HFTH - Episode 206 - Atonements

Content warnings for this episode include: Abuse, Animal death (Shank as usual, Dogsmell as usual), Violence, Kidnapping and abduction, Death + Injury, Blood, Transphobia, Homophobia, Homophobic slurs, Strangulation/suffocation, Misgendering, Deadnaming, Static (including sfx), Emotional Manipulation. Body horror, Consumption of Inedible Materials (Russell McGowan), Religious Violence, Cannibalism, Character Death

Intro - Begging for Forgiveness

You have spent your whole life begging for forgiveness. It began with your parents, and they taught you that to live at all is to live in sin, and that you must have forgiveness if you are to be saved. In the years of your life, you have come to find that all that you do, you must atone for later. After killing your husband, you have had to seek the Lord’s forgiveness forever. When you did your best to raise your children as a godly mother, they only resented you, and you have had to beg them to believe that you are a person who makes mistakes and that you never claimed to be perfect. When you tried to do what was best for your community and take what belonged to another, you have had to play the sorrowful martyr ever since, flogging yourself each time they look so that they will be satisfied you understand your mistakes. You live only on their kindness and good grace, and it is humiliating—but a necessary humiliation, so that your children might enjoy the gift of a community that is not starving into nothingness. All you do is grovel, before the lord and your children and Scout City, and someday soon, it must be enough. It must be finished. Over. You have had a taste of violence, now, and the anger is sweeter than the dust you have been eating. Wrath is growing inside you faster by the hour, and you are ready to tear the tongue out of the next person who bids you a Hello From The Hallowoods.

Theme.

Right now I sit in a clearing, where a branch has fallen from a large aspen tree. Its bark is white, and covered with peering black eyes. A hound sits beside me, or many hounds. Most would only know it was there by its distinct and deathly odor. It is in some ways wiser than the four who are arguing in the clearing beyond. It knows that in this age, when every soul is disintegrating slowly into nothing, the key to survival is to stick together, and not to let the past eat you alive.

The theme of tonight’s episode is Atonements.

Story 1 - Personal Problems

The clearing where they had landed was, in a way, bewilderingly large. Percy had been shocked to find how much the Hallowoods had changed in a decade and a half—beyond the titanic wooden stump of the Scoutpost growing into a tree the size of a skyscraper, the forest itself had similarly transformed. The leaves on the aspen trees that surrounded him were almost a foot across. But he stayed out of their heights, in the clearing beneath, where the sun only filtered in dim, dappled rays. It was here that Clara and Diggory, and by extension himself and Ratty, had landed in the minutes after their quick exit from Rothogroth’s cavern.

Percy had been shocked to see the thing, sheer walls of fungal growth, and maybe thousands of glowing yellow eyes stretching off into the dark. How long had it been growing there? It was unreal to think that for the entirety of his life—growing up in their house in Alabama where the air outside was a suffocating heat and the air inside was always frigid, bumming around the mall, all those crucifying family dinners—there had been a real cosmic being, a real alien, a real god, growing in a hole in the ground in northern Canada. But then again, it hadn’t struck him as much of a god. Just a gigantic, scary, frightened, wretched thing, trying to understand its new reality just as much as he was. He wondered if that was all gods.

“I do not understand,” said Diggory, who had sunk to their knees in the clearing. “This was supposed to work. I… I gave so much.”

“Can you like, walk me through what you’re talking about from the beginning? Because I have like three pieces of information and one of those is we met a very cranky giant mushroom, and I’m completely lost,” said Ratty. His partner was hovering as though she were hanging upside-down from a branch, arms folded.

“Rothogroth threatened to destroy me, once, if I interfered with the Spring,” said Diggory. “In the north, there was a heart. A beautiful creation. It was designed to fill our world with this black water that has come to plague every lake and storm and sea. I was made to steal its power, and take it into myself. Percy has told you, no doubt, of our journey north. I was one of only two to make it to the end, but I did, and I took the heart into me and that should have been the end of it. I was made to save this world. Why is it still falling apart.”

“Yeah. If you were going to martyr yourself at least it’d be nice if it worked,” said Percy. He was surprised to find the words coming up out of him.

“I did not martyr myself,” Diggory said quietly, studying him with their one blank eye, but even that was a reminder of exactly what they’d done. “Unless by which you mean that I was willing to sacrifice everything for this. I was.”

