Speaker 1: Thirteen Days of Halloween. Devil's Night, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart three D audio, Blumhouse Television and Grimm and Mild
Speaker 1: from Aaron Mackey Headphones Recommended. Listener discretion advised. The yes
Speaker 1: no no, yes Lord, Oh no, no, yes Lord spoken
Speaker 1: out here in the cemetery. Why I did not mean
Speaker 1: to startle, you know, in the church, the pastor and
Speaker 1: his wife. Yes, that was a close one, but you said,
Speaker 1: you promised me you wouldn't hurt anyone else. You asked
Speaker 1: me not to kill anyone, and I did not. It
Speaker 1: was not by my hands. But they still died, and
Speaker 1: you told them to do it. Do you think they
Speaker 1: deserve to live? I don't think that was my choice,
Speaker 1: and it isn't yours either. What would you have done?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but that can't happen never again. All
Speaker 1: right back. The children, on the other hand, innocent as
Speaker 1: they are still drugged and following orders. I think I
Speaker 1: can outrun some little kids on again. I don't understand
Speaker 1: what we're doing it cemetery. Take it from me. There's
Speaker 1: always some trouble you're on Devil's Night. Kids drink and
Speaker 1: vandalizing the headstones. One time I swear to God, I
Speaker 1: broke up what was about to be some kind of
Speaker 1: satanic ceremony. They're too close. What do you know? There
Speaker 1: is somebody here? I told you so, all right, Now,
Speaker 1: come on out. We know you're there. Which way to go?
Speaker 1: I think back that way behind the big cross. You
Speaker 1: know you're violating curfew and you're trust passing out of here.
Speaker 1: I don't want to add resisting arrest. If you come
Speaker 1: out now, we'll make it easy on you. How this
Speaker 1: boy is out, it is entirely up to you. You
Speaker 1: know I can stop this sick you behind the cross
Speaker 1: on your feet now run it's doing both. Do you
Speaker 1: stop right there? Go around, get them from the other side,
Speaker 1: snored hide You could go in that building. Can you
Speaker 1: just for a second, where are you going to go?
Speaker 1: Throw the cops? Okay, I will, but seriously, don't hurt anyone.
Speaker 1: I will not. Just let them chase me a little.
Speaker 1: I won't return as soon as I can, how you
Speaker 1: tall fella? Yes, officers, we want to talk to you,
Speaker 1: of course you do, but you will have to catch
Speaker 1: me first. I get back here in the name of
Speaker 1: the law. Seems cellib you've got here. Okay, Oh no,
Speaker 1: no no, no, no, no no no no no no yea,
Speaker 1: well crap, I could have left me a candle. Is
Speaker 1: is someone there? What do you want here? I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I didn't know anyone else. You shouldn't be here, boy,
Speaker 1: it isn't your place. I know, I was just hiding, hiding.
Speaker 1: Why there was? There are some people after me? Again?
Speaker 1: I asked why. I didn't mean to intrude. I didn't
Speaker 1: know there would be anyone else here. I tried to leave,
Speaker 1: but the door what was that? Did you hear your voice?
Speaker 1: There's a tremor in it. What is that? Fear? Sadness,
Speaker 1: a guilty conscience, whatever it is, you are not welcome.
Speaker 1: This place is sacred, a monument built on hallowed ground,
Speaker 1: a final resting place, and it deserves respect or resting
Speaker 1: place for who my daughter? Oh, I'm sorry. She was
Speaker 1: my entire world and I was hers. When I closed
Speaker 1: my eyes, all I see is that face. When I
Speaker 1: listen into the night, I still hear the musical tone
Speaker 1: of her voice, like the ringing of a bell. And
Speaker 1: unlike other pretty girls, she was not jaded by this world.
Speaker 1: She was perfectly kind, generous, trusting. She sounds like a
Speaker 1: very nice person nice. Yes, she was nice, two nice.
