Content warnings for this episode include: Violence, Death + Injury, Blood, Static (including sfx), Body horror, Animal Death (Shank as usual)
Intro - For a Purpose
Were you made for a purpose? That is the question that governs each driving choice you make. You exist in this universe, and for that you are unsure of whether to be grateful. Regardless, the truth is unchanged; you are here, and the endless why of your calling haunts each of your moments. You were born, one day, in a burst of starlight and fire at the center of the universe, but only the Outsiders know why, and can they truly ever answer your question? Perhaps from out there where they dwell, the before and the after, things are so different in scale as to be unfathomable.
For you, who were born and one day will dissipate, gently or violently, the meaning is caught in these moments, and the Outsiders could never understand. What you have been given is petty. What you choose could shape the universe. All you know is that, night after night, you speak to all who dream, and you always begin with a Hello from the Hallowoods.
Theme.
Right now, I lurk in the concentric maze of wood-grown houses and stapled-together structures which surround Scout City, known as the Stumps. Like myself, the other inhabitant of this alley also wonders why she is here. The theme of tonight’s episode is Vocations.
Story 1 - Hotcakes
Victoria Tepiani stood in the alley, and was not happy. When she had a story to sink her teeth into, a thrill ran through her; the spark of life was hot in her chest, made her heart quick. When there was no story, she languished, and everything slowed. And stories only stayed alive so long, much like detectives and politicians and cities.
She had posted the Clementine examinations, first, and then the reflections, and then the eulogies. The city mourned the loss of its only remaining significant detective, and so soon after Buck Silver had made his own ungraceful exit. The circumstances surrounding Clementine’s death were curious to say the least—injuries sustained after falling into the Northern Logfall while chasing the Instrumentalist Killer. The burning of the logfall and all the evidence within it mere hours afterwards. The supposed death of the killer and then his mysterious disappearance from Vincent’s morgue, and Vincent’s disappearance alongside him. The mayoral edict about the supposed Quartet, although the mayor was Clementine’s own mother and no Quartet had reared their hypothetical four heads since. That was to say nothing of Riot Maidstone’s sudden return, a decade and a half late. Oh yes. Something was being covered up on the grandest scale. And although some small rabbit-like part of her heart quivered and doubted, she could not resist chasing the lead across the dark glades of Scout City’s neighborhoods. Which was what brought her to wait, twirling her mustache anxiously, in a dark alley in the Stumps at night.
“I almost thought you’d backed out,” she said at last, when the silhouette in the big jacket stepped into view and began making its way towards her, a slight limp in its step.
“It took longer than I thought to get clear,” said her informant. “Without being suspicious.”
“The usual?” said Victoria. The other party came to stop a few feet away from her. Heather McGowan’s bushy red hair almost cleared the brim of her deputy hat, and she kept her collar up as if the lumbering deputy could ever go unnoticed in a crowd.
“Not tonight,” said Heather. “Your vouching for us is… nice. But this is going to be big. I don’t think we need anything special.”
“Well, spit it out,” said Victoria, crossing her arms.
“I’ve got two things,” Heather breathed. “I don’t know how much you’ll be able to do with this right away. What the mayor will do if this leaks.”
“Valerie can eat her heart out,” said Victoria. “Please tell me this is something I can use for tomorrow’s headline.”
“Oh I think so,” said Heather. “The first thing is this.”
Here Heather fished out a piece of paper; Victoria’s vision was excellent in the dark and even so she squinted to make it out. She could see the pale shape of hands, arms, glinting strings of an instrument, a body pinned to a cello.
“The Quartet,” Victoria breathed. “They’re back? This is when? This is tonight?”
“Tonight,” said Heather. “But as far as the Quartet… well. you’ll want to see this one too.”
Here Heather produced a second photo, and Victoria’s pupils dilated as she laid eyes upon it.
It was, unmistakably, the glass of tall, dark and handless that was Shelby Allen, with her sleek black hair, walking somewhere deep within Scout City. But there was a second person in the Camocept photo as well, even taller than Shelby and twice as broad. And she had been waiting for any glimpse of his dead-pig mask, his blood-spattered clothes, his huge gloved hands, for close to two months.
“Oh my god,” she said. “Shelby’s working with the Instrumentalist killer.”
“I thought you’d like that,” Heather said, and turned. “Good luck writing.”
“You’re too good to me,” said Victoria, looking up to the deputy. “You’re sure there’s nothing you need?”