“You were so quick to bear that cross,” said Percy evenly, although he felt something smoldering still in him after the fight earlier. “You weren’t alone out there. You weren’t the only one. Riot died trying to get you where you wanted to go. Olivier pushed himself so far that he snapped. I was there for you. And you ditched me because I dared ask whether a suicide mission to the end of the world was going to be worth it. Was I right?”

“You were right to ask,” Diggory said, sitting on the heels of their boots. Their single eye watched him narrowly. “But the Spring was coming, Percy. The end. I cannot express to you the catastrophe that would have washed over every shore. I did not fully understand myself, until I touched it. What died with my touch. A being emerging that would have made Rothogroth look like a single brown mushroom cap in the vastness of this forest.”

“Then maybe that was enough,” Clara volunteered, speaking up for the first time since their landing. She pushed up her glasses, and looked sternly to Diggory. “We’re alive, aren’t we? Now we can work on a solution for the black water as a separate problem. That was what I was originally searching for, before Riot ended up… in her condition. A cure for my parents. In the Compact, there were carvings from a man named Joshua Fishell. He was trying to find a cure to the black water for his wife. He was close. He made the same mistake that I made. Asking without paying the price.”

“What if there is no solution?” said Percy. If he had physical teeth, he’d be gritting them. “I asked you this when you were making the decision to go forward without me, but what does it matter? You’re going to live until your thread falls apart. I’m going to live until I burn out. Which could be days, or years, or hundreds of years, who the hell knows. Our lives are done. And the people that you hope will thank you for the tireless work you’re doing trying to solve their mutation problem are people that almost killed you in a mob two weeks ago. You could stop. You could walk away. You could do anything else in the world. You could do something that makes you happy for a change. This is what I’m talking about: why is it your problem? Why do you make it your problem? It’s the world’s problem. Let the world figure it out. Nobody asked you to be their savior or to die for them. Nobody asked.”

“Wow. Well,” Clara said. Ratty, on the other hand, was silent completely, pierced brows furrowed.

“Because I can,” Diggory Graves said, and their face was full of more anger than he had ever seen it. A black tear rolled down their stitched cheek. “Because I do not care who sees it, or who thanks me. I see that something is happening that makes me angry. Makes me sad. I used to be many people, and they all cared about what was happening to that world. And even though they died without saving it, even though it is not my responsibility, I will fight for it because I was born to fight and I can and I am strong. Because if I do not, perhaps no one will. I am sorry that I am not content to run from my problems like you. I am sure I would find happiness somewhere if I did. But no matter what love or friendship I found there, in some distant city, I would not be able to live with myself knowing that there was still a battle that I could have waged for this world’s future.”

“Maybe you should,” Percy said. “Because you are not a tool, or a weapon, or somebody’s pet project. You are a person. And you throw everything that matters to you away the second that things get tough. You’re allowed to let people in. You’re allowed to have people that love you. It’s not all or nothing between that and fighting whatever noble cause you’re fixated on. I’m the bad guy because I took time to live my own life for the first time ever? Because I, by myself, didn’t try to what, cure a global catastrophe? What the fuck can I do? What can I do?”

“All this talk of the new Percy,” said Diggory sourly. “I hoped the new Percy would care more about the world he lives in than the old one did.”

“I don’t fucking live in it,” Percy screamed, and flared so bright and angry that he was sure he had taken a week off his remaining time. He didn’t care. “I’m a ghost, Diggory. I’m a goddamn figment of my own imagination. I’m a candle and I’m burning lower each fucking minute. This world isn’t my problem anymore! It’s not your problem either! Let it be and accept what it fucking is so that you can actually enjoy the five minutes of life that we have left. People are going to change because of the water? So what, they’re going to change. The sun is going to come up tomorrow and they’re still going to be there. Whether they have three eyes or fins or wings or whatever the fuck. Why are you so sure they need to be cured from this?”

“Percy, I don’t know how much time you’ve spent around people who’ve been affected by this stuff,” said Clara, betraying nothing with her face. “I’ve seen what it does. Growing up, my parents secretly gave me their entire supply of safe water. They drank from the well on our property, and I watched it take away everything they were. They changed so slowly from people that I loved, that cared about me, into feral animals that were ready to tear me apart.”

“I mean, not to interrupt, because like. I was dead sooo long before this conversation was relevant,” Ratty said, still hanging. “But like, there are tons of people in Scout City who have all sorts of freaky things going on with their bodies, and not all of them are like, eating each other.”

