Content warnings for this episode include: Kidnapping and abduction, Blood, Birds, Body horror, Imprisonment
Intro - Waste of Time
I know what you felt. When you looked ahead and saw darkness. A black sky opening. Rain pouring out of some alien abyss, poisoning your world. You knew it was coming because she told you, and she was preparing to do something about it. What she chose was to try and change the future, and if it could not be changed, then to survive it. And so she laid foundations of black magic and raised eternal guardians and was lost from you. But you? You were brilliant. You could have done so much. You had so much time. But what did you do?
Was it a despair that crept into you? That you could see no path through to the other side of that storm? Was that why you built that visor? That coffin, that vault? Was it for yourself, at first, so that you could drown yourself in technicolor dream and forget the sound of the thunder? Was it easier to sleep, and in doing so forget the world turned sour by your industry and poisoned by a bleeding heart, a world that forever screams Hello from the Hallowoods?
Theme.
Right now, I sit in the back seat of a sporty convertible, one I have enjoyed several times now. The seat cushion has been stitched back together with a thin black thread, although the lines are so precise you would be hard-pressed to believe it was by hand. The Spindle does fine work. Beside me is a former king, who can no longer see where he is going. The theme of tonight’s episode is Foresights.
Story 1 - The Fifth King
The Count was stumbling, out across the sand and loose scrubland, and his boots were stained by falling spatters of his own blood, red globes dripping in the dust. He turned his eyes up to the sky, but the tapestry of stars that lit the American west was dying out, as the stars were sucked up one by one into the maw of something deep and hungry. He turned back, and upon the hill among the steppe grass… it was the emptiness herself, long black dress flowing behind her through the dust, leaving nothingness in her wake. When she smiled, it was his blood that pooled in her teeth.
“Morning sunshine, get some beauty sleep?” she said, with a voice like a raven, a tin can, and the Count woke with a jolt. He found himself glaring at a red sun that spilled in long rays over the horizon, and he winced, shifted back from the window so that it did not scathe him. His body ached with a tiredness he had not known in centuries, and he wondered if he was dying. He could not see the future hours spreading out before him; he could not even see a few seconds ahead. He was driving blind into the future.
“Where are we?” he said. The red convertible had come to a stop in a field; some dark settlement loomed ahead of them. The driver was missing, but the green lights in the dashboard flickered along with the voice.
“Moth is fetching breakfast,” said the voice that lived in the dashboard. “Allow me to just go over our checklist again, you were a bit zoned last night. Your name is?”
“Breakfast,” said the Count, and he bent down to inspect the landscape ahead of them. “Breakfast where? Are they still after us?”
“Easy there, relax. We’re incognito,” said the vehicle. “My name’s Ray. Once again, top of the order, what’s yours?”
“I’m nobody,” said the Count. “If you don’t know who I am then you’re better off that way.”
“Oh, don’t you worry,” said Ray. “They’re persistent, but they’ve got nothing on me for speed. If they’re still looking for you, and I doubt they are, by the time they show up here we’ll be a hundred miles east. You’re not the first we’ve picked up that was on the run from the King of America.”
“Is that so,” said the Count. “What are you exactly, Ray?”
“Well, I’m supposed to be asking the questions here,” said Ray, and the stick shifted of its own accord, and the vehicle rocked back and forth a little as he spoke. “But I’m an automobile. Not a car; deadly mistake. I’m also an expert on ghosts, spirits, spectral apparitions, poltergeists, photogeists, things that go bump in the night. These days, Moth and I drive. East to west, then when we hit the water, west to east. Pick up hitchhikers on the way, drop em’ off wherever they’re bound. Right now we’re on a little jaunt to go hunt down some old friends in Canada-dada-da, over the New York border. Which brings me to another question; anywhere at all is nice, but do you mean it? Or is there someplace you’re trying to go?”
“Can you see me?” said the Count; he found himself wearing only his tattered silk vest, baggy evening trousers, and he kept his wings collapsed against his back.
“In a manner of speaking,” said Ray. “You know it’s rude to ask too many questions without giving some answers.”