“I need the truth to get out there,” said Heather, looking back. “Things need to change in Scout City. The mayor can’t keep telling us what to believe. I just want people to be able to choose for themselves. That’s the only payment I need.”
Heather continued, moving quickly then, disappearing back into the night, and Victoria grinned, and tasted blood. At last, things were beginning to make sense. The truth was going to get out indeed. And if she opened the wound correctly, it would sell almanac issues like hotcakes on its way.
Interlude 1 - On Scout City Jobs
If you live in Scout City, there are expectations that come with living in a self-sustaining community. There are dozens of paths to choose in order to become useful, and as long as you have picked one to earn your credits, you can barter them for all that you require beyond your basic needs. If you feel your calling for hunting or fishing, for farming or cooking or cleaning, or for any productive thing, the guidance of experienced mentors is easy to secure, their curriculum based on practice as you earn your merit badges for that trade. If you are something less traditionally recognized as a staple of the community, such as a freelance investigator, you may need to earn your Scoutcoin differently, such as working in a meat shop or selling issues of your diligently reported and influential newsletter. We go now to one who does not worry about gainful employment.
Story 2 - Tea Light Conversations
Percy burned brightly, although he knew it came with a small cost, a subtle one, one that was paid over hours and days and years. He could not help it, any more than he could suppress his smile. He had almost forgotten how much he missed these people, and it was almost unreal now to sit in Danielle’s kitchen—she had a kitchen now!—and the sound of Danielle’s voice, although a decade and a half past the last time he had seen her. Riot, although reconstructed from memories of two friends, still held a smile and a light in the eyes he recognized. And there was Diggory, sitting contemplative on the floor of Danielle’s lounge, where the group had drifted now that the energy was gone for board games.
The lounge was a round room carved out of a large knob on the side of the branch where she lived, and had a sunken area where cushions had been set out for seating, and a large twist in the segments of bark that acted as a window to the forest canopy far below. A tea light cast a warm glow from the center table, still attracting a single small moth this high up, fluttering with red eyes illuminated on its black wings. Ratty sat beside him, silhouettes just a little entangled, and she lit up a single fingertip until the moth drifted away from the flame, and followed its finger through the air in search of the sun.
“So,” said Danielle, who lounged across almost half of the cushions and crowded Diggory’s space with her feet. “How did you two meet?”
“Do…,” Percy began, and then found himself talking at the same time as Ratty. “Do you want to tell it or should I?”
“I like the way you tell it,” said Ratty, guiding the moth in front of her face, and then extinguishing the finger and lighting up her eyes suddenly, and the moth fluttered in confusion for a moment. “So go for it.”
“Well, I had just arrived in Toronto,” said Percy. “I didn’t really know why I was going there, except it was away from the Hallowoods and I had been there a little bit before and Milo had mentioned there were a lot of ghosts there. I was hoping to find him again. And I did, actually. He explained a lot about the city. I didn’t really know that people could be so casual about ghosts.”
“You are so back in our story that you are almost telling a different story,” said Ratty. The moth had returned to the tea light.
“I’m getting there,” said Percy. “I can tell it slower. My first day there I just wandered the storefronts, looking at all the clothes and advertisements and how much the world had changed since I was a kid. And then I went to where lake Ontario washed up to meet the skyscrapers. The second day I was there…”
“Perrcccyyyy,” said Ratty, and bumped her dejected forehead to his shoulder, charged it enough to create a tiny shock of static electricity. “Just tell it normallll. I’m sorry.”
He put his arm around her and grinned. “Only if you chill. But yeah, eventually Milo was like, I’ve got to go up there, this sounds amazing, and the Venus was like ‘I hope there are people to eat’. I just never would have guessed that he’d be such a big deal up here. I thought he was working on a thesis, not making inventions.”
“I think he’s doing both,” said Danielle, and raised a glass. “But the legs are way more useful to me than the thesis. Cheers to Milo.”
“But he had been telling me about the city, encouraging me to get out there. A lot of people died in Toronto, apparently, and some of them left or drifted away or were picked up, but a lot of them were also like well, we’re dead, but it’s still our city. So there were a lot of haunted places for me to check out. I met a lot of ghosts. It was a good period of exploring, I guess. But there was one place that I was told I should never go, because it was haunted by a poltergeist, which is a ghost that kills people. It was a queer nightclub…”
“Heartthrob,” said Ratty. “And it was in the basement under Rackham’s. You couldn’t get in unless you knew where the secret door was. Oh my god, you should have seen it when it was popular. There would be like forty people in a twelve by twelve dance floor. You were absolutely getting sweated on. That was part of the experience.”