“Right,” Percy said, and his white fire was more of a smoke now. It was exhausting to be so angry, and yet he had barely begun today. “I’m sorry, Clara, for your parents, I really am. For what it’s worth, my dad was chugging the rain too, and it… mostly made him crazy, and weirdly strong for his age, I think. My parents wanted to kill me while they were still in their right minds.”

“Are we trauma-offing?” said Ratty. “Because like, I’m a contender.”

“Stop,” said Diggory, raising their long claws. Percy looked to them, as did Ratty and Clara.

“Regardless of how we feel, the facts are these,” continued Diggory, lowering their hands to the leaves beneath them. “That the black water already in this world will continue to change it. That humanity’s changing into something else will continue despite my best efforts. And that Rothogroth, the Decaying Crown, has nothing useful to say on the matter. We are all friends. We have been through great struggles and horrors and joys together. Even you, Ratty, although you are newer to this circle. So. The problems of the world are many, and they will not be solved today. But the problems of Scout City are five, and they must be solved tonight. We should return, and rejoin our friends. Because tonight, we are going to war.”

Percy nodded, and he burned a little brighter. He was ashamed that Diggory had been the one to say it. It was his problem, after all; the legacy of his father, the five bigoted, murderous idiots that worshipped his memory. They had been ready to confront him with an army of spirits trapped inside of that church organ in their old chapel, yes, an organ that his father had built, an organ that Percy himself was destined to be trapped in until he was saved.

“For what it’s worth, everyone,” he said, “thank you. For walking, or floating, into danger for this tonight. My dad’s legacy should have died with him. But there are ghosts trapped in that organ that are being tortured, right now, by being stuck, and they need to be set free. The Quartet needs to burn. And everything my father believed needs to stay buried forever. So. I’m frustrated. I’m angry. I’m still so angry, and I really thought I’d left that behind too. Please know that just because I’m… right now, I still appreciate you. I appreciate you all standing with me tonight. And there isn’t anyone I’d rather be fighting alongside for this.”

“We all have our battles,” said Diggory, coldly. “I am always willing to fight alongside you for yours.”

Percy was going to snap back at that, but Ratty interjected.

“Oh for sure,” it said. “Killing people is fun. I can’t wait.”

“It will,” said Clara. “Stay buried. These cabinets and keys and silver bones and everything else. This ends here, with them. Tonight. These things weren’t made to fall into the hands of hateful amateurs.”

“Or anyone,” said Percy, and nodded. “If we’re going to make it back in time, we should fly. It’s a long ways home.”

But as Diggory and Clara remounted the broomstick, and rose into the air, and he and Ratty began to soar to keep up again as they lofted over the titanic canopy of aspen leaves, and the ghostly hound Dogsmell galloped ahead, all Percy could think of was that maybe his father’s work would never be buried, that maybe there was some greater darkness behind it that could never be snuffed, that maybe he would be long gone before the memory of what Solomon Reed worshipped faded.

Interlude 1 - Tree Crimes

If you dwell in any central region of the Hallowoods—defined by the titanic trees that blot out all sunlight and render the forest floor a murky gloomy—then you should be aware that although the Watching-Trees do not care about moral crimes of pride or lust or larceny, there are several unspoken rules which they will hold grudges about and enforce. These crimes against the forest include:

Setting any intentional fire to a living tree.

Killing a Hallowed Beast without eating it.

Carving your name into Hallowed bark.

Trying to carve your name into a Watching-Tree’s bark, and then finding that the bark that sits over the Watching-Tree’s eyes is really more like a thin eyelid, and so you have stabbed the eye of a Watching-Tree.

Breaking off a little twig from a tree or bush as you pass, to twiddle it in your hand for a while as you hike or some other inane reason.

If you have committed any of these crimes against the forest, the Watching-Trees have likely observed you and communicated their grudge to all interconnected trees in the Hallowoods, and it is likely your demise is imminent the next time you go for a walk amongst them.

If you wish to absolve this grudge, make your way to your nearest Watching-Tree, and shed your own blood at its base so that its roots may drink of you. Make sure that you give lots, so that you can be sure it really forgives you.

We go now to one who is tasting blood.

