Speaker 1: Thirteen days of Halloween is a production of I heart radio,
Speaker 1: Blumhouse television and grim and mild from Aaron mankey headphones recommended.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion advised. A welcome, my friend. Please come in.
Speaker 1: I Apologize For not guiding you here myself. I felt
Speaker 1: the need to prepare the space, as no one has
Speaker 1: entered this room for many, many years. Strange it was
Speaker 1: entirely devoid of dust, everything tidy and in the air
Speaker 1: it's a whiff of amber oil. The scent would emanate
Speaker 1: from this room whenever he was busy scrawling and transcribing.
Speaker 1: I feel this was the sanctum sanctorum. No one was
Speaker 1: allowed in this place but the architect, not even his
Speaker 1: own daughter. You see here, the stars became his dreams,
Speaker 1: the dreams became planned and the plants became this place.
Speaker 1: This is where the architect slowly and painstakingly conjured Hawthorne Manner.
Speaker 1: Now I have a feeling that this is where we
Speaker 1: will find our door. This is where it will end.
Speaker 1: You are dreaming, my friend. Are you all right? Always
Speaker 1: lead you look frail and lead you here. You look
Speaker 1: like here. Remind Yourself. Dreaming here is not advisable. This
Speaker 1: is a dream. Take care not to lose yourself. Remember
Speaker 1: my friend treat. There you are awake, and just in time.
Speaker 1: I imagine you have some questions the heart. First, when
Speaker 1: I was young, Halloween was my favorite holiday. I had
Speaker 1: these recurring nightmares about a witch. Remind Yourself, said the witch.
Speaker 1: This is a dream. I was frightened, but Halloween was
Speaker 1: the only night of the year when children could be
Speaker 1: out late. Our parents let us Rome as we wished,
Speaker 1: door to door through the neighborhood, dressed as ghosts and
Speaker 1: UNICORNS and vampires and princesses and astronauts and wholes. On
Speaker 1: every other night of the year we had to be
Speaker 1: home safe across the threshold of the doorway before the
Speaker 1: sun left the sky. But Halloween this neighborhood stretched for miles.
Speaker 1: You could walk an entire summer and never explore every
Speaker 1: side street, the circles, the dead ends. Some streets existed
Speaker 1: every day, others only on the day of your first kiss,
Speaker 1: others only at the hour of your first parent's death.
Speaker 1: And you can only find them a Chaus at night
Speaker 1: the Blue Stars show you. I will tell you a secret.
Speaker 1: When you see this neighborhood from above, the streets loop around.
Speaker 1: They form a pattern miles wide, visible only from the sky,
Speaker 1: and they have always led you here. Like all children,
Speaker 1: we lived in our own world, full of rituals, ruled
Speaker 1: by rumors, beset with secrets. Children know the things adults
Speaker 1: do not, and so we knew the house at the
Speaker 1: end of Ash Corn Lane, which we called witch house,
Speaker 1: was haunted. We saw the missing person notices at the
Speaker 1: end of the local news. We remembered how, once a year,
Speaker 1: a desk in the classrooms hat empty. We heard our
Speaker 1: parents arguing in hushed tones when they thought we were asleep.
Speaker 1: Children worshiped danger and love mystery most of all. We
Speaker 1: were eleven years old that Halloween, so we decided we
Speaker 1: would visit the witch house for ourselves. Remember we, like you,
Speaker 1: knew the stories. We, like you, were and no matter
Speaker 1: where we went, every street let us, like you, to
Speaker 1: this place and the things beneath it. We dared each other.
Speaker 1: The older children had all been to witch house, we knew,
Speaker 1: and while they didn't speak about it, we knew the
Speaker 1: house gave them some sort of treat. Children who went
Speaker 1: to witch house on Halloween seemed somehow blessed. The next year,
Speaker 1: one boy's mother recovered from cancer. One girl took first
Speaker 1: place in the science fair, the prize that came with
Speaker 1: a scholarship, ensuring her escape from our cursed, struggling town.
Speaker 1: The adults called these things miracles and hard work, but
Speaker 1: we knew the truth. The witch house was not like
Speaker 1: other houses. You could make a deal. In return, one
Speaker 1: of you would be tricked. We did not know more
Speaker 1: than that. We didn't know how many children this house
Speaker 1: might have taken. We were learning, in our way, to
Speaker 1: be adults, and this meant we were learning a certain
Speaker 1: kind of blindness. We, like our parents, never talked about
Speaker 1: the missing children. Ash Court Lane was on the far
Speaker 1: side of our neighborhood, a straight, unlit street limbed by
Speaker 1: overgrown lots and vacant houses. We walked under the Moon,
Speaker 1: which cast blue shadows all around us. The branches swayed
Speaker 1: in the evening wind like the hands of skeletal prisoners
Speaker 1: scratching against the sky, and the shadows of these branches
Speaker 1: swam belowt scuttling across the broken pavement, reaching for our feet.
