Deepwoods | Creep Cast

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with a class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah, aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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I am trying so hard to try to find a Totino's sponsorship somewhere.

I mean, we probably could.

Can you imagine if we got a Totino's pizza flavor?

Yo, that would be, you know, how happy I'd be to be in a grocery store and be like, whatever.

There we are.

They put green dye in the cheese, so it's you melts it green.

It's like green cheese, and we call it like little black pepperonis.

Yeah, what would we call it?

Green and black pizza roll.

Crazy pepperoni.

Yo.

Whoa,

hold on, cowboy.

Let's calm down.

You're really opening up a lot of doors with this.

Scary salami.

Scary salami is pretty good.

But there's no salami in it.

It's pepperoni.

Hazardous hamburger.

What about creepy pepperoni?

Like the peas play off each other?

Creepy pepperoni.

Creepy pepperoni.

Yeah.

Creeperoni.

Yo.

He's got it.

Look at this guy.

What about.

So no one really jumped at this, but I'm still going to say it again.

Hazardous hamburger.

Say it again.

See if the third time gets this.

Hazardous hamburger.

Yo!

Welcome back to Creepcast.

Today, we're talking, we're reading a story written by the author of Baraska, aka

the Dalek Emperor, aka.

Sorry, I was looking at the subreddit making memes about your grandfather shooting your dog.

I think the user.

Also written by C.K.

Walker, which is the pen name of Rebecca Klingle.

So obviously...

Not only do you guys know the impact Baraska has had on your well-being, but the impact it's had on us.

Because most of the time when we talk about like one of the best stories we covered, Barosca is always in the top three, right?

And everyone, we love it.

A lot of you all love it in spite of the trauma it caused, which you're welcome for that, by the way.

So we figured.

There is an episode, or sorry, a short story written by the same author called The Lost Town of Deepwood, Pennsylvania.

So that sounds like an interesting title.

We know we like the author.

Sounds perfect for an in-person episode.

I am

still going to go back to, I think, that the abuse of AI

in our subreddit depicting me as a fat child.

I want to just go on record saying that those posts are going to be removed.

I'm going to repel those from existence on the subreddit.

And

there's just going to be, it's just going to have to be a lot stricter.

And I hate to be this guy, but it's unfucking fathomable what they've started to do to me.

And I have started therapy because of it.

Here's a picture of him as a fat little child next to a man holding a shotgun pointed at a small dog, and it says, Hunter's grandfather's POV.

And I think that's really cool, and y'all should keep doing it.

Anyway, so to get into it.

I don't have to tell you why

that's, we're removing that, okay?

And we're getting into the story, and I will say, I think the title of the story, is good.

Yes, it is interesting.

It reminds me of the one we did during the grab bag.

What was was it called?

The disappearance of

Shelby, Kansas, or something.

It was a woman's name, Kansas.

Ashley.

Ashley, Kansas.

That's it.

Yes.

The disappearance of Ashley, Kansas.

So the title kind of reminds me of that, but again, from...

I think, honestly, the only one of Rebecca's works I've read is probably Borofska, at least to my knowledge.

I think that's the only one that we've read.

It's definitely the only one we've only read on the show.

You're saying just in general?

I think in general, that's the only one I've read.

I thought you'd read way more of her stuff.

I guess not.

I've heard of more of her stuff.

Like, I've heard of Mayhem Mountain, I know, but I've never read it, stuff like that.

So there are,

I know she has written a lot of other famous works.

Barosca, far and away, though, is the most popular.

She's also done the work on the Haunting of Hill House.

Okay, I should clarify.

In the creepypasta community, Barosca is the most popular.

But yeah, she's like a very accomplished author, wrote on Haunting of Hill House and stuff like that.

We stand her very much.

Rebecca,

for some reason, you see this.

Does Pennsylvania have any bodies of water?

Because this could very well be an Atlantis situation.

Deepwood.

I feel like Deepwood makes it sound like it's in the woods.

That's, you know, you're putting up a.

I just want, when are we going to start talking about myrrh creatures?

Mermen, merwen.

I actually know a few creepypastas about like ocean people and stuff like that.

I want to start digging into that

soon.

Okay.

Not now.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay, buddy.

The day when we start rolling in, it's like, oh, I think that my husband's a fucking fish person.

I want to be on that gravy train.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

I'll let you know.

I'm excited.

I hope that this is equally as good as Barasca.

If so, I'm going to be a very happy little boy today.

Do you also want it to have like

female impregnation following?

Yeah, like the sex slave, weird stuff.

You know, I think we could probably do without it.

I'm open to a lot of things, though.

How many stories does an author have to write with that in it before it becomes questionable?

I think three.

Oh!

We're on the right track.

So if this one does have it, totally fine.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, I mean, there's one.

I mean, like, you know, everyone, who doesn't from time to time, we look at every one of our stories and they're all just impregnation

stories.

It's like, okay.

Okay, well, come on.

This is more than three.

Maybe we dial it back a little bit.

All right.

Well, without further ado, let's get into the lost town of Deepwood, Pennsylvania.

Let's get into it.

As always, everyone, thank you so much for watching.

Oh, yeah.

Spotify.

Spotify.

Listen to us there, baby.

Rate us good.

Rate us hard.

We're halfway to Hawk Tua.

We are.

Hawktua podcast is at 15 right now.

We're still above Ben Shapiro, but we want to get above.

I want to get above fucking Markiplier, which his show is presented by Mug.

Rubier.

How the hell do we get?

When can I get a Mug

presented by Mug?

We can steal that.

I think we can.

If we overtake him, we can.

And I have to get by.

I will, if by the end of the year, we have not surpassed the talk to a podcast, I will

that has to be bleeped.

There's no way it cannot be.

Do you think we can at least try to get a Mountain Dew presented by Mountain Dew?

I think

where's it at?

Hold on.

Did we not have one?

We had one.

We drank it.

That's how much we like it.

Harry, go grab the Baja Blast Zeros.

Hold on.

Did it like Red Bull and Monster sponsor creators forever?

We don't need to talk about them.

Our scopes need to be on Mountain Dew.

That's where our love is moving forward.

Isaiah, let's get into the story.

And if there's a reference of Mountain Dew, we're going to give a lucky fan $60,000.

You're going to give a fan $60,000?

I don't know.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I'm going to get a split joint here.

I don't know what you're talking about.

Lost Town, Deepwood, Pennsylvania.

All right.

When I was a kid, my dad traveled a lot for work.

Back then, his company was growing exponentially, and my father was sent to oversee the opening of new stores all across the country.

In 2002, he had a particularly busy year.

My dad was assigned to his store in Pennsylvania and because it was a longer assignment and because it was summertime as well, he decided to take my mom and I with him.

Since we were going to be there for two months, they gave us a fully furnished house in the suburbs.

It was two stories tall and at the end of a very long cul-de-sac.

The town itself was very small, with a little over 3,000 residents, and the suburb where we stayed was even more rural.

Our neighborhood was relatively new, and most of the houses were still empty.

The housing development, Lonewood, had only just started cutting into the dense forest that surrounded it, and all the empty houses gave it a very eerie, albeit boring, feel.

Lucky for me, there were a few other kids who lived in Lonewood, and one of them happened to be my age.

Jamie and I were both 12, and really that was all we needed to have in common.

We had a lot of fun that summer.

Being a city kid, I was eager to explore all the bike trails local kids had made out in the woods.

The city of Middlesbrough was a very old town which was incorporated sometime in the early 1800s.

The town had tons of history, but nothing really to do.

One particularly boring Sunday, Jamie and I even went to the town's museum.

It was pretty boring, as expected, until we heard some kid ask an employee about the lost town.

The employee replied that that was just a legend, but that was enough to pique my curiosity.

I do love that random kid comes in.

What about the lost town?

What about the lost town?

Yeah,

I don't think I've ever had anything to that extreme, but I've definitely heard of like, in my hometown, we had a little city museum thing that was also really boring, but there was a guy who's like, what about the butcher?

And it was like something like that, where it's like, oh, we had a serial killer.

No.

And then the guy was like, oh,

we don't.

No, that

we're not trying to put him in here.

And

I've still never known who it was or anything.

Wow.

But it was still one of the, it's like that weird serendipitous.

I like this beginning of being like, what about the lost town?

What of the lost town?

Yeah, exactly.

I will say, right now, this is smacking on the pulpit of Baraska pretty hard.

I was new to town.

I was 12 years old.

I met a local kid named Jamie.

Oh, true.

We went to the local historic place, and there was the Lost Town, which is the the exact same as like the lost mine or whatever.

Was the person refresh my memory?

Was the so was the he was new to town or man?

Yeah, his dad, they had just moved there because his dad got a job as the sheriff's dad.

The sheriff, okay, that's what's what it was.

Okay, I'm just making sure because that was the whole thing with that story.

It was fucked up, was that the dad like that?

The dad turned out to be one of the people running it and gave his daughter to the thing, yeah.

Which is why I want to read the next part of Barosca because I hope he gets just we should put that out there.

We will be doing Barosca 5

at some point, yeah.

It's just a long, it's long.

I think Barosca 5, if I recall right, is longer than 1 through 4 together.

Yeah, I think that we were looking at over.

It's like a five-hour route.

Yeah, it's going to be like a long-ass episode.

Which I'm down for.

Yeah.

We just need to prepare it.

We just need to block out a day for it.

A full day.

I quit Jamie about it, but he didn't seem to know much either.

It was a full five weeks into the summer before I finally got my questions answered.

Jamie and I were building a bike ramp over a narrow stream late one afternoon when we saw a group of five teenagers boisterously heading up out into the woods.

They were carrying flashlights and beer, several of them trying to scare the girls of the group into turning back.

I wonder where they're going, I mused as I glanced over at Jamie.

He stood up and wiped his brow.

I know where they're going.

Where?

I stood up and dusted the dirt off my shorts.

The novelty of living in a small town had weeks ago given way to boredom, and I jumped on anything that sounded remotely interesting.

They're looking for the lost town, he sighed regretfully.

Okay, seriously, what is that?

I knew you knew more than you let on.

I need to know, Jamie.

I need to know.

I shook his shoulders in mock hysteria, and he stumbled for balance.

All right, I'll tell you.

Geez, Katie.

Jamie picked up his bike and started walking down the bike path.

I grabbed mine and followed him.

The lost town is just a dumb legend.

The stories say that Middleborough had sister city nearby, somewhere out in these woods.

Then one day, like a century and a half ago, the whole town just disappeared.

The people left or died.

Nobody knows.

Nobody remembers the name of the town.

It's like a rite of passage or something for kids to go looking for it.

Jamie, we should know.

He stopped and turned to look at me.

Some kid went looking for it in the 70s and never came back.

They found his body like 10 years later in the middle of nowhere.

He got lost out there.

It's easy to do.

Everything looks the same.

He was a total idiot, probably on drugs.

I mean, it was the 70s.

We're a totally different generation.

We have Satnov.

Satnav.

What's Satnav?

Satellite navigation.

GPS, yeah.

Satnav?

He looked at me curiously.

Jamie had lived in this town his whole life, and sometimes I forgot how sheltered he was.

Satellite navigation.

That's me impersonating.

It's so cringe that we just have this conversation.

My dad has a GPS that he totally wouldn't notice missing for a day.

Come on, Jamie.

It'd be so much fun.

I'd better get back.

I love whenever

you have conversations with yourself because it's like hysteria sitting in.

Jamie looked at his watch and then mounted his bike.

My dad is taking me to a movie tonight.

We rode in an uncomfortable silence until an idea struck me as we rolled over the abandoned train tracks.

They were old and almost buried

by plant growth.

Hey, I know you don't want to talk about it, but has anyone ever found anything?

No.

Well, my friend's older brother said he found some human bones out there once, but nobody believed him.

Oh, where do people look?

Well, almost everybody goes to the lake.

He pointed to the left of us, where we'd seen the teenagers heading earlier.

It's pretty deep back there, but they figured if there was another town, they would have lived by the lake.

So that's where they go.

Well, you know what I would do?

I would follow the train tracks.

I mean, they look pretty old.

I don't know why they would lay them going back into those woods unless there was something back there.

So that's where I'd go.

Jamie considered this and then nodded.

Yeah, I guess I could buy that.

No one follows the tracks that way, though.

That's where that kid disappeared Went.

I wasn't swayed.

I didn't bring up the lost town again until two weeks later.

It was the weekend before we were moving home, and my parents had a barbecue for the employees of dad's new store and some of our neighbors.

Jamie and I hung out inside the house and played my Nintendo 64 while we flirted pretty outrageously.

Hot.

How old are these kids?

26, I think.

Bases Bases covered

bases covered.

Man, these kids on bicycles building ramps playing Nintendo 64, thank God they graduated college eight years ago.

Yeah,

it does look like whenever you're flirting, playing Nintendo 64.

What was that?

What kind of shenanigans?

You were never like in high school playing games with a girl you liked?

Some of the boys, maybe.

It's my turn.

It's my job.

Stop it.

No, stop, Michael.

Stop.

Stop.

That's how I felt.

You do that thing when you're playing a game together and then one of you's beating the other and you're doing the haha, like the shove thing or whatever.

Come on.

You're cheating.

Sure, yeah.

That's probably what's being described here.

Yeah, there's a lot of this going on, you know?

Dude, stop.

You're tickling me.

I don't like, I'm not going to describe anymore because you're going to do it.

It makes me uncomfortable.

I'm looking directly into the viewers' eyes right now.

Stop it.

You're tickling me.

I'm up next.

I want that people can practice their flirtation.

I'm going to keep reading.

Good lord.

There had been an unspoken sort of mutual attraction throughout the summer that no one had the guts to act on.

Stop moaning.

Since I was moving home in five days, there really was nothing left to lose.

Although his intentions were probably pure and genuine, I'm embarrassed to say that mine were not.

I thought that if I could make him want to impress me, he would agree to go looking for the lost town.

What a bitch.

I mean, this is like standard high school stuff.

Yeah, but still, that is not.

I mean, what the fuck?

I mean, like, sure, it's rude, but I mean, like, there's a bunch of girls in high school who are like, oh, that guy likes me.

If he gets off flustered, he'll go to that weird town where the guy died.

Well, how many

times are you?

How many

turn?

How many girls in high school and stuff like that, like, you you know, they try to

get a guy to like them for like social clout or like because he's like big on the baseball team.

Like, they don't actually like him, they just want something out of him, right?

It's like it's, I think it's a fine part of being a kid.

Now, when you're an adult doing like serious relationships off of this,

negging, negging, what is what is the definition of negging?

Negging is a manipulative tactic that involves making backhanded compliments or negative comments.

Oh, that's that's where you're just like, you look really good for a fat girl.

That's negging.

I I don't think that's it.

That's negging.

I don't think that's negging.

No, I mean, there's no tactic that involves making backhanded comments or negative comments to make someone feel bad about themselves.

What you just did is just mean.

Negging is being mean.

No, it would be like this.

It'd be like, yeah, you look a lot better today.

That's kind of similar to what I did.

No.

No.

The difference.

Ow!

Saying, you look really good for a fat girl is totally different.

First off, I didn't say that.

I'm saying that that's the example of what someone negative.

I'm saying, but it has to be manipulative.

If I say you look better today, you're like, thank you.

And then maybe you're later to like, oh, did I look not good the past few days?

Which is what the incentive underlined was.

Oh, so just saying you look pretty good for a fat girl is just like, what are you talking about?

What?

Like,

there's no manipulation.

For a guy this big, you look really good.

Okay, here's one.

Hey, Hunter, your last video was a lot better.

Oh, thank you.

It was really good.

The other ones are good.

This one's really good, too.

Wow, I'm good at everything.

That's what he meant.

There's never one negative thing.

Hmm.

Okay, wonderful.

Well, I'm glad I have an understanding of what negging is now.

Okay, yeah, I'm just going to keep going.

The legend had thoroughly consumed me.

I'd been to the local library every morning for the past week looking for more information on the town and had found nothing.

But legends don't just come from nowhere.

I was sure of it.

I knew if we didn't leave by 2 p.m., we wouldn't have enough daylight to carry out my plan.

I already had a backpack packed with water, a flashlight, a camera, and a can of red spray paint.

I figured if we left the tracks, we would need a way to find our way back to them.

I thought I was so clever.

Nothing in that backpack made a damn bit of difference in the end.

I was a fool.

I set my controller down and turned to look at Jamie.

So, do you want to go to the woods one last time?

I raised my eyebrow at him and smiled.

Yeah,

he said excitedly and jumped up off the couch.

Then, embarrassed, he cast his eyes down at the floor.

Yeah, you know, if you want to, that's cool.

Cool, let's go.

These in-person thing, because I'm glad I get to act and be the caretaker.

Yeah, I get.

The whole time you're reading, I'm like, don't look at me, don't look at me.

Cool, let's go.

Thank you.

I grabbed his hand and ran out the front door, grabbing my strategically placed backpack on the way.

Jamie didn't even notice it, he was walking faster than I was.

When we had gotten a decent way into the trees, Jamie turned around and looked briefly at my face before casting his eyes to the ground.

He rode the back of his neck.

I've actually

wanted to kiss you all summer.

Don't look at me when you do that, Line Read.

It doesn't help that anytime I imagine you as a kid, it's just you, your head now, but on a smaller body.

I was stunned to silence, absolutely dumbfounded that Jamie had found the guts to say anything like this.

I knew I needed to fill the awkward silence left in his wake, so I did the only thing I could think of.

I leaned in and kissed him.

It was,

dude, why did your lips purse when you said that?

He's like leaning over and shit.

I immediately hate the in-person format because you can do

physical bits like right next to me while I'm here.

And I don't realize that until I've been really wanting to record in person for like

a long time.

I can tell.

It was the awkward first kiss of two 12 year olds.

26 year olds.

But it made me feel warm and sent a flight of butterflies swirling into my stomach.

So I actually really did like Jamie.

How about that?

I let him go and his face was the same shade of red that I imagined mine was.

He quickly changed the subject to how long he'd wanted to ask me out, but that he didn't think I liked him back.

We walked for a while carrying this conversation, him oblivious to his surroundings, me subtly leading the way.

It took him stumbling over the tracks to break off his monologue and finally noticed the backpack.

He looked at me like I'd punched him in the face.

You can't be serious.

Jamie, I know, but look, this is the last time I'm going to see you in a really long time.

And I want to remember today.

We will only be out for two hours max.

We'll be back before they even realize we're gone.

Jamie stared at the tracks for a minute and seemed to be considering it all.

I held my breath until he finally let out a deep sigh.

Okay.

Oh my god, Jamie.

I...

He held up his finger, cutting me off.

But we follow the tracks the entire time, and we turn around after an hour.

Okay.

I was so excited that I hugged him.

It would be the first and last time I ever did.

I want to say too, real quick, this author does a really good job by like setting up mysterious,

like world-building places, like almost like fantastical dream, like who knows if it's real or not.

Well, and also the relationships between people.

She does a great job

at like establishing her characters quickly, right?

But in a meaningful way.

Like, I feel more attached to these two than I do a ton of the different characters we read about.

Like, I think of Jamie and Katie like more than I think of, I don't know, I mean, characters from stories like 1999, where it's just kind of like a faceless person.

So, it establishes, not to say that's a bad story, just I'm thinking of a good story in comparison.

Like,

we have

our setup that we like, and it's doing fun stuff with the writing as well.

Stuff like his face was as red as I imagined mine was.

Like, there's, you know, fun writing tricks there, but it stays focused on where it wants to go.

