Speaker 1: Hmm. Thirteen Days of Halloween Penance, a co production of
Speaker 1: iHeart three D Audio Blumhouse Television and Grim and Mild
Speaker 1: from Aaron Yankee. Headphones recommended Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 2: Hm hmmm, well someone here soon as an expect.
Speaker 3: No time to waste on the examination table. There prepper
Speaker 3: for treatment? Oh where am I?
Speaker 2: Where am I?
Speaker 1: Doctor?
Speaker 3: She's come to?
Speaker 1: Why can't I move?
Speaker 3: The application is already prepped? Am I in the hospital?
Speaker 3: The clinical make a fist for me? Why am I restrained?
Speaker 3: It's for your own safety, my safety.
Speaker 2: You could hurt yourself or someone else.
Speaker 3: Why would I do that?
Speaker 1: That's the single dose?
Speaker 3: What the fuck might be enough?
Speaker 2: Why did you just inject me?
Speaker 3: Huh? Why would you look at that?
Speaker 2: I believe she's already responding.
Speaker 3: Should it really be so fast acting?
Speaker 4: She probably hasn't aiden, But this one, too is a
Speaker 4: special case.
Speaker 2: What's happening? Well, missus Rodrige, that's not my name, that's
Speaker 2: not just remain coin.
Speaker 4: Everything will be much easier if you are cold.
Speaker 3: You give me tell me what are you seeing? What
Speaker 3: are you here? I think it could be sick.
Speaker 5: Maybe we gave her too much.
Speaker 2: Well, no science is exact.
Speaker 3: Let's give it a beat.
Speaker 2: Seven, Gatherine, can you.
Speaker 3: Talk her through it? What am I just relaxed?
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 2: Talk to Catherine right back to check on you.
Speaker 4: Could you imagine should be scheduled next week?
Speaker 3: First time? Where are you just the next bed over?
Speaker 3: How does it feel strange? I can't seem to focus. Yes,
Speaker 3: it does give one a bit of a tumble. Well,
Speaker 3: if you can listen to my voice while the worst
Speaker 3: of it passes, you'll be right asway against soon, though
Speaker 3: I suppose I should warn you I'm spectacularly tedious. Listen
Speaker 3: to me too long and you may end up quite
Speaker 3: literally bored to death. Who are you, oh, Catherine Sherwin?
Speaker 3: I'm a scholar of medieval theology. Sounds dreadful, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: I write books that no one reads, about books that
Speaker 3: no one has read. My specialty is since Anselm of
Speaker 3: Canterbury and the ontological argument? You familiar um? And why
Speaker 3: would you be? Anselm was a Catholic theologian of the
Speaker 3: eleventh century, a thundering, black habited engineer of the Arcanetus
Speaker 3: of God. Before he was my research subject, Anselm was
Speaker 3: a homegrown obsession of my father's yes, Dad, It was
Speaker 3: a bit of an amateur theologian himself. He spent so
Speaker 3: many hours pouring over Anselm, Augustine and that whole spectral
Speaker 3: faculty of god minded men from ages past. Of course,
Speaker 3: when I was a girl, I had about as much
Speaker 3: interest in all of that as I had in the
Speaker 3: design of seward rains. But I suppose death does have
Speaker 3: a way of rearranging one's engrossments. My father died when
Speaker 3: I was in my first year at university. He was alone,
Speaker 3: alone on one of his meditations, as he called them,
Speaker 3: hiking the peak of a mountain in Scotland called khn Aran.
Speaker 3: It was a heart attack, or so they assumed. But
Speaker 3: would you guess this, He did make it to the top.
Speaker 3: They found him there in the cold rocks, in the fog,
Speaker 3: as high as the mountain goes. I always liked that
Speaker 3: felled by his ambition, but he did make it all
Speaker 3: the way up. After he was gone, I found myself
Speaker 3: home for Christmas reading through the books and papers in
Speaker 3: his study. One story from a book on his desk
Speaker 3: that arrested my attention was about Saint Anselm's childhood. Apparently,
Speaker 3: as a young boy Anselm had met face to face
Speaker 3: with God himself, or so he said. The encounter took
Speaker 3: place on top of a mountain called Beccadinona, near his
Speaker 3: home town of Aosta in Italy. After the young Anselmo
Speaker 3: climbed the cliffs and scrambled over the ice and rocks
Speaker 3: to the summit, he was found by a wandering angel
Speaker 3: and ushered into the secret mansion of the Lord, where
Speaker 3: they welcomed him with a meal the bread of God.
Speaker 3: Now when I read this, I couldn't help but wonder
Speaker 3: if Daddy's solitary mountaintop journeys were all in the vain
Speaker 3: hope that he would one day stumble into the garden
Speaker 3: of a secret manner and be welcomed inside by a
Speaker 3: seraphic majordomo and taste the bread of God himself. After
Speaker 3: I uncovered this window into my father's obsession, I had
Speaker 3: to learn more about Anselm. It was in this that
Speaker 3: I first crossed paths with my life's work and Saint
Speaker 3: Anselm's most favorite invention, the ontological argument for the existence
Speaker 3: of God. Are you ready for me to prove it
Speaker 3: to you? The existence of God? Anselm says, if God exists.
Speaker 3: He is the great conceivable being. No being greater could
Speaker 3: be imagined. Now, I ask, would the greatest conceivable being
Speaker 3: be greater if it existed only in your mind? Or
Speaker 3: if it existed both in your mind and in reality.
