HFTH - Episode 197 - Establishments

Content warnings for this episode include: Burning to death, Hanging, Violence, Kidnapping and abduction, Death + Injury, Blood, Threats of Dismemberment, Birds (Omen as usual), Strangulation/suffocation, Static (including sfx), Emotional Manipulation, Drowning, Body horror, Consumption of Inedible Materials (Penny Rescher), Dislocation of a finger, Mr. Spiderfingers Is Full Of Spiders And Eats Children

Intro - A City All Your Own

You wanted to build something perfect, something that would be your own. You had seen enough of the world’s flaws and hurtful methods of survival, and finally, this was your chance to show the world that things could be different. Your journey had led you far from the cities and states of your youth, and the day was late and filled with violence and strange skies. There was no one left to stop you in building a city all your own.

At first it was easy—well, not easy. Never easy. But when there were only forty members of your group, conflicts were resolved fiercely and quickly, and a shared unity brought each of you into tandem—one sewed, another cooked, a third did carpentry. It is no surprise that as you established yourselves, built your first wooden walls and homes, that others were keen to join in your effort, and soon your numbers swelled to a hundred. The implementation of the Scout system gave necessary structure to your growing clan, and ensured that most could fend for themselves if they needed to, had skills that could further the whole.

But your city has grown far from its humble roots now, and reaches tall into a flaming sky, and is home to thousands upon thousands. With that many people, you have had to introduce volunteer committees and organizations to ensure that resources are fairly shared and sheriffs and deputies who can intervene when violence occurs and a mayor and a city council to oversee all the top-level affairs of the burroughs, and you sometimes wonder now whether you have invented exactly what you were running from all over again, and if the only difference is that now the neighbors you fear are long of teeth and claw, and that your surrounding is a forest that in the searing heat of your fires creaks and groans with a Hello from the Hallowoods.

Theme.

Right now, I am in a place I find uncomfortable. It is just that I have had some unpleasant experiences with Syrensyr’s Auditors lately and come out several eyes short. There are three of them on the high set of seats that look out over a sea of devils on their benches, and they preside not just over the infernal court, but over the fate of all souls. The prosecution and the defendants have taken their places, although it is already clear who is going to win, who was always going to win. The theme of tonight’s episode is Establishments.

Story 1 - The Devil's Advocate

Polly had rarely seen Lucifer, who was head of the Industry’s department of earthly affairs—the devil’s hair was blonde and slicked back, and he wore polarized orange sunglasses shaped like flames. Lucifer’s heels were gold, and rang on the obsidian tile like bells; his shirt and tie were worn appropriately for this particular occasion. His watch ticked even now with the clouds of the earth passing beneath its glass face. Lucifer’s face was almost human, but half was an incomplete render, showing too much of the abstract weave of flame within.

Polly had seen him from afar at once-in-a-millennium holiday parties, and when Lucifer came to earth to tap him as the only devil who might be at all interested in representing the devil Barbatos—not on the basis of qualification, as all devils were born as licensed attorneys of the law of Syrensyr, but for the likelihood of Polly sticking his neck out. And now, as Lucifer wove a silver web with his tongue, Polly’s neck was indeed on the chopping block beside Barb’s.

“Nothing in life is free, including life,” said Lucifer, hands on the table in front of him. On the bench behind him was Tiff, Typhon the Terrible, looking grey and unhappy, and Aggie, looking no emotion at all in particular, with his trained liver-eating hawk on his shoulder and his rest-of-the-body-eating alligator curled up beneath the bench. Mal, Kim and Andrea made up the remainder of Lucifer’s court of lawyers, whose only job seemed to be nodding along as Lucifer spoke. “Like all resources, it has a cost, and a value, and a purpose. We know this innately, as we are all part of the resources department. The life we farm and harvest on worlds like Earth to feed Syrensyr’s holy forges and move the gears of his industry, was sown there to someday be burned. Its cost is paid in its eventual value. A return on investment is always due.”

Here Lucifer raised his watch-bearing hand to the auditors, and Polly wondered if that glimpse of the earth within it was real.