Speaker 1: The street felt hungry and a silence fell upon us.
Speaker 1: The other avenues and lanes full of children and parents
Speaker 1: laughing house to house. It felt far away, a dream
Speaker 1: like the one you're having now. Soon, over the next
Speaker 1: rise we saw the house. The witch house stood an
Speaker 1: empty field at the end of a long driveway sloping upward.
Speaker 1: The house was old, so old that no one remembered
Speaker 1: when it had been built. It had somehow always been here.
Speaker 1: The weathered sighting and chipped Miss Match brick. Was it
Speaker 1: two stories, three? Surely it had a face man, we thought.
Speaker 1: How deep did it go? There was a tower in
Speaker 1: the witch house, a tower with a single oval window.
Speaker 1: And the story went on. One night a year you
Speaker 1: could see a blue light in the window, a candle
Speaker 1: flickering faint. This was the night the light shone, just
Speaker 1: visible from the edge of the driveway. The wind rose
Speaker 1: around us, the ghost of an ocean. The Front steps
Speaker 1: of the witch house seemed solid then, for than whatever
Speaker 1: weighted in the darkness. The five of US stood there
Speaker 1: in front of the heavy door the color of old
Speaker 1: burnished blood. At the top of the door an iron knocker,
Speaker 1: blue in the moonlight, rotten what must have once been
Speaker 1: a face. I touched the door, laid my palm flat
Speaker 1: against it. It hummed warm. Knock, said a kid. Knock
Speaker 1: on it. I stretched up on my toes and strained
Speaker 1: to lift the knocker. It swung along a rusted hinge.
Speaker 1: I dropped it and stepped away. As it slammed into place.
Speaker 1: The wind fell silent. I heard my heart beat, the
Speaker 1: echo of that knock, the slow rhythmic footsteps from somewhere
Speaker 1: inside the House and, like you now, on the edge
Speaker 1: of it all, I heard the song. It was like
Speaker 1: this dream you're having now. I tried to shout a
Speaker 1: low croak until the ritual kicked in and church tree.
Speaker 1: The door swung wide. I remembered how to scream. Wow.
Speaker 1: You may have seen the news later, a missing person's
Speaker 1: report running on the lower third of the local news,
Speaker 1: a notice in the paper below the fold between an
Speaker 1: op Ed and an advertisement. Life moved on one Halloween
Speaker 1: to the next. But what they don't tell you, what
Speaker 1: the children don't know, is what happens after the witch
Speaker 1: asse takes you. I awoke in here by this fireplace.
Speaker 1: I dreamed of this. I thought I should remind myself this.
Speaker 1: It's a dream. There you are, said the witch a
Speaker 1: week and just in time. It made me watch in
Speaker 1: the low light from the fire the witch opened a burlapsack.
Speaker 1: It pulled pieces of something from the sack and plopped
Speaker 1: them one by one into the cauldron over the fire.
Speaker 1: The witch spoke to me, as it did these things,
Speaker 1: and now I could not understand what it was saying.
Speaker 1: Its hand was on my mind, palm flat as my own,
Speaker 1: against the door. It held me there invisible bonds, like
Speaker 1: nails through my flesh, holding me to the chair. I
Speaker 1: felt the witch etched secrets one by one, like ragged,
Speaker 1: narrow fingernails scratching furrows in my brain. There is a
Speaker 1: darkness between the stars, the witch said, and all the
Speaker 1: world exists as a covenant between the darkness and the light.
Speaker 1: I felt the house, felt it through all time, all ages.
Speaker 1: I glimpsed its heart in a low cellar by an
Speaker 1: ancient spring, a blue pulsing stone I saw fallen here
Speaker 1: before the continent spilit. I saw the cave that grew
Speaker 1: around the stone, the blasphemies of the ancient things that
Speaker 1: worshiped it, exchanging souls for power and accordance with the stone.
Speaker 1: How it sang to them in the dark. I felt time,
Speaker 1: the horror of it. I saw the mound built over
Speaker 1: the cave and the bones buried within the teeth chattering
Speaker 1: still into the void. I saw a church built upon
Speaker 1: the Mount, a house built upon the Church and the
Speaker 1: House built upon the House. This place, whether cave or
Speaker 1: church or mansion, has always been the witch house, m
Speaker 1: guarding the song deep within its depths. Can you hear it?
Speaker 1: The stone is a song and it's also a door.
Speaker 1: When I was where you are dreaming now, I looked
Speaker 1: under the bed and I saw the face of every
Speaker 1: child taken. The last face I saw was my own.
Speaker 1: You will free me, the witch said, though it did
Speaker 1: not release me at first. For many years it made
Speaker 1: me watch what it did to the children. A tongue
Speaker 1: still squirming, cast in the cauldron to alleviate a stutter,
Speaker 1: brain sliced and Sauteed, eaten one piece at a time
Speaker 1: while chanting. I remb I remember. I remember. They restore
Speaker 1: an old woman's mind. Femurs and Shins snacked and charred
Speaker 1: to ensure the champions soccer player will not compete another secret.
