HFTH - Episode 207 - Attachments

Content warnings for this episode include: Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Kidnapping and abduction, Death + Injury, Blood, Static (including sfx), Body horror, Smoking

Intro - Black Rose

When you entered the universe, fully-formed, in a tie and a pure black blazer, you were sitting in a metal chair in an all-white room. You knew nothing; a sense of self, even a name, was unbeknownst to you until the orientation began. And you sat, quietly, with your hands in your lap, as you learned that you had been made from the fire of souls, and your life had come at a cost, and that it was a debt that you had to repay.

You learned that all life is fire, and fire is the most valuable thing in the universe short of the overall profit statement of the Industry for which you were made. That as long as profit is acquired, and the Industry continues to grow in a millionth of a percentile margin year over year, then all is well in the universe and your purpose is fulfilled. You were filled with a quiet, polite pleasure as you shook hands with others like you, who had been working for much longer and had so much wisdom to share. You received your assignment with glee: you were to minimize losses in unusual areas by auditing soul intake statement forms across several centuries of a planet called Earth, where souls were grown.

And as they led you down sheer white walls to your office, only one thing was amiss: you saw, painted on one wall in bleeding black paint, a shape. You would later come to know it as a flower, a rose, with thorns and blooming petals. You asked what it was, and it was quickly removed.

You were brought to your office, and joyfully took in your very own chair, and desk, and filing cabinets. And you thrilled as you were handed your first scrap of importance: files to audit. It was not until the three hundred and thirtieth auditing month, accounting for every soul that had ever been liberated from its body and harvested by carrier-bird on the planet Earth, that you began to daydream, and draw in the margins of your assignment a rose. It would be centuries more before you would ever decide to wear flowers in the fabric of your attire, to leave the Industry on assignments, to fall into a happiness with the Industry’s worst enemies, to cling to a world that bids you Hello from the Hallowoods.

Theme.

Right now, I sit on an eyelid, dangling over the long black lashes. This eye has seen a world before the Black Rains. It has seen the depths of the corruption inside the highest circles of the Botulus Corporation. It has seen Lady Ethel Mallory eat a whole dove. It has seen darkness for long dreaming hours, and it has seen the waking world, scarred and filthy and beautiful. It has seen several faces, full of love, looking back. And currently, it looks across an orchard at twilight, and sees no sign of its daughter. The theme of tonight’s episode is Attachments.

Story 1 - Inner Monsters

Something had been unlocked inside of Brooklyn Williams, or perhaps dismantled. She had, for most of her life, been the very image of the Botulus Corporations’ brightest. Cheerful and polite, efficient and accommodating. A sophisticated model citizen perfectly suitable to live in a dreamy future world. She did not feel perfect, now. She felt ruined, and she did not care what happened to the wreckage of her mind and body, so long as she found Hope.

She jaunted ahead of Marco and Buck as she made her way up the steep path towards the outcropping of black trees. After most of a day crossing barren and grassy plains, she was not about to be stopped by even the toughest climb. Buck, on the other hand, was limping along in an even worse state than he usually was in—they’d found him on the outskirts of the wall of black that had consumed the chapel in a nearly catatonic state, eyes glazed and babbling, and he wasn’t in much better shape now that Marco had been basically carrying him for the better part of a day. Even now, Marco kept an arm around him, guiding him forward as they reached the base of the hill.

The trail of clues they’d been following were sparse—the tower they were hiding in had exploded in the calamity, and their fall towards the ocean was not cushioned by any great slimy organisms that their daughter had befriended. Brooklyn had washed up on shore alone, until she searched enough to find Marco’s body half-jutting from a tide pool, and made sure that he was alive. One of his legs was swollen and black with bruising from where he’d been struck by flying debris in the fall, and it seemed as though it made each step agonizing—even when he wasn’t carrying half of Buck’s weight too. Her husband had been scarred before; he wore it across his arms and cheeks and chin, but this was different. The three of them had never been in a tenth of so much pain together.

They’d searched the shoreline on both sides of the abbey, which had been consumed by some kind of black event horizon, and eventually found bootprints in the sand, a small cave where evidence of both the Humble Boot—he had left strings of garlic everywhere—and Hope had been left. By the time they began following the trail, though, she did not know how long had passed. Bootprints and the occasional lost button or jettisoned piece of junk from, presumably, the Humble Boot, were all that had kept them on course. But as they had come straight across the fields towards the hill where the black olive trees stood tall, she had an intuition that it would have been an appealing stop for the Humble Boot and her daughter; a safer place to camp, perhaps, than the surrounding fields. Night was only just beginning to fall; maybe they would still be there. And she ran up the hill with abandon, her waterlogged lightgun at her side. The weapon, originally only barely functional as it was made from a downed Botulus Corporation security drone, could barely muster a red spark at this point, but she held it in one hand nonetheless.