I think she has a good, you know, good with these stories too, them being 12 years old.

That perfect time where it's like youthful ignorance, but also like kind of upbeat, adventurous kind of you have enough agency to go do stuff, but still enough stupidity to put yourself in dumb situations.

It's like the innocence of believing that someone, like if two, if they were 26, you'd be like, Do you have nothing better to do?

Yeah, with your time.

But then being 12 years old, I think really leans into that.

How old were you when you had your first kiss?

30.

I don't know what's up.

I looked at my wife and I was like,

I looked at my wife.

Should we kiss?

Also, talk about how real that is, though.

The little boy asked the girl, I've been wanting to kiss you for a long time.

And he does, and then now the floodgates are open.

And he's just like, Yeah, I've been really wanting to ask you out for a long time.

I think that's very classic young boy.

I think that's exactly how my first kiss went.

Oh, yeah.

You kissed, and I immediately like, oh, yeah, so I think you're really cute, and I want to

go out, you want to date?

Like, yeah, there's a lot of people who say a lot of stupid shit after the floodgates are open, like that.

Yeah.

I think I've known you for so much longer.

Do you want to get married?

Whatever.

As we walked, we talked about all sorts of mundane things, stopping only to make sure we were still on the tracks.

It felt like we had only been walking for 45 minutes, but when Jamie checked his watch, it had been three hours.

That's That's weird.

It hasn't been three hours.

It says five o'clock.

He trails off.

I swear we just left after two.

It can't be five, dude.

Your watch is busted.

I gave him a playful shove.

Jamie raised his eyebrow at me and smiled.

Even so, we should probably turn around.

He wasn't wrong.

The sun was setting.

The shadows were long and looking around.

I wondered if it really was five o'clock.

But I wasn't ready to give up just yet.

As we had been walking, I noticed something taking shape off to our right.

A large mass, maybe a quarter mile away.

It was denser than the area around it and seemed to have clean, man-made lines.

Jamie, look!

He turned.

Yeah, I was hoping you hadn't noticed it.

It's a long way off, though.

We would never find the tracks again.

Yes, we would.

Check it out.

I triumphantly pulled the spray pen out of my backpack.

It's for the trees.

He took the can and shook it.

It made an experimental X on a nearby tree.

Okay, but I gotta do the spraying.

And I didn't argue.

The closer we got to the mass, the more it took shape.

First, we could tell it was a building.

Then we could tell it was church.

By the time we got to the front door, We were looking at a very old and dilapidated chapel.

Remembering my camera, I took a picture of the wooden plaque over the door.

Whatever had been written on it had long ago worn away.

We walked around the church in awe.

The building was small, maybe 500 square feet.

The windows were, surprisingly, all intact, but were so caked with dirt and grime that we couldn't see anything inside.

How do we get in?

I asked quietly.

I don't know, but we're going to have to figure it out.

Wait until my brother hears about this.

I mean, holy shit.

Look at this place.

His excitement was contagious.

The front door had a pull handle, but try as we might, we couldn't seem to open the door.

Do you think it's locked?

I asked as I watched Jamie struggle with it.

Yeah, maybe.

I mean, it must be.

There was a door around back, though.

The door at the back was a lot more sympathetic and led us in with relative ease.

We were standing in a small room with an old wooden desk attached to a wall.

There was a small fireplace and old portraits hung up around the tiny office.

The people in the pictures were all standing in front of the same maroon background and were looking down at us disapprovingly.

Books were scattered everywhere, most in a language I had never seen before.

The floor was covered in dirt, and a pair of old shoes were laying haphazardly in one corner.

Whoa,

I said in awe.

Yeah, whoa.

I looked over at Jamie, who had a huge smile on his face.

He was holding up a cross and a piece of paper.

What is it?

I walked over to see.

It's a list of names.

There's like 60 people in this list.

Maybe a town census?

Let me see.

I pulled my flashlight out of my backpack and shined it on the parchment.

Deepwood.

Do you think that's the name of the town?

All these names are crossed out.

I'll accept this one.

I pointed to a name at the very bottom.

Maybe it was the plague?

You think it's a list of the dead?

Jamie shrugged.

Makes as much sense as anything else.

I walked over to the desk and leaned against it.

Why do you think they left?

I mean, look,

there's a jacket or something on that chair.

His shoes over there.

The town pastor or whatever, he just took off and left everything like this.

Or died, said Jamie as he folded the paper and put it into my backpack.

Yeah, died.

Either way, it must have been creepy as hell to be alone in here.

I stared at one of the portraits for several long seconds.

The young woman painted there seemed to be staring down at me with a very accusatory look.

Made me incredibly uncomfortable.

So basically, just to recap, this is just a small little church.

Books all over the floor.

There's like people's clothes kind of scattered around here and there.

But then like, it's pretty well in shape, like the inside of it.

They didn't say that it's like decrepit or...

Well, it's an abandoned church.

Well, it's abandoned, but they're saying that like the

deep reds and like the paintings and stuff like that.

It's not like destroyed, but I think it's been abandoned for a long time

because, like, there's the list of names and there's the paintings and stuff.

But there's like books across the floor that are laid open.

And they also mentioned like maybe the plague got them, which obviously wouldn't be the plague as an European plague, but I could see two kids thinking, like, oh, 100 years ago, the plague, sure, you know.

Yeah, it's something trying to justify like a mass death.

Yeah, kind of like there was some huge because there's 60 names, all of them are crossed out except one.

And then you have like the paintings of people along the walls that all have like the same matching background, which is interesting.

I just want to appreciate like how well the author sets up mystery in such a short amount of time.

Because I'm in.

I want to know.

Yeah.

Like where they said the name Deepwood, right?

Was that on a piece of paper?

Yeah, I think it was the,

let me see here.

Pull the flashlight backpad and shine it on the parchment.

And then Deepwood.

Do you think that's the name of the town?

Yes.

Yeah, so on it it says Deepwood.

So like

the name of the town was Deepwood.

It's abandoned.

There's an empty church.

The books are in languages they can't read.

Probably my first thought, this is Pennsylvania, maybe Germanic or Dutch population.

Obviously like an old kind of like Dutch, like really kind of like almost Amish church.

Yeah.

Like those classic wooden, like

it doesn't have to be a supernatural reason for the books to be a different language, but it adds to the mystique of everything.

Yeah.

I thought it'd be really funny if it was in Spanish.

she's like a link

it's like all the other books are in english but one spanish book's out she's like whoa

what

you think a demon wrote this and it's just like i don't know it's just like the giving tree in spanish like

yeah spanish for dummies yeah whatever

whoa i was so absorbed in the paintings that i didn't notice the slow creaking from overhead until the ceilings cracked loudly as it started to cave in i screamed and covered my head but the next thing i I knew, I was lying on my back over the threshold of a door, Jamie on top of me protecting his head.

Thanks, I mumbled as I gently pushed Jamie off of me.

Don't mention it.

Jamie climbed to his feet and brushed himself off.

I glanced behind him at the office, which was now filled floor to ceiling with decaying debris.

Jamie,

that was our way out.

That's okay.

We can unlock the front door now that we're inside or break one of the windows.

If the back office was unsettlingly, the chapel was downright disturbing.

Even though the grimy windows allowed very little sunlight in, I could make out eight rows of pews lining a narrow aisle and a tall podium at the front of the chapel.

Jamie and I stumbled around the small nave, breaking windows on either side with pieces of wood we had found.

The sun was still setting and I wondered how much of a difference the muted light would make.

When I broke the last window on my side, I turned back around to survey the chapel.

Disappointed that the lighting wasn't much better, the room itself seemed to repel light.

The wooden pews were completely rotted.

In fact, the wood we had used to break the windows of the church were leg stands from the front row.

The narrow aisle in between the rows of pews was littered with leaves and rotting wood.

But that was nothing.

Nothing compared to what set upon the altar.

It wasn't a podium, as I had thought earlier.

It was a statue of the crucifixion, but unlike any I had ever seen before.

The paint had been worn away on every part of the statue, except the blood of the crucifixion wounds, which stood bright and realistic and seemed to be oozing before our very eyes.

The only other surface left untouched by the decay of time was the face of Jesus.

The details of his face were still so incredibly minute and perfect.

He had the same accusing eyes as the portraits in the pastor's office.

He seemed to be staring directly at me and I could tell Jamie felt the same though he was across the room from me.

The statue's stare awarded me an edge of panic and I suddenly realized that we needed to leave.

We weren't wanted here.

I had the sudden feeling that we were trespassing on some sort of hallowed ground.

We had found the church, we had documents proving we had been here, and now it was time to go.

I turned to Jamie to tell him so and could immediately tell that he did not share my feelings.

He had been born and bred on these legends, and nothing was going to tear him away from our discovery.

I watched him walk over to grab the camera out of my bag.

He took pictures of everything he deemed interesting, including the crucifixion statue, much to my unease.

I gave him several minutes before I said something.

Jamie,

I think we need to leave, I said in a low voice.

Jamie stopped and looked up, seeming to remember I was there.

Are you kidding?

This is what we came here for.

We have to bring some evidence of all of it.

It's going to be dark in half an hour.

It's already hard to see in here.

Duh, that's why I'm using a flash.

Hey, could you get a picture of me next to the creepy Jesus thing?

Um, I guess.

Whoa, the forever bleeding statue?

Yo, get a picture.

I'm going to pog at it.

Give me a picture.

I mumbled as I took the camera from him.

I didn't even want to look at it, much less photograph it.

But if it would help me get him out of here, I was going to stomach it.

Jamie wrapped his arm around it just as I snapped the picture.

Don't touch it.

Oh, crap.

Why did you touch it?

There's something off about that thing, Jamie.

Can we freaking go now?

Yeah, fine.

Jamie walked over and picked up the backpack as I headed towards the front door.

I noticed there was no lock on it.

I pushed against the door as hard as I could.

It didn't budge.

My heart sank.

There wasn't even a handle or a knob.

It was just a solid piece of wood with strange markings on it.

Symbols I had never seen before.

Jamie, the door's stuck.

I said as I turned around to see him testing a piece of floor with his foot.

What are you doing?

I asked, hearing the edge of panic in my voice.

He was still at at the front of the chapel, a foot from the Jesus statue, hopping back and forth from one part of the floor to another.

The statue's eyes seemed to be only on him now.

There's something under here.

See?

I heard the floorboard creak under his left foot as he put white on it.

Jamie, don't.

No, it's like under the dirt right here.

The floor is hollow.

He kneeled down and started digging through the thin layer of dirt.

It's like a trapdoor or something.

And it was indeed a trapdoor.

By the time I had walked the length of the pews, Jamie already had the edges dug halfway out.

Let's just leave it and your brother and his friends can come back and see what it is.

Please, Jamie, I want to go.

There was something wrong with this place.

Terribly wrong.

The thought of spending one more minute here had me on the precipice of a panic attack.

Something I hadn't experienced in over a year.

I sat down against the front pew and put my head down.

I heard a roaring in my ears and my breathing grew labored.

I had to leave here, even without Jamie.

I rocked back and forth for a few minutes as I tried to calm myself down.

I wouldn't climb out of a window and run in any direction.

It didn't matter.

There's something here, under the church.

Jamie's voice sounded a million miles away.

By the time I pulled myself together enough to lift my head, Jamie was knelt next to me.

I didn't know you were claustrophobic.

At least, that's what I think Jamie said.

I better remember the horror I felt as I stared at the hole in the floor.

Jamie had opened the trapdoor.

Two minutes, Jamie said as he stood up.

We go down, we take a couple pictures of whatever's down there, and we come right back up and leave.

Just two minutes, Katie.

That's all I'm asking.

I wanted to say no.

I intended to, but I felt myself slowly nodding as Jamie pulled me to my feet.

To this day, I don't understand why I agreed, but I suppose that's better that what happened down there didn't happen to jamie alone we're going to come back with the story of a lifetime what if there's valuable stuff down there or something old is always worth money we could be rich so rich that your family could stay here you could buy the house you're living in and come to school with me in september this is incredibly sad

well it's kind of what i like about this so far is like the awkward kid that you kind of rooted for is now it's it's turned a switch yeah well he's now manipulating manipulating well it's it's interesting because she started by manipulating him and being like well i'm going to flirt with him yeah and now he's kind of now he's now he's like okay well if it is really here and we found it this is the story that everyone's talked about for so many years so i want to go see it and also it's like oh well if we get rich then maybe you could stay maybe you could buy the house it's like uh do you think it's more malicious or just like foolhardy

I think he's saying whatever he can to stay in the situation.

Or is it he actually does like her?

And he's like, I'm sure it's a mixture of both.

But I think at the moment, it's the same.

I think that it's a mirror of what she did earlier: of like, oh, I'm flirting with him in the guise of wanting somebody to like, you know, impress me so someone will go with me there.

I think that it's something similar where I think he does like her, but I still think it's one of those things where he's like, and also when we go down there and find something, we're probably going to be rich.

You know, it's like he's kind of

trying to talk her into something.

Yeah, leading her along down this thing, comforting her.

I'll also say, like, the setting they're in is very, very frightening.

Yeah.

Very well done.

I hate that this is a short story because I want this to, I want to see whatever, what, what else is in these other buildings and whatever else, but also just to spend more time in this church.

I love the idea of that statue kind of like it looks like it's still bleeding.

Yeah.

I like the idea that it looks like both of them feel like it's looking at them.

Yeah.

But when Jamie gets to the trapdoor, she says, it seems the statue is only looking at him now.

Yeah.

Which is a very like the idea of the visual

because like it's for creepy for one, the idea of like the crucifixion, but in my head it's very like emaciated and spider-like depiction of Jesus, you know, like very spread out.

Yeah, very spread out and stuff and it's still bleeding, but it's like looking straight down at him right across.

It's the agony face of the whole like, oh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Looking around.

You ever, you ever seen any of those fucked up paintings?

You ever see like a portrait of somebody and it does look like their eyes follow you?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's like that's the weird thing about those optical illusions, but if you're in a a weird, horrifying space, it's very easy to let your mind run wild and be like, this thing is fucking...

There's that painting's something else than just a painting.

I'm a huge fan of this so far.

Yeah.

Like, it's got me hooked.

Yeah.

I love that immediately it feels like,

I don't know, just a really solid writer.

It feels like if you've ever read anything else from her, it's just going to be solid.

Yeah,

I feel like she's a safe bet to go with.

It is very like, at the beginning, I was like, oh, this wraps of Baraska, which it does a little bit,

but I feel like it's diverted enough.

It has its own identity.

I think people are also always going to find their tropes that they have in some ways.

Writing about a kid in a small town.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

I think that it's, you're, you're probably going to pull from very similar places, I would assume.

And we've also, I mean, I have no idea how many works she has.

She could have hundreds, and we've just picked the two about kids.

Who knows, right?

Because we are YouTubers, it is our thing.

So anyway,

I managed a small smile.

Of all the things someone could think to buy with wealth, Jamie's first thought was to keep me here with him.

He was right.

There could be anything down there, and almost all old stuff was valuable.

I took a deep breath.

Okay, two minutes.

I agreed.

As we leaned over the trapdoor and peered down, the first thing we noticed was an intense heat emanating upwards from the hole.

The second was a strangely out-of-place spiral staircase leading into the depths below.

Jamie rolled the flashlight over to me with his foot, and I picked it up as he pulled his lighter out of his pocket.

Ladies first.

He smirked at me.

I stared at him, slack-jawed.

No way.

You found this door.

You go first.

Between the black staircase and the heat, I feel like we're descending directly into hell, and I'm not going first.

Crossed my arms and glared at him to reinforce my point.

Jamie simply shrugged and stepped onto the staircase.

The only real place I have to suspend my disbelief with this story is that two 12-year-olds would keep going, right?

Yeah.

Like I get to, I get all the way to breaking into the church.

Like I probably would have done something like that if I was with a friend when I was, especially if it was to impress a girl.

I would do some really dumb stuff.

But

I feel like

the door, the trapdoor is like, no.

I think realistically, yes, but I think once again, that's what I was saying earlier is you have that nice element of

youthful ignorance or kind of like ignorance is bliss, being young and not really understanding the severity of something.

Yeah, granted, you can still see something that's dark or whatever and be afraid of it, but I think that's where this story, you get a lot of leeway whenever you age people in this in this kind of age range is because there really shouldn't be a lot of like not necessarily intelligence, but just I guess social cues or,

you know, stuff like that.

I took several deep breaths as I watched his head disappear into the darkness below.

I almost didn't follow him.

I was still deciding when he yelled at me to shine the flashlight down the stairs so he could see.

I started down the stairs after him.

They went down much farther than I thought, and it became warmer and warmer

the further down we went.

When we finally reached the bottom, I was holding back what threatened to be a massive anxiety attack.

We were farther beneath the church than I thought we'd be, and it was hot, muggy, and difficult to breathe.

Hoping to get this over as fast as possible, I swung the flashlight around the chamber, hoping to reveal its hidden treasure.

What I saw there, I can never describe, though I have tried many times.

The room was entirely empty, save two things.

One was a desk in the corner, much like the one in the pastor's office.

The second

was another statue.

This one was roughly 12 feet tall and remains to this day, the most terrifying thing I have ever seen.

To put it mildly, it was some sort of demon.

It towered over us and as such I could only see the bottom of its jaw from where I was.

It was looking directly ahead of it

at the staircase we had just descended.

Its tail was long and swept around the entire room.

There wasn't a lot of room to move.

It had claws, like any modern depiction of a demon, and as I moved around the chamber to view its profile, I noticed it had horns as well.

Neither Jamie nor I spoke as we shuffled around the room, our backs to the wall as far away from the demon as physically possible.

I stepped carefully over the tell as I made my way to its back and came around to the other side of the statue.

I couldn't take my eyes from it.

I couldn't trust it.

If the statue upstairs seemed to bleed, what could this one do?

As I eyed the talons on the gigantic stone feet, Jamie broke the silence.

Can you believe this shit?

His voice was coming from the other side of the room.

I searched the darkness for the weak glow of his slider and was relieved to see it moving towards me.

I turned my flashlight upward to shine it on the side of the demon's head.

The horns had to be at least a foot tall.

As I brought it down to see where Jamie was, I hit my arm on something hard.

My head.

Jamie squeaked as my flashlight fell to the ground and rolled under the desk.

God damn it, Jamie, I whispered in a panic.

I dropped to my knees and felt around under the desk, searching for the flashlight.

What?

It's not my fault you cracked on my head.

You cracked me on my head.

I stood back up and swung the light around to see Jamie trying to relight his lighter.

But it wasn't him that stopped me dead.

I will forever be frozen in that moment.

I don't know why I couldn't speak, couldn't scream, couldn't move.

All All I could feel was my own intern descent into madness.

As I had moved the beam of light up to Jamie's face, I had seen another face right next to his.

A twisted, angry, soulless face.

The demons.

The statue had bent down and turned to the side, its head mere inches from Jamie's, and it was staring at me.

I cannot describe its face, and I am not sure my mind will ever let me remember it in detail.

It shook me to my core in a literal sense.

My body was having a dark, violent, visceral reaction to this impossibility.

Jamie finally noticed the flashlight shaking in my hand and turned to see what I was looking at.

It wasn't until he started screaming that I was shaken from my paralysis.

I dropped the flashlight, Jamie dropped everything else, and we ran.

Do you think it's like just a stone?

Still a stone statue, or do you think it has like flushy kind of...

so in my head, this is kind of like uh

you remember the exorcist, the Bazuzu statue?