Speaker 3: Surely if the being were real, it would be greater
Speaker 3: than if it were only imaginary. Therefore, the imaginary one
Speaker 3: is not the greatest. The real one is. Therefore, by definition,
Speaker 3: the greatest conceivable being must and does exist, not just
Speaker 3: in here but out there. Ah, I take it, you're
Speaker 3: not convinced. Some say the same form can be used
Speaker 3: to prove the existence of any silly thing, the most
Speaker 3: perfect island or the most perfect cup of laps and tea.
Speaker 3: But that first night, when I read the proof, I
Speaker 3: was flawed. It was late in the evening, and I
Speaker 3: was alone in his study, and everything was quiet except
Speaker 3: for the crackle of snow falling outside the window. I
Speaker 3: walked out into the night and let the snow fall
Speaker 3: on my face and melt on my skin. Every sensation
Speaker 3: was rapturous. The air around me was bursting with the
Speaker 3: life force of the presence previously unknown. I knew there
Speaker 3: was a God. I had absolute proof, and that knowledge
Speaker 3: meant I would one day see my father again. I
Speaker 3: slept fitfully that night, dreaming about strange clouds that gathered
Speaker 3: round a mountain top. When I woke in the morning,
Speaker 3: I ran to my father's study and read the ontological
Speaker 3: argument again. But something was wrong. The words were the same,
Speaker 3: but they lacked the force of certainty they had the
Speaker 3: night previous. To my horror, I was no longer persuaded.
Speaker 3: Instead of absolute proof, I was left with a humiliating
Speaker 3: sense of the hollowness of it all, like the whole
Speaker 3: thing had been a mere word game, some kind of
Speaker 3: clever trick of grammar. I couldn't say what was wrong
Speaker 3: with Anselm's argument, but it just didn't feel right at all.
Speaker 3: And that's where I stayed. For thirty years. I became
Speaker 3: a scholar of Saint Anselm. I under a professorship at Oxford, married,
Speaker 3: had children, sent them off to university to foster their
Speaker 3: own obsessions. I wrote several books about Anselm, dozens of
Speaker 3: articles on the subject of the ontological argument, its modern proponents,
Speaker 3: and so on and so on, bloody blaody blah. But
Speaker 3: as many in my profession know, though they dare not
Speaker 3: confess expertise has diminishing returns. In all all those years
Speaker 3: and through all that study, I never once again found
Speaker 3: what I was searching for that moment that night, where
Speaker 3: I knew in my bones the ontological argument was sound,
Speaker 3: and I knew he orri it was out there. This
Speaker 3: rather boring life of flapping dust jackets and compiling endnotes
Speaker 3: went on until one day, at an academic conference, I
Speaker 3: was approached by another professor, not of theology or medieval studies,
Speaker 3: but of biochemistry. I'd just given a presentation on modern
Speaker 3: challenges on the ontological argument, and she met me afterwards
Speaker 3: to see if I would like to chat over a
Speaker 3: cup of tea. Her name was Professor Raymond. She was
Speaker 3: a dashing woman with long black hair and livid eyes,
Speaker 3: and her attention was dangerously exciting. I could hardly say no.
Speaker 3: Raymard led me to a secluded corner in the college's library.
Speaker 3: Once we were snuggled away in our little den, to
Speaker 3: my astonishment, she narrated that she had one night long
Speaker 3: ago become absolutely convinced that the ontological argument had force,
Speaker 3: only to find upon waking the next morning that she
Speaker 3: was once again doubtful. But she had never been able
Speaker 3: to shake the memory of the Catharsis, the almost psychedelic
Speaker 3: arising to a second substance of life that came from
Speaker 3: that one night when it seemed true. Since then, she
Speaker 3: had thought about the argument every day, but with a
Speaker 3: different sort of lens than I had. Raymond asked me,
Speaker 3: suppose that.
Speaker 6: The argument is at bottom correct, and that it does
Speaker 6: prove the greatest conceivable being must exist in reality out there?
Speaker 6: Why are we so quick to assume we know what
Speaker 6: the other qualities of the greatest conceivable being are? Might
Speaker 6: not our idea of greatness be an illusion, a biological
Speaker 6: contingency based on our ancestral environment. For example, we believe
Speaker 6: the greatest conceivable being to be the biggest because it
Speaker 6: is cooked into our animal brains that bigger beasts win
Speaker 6: over smaller ones in a fight. But sweet aside the
Speaker 6: preferences of generous Homo sapiens and ask, from the perspective of, say,
Speaker 6: an atom of hydrogen, what are the qualities of the
Speaker 6: greatest conceivable being? Might bound cell be proving the existence
Speaker 6: of a different kind of being altogether? And if so,
Speaker 6: what are those qualities that are the greatest as conceivable
Speaker 6: by the universe, the true superlatives, if you will.
Speaker 3: This stirred something both thrilling and frightening in me. I
Speaker 3: remembered for the first time in years, the dream I
Speaker 3: had about the clouds round the mountain top. Anyway, Raymond
Speaker 3: had a theory about our mutual obsession with Anselm's argument
Speaker 3: that to truly grasp the proof through ontology requires not
Speaker 3: just an intellectual understanding, but an experience. To use the
Speaker 3: analogy of an alien life form from the burning, sulfurous planet,
Speaker 3: who could never understand the wetness of water, no matter
Speaker 3: how many papers it read on the chemical properties of
Speaker 3: H two O. The wetness must be seen with the eyes,
Speaker 3: and felt with the skin, and tasted with the tongue.