Story 2 - Suppertime

When Kellyanne awoke, she sat up starkly. She knew immediately the room that she was in; it was the guest bedroom of a grandmother that she had not seen for nearly fifty years. Sunlight beamed in through the white drapes, which were printed with small butterfly patterns. The quilts that sat over her legs were a product of beautiful stitching and intricate cloth triangles; it had taken her years to try quilting of her own, and no attempt she had ever made at it had been as elegant as her grandmother’s work. And yet, when she looked down at her hands, they were not the hands of the child that she had been last time she visited this place, but old, and scarred, and with thin blue wiry veins crawling over the fragile bones on the back of her hands.

“Grandma?” she called, although she was almost a grandmother herself by now—only a few months away. She’d had her reservations about Jacob dating any girl that he met in Scout City, but before long, well. The inevitable had happened. She supposed that was what she wanted, in the end. Not necessarily for her children to join Scout City, which represented all sorts of left-leaning iniquities, but for them to have lives, actual lives. There had been so little left of Fort Freedom by the time they’d left.

She was staring at the cracked-open door out of the bedroom, and her grandmother did not answer. But there was a sound—sharp and sudden. The old dinner bell being rung downstairs.

She gulped, and slid her feet out from under the covers—they were narrow things, as fragile as her hands. They felt stronger beneath her as she sunk her toes into the plush orange rug than they usually did. She stood up, and took in the decorations of her youth—the little porcelain dolls on their shelf, the stuffed characters that crowded the top of the box TV—before she turned, and in her night-dress, walked barefoot out of the door and down the stairs. She reached the junction of the living room and the dining room, and as she looked down the dining room, she found someone sitting in the afternoon sunlight.

She was grinning, opening her mouth, gnawing. Her teeth scraped skin, and dug deeper, until it marked, until it began to bleed. She licked her lips, and encountered hair she’d pulled loose, and the rich iron taste…

No, none of that. She was standing by the stairwell, and looking into the dining room, and sitting at the end of the old dining table was a woman with the head of a pig.

She had long learned that fear had no room in her. Not if you were going to lead people. Not if you were going to take care of a family. For the first time since waking up, she wondered where her children were. If they were joining for supper. But she had to get through this first, whatever it was. No point in fleeing from it. She walked into the dining room, and pulled the chair on the other end of the table out, and sat down. The table was covered with quite the spread; casserole, potato salad, buns covered with a cloth to keep them warm. The woman wearing the head of the pig at the end of the table stared straight at her, but said nothing. The eyes of the mask were deep black holes that did not catch any light inside.

“My name is Kellyanne Wicker,” she said. Straight to the point. “Who are you?”

“I’m you. Ain’t nobody different in here,” said the woman.

Kellyanne doubted this intensely, but she noticed then the woman’s hands, lying casually in front of her on the table’s edge. The same worming blue patterns of the veins. The same night dress, even. Everything save for the mask.

“That’s impossible,” she said. “As I am myself. You cannot be me.”

“Sure I can,” said the woman, leaning forward. Her voice was deep, guttural, stretched beyond human contortions. Her breath seemed to hiss like the hot steam issuing from the bowl with the buns. “I’m you with your eyes open. I’m you with your gloves off. I’m you, Kellyanne. I’m the beast that’s been brewing inside you for a lifetime. You ain’t a prisoner here. You’re free for the first time ever. I’m what freedom looks like.”

Kellyanne frowned.

“I have all the freedom I need,” she said, and reached for the bowl of buns. They’d always been her favorite. She lifted the cloth cover, but something was wrong with them.

They were all heads. Tiny, wide-eyed, mouths open. Half of them were a red-haired young man she recognized as Russell McGowan, the interloper from the upper city. The other half were her own son’s; Jedediah, screaming out for her. Blood spilled from a dozen tiny cuts in the side of Russell’s many heads, and ran down in the same river. She gasped, and covered them again with the cloth, quickly.

“Smells good, don’t it?” said the pig-headed woman on the other side of the table. “Tastes better, I promise. Come on. Give ‘em a bite.”

“My name is Kellyanne Wicker, and whoever you are, whatever you are doing to my boy, you let him go,” she said. “Or there will be hell to pay. Do you understand?”

“I’m not doin’ nothin’ to your boy,” said the woman, leaning towards her, a grin on her dead pig mouth. “We, on the other hand, are doin’ plenty.”

Marketing - The Last Night Also

Mandy Monroe

Well hello again y’all. Truth be told, I wasn’t really planning on picking up this dreamcaster-whatsit again, but I really do have to respond to several statements that my longtime idol and now opponent in this race, Lady Ethel Mallory, has made.