Kind of like that, where it's like this weird combination of like demonic imagery, animal imagery, human imagery, like kind of like the biblically accurate demon, right?

It has these massive, like the horns are a foot tall, right?

And

I don't imagine that it's detailed.

I think it's still the statue, but I think it's much more animated now.

Like maybe the expression on it has changed or something like that.

Yeah.

Even the idea of it like twisting and it's like in a a completely new yeah like it like it can bend and stuff like that also is the room did they say is it just like a dirt floor room like it's just underground or is there actual flooring i'm like perceiving it in different ways kind of think of it as a cave almost that's what i

it's creepier to me of going down dirt floor like no actual structural shit

in my head it's like a cavern down there yeah and there's a desk in there also the whole thing making it seem hotter seems like she's like almost crawling into the depths of

you're getting closer to hell down there there.

Also, it's subtle, but I really like the mention of the desk was much the same to the one in the pastor's office.

It's a reflection.

It's a reflection, but it also implies, especially because the passageway to this was at the altar of a church, that whoever the pastor was that was leading that church

was actually worshiping whatever this demon was down there, right?

And the difference between the Jesus and the demon and stuff, and perhaps whatever happened in this town was a part of that doing.

Kind of right there.

Yes, yeah, a lot like borderlands.

like there's this entity beneath that is dictating what they do above and it's so much world building like the imagination in your head established with the sentence of there's a desk in the room similar to the pastors boom like that ties everything together you can do so much with just a sentence or two yeah fires your fucking neurons for sure yeah yeah I love it.

Like, so far, Rebecca, like two for two.

Yeah, looking for the music.

I'm curious to see where it goes.

Because also, mind you, earlier, she did say this is the last time she saw him or last time that she hugged him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She hugged him.

Also, they keep doing this thing where it's like

they keep coning in the story.

So it's like big picture at the beginning.

Then

there's something like, I'll never forget what happened.

So what we're about to read about is something intense.

Then it's like, I hugged him or whatever, last time I ever would.

Okay, from here to the next time, we're coneding more, something intense.

And then it got all the way to when they get to the basement.

Like, I'll never forget what happened.

It's like, this is the moment.

The basement we're about to go in is where things change.

So it's like, it's this interesting way to keep you engaged through the process

while you're still pretty much getting exposition early on and stuff like that.

It's just, it's just good riding.

Yeah.

No, it's awesome.

We took the stairs two and three at a time.

Jamie pushing me up ahead of him.

Halfway up, I slipped and we both went tumbling down halfway to the bottom.

In that horrible moment, we heard the grinding of stone against stone and we knew the statue was moving.

Oh, that's so sick.

Jamie screamed, but I was mute, too horrified to make a sound.

We got up and kept climbing, never taking our eyes off the small, dying light above us, our only salvation now.

We were almost to the top when we first heard it on the stairs.

It was so large and heavy that the entire staircase shook with the impact.

Terrified that the stairs would come crashing down and we would be left alone with it below, we jumped the last three steps.

Jamie pushed me up out of the opening.

He climbed out after me and tried to slam the trapdoor shut, but it was somehow stuck.

We could hear the deafening thunder on the staircase as the statue slowly climbed the steps.

I helped Jamie try to push the trapdoor closed.

For the first time, noticed the symbols on the bottom of the wood, the same as those on the front door.

Before I could begin to comprehend this, I noticed the demon first penetrate the shaft of life on the staircase below.

It was coming.

Jamie saw it too and pulled me to a standing position while pointing at the front door.

We both ran at it as hard as we could, but when we hit it, it didn't budge.

We tried again, but it was unsympathetic.

Katie, the windows.

We ran to the closest one and tried to climb up to the wall to get out, but the windows were too high.

The thunder from below was getting louder, closer.

It was more than halfway up the stairs.

We tried to climb on the rotting pews to reach the windows, but they crumbled under our weight.

I'll push you out.

Give me your foot.

Jamie yelled over the sound bellowing from below.

I shook my head.

I wanted to.

God, I wanted to.

But I couldn't leave him.

I couldn't leave Jamie to face that thing alone.

We both looked over at the door again.

Our only chance was to keep trying to break it down.

We stumbled back into the aisle and ran at the front door with everything we had.

I thought I felt it move.

We backed up even further and ran at it again.

This time the impact knocked me backwards into the aisle and Jamie barely stayed on his feet.

He looked at me in horror and I turned around to see stone horns rising up from the darkness of the trapdoor, three feet from where I sat.

We were going to die here.

I stood up, refusing to turn around again.

I knew that the next step it took would bring its head into the room and the thought of seeing its face again had me running at the door with every last bit of strength I had.

Jamie reached it at the same time and I felt it give way as we crashed through the threshold and landed outside the church.

Jamie had picked me up off the ground before I could think to move and we were running toward the train tracks at an Olympic sprint.

We could still hear the thundering on the stairs no matter how far we got from the church.

Every step echoed through the woods like a gunshot until they stopped.

It was here.

I had no idea if we had run in the right direction or if we would forever be lost in the woods.

It was now dark outside and the temperature was dropping fast.

I was beginning to panic that that we would never find the train tracks when I noticed Jamie wasn't next to me anymore.

I turned around in panic to find him sprawled on the ground a few yards behind me.

He had tripped over one of the rails.

He was up and running down the tracks before I could even ask if he was okay.

We ran until we couldn't anymore.

Our running eventually slowed to a jog and the jog to a walk.

We hadn't spoken, neither of us had any idea what to say, and it wasn't until we both got in our breath back that one of us finally broke the silence.

How long have we been on the tracks?

Jamie's voice had an edge of barely suppressed fear.

I looked at his wrist and noticed his watch missing.

It didn't take us this long to get to get to find that place.

Or did it?

Do you think maybe we went the wrong way?

Jamie asked hesitantly.

I couldn't afford to think like that.

If we had somehow gotten turned around and ran the wrong way down the train tracks, then we were deeper into the woods than ever.

No, we went the right way.

I said to convince myself.

That thing.

I thought it was a statue, but maybe it was some crazy undiscovered giant reptile that was like hibernating and we woke it up.

So we were going to delude ourselves into thinking that there was a scientific explanation for this.

I understood why, but I just couldn't accept it.

Yeah.

Did you, um...

Do you see the weird riding on the front door?

It was on the trapdoor, too.

Do you think it it was keeping it down there?

Because, Jamie, all those doors are open now.

Well, if it's an animal, words mean nothing to it anyway.

Yeah, if.

Trailed off hoping you would challenge my implication.

He didn't.

That's, that's, uh, I like the uh

kind of the justification to yourself.

Because it's clear that, like, okay, whatever this church was, uh, whatever potentially these people were, they were trying to keep it down there, right?

Like the incantations, and the kids basically broke all the seals to it.

And it's like, oh, but Jamie, we opened all the Jamie's like, yeah, well, lizards can't read, Katie.

Birds are really doing that much anyway.

Yeah, I don't know.

Let's be honest.

Why don't you fucking drop it?

I also love the idea of two 12-year-olds just like unleashing a demon back into the world.

Yeah, yeah.

That would be the most plausible thing, too, about two kids just being like, I don't know, let's crawl down there.

Spells and shit on the door.

I don't know what that is.

I can't read.

Anyway.

Also, do you think that the books also were in that language that was on?

I think it's Latin.

You think it's Latin?

I think it's certainly Latin.

Probably some books of spells or some shit.

I don't know.

I also think

that it now makes sense.

See, this is what I mean by like good world building.

It now makes sense why all the adults in town didn't want to talk about it.

What about the lost town?

Lost town, whatever, you know, because

I'd imagine there were some survivors, at least a couple of this whole experience, right?

And the town is lost because something is stuck down there.

What was the town called again?

Do we remember?

Deepwoods.

No, no, no.

The town that she moved to.

Did she say?

I thought that they did at the beginning.

It was something similar to Deepwoods, I thought.

I just didn't know if it's going to be, oh, this is a new sect of the town that was prime, who was known as Deepwoods before.

Hold on, stand by.

I'll get down to this really quick.

New work, store in Pennsylvania.

Store decided to take me with him,

suburbs.

Our neighbor was new, Lonewood, Lonewood, Lonewood's the name of the town.

So you're probably,

oh, it's it seems too similar to have it just be,

you know.

I bet you're right.

I hope there's some more flirting.

Keep throwing

you between the 12-year-olds.

I don't know.

So, are you still going to stay in town?

It's like, no, there's a fucking demon there.

Well, well, okay, I guess.

All all right i could tell this was something jamie's mind wouldn't accept but he hadn't seen its face not like i had

it was no animal it was made of stone it was something sinister and anciently evil and it had seen me and it had seen right down into my soul it was aware of me and i was aware of it and now it was free

Whatever had been keeping it beneath the church had been awkwardly destroyed by Jamie and me.

That thing was free to walk the woods and go God knows where.

We walked in silence for another half hour until Jamie suddenly stopped short and started yelling.

Hey, we're here!

He booked it down the tracks towards a swarm of flashlights and I followed close behind him.

As soon as Jamie reached his parents, he collapsed while I ran into my mother's arms and cried like a child.

I couldn't hold it together any longer.

The police report says we were found at 4 a.m.

By our sense of time, about three hours after the sun had set.

We had spent less than an hour in the chapel and yet we seemed to have lost 10 hours there.

We were never told, we never told anyone where we had actually been or that we had found the lost city of Deepwood.

He simply said we went for a walk to the lake and got lost in the woods.

My family left Middlesbrough the following Monday.

Two days ahead of schedule.

My father had another store to open and

there was really no reason to wait.

Jamie didn't come to say goodbye to me and after we left Middlesbrough I never saw him again.

I kept a copy of the police report to remember him.

Over the following year, Middlesbrough slowly disappeared.

First, I could just feel the memory fading unnaturally from my mind.

My parents couldn't remember that we had ever been there, which scared me more than anything else.

I taped the police report to the ceiling over my bed so that Jamie would be the first and last thing I thought about every day.

Then the Middlesbrough City website disappeared as did that of the local paper and the town's two public schools.

The store my dad helped open in 2002 also disappeared from the company's website.

After that I can never find any mention of Middlesbrough anywhere online ever again.

Over the years, I searched public records for Jamie's full name and found nothing.

I hired someone to illegally search private records and he came up empty too.

In the end, the only proof that Jamie ever existed at all was the police report with his name on it.

And then nothing was left.

One day the paper I had taped to my ceiling for so many years was blank.

I remember what it was and what it looked like before, but now it's just an old weathered piece of blank paper.

All that remains of Middlesbrough and the people who lived there are my memories.

And this is why I'm I'm writing this story down and uploading it to the internet.

Once it's on the internet, it can never die, right?

Or perhaps one day it will just disappear and you won't remember even seeing it and I won't remember ever writing it.

I can only hope that this ended with Middlespril.

If it has moved on to other towns, who would know?

Who'd even remember?

I wish I had answers, but all I have are questions.

And that is the end

of the lost town of Deepwood, Pennsylvania.

I love it.

That was great.

That was so awesome.

That was great.

That was great.

You really started throwing stuff.

That was fun.

I really love the idea of

a stone demon.

You don't get a lot of like.

You don't get a lot of stone demons.

Well, you don't get a lot of statues coming to life even in a compelling way.

Yeah, they're always just like a mannequin.

Yeah.

It's always the Doctor Who Weeping Angel thing, Right.

Where you look at it and it's still and you turn around and it gets closer or whatever.

Like, I like the idea of a living statue where

something so old that it's almost become stone and can move around.

And now this thing, you know, like the story it seems now is they were able to trap it at one point.

But now these kids fucking Katie, way to go.

In my head,

in my head, I imagine the statue kind of looking, again, like the ancient depictions of demons where it's animalistic, but it has like these super like small eyes that are like intense, like, you know, always open.

and like this It's kind of like pronounced features like huge brow and stuff like that like a very foreboding face, but it's moving it's alive, you know Yeah, the scraping of stone and the kind of audio visual cues that they had in the story were pretty haunting too I mean that real scraping edge and yeah the loud thunderous steps that it had to I like the idea too that it is

like

Once it got out it made that town disappear too.

What's I'm saying is like a mind play the last The last town disappeared, and they locked it there.

I'm almost wondering if the town disappeared and if it's locked in Lonewood now, probably.

If it got locked down that way, and for some reason, whatever, people are just gone again, and now this is just going to be another Herbert Legend that people look for as well.

I really like it.

It's short and sweet.

It's definitely one of those things where I could see myself falling into a story like this, though, like a Baraska time jump.

Oh, yeah.

And then all of a sudden, you know, she goes back.

Yeah, there's two other parts.

Yeah, it looks like the other two parts are return to Deepwood and Death of Deepwood.

Yeah, so maybe in the future we'll have to check those out sometimes too.

I agree.

You know, and there wasn't a child sex

inbreeding plant this time.

There wasn't.

Is that a negative or is that a positive?

I don't know.

For YouTubers, there's no way to tell.

This is the second author we've looked at, two of their stories, right?

Because

Tommy Taffy did.

Yeah, what was the author's name for Tommy Taffy?

Yes, Elias Withero.

Thank you.

Yeah, Elias did that in Feed the Pig.

And we loved Feed the Pig.

That one's great feed the pig was good and i i still stand by a little bit of discourse yeah it did but i still i really like tommy taffy i thought it was scary i think that it has its it has its place for sure i like feed the pig better to be honest i like feed the pig the the description of the guy going into the pig's mouth is just so great that was an all-timer tommy taffy is a internet creepypasta i think has its place is like this is primo yeah creepypasta bullshit whatever but we're proving here that you know you don't have to have i don't know the

i I liked how Barasca is like, you think it's going to be something paranormal of some kind, and then it turns into a very real world horror kind of like enslavement, trafficking kind of thing.

And this one took a very similar in tone, but it did go into that fantasy, spiritual kind of stuff.

I'm also always a sucker for put me in a fucking dilapidated church, give me some religious iconography that is bleeding or oozing and I'm going to have a good time.

Yeah.

I like that.

It's hard to not have a good time.

So, this is right up my alley.

And I'd be curious, too, with these other sequels, if we just had to speculate, speculate on it now, would it be something where she comes back, and do we see that same kind of demon?

Or is it something where does it reset?

Is there more?

I think it might be the same demon.

I think we're going to see more of the cult or whatever.

Maybe that would be.

Maybe it's not even a cult.

Whoever was trying to stop it way back.

At the end of that, I'm curious, do you still think that to me, it seems like a religious guy who was keeping evil at bay is how I'm reading it versus a facade of

potentially but the desk in the room with it tips me off a little bit

yeah I mean it does it does seem evil versus it just being like oh it's just it's not just chained in there yeah sure the desk in the room makes it sound like there's a there's a piece with it almost right now something I really do like in hindsight is all the paintings and the pictures of the people there as well as the statue of Jesus looked on the kids with an accusatory look yeah almost of like we you don't know how much we suffered to keep this thing locked up, and now you're going to go open the bottle.

That's kind of something with a lot of old churches in general, too.

The very kind of like feel,

you should feel bad for even existing.

That's kind of like a big part of it.

You know, that's an interesting point.

The story starts out with the tone of like, this is like your typical, like, scary religious setting, right?

Like, the old timers who look at you angry and like, oh, the Jesus cross looks evil and stuff.

But now with hindsight attached to it, it's like, no, they were trying to protect the people around there.

Yeah.

These kids are about to let that loose.

It's kind of interesting.

It's one of those things where even you see that in Barrasco where it's like people know about this dark secret, which is also, I almost, if this was longer, I'm curious to see if, would you have something with the older kids going and with the flashlights and the beers and stuff?

Do they actually know where it is?

Or

is it just the presumption that you think that they're looking for that thing?

Because you never really know.

Yeah.

Right.

Jamie's just kind of like, oh, they're probably looking for this.

Yeah.

But you never, I mean, who knows?

So I am curious to see.

I'm sure they'll come up in the next parts.

Yeah, I imagine so.

It's just, it leaves a lot of fun stuff.

Sometimes these stories end, and you're just kind of like, oh, well, you know, or ends on that cliffhanger where it's like, and we never heard from him again.

Yeah.

But this is something where,

you know,

I want more information.

I want to be dead.

But I don't think if you just stop now, too, it would still be a fun thing.

It still works for what it is.

Yeah, it's still a working story, I think.

I'm very happy with it.

I would like to read the other two parts sooner than later, though.

Yeah, I think that's worth doing it for sure.

Let's see what the see what our beautiful, beautiful viewers have to say.

And I don't know, maybe

we'll have to read this again soon.

I don't know.

And then maybe we can

kiss.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you all for watching.

Thank you all for

thank you all for watching Creepcast.

This has been another enthralling, spooky episode.

And also live tour coming up.

By the time this episode drops, I think we'll be on the road.

I think so.

So,

you know, we'll read this one and then

we should give them a prompt or something.

So when you listen to this, whenever you go to the show, in the first five minutes, I'm going to say banana at some point.

And then people need to put their hands behind their head like this and do

so that way we know who was there and who wasn't.

I'll be like, yeah, I really like bananas.

And I'll look out and I'll see people do it.

And for audio listeners, I'm putting my.

I think I would rather them do do anything else.

Actually, I'm not saying it's a good thing.

I'm just saying that

hey, here, we're trying to get a sponsorship, right?

What's your favorite drink?

Mountain Dew.

Mountain Dew.

So when we say what's your favorite drink, say Mountain Dew.

There you go.

Don't do that.

Don't do that.

Mountain Dew?

Okay.

Yeah, that'd be nice.

Very excited to see you all on the tour.

Hunter's about to have a panic attack over it, but I'm excited to see you guys.

So I'll be happy to kiss babies and shake hands and all that stuff.

And he won't.

That's the way it is, you know.

But we appreciate y'all watching on YouTube and also all the support on the audio platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all that jazz.

And also, once again, be on the lookout next month, I believe, for the Creepcast hoodies that are coming.

They are, they're, you know, I'm just trying to reiterate because I know last time people were like, I don't even know, or I missed out too soon.

So, just be on the lookout.

Be on the lookout.

Coming up.

All right, everyone.

Bye.

Bye.

Stay spooky.

Can I go home now?

Yeah.

Okay.

You are home.

You've been home.

Deeny, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, ni.

All right, bye, everyone.

Welcome back to Creepcast.

Actually, if anything, we weren't going to do all of this.

Let's just say this is a welcome back.

Same episode.

That's right.

We were going to release the first part when we were together.

But then we thought the episode was so good that we should just go ahead and read all of them.

So this is just a continuation

from the lost town of Deepwood Pennsylvania, and now the sequel.

And it's a three-parter.

So Return to Deepwood, Pennsylvania, and the Death of Deepwood, Pennsylvania, I think are the next stories.

But I figured we should go ahead and just start reading Return to Deepwood and just keep going.

Also, should we do like a little, we should, it doesn't matter.

This show is just a convoluted way for us to read stories that we like and get paid for it.

So we were like, hey, Deepwoods was cool, so let's finish it.

Yeah, I saw a lot of people.

I just wanted, and I want to take a second to say something.

I want to take a fucking second to say something.

The response to people saying that we were going to miss a week, let me tell you something.

If we want to take a week to get you a goddamn episode, then you're going to sit there politely, and we're going to pat your head, and you're going to shut the hell up and wait till we get the goddamn episode out.

All right?

Because also, Isaiah, you know that if we wouldn't have done that, people would have been like,

I wish they would have just released it all in one episode.

Well, that's what you get.

This is what it is.