Speaker 3: And whom you've had the experience of a damp cloth
Speaker 3: wrung out and dripping on your toes, you don't understand
Speaker 3: what water is. After all, didn't Anselm himself taste of
Speaker 3: the bread of God. This seemed true enough to me.
Speaker 3: I'd spent years trying to recreate the experience of that
Speaker 3: night in my father's study, and I didn't know anything
Speaker 3: that could conjure it again. Well, she did, Remard had
Speaker 3: in her laboratory happened to isolate a compound called seven
Speaker 3: methyl ionamine. This molecule was an enzymatic byproduct of a
Speaker 3: species of alpine lichen that grew on rocks above the
Speaker 3: tree line in certain mountain ranges. It just so happened.
Speaker 3: She noticed that this molecule was similar in structure to
Speaker 3: a number of other molecules that are known as ensogens,
Speaker 3: those used in religious ceremonies to bring messages from the gods.
Speaker 3: She said that she had, on more than one occasion
Speaker 3: happened to ingest a significant amount of this compound, and
Speaker 3: she believed it had given her profound insights into the
Speaker 3: ontological argument and the being to which it pointed naturally.
Speaker 3: I asked what these insights were. She said that they
Speaker 3: were difficult to put into words. She said, I would
Speaker 3: need to see for myself. I would need to wring
Speaker 3: the cloth to understand what it meant for water to
Speaker 3: be wet. So I took what she offered me. It
Speaker 3: was a white powder in a small plastic bag. She
Speaker 3: gave me a dosy'ch advisory said she'd be in touch.
Speaker 3: I mulled over it for a while. I'd never taken
Speaker 3: drugs of any sort, not even a puff of grass.
Speaker 3: In my school years, I only drank wine at Christmas time,
Speaker 3: but I felt I owed it to myself, or perhaps
Speaker 3: to Daddy, to understand what Raymard was hinting at. It
Speaker 3: was a night my husband was away on some silly
Speaker 3: mission of his, collecting fossils in Devon or some such
Speaker 3: so I had the house to myself. I dipped candles.
Speaker 3: Isn't that humorous? Why did I like candles? It just
Speaker 3: seemed the thing to do. But I only had half
Speaker 3: a dozen or so in the house. So there they were,
Speaker 3: my six candles, melting on the sofa table while I
Speaker 3: waited for the drug to take effect. I didn't know
Speaker 3: what to expect, and for a long time nothing happened.
Speaker 3: I rubbed my toes on the carpet and took deep
Speaker 3: breaths and waited to feel something. I confess after some
Speaker 3: time I grew rather bored. I began to wonder if
Speaker 3: the powder had lost its potency, or if Reymard had
Speaker 3: been pulling some kind of prank. For a while, I
Speaker 3: became convinced this must be the case, and that I
Speaker 3: had just swallowed several grams of baby powder dissolved in
Speaker 3: a cup of tea. I was so embarrassed, What a
Speaker 3: stupid thing to even try. But then, while I was
Speaker 3: sitting there, feeling sorry for myself, I witnessed something quite
Speaker 3: strange in my border. I'd flicked on the television, which
Speaker 3: was showing a football match, but at some point, without
Speaker 3: me noticing, everyone had stopped playing. No one was running
Speaker 3: or kicking, no line up for a penalty, and they
Speaker 3: weren't leaving the pitch either. They were just standing there,
Speaker 3: all of them, stock still on the green. The crowd
Speaker 3: in the stands had fallen silent, and one by one
Speaker 3: all of the players began looking up up into the
Speaker 3: sky at what. I had no idea. I suppose at
Speaker 3: the camera hovering over the pitch, because our eyes met.
Speaker 3: I was looking at them, and they were looking to me.
Speaker 3: No one moved. For what seemed like ages, they gazed
Speaker 3: into my eyes. I said to myself, now that is
Speaker 3: rather odd. Then one of the football announcers answered me.
Speaker 3: He said, scarcely ever happens. And I said, what makes
Speaker 3: them do that? And the man at the microphone said,
Speaker 3: they're showing respect for the arrival of an important guest.
Speaker 3: I said, well, I suppose I'm flattered, and he said,
Speaker 3: I'm not talking about you. The hare stood up on
Speaker 3: the back of my neck. I felt jets of cold
Speaker 3: water rushing over my bones. I swirled round to look
Speaker 3: behind me, but saw nothing except the blank wall. However,
Speaker 3: I knew there was someone in the house with me.
Speaker 3: I didn't know who it was. I said, I'm afraid,
Speaker 3: but the announcer wouldn't reply again. The football players all
Speaker 3: stood there, looking right at me, not smiling, saying nothing,
Speaker 3: just watching what I was going to do. Suddenly, they
Speaker 3: all raised their arms and pointed upward to the sky.
Speaker 3: Without warning, the telly switched off. Then all the lights
Speaker 3: began to grow dim. The lamp bulbs faded to gray,
Speaker 3: and even the flames on my half dozen candles shrunk
Speaker 3: down to mruborn pinpricks of light. I stood and they
Speaker 3: all snuffed out completely. The only light left was what
Speaker 3: I could see up the staircase from the second story.