Speaker 1: And you know what happens to nice people, They get
Speaker 1: taken advantage of who happened to her. What happened is
Speaker 1: she resented me. I devoted every waking moment to that child,
Speaker 1: and she resented me for it. I realized now that
Speaker 1: it was my own fault. I wanted to keep her safe,
Speaker 1: but in doing so, I kept her isolated, naive to
Speaker 1: the world and the evils lurking in it. But children,
Speaker 1: even the innocent, obedient ones, are destined to outgrow their confinement,
Speaker 1: to find a way to test their boundaries. It was
Speaker 1: Halloween two years ago to day, a dark, cold, wet
Speaker 1: night that autumn. It rained like it would never end,
Speaker 1: swelled the river, overflowed the dam, and saturated every inch
Speaker 1: of god forsake and ground. While the other kids were
Speaker 1: out gallivanting in the streets, taking candy from strangers and
Speaker 1: getting into god knows what other kinds of trouble, me
Speaker 1: and my baby were all to ourselves, just like any
Speaker 1: other night. I put her to bed. I remember standing
Speaker 1: in the threshold of the door, the shape of her
Speaker 1: sweet little form buried under the blanket. In the middle
Speaker 1: of the night, I woke suddenly. The storm outside was raging,
Speaker 1: and I figured that's what had stirred me. I left
Speaker 1: my room and I went back to check on my angel.
Speaker 1: From the doorway, it looked as if she hadn't moved
Speaker 1: an inch. I sat down on the bed next to her,
Speaker 1: just to stroke her hair. I pealed back the covers,
Speaker 1: and you know what I saw, you do, don't you
Speaker 1: lo what? Two pillows were stuffed beneath the quilt, and
Speaker 1: my girl was gone. I tore through every room, praying,
Speaker 1: please God, let me be wrong, let her just be hiding.
Speaker 1: But it was pointless. She was not in the house.
Speaker 1: If I had slowed down to think, I might have
Speaker 1: noticed that the window in her room was ajar. But
Speaker 1: I wasn't thinking. I was panicking. I rushed out into
Speaker 1: the storm, still in my slippers, no raincoat, no lantern,
Speaker 1: and no sense of where my little girl had gone.
Speaker 1: I ran through the streets from one end of town
Speaker 1: to the other, screaming her name. Who was that? I
Speaker 1: think you know already. I didn't find her that night.
Speaker 1: The next day a search party was launched. The police
Speaker 1: went door to door, set roadblocks on the highways in
Speaker 1: and out of town, cleared, the hobo camp ran bloodhounds
Speaker 1: through the woods. Within a week, they'd dredged the river.
Speaker 1: We made up posters with her picture, offering a reward
Speaker 1: for any information. There wasn't a window door or telephone
Speaker 1: pole in town without my baby's face on it, and
Speaker 1: nothing happened. A runaway, they called her. I knew my
Speaker 1: girl would never run away. But even if that was true,
Speaker 1: where had she gone. Weeks passed, the rains cleared, the
Speaker 1: posters yellowed and tore, and still I truly believed that
Speaker 1: I would see her again, that no one could hurt
Speaker 1: something so beautiful and sweet. And yet I knew I
Speaker 1: could feel it, something was hiding in plain sight. I
Speaker 1: kept my thoughts waking and sleeping on nothing but her,
Speaker 1: and with every ounce of strength, I embraced that feeling.
Speaker 1: What is that? You don't know, well, let me tell you.
Speaker 1: The next fall, the reins returned. All through October. It
Speaker 1: stormed and stormed again. The basements flooded again, the river
Speaker 1: overran and again. The earth everywhere was turned to mud.
Speaker 1: The pattern, the repetition, it was all too much to bear.
Speaker 1: And Halloween was the worst of all. I was alone,
Speaker 1: cooped up in my house, listening to the rain pound
Speaker 1: the window, thinking the last thing I wanted to do
Speaker 1: was live through this night again. In that moment, I
Speaker 1: was ready to end it all. And then outside my
Speaker 1: window I heard something. It wasn't clear, maybe more a
Speaker 1: agend than real, and yet I didn't dare deny it.