“Hope?” she called, and her voice carried through the rustling black olive trees. “Honey, are you here?”

She stumbled up to the top of the hill and her heart caught in her mouth. There appeared to have been some kind of disturbance. Heavy tire tracks, still fresh, churned the earth of the orchard’s road. A makeshift campsite had been abandoned. And across the ground ahead of her, there were objects scattered. A diary, a set of colored wax pencils, a stuffed toy. Nighty the Night-Gaunt. And she knew then that something was terribly wrong, because Hope would never leave that toy behind, not for anything in the world.

“No Hope,” said a thin voice, and she whirled around; did not see anyone immediately at first in the olive orchard around her, but then turned her eyes upwards. There was a man, suspended in the air; the boughs of the olive tree had wrapped around him and held him in a tight embrace. There was a motion in the clusters of olives that seemed almost like feral dogs nuzzling into a corpse to tear away flesh; smoke trailed from the man, although she did not smell it. It took her until seeing the leather boot half dangling from his head to recognize him as the Humble Boot.

“Marco, Buck, don’t touch the trees,” she called back down the hill; Marco was helping Buck up slowly, and started hobbling all the faster at her shout. She returned her attention to the Humble Boot.

“What did you do with her?” she said.

“I?” said the Humble Boot, and winced as the olive tree continued to dissolve his arm. “Walk, and conversate, and wear down the heels of our boots together. No heel we have encountered, though, like one Mister Spade, familiar yes, but familiar like a rock in a shoe, not like the embrace of a well-worn sole. Perhaps if you could help me down, I seem to have been hung out with the wash.”

“Where is she now?” Brooklyn said, and pointed the lightgun up at him. His brows furrowed in a lopsided fashion; half of his face seemed almost purple and burned, and distinctly less eyebrowed than the other.

“Oh, would you look at the time, I suppose I must be off this mortal coil,” cried the Humble Boot, and the tree began to move again, its black olive bushels sinking into his sides and boiling the surface of his flesh.

Brooklyn fired her lightgun. Its case sparked with a flash of red heat in her hands as it malfunctioned, but the resulting crack of red light that it delivered to the branch above was enough. The branch shattered with a smoldering blast, and immediately the Humble Boot flipped end over end out of the tree, coming crashing to the ground in a heavy heap in front of her. She kept her lightgun trained on him just as Marco and Buck finally arrived in the intersection in the middle of the orchard.

“Honey?” Marco said, looking over, and then his jaw dropped a little at the sight of the Humble Boot, and he set down Buck carefully to kneel on the orchard road before running over. “Who is that?”

“Alright,” Brooklyn said, as the Humble Boot began to sit up. The tree had done a number on him; it appeared to have seared through his clothes down into his skin in patchy areas across his body, and his eye wasn’t opening in the side of the face where he’d been burned. The boot hung halfway down the side of his head, dangling by a shoestring. “Now talk.”

“There is in this world a predicament that every man has,” said the Humble Boot. “And for the bedrock of this philosophy, he need merely look down.”

“About Hope,” said Brooklyn, gritting her teeth. The lightgun shook in her hands, and its red warning light flickered on the Humble Boot’s singed forehead.

“Hope has fled,” said the Humble Boot. “Hope has gone. You should have felt it the moment that chapel on the hill turned black. Hope is a thing man clings to in the absence of goodness in the present, yes, but more goodness is never guaranteed. In fact, there might be less and less, losing one more thing—string—child after another until everything is gone. Can you follow the rabbit through that knot, yes? You can double-knot it and hope it holds, yes, but sooner or later the path will tear apart all your pretty knots and leave you with loose ends.”

Marco reached for her hands, to try and gently persuade Brooklyn to lower her weapon, but she avoided his touch and retrained the weapon on the Humble Boot.

“You said Spade,” she said. “Dashiell Spade? Did he take her?”

“Oh, and quite forcibly at that,” said the Humble Boot, a weary grin on his thin lips. “He put her in his truck and drove off not even an hour ago. Implied that she would be useful to him. I put up a fight, you understand, but he pushed me into the trees and… well. The rest, as you say, is history.”

She stood and pulled away from him, confiding with Marco.

“Drove off,” she repeated in a low voice. “We can barely keep walking, let alone keep up with a vehicle.”

“I can handle it,” Marco said. He seemed his usual chiseled self, but she could see the weariness in his eyes. “They’ll still probably stop for the night. If we keep going, we could…”

Brooklyn held up her hand.