Speaker 3: It was as if the tide of darkness were rising
Speaker 3: through the house. In that darkness, there were things. I
Speaker 3: could hear them, soft squeaks and shuffling on the wood
Speaker 3: of the floor, like little infants crawling towards me to play,
Speaker 3: But without laughter or even breath, I lunged for the
Speaker 3: staircase and climbed it into the safety of the light.
Speaker 3: But no sooner had I come into the upper hall
Speaker 3: than the lamps there began to fade as well. The
Speaker 3: dark flood was rising evermore, driving me up and up.
Speaker 3: I heard the crawling of the creatures. Now upon the stairs,
Speaker 3: How could I go any higher? Then I looked to
Speaker 3: the ceiling and saw, yes, in the little crack around
Speaker 3: the door to the loft, there was a glow of
Speaker 3: yellow light. I snatched the chain, leave it down the door,
Speaker 3: and scurried off the ladder as fast as I could.
Speaker 3: The loft was lit with a single yellow light bulb.
Speaker 3: The shadows were throbbing, and there in the just within
Speaker 3: reach of the light, there it was the stack of
Speaker 3: things from Daddy's office. I tore open the boxes and
Speaker 3: began paging moniately through the papers inside. These were not
Speaker 3: my father's books, which were now part of my own library,
Speaker 3: but his notes and his diaries. I blazed through the pages,
Speaker 3: searching for something that would make sense of it all.
Speaker 3: I said out loud, what is it you want to
Speaker 3: show me? And Then a voice, speaking from a darkened
Speaker 3: corner of the loft whispered, what shood dear. At that moment,
Speaker 3: the tattered notebook in my hand fell open to a
Speaker 3: page where my father had made a long diary entry
Speaker 3: about plans for one of his meditations, a mountain hike
Speaker 3: at Ben Lower's. He noted his transportation, his packing list,
Speaker 3: the books he would take with him, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: But after his return from the mountain, the entry was
Speaker 3: only two words, written with such force his pen had
Speaker 3: cut through the page. It said most ancient. After this,
Speaker 3: I have very little memory of that night. I know
Speaker 3: there was something else. The man in my house told
Speaker 3: me something important, but I couldn't recall beyond that, only
Speaker 3: faint sensations of fibers, like soft hair brushing against my
Speaker 3: skin and hearing a melody ah. When I woke the
Speaker 3: next morning, I was in a rather strange position, blank
Speaker 3: curled on the floor of my son's bedroom, with a
Speaker 3: vague sense of discomfort in my mouth and a taste
Speaker 3: of salt on my tongue. When I went to wash up,
Speaker 3: I discovered the source of the taste in my mouth,
Speaker 3: which was an unexpected gap in the molars on the
Speaker 3: lower left side of my jaw. I searched around the
Speaker 3: house for the missing tooth to no avail, but no
Speaker 3: sense wailing about a lost tooth. Here and there. I
Speaker 3: was exhilarated about what had been revealed to me, the
Speaker 3: most Ancient. I tried to call Raymond on the telephone
Speaker 3: that very morning. Could it be that most Ancient was
Speaker 3: one of her true superlatives? Had I and Daddy before
Speaker 3: me somehow discovered one of the objective properties of the
Speaker 3: greatest conceivable being. It's hard to express how true and
Speaker 3: how important this discovery felt. I was tingling all over,
Speaker 3: but alas Raymond's telephone rang and rang and rang without answers,
Speaker 3: so I couldn't share what I'd found. It was, I
Speaker 3: think the loneliest I had ever been ah, but I
Speaker 3: was ravenous to learn more. A few nights later, I
Speaker 3: fabricated a story to feed my husband about an overnight
Speaker 3: trip to visit relatives on my side. Instead, I set
Speaker 3: out to have another meeting with the presents. This time,
Speaker 3: I wanted to learn as much as I possibly could,
Speaker 3: so I ignored Raymard's dosage instructions and took the rest
Speaker 3: of what she had given me. In one go, I
Speaker 3: had landed at the ruins of an abbey in the
Speaker 3: East Country, thinking this setting would aid in perceiving the
Speaker 3: qualities of Anselm's God. Of course, I had to do
Speaker 3: a bit of fence jumping, since the grounds were closed
Speaker 3: to tourists after sunset, but I didn't think much of it.
Speaker 3: Little was left but a broken wall on the southern
Speaker 3: face and a row of stone archways, all of it
Speaker 3: now covered in moss so green it seemed to glow
Speaker 3: in the dark. I took the powder and waited, writing
Speaker 3: meanwhile in my journal, which I had brought along so
Speaker 3: I could record my experience despite my previous encounter. It
Speaker 3: took long enough that I began to wonder, if you
Speaker 3: may laugh at me for this, But so be it.
Speaker 3: I wondered if it had ever done anything in the
Speaker 3: first place, and the source of my previous experience had
Speaker 3: been nothing but my own mind, perhaps in the effort
Speaker 3: of arriving at some form of madness. Oh but as
Speaker 3: I put all this down to paper, I began to
Speaker 3: hear voices singing a quiet melody that was unlike any
Speaker 3: chance I'd ever heard before. I tried to sing along,
Speaker 3: and then I was somewhere else. Entirely the abbey was gone.