First of all, Lady Ethel, I do not want to be just like you. You were a nobody doing makeup tutorials on social media before you sold your soul to a great big corporation, and after that you were nothing but their corporate pawn for years. I understand you weren’t the one responsible for delivering the product—just selling the dream. A dream that turned out horrible and deadly for thousands of Americans. Just ask everyone who woke up in Box Aries and then wasn’t allowed to return to the Prime Dream because we knew too much about what was happening, and still probably is happening, in Dreaming Boxes everywhere. Unlike you, I have a conscience, and I care about what happens to my fellow human beings.

Secondly, using a dreamcaster—it may be for marketing, but I’m not trying to control the masses with this. I just want to reveal to them what a massive hypocrite you are.

Thirdly, I don’t deserve to lead anybody. Nobody deserves to lead anybody. I’m stepping up to try and be Queen of America because I believe I can help people. And the teeth on my legs don’t make me qualified, but they do show me exactly what the people you’ve hurt are going through. They remind me each and every day why we need leaders that will fight for us, instead of abandon us once they get what they want.

Fourthly, as far as organizing people goes, as far as leading the masses goes, sure, I’ve never been in a position of absolute power over anybody else. I don’t have an army like the former King of America. But what I do have is faith, that I can do some good for any of y’all out there who are listening. Because I’m listening to you. I want to make your lives, our lives, better.

As far as America goes… Lady Ethel is blatantly trying to rally you behind some kind of fallen-flag patriotism. It’s old school. It’s ancient, in fact. America died a long time ago, when its politicians sold its soul to the Botulus Corporation and they allowed it to ignore every human rights code and law in the book. There’s nothing there to resurrect except hazy memories of the good old days, which were full of hor rible problems. If we’re going to make America live again, we’re going to have to start from scratch. With you, and me, deciding what that America is going to look like. Together. And we can raise a new flag where the old ones burned.

One thing I can agree on with Lady Ethel Mallory—it is in fact the last night before our battle begins here in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. It’s hot here, and the sky is full of pink and purple clouds, and it would be beautiful if this place wasn’t about to be where the fate of America is decided.

As for her last comment… my intestines are going to stay where they are, thank you. But the teeth on my legs that you like to make fun of? Poke me again and I’ll feed them your fingers.

Story 2, Continued - Suppertime

Mandy Monroe, I hope you are aware that Lady Ethel Mallory is the size of a large aircraft… and that you have brought appropriate munitions.

We return now to Kellyanne Wicker.

“Please, mom,” Jedediah Wicker was screaming, but all she could do was stand. Joel and Jemimah, swollen with pigflesh tumors, had Jedediah pinned down to the floor of their house, and he kicked and writhed but could not pull himself free to safety. Beside him, two more had fallen upon Russell McGowan; Jocelyn had one of his ankles in each of her meaty pink hands, and Jacob’s long arm was wrapped around Russell’s throat; his front teeth were sunk into the side of Russell’s skull as he shrieked. All four of her pig children looked to her, expectantly; she was standing on her two powerful, thick legs. She didn’t feel frail, broken, anymore.

She felt amazing. Full of power. And hungry, hungrier than she had ever been in her life. Her children were waiting for her before they dug in; waiting for her to say the grace, give the blessing. She smiled. This was the appetizer, really, something to tide them by. After this, there was a whole city out there who had forgotten who she was for so long, and she had the power to remind them, to make them fear, to make them squirm. Goddamn was it delicious.

No. None of that. She was seated at her grandmother’s dining room table, and the woman in the pig mask at the other end of the table was breathing, waiting for her to answer.

“No,” she said.

“No?” said the pig, tilting her heavy head. “No ain’t an option. Not anymore. Deep down, you know how much you want this. You don’t have to be afraid of nothin’ no more. You got the power. To fight. To break. To kill. Their flesh and bones will melt in your mouth like butter. You can crack their skulls with a snap of your fingers.”

“You’re a monster,” she said. “We kill monsters at Fort Freedom.”

“I’m your monster,” snapped the pig. “Can’t you feel that it’s always been boiling in your blood? The violence? Let. It. Out. See what a beautiful world it’s gonna be when you stop holdin’ back. When you start painting it red. Taste a little blood and you’ll find you like the flavor. How are you gonna change anything for your children if you’re afraid to make that change happen yourself?”

