eat all these knives?”
This became the new attraction as Riot and Danielle pivoted over to watch Ratty, a handful of steak knives in hand, begin to pop them in through her mouth and travel down her transparent neck. Diggory watched for a moment, brows furrowed, and found that Percy had shifted over to their side of the table while Riot laughed.
“It’s so good to see everyone,” Percy said quietly, not looking at them.
“Yes,” said Diggory, and smiled. “It’s good to be back.”
Interlude 2 - Work Business
I wait now for the commencement of the first council meeting. And I wonder how much time I have. Knowing the span of life for Indescribable beings, probably some moments yet. I wonder if I ought to make introductions before the meeting itself. Say hello to some unfamiliar faces. Try to make a good first impression. This is work business, dreamer, it does not involve you. We go now to one who, too, approaches a door.
Story 3 - Unhealthy
Cole Kane walked in the dark, and the light of his flashlight swept idly across the roots that formed the overgrown pathway and walls and ceiling. The depths of the tree that formed Scout City were not all as navigable as the many chambers of the trunk above; there were black market businesses hidden here in the roots that dealt in illicit substances like fabric and tobacco, and what hiding spaces remained were sometimes licensed for storage. Sometimes the storage happened without a license.
“It’s not like I chose it myself,” said Heather. She was one of the tallest of the McGowan children, and the most muscle-clad, and she kept pace beside him on their patrol. “If I could take the growth out of my skin, out of my muscles, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But it was forced upon us the second our parents chose to move up here.”
“Amen to that,” muttered Cole, gritting his teeth and scraping the inside of them with the legs of his centipede-like tongue. “I don’t understand how no one seems to notice anything is wrong. Most of the people in Scout City. They’re either dead, or perfectly fine with corpses having jobs among us. They have parts of animals and insects and plants growing out of them. And mostly everyone treats it like it’s normal. Anywhere else in the world we’d be freaks.”
“I don’t know if it’s healthy,” said Heather. “The way they just. Blindly accept it. It’s almost like they’ve been indoctrinated, you know? Like the water makes them think it’s normal. Changes their worldview.”
“You and I have been drinking the same water, though,” said Cole, pausing at a rusted door of metal sheets; a broken padlock. “And we see through it.”
“Something needs to change,” said Heather, stretching, and when she did there was a ripple in her biceps, her shoulders, where the folds of her sponge-laced tendons lay. “It will, whether we like it or not. All we can hope for is that Scout City survives the transition.”
“Well, that’s our job,” said Cole, and he rapped on the metal door. “Scout City deputies, anyone in there?”
He waited a moment, and then tried to lift the door up, strained for a second with one hand, could not.
“Do you mind?”
The door rattled up into the ceiling on grinding rails with a grunt from Heather, and Cole shone his light into the storage cell. The pool of blood that filled the floor had gone dark and black by now, and the body that sat in the center sat at a cello, although the strings from it ran through the head and hands and up into the ceiling and walls. A cascade of wire stretching between the cello’s longer strands spelled letters in the air; REPENT.
“God,” Cole breathed. “What the hell have we done.”
Outro - Vaults
Vaults. We bear with us the question; how much do we set free? Do we allow all that grows within our chests to prosper without it, or for fear of being seen stay hidden? Lock it away until the danger is past? There is on the one hand safety in hiding, behind deep doors, unnoticed and unknown, until safety comes again someday. On the other, there is that the hiding is in itself a victory, that those who seek to build a world without you will accept silence as much as destruction. All that matters is that you are, one way or the other, invisible, and when withdrawn to a deep dark place, those looking for any trace of hope for their own futures will look past you and see nothing. Which is more inspiring to them, however, one who hides, or a martyr? Until all the secret tombs of the world are broken, I am your loyal host Nikignik, waiting securely for your return to the Hallowoods.
The bonus story that goes with this episode is called 'A Taste of Sunlight' and is available on the Hello From The Hallowoods Patreon. Consider joining for access to all the show's bonus stories, behind-the-scenes and more! Until next time, dreamers, please be careful when carrying stacks of books after the apocalypse. If you have all the time in the world to read, you wouldn’t want to trip and break your glasses. Wear contact lenses instead, and enjoy your eternal reading nook in peace.
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