Speaker 1: M thirteen days of Halloween is from grim and mild
Speaker 1: blum house, and I heart three D audio headphones recommended.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion advised. The schoolhouse. It's so forlorn. Yes, that
Speaker 1: is a good word for it. Forlorn, abandoned by those
Speaker 1: who give it its purpose, bereft. Where are the children? Ah,
Speaker 1: perhaps Miss Matson will enlighten you. She was there the
Speaker 1: day it happened. To Day. What happened? What is it?
Speaker 1: What do you see? Large forms, whales and authors, many
Speaker 1: arms circling overhead, and smaller things too, fish and then
Speaker 1: and also they were waiting, it felt like. For What
Speaker 1: do you think? I don't know. Come, we should speak
Speaker 1: to missus. Marton, come in, mother, hello, hello, Miss Mayton,
Speaker 1: and who is this? This is a guest. Ah, welcome then,
Speaker 1: my friend has a question for you. Well, if I'm
Speaker 1: not here to educate, then what in fact, am I
Speaker 1: here for? The schoolhouse? The playground? Mm Hmm, they are empty. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: where did they go? They're gone. They tried to warn us,
Speaker 1: but we didn't listen. Now it's too late and all
Speaker 1: the children and apologies, I didn't mean to startle you.
Speaker 1: It's been quite some time since anyone's visited and I
Speaker 1: seem to have forgotten my manners. Allow me to introduce myself,
Speaker 1: Miss Matchin. I was the teacher here for well over
Speaker 1: twenty years. I suppose nowadays, caretaker would be a more
Speaker 1: apt description of my current position. And Yourself. I see
Speaker 1: you're new here in dybrook. It's in your eyes that
Speaker 1: delirious all were. Curiosity hasn't completely succumbed to dread yet.
Speaker 1: Curiosity is good. It means you pay attention. You also
Speaker 1: appear to have been on your feet all day. Please
Speaker 1: have a seat, catch your rings and perhaps indulge in
Speaker 1: old educator the opportunity to deliver a final history lesson
Speaker 1: before ah, but we don't want to get ahead of ourselves, now,
Speaker 1: do we please? said. Yes, right, there is fine, comfortable.
Speaker 1: Let's see. Where was I? Ah, yes, at the beginning.
Speaker 1: This was many years ago, back when dybrook wasn't quite
Speaker 1: so m tire. It was a clear spring afternoon and
Speaker 1: towards the end of recess, while the older children supervised
Speaker 1: the younger ones, I stayed here grating papers. I remember
Speaker 1: hearing the usual laughter and shrieks against the ticking of
Speaker 1: the clock. Then the shrieks became screams. As I rose
Speaker 1: to investigate, a flash sparked from the corner of my eyes.
Speaker 1: Then their scream stopped, as did the ticking of the
Speaker 1: clock on the wall, as did my very thoughts. All
Speaker 1: I could hear was the ocean. Yes, you can always
Speaker 1: hear the ocean here and I brook, but this was different.
Speaker 1: I could hear the waves, actually hear them as never before,
Speaker 1: their tides pulsing through my blood, their currency electric in
Speaker 1: each breath, until I didn't know where the sea ended
Speaker 1: and I began. Eventually over the waves, I heard my
Speaker 1: name called. I awoke to the Gustav Twins Bursting into
Speaker 1: the class room with hysterical bleed. They urged me from
Speaker 1: the desk and led me towards the playground, their identical
Speaker 1: smiles radiant, yet their faces flushed and still wet with tears.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't explain themselves and I was still too discombobulated
Speaker 1: to protest. Once outside, I saw them, the other children
Speaker 1: all kneeling in a circle in the center of the
Speaker 1: kickball field. My body swayed to the tempo of their chat,
Speaker 1: the exceeding, indeeding, and in the places little hand reach,
Speaker 1: the grags way out there with the stunts. The chill
Speaker 1: at my spine brought me back to my senses. I
Speaker 1: ordered the twins back inside then, with a shout only
Speaker 1: a teacher can give, demanded and enter the children's game.