Speaker 1: A tone in the air like that of a ringing bell.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine why, on that night, of all nights,
Speaker 1: I would venture out into that storm, and yet that
Speaker 1: is exactly what I did. I walked calmly forward, certain
Speaker 1: I had lost my mind, but since I had already
Speaker 1: lost everything else, what did it matter. I followed the
Speaker 1: sound with ears I could not trust, but where I
Speaker 1: felt it get louder. I went through the neighborhood into town,
Speaker 1: behind the church and passed the cemetery gate. There I
Speaker 1: heard a cacapa me like the chiming of a thousand
Speaker 1: clock towers. Everyone in different tambre and time, some so
Speaker 1: shrill they pierced the sky, others so deep they shook
Speaker 1: the earth below. But in the midst of all of it,
Speaker 1: one voice rang true, like a bell, soft and simple,
Speaker 1: yet insistent. I trained my senses on that single note
Speaker 1: and walked toward it. It led me to the center
Speaker 1: of the cemetery, away from all the other headstones, to
Speaker 1: this very spot. My boots sunk into the mud, and
Speaker 1: there the ringing stopped. You mean right here, right here,
Speaker 1: m I realized then where I stood the ground had
Speaker 1: been disturbed, a depression in the earth where no grass groop.
Speaker 1: It looked like it could have been a grave, only
Speaker 1: big enough for a child. But there was something wrong
Speaker 1: about it. It looked shallow, like it hadn't been properly filled,
Speaker 1: and the rain had been eating it away. I plunged
Speaker 1: my bare hands into that sodden ground, and I dug
Speaker 1: into the black mud, wrist elbow, shoulder deep. The earth
Speaker 1: was soft and giving and stuck to my skin like tar.
Speaker 1: It got into my hair, my mouth, and nose. But
Speaker 1: I just kept digging, and before I knew it, I
Speaker 1: was crouched at the bottom of a hole. And then
Speaker 1: my hand found something cold, hard. It was her. Yes,
Speaker 1: she had led me write to her, But you already
Speaker 1: knew that, didn't you. If I had had the chance
Speaker 1: to bury her, to give her a funeral and have
Speaker 1: her embalmed, her beautiful little body, her bright countenance, might
Speaker 1: have stood a chance. But with no casket between her
Speaker 1: and the wet earth, the elements got the better of her.
Speaker 1: She was not quite a skeleton yet, but not much more.
Speaker 1: I promised right there that I would restore her to
Speaker 1: her former beauty. No, nothing like that was possible now,
Speaker 1: but we would do the best with what we had.
Speaker 1: I began that very morning, carried her home in my
Speaker 1: arms in the pre dawn light, and got to work.
Speaker 1: Where she still had skin. I washed and dried and
Speaker 1: sewed the cracks together where she was only bone. I
Speaker 1: scrubbed until perfectly white, her eyes, once so blue, now
Speaker 1: modeled gray. I replaced with jewels, blue moonstones that glitter
Speaker 1: in the night. For her nose, long eaten away, a
Speaker 1: button from her favorite dress, onto which I hand painted
Speaker 1: each of her freckles. For her mouth, the porcelain lips
Speaker 1: from her favorite doll. The fit isn't quite right, but
Speaker 1: they'll do for now. And what wisps of hair as
Speaker 1: she had left, I washed and curled and tied up
Speaker 1: in ribbon. Some days I wonder what would happen if
Speaker 1: I gave her blood a fresh heart. Would she live again?