“You’re in bad shape,” she said. “I’ve seen your leg. And pushing it like this is making it worse.”

“I have a really very high pain tolerance,” Marco shrugged. “It’ll be fine. We just get through this and then…”

She took a step closer to him, looking up to his face, and then over to Buck, who was kneeling back on the road twenty feet back, staring up at the twilight sky.

“And Buck,” she said. “Even if you weren’t hurt, he needs an actual doctor. If even that could help.”

Marco pursed his lips at that, and looked back to Buck as well, before returning his attention to her.

“I… I’m really trying to think of other options,” he said. “But I don’t know where to go from here.”

“I have an idea,” she said. “And you’re not going to like it.”

And he did not. But she left him to stand, thinking it over angrily, and to keep an eye on the Humble Boot while she made her way over to Buck.

“Hi Buck,” she said, squatting down beside him. He was kneeling, but leaning back, staring up at the emerging stars. His face trembled, and he was pale and sweating. He had been since they found him on the shore. “Looking at the stars?”

“It’s mag… magnificent,” he said, with all the expression and interest that she usually saw in him when he had found the first clue in a lengthy mystery.

“It really is,” she said. “Listen…”

Buck pointed his hand up towards the sky, and she stopped. She could not quite follow his point to any particular star, though.

“Which star are you pointing at?” she said.

“No star,” Buck whispered, and turned his wide-eyed gaze down from the heavens to her. He gulped. He seemed, to her, afraid. “It.”

“Right,” Brooklyn sighed. “Buck, I’m going to have Marco take you back towards the abbey, okay? We need help. Maybe Yaretzi, maybe the Countess will be there. Maybe they survived too. I thought we could do this on our own, that if we moved fast enough we would find Hope in time, but we can’t. We need…”

“Monsters,” said Buck.

Brooklyn gulped.

“Yes,” she said. “In this case. There’s no one else we can turn to out here.”

She stared at Buck for a moment, but he had turned his eyes again to the stars, or to It, whatever he saw up there. She looked over, and gave a nod to Marco.

“I don’t like this,” Marco said, coming to put one of his massive hands around her waist. He gave her the concerned, surly look that he got when he was solving simple math problems. “What if Yaretzi or the Countess are already gone? Or they’re dead? We already looked once.”

“Then I’ll meet you back at the beach. And you’re more likely to find people who can help if they were headed towards the abbey,” she said, and kissed his chin, and then found her way out of his embrace to help Buck off the ground. Marco’s goodbyes were plentiful, but something distracting had come to freeze over her heart: fear, fear of what she was about to do. And she waited until she could see Marco taking Buck back, down the orchard hill, and off on the path back towards that far distant spot of pure black on the horizon, before she took the lightgun in her hands.

“I do hate to see a happy couple split in twain,” said the Humble Boot, from where he still lay resting against the tree trunk, out of reach of the branches.

She ignored him, and walked away to kneel beside where Nighty the Night-Gaunt lay, and took the plush creature into her lap. She turned her lightgun over. In the bottom of the handle, there was a small latch, and she pressed her thumbnail under it to pop it open, and slid out a single small silver cylinder. She took her glasses out of her breast pocket, and wiped the smudges from them, put them on. And she brought the silver cylinder to the side of the glasses. For a moment, there was nothing—only the dark reflection of the orchard, and the Humble Boot beginning to nurse his wounds.

But then, a blue icon began to glow in the lower left of her vision as the wireless battery began to charge her glasses; they had not been operational in most of a decade. A red eye fell into the center of the blue box of the Botulus Corporation logo with a satisfying click, and then her datafeeds were on. One million, seven hundred and eighty-five unread mail items in her Happy Dreaming Family messages folder. She had no time for any of those; the battery could give out any moment. They had stripped her Botulus Corporation account of its administrative privileges, yes… but that did not change that she had memorized Lady Ethel Mallory’s passwords for the months of working as her secretary, and within moments, she was asleep, and the world was opened.

It had been true when Buck said that they would need to work with monsters. But right now, the monster she needed was not back at the abbey, but surveilling the planet with orbital satellites. The monster she needed was herself: a Botulus Corporation professional. And she was going to get her daughter back.

Interlude 1 - Relationships Born

You are born into relationships. You have a sun, whose warmth and light will shelter you as it has for all members of your species. You will live beneath it all the days of your life, and without it, there would have been no human race, for only worlds with particular conditions are marked ideal for life by the Industry’s farming program.