“I don’t know,” said the Count. “I don’t know where to go. The court has been my home for… years.”
“Well, we’ll pass some interesting spots, feel free to hop off wherever we find one you fancy,” said Ray, and swiveled to point towards the settlement ahead of them. “I wouldn’t choose this place. You should be able to see Box Pyxis out there over the woods. Their Stonemaids didn’t get very far before they chose to settle right here at Rapid City, South Dakota. Still within sight of the Dreaming Box. Look around you, Nobody, whaddya see?”
The Count glanced to the left, the right.
“Is grass the answer you’re looking for?”
“Grass is right. And you’re lucky it’s not snow. So you’ve got a population of thousands moving out here, with no food, no transportation, no water, no nothing. Half of them with them blackwater mutations, I can gather you’ve got a bit of that going on yourself.”
The Count folded his wings a little tighter. “Of course.”
There was someone walking across the plain, wearing a dark cape with a hood, and a bag over each shoulder. There were horns—a devil?—no, they were fluffy costume antennas sewn into the top of the hood.
“We have company,” said the Count.
“That’ll be Moth, with the breakfast,” said Ray, and the hooded stranger came up to the driver’s door, which popped open of its own accord. “Moth is name, pronouns, the whole shebangle.”
“Good morning,” said Moth, and put back moth’s hood to reveal a slender face, eyes hidden by red polarized sunglasses and an acne-pocked chin. Moth had a smile of slightly crooked teeth, and both arms were covered in thick sleeves of tattoos, with dozens of moths drawn in dark ink beneath moth’s skin. “I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I have bread, cheese, pastry, even a little wine.”
“I don’t drink wine,” said the Count. “Although it is a luxury. I’m not hungry, but I appreciate your hospitality. I only regret that I cannot return it.”
“I think we should get a move on, Ray,” said Moth, and patted the roof of the convertible twice before swinging the door closed. “The King of America’s men can be a real pain. They have reach, even here. It’s why you can get a bottle of wine in Rapid City.”
“Note taken. Let’s hasta la vista,” said Ray, and the Count grabbed a hold of the door handle as the car revved suddenly, twisting across the grass and skidding across the field back for the highway, leaping over the crumbling edge of the asphalt, and roaring up to speed. The fields, and shortly after the glimpses of dark forest and the large silver outline of Box Pyxis travelled by on the horizon.
“Our guest here escaped from the King of America’s court it seems,” said Ray, and the Count grit his teeth. He was not sure about the automobile’s ability to recognize who he was, but the one named Moth seemed even more likely, with two eyes in moth’s head instead of a dashboard of blinking lights. And if they put it together, all sorts of unpleasant questions would follow. Who is after you? Does that mean you’re not King of America anymore? Who has the crown now?
“Well I figured as much. That must have been a very rough place to live,” said Moth, who sat back with one hand behind moth’s head and the other holding a biscuit, letting the wheel of the car and the pedals move on their own. “I love your wing-things, by the way. I have always wanted wings myself.”
“My time in the court was… sometimes pleasant,” said the Count. “Sometimes less so. Especially last night.”
“Let me guess, you laughed at the wrong joke?” said Ray.
“I do not know who he thinks he is,” said Moth, around a mouthful of bread. “America has no king. It barely has owners, anymore. Just warlords, arrogant men who think they can lay claim to whatever has been left behind. A king would not be feared, he would be loved, you know?”
“Oh, plenty that I have met loved him,” said the Count. “Obsessively, even. Pleaded to kneel at his feet. Beggars reaching out for a taste of his power.”
“Worship and love are not the same,” Moth shrugged. “But what would I know? You have been on the inside; we just pick up the people he leaves behind. Ray, where are you going? You’re taking us south.”
“Well while we’re passing through, thought we might stop in and see one of our great national landmarks,” said Ray, and rolled to a stop on a curve of the highway. “Think that’s love, or worship?”
Up between the sweeping expanse of the forest, the Count could make out a mountain crag, and he went immediately still. Upon that high cliff, although much smaller than he had ever imagined, the heads of four of America’s past kings—Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln—were inscribed upon the grey face of the mountain.
