Speaker 1: M thirteen days of Halloween is from Grimm and mild
Speaker 1: blumhouse and I heeart. Three D audio headphones recommended. Listener
Speaker 1: discretion advised. Oh, you are right. Yes, just the bells
Speaker 1: startled me and are familiar. Good, I'm glad to hear. Oh,
Speaker 1: perhaps they and the pastor gave you is clearing up
Speaker 1: the fog. Yes, you're noticing the graveyard. Yes, I I'm
Speaker 1: drawn to it. What. Nothing. Nothing. I'm glad. If it
Speaker 1: scratches an itch. Would you like to walk in? Have
Speaker 1: a Loa, sure, AH, after you. Over here, to your
Speaker 1: right is the oldest portion of the graveyard, the only
Speaker 1: part of town older really than the church. This is
Speaker 1: where some of the builders were buried as they died
Speaker 1: that first winter building the holy structure, those that were
Speaker 1: still members of the faith. Of course, there's an underground
Speaker 1: river that runs far below this spot, and as their
Speaker 1: bodies rocks, it carries them to the ocean to be
Speaker 1: with the father in the sea. Lovely. No, why don't
Speaker 1: they just give them a burial at sea? Well, that
Speaker 1: right is reserved only for our saints, those whom the
Speaker 1: Father Calls too loudly enough for the others to hear. See,
Speaker 1: think of this burial as sort of a purgatory. We
Speaker 1: dissolve into the earth over time, enter the water table
Speaker 1: and it cleanses us before returning US home. I see,
Speaker 1: is someone else here? M Hmm, I don't know. Let's see. Hello, hello, hello,
Speaker 1: perhaps it's the dead. It's a joke. Oh, who's there then?
Speaker 1: Two pilgrows? You here to see someone in particular? Are
Speaker 1: you just window shopping? MM HMMMM, are you? Stop? Stop
Speaker 1: right there, miss m sorry about that. You just can't.
Speaker 1: Are you unwell? M H in a sense, death is
Speaker 1: a trickster. I know because I was playing it's game.
Speaker 1: I know from after what happened to this town and
Speaker 1: what happened to poor Alice. There's no man in the cloth.
Speaker 1: But I worked for one year. It's been a grave
Speaker 1: digger over thirty years and put more folks in the
Speaker 1: ground than I can remember. So, as you could say,
Speaker 1: as affiliated used to be, you could put a person
Speaker 1: in the ground, rattle off a few prayers, tip your
Speaker 1: capitaries and glass to the dearly departed. Not No more.
Speaker 1: Need the lighthouse. Over there you'll find a cliff hundred
Speaker 1: and thirteen foot dropped down to the cove where the
Speaker 1: ship had wrecked. That day, same day death started playing pranks.
Speaker 1: We formed a rescue party. Scaled the cliffs down to
Speaker 1: the rocks below. Looked like a small transport vessel. The
Speaker 1: riptide had hammered her against the rock so over and
Speaker 1: over till there were nothing but splinters and oil all
Speaker 1: along the cove. Most of them bodies was already buried
Speaker 1: neath the sand and seaweed. Some crabs got to them
Speaker 1: before we could, so there weren't much left of them boys,
Speaker 1: just skulls and cartilage, white flesh dangling off the skeletons
Speaker 1: like little flags flapping in the wind. Except one fellow.
Speaker 1: Followed a trail on the black sand along the coved
Speaker 1: weight collapsed. The Gulls was on umn and nearly pecked
Speaker 1: his ears clean off. He's gashed and gnarled from a
Speaker 1: reef too. Blood everywhere. I think it was porter, John Porter.
Speaker 1: He was the first to get close to the poor bastard.
Speaker 1: Porter checked for a beaten heart. M He's alive, still alive,
Speaker 1: port calls out, and then all of a sudden a
Speaker 1: man's arms shot up, clutched old porter by the collar
Speaker 1: brought him down to his crusted lips so he could
Speaker 1: whisper in his hair. Poor soul managed to get a
Speaker 1: few words out so John could hear a final breath,
Speaker 1: but gurgled up to the salt water and sand and
Speaker 1: has collapsed long. Don't put me down there, don't put
Speaker 1: me under. The man wheezed and then he was out.
Speaker 1: Died right then and there, still clinging the John Porter's coat.
Speaker 1: There was talk of sinking him. I wouldn't have it.
Speaker 1: Neither man deserves a proper areal. I says. Being a
Speaker 1: grave digger means I'm of the business of the church
Speaker 1: here and as such, well as no shepherd, mind yee.
Speaker 1: But in the absence of any clergyman on the blood
Speaker 1: soiled beach that day, it figured. As next in command,
Speaker 1: we managed to hoist the dead man to the top.