“You’ve taken my children,” she said.

“They’re coming to reckon with me the same way you are,” said the pig. “You see how much fun they’re having? They’re still your kids. You mad that this city don’t love ‘em the way you do? Now you can make ‘em.”

She thought about this for a moment. Perhaps there was something to what the pig was saying. It had been so long since she felt like she had any power at all.

She reached for her fork, her knife, and took them in her hands.

She stepped towards her children, towards Russell, towards Jedediah. Both of them squealing like animals ripe to be butchered.

She took her folded napkin from her plate and put it in her lap.

The pig grinned.

She approached, and her children grinned bloody grins, and she wondered which of them would be the most delicious first… Jedediah, or Russell.

“That’s it,” said the pig at the end of the table. “Take a bite.”

She smiled.

“You killed my son,” she said.

The pig did not smile.

“Don’t think so,” it said. “Musta been someone els-”

But by then, she had scrambled across the table, kicking aside bowls and casserole dishes, slipping on the tablecloth, and she reached out with her knife and planted it right into the empty black eye socket of the pig mask.

Her hands, so frail, recoursed with strength that she had never known, and the punch that landed against Jemimah’s swollen piglike head was enough to send her daughter reeling back across the living room floor, where she crashed through a sofa, splintering it. Her next blow caught Joel in the chest, and the growths on his back each burst with the impact, spattering blood and spirals of misshapen vertebrae across the floor as he collapsed. And then Jedediah was free, crawling back away from her on the floor, face spattered with blood. She stepped in towards Russell next; with one twist ripped Jocelyn off of him by the hair, and with the next ripped Jacob’s arm out of his socket, and the McGowan boy was free too, bleeding but free, scrambling for the door.

She stood over the woman with the pig mask, beside her grandmother’s dining room table. She was not sure if, within the black abyss of an eye socket where the handle of the knife poked out, her own face, her own eye was beneath. She was not sure if she wanted to know. She knelt down, and put her hand on its cheek, and whispered.

“Jedediah,” she said. “I love you. You are my son, and you mean more to me than I could ever tell you. I know that I’ve hurt you. Not just through my mistakes, but on purpose. I’ve been vengeful, in my life, I’ve been cruel. I think something horrible has happened and I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again. So I just want you to know that you are strong. As strong as any of your brothers. That you are good. You’ve always been good, looking after your sister. Please save yourself. Live a good and godly life. And know that I always love you.”

But there was no dining room, no woman with the pig mask.

Just her, standing in her own living room, and she could not manage to even choke out a sound, and she was aware that she had said none of those things. Through the open door, Jedediah was escaping, pulling Russell McGowan after him. Meanwhile, the remaining four of her children—as afflicted as she was—had come lunging back from where she had wrestled them, and their attentions were all on her now; there was no unity in their violence, and any flesh was as good as another’s.

She saw Jedediah look back to her, a last time, and she took her two fragile hands, and put them together, thumbs down, fingers curled, to form a heart. Without words to scream, it was all that she could do.

And then Jacob’s fingers were reaching into her cheek, and tore; Joel’s teeth wrapped around her shoulder, and crunched; Jemimah’s tongue lashed out to seize her ankle, and Jocelyn’s hands reached above and below her knee, and pulled. And she sighed a ragged breath, and was thankful for her children, and that she had one last thing to give them.

After all, she had given them everything else.

Interlude 2 - Mistakes, Before and After

I have made many mistakes in my time, dreamer.

There was agreeing to take the position I was given, to guard the gates of the Council of Heavens. There was leaving that position, and running free, and falling headfirst into an enticing love that I so deeply desired that I did not care who provided it.

There was conspiring against the Council of Heavens in the days when Marolmar still worked his forge upon his world.

There was not believing in him when he said he was going to take on the entire universe.

There was trusting him at all.

There was grieving him.

There was listening to a human speak for the first time, when she sought my name. There was trusting her.

There was listening when he said he wanted to speak, from his infancy within the Heart.

There was murdering him. There was taking my new seat on the Council, as the enforcer of Syrensyr’s thoughts.

All of the mistakes I have made, dreamer, pale in comparison to the ones I am about to.

We go now to one who feels she, too, has made a mistake.

Story 3 - All for Nothing

Johannah Wicker sat in the pews of the Old Chapel.