Speaker 3: I was floating up, as if clutching to a trail
Speaker 3: of steam rising in the sky. But I wasn't simply
Speaker 3: rising up. I was rising backwards, backwards in time. I
Speaker 3: saw the earth below my feet, with civilization retreating, every
Speaker 3: road fading to grass, and then grass fading to stone,
Speaker 3: and then stone to icy waters, and then icy waters
Speaker 3: to entrails of flame, a landscape of illimitable, writhing worms
Speaker 3: made of molten rock. The earth glowed like a forge,
Speaker 3: and I was silent. And then he was there with me,
Speaker 3: the presence from the shadows in my loft, the one
Speaker 3: who would show me the way. I asked him, Are
Speaker 3: you going to welcome me into the mansion of God?
Speaker 3: The voice said, The sterile earth burned below us. I
Speaker 3: asked what we were looking at? He said rest. I
Speaker 3: gathered my wits and remembered why I had come. I
Speaker 3: asked him of the ontological argument. I asked him what
Speaker 3: it was I had understood the night in my father's
Speaker 3: study that I could no longer see now, And damn
Speaker 3: it to hill as I tell it, I can't explain
Speaker 3: precisely what he said. He did whisper something to me
Speaker 3: from just behind my ears, so that I could feel
Speaker 3: his breadth through my hair, something so so not words,
Speaker 3: more like a melody, a melody that somehow in itself
Speaker 3: carried a logic. And I knew. I knew in some
Speaker 3: sense it contained a hidden premise that made the ontological
Speaker 3: argument irrefuteable. I could almost put it into words. It
Speaker 3: was right behind the veil in the back of my mind.
Speaker 3: How I failed around for my notebook so I would
Speaker 3: be ready to write it down as soon as I
Speaker 3: worked it out. But then then below, as the earth
Speaker 3: opened its mouth a chasm of unimaginable heat and darkness,
Speaker 3: I asked, Must I go in there? He whispered. A
Speaker 3: change came over me, the beginning of an unfolding of
Speaker 3: sensation into impossible dimensions of strangeness and understanding and pain,
Speaker 3: thought without meaning, sight without light. There was an infinite more,
Speaker 3: but I could not remember it. I came to the
Speaker 3: next morning with a policeman gruptly shaking me awake. Had
Speaker 3: slept in the grass at the crest of the hill,
Speaker 3: somewhere beyond the abbey. I dealt with the policeman quickly
Speaker 3: as I could, and darted off to my car leave me.
Speaker 3: Through the pages of my journal, I'd left several indecipherable illustrations,
Speaker 3: along with scribbled notes from the part of the night
Speaker 3: I could not recall. One note said the terrible Angel
Speaker 3: the Majordomo. Another said the bread of God. It is
Speaker 3: of God, but it is not bread. And finally, at
Speaker 3: the end of my notes I had written with such
Speaker 3: force that my pen tore through the pages most secret.
Speaker 3: Upon reading this, my heart raised, Could this be another
Speaker 3: of the true superlityis of the greatest conceivable being? It
Speaker 3: must be, Though it made less sense than the last.
Speaker 3: It was hard to reconcile the evangelical message of Christ
Speaker 3: with the idea that God's greatness could be a secret.
Speaker 3: But nevertheless I knew this insight had to be correct.
Speaker 3: I would make sense of it somehow next time I
Speaker 3: would understand. In this excitement, I knew immediately I had
Speaker 3: to get more of the powder. I called and called
Speaker 3: for Professor Raymond dozens of times, but you never answered
Speaker 3: the telephone. Eventually, I became so desperate I booked a
Speaker 3: plane ticket and made my way to her university. After
Speaker 3: a bit of asking around, I came to the correct building.
Speaker 3: I found her office locked, with parcels overflowing her mailbox.
Speaker 3: So I went to the office next door, where I
Speaker 3: met a small, timid looking man, framed with a bald
Speaker 3: head and neatly trimmed beard. He was friendly at first,
Speaker 3: asked if I needed help. I told him I was
Speaker 3: looking for Raymond. He said that she'd recently gone on
Speaker 3: sabbatical and he didn't know when she would be back.
Speaker 3: He asked who I was. I said I was a
Speaker 3: research partner, and that we were considering authoring a book
Speaker 3: chapter together. The little man frowned. My deception must have
Speaker 3: been rather obvious and really not good at lying. He
Speaker 3: asked what we were writing about, and in a panic
Speaker 3: for what to say, I blurted out a compound, A
Speaker 3: compound called seven metal I ownamine. He stiffened, rose from
Speaker 3: his chair and took a step backward, as if suddenly
Speaker 3: afraid of me. He looked me up and down. His
Speaker 3: voice became very quiet. You're not one of them, he said,
Speaker 3: Did they send you? I asked who he meant? With
Speaker 3: evident terror, he whispered foss. I said I didn't know
Speaker 3: what he was talking about, but that I had been
Speaker 3: given to some of the compound by raymart and I
Speaker 3: needed more. Could he get it for me? He said
Speaker 3: no and told me to go away. I explained I
Speaker 3: was desperate. I told him I would pay anything for it.
Speaker 3: He began shouting, shouting for me to leave his office
Speaker 3: and never come back. Not knowing what to do, I
Speaker 3: hid in a laboratory stall down the hall until later
Speaker 3: that night, when every one had left and the building
Speaker 3: was locked up. With a bit of a jimmy, I
Speaker 3: broke into Raymard's laboratory and began looking around. I ransacked
Speaker 3: the cupboards and the sample drawers and the file cabinets. Nothing.