You were born into a relationship with your father, who is gone, whether you realize it yet or not. The sun, you remember, will grow cold one day, and its final red hours will be done faster than you expected, and it will become one with the endless field of night that encircles every world and star. So too your father’s warmth and light will go the way of all stars, and leave behind only an emptiness, a centrifuge for gravitational decay, where something large once was before the collapse.

You were born into a relationship with a mother, and although she wishes to shelter you in her arms, she cannot carry you far enough away from the sun’s collapse to save your civilization. Your family is a solar system, and hurt and trust and love and hate bind you like gravity to its circles. Your friends are distant stars, and they will twinkle with understanding, looking in, but they will never truly know from there, where the gravitational pull is distant. They have their own solar systems to worry about, after all.

We go now to one who has, despite her best efforts, become attached.

Story 2 - Long Dark Centuries

The Countess had known, at that time, only that she was being carried, and not gracefully, either. At times Yaretzi’s teeth almost pierced her skin when the greater leaps and bounds came. Her pain was far greater than the average state of agony in which she lived, silent to the world. She could not stop the shrieks and cries from escaping her. Where her wing had been cleaved free of her body, her severed tendons and folds of ligament were screaming. The maelstrom that Olivier had unleashed on Abbey Saint Loris tore at her dress and fought against Yaretzi’s weight as she leaped from wall to roof, and was heavy, black, seemed as though it would tear them apart. The Knights of New England surely had to have given up their pursuit by now; they would not be able so much as to stand in these winds.

And then there was darkness.

The shockwave came rapidly, flattening the wind around them for a moment, and then it was replaced with a new rushing sensation—displacement; a tidal wave of shadow sweeping across the Abbey. The Countess thought that it had come from her, at first; that perhaps the emptiness she was filled with had leaked out into the world and was going to swallow everything. But her eyes grew wide, and she screamed for Yaretzi to run faster, and there was nothing familiar in the void that was growing by the second. She closed her eyes, and as Yaretzi made a final leap, was not sure if it would be enough.

They were in darkness, for a while, ripping and rushing and tearing, although the Countess could not tell if it was simply the night and ferocity of the storm, or some deeper abyss into which they had fallen. A landscape passed, black and lightless, before her. And then there was light; a burning flame, bright ahead of them, and a lesser by his side, and even through her blurry vision, she knew with equal pain and bitter happiness that Apollyon had returned, and her cold glass heart shattered. He was wreathed in fire, a holy lantern. But then there was also a bleeding warmth; the face, frazzled and shaken beside him, and she might even have smiled. She had come to terms with never seeing Barb again, and there he was, in the flesh. And then it had all gone very, very dark.

When she woke that morning, she found that Yaretzi was by her side, the Countesses’ cold hand resting in her warm ones. She looked up to Yaretzi’s deep brown, gold-flecked eyes, for clarity, and she found none. And then Apollyon was in, with his apologies for arriving late and condolences about the wing, and so was Barb, who came in for a hug without much regard for the wing, and she did not laugh but she almost smiled. The smile quickly faded, though, and as talk turned to the Abbey, she turned to look out the window and lost her humor completely. The Abbey Saint Loris’ distant outline on the horizon was a pure dark spot; soaking in all light, impervious to the rays of the dawn. And it all, like her own organs withering up within her, soured.

Yaretzi had lost Apollyon, and Mort, and the Grand Crossroads all in one fell swoop. The life of comfort that the Countess had known, and all of Yaretzi’s scant pickings of family, had vanished. And in the massive wake of that sinking ship they had only had each other. Eventually they found Mort in the arctic sea, water-bound, and it was clear that his life would never completely be theirs again, not like it was before. He was Creep. He was Doors. He was Cindy. He was a thousand people, and he didn’t need Yaretzi to raise him anymore. In a way, he could raise himself, and sail to ocean depths that would exceed any mortal reach, and learn within himself what sort of person he was going to be.

Yaretzi had been dead inside for a long while, which she was not used to. The Countess, on the other hand, was grateful; typically when her entire life and everyone that she knew burned, she lost everything. At least this once, she had managed to keep what was most important. They wandered together, without a true place to call home, for years, and it was in that time that the Knights of New England caught their trail. She suspected that the prospect of taking down two centuries-old blood-drinking monsters was just too appealing.

Nothing that they couldn’t handle, of course, although every time she ripped the heart out of a knight they came back stronger. She had questioned why they were still waiting in a godforsaken patch of woods where Yaretzi and herself had both lost everything, and that was when she learned: Yaretzi was waiting. Just in case. Apollyon had come back once. Maybe he would come back again.