Or they had, until the Count had ordered Washington to be carved out and replaced with his own face, as King of America. Even vandalized with the red paint that ran down his stone lips and chin, his cheekbones, the heavy brow, the thick hair joining with the mountain, were his.
It was a good likeness, too. He had insisted work be done again and again until it was flawless.
“Ray?” said Moth. “Did you happen to get the name of our guest?””
Interlude 1 - Chamber of Prophecy
The Lurch Lake chamber of prophecy is pleased to present their latest findings to the Scout City Almanac. It has been a busy summer for our liches, as we know there is much uncertainty in Scout City about current events and weather phenomena, and we wish to provide whatever resources we can in oncoming affairs. As always, we remind you that interpreting prophecy from the Sleepers is an art, not a science, and that their statements should not be taken literally or form the basis for serious financial investments.
Democracy says, “a crown falls, and with it the hand of a lawless age.”
Justice says, “blood travels in the soil and is swallowed by the roots, and now that it has tasted of blood its thirst shall not be slaked.”
Epiphany says, “If your cat seems uneasy, it is because it knows.”
Tradingcard says, “Unprecedented economical changes… you want luxury to help forget ruin, but in ruin you cannot afford luxury.”
Forecast says, “Hot and dry weather continuing into the coming weeks. Small chance of rain. Drink blood instead.”
We go now to one who fortune favors.
Story 2 - Homework
Penny Rescher slid the plastic card through the small black box next to the door, and the door popped open with a click. The red thumbprint that had been left on the white plastic ID badge was long smudged away, but it nevertheless carried something of Mr. Writingdesk for her in its weight.
“Imagine if we go in and there’s a skeleton of someone who was locked in there and couldn’t get out,” said Friday in a low voice behind her.
“Don’t be morbid,” said Penny, tilting to look back at her. “If there are any skeletons like that they’ll be downstairs.”
She pushed the door open, and felt for a switch several times before stumbling upon it. She winced as the white light bars set into the drop ceiling blinked on, struggling to wake before finally lending a glaring shine and a constant subtle whine.
The room’s decor was a combination of years-long organizational debates and frantic packing, and so stacks of file folders and stapled reports towered over wood-topped office tables and scattered cables and boxy pieces of technology. At the end of the room, two desks sat within a cubicle-like enclosure rigged with headsets, scanners and secondary screens that seemed to be humming green of their own accord. But she paced in over the stiff grey carpet, looking for file cabinet 18, and had to drag over a rolling chair to stand on to reach the drawer. Friday followed her, dragging a fingertip through the light veneer of dust on the table by the door, and the Omen peeked in from outside, although it kept a wayward eye focused on the dark expanse of the access tunnel, and what it led down to.
“As much as I joke,” said Friday, watching while Penny pulled free a wad of folders and stepped down to place them on the table. “I really don’t know if you’re going to like what we find down there. Fourteen years is a long time for anyone to be left alone. Even ones that are used to it.”
“I know,” said Penny, and stepped back up, came down with a round device and a set of discs in a zippered black case. “But the ones that have died are still dead down there, whether we check on them or not. And the ones that are alive… they’re the ones I came back for.”
She set the clunky thing down, and stepped toward Friday, and put her arms around her, although she sensed Friday stiffen.
“Thank you,” she said. “After this, we’ll be free. No more library, because we burned it. No more black spring, because grandmother Briar was wrong. And no more CPE Institute, no more complex. I’m glad we could get revenge together.”
“Of course,” said Friday, relinquishing her sister. “I think it’s been a lovely way to bring our little family back together.”
“Omen,” Penny called. “Everything alright out there?”
“No movement,” cried the demon. “No sound.”
“Good,” said Penny, and went back to inspect the device; silver letters read ‘CD-GO!’. “Let’s start by hearing what Mr. Writingdesk had to say.”
Marketing - Hope for America
Lady Ethel Mallory
The Botulus Corporation’s continued silence regarding my return to work is the largest indicator of their weakness. They simply have nothing to say; how could they? What are they going to use to defend themselves in a fair argument against me, their statistics? The ones that say that their user base is dwindling year by year, that ratings for dreaming family happiness is at an all-time low? Listen to what people are saying about me now, Oswald. They know that Lady Ethel Mallory is more than a simple change of corporate hands. They know that Lady Ethel Mallory means hope. Hope for our dreaming boxes. Hope for our dreaming families. Hope for our happiness. And hope for America.