Speaker 1: Stop running, come inside, sit down. That's what it must
Speaker 1: have been, after all, some sing song nonsense gone too far.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought then. Oh how I wish I
Speaker 1: had been right. Silently, their swaying ceased and the children
Speaker 1: rose from the dirt is one, to file back into
Speaker 1: the classroom, each with a radiant smile and cheeks that
Speaker 1: glistened with fresh tears. Back inside, I resumed the lesson
Speaker 1: and the students gazed blankly at me. Finally I let
Speaker 1: them use the remainder of their time to read quietly
Speaker 1: until their parents arrived. When I was last alone in
Speaker 1: the classroom, I turned off all the lights and listened,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't wrong. The Ocean was louder now. The
Speaker 1: next day, over half the class was absent, all of them,
Speaker 1: the ones who knelt in the field. The parents that
Speaker 1: bothered to call reported that their children had woken in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night with the fever and screaming
Speaker 1: in a language they had never heard before. The few
Speaker 1: remaining children that managed to show all looked as if
Speaker 1: they hadn't slept that night or any other. Possessed of
Speaker 1: an unrelenting curiosity, I abandoned the lesson plan to talk
Speaker 1: to the children. I asked them what happened at recess yesterday. Silence.
Speaker 1: Then the twins spoke up in unison. They reported watching
Speaker 1: the boys play in the field when a golden ball
Speaker 1: of light appeared above them. It hovered there for a
Speaker 1: few moments and there was a sound like a wail
Speaker 1: song that they could only hear inside their heads. Then
Speaker 1: the light descended towards them and the sound grew louder.
Speaker 1: That's when everyone screamed. The ball of light burst to
Speaker 1: flash and in its place stood the crack an angel.
Speaker 1: They all stopped screaming and formed a circle around it.
Speaker 1: It bide them to kneel, and that's what they did.
Speaker 1: It then told them a story. How long ago, their
Speaker 1: grandparents struck a deal when dyrebrook was on the verge
Speaker 1: of economic collapse. It was then the angel appeared to
Speaker 1: them with an offer of plump fishing nets and harbors,
Speaker 1: spared from the ravages of tempest. They asked what the
Speaker 1: angel wanted from them in return. Okay, it replied. The
Speaker 1: dead could only be paid by the one child, and
Speaker 1: that child had not been offered because the dead had
Speaker 1: not been paid. The crack an angel has returned to
Speaker 1: collect the children of dyre brook to come live with
Speaker 1: it where the ocean meets the stars. I then asked
Speaker 1: the children to draw from me this crack an angel.
Speaker 1: What they produced was a picture of a towering man
Speaker 1: with peacock wings and a black smudge for a head,
Speaker 1: from which radiated tendrils that reached outward. The next day,
Speaker 1: only five children arrived for school. They were all Pale
Speaker 1: with black rings around their eyes. The parents I managed
Speaker 1: to speak with reported their children had been up all
Speaker 1: night in fevered conversation with imaginary friends or or babbling incomprehensibly. Ultimately, though,
Speaker 1: they dismissed my concerns when I mentioned others had reported
Speaker 1: similar symptoms, by reminding me that everyone has bad dreams
Speaker 1: and diyre brook. I tried to instill some much needed normalcy.
Speaker 1: I declared a pop quiz. I received none of the
Speaker 1: usual groans or gasps. The tests were passed out and
Speaker 1: at the end of twenty minutes returned to my desk,
Speaker 1: each page filled with hieroglyphs and are cane symbols. Outside
Speaker 1: I could hear the waves crashing as if they were
Speaker 1: at the front door. That night we all slept deeper
Speaker 1: than we ever had, all the adults that I brook,
Speaker 1: even those who worked night shifts, Sheriff Caine, as well
Speaker 1: as Maggie and gusts at dotty's. All night diner dreamed
Speaker 1: of the children who entered our rooms and leaned down
Speaker 1: to our frozen bodies to whisper in an alien language,
Speaker 1: some forgotten promise or omen there. And when we woke
Speaker 1: the next morning they were gone, all of them. Don't
Speaker 1: ask how we knew, but something told us to go
Speaker 1: to the beach. There we found the footprints, child's eye,
Speaker 1: all leading across the sand towards the ocean, and none
Speaker 1: of them returning from it. The only thing left of
Speaker 1: them was it? The Single Poo bear, the one little
Speaker 1: Jimmy Vander carried with him everywhere, found bobbing on the waves.