We knew for a fact, everyone would be like, well, why didn't you read parts two and three right there?

Hey,

average creepcast sounding person.

That's what our

nesters sound like.

That's very true.

They sound exactly like your dog shortly after it was shot by your grandfather.

I just want to say that between us recording in person and now that episode has gone up, and I'm glad everyone else thought it was as absolutely bonkers.

Nobody really cared about it.

The story as I did.

Nobody, there was really

no conversation about it.

We are.

It definitely wasn't the funniest thing I've ever seen.

I have seen so many edits of like Stephen Hawking approaching a dog in a forest at night.

It's just

beautiful.

I appreciate you guys.

Thank you.

Well, we're also on tour right now by the time you're watching this.

So that's cool.

I had a crazy dream.

What was your dream?

That we got booed off stage at our first show.

You are terrified of this, aren't you?

It's an actual nightmare.

I'm not going to lie.

I have been, ever since Sunday, my stomach's been in knots.

I've been having diarrhea, like nervous shits.

And I have a feeling we're going to, we're going to, we're going to shit the bed big time.

The only saving grace, I think we've said this before, the only saving grace is if I shit myself on stage and it's that memorable.

That was not, okay, we've talked about that, but that was not a saving grace.

That was

your worst case scenario.

No, no, that's a saving grace at this point.

The substance is going to be so poor, so lackluster, that it's going to take one of us to either have a heart attack on stage or shit themselves.

And I got to say, I am probably the candidate for both.

Hunter, Hunter, Hunter.

Listen, people who come to these shows want to have a good time.

You're not going to have a good time.

We don't have to be

our very, very best, like 10 out of 10 for people who are going to be able to do it.

We absolutely do it.

They're paying people.

They paid for the show.

It's a best for us.

And we're going to put on a good show for them.

I'm not saying we're not going to do that, but they want to have a good time.

We just have to offer it up.

This was full.

I am showing to the camera right now, I'm showing.

A almost empty bottle of Captain Morgan private stock that was full on Saturday.

All right.

And sure, you could equate a lot of this to the chiefs game the big win we had on Sunday, but a lot of that is nerves.

All right

So there you go Anyways, I forgot we were reading an episode So with that all of that out of the way, let's continue on to part two.

Let's do it return to Deepwood Pennsylvania

Harrisburg is an antiquated yet charming Pennsylvanian town on the Susquehanna River with roots reaching back into the 18th century.

At least, that's what the tourism brochure read.

I'd really have to take their word for it.

I'd researched a lot of Pennsylvania townships in the last year, but this wasn't one of them.

I handed the brochure back to the tall, red-faced girl behind the hotel desk.

She sniffed loudly as she took it and unceremoniously slid my credit card back across the counter at me.

Thanks.

I muttered.

The girl dropped a brass key on the counter, which I eyed with suspicion.

I hadn't seen a hotel with actual brass keys since I was a kid.

I didn't know if it was my limited funds or Harrisburg's antiquated charm at work, but either way, it sent an involuntary shudder down my spine.

Room 217 checks out 10.

The girl said, wiping her small, watery eyes with the back of her sleeve.

Eager to be done with it, I hadn't bothered to ask where to find room 217.

When I finally located it on the other side of the building, I was exhausted and ready for whatever awaited me on the other side of the door.

It was, as you suspect, dated, troll, and dusty.

I took a short shower and spread my maps out on the painfully flat yet somehow still lumpy hotel mattress.

It was strange to be back in Pennsylvania after all these years.

Honestly, I was just happy it was still there.

I had spent years trying to pretend I dreamed it all, trying to convince myself that I had a very vivid psychotic breakdown.

and I'd never actually been a Pennsylvanian at all.

And I might have believed it too,

If it weren't for Jamie.

He was as real to me as the face in the mirror.

I couldn't have dreamed him up if I'd wanted to.

And if he had been real, then so had everything else.

The damn church, the demon, and the hell I'd brought down on Middlesbrough.

How many more had died since then?

I needed to see for myself.

I needed to see for myself.

I needed to prove I wasn't crazy, even if doing it meant I would have to face the consequences of my actions.

The death.

I stared at my notes and topographical maps until my vision began to blur.

I'd been researching and preparing for this trip for a year, and yet here I was in Pennsylvania, still with no real direction.

It had been 13 years since I stepped foot in this state, and only for one of them had I considered coming back.

I'd lived only half a life for the last decade, slowly suffocating under the heavy, pungent cloak of guilt.

Usually, I could escape it in ambient-laced dreams or when I was utterly blackout drunk, which is an easy order to fill when you work in a bar.

Yes, ma'am.

But a year ago, my tricks had abruptly stopped working and it had been too long since I'd come up for air.

I know it was time to go back.

So

this is after the fact, 13 years.

So she's probably mid, mid-late 20s by this point.

Well, she said she was

in the first store.

Oh, 12 or 13.

Okay.

Weren't they that?

They were like 12 or 13.

I'm pretty sure.

I assume that she's like 20, 25, 26 right by now.

Yeah, I'd say that's right.

Because it's been long enough that she's moved and she's back in Pennsylvania.

Remember, everyone else has forgotten that the town of Middlesbrough ever existed, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So, but

to, I like setting up this

character again that has been kind of plagued with this guilt or this kind of, yeah, you know, I say guilt, but I would say more so just it just haunting visuals, but I would assume some kind of guilt because you let it out because yeah, she let it out.

That's what she was saying.

The hell I unleashed on Middlesbrough, yeah, yeah.

Um, because the town of Deepwoods got wiped off the map, but they successfully managed to contain the thing, uh, and now Middlesbrough seems to not have done that.

So, also, when she referred back to Jamie, was she saying it was uh, Jamie,

I wonder, we haven't said it yet, but do you think that he reached back out to her for this?

No, he vanished, remember?

The newspaper clipping.

Okay, so I know through the bottles of Captain Morgan, it may be hard to remember.

I can't remember any of these fucking stories, dude.

God damn.

I spent an hour trying to find a comfortable position on the worn-out hotel mattress.

When that failed, I picked up the maps again and studied their details.

Though I'd memorize them all.

Suppose I was waiting for something to just click.

Some small detail I'd overlooked that would suddenly make all the difference.

A clue as clear as daybreak that had been in front of me all along.

But none came and when I woke again it was buried under a pile of legal pads and maps and suffering a sore back.

I showered again, not trusting the comforter and reluctantly drank the motor oil that passed for breakfast blank coffee.

I packed up my research, checked out of the hotel, and sat in my car watching the sun slowly brighten the populated downtown area.

At least the creature hadn't hadn't made its way here.

The city had a population of around 50,000.

But how many other cities with similar populations were gone because of me?

It wasn't something I wanted an answer to.

Since I had no other data to go on, my plan was to drive to the least populated areas and see if what wasn't there would give me a clue to what had once been.

Basically, I was looking for an area that, by all logic, should have a city.

but didn't.

But the Ford Focus and Drive and headed west of town.

Half a day was spent driving in the middle of the state and another two days aimlessly driving around Pennsylvania looking for something familiar.

A mountain, a water tower, a road, anything.

But it was as if I never lived here at all.

On the fourth morning, discouraged and frustrated, I checked out yet another shitty motel.

I only had three more days before my flight back to Arizona, and so far the trip had been utterly useless.

The man at the front desk took my key and gestured toward the continental breakfast, pre-packaged muffins and horse bisque coffee.

No thanks.

I grumbled.

is that your voice is this young lady yeah or sorry no thanks sorry

no thanks

well it said i grumbled so i was trying to be like no thanks whatever like she's like

all right let me retake it then

leave the cot leave it the old one and thank you there you go where are you headed huh where are you headed he repeated more slowly i couldn't place his accent as closest i could get was maybe southern oh

I don't know.

Well, if you're headed down to 320, get it before you leave town.

There ain't no gas stations or towns between here and Landenburg.

But that's like 90 miles.

Yeah,

never just did it myself.

People get stuck on the road all the time.

Blowing tires and running out of gas.

I don't know why the government hasn't done something about that.

Because they're broke!

Someone yelled from the back office.

yeah that's it most likely stain ain't got no money for it i'll get gas before i go i promise and received an approving nod in return so effectively

her little goof up with jamie has eliminated 90 miles of civilization yeah i just wanted that's what i was gonna say this little fucking oopsie butterfly effect thing

really was detrimental well also here's the thing too

here's the thing too we've they've said before that this is, we've theorized that this had probably happened to other towns before this.

Before this, before this.

Often it is.

Do you think the Gargoyle is something that wakes up and it's almost like,

I don't know, trying to think of a similar monster.

Like, Jeepers Creeper's rules is he only wakes up for a certain amount of time every certain amount of

years.

Yeah.

Right.

So it's like, what if, what if it's something similar?

That way, there has to be some kind of lapse of time.

Because if it happens so suddenly and all the time, I doubt that it can be kept a secret realistically.

Right?

Yeah, I mean

Well, the idea is that the deep woods town that caught it was an old, old town, right?

So it was wreaking havoc up until like, I don't know, or early 1900s, late 1800s.

And then they caught it effectively.

But now it's unleashed in modern age.

Yeah.

Well, I guess too, think about all the towns in your own state that you have no idea that they're even there you know what i mean yeah this this also makes a fun game for yourself whenever you're driving through an area and it's like yeah there ain't a gas station for 40 miles it's like oh why yeah well that that that's like a nice weird uh odd thing it's like whenever i i drive through like nevada outside of vegas there's like this really long stretch of land between Vegas and some other part I think on the California border where there's like no other gas stations so you have to feel up with this one spot and it does feel feel kind of almost dystopian or even kind of like wasteland kind of vibes so to have that in a Pennsylvania setting would be kind of creepy because you're like wait what

yeah and you're in the middle of the woods while you're doing it

yeah it's a fun idea I like it I practically ran out the door for days I've been looking for the out of place the not quite right the bizarre and this was

Well, it was odd, at least.

It was all I had.

I gassed it before I left town and followed the the signs to the 320.

As promised, it was nothing but dark asphalt for miles.

No exits, rest stops, signs, or even mile markers.

This was it.

It just had to be.

As there is no one else on the road, I drove well under the speed limit, taking in every detail.

Eventually, I began to notice that periodically, there was a gap.

Not in the foliage, but in the coloring of it.

Every so often, a grove of trees would be duller, sicker.

It was something you'd only notice if you were looking for it.

So the creature, as I'd taken to calling it, could technically give life in the process of filling in the hold of previous existence, but not very good life.

The fauna in these spots was weaker and bore dull, almost muted coloring.

I continued noting these spots until I couldn't count them anymore.

These had likely been cities or homes of people with lives, families, futures, all taken from them because of me.

Felt the panic begin to claim claim the edges of my vision and quickly popped his anax.

My panic attacks had become unbearable after Middlesbrough.

I suffered from them still.

The edges of my vision got hazy and I was able to relax a fraction.

At some point, I processed the presence of the dilapidated railroad tracks running parallel to the road.

I noticed them early on, but my mind had hidden the significance of this until now.

They had not been the tracks, but to me it was a sign that I was on the right track, so to speak.

I was close.

I had to be.

And if Landenberg was still there, that meant the creature hadn't made it that far yet.

I somehow knew, like, I knew that I'd once lived somewhere off this road, that the creature had been moving north, but it hadn't claimed Landenburg yet.

Why?

Was it satiated?

Had it left the area?

Or was it just slow moving?

Whatever the answer, I felt I'd learn it in Landenburg.

As I reached the outskirts of the city, I saw my first road sign since I emerged onto the 320.

Landenberg, next 17 exits.

I decided to take the exit that'd give me into the heart of downtown Landenburg, if there was one.

I hadn't researched the city of Landenberg either, thinking it was too far north to matter.

And yet, here I was.

The downtown area began to take shape off my right like the damn church had in the woods so long ago.

But I didn't need spray paint to find my way anymore.

Exited the highway and drove around the cityscape until I found a centrally located hotel that I could afford.

I parked and heaved my bags out of the car, hoping they had vacancy.

They did.

I was told by the overly flirty college senior behind the front desk, slinging his guitar behind his back.

What kind of a loser?

God.

Do you have Wi-Fi?

I asked as he handed me the keycard.

We do, but there's a $10 a day charge for the password damn

i was on an extremely tight budget but i can give it to you for free if let his voice trail off suggestively

if if what i raised a skeptical eyebrow at him if you let me write a song about you

he writed my credit card receipt so he could read it caitlin

i sighed

Okay, yeah, fine.

At this point, there wasn't much I'd say no to.

I was going on four days of restless sleep.

This is very cute, the idea that in a small town, like the

controversial thing the guy wants is to write a song.

Oh, yeah, definitely.

It's cute that the guy is blackmailing the woman so he can force write a love song for her.

That is cute.

Yeah, you know what?

I'm not backing down from this one.

That is cute.

It's out of all the things he could have done, just being like, hey, can I write a song about you, Princess, so we can fall in love and we have sex?

Hey, he did say she had to do all that for her to get the password.

Yeah, well, that's what in the back of his mind.

He's like, she'll love the song.

That is in the back of his mind.

She'll be so happy.

And I'll get a slow blowy from it.

It's going to be awesome.

Okay.

And he starts playing Third Eye Blind.

I wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend.

He's playing guitar like that.

Caitlin.

And he just starts Caitlin's.

Caitlin.

She's like, are you saying I'm suicidal?

He's like, uh,

no.

I don't know.

Yeah,

that one was rough.

Tor got you nervous, somebody.

Yeah, sorry, I'm flustered now.

I'm now picturing singing my own song to all the pretty ladies out there for key cards and Wi-Fi passwords.

See, if you do stuff like that on the tour, I am, you should be embarrassed and you should be nervous about it.

Who here wants a love song?

What's your name?

Girl's like, Janice.

I'm like, ew, gross name.

Who's that?

What other person?

He eagerly gave me the password and I retired to my room.

First floor, thankfully.

I took out my shitty laptop, connected to the hotel's equally shitty Wi-Fi, and pulled up the Wikipedia page for Landenberg.

It's a larger city for this part of the state, around 55,000 residents, mostly due to the fact that Landenberg hosted a state university.

It's a progressive, young, educated town filled with hipsters and young professionals.

Where'd he even begin?

I threw my notes, my phone, and my GPS in my backpack, and decided to start with the front desk of the motel, much to my own dread.

The college kid who checked me in was strumming chords on his guitar and softly humming.

Excuse me.

He looked up at me and winked.

You're pretty eager, Foxy lady.

And I like that.

The songs take time to write.

Even for the most talented.

Yeah, actually, I was just wondering, where can I find the university?

I interrupted, suppressing an eye roll.

Mama, this whole city's a campus.

I mean, where'd you want to go?

You a new student?

I show you around.

I got off it.

No, I just like to find the...

This has been a horrible mistake.

Think of something quick, genius.

Admission office.

I need to talk to admissions.

Ah, well.

That's about half a mile down the rooker street.

That's the one running in front of the building.

Got it.

Thanks.

He started to say something else perhaps which way to go down rooker but i was already out the door not knowing what else to do and wanting to get as far from the porkid as possible i picked a direction and started walking migtow uh wait what mgtow men going their own way that subreddit or whatever yeah what what what's the reference to this i think that the just the she's breeding a monster basically with that interaction Yeah, Chads always get the stacies.

Yeah,

I guess I'm never going to be able to write a fucking beautiful.

Nice Nice guys like me who like music never get what they want.

Nice guys like me

never get never get ahead.

He goes into his full joker.

Society wonders why we go a little crazy.

Yeah, society wonders.

And then society

I say peacock and no one bats an eye.

I say peacock and no one.

But if I say poocock,

well, everyone loses their minds.

Yeah, everyone loses their freaking minds.

Even though it was May, I was still freezing.

I'd have been built for the far north, and my blood had thinned out living in Arizona.

With my backpack at my age, I probably would pass for any other college student on campus if it wasn't for the hoodie I had pulled tightly around me.

I envied them all.

Kids just a year or two younger than me going to classes, hanging out with friends, making stupid yet amusing mistakes.

Could have been me once, but I hadn't grown up like them.

Ever since Middlesbrough, I had struggled with school and life in general.

I couldn't focus, I couldn't laugh, I became a sarcastic, guilt-ridden introvert, and I lost all my friends.

Me.

Then my dad died, and my mom started to look at me differently.

I stopped talking about Middlesbrough the day I heard the word hospital whispered to my mother by a psychiatrist.

Even though I stopped trying to prove it had all been real, my mother never really saw me as her little girl again.

I moved out at 18 18 and lived alone for years, working in an English pub, trying to forget how many people were probably dead because me, including Jamie, the knife that dug deepest.

I walked the downtown area all day.

I didn't know what I was doing, where I was going, who I should approach, or what I should ask them.

I just knew I was in the right place.

I've been drawn here for a reason.

I felt it in my gut.

This was where I was supposed to be.

But for the fifth time in as many days, I had asked myself, what now?

I suppose I could have spent days wandering around Landenberg.

I could have left empty-handed and never known what happened all those years ago.

I could have never found him.

But as fate would have it, it only took half a day to find what I was looking for.

It was well past noon and I had stopped at a small cafe to eat a sandwich.

Since the restaurant was packed wall to wall with students, I went outside and leaned against the brick wall by the door.

I supposed I noticed it because it was so brightly colored, or maybe because it was the only piece of litter I had seen all morning.

Or, just maybe, it was simply because I was supposed to.

But for whatever the reason, when a bright red flyer blew past my feet, I reached out to step on it.

Curious, I bent down to pick it up and read the heading.

Teeth and History Museum, Landenburg, Pennsylvania.

Upcoming exhibitions, 13th to 14th century Judeo-Christian relics and artifacts.

What the fuck?

They're going to get there.

It's a little drawing of the demon.

And it's like, oh, welcome to the demon of the

Could there be any

do you think there's any way that they have the demon there?

Like the like a gargoyle?

Like there's just the statue that is

cool if it was like dormant.

Well, I gotta say, I love this.

But they didn't know what they had.

I love the setup that

the

Landenberg

Town is just a college town because the entire time I was sitting here thinking, I was like, you have all these crazy in-betweens there's not there's no gas station for 90 miles it's literally nothing and then it's just

like it's just so suspicious and odd right but then of course it's just like a weird college town where it is probably just a bunch of like kids focusing on school or just kind of like you know being young and stupid would amass and that's where they would live is out in the middle of nowhere going to the school.

I'm glad that that's the infrastructure to it versus if it was like, yep, the whole town's just a, it's a plastic factory town.

Because I feel like it would just be a little too cliche, maybe.

Oh, it's the town where we make.

Yeah, or even just something where it's like, yeah, there's only nine people who live here ever since this.

But I like that it's, it's kind of a thriving, bustling college town.

There's like life to it and stuff, which, I mean, makes sense because like the curse or the demon hasn't got there yet, right?

It's like right at the border.

I'm going to laugh my ass off if she just destroys another town.

Then she's actually a monster right

because destroying it it's like the the demon keeps progressing territory right well that's what i mean but i'm saying that if some way if she wakes this thing up again somehow and it does that again i mean she is indirectly again responsible for that

or directly responsible for that well i mean eventually we don't know what this thing does it could take over the world for all we know yeah below that was a blurb about the museum nothing too interesting and below that was a description of the exhibits to be unveiled i skimmed down the list quickly seeing little of interest until the very bottom

statue of the demon metaraxis now god yeah well there it is there he is

oh i wonder who that could be

that's a legitimate like bruh moment uh i'm looking right now on one of my pages that's like all the demon names and stuff like that uh and i don't see metaraxis i don't think that is a real demon

or it's there's not like a real history to it's not like beelzebub or you know um balaam or something like that my mouth fell open it was too much of a coincidence nothing to be ignored i checked the date on the flyer may 2nd 2014 three weeks ago i threw the rest of my sandwich in the trash and took off I'd seen the museum that morning and I knew where exactly where to find.