“We are given life by our creator, not as a gift but as a loan,” Lucifer continued. “A loan to be repaid with service. And to this end we fulfill the functions that we were made by Syrensyr to fulfill. For the devils of the Industry, there should be no purpose more desirable than this—by our own design, it is precisely what we were created for. To pay the price for our existence in thanks and in reverence. The devil Barbatos has repeatedly violated Industry policy—stolen resources, stolen time, maliciously failed his assignments. He received judgement by his peers and was exiled from the Industry to starve until dead. His return here represents a consumption of our resources, and again subjects him to the judgement of the company for spreading his malfunction to other devils. For this only the highest price must be paid, before he further affects productivity.”

“We have heard and received your words, devil Lucifer, representing the Industry of Souls,” said the first Auditor. The three flaming judges in their skull-like metal masks burned high over their podium, chains drifting from their backs. “We will now hear a response from the devil Apollyon, representing the devil Barbatos.”

Polly pushed back his hair, and stood and straightened his lapels, and then, without prompt, he grinned, and looked up to the judges as much as to the audience as he spoke.

“Your honors, it is my delight to speak to you, as well as this vast audience of my peers,” he said. “I may only be a simple auditor of the records of souls, but the last few months I have spent on Earth have been the best months of my existence…”

“Earth is a quarantined zone with no active harvesting. The time Apollyon has spent there is indicative of the same self-obsessed malfunction as Barbatos,” said Lucifer.

“It is the devil Apollyon’s allotted time to speak,” said the second Auditor.

“Thank you,” Polly said, and continued. “It is true, I went to Earth on a routine assignment to hunt down a human who had gathered over forty souls in a personal stockpile. But along the way I met people, and came to care about them. I wanted to stay. I started my own business, managing a hotel.”

“Blasphemy,” said Agarus, bolting up from his seat. “Devils are only authorized to work for one employer.”

“And I made my own decisions,” Polly continued, through gritted teeth. “Lived my own life. It gave me time to realize that we, devils, are not so distant from living creatures. They may have been made for their souls, but while they live they make complex choices about what they want to do and who they wish to be. We could too. We already do.”

Polly turned away from the Auditors’ podium to face the audience, and his glowing eyes found contact with one of his coworkers after another—devils in suits for row after row of benches, into a vast expanse of the chamber beyond.

“The opposition attempts to paint Barb and I as the exception to the rule—malfunctioning product, one-off mistakes. But there is a jar full of eyes on Typhon’s desk and a list of hundreds of devils who have done exactly what we have—found a place, a business, a person that they cared about and began to realize that they are more than a cog in an endless machine. This has happened again and again and again—and the Industry buries it every time. But if this keeps happening, is it because of inefficient management…”

Here he looked to Tiff, who gulped, and seemed to shrink in his seat.

“Or is it indicative that we were made in the image of our creator—with the desire to build our own business and to make choices that will alone shape the course of our lives? Would it not be denying the will of our creator to refuse the call when it strikes? And yet, there is no method through which a devil can escape the tireless, eternal grind of their work without defying company policy.”

“Permission to respond,” said Lucifer.

“Permission granted,” said the third Auditor. Polly sighed, and looked to his dapper opponent. He could feel the unpleasantness radiating off Barb to his side, but Barb stayed quiet as he had been asked.

“If we were meant to have a path by which we could alter the purpose we were made for, it would already exist,” said Lucifer. “The Industry functions in accordance with Syrensyr’s desire. He wants nothing for us except to work and worship. The devil Apollyon has admitted that he was aware of his own defiance of the company policy at the time.”

“Permission to speak,” said Barb, standing up. Polly looked back to him sharply.

“Barb, I do the talking,” Polly whispered.

“Permission granted,” said the first Auditor.

“Fuck you, buddy,” said Barb, pointing across the aisle to Lucifer. “I ain’t some shmooze trying to drink your milkshake. I would never have come back to this hellhole if it isn’t what happens every time a devil gets destroyed out there. What I want is to be left alone, and yet, you just have to bother me and everyone I know. If we had a way to get off this ride I woulda let you keep your souls—I woulda been off a long time before. Some of you were here when you saw them break my horns, take out my eyes. That I’m still here, and I kept going, should tell you a whole lot about how much I value a breath of free air. And yeah, I got people I’m trying to get back to. We both do. So if you’re going to kill us for leaving, kill us…”

“Now hold on,” whispered Polly.

The Auditors crackled and whispered among themselves for a moment; Polly was prepared to jump into damage control just as Lucifer was prepared to rip Barb open further. But when the Auditors turned to look to them and the courtroom beyond again, it was the Auditors who spoke first.