And so the Countess waited with her, for still further years to come. She was patient. She knew that even the greatest desires, the most heartfelt promises, crumbled in time. And that someday, whether it was now or in ten centuries, Yaretzi would let go of what they had lost, and begin to search for what they would have next. But, despite her better judgement, the Countess wrote Yaretzi a letter one year, asking if she would accompany her on a trip—a voyage to old Europe, for a change of pace, a change of grief. And to her surprise, Yaretzi accepted.

But the knights followed, and the Humble Boot’s exile came exactly at the wrong time, and a relaxing sea voyage quickly became a battle for life and death—or life after death, she supposed. And the bitterness that had been growing in her finally had an outlet. The knights were hunting her, and she could be their hunter in turn; eviscerate them, torture them, leave murderous little notes on their corpses. Or really, that of anyone who got in her way. If she was not enough to make Yaretzi happy, then to hell with it all; to hell with the world, to prying men who thought they could pull her life apart.

Murder seemed like such a taboo to those who only lived to sixty, eighty; she was hundreds of years old and had rent almost as many human beings apart with her own hands. They were all the same, fearful and hateful and quick to judge, quick to throw stones, quick to jab pitchforks and light torches, and what did it matter if they died, they would just give birth to more of their kind who would be back in a decade’s time. They wanted to see hunter, see threat, see monster? She could be all of those things and so much more. She just wanted them to see, for a moment, when she showed them the meaning of real terror, to know in their hearts that she had been on her best behavior these past, civilized years, and if they had let her lie, she might well have done so forever. But there was always some self-proclaimed saint with a sword, and the teeth and claws always came growing out of her no matter how long she hid them.

And in that final fight at the abbey… what?

She had been dragged out, barely alive. Losing the black bubbling ichor that she called her blood. Her wing had been torn from her, and she would never fly again. Not unless there was a second one hidden inside all the eldritch geometry of her skin. She felt like she had the night she was transformed—a hurt, volatile, stupid young girl, surprised once again that the world wanted to get her and take everything.

And when she went out with Polly, and Yaretzi, who had so much to talk to each other about—and she was so happy for Yaretzi, she really was, that someone who brought her so much joy without any effort at all was back for her to cling to, that the dark awful hopeless years of being alone with the Countess were over, what a blessed liberation—she could barely listen to Barb’s words as he tried to ask her what had happened, where the time had gone. And when they approached the sea of shadow that had consumed the abbey, the wall of absolute dark that its fortifications had become, she stared into it deeply, and wanted nothing more than to fly in and join the emptiness in all that it wasn’t. It had a calmness, a serenity. If you had hurt all of your life, nothingness was soothing. The quiet end.

She was dragged back by Yaretzi, human and brown and panicked, as they saw the being with the porcelain face emerge; as Barb and Apollyon recognized some old familiar lack of a face, as they began to flee. But even so, she was looking back.

How blissful was the shadow’s call.

Marketing - Hope You Choke

Lady Ethel Mallory

Mad Mandy will say anything that helps her gain a smidge of credibility with my audience, which is a known fact. But even I was surprised to hear her stoop so low as to try and question my motives for competing for Queen of America. But she can rant and rave all she likes, and show her own pathetic followers why she would be such a poor candidate. Being Queen is not something that you can get others to give you. You think you are going to be handed a crown? You have to be willing to earn it, and that power to lead is what lets your followers know that you have the strength required to keep wearing the crown once you have it. You think I care about permission? You think I care about being liked? I care about what is best for this great nation, and keeping the human race alive.

Right now, I am watching the last traces of purple fade in the clouds. In only a few short hours, it will be midnight, and the games will begin.

I only feel bad for Otis Moloch. It seems he hasn’t found himself a dreamcaster. Hardly a fair race, is it? Dinah Dealey, likewise. And yet, both of them have arrived in Truth or Consequences, according to my surveillance drones. We are all here, and tonight, the quiet blocks of my home will become a battle for your future. I will paint the dawn of a new America red with their blood. I cannot blame Mandy for not remembering good old America; she was barely young enough to live in it at all. But I remember the greatness we had, and I know that we can take it back together.

You want to eat my fingers, Mandy? I hope you choke.

Story 2, Continued - Long Dark Centuries

Less talk. More losing fingers.

We return now to the Countess.

The Bellevue Hostel had not been long established; in fact, it had been made only in the dawn hours of that same day. The building had been a run-down hostel, paint peeling, roof caved in. Apollyon’s flame had merely given the place new life; a shining painted door, an open roof with a rail, a mahogany welcome desk and old-fashioned amber light bulbs. Its large communal area had a kitchen in the back, and high-backed green cushioned chairs in the front around a coffee table of driftwood and glass, and as Mort had been asked to wait on the shoreline, it was only the four of them sat in this sanctum, discussing the dark.