Speaker 1: Would you like to see her? No? No, no no, she's
Speaker 1: lonely after all this time, still so beautiful, Yes, am
Speaker 1: s S. I had the grave filled in, and above it,
Speaker 1: I built this mausoleum where nothing could ever hurt her again,
Speaker 1: not even time itself. Did you ever find out what
Speaker 1: happened to her? Funny that you should ask. For the
Speaker 1: longest time, it remained a mystery. I feared I would
Speaker 1: never know. And then one came forward, a boy just
Speaker 1: a little older than she would have been. Couldn't handle
Speaker 1: the guilt, he said. He certainly waited long enough. And
Speaker 1: you know what happened. The reason he gave for the
Speaker 1: murder of my daughter. You do, don't you. It was
Speaker 1: a joke, a prank. And when I heard him say it,
Speaker 1: everything became clear. That's something hiding in plain sight, that
Speaker 1: uncanny feeling I could not deny. A child buried alive
Speaker 1: on Halloween. He's more than just a coincidence. It's a story,
Speaker 1: a tale children tell. They told it long ago. I
Speaker 1: suspect they tell it now. I believe it was told
Speaker 1: to me as a girl, that I had heard it
Speaker 1: before I lived it, and that it was all but
Speaker 1: forgotten until I heard it again. As the story goes,
Speaker 1: some time a century ago, there was a banker's daughter
Speaker 1: who fell ill. The banker sent for the best doctors,
Speaker 1: with the finest medicines, the most modern techniques. They did
Speaker 1: everything they could, but Halloween night she was declared dead
Speaker 1: in her bed, and to stop the spread of infection,
Speaker 1: they dragged her body out that very night and buried
Speaker 1: her in the earth. But the next morning, when they returned,
Speaker 1: the grave had caved in, and the whole where she
Speaker 1: had been laid to rest was empty. Now this might
Speaker 1: have happened, might have not. But regardless of what was true,
Speaker 1: a legend was born that every Halloween, that poor forgotten
Speaker 1: child would arise once more from that unhallowed ground and
Speaker 1: walk the streets looking for some one, some one else
Speaker 1: lonely to spend eternity with. Now I don't know where
Speaker 1: or when, but somehow this boy and his accomplices had
Speaker 1: gotten to my little girl. They had told her the
Speaker 1: story of the banker's daughter and given her the idea
Speaker 1: that because she was so utterly alone, she would be
Speaker 1: the perfect bait. And this Halloween, even if she was
Speaker 1: locked up tight in her room, the banker's daughter would
Speaker 1: come and get her. Unless they took the steps to
Speaker 1: prevent it, and the only way to ward off this
Speaker 1: wandering spirit was to go out Halloween night and leap
Speaker 1: over an open grave. Knowing my baby, with her simple
Speaker 1: heart and trusting nature, she probably believed it. Really, they
Speaker 1: just thought it would be funny that she would be
Speaker 1: an easy target, and so they dug the grave that
Speaker 1: night in the rain. Can you imagine going to such lengths? Well?
Speaker 1: Can you? And then they came to my house, lured
Speaker 1: my baby out of her bed, opened her window, and
Speaker 1: led her into the cemetery. I can't imagine it all.
Speaker 1: My little girl more nervous than she'd ever been, but
Speaker 1: I suspect more excited, too exuberant even the chance to
Speaker 1: have friends play their games be one of the gang,
Speaker 1: But of course that was hardly their intention. By the
Speaker 1: time they reached the cemetery, the storm had gotten worse.
Speaker 1: The makeshift grave was filled with water and mud, and
Speaker 1: the edges were slippery and crumbling. One by one, the
Speaker 1: boys leapt over, ensuring my darling girl that this would
Speaker 1: keep her safe from the evil spirit, and then, just
Speaker 1: as she was about to jump, the last boy pushed
Speaker 1: her in. She hit the bottom and sunk in the mud.
Speaker 1: She tried to climb out, but the more she struggled,
Speaker 1: the deeper the whole got. She cried out for someone
Speaker 1: to help her, but these boys laughed at her, at
Speaker 1: her fear, at their successful prank, and they left her
Speaker 1: there beneath the earth, the storm worsening, the whole filling
Speaker 1: with water, with no one to hear her scream. The
Speaker 1: boy who confessed, I swears it wasn't he who pushed
Speaker 1: her in. He claimed they never thought she'd actually die,
Speaker 1: that it was all a harmless prank that went too far.