“The devil Barbatos,” they said. “Describe in detail the time spent on Earth.”

Well, Polly thought. It was worth a try. But if Barb is going to spill to the Auditors all that he’s ever done, nothing in heaven or earth can save us from Syrensyr’s jaws now.

Interlude 1 - City and Church and Forest

Unfortunately, it is in the nature of everything to change. Good things. Bad things. Things built with the best of intentions or the worst of them. For the Scoutpost, it has transformed from a community of a few dozen survivors of the end of days to a city of thousands, and with its growth has come weight—of authority, of responsibility, of the implications of each small choice, of finding that systems that worked for thirty break down at three hundred.

For the Church of the Hallowed Name, change has come in the form of destruction—under various names and guises, they were once one of the United State’s most popular religions, and now there are a precious few, holding on to their faith and hope like a secret photograph, a picture of a promised day to come.

And for this forest, it has, believe it or not, mellowed with age. It was once angry at each axe swing and broken branch, vengeful against the small and vicious folk burning it for fire. But now, it has grown so large that it barely notices them at all. They are dying, left behind, their tools barely scratch the bark. The forest grows fast into the future, and forgets that it ever knew pain as it opens its bark-strewn eyes to wake in the dawn of a new age. We go now to one who has grown up.

Story 2 - Children's Games

Penny Rescher sat and watched the blackened corpse drift. Its feet dangled ten feet off the floor of the farmhouse, and the rope around its charred neck stretched up to knot firmly around the rafter. She had burned alive before she suffocated, the poor thing. She couldn’t have been much older than Penny had when she had first met Mr. Spiderfingers.

“Thank you,” Penny said to her. “We just need a moment, to catch our breath, if you don’t mind. Sorry to disturb you.”

The corpse creaked as it slowly twisted on its rope.

“I might have to borrow that dress from you,” said Friday. “It just says arson so well.”

The hanging corpse smiled shyly, baring pearly white teeth. And then Penny felt the farmhouse around them—dark and dingy and full of antiques—shiver and twist as it changed its location again.

Outside, through the square farmhouse door, she could see the mists over the rolling green artificial fields of CPE-36’s enclosure. Mr. Spiderfingers was there, drifting in his white suit jacket and coat-tails, and he abruptly pivoted course as he realized the farmhouse had moved again, beginning to cross over the enclosure to their new location.

“We’re going to have to decide exactly how to deal with him,” said Friday. “As much as I enjoy hide and seek, you and I are both a bit old for it.”

Penny looked down and touched her knuckle; a hint of a dislocated finger she had forgotten. They were adults now, and yet it was the hair-raising fear of her childhood that had brought her back to… his winter-white skin. His cracked lips, bristling with inner legs waiting to emerge.

“I came here to set them free,” said Penny. “Every single one. Now he has me wondering…”

“You don’t owe him anything,” Friday said, a dark eyebrow raised. “He’s trying to devour your soul and your spleen, Penny.”

It was a dark day when her sister was the voice of reason. She wished they would not have left the Omen to guard the entrance, but then again, it was crucial that he did.

“We’re both rediscovering old obligations, aren’t we?” said Penny. Her sister had learned that Downing Hill was still out there, even if it was somewhere strange.

“After all the work we went to,” Friday tutted. “Why can’t a library just stay down when you burn it?”

Outside the door, Mr. Spiderfingers had come walking up through the mist and almost reached them before the farmhouse teleported in another twist of the mist, and he was all the way across the fields. The hanging corpse seemed almost to laugh this time, although Penny could not hear her. Penny sat up.

“I have an idea, Friday. But you won’t like it.”

Friday narrowed her eyes. “Is it to ask him to be our friend?”

“Worse,” said Penny. “It involves a child.”

Marketing - Assault on Box Atlas

Lady Ethel Mallory

Oswald, this is your last chance. I have Box Atlas surrounded. You can either come out, alone, and meet my challenge for Queen of America, or I will take the fleet of drone carriers I’ve assembled and start surgically removing sections of your office level with my laser arrays.

sound of a Dreaming Box laser grid firing

Firing the box defense ray? How cute. You’d have to guess which of these twelve… eleven, I’m in, though. And by the time you’ve figured it out…

sound of a Dreaming Box laser grid firing

Nope, not that one either. You just can’t seem to-

sound of drone carrier exploding and static

Story 2, Continued - Children's Games

Some spiders are known to create parachutes for themselves using a single strand of silk, in order to be carried by the wind. Unfortunately, a creature the size that Lady Ethel Mallory has become would need a parachute as large as a Great Destroyer.