Okay, that's a typo.

I thought I was having a shit.

Yeah,

I'll also say you could bring your sandwich with you.

I feel like I feel like that's okay.

There's no time to eat and process.

That would be one of the things that you have to throw it away because if she was running and still chowing down on like a meatball sub, it just would be so uncanny.

Like, it's just like, throw the fucking sandwich away.

You got business to do.

In my head, she has like a tiny little cold-cut sub, but it's funnier to imagine her, like, standing outside with one of those three-foot-long, like, Italian fucking meatballs.

She has

an extremely large sandwich in her hand like way too heavy of a meal

She's like it's 11 it's 11 a.m I'm gonna have my my pastrami sandwich and it's like God really that heavy of a meat this early in the day

off of it as she's standing there Why is it why is it that whenever people have pastrami sandwiches too that you have they have to put so much pastrami on the sandwich?

Have you noticed that?

That's never a normal amount.

Yeah, it's always like

just a palpable amount of pastrami.

Well, to be fair, I feel like if you had just a normal amount of pastrami, it would just kind of of taste like any other like might as well be a pepper i think i think they're trying to thin out the herd they're like whoever orders a pastrami sandwich we're trying to send them to a heart attack early as much as you can eat it all i think i will can i have extra can i have more mustard on this please big pastrami organizing all the sandwich changes big pastrami coming out being like kill their customers kill them all

we're gonna have a really hot about 60 years and then no more after that better than going to a sub shop i would rather hear someone say, Hey, can I get a pastrami melt or whatever, right?

Versus nothing enrages me more than when I go to a sub shop and someone's like, Can I have a BLT?

Like, what kind of fucking sandwich is that to order at an actual place?

That's like an ass stupid sandwich.

A BLT is like a camping sandwich.

You've got, you have limited supplies.

You're ready to go.

In my fridge, I have like nothing.

You know, a BLT is a gas station sandwich.

That's what I used to get.

Absolutely.

So then to go to an establishment that is chock full of supplies to make you any sandwich you want and to spit in God's face and just be like, oh, can I have a BLT?

Spit in God's face.

I mean, like,

I mean, what the fuck is going on?

You have options for meatball subs, turkey clubs, all kinds of stuff.

And then you're a BL fucking tea.

Can I have two strips of bacon, a shit ton of lettuce, and some tomatoes, please?

Oh, my God.

Thank you.

Me and you might disagree on a lot and get into a lot of little tiffs on this show, but on this one, I'm with you inside,

brother.

We found common ground.

We found common ground.

You know what?

It's ridiculous to get a BLT

at any place that has more than a BLT at any time past 8 a.m.

Yeah, agreed.

Totally socially acceptable at your house at any time.

But also just like heating up ramen packets is acceptable at your house at any time.

It's safe.

No one can see you there.

Well, it's like, yeah, yeah.

Any other option, it's like, was there literally nothing else available?

Yeah.

For you.

And I just don't know.

It's like, all right, this is sad.

Like,

you're not that poor.

I agree.

Yeah.

It was only three blocks away, and I got there in under five minutes, flew up the building steps, and stumbled straight to the cashier window.

Student ID, please.

The old man said flatly.

I'm not a student.

Well, you look how much?

$11.

I was gladly willing to pay.

I didn't stop to grab a map, instead joining a tour group already in progress.

The museum, I could tell, was a veritable labyrinth, and I certainly didn't want to get lost.

Not in here, not with that thing.

If, indeed, it really was what I half hoped, half-dreaded it could be.

It took the longest 20 minutes of my life, but we finally came to the room I'd been waiting for.

Now, behind this door is our newest exhibition on ancient Judeo-Christian artifacts.

Please do not try to touch anything, or you'll be escorted out.

These pieces are centuries old and may be and may be damaged by the lightest touch.

If you have behind the door, what I suspect you do, then I highly doubt it.

Also, please no flash photography.

My heart beat a million miles a minute as the decent as what's that word?

Docent?

Docent.

What the fuck is docent?

This probably, that's probably we're holding up the story once again.

That is probably the term for someone who's like a museum curator.

Dude, come on, just fucking say the like, dumb it down.

Curator.

Yeah.

My heart beat a million miles a minute as the fucking, as the guide, tour guide, opened the door.

I'll be like, what the, what does that, it adds,

docent, fuck you.

I don't like that, Isaiah.

I don't like that.

They're big leaguing me.

I don't like that at all.

It's okay, buddy.

We'll get through.

I'm going to slip in docent.

Do we, do we fucking need docent?

What's wrong with tour guide?

What the fuck am I like?

What is wrong with just saying docent?

hold up man you might have found common ground over the vlt thing but you watch your mouth about rebecca all right she's done a lot for us i love rebecca and her work i'm just saying cool with the docent is what i say i say delete that is what i say delete that i lingered toward the back letting everyone go in front of me i'd come thousands of miles and done months of research to find that statue to prove i wasn't insane And when the time came to possibly face my nightmare, I was hesitant.

Finally, I was the last and the guide had to wave me in with a polite but impatient hand.

There were about a hundred things in that room.

All sorts of things, really.

Sculptures, paintings, pottery, even other statues.

But I only had eyes for the thing in the middle.

It was larger than I remembered.

Not the 12 feet I had guessed.

It was actually closer to 20.

But every detail of its face and body was exactly as I'd remembered, though it was positioned differently now.

This reminds me of like a Trojan horse, right?

Like it appears, a museum takes it in, and to me that marks that this town is next on its list, right?

Like the next place it's going to destroy.

So

it's like it's posed there, but I mean, what can she do against it, right?

Like even if she knows it's real, even if she knows it's going to be a problem.

12.

The difference between 12 feet and 20 feet is insane, by the way.

I thought she was also.

Well, yeah, she was a kid.

saying the realization of it now,

seeing it through adult eyes, makes it so much more menacing.

As if it already weren't before.

Yeah, 20 feet's ridiculous.

That is terrifying.

In the church, all those years ago, it had seemed as if it was standing, waiting, yet content.

But now it was positioned as if it was ready to leap off the stone square that it stood upon.

Its tail was paused in midair instead of wrapped idly around its legs as it had been before.

Though it was smaller than I'd remembered, I could at least see its face this time.

It wasn't particularly scary, just an empty, stony face, far from the hungry, animated one it became when it woke.

Like the crucifixion statue in the damn church, it had eyes only for me.

The rest of my group took photos, oohing and awing as they made their way around the room.

I stood directly where I was against the now closed door, going no further.

The guide walked around the room, discussing notable pieces of the collection, and I only moved from the door when she finally stood before the creature.

And finally, the jewel of the exp

ex oh my god, why the fuck can I not say exhibition?

Exhibition, my god.

And finally, the jewel of this exposition.

My god, whatever.

A granite statue from the 14th century.

This is a representation of is it Metaraxis?

This is a representation of Metaraxis, a lesser-known demon of Christian mythology.

It is unique in its size as well as its crisp detail, especially from something so old.

Our conservationists are unable to discover its place of origin or creator.

Its place of origin or creator.

But they know it's 14th century.

Well, I guess that tracks, because you could tell time periods of statues and also what it's a depiction of based on other depictions, so.

Yeah.

I edged closer and closer to the red velvet rope.

Its eyes followed my every step.

The room seemed to grow hotter.

The guide moved to the side so people could get pictures in front of the statue.

Though I couldn't blame them, I barely kept from yelling.

This was madness.

The stone platform on which the demon stood was covered in red velvet, which pulled at the creature's feet.

It hid the words inscribed on the front of the granite stand that Jamie and I couldn't read those many years ago.

The guy droned on about nothing, and I read the description of the plaque: 14th-century representation of the demon Metaraxis.

Artist Unknown.

No shit.

And then I saw what I didn't know I'd been looking for.

The triangles.

The symbols I would never forget etched into the doors of the damn church.

And once I found one, I found another.

And another.

There were half a dozen of them.

So that's how they're doing it.

They, whoever they were, had placed wards all around the base of the creature's stand.

The museum not only knew what this thing was, they knew about this.

The museum not only knew what this thing was, they knew about the sigils of the doors of the damn church and were using them to trap the statue here.

The revelation was like a punch to the face.

Someone was aware of what the statue really was and was blatantly risking innocent lives anyway.

It was insane.

I thought it was a Trojan horse thing at first.

I thought the statue was like in control this whole time.

Right.

But if the people who have the statue here know what it is and are successfully keeping it trapped with new sigils and wards, why don't you just shut up and let them keep doing that?

I think, I'm wondering, is there any way that this thing could be a group of people that like,

I mean, that you're keeping it locked, quote unquote, so far, but could it also be people who are also unlocking it like the church that we saw earlier?

Was it really a church for Christ or was it like a temple for the demon?

And it was just like a front before.

And now this is maybe a new front?

I feel like

whoever put that demon down there wanted it to stay down there.

Yeah, I mean, it's probably true.

That's not to say the pastor wasn't worshiping the demon or allowed the demon to enter the world or something like that.

But whoever trapped the demon down there, I think actually did want it to stay down there.

Hmm.

Well, at least we're glad that we at least least have some kind of understanding of the sigils or like wards that are apparently locking this thing in place.

Yeah.

In a panic, I turned to find the guide and saw her conversing politely with an elderly couple.

Excuse me, I interrupted loudly.

Yes.

She failed to mask her irritation at my rudeness.

This piece is on loan from a private collection.

Whose?

It belongs to Jameson Scott.

The guide, feeling the exchange was over, turned back to finish her conversation.

Jameson Scott?

I knew that name, but from where?

No, there's no way it's Jamie.

Ain't no way.

Wait.

Jameson Scott.

She lost her memory of Jamie, right?

Well, she just said that she

just said that that was the last time she spoke to him.

She still referred to him at the beginning of the story.

It could be Jamie.

That's what I'm saying.

But Jameson Scott is so close to Jamie, it just would feel...

I don't know.

I'm just curious.

Oh, he would.

Dude, keep reading.

Look at this.

As our group began to move out of the room, I took one last look at the creature, Petaraxis, and shuddered.

Its eyes had never strayed from me.

I took my phone out and pulled up a Wikipedia page of Jameson Scott.

I had to know who could be this stupid.

He was young.

Okay, it's Jamie.

He was

yeah

yeah it's jamie he was young my age but wealthy at his own company and well known in the tech industry for multiple inventions the words brilliant pioneer and industry leader were scattered throughout his wikipedia page which had no picture At the end of the article, under personal life, was a short paragraph about his interest in symbolism and ancient artifacts.

This would make sense too, because Jamie was obsessed when he found the.

He was taking pictures of everything.

She basically had to beg him to leave.

Yeah, well, I mean, heck, wouldn't you be?

Imagine.

Like,

you meet a demon, like an actual one.

I would very much be in her shoes where I'd be like, come on, please.

Can we get out of here?

That'd be me.

What do you want to go home?

Come on.

I shook my and I'm there being very brave and stoic and taking pictures of artifacts, being like, we can trap the creature.

And you're like crying and peeing your pants next to me.

Is that accurate?

Yes, that's true.

Okay, that is true.

I shook my head as my group was herded into the museum's gift shop.

What did he want with the statue?

How had he acquired it?

And how did he know about the wards?

None of it made sense.

I wandered through the gift shop, idly picking up trinkets and wondering just what to do.

Should I warn the guide, the curator, or did the scop person know what he was doing?

Were the wards enough?

Somehow, I didn't think so.

If this thing is now trapped, we're going to find out it's Jamie and everything, and it's going to, like, she'll be incorporated into the story.

But if she didn't know it was Jamie, just leave.

Like,

good for you.

They've got it locked up.

Great.

That's possible.

I wonder how much of it becomes the thing of like, yeah, it's there and it's sealed, but you want it to be destroyed.

So it could never, there's never the possibility.

Like, I wonder if that's going to be her obsession.

Anyways.

Yeah.

I mean, depending on how much they follow uh like real quote-unquote demonology uh you can't kill a demon humans can at least you can only exorcise it or banish it back to hell um yeah only god and angels can kill demons

i see

are you going to lecture tonight

someone asked for behind me i swung around my backpack nearly taking out a postcard stand as i did don't sorry i thought you were someone else the red-headed girl turned to leave What lecture?

The lecture our guide was talking about.

Jameson Scott's lecture on the exhibit.

He's in town?

Yeah, that's what she said.

You should go.

He's really hot.

She turned to leave.

Wait, where's the lecture again?

The auditorium in the history building.

Building E?

She said as if I should have known.

And I guess she wasn't wrong.

I was only a few years older than her and I looked like a college student.

Apparently everyone thought so.

Thanks!

I yelled yelled after her as she walked off with her giggling friend.

Okay, so a couple of theories.

For one, there is some supernatural element at work that is pointing her down this direction.

I agree, but also at the same time, I'm kind of liking the 50 Shades of Gray angle they're taking this now.

I

don't think that's the angle they're taking with this.

You have girl coming into town with high, high, high-tech,

billionaire guy that all the girls are gushing over, right?

Oh, and he's hot.

How do we know that this isn't going to take a little turn to erotica?

If this really cool statue demon story becomes like

smut,

I'm leaving.

We're ending the episode.

I would be so thrilled.

It would be so good.

I know, I know.

You know what?

As soon as that happens, you can read it.

I'll just sit here.

How's that sound?

Okay.

All right.

All right.

Deal.

I would definitely be there.

I had a few things to say to this guy, and I wasn't leaving Pennsylvania until I did.

I sat in the back of the auditorium, as was my custom.

The room was filled wall to wall with people, faculty and students alike.

An empty podium sat in the front, and a tall, blonde-haired security guard stood to its left.

He had a gun on his hip, and his hands were folded behind his back.

Maybe he wasn't a security guard after all.

I was pretty sure state campuses were gun-free, which meant he was with somebody important.

Jameson Scott, no doubt.

The guard stared straight ahead, his eyes boring a hole into the wall behind me.

Lots of things about him made me uneasy.

The murmurs and whispers died down a moment later when a thin, attractive man walked purposefully onto the stage.

Good evening.

He began.

He graced the room with a smile that couldn't fool me.

The emotion didn't quite reach his eyes.

If anything, he looked like the most stressed out entire 25-year-old I'd ever seen.

My name is Jameson Scott.

I'm here to speak to you tonight about a few ancient and interesting items I've collected over the years.

I'm sorry, but I will not be answering questions about my company, our newest patents, or my personal charities.

Easy, Christian Gray.

Ah!

What?

Yeah, you looked ahead.

You looked ahead and said, I did not.

I swear.

I swear you did.

You did.

Look at my my screen record of this.

You can look.

I did not look ahead.

I fucking knew it.

I love it.

Uh-oh.

There's no way you're going to get it.

You're through a 50 Shades of Gray, Hail Mary, and then the story said Christian Gray.

Do you remember?

What was the one time?

There was one time we were reading an episode and something like that happened.

I can't remember.

It was like Angel and Mother.

Do you remember that?

I can't, dude, you're asking the wrong, dude.

I'm sure you forgot you forgot what story this was.

No, there was some story we read where it was like, oh, my mom said something about an angel or an angel on my mom.

And then we read like that exact sentence paragraph later or something like that.

We've had a couple good calls on this.

We have our moments.

We dabble.

Yeah, I saw that.

I saw that deep fucking from the billionaire a mile away.

There were a few disappointing.

I also like

in horror media, especially, it throws me off a little bit whenever it references other media because that implies that, okay, in this universe, approximately 20 years ago, a series of towns in northern Pennsylvania were wiped out by a demonic entity that's now chained within one of those towns.

And somehow...

This created a series of events that also led to the exact same production of 50 Shades of Grey as we know it today.

Yeah, but it was a book, a popular book before that.

Was it?

Like back at...

Oh, yeah.

50 Shades of Grey came out a long time ago.

Well, no, it was a...

No, 50 Shades of Grey was Twilight fan fiction originally, so it had to be after that.

It was...

Because in my head, like, all of this went down in, like, 2005.

the town disappearing and stuff like that right published it was self-published 2011.

yeah

I'm just saying it's not out of the realm of possibility.

I don't mind it in this case.

I'm just nitpicking.

I'm just being, I'm being you for this episode.

I was optimistic until the Christian Gray reference, and now I'm over it.

I'm even more optimistic now.

I can tell.

My future's looking up.

There were a few disappointed groans from the audience, but Jameson Scott smiled

directly a oh, and directed a flirtatious wink at no one in particular.

He was an alarmingly charming man.

I have been interested in ancient relics, particularly those of religious significance, for many years.

Since I was quite young, actually.

Somewhat traumatic experience played the catalyst, and I've been studying and collecting ever since.

I'll begin with some of the more well-known pieces and then move on to one more exotic.

She needs to put together quickly that this is Jamie or it's going to drag me down a bit.

She just keeps me like awareness.

Where do I know that?

name what is going on with this

scott began his lecture on a bowl from mesopotamia that was supposed to bestow on the user unnaturally long life as long as you drank from it only water siphon from the bottom of the euphrates river he spoke extensively about several other equally uninteresting artifacts before finally coming to the one i cared about

the statue Please study this photo for a minute

Scott clicked to the next slide in his slideshow and the demon statue appeared again a blood red back appeared against a blood red background as imposing and terrifying as it was in real life a blanket of heavy uncomfortable air descended on the room as people averted their eyes from the screen and mumbled uncertainly i didn't take my eyes off of it

this is the piece i spent most of my life trying to locate may i introduce may i introduce you to the demon metaraxis

he paused for a minute and clicked to the next slide.

A Dante-esque depiction of hell.

Metaraxis belongs to the second hierarchy of demons, though he is virtually unknown.

And this is simply because of his nature.

Metaraxis doesn't kill or possess.

He doesn't vie for power, bring darkness into the hearts of men, or try to influence innocence.

Metaraxis eats, but he eats more than the flesh of man.

eats their homes, their histories, and their souls.

If you were to be eaten by Metaraxis, it would be as if you'd never existed at all.

No one would remember you and the now empty piece of life you have carved out of yourself, and the world would fill in as if you were never as if you were never there.

Everything that was you or ever would be you is gone.

Kind of a horrifying concept of like not only does it eat your soul and stuff, but your entire like you literally never existed.

Jameson Scott paused artfully to let his words wash over the audience, every soul in the room hanging on every syllable.

I suppose it really was quite interesting, if you didn't know the heartbreaking truth of it, which I knew he did.

If someone held as a genius, it seemed utterly reckless of him to romanticize all this.

I crossed my arms and slumped lower in my chair.

When this was over, one way or another, Jameson Scott and I would be having a conversation.

And this is why Metaraxis is an unknown.

There is no one to speak his name or his deeds.

Alive or dead?

Or there wasn't for many centuries.

At some point in history, Metaraxis grew tired of being unknown and unworshipped.

He proclaimed that those who prayed to him and brought him sacrifice would not only be spared and

would not only be spared and

but also given gifts of everlasting youth and resilience.

Nope, that's probably Jameson.

That which he had stolen from his others or had stolen from others.

It is believed that several ancient civilizations took him up on his offer.