Speaker 3: There was no powder anywhere. But then something caught my attention.
Speaker 3: A large photograph lying in the heap among all the
Speaker 3: papers from the file cabinets, A photograph of a rock
Speaker 3: covered in splotches of gray, green, and yellow. I knelt
Speaker 3: and picked up the picture. It was a patch of lichen.
Speaker 3: The photo was dated from several years before, and it
Speaker 3: was labeled source of sample north face of khn Iron.
Speaker 3: I felt something grip inside my gut. I'd heard that
Speaker 3: name before, long before. Khn Iron was the mountain of
Speaker 3: Daddy's last meditation, where they found him at the top.
Speaker 3: Without returning home, I booked another ticket and made my
Speaker 3: way to Aberdeen. There I rented a car. I was delirious,
Speaker 3: no telling how long I had gone without proper sleep.
Speaker 3: I drove up a long, lonely road through the Highland
Speaker 3: glen to the foot of cahn Aran. The peak of
Speaker 3: the mountain was ringed with gray fog when it came
Speaker 3: into view, and the rocks along the path were slick
Speaker 3: from the morning's rain. I began to hike up the slope,
Speaker 3: clutching the photograph of the Lichen. I made my way
Speaker 3: up through the corner of the forest, then on a
Speaker 3: steep incline over a ridge like the spine of a
Speaker 3: great beast. I looked all around for the Lichen, venturing
Speaker 3: far off the hiking trail, turning over rocks and checking
Speaker 3: their undersides like a child collecting insects. And finally, at
Speaker 3: long last, I found it on the upturned face of
Speaker 3: a huge flat boulder. The lichen was a papery mass
Speaker 3: of pale green and yellow substance that somehow looked almost delicious.
Speaker 3: I assure you it was not. It was poisonously bitter,
Speaker 3: with the texture of old rope. But I choked down
Speaker 3: as much as I could. I managed quite a bit.
Speaker 3: I waited and waited for what seemed like hours on end,
Speaker 3: but I felt nothing save for an increasingly vicious stirring
Speaker 3: of nausea. Eventually I had to be sick in the
Speaker 3: weeds beside the boulder. Had I lost my mind? I
Speaker 3: didn't even know if it would work this way? Did
Speaker 3: Raymond have to do some sort of chemistry to isolate
Speaker 3: something within the lichen? Was I even sure I'd found
Speaker 3: the right organism? It was a miserable defeat. I sat
Speaker 3: on the boulder, ill and exhausted, and sulked in self
Speaker 3: pity as clouds gathered their gray bulk. Evermore overhead, the
Speaker 3: sun went down, and the shadow of the mountain swept
Speaker 3: over the valley to the east at a racing clip.
Speaker 3: As I thought about it, I realized Daddy may well
Speaker 3: have looked out over the same gloomy view his last
Speaker 3: day on Earth. Did he sit on the same boulder
Speaker 3: and rest half way up the mountain? Was he surrounded
Speaker 3: by pale pink frogs just like these? Would he have
Speaker 3: noticed the way their skin looked like rare veal, leaking
Speaker 3: juices under the pressure of the carving fork. I tried
Speaker 3: to ask the rosy froglets if they had any memory
Speaker 3: of him, but they were not especially talkative. Instead, they
Speaker 3: began to leave my side all at once, in a
Speaker 3: frenzy up the mountain slope. How strange, I thought it
Speaker 3: was almost as if they were fleeing in terror. So
Speaker 3: I turned back to look down at the valley, and
Speaker 3: I saw what it was, the water line of darkness.
Speaker 3: I had felt just the edges of it in my
Speaker 3: house a few nights before. Now I saw it complete
Speaker 3: in its awful majesty, stretching as far as an ocean
Speaker 3: would have. A mist of moonless blackness rose from the
Speaker 3: valley and ascended the mountain side, And hidden in the
Speaker 3: darkness came the things creatures of a chilling primeval innocence,
Speaker 3: the silent Cambrian infants crawling on hands and knees. My
Speaker 3: mind was seized with flashes of what could happen if
Speaker 3: the little children overtook me. They did not laugh or
Speaker 3: shout that they would play. My heart contracted with terror.
Speaker 3: I scrambled from the boulder and ran as fast as
Speaker 3: I could up the mountain path. Up above me were
Speaker 3: the silhouettes of several men, whose skin seemed to glitter
Speaker 3: with dull reflections in the gray light. When I came close,
Speaker 3: I saw they were man shaped things, made not a flesh,
Speaker 3: but of thousands of little metal objects, safety pins, batteries
Speaker 3: and fish hawks, all held together by a sort of
Speaker 3: animate magnetism. They were slow moving. They begged me for
Speaker 3: help in their rattling language, but I couldn't stop. I
Speaker 3: ran past and left them behind to be played with.
Speaker 3: The path steepened, and I climbed with a ferocity of
Speaker 3: which I wouldn't have thought myself capable. I was driven
Speaker 3: now not only by the fear of what rose from below,
Speaker 3: but by a del larious ecstasy of what lay above.