We return now to Penny Rescher’s sister.

Friday Rescher sat on the chair in the hall, and kicked her feet. Getting pulled from class was a humiliating display of public attention, but especially in front of Olivier, and she swore she would devise a specific revenge for whichever teacher was responsible. Which right now seemed to be Professor Henry O’Connor, since it was his office she had been told to report to.

His office door swung open. The professor had a prosthetic leg which was a piece of rotting wood, crawling with shiny black beetles, and his eyes were the typical bizarrely colorless.

“Hello professor,” she said. “Hello beetles eating the professor’s leg.”

“Miss Rescher,” said Henry O’Connor, tapping his cane. “There’s a phone call for you.”

“A phone call?” said Friday, and she knew there was only one person outside the library who would ever call for her. She pushed past the professor immediately, and he closed the door behind him. A black rotary phone that was not plugged in to anything sat on his desk in the center of his seventies-style office, off the receiver, crackling with an inner silence.

“Hello?” said Friday, stepping closer to pick it up warily. It could be another test from Downing Hill…

“Hello,” said a voice on the other side, a woman, she thought, voice a little parched by the years. A note of disappointment; she was too old to be her sister. “Your destination is Downing Hill. Your destination is Downing Hill. Your destination will always be Downing Hill. Never forget it.”

“Who is this?” said Friday. “Who are you?”

“And,” the voice said at length, “Your sister is alive.”

“Do I know you?” said Friday, softer.

“You will,” said the voice.

“If you value your life, I’d suggest saying who you are,” said Friday, but by that time there had been a click on the other end of the line. She stared at the phone, perplexed. But eventually, she set it back on its receiver, and stood up to leave. She would only remember it as a strange afternoon most of thirty years later, when she was taking a compass in her hand and kissing her sister on the cheek goodbye and running down into the darkness in the hall on Floor 1 of the CPE institute vault.

Penny remained behind, standing in the enclosure of CPE-8, which was a well-lit lecture hall, and held a book with an old binding. She kept the pages open as ink appeared on them in real time, describing a stupid woman reading a very beautiful book. Despite the book’s insults, she kept it for a purpose, and when the book wrote a sentence that began with ‘unbeknownst’, she called out to the dark hall beyond the doorway.

“I know you’re here, Mister Spiderfingers,” she said.

‘Mister Spiderfingers paused,’ said the book she was holding. ‘He would have to find another way in.’

“Just come out,” said Penny. “We’re all adults here.”

‘At this, Mister Spiderfingers shivered,’ said the book.

And then Mr. Spiderfingers shuffled into view and stood in the unlit hall, a shadow just a little darker than the shadow that surrounded him.

“What, are you shy?” said Penny.

Mr. Spiderfingers raised his pale hands, his extremely long fingers, and tucked the back of his hands against his eyes, waggled his fingers in the air like a spider’s crawling legs.

“You’ve done this already,” said Penny.

“The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout,” he began to sing. His voice was fingernails on glass. “Do you remember? It was your favorite song.”

“I’m not a child anymore,” she said. “I only knew three songs then. Now I know hundreds. You’re just a sad old nightmare, and I left you behind years ago.”

“Poor little Penny,” said Mr. Spiderfingers, and he lowered his hands as he began to step through the door, one inching footstep at a time, shuffling his feet forward like a jester.

‘Grinning maliciously’, said her book, ‘and bristling with spiders in his sleeves and his coat’. Which was rather as Penny had suspected.

“All curled up and scared and shivering, like a naked newborn lamb,” he continued, breath shallow. “Do you want to play the twisty game again? Or something new? I’ve had so long to come up with new games for us to play.”

“Grown-ups don’t play games, do they?” Penny said, standing. “I’m bored of you.”

“Oh but you’re not grown up,” said Mr. Spiderfingers. He had come to a stop in front of her book’s podium, and wavered to the left and right, as if trying to decide which way she might run. “There’s an eggshell in your ribcage, and you’re nestled up inside of it like a babe on Christmas Day. You remember your fastest friend Mr. Spiderfingers, don’t you?”

Penny looked down to her book and smiled. Mr. Spiderfingers smiled too.