They sang his songs, built his temples, and created beautiful artwork in his likeness, such as the one in your museum, to praise the demon and reap his gifts.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

This is

this is really cool because now Jameson's the villain of the story, effectively, right?

Yeah, Jamie, it seems as if he was obsessed with it, started worshiping it, and now is this like high-tech billionaire dude.

Yeah, because it says that the demon would give the worshippers gifts that it ate from other people.

So all of those ideas Daimy has of like

all the tech inventions he has, all the charities, all the money was stuff that was eaten up from other people and they gifted to him.

And this would have gone on for many years until a name was called that refused to be sacrificed.

Metaraxis chose his tribute selectively, but eventually a name would come up of someone rich or in power.

That person would maneuver out of it or simply commit suicide.

in these instances metaraxis would grow angry and eat the city and all the people therein leaving no trace that he or they had ever existed this would have happened many times over the centuries so we were also right there about how it's been kind of going on for

it's been going on for a long time but it says that someone would refuse to be sacrificed and this would call cause him to become furious maybe that was them escaping out of the water

whenever they awoke him him, I imagine that was supposed to be their sacrificial moment, and then they ran.

And that's, and that's what basically pissed him off.

Probably.

Now, this was interesting.

The creature could be tamed like a pet.

That is not at all what he said.

What?

She's like, she hears all this and she's like, now this is interesting.

This creature is

just like a bad thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're going to be

As long as you gave it the treat it wanted, you would be not only saved, but rewarded.

That's assuming that you're in control of the negotiation,

which I feel like is a misstep.

So it's science.

It was too busy asking if they could.

They never stopped to ask if they should.

Something else to consider is that no one ever knew how often Metaraxis called a name.

This person would be absorbed by the demon.

No one ever remembered if they had existed at all.

It could have been one person a year or five a day, and no one would know the demon himself.

You will find mentions of Metaraxis scattered in religious texts dating back as far as 1700 BC.

The statue is rare, and that it is the only one likeness of him to ever be found.

This is kind of interesting, too, because even if you Google him, it's supposed to be like, well, Metaraxis is like, no one's ever been able to remember writing him down.

Of course, they wouldn't find him, right?

So that's a good idea.

That's a good fun gravity.

That's a fun way to, because most stories would just incorporate a name demon, right?

But saying that it is a demon whose history is unknowable and then, you know, making up your own to

fit in there and then like closely tying it to other demonic beliefs.

That's fun.

It's pretty cool.

Jameson graced the many hands in the air with another tired smile and said,

I'm sorry, but no questions tonight.

You haven't yet had a chance to see the statue of Metaraxis.

I encourage you to experience it before it's shipped to New York next month.

New York City just disappears.

Get a shit.

Man, someone should really put a massive city here on the coast.

Then, without any ceremony at all, Jameson Scott simply walked off stage and the lecture was over.

A security guard, who I realized was more likely a bodyguard, stepped forward to block several girls who jumped the stage to follow his boss.

Jesus.

I knew I had a chance.

It's like it's Justin Bieber.

For real.

As the throng of people pressed forward to the upper exits, I fell back and went out the rear.

I sprinted out of the building around to the corner, hoping to see what I'd gambled was there.

And it was.

Jameson Scott was climbing into the back of a white SUV when I spotted him.

He glanced in my direction at the sound of his name, but then shut the door and rolled down the window of the SUV as the SUV began getting to pull away.

I threw a hell Mary.

Your words of that demon will never hold!

A voice echoed down the alleyway.

The brake lights came on immediately, but no one exited the car.

Taking it as an invitation, I ran up to his window.

For mere 25 years old, he sure looked like he'd seen some shit.

His lined, pale, yet attractive face no longer carried a tired look, but a surprised one.

I bent over to catch my breath.

He didn't speak, but opened the door and scooted over.

I climbed in.

Who may I have the pleasure?

Caitlin Ross.

I held out a shaky hand.

His surprise seemed to turn to shock.

Caitlin Ross,

he said slowly, with a strange inflection of reverence.

Yes, I'm Caitlin Ross.

And your wards, they're bullshit.

He didn't even bother to ask how I'd known, which in turn bothered me.

Simply tapped the seat in front of him, and his driver let go of the brick.

Those wards have held for six years, Miss Ross.

I assure you, they'll hold.

You have no idea what you're dealing with here.

Oh, I assure you, I do.

There was a hard yet sad edge to his voice that suggested personal tragedy.

I wondered if I misjudged him after all.

Oh my gosh,

here, fucking God, Caitlin.

Put the fucking

figure it out.

Good lord.

My apartment.

Oh, here, see, here we go.

Here's the 50-shake.

My apartments are only a block away.

Perhaps we should speak more in my study.

This isn't a conversation for anyone over here.

She's going to be tied up and flipped up somewhere.

Yeah, maybe

some bondage and ass play while we're at it.

Maybe.

Do you know what these are?

These are anal beads.

I want you to count how many exit me as we have this conversation.

Have you ever heard of sounding, Mrs.

Ross?

I noted the finality in his voice and, nodding, sat back in my seat.

As long as I got to say what I'd come to say, I didn't care where we went.

We were let off at the corner where several men in his personal detail were already waiting.

Scott escorted me into a private entrance and private elevator with only one button marked, penthouse.

As soon as the elevator doors opened, one of his men ushered me into his cavernous study and the door was shut behind me.

For whatever reason, Jameson entered from a different door a few minutes later, followed by his head bodyguard who had been at the lecture.

This one didn't like me one bit, barely concealing irritation and shades of panic when he saw me.

He was older, clearly over 30, with dark blonde hair and a square jaw.

This is a funny amount of security to have in like a small town in northern Pennsylvania.

Yeah.

But I'm rich and I'm a bachelor.

He has like a multi-floor penthouse and everything else is like a one-story like cottage.

Yeah.

He's like, couldn't you believe it?

800 square feet.

It's all mine.

They'll never take this from me.

Jameson sat down behind his desk while I continued to stand.

He gestured to an empty seat in front of him.

He gave a suit-yourself shrug, turned to his bodyguard.

His eyes continued to bore angry holes through me as they did everything else he looked at.

This was quickly becoming enemy territory.

Scott's from me, Bannock.

Anything for you, Caitlin?

No, thanks.

I mumbled as the guard, Bannock,

raked his hair back from his forehead in exasperation.

I assumed it's Scott's familiar use of my first name.

No threat to your boss, buddy.

If anything, he is a threat to everyone else.

I returned his icy glare, never wavering until his lips grew into a thin line and he curtly nodded to Jameson and left the room.

First,

I want to establish...

Do you have any idea what you're doing?

I asked, suspending all platitudes.

Jameson leaned back cautiously in his chair, giving me a casual go-on gesture.

Why would you bring that thing to a populated city?

Why would you put it on display for all to see and touch?

What sort of arrogance allows you to think that you could control it with

a few poorly copied sigils?

He had made no move during my short outburst other than to tint his fingers and stroke his jaw with his thumb.

Which question would you like me to answer first?

I'm telling you, this is getting very erotic very quickly.

I don't know.

Stop.

Also, I have...

There's been a lot of focus on the guards.

My Hail Mary that I'm going to throw is that the guards are some kind of spiritual entity.

Angel may be a bit too campy, but like some kind of supernatural thing, I think.

The guards that are around him all the time.

Just then, the one called Bannock opened the door with a little too much force and brought his great lord and master a scotch.

He turned to stand beside Jameson's desk, which seemed a natural and familiar spot for him.

You may go, Eric.

Jameson clipped without so much as looking at him.

The guard didn't move, and I continued to stare daggers at him.

We engaged in our own little personal silent standoff.

He, like the statue, had eyes only for me, and they were filled with rage and fire.

He can stay.

I ground out, finally.

Let him know I'm not afraid of him.

If he was grateful for my help, he didn't show it.

As you wish.

Your question?

I slid my eyes reluctantly back to Jameson.

How did you get it?

I bought it from the government.

Oh, my God.

The government had it?

I asked incredulously.

The state of Pennsylvania.

It appeared on government land in the middle of nowhere.

According to the surveyor who found it, they shipped it off to PSU, who dated and appraised it, and they put it up for auction.

They just sold it to the highest bidder?

Yeah, and why not?

It's just a piece of granite to them.

And they needed the money.

The state of Pennsylvania is suffering its own financial crisis.

Though I suppose that's why

I suppose that's what happens when, in essence, 20% of the state just stops paying their taxes.

It's a curious thing.

I winced.

He didn't need to elaborate.

Why did you buy it?

Because I have personal history with Metaraxis.

He has taken from me.

He's taken from me too.

But I'm not parading him around in public, risking people's lives.

Their souls, according to you.

If you listened to my lecture, you would know why I do that.

I remained silent.

Jameson sighed and leaned forward.

You're right, Caitlin.

The wards won't hold him.

Not forever.

And we don't know what it will.

The only reason they're holding now is because I'm giving him what he wants.

Uh-oh.

He's probably feeding people to him.

I think he means the worship.

Oh, I see.

Yeah, you're probably right.

You assume that being exhibited in a museum satisfied the creature's desire for worship?

And you're willing to stake people's lives on that?

I am.

The creature has not moved a millimeter since he came into my care.

I've employed teams of symbologists and demologists to research, test, and advise me on the safest course of action.

And for our efforts, the statue has remained dormant.

Yes, but it's not dead.

You're going to kill someone someday.

Jameson sprung up from his desk and was in front of me before I even had a chance to take a step.

His bodyguard took an almost involuntary step toward him.

It was too late.

Jameson was only inches from me and much more intimidating at eye level.

Panic seemed uneasy and ready to pounce if I tried anything.

What would you have

It was try to kill it?

I tried to incinerate it, hit it with a wrecking ball.

I even ran it over with a tank.

It wouldn't be destroyed by any tools of man.

And believe me, Caitlin, I paid dearly for my attempts.

Almost everything I love is gone.

Did I put it back where it came from?

If the church was even still there, and if I could find it.

No, we can do that.

Who did it kill?

Who that you loved?

I don't know.

Also, the visual of him hitting it with the tank is very funny.

Yeah, him like a bulldog

tank.

Yeah.

It's just like it won't break at all, but it's just like on the ground in the pose.

I don't know why I cared so much, but I couldn't let it go.

I had to know.

Scott took a step back, but held his ground.

She was.

She.

And just how did you escape the creature when it came for you?

The question hit him physically, like a bullet.

He leaned back against the desk, suddenly weaker, defeated, and less imposing.

Bannock visibly relaxed, his hand sliding off the handle of the gun I hadn't noticed was still holstered in his belt.

This is a story for another time.

Oh, come on!

How long are we gonna do this?

I know who Jamie is.

Fine, then why you?

Why are you the person who's qualified to own the statue?

Because I've seen its face.

My fate is bound to it, as surely as yours.

Jameson Scott rubbed his face in genuine exhaustion.

If he hadn't been speaking the truth, then he was a damn good actor.

He looked up at me, finally, from hooded eyes that burned with some intense, unnamed emotion.

And who did it take from you?

Jamie.

I had nothing to hide, and I wouldn't disrespect Jamie by hiding the truth.

Wait.

I wouldn't disrespect.

Okay.

Oh, oh, she's saying she won't disrespect her memory of Jamie.

Not doing it's Jamie she's talking to right now.

I raised my chin a little higher and crossed my arms.

Scott's expression had turned milder, almost pensive, and a sad smile graced his handsome face.

Tension in the room abated, though Bannock was looking at me intently, his expression unchanged since the moment he'd walked into the room.

When Scott didn't reply, I decided it was now or never.

I want to see it.

No.

Alone.

No!

This time, both Jameson and Bannock had spoken at the same time.

I know he wouldn't let me go.

He never let me near the statue again.

I'd assumed this before I'd even met him, which is why I swiped the museum keycard off his desk as soon as I had the opportunity.

Why not?

Because he knows you.

And you know he could break the wards if he wanted to.

No.

He could never get past the wards.

They're perfectly drawn and blessed as they should be.

But I won't risk your life.

Jamison Scott suddenly seemed battle-wary, so much older than his 25 years.

Don't even try it, Caitlin.

He will take you if you do.

The only one who will ever remember you is me.

His plea was multi-layered, intricately woven with threads of both deceit and familiarity.

Once again, I was put ill at ease.

There was only one more thing I wanted from this room.

Who did it take from you and how?

Tell me.

Tell me that and I'll leave Landenberg in the morning and never come back.

It was a lie, but I was curious.

Jameson's eyes shifted to mine, perhaps to gauge if I meant what I said.

He must have believed me, because his gaze drifted off the window and he answered my question.

I took her for myself.

It was an unsatisfying answer.

Now leave.

Commanded his bodyguard before I'd had a chance to reply.

Jameson stared at me as I took a step back from the desk.

His eyes were again pregnant with an emotion I couldn't name, but it tread a line between longing and insanity.

Perhaps desperate desire, perhaps insane desperation.

Perhaps something in between.

I will walk her out.

Bannock bit as I made my escape out the door.

To God, anyone but him.

No, I need you here.

Andrews will see her out.

The door closed behind me and I heard no more.

Andrews turned out to be an older man with a bald head and a white beard.

He met me at the elevator and escorted me all the way to the ground floor, saying little.

Do you need a ride somewhere?

He asked as we stepped out into the street.

No, I can walk.

He said no more, just turned around and let the private door shut behind him.

Nice of him to ask, at least.

As I walked back to the museum, I had time to wonder just what in the hell I was doing.

Why didn't I listen to Scott and just leave?

Why did I hope to gain by seeing that thing again?

Couldn't I just trust that he seemed to have everything under control?

Scott had the resources, the money, the people, and most importantly, the motivation.

He had lost someone too, after all, someone he loved, though how that had come to pass was not clear.

But I knew I had to see it again.

Perhaps I could prove to him just how dangerous that thing was, regardless of the precautions he was taking.

I need to convince him to take the statue off display before more people died.

It was madness having it here.

He was exposing innocent people to a demon on a reckless gamble.

If I could make the statue statue move just an inch or two, maybe even a turn of its head,

it would be on the museum security tapes and I could prove that this thing wasn't truly dormant.

I read him as a pragmatic, reasonable man.

He would remove the exhibit at once.

I trusted that much, didn't I?

She is insanely stupid.

Yeah.

This is the this is the most reckless thing I think I've ever heard.

They're both being reckless and selfish, but it's coming to an extent that our protagonist here, Caitlin, is it's it's becoming infuriating.

My theory is too that

the thing Jamie said where he's like, I pushed her or I lost her myself, whatever.

I feel like something bad happens if Jamie recognizes Caitlin or like recognizes someone from that time period.

I think Jamie knows who she is and isn't, he's trying to keep her safe.

Something going on with Badok too, where maybe he doesn't want to reveal that in front of him as well.

Like he doesn't want him to be alone with caitlin either so i don't know once again i pulled up jameson scott's wikipedia page all i knew was that he was a pioneer in the tech industry rich as a roster and interested in 14th century judeo-christian artifacts it didn't fit it just didn't

unless jameson scott was telling the truth but even if he was being honest about his past scott was still lying to me about something Like everything else in the last week, I would have to trust my gut.

I arrived at the museum and walked around the giant building looking for the gift shop.

At the moment, I knew two things.

Statue's room was next to the gift shop, and museums usually had nighttime security.

I slid Jameson's card through the reader next to the door, and a light flashed green while the door emitted a soft click.

Pushed it open and peered into the empty gift shop.

Dim overhead lights gave the room an eerie and foreboding glow.

The room reminded me of another room from over 10 years ago.

A nave darkened by dirty windows and a muted setting sun.

I was younger then, more innocent, and I'd had Jamie then.

But I wouldn't give to have him with me now.

What would he say?

Perhaps that he was a 25-year-old billionaire who I could.

Would he trust Scott?

Would he attempt to stir the creature for the greater good?

Or would he say I was stupid for risking my life?

Jameson was convinced the wards would hold.

Would Jamie have been too?

Whatever happened, I hope I didn't fail him.

That is the end of the of the return to deep wood here leading i just kind of want to hop right into the death of the deepwood to kind of see what's going on i am livid that she doesn't understand like has not pieces that together granted she does have

she does have the ability she has

for years now you could argue you know over a decade she has uh told herself the story that jamie's just gone that he disappeared that he's dead essentially you know so she has had like been living with that forever so she probably does hasn't even thought about him actually still being alive but it does seem kind of naive to have somebody be like have another experience with that um i don't know she is being incredibly naive yeah because like someone else has experience with it uh they have for six years kept it from killing anyone yeah we are on to part three death of deepwood pennsylvania I padded quietly through the dimly lit gift shop, pulling the straps of my backpack tighter over my shoulder like a security blanket.

When I reached the opposite door, I leaned my head against it and tried to calm my rapidly beating heart.

Taking several deep breaths, I slid Scott's keycard through the blinking card reader and was rewarded with a green flash and another soft click.

The creature was right where I'd left it, as still as the statue it was pretending to be.

Took my time wandering around the room.

My eyes never leaving Jameson Scott's surprised exhibit.

If the demon was as satisfied and successfully warded as Scott bragged it was, then the creature either wouldn't notice or wouldn't care about my presence.

I'm starting to hope he was right.

Yeah, but he also said it remembers you and can get up whenever it wants.

Whatever, okay.

I approached it slowly and unbuckled the velvet rope with a shaky hand.

I was so close to it now that all I could see when I looked up was the underside of its gigantic head.

I suddenly wondered if years of schooling would help me read the words inscribed on the statue's stone platform.

I bent down and started to pull up the velvet covering when I heard a quiet scrape above me, like stone on stone.

Oh God.

It was the sound I'd heard before in the soundtrack of my nightmares.

Though I'd been right all along, the statue wasn't dormant.

It was a hollow victory.

I dropped the velvet and backed away from the statue, trying to determine what had moved.

Nothing had changed to my naked eye, but I know what I heard.

Bumping against the back wall, I decided to play a wild card.

I didn't need it to move perceptibly if I wanted proof that the thing was still dangerous.

I turned away from the demon to face the wall, using an armed brace myself.

I couldn't believe I was doing this.

I pushed my chips all in.

Do you really think I'm scared of you after all these years?

I asked quietly, my voice echoing around me like a gunshot.

You're just a piece of rock now.

Harmless to me.

I felt my breath and waited.

Nothing.

Feeling both disappointed and relieved, I sighed and turned around, dropping the keycard as well as my jaw.

Though it hadn't made a sound, the statue was now not only facing me, but

leaning out as far off its stone platform as it could.

Its mouth was opened and almost imperceptibly growing wider by the second

that's awesome that's you can't leave your platform

i i wouldn't tempt him i breathed as much to myself as the creature my whole body was shaking and i was quietly backing up slowly slowly to the door i got what i come for now it was time to leave it happened in the breath of a second

There was a sudden crack as the demon's tail whipped through the air behind it from one side to the other as though it were not made of stone but of flesh and blood.

The glass encasing it on either side shattered.

The makeshift wall behind split in two and the velvet ropes came crashing down.

One of the poles sent a sigil flying across the room.

I screamed like I never screamed before as the creature's neck seemed to stretch across the room toward me, one of its wards no longer effective.

I turned my back on it and ran for the door, realizing too late that the keycard now lay under a heap of rubble.

i hate her reached uh yeah she's this was insane this was a horrible horrible she went to a demon and was like i'm gonna mock you so that you move a little bit but not a lot fuck you

i bet you have a tiny dick yeah like well yeah she this is ridiculous i turned my back on it and ran for the door realizing too late the key card now lay under a heap of rubble i reached the double doors and tried to jerk them open hoping they weren't locked from the other side They were.