Speaker 3: Stone shattered under my toes like globes of glass, and
Speaker 3: the soil gave off the aroma of bread crust. The
Speaker 3: boulders that lined the path bloomed with the sacred lichen
Speaker 3: in shapes of naked bodies, humming with pleasure, and splitting
Speaker 3: up masses of oysters and offal that fell at my
Speaker 3: feet as I passed this. This was their way of
Speaker 3: showing respect. Meanwhile, all around black habitat. Monks stood guard
Speaker 3: underneath prisoners who were hoisted up to the sky upon
Speaker 3: Catherine wheels, my namesake, I thought. The men and women
Speaker 3: blashed on the wheels sang together. Yes, it was all
Speaker 3: starting to make sense. I understood that the prisoners on
Speaker 3: the wheels were not being punished. They were in the shines,
Speaker 3: machines for generating a kind of power, like the turbines
Speaker 3: in a down. The monks standing guard under the wheels
Speaker 3: of torture all raised their arms when they saw me,
Speaker 3: all pointing in the same direction to the top, just
Speaker 3: over the last ridge of rock. As I climbed above,
Speaker 3: finally I felt him, the presence the Major DOMO. He
Speaker 3: was looming just behind me, breathing on my neck. But
Speaker 3: I knew it would be terribly bad manners to turn
Speaker 3: and look. Without a word, he guided me through the
Speaker 3: fog until the jagged rocks of the peak gave way
Speaker 3: to a smooth, paved pathway of flagstones and mortar, surrounded
Speaker 3: by crisp green hedges on either side. It was a
Speaker 3: secret garden path leading me to a mansion with its
Speaker 3: windows bleeding yellow light. My voice trembling, I asked the
Speaker 3: Major d'ama, Will you ah take me inside? The Major
Speaker 3: d'omo whispered, perhaps, but not yet. I understood there was
Speaker 3: something I had to do first. I had to meet
Speaker 3: some one. There was a lanky human shadow on the
Speaker 3: path just ahead. When I saw the figure, my heart
Speaker 3: leapt into my throat. I thought, Daddy. But as I
Speaker 3: ran to meet him, with tears gathering in my eyes,
Speaker 3: the shape that came into focus was all wrong. It
Speaker 3: was not my father. It was Raymard, standing athwart the path,
Speaker 3: wearing a cheshire cat grin. I asked her what she
Speaker 3: was doing here, and she leaned in to embrace me, whispering, Catherine,
Speaker 3: I have the most wonderful news. I have been given
Speaker 3: a research grant by God Almighty, and you are to
Speaker 3: be my assistant. I was flummoxed to say the least.
Speaker 3: I said, but his house is right there. Can't I
Speaker 3: go inside and learn what he is like? Raymard said,
Speaker 3: you will, but you're not ready yet. First you must
Speaker 3: learn the secret, the oldest secret. She then stepped back
Speaker 3: and unbuttoned her glass, and her skin was not skin,
Speaker 3: but a sort of plate thronged with legs. Hundreds thousands
Speaker 3: of dancing, undulating articulated legs like the underside of a
Speaker 3: horseshoe crab. A tear of blue blood leaped from the
Speaker 3: corner of her eye. She came in close to embrace
Speaker 3: me again. In horror, I tried my best to recoil,
Speaker 3: but now the major Domo stood behind to hold me
Speaker 3: in place. Raymond's breath smelled like copper. The legs wriggled
Speaker 3: and flexed, close enough to tickle my stomach. I screamed, no, no,
Speaker 3: this is not what I wanted. Raymond leaned to my
Speaker 3: ear and said.
Speaker 2: Hard, let us be here.
Speaker 3: Instr my memory stops there. I woke the next morning,
Speaker 3: lying on the cold rocks of the mountain top, parched
Speaker 3: stiff as a plank. There was a man dressed in
Speaker 3: a black habit, kneeling beside me, touching my arm. He said, good, Heavens,
Speaker 3: are you all right? He must have seen me looking
Speaker 3: at his clothes, and answered, without my asking, I'm one
Speaker 3: of the brothers of the monastery here at carm Aron.
Speaker 3: You look like you've taken a fall. Would you like
Speaker 3: me to get some help? I told him not to bother,
Speaker 3: and I rose to go on my way, limping on
Speaker 3: a leg I had injured somehow in the night. But
Speaker 3: as I was walking away, he said, were you invited in?
Speaker 3: I stopped. I asked in where? He said, beyond the
Speaker 3: secret garden, into his house. I rushed back to the
Speaker 3: monk's side. What do you know about it? I asked.
Speaker 3: The monk smiled. He said, are you seeking to believe
Speaker 3: in order that you may understand? Or seeking to understand
Speaker 3: in order that you may believe? I felt a hopeless
Speaker 3: despair come over me. I didn't know. In truth, I
Speaker 3: feared I'd lost track of what it was I was
Speaker 3: trying to prove and whom I was trying to prove
Speaker 3: it too. But I was in his presence, I said,
Speaker 3: nearly in his mansion, I see, said the monk, the
Speaker 3: greatest conceivable being, I said. He smiled placidly, as if
Speaker 3: to humor me, the god who called out to Abraham,
Speaker 3: I said. But then the monk's expression changed. He looked, amuteoos,
Speaker 3: oh him, you think down here on this bleak mountain
Speaker 3: top with us. I didn't know what to make of that.
Speaker 3: The monk said to me, if there were two beings,
Speaker 3: both infinitely beyond your understanding, and both claimed to be
Speaker 3: the greatest? How would you tell them apart? I had
Speaker 3: no answer. I asked, will I ever understand what he is?