As much as the years had done a number on this place, as had their recent fight with the ghost Persephone in here, it was oddly peaceful when the others weren’t around. The afternoon light that beamed through the stained glass panels was what church was supposed to be like—not the sort of dinky house-churches of Fort Freedom’s community groups. The church organ that dominated the end of the room occasionally made a clunk or click; the ghosts that lived inside of it were very real and not happy. She liked that. They were all being punished, each and every one of them, for something they’d done. Something they’d done unabashedly, in front of the whole world, and dared anyone to stop them from whatever perverted thing it was. Well, someone had stopped them, and if they were unhappy now that they had to be a part of the bigger picture, actually be useful to society, well. She wished she could make them hurt more, actually.

Because god, did she hurt right now. And it wasn’t just the wounds that she’d sustained during their big fight at Danielle O’Hara’s house. She’d kind of suspected her identity would get out eventually, but not like this. Televised via dream to everyone in Scout City overnight. She really should have put some holes in Danielle while she’d had the chance. She’d been a little bit preoccupied, but as much as it sucked to say, she’d underestimated how much damage to their cause that Danielle could do, which was exactly why they were going to make an example out of that… creature. Worst of all worlds, with that one. A literal monster AND a queer freak of the highest caliber, with the arrogance to walk around in a pencil dress and call itself a woman. Usually it was only one or the other.

But no. Danielle had made it out just peachy-keen, and they’d lost Fiddle, and now every one of them couldn’t so much as step a foot in Scout City without bringing down all the monsters that had crawled out of the woodwork AND half of the Coda who felt betrayed about Ben AND the Scout City Sheriff’s department who wanted blood for what Cole had done to Virgil. And although she didn’t doubt that she was making her mom, her family proud right now, she wasn’t sure if they’d say it. Or if some narc amongst her siblings—she wasn’t sure why Jedediah came to mind, he was always a crybaby—would turn her in to Scout City if she went home. So in a way, Danielle had cost her her family, for now and for a long time to come, she bet. It wasn’t like Scout City was going to be won in a day. Their work was going to take months, maybe even years to fully complete.

She held her piano-teeth mask in her hands, and stared at it. It had no visible eye holes—just that great big jagged grin of white splinters and black ones. She liked that. There was something human about making eye contact, and when she wore the mask, she didn’t want to be human. She just wanted to be a smile. A smile that said, ha, ha, I’m your worst nightmare. Ha, ha, I’m coming for you. Ha, ha, weren’t you laughing when you thought you owned this city? Why aren’t you laughing now?

“You’ve completed your preparations, I assume?” said a creaky voice, and she jumped; Tiberius was really quiet, quieter than you’d expect. She’d expect his bones to make a sound like an old rocking chair.

“Yeah, I mean, pretty much,” she said, looking down at the open door towards him. “I’ve probably got a few more nooses to set up, but I’ll get to it.”

God. He was like her mom. Not her actual mom, who was a miserable fucking failure. But Indrid, who had been everything to her until Tiberius ripped her in half to get out of his little hole in her ribcage. She wanted to take whatever that feeling was inside of her about that and put it towards something fun, like drawing on someone’s head with a knife.

Tiberius came up to stand beside her, looking at her mask. Old fogey probably couldn’t see more than three feet in front of him. Well, she wanted to think that, but the truth was he had eyes that were always weirdly focused and wide, like an eagle. His silver-boned skeleton hand rested on the pew.

“Masks,” he said. “It is a great shame that you have had to resort to these in order to make the truth of the Black Eternity heard.”

“I’ll be honest with you, Tibs,” she said. “We put the masks on because we had to kill people to make a difference around here, and masks are a good way not to get caught doing it. The whole Black Eternity thing… I mean, Indrid talked about it, but I don’t know if it was ever why we did what we did. We put all the souls in the organ that we did to help make Scout City better. Because it’s our home, and it’s under attack from faggots and freaks.”

“That is how it may appear on the surface,” said Tiberius, frowning. What was he going to do, smite her? “But Indrid had her reasons for asking you to do these things. What is monstrosity, but a corruption of the Dawn’s plan for our world? What is flagrant sin and homosexual indulgence but a symptom of humanity’s own desire run rampant? Indrid hoped that by addressing the symptoms, you might change Scout City. But that will never be enough.”

Johannah sat, staring at him.

“So… what,” she said. “What are you saying? It won’t be enough?”