Speaker 1: Children are the only ones that vanish at a town
Speaker 1: or searching for adventure, criminals on the lamb, the homeless
Speaker 1: man seeking shelter from the rain. They end up here
Speaker 1: with you in the hum one night, a night just
Speaker 1: like this one, the witch freed me from its invisible grip.
Speaker 1: It beckoned me towards the fire. I looked at my
Speaker 1: hands changed, my knuckles crusted with old blood, my finger
Speaker 1: nails long rag getting shut. I Walk gone suddenly on
Speaker 1: Unfamiliar Feet, Shuffling from one foot to the next. Do
Speaker 1: you remember your wish? said the witch. I stared into
Speaker 1: the cauldron, watching the bubble strifts slowly to the top
Speaker 1: of the stew. I don't remember, I said, my voice
Speaker 1: like a door knocker rusted from disuse. You are not
Speaker 1: that you you think you know, said the witch. You
Speaker 1: were only a story you told yourself in the dark.
Speaker 1: I know your wish, it said, as it was once
Speaker 1: my own, to escape, but you have always been here,
Speaker 1: it said. Each of these my entrails first, said the witch.
Speaker 1: Free me and I will grant your wish. The witch
Speaker 1: slid the Knight Cross itself and its bowels sank to
Speaker 1: the floor. It grabbed my neck and forced its mouth
Speaker 1: to mine and said you will always be here, and
Speaker 1: in this moment, I am free, and now you will
Speaker 1: know you are to become the witch and now, and now,
Speaker 1: you are here, as you always have been and always
Speaker 1: will be. Remind yourself this is a dream. Soon you
Speaker 1: will awake and, though you will wonder where you are,
Speaker 1: each moment after will bring you here, and soon I
Speaker 1: shall be free. Come join me at the fire. Take
Speaker 1: of these my entrails first, free me, and I will
Speaker 1: grant your wish. Take of me, next, my eyes, that
Speaker 1: you may see the path you walk. Take last of me,
Speaker 1: my tongue, that I tell you this, you will wake,
Speaker 1: you will live one moment to the next, and every
Speaker 1: path will lead you here. Tomorrow, tonight, a year from
Speaker 1: now or ten you are not that. You you are,
Speaker 1: and every step brings you closer to recognizing this place
Speaker 1: where you always were and always are, and in that
Speaker 1: moment you will realize wake up, friend, wake up. Did
Speaker 1: you see her? Did you see her this factor? Oh,
Speaker 1: you did, lucky you. We are close. Careful now, careful, good, good, good.
Speaker 1: Have you come around fully? Very few have encountered her
Speaker 1: and returned. You are still you? Yes, of course you are.
Speaker 1: I felt her presence here too. I saw her tell
Speaker 1: tale glow from under the bed. The architect referred to
Speaker 1: her as his muse, but, as you have seen, she
Speaker 1: is something else entirely. Now. Steady Yourself, I need your assistance. Movie.
Speaker 1: The bid a hatch in the floor. Yes, of course
Speaker 1: it was, unto the bed. Tomorrow, Tomorrow night, we shall
Speaker 1: open the hatcher descent. You've done it. I knew you would,
Speaker 1: and all without a single word. On the morrow, my
Speaker 1: dear friend, ascension awaits. I do not know what we
Speaker 1: will face in the depths, but we will face it
Speaker 1: bravely together, a dual mind, yours, friend, tomorrow, tomorrow we assent.
Speaker 1: Thirteen days of Halloween was created by Matt Frederick and
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and executive produced by Aaron Manky, starring Keegan
Speaker 1: Michael Key as the caretaker. The Day story was written
Speaker 1: by Ben Bolan, performed by Marissa grindstaff and directed by
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, with editing and sound designed by Miranda Hawkins,
Speaker 1: additional writing and script supervision from Nicholas Dakowski casting by
Speaker 1: Jessica loser. Only one day remains, tomorrow. Another story. And
Speaker 1: after countless sleepless months, oliver found it a forbidden ritual,
Speaker 1: recorded and lost language, to call forth an ancient entity,
Speaker 1: one with the power to shape time in space itself.
Speaker 1: At the appointed hour on the appointed night, the architect
Speaker 1: and Oliver cast a circle of obscure sitels. Together they
Speaker 1: read aloud the violent cantations. Together they spooned each other's
Speaker 1: blood and together they witnessed the apostile. Yeah. Yeah, thirteen
Speaker 1: days of Halloween is a production of I heart radio,
Speaker 1: Blumhouse television and Grimm and mild from Aaron Mankey. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart radio, visit the I heart
Speaker 1: radio APP, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows, and learn more about thirteen days of Halloween
Speaker 1: at Grimm and mild dot com.