“Except when I went, the building was collapsed, and the secret basement dance floor was flooded. But I wanted to see what it would have been like, because that was never really an experience I got to have. So I went down through the concrete and sure enough, it was all dark and spooky and dead in there. And then I saw it. The poltergeist.”
“And I was like. Coming here was the last mistake you’ll ever make,” said Ratty, and stuck her forked tongue out, grinned with the shadow of her sharp teeth.
“And I was like, how can it be the last mistake I’ll ever make when I’m dead,” said Percy.
“And then I was like, most people usually run screaming by now,” Ratty continued. “You must really wanna dance.”
“And so we did, dance, down there beneath the water,” said Percy. “And Ratty made the dance floor glow somehow, which I didn’t even know was possible. And that was how we met.”
He met Diggory’s gaze by accident; wasn’t sure how to decipher the look they gave him. Whether they were watching him at all. Their remaining eye flicked over to Danielle almost immediately.
“I might need lessons,” said Riot. “I don’t know if I ever had a sense of rhythm but right now I’m two left feet. Thankfully not literally.”
“If I can do it, so can you,” said Danielle. “But nice. And you hit it off, it seems like.”
“Yeah. It took me a little bit to be ready for anything serious, but… Ratty is great.”
“Stopppp,” said Ratty.
“And gorgeous and so so smart,” Percy continued, until Ratty glowed brighter from embarrassment, and put her head against his shoulder and gave him several light punches in the arm.
“Stop it or I kill you,” she said.
“Again, already dead,” said Percy.
“What is like dating another ghost?” said Diggory. Percy raised his brows.
“Well, it’s my preference,” said Ratty. “Not that I’ve dated a lot since being dead, since I hate people. But dating living people is just so tricky because they just don’t get the struggles, you know? Of having to stabilize and regulate and manage your spirit energy. I prefer D4D dating, that’s dead for dead. You’re on the same wavelength about things from the start and it’s just so much easier.”
“What about you,” said Percy, suddenly feeling an impulse to shift the attention away from him and Ratty; it had dwelt there too long, maybe. “Have you dipped your toe in the dating pool at all, Diggory?”
“I have not,” said Diggory, and they smiled in a way that Percy did not entirely trust. “Until the day I returned, I had been only in the Museum of Broken Promises. But I have also felt no great need. I have had much of myself to become comfortable with, first.”
“I mean, you seem like you’re doing a lot better,” said Percy. “No, uh, fainting and memory spasms or anything.”
“Yes,” said Diggory, and smiled again, looked down to the flame. “I have learned how to make peace with all the parts of me, more or less.”
“I love you all, but I am going to have to give it up for the night,” said Riot sleepily, and she rolled off from the lounge and clambered out of the seating pit. “I think I work tomorrow morning.”
“So, tomorrow afternoon,” said Danielle.
“Hey, we can’t all be sleep geniuses,” said Riot, and blew a kiss to the crowd from the doorway. “Percy, I’m glad you’re back in town, don’t go anytime soon, okay? We should hang out. Ratty, lovely to meet you.”
“Byyeeee,” said Ratty, and waved.
“Speaking of sleep,” said Danielle, and stretched. “I’m probably ready to turn in too. But feel free to stay up. Percy, Ratty, I have no idea if ghosts sleep but the lounge is yours.”
“Cool,” said Percy. “Thank you, Danielle. It’s so good to see you.”
“I’ll be in your dreams,” Danielle said, and rose out of the lounge as well, the vines that supported her legs and lower back drawing taut like tendons. And then it was just Diggory, and Percy, and Ratty, sitting in the patio enclosure.
“So,” said Percy. “What’s new with you?”
Marketing - Happy Dreaming Family
Lady Ethel Mallory:
For too long, the Botulus Corporation has taken its happy dreaming family for granted. What makes us happy? Services that are provided as promised. What makes us family? The shared bond of our unique lifestyle, one that uses the power of dreaming technology to give every dreamer a better life. What makes us dream? It’s more than just a visor or a box or pair of glasses. It’s a movement. It’s a movement that used to mean something. The Botulus Corporation once was the epitome of the power of the American Dream. A fusion of technology and innovation and endless imagination, building something beautiful out of a broken world. How many identical Azuria expansions are you in? It’s all Cloud Realms and Dark Lands over and over again. We need a new dream. I wish I didn’t have to be the one to give it to you. It should be Oswald Biggs Botulus. But if he cannot, then I will. For you, dreamer. For you.
