Speaker 1: M twelve Ghosts is a production of I Heeart three
Speaker 1: D audio and grimm and mild from Aaron Manky Headphones.
Speaker 1: Recommended listener discretion advised. Blow blow thou winter wind. Thou
Speaker 1: art not so unkind as man's ingratitude. Thy tooth is
Speaker 1: not so keen, because thou art not seen, although thy
Speaker 1: breath be rude. When I was a boy, my father
Speaker 1: had a large velvet wingback chair in his study. I
Speaker 1: would sneak in sometimes, specially in midwinter, when the darkness
Speaker 1: and the cold crept in early, and I'd curl up
Speaker 1: in that chair. The warmth of it, the comfort a
Speaker 1: cocoon holding a little boy waiting to transform. That is
Speaker 1: what we seek in the midwinter, a cozy spot to
Speaker 1: wait in while we transform ourselves. Did it work after
Speaker 1: a fashion? It's not true. You know that people can't change,
Speaker 1: They just do it very slowly. We change inch by
Speaker 1: inch over the course of years. The wild passion of
Speaker 1: youth mellows into a sort of patience. We don't notice
Speaker 1: the slow change in others because we travel at the
Speaker 1: same speed, all of us, over the course of a life,
Speaker 1: and so we just assumed that people are static, immovable,
Speaker 1: when I picture myself as very young, I do not
Speaker 1: recognize that boy. He's as far gone as anyone I've lost.
Speaker 1: What of grief? Does that not change us? In one
Speaker 1: great motion? Mm hmm, oh, mine the time, the time? Hello,
Speaker 1: young man, we've been expecting you. Hi. I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I'm in the right place. I think I'm lost. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think you're right where you need to be. Come
Speaker 1: have a saint with Annabelle. H What is it, Lad?
Speaker 1: You look like you've seen a ghost. It's just I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I thought she was someone else for a moment. I'm
Speaker 1: just me sit, have something to drink, warm up. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry you look a lot like her who It's kind
Speaker 1: of a long story. You seem to be in the
Speaker 1: right place. She's right, glad, we have nothing but time
Speaker 1: tell us about her. I was ten when she first
Speaker 1: came to me. She was just there when my mom
Speaker 1: put out the lights one night, leaving my room after
Speaker 1: tucking me in. I first I thought it was a
Speaker 1: trick of a light. You know, the neighbors next door
Speaker 1: they had these Christmas lights and they'd blink. The stripes
Speaker 1: of her dress were all black and white. I thought
Speaker 1: it was just the shadow of the blinds flashing on
Speaker 1: and then off, on and then off. But when the
Speaker 1: lights disappeared, she didn't. She lingered watching me, and I
Speaker 1: just stared at the shapes of her, the parts I
Speaker 1: could make out. She wasn't fully there. It was like
Speaker 1: a double exposure photograph or a bunch of slides that
Speaker 1: get jammed in the carousel. Flash of light and I
Speaker 1: made at her chest. Lights go off, She's still there,
Speaker 1: gangly arms blink again. She has a frown. Those eyes
Speaker 1: and their running mess care that didn't drip or move.
Speaker 1: I'd look from the window to her. I wasn't scared
Speaker 1: of her at first. I was just trying to make
Speaker 1: it all out magic eide view master. Her hair was
Speaker 1: like Peter Pan or Dorothy Hamill. When Peter Pan comes
Speaker 1: to your window. You're not in danger, you're not haunted,
Speaker 1: you're not cursed, You're just special. Stories taught me that
Speaker 1: the world just opens its magic to you at some point,
Speaker 1: and I thought this was my turn. Looking back, I
Speaker 1: guess it was. The stripes were kind of cool on her,
Speaker 1: like these diagonals. I love diagonals. I was just frozen
Speaker 1: in my bed watching her. I kept waiting for something
Speaker 1: to start. I didn't want to talk first. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to be the one to interrupt what was happening.
Speaker 1: I was scared she'd disappear and never come back, that
Speaker 1: this was all I'd get. And I was also so eager.
Speaker 1: I was shape a king. Her mouth opened just a
Speaker 1: little bit, but instead of a whisper, there was this screech,
Speaker 1: a metal on metal scraping, like like school bus breaks.
Speaker 1: It rang in my ears. It shook my spine, and
Speaker 1: I closed my eyes to shut it out. I opened
Speaker 1: them again, and I was in a big, old department store.