Speaker 1: Of course there were search parties, boats deployed, divers, the
Speaker 1: shores were searched thoroughly. There should have been bodies. None
Speaker 1: were found. There was a brief media frenzy that eventually
Speaker 1: died down once another random tragedy and another random town
Speaker 1: in America occurred. Diet Brooks mystery was abandoned and its
Speaker 1: residents were left to pick up the pieces as best
Speaker 1: they could manage. What few children born over the years
Speaker 1: since that day are home schooled. No one comes here anymore,
Speaker 1: no one, that is, except me. You see, there's something
Speaker 1: I've never told anyone here before, none of the greeting
Speaker 1: parents or Stoic police officers, story hungry reporters. In my dream,
Speaker 1: it was the Gustav twins that visited me at night,
Speaker 1: and while all the other parents could only hear an
Speaker 1: indecipherable language from their sons and daughters, I alone understood
Speaker 1: their words. Don't be sad, MS match, we're coming back
Speaker 1: one day soon, all of us, back from where the
Speaker 1: ocean meets the stars, and we'll bring the crack an
Speaker 1: angel with us. Then it will be our turn to
Speaker 1: teach you what we learned. Since that night. I come
Speaker 1: back to this classroom each and every day. I sit
Speaker 1: right here, patiently waiting behind my desk for the day
Speaker 1: the children will return and deliver to me, to all
Speaker 1: of us. The final lesson the crack an angel. Poor girl,
Speaker 1: it was too much, wasn't it? There were so much.
Speaker 1: They were there. This one has the gift side. Mm Hmm,
Speaker 1: so it seems. Poor girl, can you stand, I think?
Speaker 1: All right. Well, we should be on our way, Miss Matson,
Speaker 1: father be with you. Everything returns to him. Come on, well,
Speaker 1: we should hurry along to the doctors. Surely He's back
Speaker 1: by now. And it looks like we have a storm brewing.
Speaker 1: The CROCK and Angel. What about him? Is He? Is
Speaker 1: he part of your religion? He is the whole of
Speaker 1: our religion. The father in the sea has many names,
Speaker 1: good bleaks, but our clocking angel, the holy arms, all
Speaker 1: our forms of the same he who gives and he
Speaker 1: to whom everything returns. I think that I saw him.
Speaker 1: What my vision? Everything was circling around himmy was Nope,
Speaker 1: don't tell me. If he wanted for me to see him,
Speaker 1: he would show himself. Now, come on, before the rain
Speaker 1: washes that mind of yours clean again tomorrow. On thirteen
Speaker 1: days of Halloween, the doctor's office. It started with a
Speaker 1: girl no more than thirteen. Her sight was dimming, save
Speaker 1: for a red smear that flashed each time she blinked.
Speaker 1: Languor listlessness, but sleeplessness as well. She was in some
Speaker 1: sort of infectious half life, the Fisher King's malady. It's
Speaker 1: like when you look at the Sun, you get that
Speaker 1: red smear, she told me, retinal afterimage. I said she
Speaker 1: was a nice young girl whom I had seen around
Speaker 1: dating the son of a family friend, so it was
Speaker 1: natural that my radar was pinged when the family friend
Speaker 1: came in with the son in tow and described the
Speaker 1: same symptoms. Thirteen days of Halloween the schoolhouse, starring Kathen to, Jimmy,
Speaker 1: Bethany and Lynde and April Parker Jones. Written by Rob Mosca,
Speaker 1: with additional material by Nicholas Takowski. Sound Design and mixing
Speaker 1: by Trevor Young, engineering by violent FERTZON, dubway studios New York,
Speaker 1: casting by Jessica Losa. Created by Matt Frederick and Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: with executive producer Aaron Manky, a production of I heart radio,
Speaker 1: grim and mild and blumhouse television.