“If the Black Eternity were not so afraid of the light of the Industry, it would have no need for Crucifus or his kind,” Apollyon said. The devil sat with his legs crossed, a black suit with embroidered flowers that glowed like embers. His horns were bright, flaming things that hurt her to look at. The change in Yaretzi’s posture, her countenance was remarkable; even in their dire situation, she smiled when she looked over to her old friend. The Countess shrank further in her chair as Apollyon’s lecture continued. “But as the Black Eternity cannot enter this universe without facing Syrensyr’s fire, instead it must operate by proxy. They are harbingers of his darkness, and they do his bidding, I suppose, to further the progress of the Black Eternity in this universe. What exactly he wants with particular worlds, we don’t know. I can only hazard a guess that it supports his goals of ultimately swallowing the known universe whole.”

“The Industry’s burned entire solar systems for less,” Barb said. His new body still had a bandage wrapped around the eyes, but also a green fedora, clothes like a french tourist on a country vacation. “So that Mister Fuss is here is very, very bad for our prospects. Which is a shame because it was a hell of a lot of work to get back here.”

“Have either of you met this being before?” Yaretzi said. She was small, human, curled in her chair. Her thick black hair hung like a veil from this angle; only a tilt of her head revealed a flash of her eyes, glancing at the Countess and then away again towards Apollyon. “It is not our sole concern. There may be other survivors from the abbey.”

“I wouldn’t stake much on the survival of any of our human acquaintances,” said the Countess. “They tend to be fragile.”

Yaretzi glanced over to Apollyon and Barb before shooting her a pointed look.

“We were allies,” Yaretzi said. “If they are still alive, they may require our help.”

“If you’re planning any scouting around, it will need to be quick,” said Polly, looking a bit serious. “At the rate that the shadow is growing, we’ll have to move the hostel within a day.”

“Very well,” Yaretzi said, standing up, and stretching. “I will run swiftly, and bring back my findings.”

By then, though, the Countess was already stood up, and on her way over to the stairs. If Yaretzi looked her direction before running off, the Countess did not see it.

She arrived to the rooftop in time to see Yaretzi, a huge dark wolf in the morning light, dashing down the decrepit streets of the village and out towards the black spire of the abbey on the horizon. She sighed, and nursed her shoulder; one side of her felt heavier than the other, with half a black cape formed by her remaining wing only.

“Hey, uh,” said a voice, and she looked across to find Barb emerging from the door that led onto the low, flat rooftop. “I’d ask how you’re doing, but it’s pretty obvious you feel like shit.”

“You always did have a way with words,” the Countess sighed, leaning on the rail.

Barb came up, in his fancy french clothes, to lean beside her.

“Listen, I’ve been gone a hot minute here,” Barb said. “I know it ain’t much in the grand scheme for you and me. I’m older than dirt. But if something’s eating you up inside, now’s the time to say it. You’ve barely said hello to me since I got home.”

“It’s not you, Barb,” she said, and ground the points of her sharp teeth together. “I really am so glad that you’ve returned. I didn’t think that was possible.”

“So, uh. It’s gotta be the rest of them, then,” Barb said. He took a cigar with a gold label from a case in his vest and lit it. “You want one? Courtesy of Apollyon and the watch he stole. It’s loaded. We’re gonna be set for a little while.”

“Fifteen years never felt so long, Barb,” she said. Her black dress was fraying, and she picked at a thread in the lace. “You know them. Inseparable. Two peas in a pod, somehow. I was always tertiary. Nice to have and to hold, but her path was always going to be the one Apollyon and Mort were on. And when Apollyon was gone, it was just her and I. I really thought I would be her everything. It’s perfect, in a way. Neither of us would age, or die. We both were created by indescribable beings. I think I let myself love someone else for the very first time, Barb, and the love that I gave her—she’s still walking around with it. I don’t know what she’ll do with it. If she’ll want me, need me now that Apollyon is back.”

“What, you jealous? I didn’t know they were dating,” said Barb, breathing out smoke.

“They’re not. It’s not… they’re still partners, in life, in everything,” she said. “I don’t know what you’d call it. I don’t care. I just know that before, it was always the three of them, and I was lucky to get even a little time with her. We’ve built a life, you know. Tried to. Fought to keep it from getting torn apart. I’ve fought so hard for the love that he gets without even trying.”

“Hey now, without even trying is a stretch,” Barb said, holding up a hand. “You’re talking about my lawyer, after all. Apollyon talked me out of hell. And he was trying to get back here, to the ones he calls family, that whole time. And… I’m not gonna lie, so was I, a little.”