Speaker 1: The lady was with me, smiling and holding my hand,
Speaker 1: and we were rushing past all these toys, train sets
Speaker 1: and stuffed bears and Christmas trees. She wouldn't let go
Speaker 1: of my hand, and I couldn't keep up with her.
Speaker 1: For heels clicked fast on the tile, past the crowds,
Speaker 1: other families sorting through red dresses, points set us ladies
Speaker 1: spritzing passers by with perfume. I could smell it. It
Speaker 1: hung in the air. I wanted to sit down, I
Speaker 1: wanted to stay still. The lady and the stripes wouldn't
Speaker 1: stop for me, though she just kept tugging. I planted
Speaker 1: my feet. She opened her mouth again. This time she
Speaker 1: had a voice, a normal voice. We're going to miss it,
Speaker 1: she said, you need to get in line. I didn't
Speaker 1: feel like moving. The lady just picked me up like
Speaker 1: it was nothing. Click click, click, and everything in the
Speaker 1: place moved past me. I closed my eyes again, hoping
Speaker 1: to will myself awake. If I was dreaming, I wanted
Speaker 1: it to stop. I just like I wanted to be
Speaker 1: where I wanted to be, only that I wanted to rest.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to hurry. I opened my eyes and
Speaker 1: I saw this pigs face. It had eyelashes, and it
Speaker 1: was flying in the air above me. No, I swear
Speaker 1: a giant pig was smiling at me, and it squealed
Speaker 1: and squealed that same metallic noise. It was morning then,
Speaker 1: and I jumped out of bed. I ran to my
Speaker 1: mom's room and I told her about my night. It
Speaker 1: sounds like you had a really bad dream, she said
Speaker 1: to me, rubbing my shoulders. Didn't you watch the Muppets
Speaker 1: last night? This wasn't a muppet, mommy. This was great,
Speaker 1: big and it could fly. Miss Piggy can fly, she
Speaker 1: said to me. Teasing. No, she doesn't. Miss Piggy doesn't fly. Yeah, huh,
Speaker 1: she does, she said back to me. Miss Piggy flew
Speaker 1: and she was on that motorcycle and went through that
Speaker 1: stained glass window. It wasn't like that, I said, that
Speaker 1: was just a movie, and she flies all the time
Speaker 1: when she's in space. I just sighed and went to
Speaker 1: the kitchen for some cereal. I hated when adults wouldn't listen.
Speaker 1: The only thing she said about the Black and White
Speaker 1: lady was that we should maybe start using my night
Speaker 1: light again. My mom never took me on adventures. She
Speaker 1: never took me shopping much, not that I can remember.
Speaker 1: She'd go for groceries while I was in school, or
Speaker 1: she'd just leave me in the car. If she needed
Speaker 1: to run inside to grab something, she just cracked a window.
Speaker 1: You could do that back then. We lived in a
Speaker 1: small town outside Birmingham. I'd only seen stores like the
Speaker 1: ones from my dreams in the movies, but there was
Speaker 1: never a flying pig. The next night, I was pretty
Speaker 1: much home alone. The neighbor girl would occasionally come by
Speaker 1: and check on me, make sure the house wasn't on fire.
Speaker 1: Mom had arranged it. I think Mom was working. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I was watching TV, and you know, I
Speaker 1: was laying right in front of it, between it and
Speaker 1: the Christmas tree. There was no one around to tell
Speaker 1: me i'd go blind. Oh wait, Before I watched TV,
Speaker 1: I did check my room to see if that lady
Speaker 1: was standing there, but she wasn't there anyway. So the
Speaker 1: only thing on was the Andy Griffith Show, so I
Speaker 1: was only half watching it and doing a word search.
Speaker 1: And then I wanted some coke, so I pushed myself
Speaker 1: up by my elbows and I rolled like accidentally into
Speaker 1: the Christmas tree. Like five ornaments just crashed down off
Speaker 1: of it. Aluminum balls and glass stars just raining down
Speaker 1: on me, and I flinched, bracing for the whole tree
Speaker 1: to come down, but it didn't. I stood up more
Speaker 1: carefully and I checked out the damage. Most of the
Speaker 1: ornaments were fine, so I put them back on the
Speaker 1: empty branches except one of them. One of the glass
Speaker 1: stars had shattered into little red shards all over the
Speaker 1: tile by the front door. I don't know how it
Speaker 1: got that far from the tree. I went to the kitchen,
Speaker 1: grabbed a dust pan and a broom tried to clean
Speaker 1: up the mess. I even put it in the garbage outside.