The creature was once again still a stone, everything but its eyes, which followed my every move hungrily.

I beat on the door, yelling for security and wondering if I was doomed and which thought would be my last.

In my hysterical panic, I suddenly remembered how I'd escaped this fate 13 years before.

I stumbled back from the doors as much as I dared and ran at them shoulder first.

So the demon also here probably remembers her as the person that was supposed to be sacrificed but didn't, but ran away and got away.

Yeah, remember what I said?

It's like it wants you, like it picks a target, basically.

So that was the target before.

He probably definitely remembers her.

Yeah.

They moved, creaked even, but ultimately laughed at my efforts.

These were no rotten, decaying church doors.

Crazed with fear, I backed up to try again, and this time, just as my shoulder reached the door, it opened from the other side and I went spilling over on top of something hard or someone.

Rolled over and I passively registered that I'd landed on an enraged Bannock.

He was standing and pulling me up by strapping my backpack before the door had even closed behind us.

Bannock struggled to say something, trying several times, but was too angry for words.

I didn't care.

I threw my arms around him, just happy to be on the other side of the door.

He didn't hug me back, just froze stiff and waited for me to get off of him.

When I finally pulled back, I pulled my hood down and looked him full in the face.

Did you see what it did?

I asked, pushing hair back from my face.

The thing is not dormant at all.

Tell your boss that, and that it needs to be moved tonight if possible.

i hate her she has no business

on saying any of this

this is such a deeply stupid person in lieu of a response bannett grabbed my arm and headed toward the lobby since it was away from the exhibit room i didn't care he could take me to jail if he wanted as long as jamison scott heard what happened here i made my point to him and lived to tell the tale Or had I?

I suddenly wondered.

Honestly, if I'd learned anything in that room, it had been that the creature hadn't forgotten me.

The girl that got away.

My life was a black mark on its record, an insult, and I had gone into its lair and challenged.

What did I think was going to happen?

Yeah, what a great time to think about that.

Happening made it mad.

Of one thing, I was abruptly certain.

It wouldn't stop until it had my life.

The creature would burn through a hundred cities, perhaps a thousand, to claim me.

It had told me all of this somehow, hadn't it?

I suddenly realized my mistake.

The creature had been dormant when I'd arrived in Landenberg, as it had been dormant 13 years before in Deepwood.

And once again, I had awoken it from its harmless slubber.

I hate her.

I hate her.

I hate her so much, Isaiah.

I can't do it.

This is the second time she has walked into a place with the demon surrounded by sigils and done something to make it upset and like draw it out.

How many would pay the price this time?

How many people had to die before the end?

You have killed 20% of the population of Pennsylvania.

I want to say that it is hardly.

Yes, the demon did it, but it is indirectly her fault.

Like, at least Jamie has spent the rest of his life trying to stop it with, like, actual methods other than just like,

she's certainly not one of the worst character we've read.

Or she's definitely not the worst character we've read, but she is getting up there to me of, like you're just having someone just be like well should i press this this button that you know sets off a nuclear bomb well i don't know seems like dirt seems like they it's gonna go off eventually so i might as well do it myself right finally understanding the true cost of my arrogance i let out a muffled cry and faltered wondering with revulsion if perhaps i should just go back and face my fate

yes you should

sacrifice yourself to the great demon redeem yourself wait

i cough trying to apply the guard's fingers for my arm.

Bannock suddenly spun me around and pinned me against a wall, his arms braced on either side of my head.

My eyes snapped up at him in shock and I recoiled from what I saw there.

What the fuck are you doing here?

I was.

I was just.

Why'd you come back, Katie?

After all these fucking years?

Well, I was wrong.

My objection died in my throat, but couldn't be.

It wasn't possible, and yet, somehow it was.

My legs gave out under me, but Jamie caught me on the way down.

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Okay.

All right, well, you know what?

Me and you, we were a little bit off.

A little bit.

I mean, he was there.

We were just a little bit off.

He was older than he should have been, and stronger than I ever thought the skinny kid from Middlesbrough could be.

But his eyes hadn't changed.

It was Jamie all the same.

Even his expressions were familiar to me, I realized.

What I first thought was seething anger was actually just barely controlled fear.

Had the creature killed me, after all?

Was I swirling in the dark abyss with Jaime and all the others who had been taken?

Jamie?

My voice broke over his name.

Christ, Katie, you need to leave now and never come back.

Hell, leave the country if you can.

They'll never stop looking for you now.

I couldn't register what he was saying.

Who wouldn't?

Leave what what country?

Jamie, how is Jamie here?

He kept me pinned there, his hold frigid, his eyes desperate and a little bit pissed off.

Jamie,

how did you-

How did I know you'd come here?

When has the word no ever kept you from something you wanted?

No, I mean how.

Hold on, what is that?

I'm sorry, Keith.

We'll take her from here, Bannock.

A voice behind him interrupted me.

Jamie slowly turned to face the three men, only one of which I recognized.

This one has been too much trouble.

I want her gone.

Jamie returned thice in his voice.

Mr.

Scott says we're not to take orders from you anymore, Bannock.

Give her here.

Jamie suddenly pushed me out of the way and I went sliding across the floor, the wind knocked out of me.

A rushing filled my ears as I tried desperately to catch my breath.

When my hearing came back, Jamie was yelling at me.

Go!

I looked back to see two men down and Jamie struggling with the third.

My sneaker struggled for purchase on the slick marble floor, and when they finally found it, I was up and running toward the lobby on the wings of adrenaline.

Suddenly I heard a sound like a book slamming onto a table.

I spun around just as Jamie went down, clutching his shoulder.

He fell on top of the man he'd been struggling with, who was now unconscious.

Blood began to drip over his fingers and I went sliding across the floor as I tried to double back for him.

What?

Why are you just Jamie?

Started to say something, but passed out mid-sentence.

His hand dropped from his shoulder, and thin tendrils of blood began to race each other down his chest.

Well, now that is impressive.

Jameson Scott stepped forward from where he'd been leaning against

crit.

I know, yeah.

That 100% strike me as like an anime thing.

Anime thing.

Pushes up glasses.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, now that is impressive.

Yeah.

And I'm not impressed by much at my age.

I stumbled over to Jamie, but Scott stopped me with a single click of his gun.

He walked over and rested a foot on Jamie's chest.

I forgot where I was.

Okay, so Scott shot Jamie,

right?

Yeah, I'm gonna assume so.

I saw you take my key card, you know.

He played the role perfectly.

In fact, everything went according to plan, except him.

Scott kicked Jamie in the ribs, but he didn't make a sound.

What do you want?

Your name came up.

I want you to die.

Why?

Scott gave a pretentious scoff.

This isn't a James Bond movie, Miss Ross.

I don't need to explain myself to you.

I'm looking down two paragraphs, and he is explaining himself in very thorough detail.

But you will, won't you?

You want me to know how clever you are.

What?

I don't know.

What happened?

What?

Where did this come from?

I think she's just trying to buy time.

Yeah, okay.

I was playing with fire, but why not?

We were far beyond caution now.

Hmm.

You're quite bright.

There might have been a place for you and my staff if things had been different.

Don't flatter yourself.

Why, then?

Why are you giving a demon what it wants?

Didn't kill someone you loved?

My daughter, actually.

And why?

It's my gift to a world I was born too late into.

You know, I was 50 by the time the internet was invented.

50!

What sad irony then?

And I was a technological genius.

Oh, but the universe does love its sick jokes.

Do you realize I've single-handedly guided the history of modern technology?

Oh god, here we go.

I'm

falling deeper.

This is getting cringe.

It's true, but I reached my 70s and then my 80s, and my vision began to fail.

My hands would shake, I'd forget coding, I could barely manage to read at one point.

I made millions, but I hadn't even started.

I just decided the world couldn't afford to lose me yet, so I tracked down every piece of ancient lore I could that helped me reclaim my youth.

Most of it was rubbish, of course, but I was desperate.

I'd almost given up until Metaraxis found me.

I

the story did dupe us pretty pretty good because it is so clearly supposed to be that Jameson is Jamie, right?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I like the trick when the guy's name is Jameson.

Like, it's just, to me, I'm like, okay, that's the name of the game.

The name should have been different.

And then it's like, and then you're referring to the other guy.

It's almost where it's like, it's like, my old friend's name used to be Sally.

And this is, uh, I don't know.

This is a new girl, Sally Field.

And there's another girl in the room.

Her name's Z-Bok.

It's like, okay, well, I'm not not really an under, I'm not really an indie under.

Like, I'm not, like, supposed to be like, oh, Battok is probably, you know, I mean, it feels kind of cheap in a non-visual format, maybe.

I think just make both of their names nothing like Jamie.

Well, yeah, exactly.

You're fine.

Other than that.

I do like how the story completely set up that Jameson was an altruistic character who had suffered at the hands of this demon and was trying to do something to satiate it only for the rug to be pulled on us in part three.

I mean, I agree.

I don't think that's the setup.

But I think it's just, it's a bit, to me, I felt, I thought I was more like, well, that's just cheap.

Like, it feels unfair, whatever.

I think you can still think about it.

I think if his name was not Jameson.

Yeah.

Yeah, no.

I mean, I like the setup of it being like, oh, maybe he is doing something good because he really...

pushes and pulls you.

I want to finish the story before I, I guess, divulge too much.

I knew what he was as

I adopted a new name and started a new company.

All was going well until your name came up about four years ago.

It really stunt me because Metaraxis only desires those who are connected to him.

Somehow.

I didn't know who you were and you're far from only Caitlin Ross in the world.

I did try several others.

Metaraxis would take them, for certain, but the name never changed.

I was getting desperate.

So you can imagine how happy I am that you showed up at my doorstep.

God is telling me that he approves my methods, and that I must stay alive for the good of humanity.

My company is in the middle of revolutionizing surgical robotics.

For Christ's sakes, I will take a few lives to save a million.

Furious at his arrogance, I struggled to keep my voice level.

Don't lie to yourself, Scott.

You're no hero.

Just an old man afraid to die.

No, Caitlin.

I'm just a man refusing to grow old.

What can I say?

I'm determined and resilient.

I want to be young until the day I die.

That's not resilience.

That's vanity.

Vanity is what you're buying with my life.

There's always a price for social change, Miss Ross.

And today,

the cost is you.

Oh,

but you look upset.

Don't be afraid of death, my dear.

Not for such a worthy cause.

I'm not afraid of death, and I don't care about your diabolical plan.

I just want you to get to the goddamn part!

Jamie's breathing was growing shallow, and my voice dripped with animosity.

As you wish.

When I woke, I was lying on a cold marble floor.

My brown mass of hair fanned out underneath me, stiff with dried blood and my wrists bound.

I sat up slowly and tried to brush the hair out of my eyes.

I knew where I was.

There's no point in turning around to see it.

But I did anyway.

It wasn't the fact that my name was engraved at the base of the statue that the velvet cloth had covered.

It wasn't the wards which had been moved from the demon's feet to the doors and walls of the room.

It wasn't even the fact that the demon's head was turned as to be looking directly down at me.

No, what terrified me most in that room was the man leaning against the wall, hands bound behind his back, as condemned to death as I was.

The blood on his chest had dried and he was awake, his eyes only partly open,

watching me with an unreadable expression.

You look like shit, Jamie.

I said matter-of-factly as I pulled myself up to lean against the base of the statue, the only thing nearby.

I've been busy,

he said, mouth curling up into a sarcastic smile.

I'm sorry I killed you again.

Try to smile back, it's only to keep the tears at bay.

Nah, we'll survive this.

I admire your optimism, but look around.

I rested my elbows on my knees and sunk my head into my arms.

I lived through it once before, didn't I?

Yeah,

about that.

How?

Oh man, this exposition dumping is fucking ugh.

Woo!

Don't you love it?

Aren't you so happy that the mysterious, creepy creature is now just like a bunch of dialogue?

About a week after you left, things started disappearing around town.

People, buildings, even roads.

No one remembered them but me.

Then one day, I woke up in an empty house.

My dad and my brother were gone, so I fled to the only place I knew was safe.

The damn church.

I figured it was the one place the demon would never go.

I don't know how long I lived there, but it felt like years.

I slept at the church and and traveled to nearby towns to steal what I needed to live.

And then, one day,

the towns were gone.

All of them.

So I decided to find the thing.

My dad was gone.

My mom didn't remember me.

And the only person who knew who I was lived in a thousand miles away.

So I went from town to town until I found it.

It was just there.

Standing in the center of town.

Nobody even thought it was weird.

I was a pro at drawing sigils, but then since I did I spent so much time at Deadwood and sigils had have to be perfect to work, so I tried to ward it.

It would take a little while, but the statue always managed to break them.

I find out a little further from its base every night.

People didn't even seem to notice the statue had moved.

What they didn't notice, or what they did notice, however, was some kid loitering around their town.

Since I looked older, the town was getting wary of me anyway.

I joined the local police force and spent my nights on patrol downtown, keeping an eye on the thing, reapplying sigils.

Occasionally, I'd wake up outside and I'd know my wards had finally failed.

Then I'd have to track it to a new town and start all over.

Why didn't it just kill you?

I asked myself that a few years ago when your name came up.

I think it needed me to find you, ironically.

In the end, it didn't need me at all.

It came anyway.

Okay.

I thought about that and wondered for the first time if I actually had come back to prove myself sane.

Had I really intended to kill it or prove I'd been right?

Or had actually been about Jamie all along?

It took a long time and a lot of towns, but I finally figured out what I was doing wrong.

I said you will slow it down.

But in order to stop it, the ward needs to be blessed.

And not just by anyone.

The second son of a Roman Catholic, preferably from a sissy, sissy, Italy, a sissy, I think, yeah.

Yeah, preferably from a sissy, Italy, or at least near the near the region.

Don't ask me how I figured that out.

It'd be funny.

She's like, how'd you figure it out?

Okay, I'll tell you.

How did you figure it out?

During my travels, I went to Assisi, Italy.

So what happened to your second son from Assissy, Italy?

He disappeared.

Shit.

That'd be so funny if that ever comes up again.

Yeah.

It's like, you need the second son of a Roman Catholic from Assisi, Italy.

What happened to him?

He died.

Okay, well.

That's not...

That's not Pog.

Yeah.

By that point, I was a sheriff and I'd been in the city over.

I came back to town to find my exit missing.

The statue was gone.

And that's when Jameson Scott got a hold of it.

And that's why you're protecting him?

You think I was protecting him?

No.

He was transparent about his intentions from the start.

I applied to be in his detail, but was denied.

No name, no experience.

I only got on because I was able to take out all the bodyguards in sort of a hand-to-hand combat.

Combat trial?

I only got on because I was able to take out all of his bodyguards in a sort of hand-to-hand combat trial.

Guess those trips to the police academy finally paid off.

Boy, oh boy, the fall.

The fall from grace.

Agreed.

How does Jameson Scott know more about the statue than we do?

Oh my god, so much dialogue.

Because he had almost 80 people on his staff who did nothing but travel every corner of the globe.

Are you still here?

I'm speechless.

I understand.

I'm just going to keep powering through.

I'm just going to keep powering through.

The combat trial, I think, is the wildest

we're getting to levels of monster hunter so what you're a monster segment's gonna be like so demon hunter huh

because he had almost 80 people on his staff who did nothing but travel every corner of the globe looking for any scrap of information on metaraxis All of this is inferred.

This could have been solved with, I spent time looking.

It would come from town to town.

I guess it wanted you.

Done.

That's it.

The rest can be inferred.

We can come up with it in our memory or in our mind or something.

Why do we need to know that he had a hand-to-hand combat trial or that meta rank?

Whatever.

Just we aren't the first ones to live to tell the tale.

Just the first to stick around.

I did all I could to keep people away from that thing.

A name would be engraved on it one day.

And a new name the next.

It took me a long time to figure out what he was doing.

And by then, your name had come up.

He's became obsessed with you.

And I damn sure wasn't going to let him find you.

Well, that explains why you were mad when you saw me.

Mad, Katie.

I've never been more terrified in my life.

I spent years leading him down false paths wanting to have you present yourself like a lamb for slaughter.

I'm sorry, Jamie.

I wasted all your fucking time.

You spent 13 years trying to protect me, and I spent all that time trying to forget you.

Well,

it's no less than I wanted for you.

To forget about this place and me.

I heard the familiar stone-on-stone sound from above me.

Is there any chance of reasoning with him?

Your boss, I mean?

Not likely.

He fed his own daughter that thing.

He what?

For the greater good, he said.

God, Jamie, I don't want to die.

I don't want you to die.

You're not going to die here.

Not today.

Why do you think this hasn't killed us yet?

It's trying.

Scott kept a close watch over his demon, but I managed to get one thing by him.

A statue sitting on a sigil the size of a mini cooper.

It's not blessed, but it's big.

You're a brilliant bastard, James Karras.

No.

No, you made that one up.

Oh my gosh, it's in there.

That's actually real.

Well,

I've sure had a lot of time.

Honor.

Bro, I am just trying to push through this so we can be done with this.

This is why I tell people, too, why we shouldn't read the fucking sequels to stuff.

Every time.

New Creepcast role.

Unless a story is known for its sequels, like the case of

the roleplay.

My wife's taking out roleplay too far.

Unless the story was written with sequels in mind, or Baraska, right?

The first four parts.

We are not doing other parts.

It's crazy.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I just want to get through it.

It's big.

You brilliant bastard, James.

Did someone else start riding part three?

Maybe she was possessed by a demon and got killed by a gargoyle.

I don't know.

He walked over and stood me up.

Use whatever tool he had picked his own cuffs with to free me.

I heard them click, but when they fell to the floor, all I heard was the loud grinding of stone on stone again.

It was louder and longer this time.

Don't look at it, Katie.

Don't look up.

Jamie.

I breathed, terrified.

Suddenly, a face appeared behind Jamie, but this time I wasn't hypnotized by it.

Jamie saw the color drain from my face and grabbed me.

Follow me now!

He yelled, pushed me in front of him to the gift shop door.

I heard more movement from behind us and turned around while Jamie typed a long sequence of numbers into the card reader keypad.

The creature had turned its head and it was watching me.

It was alive, as alive as it had ever been.

The statue took a step off its platform and shook the museum floor.

Its movements were silent, yet fluid and flexible, like a cartoon on mute.

Jamie, working on it!

Something else is like the creature design's still cool.

Like this giant thing that's completely silent, but it's made of stone and walking.

Like, I like the description of the cartoon on mute.

Like, that there's still cool stuff happening adjacent to it, but whatever.

Suddenly, the keypad flash screen and the door clicked open.

Jamie drew a black marker out of his pocket and drew a long line down the middle of the sigil, negating negating it.

What are you doing?

Just trust me.

Jamie pushed me out the door.

We slammed it behind us and tore across the gift shop to the exit.

The door was locked.

I turned around to tell Jamie as much, but he was already hurling a table through the window.

It shattered just as I saw the door on the other side of the room begin to bend as it was pushed in from the other side.

How'd you unlock that door?

I asked as we ran across the parking lot.

Scott isn't the only one who's good with programming.

Ugh.

I close my eyes

only for a moment.

Then the moment's gone.

Dust in the wind.

All we are is dust in the wind.

I think I'm going to do it tonight.

I don't think I could do it anymore.

I think it's right before the tour also.

Right before our first date at the tour.

He's not the only one that's good with programming.

Pushes up glasses, pulls out sword, slices demon in half.