The Countess looked over to him, all-black eyes narrowed.

“Who would have thought that hell would have made you softer?”

“Not softer, exactly,” said Barb, turning his head away from her, back out toward the horizon. “Just that I thought I didn’t care much about this place, this planet, the people on it, win or lose. And it turns out that I care a little more than I thought I did. Friends like you, Margie, don’t come by that often. Once in an eternity, really. So I’d like to hold onto that.”

“You picked a poor time, I suppose,” the Countess said bitterly, and wished that she could cry. She grimaced at the black silhouette on the horizon. “Seeing as our world is going to rot. You remember once we were on the roof of the Resting Place, and talking about what to do when the spring came? I’m sure the Ascended Scientists still have a seat saved for us, if you’ve reconsidered.”

“Yeah, I remember that talk,” Barb said, and crossed his arms. He was rather unlike the Barb she had known before, she thought. Something else tied him to this world, it was clear, and weighed heavier on his shoulders. “I forget what I said. Something about watching it all go down? Enjoying the show? I knew even then I wasn’t gonna leave this world. But I woulda watched it burn and laughed, back then. Now I’m realizing, there ain’t much out there, in the universe. The Industry sure is awful. The only place I’ve got, the only people I’ve got, are right here. It’s you. It’s the stupid kid and the stupid wolf and their stupid bonehead of a son. And… I’ve gotta hold onto that a little tighter than I used to. Turns out, I kinda like this world. And if there’s a way to stop it from falling into some kind of eternal lights-out, then I’ll do it. I was worried you wouldn’t be here when I got back. And that you are, well. It feels that much more like home.”

The Countess sighed, and lowered her head to the rail, over her arms.

“I’m so certain that I’m losing everything,” she said quietly. “So slowly.”

“I’m not a betting man,” Barb said, which was a lie, and she could practically hear him grinning. “But if I was, I’d say, you’re not out of the game until the last hand’s dealt. And you and I, we’ve still got cards up our sleeves. So let’s make this one hell of a game.”

Interlude 2 - Council Observations

Although it may appear to you, dreamer, as though I am doing absolutely nothing productive in my new position as the eye of Syrensyr, I assure you that this is only an illusion caused by that you only hear of me when I am making it my business to interrupt and shape your nightmares. I assure you, I am safeguarding my new position with results.

Ephelzeph, the Endless Storm, believes that Olbsalolb is too haughty for his position, and wonders if the arrival of Urnundurn will spell disaster for the Council. In their eyes, there is no hope that the Council can overcome their differences to present a useful and united front.

Olbsalolb, Master of Matters, is preoccupied with matters of his own state, but he largely believes himself to be untouchable within the Council, and a crucial pillar who cannot be removed without destabilizing the state of the universe. Thus, devoid of all consequences.

Tolshotol, Who Guards a Thousand Suns, believes that my own presence is to be resented, as she is already in charge of security for the Council, and that my position directly affronts her trustworthiness in the eyes of Syrensyr. I do not think she understands just how precarious her position is, as if Syrensyr were ever to absorb her domain, the universe would truly sit in the hand of his monopoly.

Skryekeskrye, Spinner of Fates, knows far more than she lets on, I think, but it will be a cold day in the Industry before she let me know what exactly she thinks. I have no patience for riddles and rhyming-games.

Noptilnopt, Who Walks Unseen, I have not seen. I would like to, when the opportunity next presents itself. I wonder at all times just how close he is. I will have to make something up for my report to Syrensyr on him.

Syrensyr, Reclaimer of Fire, is also not immune from my observations. He spends great deals of time in his chamber, brooding on what I am sure is his confrontation with Urnundurn. He does not, I think, approach from an angle of concern for the universe or the beings that dwell in it, but rather from vengeance. To deprive him of the territory he has rightfully claimed is a personal attack, and one he shall not suffer from any being, indescribable or otherwise. Although we have many years yet before the Council returns from its intermission in order to begin actions against Urnundurn, Syrensyr already plans for war with Eternity.

We go now to one who is willing to burn it all down.

Story 3 - A Time for Burning

When the door finally opened, Scout City Sheriff Ignatius Thorpe was not surprised to find that the dead girl herself was the one who answered it. The Riot Maidstone who had mysteriously reappeared after a decade and a half absent had thick stitches, much like any of the undead scarecrows that stalked around Scout City.

“Ignatius, I’m sorry, we’re all out of our quota for strangers pounding on our door today,” she said, and began to close it, but his boot swung swiftly into the gap.