Speaker 1: But she did die, suffocating on mud until it filled
Speaker 1: her mouth, her nose, her lungs, a child entombed in
Speaker 1: the earth, all alone for a joke. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: That's horrible. There it is again, that little tremor in
Speaker 1: your voice. You remind me of him, you know of who,
Speaker 1: the one that confessed. Why did you come here? Boy?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but I really need to leave, to vandalize
Speaker 1: this tomb, to see her own handiwork to defile her corpse. No, no,
Speaker 1: which one were you? Did you tell her the story?
Speaker 1: Did you open her window? Did you push her into
Speaker 1: the grave? No? I didn't. It was maybe you were
Speaker 1: the mastermind behind all of it. Get that stay await.
Speaker 1: Why should a worm like you live while she lies dead? Stop?
Speaker 1: Let go of me. I don't know what you were
Speaker 1: thinking coming back here, boy, but it's time you, atone
Speaker 1: hell join my daughter in her tomb right here forever,
Speaker 1: so she is never lonely again. Experience the fate. You
Speaker 1: condemned her to feel what it's like to be buried
Speaker 1: alive now they in there is that I can never sir,
Speaker 1: uh mazie nothing. Greez line with me. This boys burry
Speaker 1: has done nothing to me. Greez right there. I have
Speaker 1: missed you so of course, of course, darling, Missilo, quiet,
Speaker 1: you vile thing, leave us be your head, girl, my love,
Speaker 1: my angel, my world. Oh I've missed you so and
Speaker 1: I because the lead anything anything, baby, it's a well
Speaker 1: h okay, Max, this way, Oh my god. The church wedn't.
Speaker 1: I could not kill the police, so I needed a distraction.
Speaker 1: I made sure all the kids got out. No one died,
Speaker 1: but the leading crip. I assure you, Max, she is
Speaker 1: alive and very very happy. You can't didn't she suffered
Speaker 1: himing there. Eventually, I suppose you should get her out
Speaker 1: if you wish I just thought, maybe give her tonight,
Speaker 1: Needy in this moment, we have more urgent problems. Hey,
Speaker 1: you there so much redistraction. PSI, well that's a well
Speaker 1: where do you freeze? Thirteen Days of Halloween Devil's Night,
Speaker 1: starring Carter Rockwood and Clancy Brown. Episode nine, The Mausoleum
Speaker 1: Written by Annie Reese, Nicholas Takowski, and Alexander Williams. Editing
Speaker 1: and sound designed by rema Il Kali, featuring the voices
Speaker 1: of Clayton Ferris, Laura Shine, Nicholas Takowski, f Frey Kennedy,
Speaker 1: and Angel Masters. Directed by Alexander Williams. Script supervision by
Speaker 1: Nicholas Takowski. Casting by Sunday Bowling c s A and
Speaker 1: Meg Mormon c s A. Production coordinator Wayna Calderon. Production
Speaker 1: assistants Zoe Shay and Amber Ferris. Animal recording by Ben James,
Speaker 1: closing theme by Rose Azerti. Loyalty Freak Music dot Com
Speaker 1: recorded at d G Entertainment in Los Angeles, California, Engineered
Speaker 1: by Gary Forbes and Jody Abbott. Additional recording by SoundBite Inc.
Speaker 1: In Atlanta, Georgia. Engineered by Chase Nixon Studio manager Kathy
Speaker 1: Roberts and Burnt Orange Sound in Sara Sota, Florida. Engineered
Speaker 1: by Matt de Seer, Executive producers Aaron Manky, Noah Finberg,
Speaker 1: Chris Dicky, Matt Frederick and Alexander Williams. Supervising producers Trevor
Speaker 1: Young and Josh Than. Producers Jesse Funk and rima Ill Kali.
Speaker 1: Thirteen Days of Halloween was created by Matt Frederick and
Speaker 1: Alexander Williams and is a production of I Heeart three
Speaker 1: D Audio, Blumhouse Television and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mackey.
Speaker 1: Learn more about the show at Grimm and Mild dot com,
Speaker 1: slash thirteen Days and find more podcasts from I heart
Speaker 1: Radio by visiting the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.