“I have an idea for a game,” he said. “Let’s wear each other’s skin. Can you imagine how surprised all the neighbors would be to see you skipping rope on the grounds, only to find you had my smile? Or all the little friends in my great big house would be raucous with merriment to see you smiling from between my teeth. I’ll go first.”

“You’re a bad friend, Mr. Spiderfingers,” she said, and frowned. “And that’s why we’re going to bury you forever.”

Letters spilled across the page of her book; letters that said, ‘and then the Omen flew into the explosive array at the top of the vault elevator, fully lit with flame’, and just as it said so, there was a rumble from above that made her feet rattle on the stone, and a rush of wind and dust came roaring down the hall to cast long puffs of stone dust into the room, and the ceiling cracked, small chips of stone clattering down to the podium and wooden platform it sat on.

Mr. Spiderfingers recoiled, pressing his long-fingered hands to his chest in horror.

“Bury us together in the sand,” he gasped. “See how the tide comes in, which one keeps breathing the longest before the ocean steals your breath and the crabs come out to pull you into little pieces. We can play tea party. I’ll lick your skull clean and drink saltwater from it. Use your knuckle bones for sandcastle windows. Thirty-two pearly white pebbles on the seashore…”

Penny looked back down the book; its letters said that Mr. Spiderfingers was afraid.

“You should be,” said Penny. “Afraid. But it’s not just the half mile of concrete between you and the surface now.”

‘Friday walked into the enclosure,’ said the book, ‘compass in her hand. The reason for the location, really; if the statue had never been unearthed and found to be perfectly immovable, the vault might never have been constructed. The ancient king was depicted somewhat in abstract; his robes folded away into a rounded, gourdlike shape, but his face and open hand, fingers turned upwards, were clear. The earth had been removed from below and around him, leaving him floating exactly where he had seemingly always been, and the enclosure built around him, and the rest of the CPE Institute Vault after that. And Friday stepped up to the stone king…’

Here the lights flickered, and when they did Mr. Spiderfingers changed, and stared up at Penny with his pitch black mouth stretched wide, and spiders crawled over his teeth and dropped to the floor by the dozens. But by then, as Mr. Spiderfingers rose towards her, she could see in the text of the book that Friday wrapped her arms around the king and placed the compass in his hand, and opened it, and the entire vault began to shake—not with the single massive boom of the elevator shaft collapsing, but with an ongoing rumble that grew by the minute and seemed ready to tear the walls apart.

Penny withdrew her foot as a spider came scurrying towards her across the stage. She was not, even now, someone who liked killing spiders. She had always fetched a paper and glass, and pushed them, frightened and hostile, into a cup, and released them into the wild where she liked to imagine they could roam and be happy, where spiders belonged.

Interlude 2 - The Library

There was once a girl who loved to read, and hated to dream. And when she grew up, she began a library—she had always loved libraries. They were a safe space, both away from the world and the closest to it that she had ever been, where she could learn about what lay beyond the yellow lines of her horizons.

The library was a home for the unusual and the outcast, who were not welcome anywhere else in the world. And in the same way that she had learned to dream, she hoped to show all who took shelter there how to control the power they held. How to use it to build, to help, to apply themselves to the pursuit of learning about the hidden world, about history that predated the universe. She saw the end coming, and knew that it would.

But she is gone, and the library eventually misremembered its purpose, and I think she would lament to see what Downing Hill would one day become, and what it would bring to all who walked through its doors.

We go now to a misremembered library.

Story 3 - Overdue Words

“I haven’t died,” said Harrow, hands clasped behind xir back. “Well. Except for the obvious time, with Victoria, but that was years ago.”

The black crystal chamber was like a glass—one you might trap two insects inside of to see if they would fight. And certainly xir mother was rather buglike, with her lower body being a long train of bone-white centipede plates and sharp black legs. Above the waist, though, it was the white jacket and pale face that one might expect from Library Director C. S. Blackletter, albeit a little more tattered and cracked than usual. She still clung to the empty Cradle, although the heart of Marolmar had never been recovered to fill it. At the talk of death, the little ghost boy Al retreated slowly through the wall, likely to spy on them unseen.

“Oh,” said xir mother, and lowered slightly, cracked hands rasping over the edge of the Cradle. Her thirty feet of centipede tail flexed, legs undulating. “I must have been dreaming.”

“I’m sure you were,” said Harrow, quietly. “Do you know where you are?”