Speaker 1: I've dug the grave foreverend came gave us a sermon
Speaker 1: for the unknown fellow about how it could have been
Speaker 1: any one of us. So we're all God's children and
Speaker 1: soul well, we laid that man down to rest and
Speaker 1: that was that, or so we thought. Porter got the
Speaker 1: deeper first John Porter. He'd gone back down to the
Speaker 1: mill to make up for his shift with the six
Speaker 1: set in. Next day his skin started turning black and
Speaker 1: flesh from bleeding inside. By Day three he was bleeding
Speaker 1: on the outside, and by the morning of day four
Speaker 1: he stopped bleeding because his heart stopped pumping. At least.
Speaker 1: They couldn't find no pulse. So as I dug another grave,
Speaker 1: then them others from the mill got the fever. Had
Speaker 1: to dig three more graves that Sunday. Next day, seven
Speaker 1: more holes. My hands were so sore from digging I
Speaker 1: had to soak them the buckets of salt water and ice.
Speaker 1: Then them government man came down from the bureau. Said
Speaker 1: we needed to dig up the first man and the
Speaker 1: one we'd collected from the shipwreck. They brought a medical
Speaker 1: examiner with them to do the Autopsyne so as I
Speaker 1: dug him up, pried open his casket. Of course, that's
Speaker 1: when we noticed the marks, terrible scrapes and gougers and
Speaker 1: the coffined lid, finger nails ripped off and embedded in
Speaker 1: the pine. Turns out that man weren't dead when we
Speaker 1: put him under. Poor bastard woke up down there no
Speaker 1: escape from the dark and the cold, no ways out
Speaker 1: of the tight confines of his two by six box,
Speaker 1: no telling how long before he ran out of breath.
Speaker 1: Government man said it was happening all other places too.
Speaker 1: showed US them headlines. People fallen into a coma like state.
Speaker 1: Death was full in them doctors into thinking these poor
Speaker 1: bastards passed dawn ye here. And when them graves was
Speaker 1: unearthed and them container's pride open, they found grisly evidence
Speaker 1: of mistakenly buried victims, their frantic attempts to escape the casket,
Speaker 1: and so on. GENEVIEVE was next. GENEVIEVE sellers, she's head
Speaker 1: nurse up at the infirmary. Took a quick she's presumed dead.
Speaker 1: The very next day the whole town gathered for her funeral.
Speaker 1: That's when it happened. The Reverend was halfway through the observance,
Speaker 1: mid prayer. Grant to the souls of all our faithful departed,
Speaker 1: your mercy, and so on. Father, we pray that genevieve
Speaker 1: sellers may know the blessings of everlasting life, life and
Speaker 1: so forth. Right then, old genevieve sellers sat up, sat
Speaker 1: right the funk up in a casket. Quarter of the
Speaker 1: congregation either wretched or fainted right where they stand. And
Speaker 1: my wife Alice. Well, she froze up to the fright
Speaker 1: overtook her, pure shock. I couldn't breathe neither. I had
Speaker 1: to shake her heart carried her all the way home.
Speaker 1: So it was decided on what had to be done.
Speaker 1: Ye here, and we proceeded to dig them other's arm
Speaker 1: the once. We just buried lucky them. Holes was fresh
Speaker 1: and the earth was loose, and sure enough, quarter of
Speaker 1: them bore the signs, the Tell Tale marks of premature burial.
Speaker 1: Fingers gnarled to the bone of trying to claw their
Speaker 1: way out of them boxes, their faces stretched in terror,
Speaker 1: their eyes fixed and permanent, anguished, and I knew death
Speaker 1: was near. And John The show its jow's Ratlin laughter.
Speaker 1: I could almost hear its hands clacking together in cruel applause,
Speaker 1: because that's when the panics set in, every one overcome
Speaker 1: with the fear that they might meet the same fate
Speaker 1: like a fungus spreading out across the village. Constant state
Speaker 1: of terror like that can damage the spirit of a
Speaker 1: town like cowers, and it did. The fear crept into
Speaker 1: my own house too. Jove valance completely mad. First she
Speaker 1: got restless, stop sleeping, stopped eating too poor sweet alice
Speaker 1: became obsessed. The unholy terror of being buried alive slithered
Speaker 1: in her brain like a nest of worms. I gave
Speaker 1: her medicine to knock her out and woke to the
Speaker 1: sound of her wheezing and choking in her dreams, like
Speaker 1: she was suffocating. She's clawing at the darkness just an
Speaker 1: inch from her face, like as though she's trapped. I
Speaker 1: jostled her and she woke up with a start, sucking
Speaker 1: in a deeper igged breath, like she's broken through to
Speaker 1: the surface from the watery depths after almost drowning. After
Speaker 1: them tears, she'd start to Weil, sobbing into the night.