Story 2, Continued - Homework
If there is hope for your splintered country, it does not live in Dreaming Boxes anymore. It lives in the Stonemaids you have cast out, who have taken up their refuges and filled broken cities, and struggle to unite what has been long shattered. It certainly does not lie with very large, many-legged marketing executives. We return now to Penny Rescher.
Friday finished carving the sigil of protection into the carpet with the machete she had pulled from her carpet bag, and then came to sit down beside Penny, shrugging down her black hood-scarf and accepting an earbud from the listening tubes attached to the disc spinner. The sisters leaned back together against the cubicle wall, and Penny pressed the button with the triangle, and closed her eyes as the silver disc marked ‘Disc 1’ whirred to life in her hands. Omen came hopping into the room as a single raven, and perched on the back of an office chair.
“Hello,” said Mr. Writingdesk’s voice, tinny and preserved in her ear. “If you’re listening to this, you’ve accepted the thing I asked you to look into at the door. Or maybe you’re just curious to know more about what’s going on downstairs. In either case, I’ll take you through it.
Let’s start with the complex. This filing cabinet is in the office. It’s one of several rooms in the foyer, including the employee quarters and living arrangements, the garage, and the equipment and supplies. Proceed down the tunnel a few hundred meters, or take the electric cart, and you’ll arrive at the front door. You can only crack it with an employee ID badge. Mr. Raven and I will each have one on our corpses. If you need to create a new employee badge, there is one spare template for it left, and consult employee guidebook H pages 185-187. With that out of the way, let’s talk about the door. It seals off everything in the vault from the outside world. Just past it is an elevator shaft leading down into the heart of the Institute. Part of the explosives that are rigged to blow sit at the top of that elevator shaft. If the self-destruct is ever armed, it’s ready to take the elevator and crush anything that is trying to get up that shaft. Bury it all a half mile underground.”
“If there’s anything you and I are going to interact well with it’s exploding elevators,” muttered Friday.
“Shush,” said Penny.
“Take the elevator ride down and you’ll find yourself in CPE storage,” said Mr. Writingdesk. “Big glass boxes, stretching out in a maze of concrete passages. Please be careful, as although all were safely and stably contained for many years during our watch, I cannot guarantee that none have found a way to escape since our probable demise. Please take notes for what I am about to describe to you. The problem is, each CPE is different. Some are objects, some are creatures, some are people. And each one has pervasive and reality-bending powers. As nasty as an encounter with any individual CPE could be, the problem with putting them all in one place is that they can have interactions with each other that are ten times worse. Take CPE-13, for instance. She appears to be a human girl. But there is a stunning amount of indie radiation in her blood, and it means that people around her have good luck, while she has forever bad luck. Now the glass that forms her enclosure, like all the glass in here, is designed to suppress indie radiation. However, if she were to be freed while any other enclosure were open, even an air vent or something, good luck from her might spread to CPE-12, which is trapped in an urn. Now, good luck for CPE-12 might look like the urn happening to be a little wobbly at the time of a sudden slight earthquake, which might push it over the edge and put… well, whatever CPE-12 looks like on the loose. Now, CPE-12 likely would have a reflection, in which case it might accidentally move past CPE-4’s enclosure, which is a mirror that grows more powerful by eating reflections, and is on a strict ‘no living reflections’ diet. You can see where things might snowball if even one factor is left unchecked. Frankly, removal is not something that was ever considered for CPE’s. Their storage here was supposed to be indefinite. So here is the detailed plan I have organized for the sequence of their release. Please consult the folders in this drawer as you listen through Disc 2.”
Penny rose to snatch pen and paper from a nearby desk, and then sat again, and swapped in the second tiny disc.
“This is good,” Penny said, replacing her earpiece. “I had thought something like this would be needed. But I thought I’d have to make it myself.”