Speaker 1: That way, I left no trace for mom to find.
Speaker 1: I was nervous, but the neighbor girl didn't see me
Speaker 1: run out her back. She wasn't watching. Then I went
Speaker 1: into the hall closet to get a replacement ornament from
Speaker 1: out of the box of Christmas stuff, but there weren't
Speaker 1: any more red glass stars in the box. As I
Speaker 1: tugged through it, I reached down into it and I
Speaker 1: felt something cold and a little heavier. Taking it out
Speaker 1: of the box. It was a ceramic ornament. It was
Speaker 1: that pink pig, its eyelashes painted on its ceramics, snout
Speaker 1: and mouth molded into a smile. A name was painted
Speaker 1: on a jingle bell collar around its neck, Priscilla. The
Speaker 1: door to the closet shut behind me, and I was
Speaker 1: in the dark. I heard that squeal again, and I
Speaker 1: was back in that dream. The black and white lady
Speaker 1: was watching me, smiling, but I was away from her
Speaker 1: this time. I had a slip of paper in my hand.
Speaker 1: Hi Jacob, she said, Wave Jacob, but that's not my name.
Speaker 1: I was being crowled with a bunch of other little
Speaker 1: kids into this. It was like a dangling cage someone
Speaker 1: took the paper from me and just shuffled me into
Speaker 1: this metal tube. Around me were all these toddlers wearing
Speaker 1: red coats and bows, and there was this piped inversion
Speaker 1: of jingle bells. All the grown ups were just watching us,
Speaker 1: and the black and white lady waved at me, and
Speaker 1: they slid closed the doors to the cage, and I
Speaker 1: grabbed onto the grates on the windows. Everything was pink.
Speaker 1: I looked in front of me and I saw the
Speaker 1: side of that pink pig's face, those eyelashes. Me and
Speaker 1: the other kids were just inside of her metal guts trapped.
Speaker 1: And then we started moving. We were dangling, flying. I
Speaker 1: looked out the window and we were flying over all
Speaker 1: of these toys. At first, there were train sets. There
Speaker 1: were painted clowns all along the walls. There were signs
Speaker 1: with the pig's face on it, Priscilla, the pink pig.
Speaker 1: Priscilla the pink Pig. All the other kids seemed fine.
Speaker 1: As we flew around the room. I closed my eyes again.
Speaker 1: I tried to make it stop. The squeal of metal
Speaker 1: hit my ears, though, and I felt this chill. Either
Speaker 1: it went down my spine or it was in the air.
Speaker 1: I opened my eyes and I put my hand on
Speaker 1: the metal grate. We weren't flying over toys anymore. Some
Speaker 1: kids were yelling. We were outside in the chilly air,
Speaker 1: flying around a giant Christmas tree. I looked all around me,
Speaker 1: and I saw all these buildings and the sky. I'd
Speaker 1: never seen these buildings before. It wasn't burning him. Nothing
Speaker 1: was familiar. As far as I could tell. We were
Speaker 1: so high up, dangling inside this pig. I know it
Speaker 1: sounds crazy. I looked down and I could see city
Speaker 1: streets below. People looked smaller than ants. And then that
Speaker 1: horrible squeal happened again. And then the door to the
Speaker 1: closet flew open, and my mom asked me what I
Speaker 1: was doing there in the dark. Why would you sleep
Speaker 1: in the closet, She asked me, come out here. I
Speaker 1: let go of the pig ornament, leaving it on the floor,
Speaker 1: and I crawled out of the closet. I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: don't know what happened. I said to her, when did
Speaker 1: you get back. I've been looking for you all over
Speaker 1: the house for ten minutes. She said, I need your
Speaker 1: help getting the groceries out of the car. The next morning,
Speaker 1: Mom told me to get dressed. She had library books
Speaker 1: to return. If I hurried, I could go with her
Speaker 1: and get some chapter books. I liked Beverly Cleary, the
Speaker 1: Henry Huggins stuff. I was looking through the kids department.
Speaker 1: The staff knew me there. Mom went to look at
Speaker 1: the newspapers and the Mr. Books. I asked the librarian
Speaker 1: if she had any books about Priscilla the pink pig.
Speaker 1: You mean Petunia, she asked me, No, ma'am. I said,
Speaker 1: Priscilla the pink pig. I think it can fly or something.