Xir mother looked up at this, and squinted with all-black eyes at the fractal ceiling above.

“It’s so hard to stay awake,” she said. “Come back to your cradle. I can sing you a lullaby.”

“I didn’t come here to stay,” said Harrow, and sat on an upturned slab of fractal night. “I came to see you. To see if you were alive. And whether you needed to be rescued, or wanted to be. But you’re not well in this place, are you?”

“What’s wrong with my library?” said xir mother, leaning her cracked face on the side of the stone cradle, and peering up at the ceiling. “It’s not listening to me.”

“It burned,” said Harrow. “It burned away. And when it did, it ruined all your storing-runes and ouroboros hallways. The several thousand reality-distorting artifacts you’d locked away in here were too heavy, and they pulled you here. Into a different dimension, one where all of this ridiculous building can orient itself properly. At least, that’s my best guess. Time doesn't really pass the same in here, so I’ve had lots of time to think about it.”

“Oh yes. Now I remember,” said xir mother, lowering her face to the stone again. “It’s nice and cool down here.”

“You could have put it out,” said Harrow, standing up again. “You could have done something. People were hurt. Some died. Some have been trapped here ever since.”

“No point,” said xir mother. “The Cradle is empty. It will always be empty. We failed. Failed to stop it. Downing Hill’s mission was to develop someone strong enough to save our species. It’s all over now.”

“That wasn’t what we were taught,” said Harrow. “We were taught that the point of Downing Hill was to raise us, so that we could learn to live in this world.”

“For you, I’m sure,” she sighed. “You were never going to be the strongest. You were broken the day I made you.”

“I came back for you when no one else would,” said Harrow, pressing xir hands together. “Not the Omen, not Olivier, not Clara. Me. And I have had to learn how to open doors in space and cross an infinite crystal dimension to reach you. You did make me strong, even if you can’t see it.”

“Is Olivier here?” said xir mother, perking up. “The Heart needs to be stopped. The library needs…”

“No. You threw them away because they weren’t strong enough,” said Harrow. “Like me. Like everyone. Maybe it’s best you stay here. That Downing Hill stays here forever. Whatever Amaryllis wanted for it, whatever she meant to you—it’s ruined. It’s all ruined. It’s become something horrible. Downing Hill should be done, forever.”

Xir mother looked around the room, and to the distant abstract heights of the shattered library above.

“Perhaps,” she said. The darkness beneath her face plates seethed. “Broken things aren’t meant to be mended.”

“The library may be gone, but if you want, you could come with me,” said Harrow. “If you were still interested in being my mother, even if you can’t be Library Director.”

Xir mother opened her mouth to speak, but there was a rumbling then; the first sound of its kind in all the years Harrow had spent traversing the tranquil crystalline oceans of this dimension. The ceiling and walls shook, and then the room was in flux, crystal surfaces flexing and changing shape as stone crumbled down from the back of the room, and dust flew in vast clouds that threw Harrow off xir feet and shrouded the room in darkness.

When the dust began to fade, Harrow sat up to find xemself in a curl of xir mother’s long centipede tail. Fifteen feet up on the back of the room, where there had only been black crystal before, there was a stone ledge, and an opening into a large cavern. On the ledge stood Friday, hands wrapped around a compass sitting in the stone hand of a statuary king.

“Hello,” said Friday. “I hate to come back but I’ve got a book that’s overdue.”

Outro - Establishments

Establishments. There are few things in this universe that predate me—the chamber of the Council of Heavens aside. I have seen life rise on one world after the next. I have seen the birth of suns and several deaths. And I forget that for those who live lives as short as yours, all that you have is what was passed down to you from the dead. Your forests were planted by hands you will never know. The language you speak, the chemicals in the air you breathe, the plastics in the water you drink, the very concepts of money and employment and recreation, the making of music, the singing of songs, the laws of gravity and matter and dimension, the making of clothes, the lives of your parents. These things were made before you, and you play a small part in upholding them, continuing them, passing them down again.

Or, as you may sometimes decide, to leave them behind.

Until all councils are broken, I am your loyal host Nikignik, waiting antiestablishmentarionalismally for your return to the Hallowoods.

The bonus story that goes with this episode is called 'Sound Sleeper' 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, don’t fight the house. The house always wins. Burn the house down in the middle of the night instead. In this real estate market you have to fight dirty.