“Homework,” said Friday, and laid back, and closed her eyes. “It’s like being in Downing Hill all over again.”
Interlude 2 - Do You Feel Lucky?
Do you feel lucky today, dreamer? Or do you feel unlucky? I will tell you this, there is no real difference. The only distinction is that Skryekeskrye decides what she thinks will be the most fortuitous, and pretends as though it is established fact. The reason so many of her prophecies are so vague as to be impossible to make value out of is because she does not know. Prediction is guesswork. And she might be an educated guesser, but the future, itself, is complex. It is moving at different speeds in different places, but at some point you must accept that wherever you are, you cannot get to where you are going next any faster.
There is in front of you this blinding wall, that separates who you are from who you will be. Do not resent its presence, dreamer, it is a gift. Because until the future sweeps over you, to envelope you and transform again into the present, it can still be swayed by your power and your actions and your hope and your dream. Only those who have the Blood-Cards of Xyzikxyz, or have read La Derniere Page Noire by Florence Alarie, or have become displaced from spacetime, know the future. And each of those are cursed in their own ways. A slave to the future is of no use to the present, and that is where you are needed most.
We go now to one who has read the Blood-Cards of Xyzikxyz.
Story 3 - Downingspace
Harrow was adrift. It would have been easy to call what xe drifted in darkness, but that was not the truth. Calling it nowhere would have been closer. Nowhere real, that was. Xe had stepped through a door, and the door had been an infinite fractal, the place where everything went when it began to exist with one too many or one too few dimensions. It was a forever-black expanse, oscillating shards of reality drifting slowly across oceans of glass. It went always up and down, and xe had stepped through so many doors in the search through it that xe had quite forgotten how to get home. Or perhaps, it was home that drew xem onwards, as though xe was tied to a thread that pulled, like a long hair out of a throat, stuttering forwards into the endless dark.
And xe wondered why. Some things existed here and some did not. Time did not. Love, love did. And xe wondered if that was the reason why xe had spent years learning how to create doors that led to stranger and stranger places, crawl through the gaps in reality’s skin and emerge elsewhere. But then, there it was. As if it had always been there.
Two stone lions, staring down from the twinkling facets of the dark. Harrow walked across nothingness, and raised a porcelain-white hand to the dark reflection that separated xem from the lions, and with a twist of space, entered the fractal xe had been searching for.
The lions hovered askew, adrift on their large marble bases, as did several park benches. And beyond them, just as it had always been, were the stone steps leading up to large double doors. That was where the similarity ended, for beyond the doors and that first array of pillars, there was an explosion of space, floors without walls, bent around triangular staircases, basements seeping into attics and high towers caught in the middle of dining halls, a hundred rooms displaced over each other. And yet, Harrow knew that somewhere within, xir mother was still waiting for xem, and xey walked through the shadow to climb the stairs, and came to rest xir hand upon the doors, read the placard above xem that said ‘Downing Hill Public Library’.
Outro - Foresights
Foresights. You could look into the future, dreamer, if you really wanted to. At least as effectively as Skryekeskrye does. I expect that you could accurately predict my very words. For until you make the future your present, I am your loyal host Nikignik, waiting forsightily for your return to the…
There, see, you had almost done it. It is that simple. The matter of prediction versus knowing the future might not matter much to you, dreamer, but I believe it matters in principle. Because I see a future. I imagine it, and it is dark, and it is everything that I stand against. And knowing that it could happen, that there might be an abyss before us, drives me to fight. Drives me to choose, again and again, no matter the cost of it, to face the present and choose what is often terribly difficult. I do it to change what I cannot yet see.
I have to believe it is for a purpose. That we can still leave scars upon the future’s chin and convince it to change its course. If it is written in stone, then what is the point of it? Except to dance to our positions and play out a tired course. If there is only one reason that we live, experiencing time in one moment after the next, cause without an effect we know yet, it must be that. To do something different, and something different, and something different after that, and hope that it changes the shape of what is to come. And in that, dreamer, I am always your loyal host.
The bonus story that goes with this episode is called 'Front Door' 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, dreamer, it was because he didn’t know how to axe.
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