“You are trying to change the very nature of humankind,” said Tiberius. “Even the fear of death is not enough to suffocate the sinful nature of man. If it was, persecuting them would be effective. Instead, the more pressure and fear that you apply, the stronger the resistance will become. In fact, they love it. They love to be the minority, the special people, attacked by the world but bravely fighting back. They love the attention, as perverse as that is. Any campaign of fear that you launched is ultimately doomed to fail.”

“Wait,” Johannah said. Her mind was reeling, and she had a deep sinking feeling that dragged her belly down towards the broken tile floor. “We brought you back because Indrid believed you would be like, the master planner for our cause, you know? We didn’t have to pull you out of her. We could have left you there. And I would still have her. So remind me again why you’re so valuable to this cause if you don’t even believe it’s going to work?”

Tiberius smiled. God she wanted to stab the old buzzard.

“There is only one way to remove the sin from all humanity. Not just their acts, but the desires of their hearts,” he said. “And it will not be in this lifetime. It will be when we are one with eternity. Those that are aligned with his heart will be forever unified. Part of his kingdom, his body, for all of the vast and silent infinity that will follow. And those who are not aligned will be… nothing. Nothing at all. No more. So you see, we are still fighting to cure this wretched world. But we shall accomplish it by bringing it into the arms of the eternal God. We worship the Deep, the Darkness, and the Dawn. But the Deep’s power was of creation; to shape our earliest steps. The Dawn’s will for our world was corrupted. But the Darkness is greater than all. And the Darkness shall be our salvation.”

Johannah held these things in her heart, and she found a kernel of resistance. She spat it up like a tonsil stone.

“You’re saying there isn’t a point,” she said. “That it isn’t even worth trying to make Scout City see? What has all our fighting been for then? We lost Heather. We lost Fiddle. People really were changing, when our plan was working. They were beginning to see why monsters can’t stay here. They were beginning to see that we were right. You’re telling me there isn’t any hope for them?”

“No,” Tiberius said, calmly, firmly, and shook his head as if at a funeral for a friend he didn’t really know that well. “No, there is not. The only hope we have now is for the next world. A sinless world, by default. Do not become burdened by the attachments of the flesh, Johannah. Our connection to this world is an illusion. Nothing in it matters to your eternal future. Our time on this planet is a speck of dust in the vast deserts of sand that fill the hourglass of Eternity. The only meaningful thing we can do here is to secure our salvation through our choices. Are you ready to choose Eternity over this world’s broken state, Johannah? Are you ready to bring them true salvation?”

Johannah bit her lip, and looked down at the floor. She did not know why, but her hands trembled. She wanted to punch out Tiberius’ teeth, but she could not bring herself to even look him in the eye. She sighed, and twisted the piano mask in her hands, and slipped it over her head.

“Whatever you say, boss,” said Piano.

“Good,” said Tiberius, and he smiled, and looked up to behind them—over the chapel doors, there was a wooden altarpiece, a closed triptych, mounted high on the wall. “Now. We are going to need to be able to access the cabinet’s light, in order to feed our beautiful organ tonight. To that end, I am going to have to pay a visit to the pests that are waiting for us on the other side of those doors. So, help me move heaven and Earth, Piano. Help me destroy a Herald of the Dawn.”

Outro - Atonements

Atonements. What is there to apologize for, dreamer? For being exactly the way that you were made? I think not. For reinventing entirely who you were when you were made? Likewise, not. For choosing to love someone who loves you back, even though your fleshes are crafted in the same styling? Does this feel like it demands apology? Only this, dreamer, do I think you owe a moment of reflection, of holding that you have done wrong, and it is when you have brought harm to another. Without that, we are all wandering in this lifetime through this universe, on parallel paths, and seeking to understand our own experience by the time that it is over. Harm to another can come in very small forms, or very large ones. And when harm is done, it does not demand flagellation and weeping and martyrdom, but an apology and a promise to do less harm in this way the next time, and your paths continue. And soon all memory of the wound will fade, until it is like it was never there, and barely scarred.

Preparing to deal much harm indeed, I am your loyal host Nikignik, waiting apologetically for your return to the Hallowoods.

The bonus story that goes with this episode is called 'Pentecost' 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, you have been granted a sign: if the next stoplight you come to is red, you are saved. If it is green, you are not saved. If it is yellow, then you still have some wiggle room and you’re on thin ice indeed.