“A word,” he said, tilting his head. He still wore Virgil’s white cowboy hat; he fancied that he had had to grow into it quickly over the past weeks.

“You have a warrant?” Riot said, relaxing her grip on the door, and Ignatius stepped inside. He expected that was a joke of some kind, and ignored it. The front door to the Groundskeeping office opened to a landing and walkway that circled around the middle of the room, which was sunk ten feet into the floor. At the meeting table down there he could see Arnold Eggers, looking the same bug-eyed amount of stupid as he had in class at Downing Hill, and Harrow Blackletter, who had found someone new to play teacher’s pet to. It was amazing how every nuisance that he knew kept collecting in all the same places. All eyes were trained on him as he came to stand in the Groundskeeping office’s lobby, and stared at Riot.

“This has gone far enough,” he said. “It’s time to call it off.”

Riot looked to her companions and then back to him, trying not to betray her obvious guilt.

“I’m sorry?”

“Oh please,” he said, crossing his arms. “Scout City Goes to War? The Scout City Sheriff’s department hasn’t approved that, and neither has Mayor Valerie.”

“Let’s be honest, you’re not here because of Mayor Valerie,” Riot said, an eyebrow raised. He scowled at that, but she continued. “Listen, Nate. I’m not telling anyone to go with me tonight. They’re coming of their own free will, because they hate what happened to Virgil and they’re going to bring the ones who did this to justice. Isn’t that what you want too?”

“You…” Ignatius said, fists curling at his sides, and they sparked with invisible heat before he cooled. Just get through this, he told himself. When he could compose his words, he tried again. “Your job in this city is to plant flowers and pick up dog shit, and maybe if a Sleeper stumbles out of Lurch Lake you put it back to bed so we at the Sheriff's department don’t have to trouble ourselves. We are the protectors of Scout City, and when it goes to war, it’s my department. I and my deputies are going to put Cole in the ground. Not next to Virgil, but in a ditch. But that’s for us to do. We’re trained for the worst. You’ve got an angry mob. And you’re going to put all their lives at risk by walking them into the Quartet’s open arms.”

“Frankly I wasn’t sure you even believed in the Quartet,” Riot said, eyes narrowed. “Great. Well, here’s the thing. If you were going to do something about it, you could have done that anytime in the last like two weeks. Scout City wants this over with, and if you won’t do anything about it, they will. We will.”

She nodded to Arnold and Harrow, who nodded back, somewhat less resolutely. Ignatius was ready to boil, but he grit his teeth. Keep the lid on a little longer, he thought.

“You, and whoever goes with you, will be blatantly in violation of Scout City law. You’ve been told. You’ve been warned.”

Riot tilted her head, and he hated that there was half of a grin on her face.

“Are you threatening us?” she said. “For doing your job?”

Ignatius stared at her for a moment, eyes sparking.

“Do it,” he said. “Try it. See what happens.”

And with that, he turned, and left the Groundskeeping office, door ajar, and stormed out into the Lower Trunk district street.

“Hey,” Riot called out after him. “Next time would you bring a Good Cop?”

Burn, he thought. I couldn’t have set it up better myself than the way you have. You’ll go out, and all the monsters with you, and you all will be out there with the Quartet. And who is to say, in the blaze that is coming, what kind of monster each person was, a killer or a dead girl walking. All that will be true, when tonight’s firestorm is past, is that all of Scout City’s killers, and its degenerates, its undead abominations, will all be gone. And the Scout City Sheriff’s Department will burn its brand on a new era for Scout City: an age of order.

Outro - Attachments

Attachments. Like it or not, dreamer, you and I are, too, bound. I speak, and my voice carries into dream. But if your mind was not open to it, if you did not allow your dreams of these strange woods to carry through your nights, then you might have stopped listening a long time ago, and my voice would be for nought. It is an unusual thing—most Indescribable beings, where they deign to touch organic life, grant them infusions of great power that alter their bloodline forever.

I have no great gifts for you; only words. Words that say that you may not be loved, but if you are not, seek it and you shall find it. Words that say that home is wherever you decide to stay. Words that say that no matter what comes, however vast the darkness, know that there is always hope, glinting like a pinhead in the endless expanse. Words that say until you stop listening, dreamer, I am your loyal host Nikignik, waiting anxious-avoidantly for your return to the Hallowoods.

The bonus story that goes with this episode is called 'Two Horsemen' 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, if you just can’t get it to stick, try flexo-tape. Flexo-tape can patch two halves of a boat together. Flexo-tape can patch two halves of a broken marriage together. Flexo-tape can patch two halves of a human body together. Flexo-tape.