Speaker 1: She looked at me, weird, you mean that Dumbo looking
Speaker 1: thing in Atlanta. I don't know. I guess that ain't
Speaker 1: a book, she said. Did you all go to Richards
Speaker 1: or something to see Santa Riches? I asked her the
Speaker 1: fancy department store over in Georgia. Librarian lady said, the
Speaker 1: place with the coconut cake and the big tree and
Speaker 1: that kid's pig train that glides on a rail every Christmas.
Speaker 1: My husband took me to see the tree lighting last Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: It was crowded, but the choirs were good. I've never
Speaker 1: been to Atlanta, I told the lady. The train has
Speaker 1: a face like Dumbo, except with a snout instead of
Speaker 1: a trunk. She said, because we're Southern. I guess what
Speaker 1: do you mean a rail? I started to ask her
Speaker 1: does it chug or does it fly? That's when I
Speaker 1: noticed Mom was standing over me. She told me it
Speaker 1: was time to go. I told her I hadn't picked
Speaker 1: any books out yet, but she told me we had
Speaker 1: to go and that I should make decisions faster. Mom
Speaker 1: didn't have any books either, but she headed to the car.
Speaker 1: Her whole mood had changed. She put me to bed
Speaker 1: early that night, but in the dark of my room
Speaker 1: I could still see the black and white lady watching
Speaker 1: me as the Christmas lights would flash through the blinds.
Speaker 1: My name isn't Jacob, I whispered to her, My name is.
Speaker 1: Outside the door, I could hear my mother talking on
Speaker 1: the phone. Mom had that tone she gets, the one
Speaker 1: where she acts like nothing's bothering her when something is.
Speaker 1: The black and white lady raised her arm. She pointed
Speaker 1: her finger at my bedroom door. I got out of
Speaker 1: bed and put my ear to it. I listened to
Speaker 1: what Mom was saying. She was talking to my aunt Carol,
Speaker 1: but I could only hear my mom. Did you see
Speaker 1: that she killed herself this weekend. Oh but it was
Speaker 1: in yesterday's paper. I ripped out the whole page. The
Speaker 1: library gets it here. They declared Jacob legally dead last week,
Speaker 1: seven years without a trace. I guess no, I don't
Speaker 1: feel bad about it, Carol, He's mine. She wasn't even
Speaker 1: watching him that day. She was shopping for purses. We
Speaker 1: walked out of there before she even noticed the train
Speaker 1: was back. She did it to be with her sons,
Speaker 1: supposedly reunited in heaven. I heard my mom laugh, like
Speaker 1: actually laugh. Good luck finding him there. I turned away
Speaker 1: from the door. The black and white lady just stared
Speaker 1: at me, and I stared back. Some nights, even now,
Speaker 1: especially this time of year, I see the black and
Speaker 1: white lady. She still tries to touch me, but I'm
Speaker 1: out of reach. Oh oh no, you've felt a pull
Speaker 1: towards her your whole life, haven't you. You've come a
Speaker 1: very long way this night, lad. Perhaps you would like
Speaker 1: to rest, Yes, I think I would. Eight room on
Speaker 1: the left, just up the stairs there. Perhaps you'll see
Speaker 1: her in your dreams, Yes, that would be nice. Good night, Annabelle,
Speaker 1: Good night, sir, good night. Sleep well. Has she passed
Speaker 1: through here? M hm, not that I've seen, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. They'll find each other. Love finds her way.
Speaker 1: Twelve Ghosts starring Malcolm McDowell as the Innkeeper and Gina
Speaker 1: Rikiki as Annabelle. Episode eight, The Pink Pig written by
Speaker 1: Benjamin Carr with additional writing by Nicholas Takowski, editing by
Speaker 1: Chris Childs and Stephen Perez, featuring Pat Young as Jacob.
Speaker 1: Directed by Nicolas Takowski. Original score and sound design by
Speaker 1: Chris Childs. Executive producers Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alexander Williams
Speaker 1: and Nicholas Takowski. Supervising producer Josh Staine. Producers Chris Childs
Speaker 1: and Stephen Perez. Casting by Sunday Bowling c s A
Speaker 1: and Meg Mormon c s A. Production coordinator Wayna Calderon.
Speaker 1: Recorded at Lantern Audio in Atlanta, Georgia, engineered by Chris Gardner,
Speaker 1: Aeros Sound and Recording in Ojai, California, engineered by Ken Arros.
Speaker 1: Twelve Ghosts was created by Nicholas Takowski and is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeart three D Audio and Grim and Mild
Speaker 1: from Aaron Manky. Learn more about the show at Grim
Speaker 1: and mild dot com and find more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: heart Radio by visiting the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H