Story 2, Continued - Tea Light Conversations
This is my audience. Keep your spinnerets away from them.
We return now to Percy Reed.
“I’m going to go do my hauntings,” said Ratty.
“Oh god,” said Percy. “You really don’t have to. We don’t exactly know anyone here, you might actually scare them.”
“No, it’s cool,” said Ratty, and she gave a little wave to Diggory, and then fell through the sofa and out into the city below, and Percy was left alone with them in the candlelight.
“She seems nice,” said Diggory.
“She’s not, but that’s why I like her, I think. She’s like a chaos gremlin,” said Percy, and then shifted his gaze and attention out to the city below them. “I don’t ever recall it being this hot up here. Not that I could exactly tell the temperature when I was here.”
“Yes, it has been rather dry,” said Diggory. “It has not rained in a month, and I do not see signs of it changing soon.”
“Yeah,” said Percy. “Speaking of changes… did it work?”
“Did what work?”
“Oh come on,” said Percy, smiling half-heartedly. “You know. The… martyr thing.”
“Ah,” said Diggory, and looked down to the candle, which was low in its pool of wax. The moth had given up on fluttering to sit near the light, watching with its wings. “In a way.”
“I mean, I’ll be honest, the reason I was terrified to come back was that I thought either you were dead, and I didn’t want to deal with that, or you were Irene Mend, and that was… I’m not sure if that would have been worse.”
“She made a mistake,” said Diggory. “If she had committed ribs or a heart, it would have been much more difficult to undo her grasp on me without a very talented creator to replace what was missing. But the eye… although it did not contain all of her, it had much of the runes that bound her soul to me. For control. In ruining them I have been able to quiet her, like the others.”
“So she’s still in there,” said Percy, sitting forward. “Are you okay?”
Diggory looked up at them, and the smile they gave him was painful.
“Yes,” they said.
“You don’t have to pretend, if you’re not,” said Percy. “I know this is super strange for both of us, and probably not the best way to reconnect. I understand if you think we shouldn’t have.”
“I am not pretending,” Diggory said, with a shrug. “Again, I have had a long time to learn how to manage what I am now.”
“Which means, what exactly?” said Percy.
“I was born of black water,” said Diggory, and here they looked down to the ground, so that their curls of thick black hair hung around their face. “Dripping through a leaky roof. It is why I awoke, unfinished, years after Irene’s death, upon that table. It has always had a part in me, too. The other Mendies do not shed tears when they weep, not even when they wish to, seeing me again. But I wept. And when I reached for the heart, its power was taken into me. I feel it, impossibly great. Coursing through the fabric of me. I am a world, Percy. I am a forest. Although I do not look it. For this reason, my permanent home is safely in the Museum of Broken Promises. And I have done well there, cataloging, wandering the world. I do not wish to alarm anyone, especially Danielle and Riot, but I think I will quite possibly outlive this world.”
“Wow,” said Percy. “That’s… a lot.”
“Yes,” said Diggory.
“I mean, what do you do with that, you know?” said Percy.
“You probably know better than most,” smiled Diggory, and then a frown was upon the stitched seams of their mouth. “I wished to apologize. If I ever hurt you. For whatever I said. I think of that time, beneath the ice. And even though you and I have both left it, I do not like the thought of pain from our past trapped there still.”
“Oh,” Percy said, and smiled in turn. “Honestly I barely even think about that anymore. It feels like a whole lifetime ago, and I was a different person then too. When the Museum showed up at Clara’s house, the only thing on my mind was, I’m glad Diggory is here. Because I mean, new Riot needed all the help she could get at the start, and you’ve always been the most responsible one in our friend group. So. No sweat.”
“Good,” said Diggory.
“Good,” said Percy.
The flame went out entirely, suffocated in its own trace of wax, and the moth watched the smoke trail for a few moments, disappointed.
“I should probably go make sure Ratty doesn’t scare Violet and Bern to death,” said Percy. “Because. She might.”
“Of course. I will retire, I think,” said Diggory, and rose, bowed their head a little. “Happy hauntings, Percy. The Scoutpost is glad to have you again.”