Speaker 3: The monk said, well, now, if you wish to be
Speaker 3: welcomed into his manner and taste of his bread, I
Speaker 3: suggest you make yourself a courteous house guest. I said,
Speaker 3: how would one do that? He said, for one thing,
Speaker 3: when a courteous house guest comes to visit, she always
Speaker 3: brings a gift. I asked, well, what should she bring?
Speaker 3: I laid a gentle hand on my shoulder and said,
Speaker 3: what is most precious? Looking back, I realized the sheer
Speaker 3: hubris of my initial endeavor. Though I find myself in
Speaker 3: good company with the likes of Daddy and Saint Anselm himself,
Speaker 3: I know now that the mysteries of totality are too
Speaker 3: much for one mind alone, and with alacrity I settled
Speaker 3: for just a glimpse. So I turned myself over to
Speaker 3: Doctor Raymard's care, in which I have been ever since.
Speaker 3: Ever said, what do you mean? Will call me a
Speaker 3: test case? An experiment in the long term effects of
Speaker 3: seven metal ie on mine on human consciousness? How can
Speaker 3: you big if you like but one of many and
Speaker 3: the labrat likes to have company in her cage.
Speaker 6: You're saying, you're saying they drugged me too.
Speaker 3: Oh I mview you know, experiencing it all for the
Speaker 3: first time. No, no, help, give me out, you need
Speaker 3: let out? You mean cat? No you say, let me
Speaker 3: have her heart rate spike crack on the rejection.
Speaker 2: All of you will get away from me.
Speaker 1: What's the course?
Speaker 3: Gave me alone? It's a tranquilizer with one more dos
Speaker 3: seven stop stops.
Speaker 5: No you see look here not seeing me?
Speaker 6: Was it?
Speaker 3: Where are you taking me?
Speaker 2: Where is this saying?
Speaker 5: Was on the ground?
Speaker 3: How much you listen?
Speaker 2: Why are you carrying me?
Speaker 3: Because you wouldn't walk?
Speaker 2: Where are my shoes?
Speaker 5: Would you t.
Speaker 1: There?
Speaker 6: You go.
Speaker 3: Go to?
Speaker 6: What the like?
Speaker 3: Mm hmm? Well look who's back?
Speaker 6: Frip.
Speaker 3: I wasn't sure you were still with us? Frip. I
Speaker 3: I sorry.
Speaker 2: Everything is so overwhelming.
Speaker 3: What happened to you? The door? I'm the dungeon.
Speaker 6: And the doctor.
Speaker 3: Did you put you on a new course of treatment? Yes,
Speaker 3: and I am. I don't know if I can take it?
Speaker 3: You can, it will run its course. How How do
Speaker 3: I just relax?
Speaker 2: Okay, lay down on the bed.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, now, imagine you are in a river right
Speaker 3: in the middle where the current is strongest. You guess
Speaker 3: whom against it?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 3: You can't fight back?
Speaker 5: Nope, I can't, but you can.
Speaker 3: Float Okay, don't fight it. Okay, let the current move you. Okay,
Speaker 3: float down?
Speaker 6: Okay, okay, Hey, frip myself.
Speaker 3: They didn't, They didn't give it away. Who would they
Speaker 3: have given it to?
Speaker 6: Frip?
Speaker 3: Have you seen anyone walk in the halls at night?
Speaker 3: You mean, besides the guards, the barefoot woman? Have you
Speaker 3: heard her singing? Quiet? Now? Okay, just flew okay down?
Speaker 6: Thank you?
Speaker 3: Frip Frip, frip.
Speaker 6: Frip.
Speaker 3: Oh YEA.
Speaker 1: Thirteen Days of Halloween pennance starring Natalie Morales, Episode four
Speaker 1: Evaluation written by Joe McCormick, editing and sound design by
Speaker 1: Chandler Mays, featuring the voices of Roz Gentel Blair, Chandler,
Speaker 1: Alex Bowling, Jay Jones, Raphael Corkil, and Wilbur Fitzgerald, with
Speaker 1: music by Noel Brown. Directed by Alexander Williams. Executive producers
Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey, Noah Feinberg, Chris Dicky, Matt Frederick and Alexander
Speaker 1: Williams Supervising producers Trevor Young and Josh Thain. Producers Jesse Funk,
Speaker 1: Rima Ilkali, Noami Griffin, Chandler Mays, and Casby Bias. Script
Speaker 1: editing by Lauren Vogelbaum, Story consultants Ben Bowley and Matthew Riddle.
Speaker 1: Casting by Sunday Bowling CSA and Meg Mormon CSA. Production
Speaker 1: coordinator Wayna Calderon. Production assistants Jenna Johnson and Winona Low.
Speaker 1: Theme music by Rose Aserti with vocals by Anna Hummler,
Speaker 1: recorded at This Is Sound Design Studios in Burbank, California.
Speaker 1: Engineered by Ross aeronaut special thanks to Romelia Osorio, Nathan Rule,
Speaker 1: Glen Nishida, and Rob Mosca. Thirteen Days of Halloween was
Speaker 1: created by Matt Frederick and Alexander Williams and is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Podcasts, Blumhouse Television, and Grim and Mild
Speaker 1: from Aaron Makey. Learn more about the show at Grimandmild
Speaker 1: dot com slash thirteen Days and find more podcasts from
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio by visiting the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. Happy Halloween,