The demon sets still for a second and then looks around and then realizes he's cut in half and then falls apart.

And then he explodes.

Simpai Jamie.

Jamie, son.

Jamie, why are you just like trunks?

I followed him to a black black Jeep sitting at the edge of the parking lot.

We jumped in just as a loud bang echoed across the asphalt.

God only knows what it meant.

J

Hunter.

Huh?

Not Hunter.

What?

Just read the sentence at the end of this paragraph.

The beginning chords to highway to hell blasted from the speakers.

Hell yeah, dude.

What are we doing?

Way to hell.

Dang, dang.

Yeah, I will say this is to where I'm like, this isn't cute.

This is just, I'm like, this is the cringe is building up like beads of sweat on my face.

Okay, maybe, maybe, maybe we now, maybe part three is supposed.

Maybe it's like Army of Darkness.

Oh my god, wait.

Why not?

I shrugged as I turned it up.

Okay, okay, okay,

Hunter.

Clearly, okay,

clearly, this is a comedy, right?

No, it's like no,

it's been taking itself seriously.

It's Army of Darkness.

It's Army of Darkness, right?

No, it's not Army of Darkness.

It's not Army of Darkness at all.

It's not been campy and fun the whole time.

This is not Tales from the Gas Station.

That is a Tales from the Gas Station line and event right there.

Is it not?

I feel like this part three is a Tales from the Gas Station Vido because I can't think of it being serious at any point.

You haven't had the characters react at all in a way that would indicate that it's supposed to be that, though.

In Tales from the Gas Station, it plays it very from the beginning.

Like it, it, it, it doesn't dip its toe.

It fully jumps in.

But do you think that maybe part three is supposed to be campy?

No.

Well, you know what?

If it is, that's bullshit.

You can't give me something one through two and then completely tone shift.

It's almost like if you fucking, if you had the movie The Pianist on, and all of a sudden it becomes a slapstick comedy at the end.

It's like, okay, well, it's been about the fucking Holocaust this entire time.

But you can't all of a sudden make it an early 2000s comedy.

You know what I mean?

The audience saw that on screen, but for the audio listeners who don't know the sentence I freaked out over,

get in a Jeep, and it says, Jamie shoved his keys in the ignition and turned the car over.

The beginning chords to Highway to Hell blasted from the speakers.

Why not?

I shrugged as I turned it up.

Jamie nodded and peeled out of the parking lot.

We tore through town like the devil himself was chasing us, which wasn't far from the truth.

Babats.

Babats.

It was early, first rays of sunlight streaming through the trees as we hit the highway.

We hadn't gone more than five miles when a white SUV appeared behind us.

It followed at a considerable distance.

Why aren't they overtaking us?

Because this is what he wants.

Scott knows where we're going.

Where are we going?

Deepwood.

Fuck.

I said as I leaned back in the chair, but I trusted Jamie, so I didn't object.

Won't it take the creature days to make it there?

I asked, eyeing Jamie's speedometer, which was at 90.

It does always move like that.

It sometimes travels on another plane.

I can't explain it.

Everything changes and warps around that thing.

Even time.

That's why I'm about eight years older than I should be.

I gotta explain every single fucking thing to you, by the way.

In the first couple parts of the story, we mentioned how time changes around it, and it has been mentioned twice now that I am significantly older than you.

So, the audience cannot put those two factors together.

So, I will now explicitly say that I am precisely eight years older than I should be due to time differences created.

Both the demon

who want to make

a winner.

Just give them

So that is going on on the speakers blaring and the guy's like

yeah, but that's even why he doesn't really travel like we do.

Also,

that's why I'm eight years older.

She's like, right,

that makes sense.

Thanks for explaining that.

We better get to Deepwood fast.

I'm doing it tonight.

I can't take this anymore.

Benny, come here.

Come up here.

Okay.

He suddenly whipped off the road and headed for the tree line.

The truck behind us did the same and we maneuvered randomly through the trees, though I figured Jamie knew where we were going.

How far?

I asked after 10 minutes.

Six miles.

But you know how time is out here.

Did I ever?

Four minutes, yet somehow six miles later, we bumped over a set of railroad tracks and arrived at the damn church, which looked smaller and more impotent than it did in my nightmares.

The front door opened easily this time, and I gave an involuntary shudder when I saw the Jesus statue, looking more judgmental now than ever before.

The trapdoor is open.

You lived here for years, and you never closed the trapdoor?

Believe me, I tried.

Jamie grabbed my hand and guided me to the hole in the floor.

We have to go down there.

Fuck no, it's the only way this will end, Katie.

You've got to be kidding me.

me.

I muttered as I took the first reluctant step down.

Wait.

You said it wouldn't either come back in here.

It would for you.

I think you're doing it right at this point.

Just reading full more anime.

Like.

Well, it's like that's kind of what they've been reading.

So I feel like it, that's probably, I'm guessing that was the author's intention of it's like very dramatic, right?

Yeah, yeah.

It would for you.

I think we've nailed it now that it is supposed to be like, regardless if you think the story should have gone that way or not, this is horror comedy for sure.

It has to be.

You know, actually, right, I would hell reference into it.

I was caught in the middle of the railroad track

And I ran!

Did I do?

There was no turning back!

Thunder!

And I grazed!

And I thought, What could I do?

Thunder!

Did I do?

There was no help!

No help from you!

Thunder!

We're not gonna do that!

We're not gonna do that!

I just wanna get to the point where I say, stupid!

Dantestra!

Die!

Dantestra!

Two big

dog destroyer!

Yeah!

Yeah, the whole time is she's sitting there and she's just like, you've been, you've never shut the trapdoor?

Just behind her.

Oh, wow, wow, wow.

Yeah!

Going on in the background.

I didn't realize until halfway through us singing highway to hell that we switched into shoot to thrill

yeah i couldn't remember the lyrics to highway to hell so i just went to shoot the thrill

okay

um

what it would be jamie followed me yeah

Jamie followed behind me and took the stairs down on shaky step at a time.

Jamie followed behind me, flashlight in hand.

I didn't see it until right before we reached the bottom.

The demon was already here waiting for us.

It stood in the same position we first found him in 13 years before, but this time its face was not stone.

The demon's eyes swept across the room in a wide arc.

His tail was wrapped around the bottom of the staircase.

If he was already down here, why couldn't we stay up there?

He wasn't.

There were no wards to protect us now and nowhere to run.

I couldn't help thinking this was a bad plan.

Well, he's here now, so let's go.

We can't, Katie.

If we leave now, he will too.

Well then, what's your plan, Jamie?

Jamie said nothing, just stared at the demon, who was now staring back at him.

Suddenly, I felt something like a tug in the pit of my stomach.

I stepped back and then it happened again.

I looked up into the creature's eyes, which had moved to mine, and suddenly realized what was happening.

There was another tug, harder this time, and I felt my mind, if not my body, being pulled towards the demon's head.

A long black tongue jutted out to welcome me and the creature's mouth began to widen.

So this was it.

The nothingness.

The demon's mouth was so wide, I could have simply walked into it if I had a body.

The blackness started to close in on all sides, creating a sort of tunnel vision, and then in a violent jolt, I was snapped back into my body, a perfect sigil drawn on my chest and black marker.

The creature screamed an ear-splitting sound, and Jamie flung me over his shoulder before I had even re-established my bearings.

We were to the top of the staircase in under a minute, the demon still emitting a deafening wail.

Something was wailing in my ear from the ACDC song.

Then I realized it was the creature.

I heard ACDC only to realize it was the creature that plays ACDC.

It was only Bon Scott, the creature.

I'm sorry.

I was sure it would come for me first!

We burst into the nave, and Jamie,

seeing our company before I did, pushed me across the altar towards the crucifixion, which I took out as I fell.

I scrambled back, kicking it away from me as I did.

By the time I looked up, Jameson Scott was standing in front of the trapdoor, a gun to Jamie's head.

His men hung back, but looked eager to get involved at a word from their boss.

Get back down there, Miss Ross.

This is the this is like a Nathan Drake scenario.

Okay.

Yes.

Fuck you.

The last words was drowned out by a loud cracking sound that echoed through the little church as the spiral staircase came crashing down below us.

Oh my god, I thought it was actually going to be thunder for a second and I was going to laugh so hard.

Like what?

You know what would make this, I think, the best story on Creepcast ever?

Hmm.

If like an angel flies in through the top of the church and like kills them.

There's a lady

who knows all the ring

down.

Katie, don't

Jamie caught a knee to the ribs, some of which I was pretty sure were already broken.

Scrambled back further.

This, there's no staircase now.

There's no way to get down there.

Oh, sure, there is.

His hired men laughed.

You're going to die either way.

At least this way.

You'll save his life.

Metaraxis is trapped down there.

Now see, fucking Metaraxis sounds like a goddamn Yu-Gi-Oh card, so I can't take it serious.

At least this way, you'll save his life.

Metaraxis is trapped down there for the time being.

So it's to uh, so it's to seller, you must go.

Perhaps you shouldn't have injured him by breaking his bond mid-feed.

Katie!

Don't be fucking stupid, just run!

Fuck now, Jamie.

I didn't leave you in this place, and I won't now.

Time to pay my dues.

I stood up to walk to the edge of the trapdoor.

Perhaps, if fate was kind, I would die when I hit the floor 30 feet below.

I looked up at Jamie, intending my last words to be for him.

I knew the moment he realized that intent.

Jamie jerked his body forward and threw himself and Scott into the dark hole between us.

I screamed as Scott's men scattered out the door.

I skid over to the side of the hole, tripping over the smaller statue on the way.

I'm here

came a pain groan from Jamie, who was just barely clutching onto the side.

Thanking every deity I knew of, I pulled him out of the hole and back into the nave.

His wound, how did she pull him?

His wound was bleeding fresh blood, and I knew we didn't have much time.

I laid him on his back as he started to slip in unconsciousness.

Applying pressure to his shoulder, a moan came from the trapdoor behind us.

Help me.

Peace.

I'm hurt.

So Scott had survived the fall.

I grimaced and pulled myself over to the edge to peer into the darkness below.

I could okay, I'm just I am just guaranteeing you right now,

right now, there's going to be hold on, hold on, there's going to be a quip.

There's going to be a one-liner when she shuts a door or something.

Something just like, you know, I don't know.

I have just a feeling there's going to be a quip and then all of a sudden the demon's going to be

and grab him instead.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It'll be like...

No, I'm saying she's going to make a quip at him.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

And then he's gonna be able to still get grabbed.

It's like the rancor scene in Star Wars.

My blood began to boil as I let Jameson Scott wail away his swan song.

Please!

It's staring at me.

I can feel it.

Please, name your price.

I'll pay it to save me.

Oh, now.

Why would I do that, Mr.

Scott?

This is what you wanted after all.

Suddenly, the trapdoor slammed shut.

Jamie standing over it as the entire building began to shake.

The edges around the door grew bright, like molten metal before darkening like a blown-out flame.

Did it just incinerate him?

Like a furnace.

Will it hold?

I yelled to Jamie over the increasingly loud earthquake.

Is it blessed?

Some say by God himself.

I'd say that counts.

Jamie hoisted me up next to him and ran for the door as a bit of ceiling began to cave in.

The door to the church swung open of its own volition before we got there and slammed shut behind us.

The church came down in a butt of dust and splintered wood.

When all had settled, Jamie was barely conscious.

I walked him to the car and pushed him into the passenger seat.

He was out before I'd shut the door.

I took one last look at the pile of rubble before climbing into the driver's seat and staring and starting the car.

I followed the same train tracks home that got us out of Deepwood when we were kids.

I made it to the road without ever looking back.

I can tell you exactly how long Jameson Scott lived.

Four days.

By the dawn of that fourth day, he and all of his inventions abruptly disappeared from the world.

If he was right about technology, it's like

planes fell from the sky.

Billions are dead.

Oh, shit.

There were a few I was sad to see go.

Like the rise of inductive charging and eyeglass.

What?

Wait, so they just disappeared?

Hold on.

How do you remember any of this?

I don't know.

I thought the whole course was.

Please were so close.

You're right.

What am I doing?

You would have loved eyeglass, and you probably did, honestly.

Contact lenses that were actually cameras.

They put GoPro out of business.

You can never afford it, but you may have had one.

I miss those YouTube videos.

Jeremy spent a month recovering from his gunshot wound.

After he was really, this is literally like the end of movies where it's like the character freeze frames with the thumbs up, and it's like he went on to blah, blah, blah.

Jamie's recovered after you know what you are, that kind of thing.

Yeah, we spent a few weeks weighing our options.

In the end, we decided to hunt down people like Jameson Scott and the powers they will.

What?

I don't know.

Hunt down people like Jameson Scott?

What do you what are you hunting?

Rich people?

People who have demon powers?

You did it.

You You have messed up one demon hunt so much that 20% of Pennsylvania never existed.

That is how bad you are at this thing.

So now you're just hunting.

Okay.

You don't know about them.

And if we have our way, you never will.

Aha.

Due to Jamie's time with Scott, we have some good leads.

We have a lot of blood on our hands to atone for and a lifetime to do it in.

Deepwood is dead.

Only Jam and I even know where it is, so the town dies with us.

I wouldn't try to find it if I were you.

I've changed a lot of details, names of towns, names of roads.

Perhaps even when this all happened, I won't tell you, and you don't want to know anyway.

Somewhere out in a hundred-mile sea of trees and dirt lies the demon's door, still under there under a pile of rotting detridus that used to be a small church.

The door may be found again someday.

It may even be opened, but one thing is for damn sure, it sure as hell won't be because of me.

The end.

Oh, God, that is the end.

Okay, first off, just want to say the story is, the idea is there.

It's well written, but just the way that this second half,

or the last two parts, the way that they unfolded, especially in part three, like the last

40% of the story.

Honestly.

Yeah, I would say, like, even the introduction into the end.

In the beginning.

Yeah, so.

I mean, love the beginning.

Wish we wouldn't have read the part two and three.

Even part two of having some kind of connection years later and returning to this place.

I like that approach, but it just always accumulates to like, what would you have really done?

Like, what is there to really be gained?

That becomes like a big thing with a lot of like sequels and stuff with horror media is it's just the idea of like, what kind of thing do you plan on gaining besides some kind of hope that there is a resolution that can ease the pain of your past?

You know, during the break, you had a good, um,

a good thought where it's like, it kind of reminds us of it, where you really only give a fuck about the kid version of it.

And then watching the adults go back and try to make sense of this crazy thing out of something that is so crazy that it can only exist in some of this childlike wonder.

It just doesn't hold the same candle.

You're also trying to make too much rationale out of something that is so absurd.

So that's why it doesn't really land.

And I think the first one ends in such a fun way of girl who is kind of like flirting with a guy to go find something spooky stumbles across essentially a haunted house.

It's like the wonderlust of childhood.

It's like there's the unexplainable, them stumbling across something they can never hope to best.

And in there, it ends on the note of like, because of their foolishness, the creature got out, right?

And that's like a haunting.

It's a heavy moment.

It is the ultimate creepcast.

It is the biggest creepcast curse, which is you start with a really strong idea.

You get really bought in with it of just like having so fun in the universe, which this author does that very well.

Like we, I think we even talked about that during our first recording of the first part of this story: is that she does a great job by just like setting you up, really liking the characters, liking the hook of the story of what's happening, and setting that like motion forward.

And I think that it's become, it's, it's, it's an ongoing complaint we have where it's just like, it was just so, you had your hook line sinker.

And it's just something whenever it's like you really try to overexamine these simple or like kind of face value ideas that it kind of falls apart in the second half where, you know, it can't really hold up to that kind of fun mystery or that fun question that the story is presenting to you.

And sometimes I think that's just what a story should be.

It's just like, wouldn't this be crazy?

I think a big way that the second half of this story would have done well for me.

And I will say I am biased because one thing I really don't like in even media, like in a lot of horror media or media in general, is like rich bad guy.

I'm the rich bad guy who is nefarious and who wants like the Dr.

Evil parody.

That's the kind of like whole

vibe of what we're doing.

We just grew up with it.

We've just seen it so much that it's

not.

Exactly.

The red guy with all the money was the bad one.

What?

Right.

No.

Well, I like the idea that you go back through the story, right?

Or the way the woman goes back.

Caitlin goes back to

try to recollect it, try to, once again, get some kind of resolution to this pain she's feeling and this guilt she has of letting this thing out.

I almost wish that it was something where there was maybe only a handful of characters or it was just her in the woods trying to find something.

And then whenever she does find this thing, thing it does it doesn't overexplain we don't get all these kind of crazy you know

she does it's it's a human experience of like some things humans you just can't wrap your head around there's a lot of it that's a lot of big fun ideas is something is so old and so mysterious that you can't wrap your head around it but she had to find some kind of way to make peace with herself um in the woods somehow as well like you i think you could have a similar ending like i don't know maybe she still finds jamie somehow or something but i wish it was just a bit more condensed and a bit more to where

if you do want the villain rich guy who owns it route, then I think the suggestion you made is really good.

Make Jamie become corrupted.

And he feels like what he's doing is for the greater good because you have two people who had the same experience years ago, and then two different ways they branched out.

One trying to long for their friend and the other trying to keep it at bay through any means necessary, right?

Well, it's kind of interesting.

You have Katie who's completely plagued by it, and then you have a Jamie who has done nothing but profited from it.

And those are two different angles that I think could breed a lot of fun conflict with when they come back together and they interact again.

Yeah.

You know, and it would have been cartoony, and it is cartoony, and I don't think there's anything wrong with the stories going to the cartoony room.

Yeah, definitely.

I'm sure that our viewers loved it.

You know, I will say, memorable episode.

I really like just the setup.

Like, if anything, if anything comes from this, I really love just how this author sets up characters, younger characters with that kind of innate young optimism and kind of like wonder to go out and search for this thing.

And I love that she uses children in a great way where it's like the ignorant

seekers that will do dangerous things because they don't really understand how creepy and odd it is.

Baraska is one of my favorite stories I've ever read about like that whole thing about the young kids like Wonderlust because it's just like oh there's the skinned men up in the mountains and it like captured the childhood like um magic so well and then it preyed upon that you know from now we can see it too she's done these kind of these fun bait and switch kind of uh like reveals uh in her stories where in the barasca the masterful reveal that like oh wait all the kids are like related to each other and the guys that we're dating they're technically siblings or whatever and and the skinned men you know like that skin man

exactly being a red herring as well She likes her red herrings because Jameson was also a red herring.

But the Jameson thing, once again, I still personally, I was just kind of like, it left kind of a bitter taste in my mouth of, I enjoy it not being Jameson, but I don't know.

I don't like the way that it went about it.

Just with the name being so similar, it's just kind of like, oh, yep, I guess I am stupid for thinking that was supposed to be him, you know?

Yeah, the name.

All in all, an enjoyable read, albeit very emotional at the end.

I think that I'm glad that it went.

If anything, here's another thing, too.

I'm glad that if it went that direction, I'm glad she went full force for it.

Like, I'm glad that it wasn't just like mediocre

and making yeah.

I mean, like,

go for it, have fun with it.

And I think that it translated well with even our reading, even if it was this exhausting kind of Sisyphus

like pushing the boulder up the hill.

It was at least a fun push.

I had AirPods and listen to ACDC while I was doing it.

All right, everybody.

We will talk.

We'll see you in the next one.

Thank you so much for listening.

Stay creeped out there, my friends.

Bye-bye.

Which one of us said that if we hit number one, we would kill ourselves on air?

I've already stopped recording.

Okay.