Percy smiled, and then drifted down through the floor of grown bark to hover over the city beneath, could see all the lights of the stumps spread out and the glow of the great trunk’s many windows. And Ratty, sitting upside down on the underside of the patio.
“They seem nice,” she shrugged.
“Oh my god,” Percy said, and floated over to sit beside her, until the city was overhead. “This trip is nice, but also… awkward.”
“Gross,” said Ratty, and grinned, and then looked up to the city below. “Also, there’s some stuff going on down there that’s gonna freak you out. I think it’s about your dad.”
Interlude 2 - Agenda
What if there was supposed to be an agenda? I seem to recall an agenda. What if they send out an agenda, but because I am not a council member previously, they have not sent it to me? What if I am at the top of the agenda? If they say, welcome Nikignik, please tell us a little about yourself and then present the report we asked you to prepare on the agenda? I should ask someone if there is indeed an agenda. We go now to one who has found a new calling.
Story 3 - Unpleasant Risings
“Please don’t make me do it,” said Vincent. “I’ll do anything else. I’ll scrub every dish. I’ll polish the floor. I’ll file your income balances. Anything but that.”
Raj kissed him on the forehead, and Vincent briefly soaked in the smell of smoke that followed him perpetually.
“My dear,” said Raj. “Breakfast will be done momentarily. Delicious dosa which I have meticulously prepared. And I ask only that you brave this most difficult task in exchange.”
“Just ten more minutes,” said Vincent, and slid beneath the covers again. “Of blissful slumber.”
“I suppose instead of current events we will have to discuss whatever comes to mind,” said Raj. “I’ve got a lecture brewing on the different ships used in Rome’s navy.”
“I love history,” said Vincent. “Hardly a threat with teeth.”
The blanket was rolled down, a little, until Vincent looked up to find Raj stooped over the bed.
“Or,” said Raj. “We could discuss what it is that we are going to do, now that I am a widower who knows too much about roman ships and the history of colonization for countries that do not exist anymore, and you are unemployed.”
“As I’ve said, I know exactly what I am going to do, I am just waiting for the right shipment to come in. But point taken,” said Vincent, and stuck his wrinkled foot free of the bed. “I’ll be right up.”
It was only a minute’s walk from the front door of the Greenstreet upper bough estate to the front gates where the mail slot waited, but Vincent slunk from one bush of cover to the next, careful not to be spotted in his slippers and red velvet robe, which matched the one Raj wore. Truth be told, there was probably not much harm in his appearing in public again, but they had thought it best to hold off a little while until there was less mystery surrounding the Instrumentalist killings and whether the late Mr. Greenstreet would have a funeral or if it was a private matter and whether Vincent had been implicated in any of the violence that had unfolded. Shelby Allen did not hold him accountable for what had happened under Voltaire’s influence, he suspected, but the Scout City sheriff’s department might have other plans. Or, for that matter, the Scout City Almanac, which he plucked up from its place in the mail tray on his side of the gate.
He abandoned all pretense of stealth in his return to the kitchen.
“I knew you’d find your energy,” said Raj, bestowing chutney in dishes alongside the crepes. “Anything promising?”
“On the contrary,” said Vincent, and set the paper down on their countertop with a slap. “I think things are about to get very difficult for one of our dear friends, very quickly.”
It would, Vincent thought, with a photo like that, of Shelby and Shank walking together, and in bold print across the top, ‘INSTRUMENTALIST KILLER RETURNS TO SCOUT CITY’.
Outro - Vocations
Vocations. There is only one thing you truly are the master of, dreamer, and it is time. And not very much of it. Moments, really. Your body will change and eventually wither, your mind will fade with the years, your power could disappear and your resources be taken at any moment. But you have, until the end, a few moments of this life and they are yours to spend how you wish. Lend yourself to whatever calling gives you meaning. Makes your moments well-spent. I do not know if this broadcast will ever be respectable in the eyes of the Council of Heavens, but it is not for them that I speak. Continuing on in my program, I am your loyal host Nikignik, waiting productively for your return to the Hallowoods.
The bonus story that goes with this episode is called 'Happy Hauntings' 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, consider carefully whether your profession of choice will actually require a college degree. For instance, if you plan to attempt to engineer a hybrid of human and beetle to create a scientific breakthrough previously unknown to man, an ethics degree will be useless to you. Best to stick with warp machine trade school programs instead.