Speaker 1: Of course. That's when the fever set into so that
Speaker 1: built her special box, a casket with a little pool
Speaker 1: stringle that run up to an eight foot poll all
Speaker 1: the way up to a pretty silver bell above ground,
Speaker 1: a safety device in case she's put down premature so
Speaker 1: she could just pull the cord and ring the bell
Speaker 1: for to signal us if she weren't all dead. When
Speaker 1: I showed it to her, she nodded real polite like
Speaker 1: and thanked me, the corners of her mouth uncoiled in
Speaker 1: that pretty smile of hers, just at her far away stare.
Speaker 1: That night she doused herself at linseed oil and try
Speaker 1: to burn herself alive. I walked in on her. She's
Speaker 1: trying frantic light to strike the wet match. Next Day
Speaker 1: her fever was burned and hot and her fingers was black.
Speaker 1: MAG sertain, she says, I'm dead. If I fixed me,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't box killy. Promise you will if he loved me,
Speaker 1: if you really I would love me. Thems were her
Speaker 1: last words. I couldn't do it, though. How could? I
Speaker 1: am now? That's when I noticed I's hot with fever too.
Speaker 1: I carried Alice in me arms and lay there on
Speaker 1: that stone slab over there. Picked all the buttery weed
Speaker 1: from them woods, collected all the column mine and maiden
Speaker 1: hair fern from the cliffs and I surrounded her lifeless
Speaker 1: body with bouquets of them wild flowers. Figured I should
Speaker 1: wait a turn before putting poor alice in the earth.
Speaker 1: Waiter spell and see if she don't come back to me.
Speaker 1: And I waited till the night air filled with that
Speaker 1: sickly sweetness. I still waiting and taking diggin up all
Speaker 1: the mothers we buried just to make sure they ain't
Speaker 1: still breathing. Fever is set in full now. My brain
Speaker 1: it's boiling. I don't know if it's for me grieving,
Speaker 1: nor the fever. My eyes is a blur now. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's swore, my tears or lack of sleep.
Speaker 1: My hands is black now. I couldn't tell you if
Speaker 1: they're staying from the soil or if he's black from
Speaker 1: the sick. Alice has been lying on that slab for
Speaker 1: a long time now too. I think she's gone. I
Speaker 1: can't be too sure. Now I can't tell the essence
Speaker 1: of mortal decave a cent to them dead flowers. I
Speaker 1: don't know as was his actual no more. I don't
Speaker 1: know how long I've been here digging, neither. I don't
Speaker 1: remember how I come here, how to exit. I don't
Speaker 1: know whether I'm even living anymore at all. Like I says,
Speaker 1: death is a trickster. Yeah, H well, I do hope
Speaker 1: you recover. Yeah, well, hear any bells ringing in here
Speaker 1: and you don't see me go fetch the pastor got it?
Speaker 1: M Hm, of course. Shall We? Yes, have a good day, sir. MHM.
Speaker 1: This way. Will he be all right? The father gives
Speaker 1: and the father takes back. Everything returns to him. Waits.
Speaker 1: What is it? I think? M H this this grave stone?
Speaker 1: What about it? It's familiar. MM HMM. Is it? I
Speaker 1: know it. The name George Barrow. MM HMMM. Well, does
Speaker 1: it mean anything to you? All right, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It just seems so weird. It's making my head hurt
Speaker 1: again to try to remember. Well then, maybe back off
Speaker 1: a little. It will come interesting. What just how the
Speaker 1: mind works? Don't thing. Who is George Barrow? He was
Speaker 1: a citizen. Did you know him? I know everyone. The
Speaker 1: moment has passed. It's gone, the feeling of familiarity. Well
Speaker 1: then it will come back come. I have stops to
Speaker 1: make to prepare for the gathering tonight. We must go
Speaker 1: by the butcher and a warning. If he offers you samples, decline. Tomorrow,
Speaker 1: on thirteen days of Halloween, the butcher's shop nothing but
Speaker 1: glamor for everything that appears. No this, no matter what
Speaker 1: it is or what it looks like, or how much
Speaker 1: begs and pleads, even if it looks like someone you
Speaker 1: know or new, there's nothing there but unholy evil and death.
Speaker 1: Do you understand? No matter what, even if everything inside
Speaker 1: of you struggles with him, even if it's a child.
Speaker 1: Thirteen days of Halloween the Graveyard, starring Kathleen and Jimmy,
Speaker 1: Bethany and Lynde and Aileen Lloyd. Written by Dan Bush
Speaker 1: with addition nil material by Nicholas Takowski. Sound Design and
Speaker 1: mixing by Rima Il Kali, engineering by violent FERTZON, DUBWAY
Speaker 1: STUDIOS NEW YORK. Casting by Jessica Losa. Created by Matt
Speaker 1: Frederick and Alex Williams, with executive producer Aaron Manky. A
Speaker 1: production of I heart radio, grim and mild and BLUMHOUSE television.