Episode 77: Brothers in Arms

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You check your feed and your account.

You check the score and the restaurant reviews.

You check your hair and reflective surfaces and the world around you for recession indicators.

So you check all that, but you don't check to see what your ride options are.

In this economy, next time, check Lyft.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratches from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question: play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly, must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

Old Gods of Appalachia is a horror anthology podcast and therefore may contain material not suitable for all audiences.

So listener discretion is advised.

When the walls close in

and the light gets swallowed

and there ain't no place that feels like home

The ones you love

turn into strangers

And you cast your eyes to the winding road

Keep your foot on the gas, your eyes straightforward, clear your heart and mind.

Best to leave them ghosts behind.

When the hearth blows cold, home is nowhere, then you might as well

when darkness calls a run

like hell.

Barrow, Pennsylvania,

1944.

It was colder than the heart of the company's founder in the halls of the Home Office of Barrow Mineral Resources, or Barrow House, as it was known to its employees.

Cold

was how Conrad Barrow liked it.

No longer tethered to petty mortal concerns like hunger, thirst, or the ambient temperature of one's home and workplace, Conrad enjoyed seeing the discomfort it brought the mortal underlings who toiled in the labyrinth of typing pools and boardrooms that snaked the lower floors of Barrow House.

He privately delighted in the layers the little monkeys would pile pile on in the winter months, taking note of who was doubling up on sweaters and gloves as he walked past their desks every morning on the way to his office.

Ever so often, he would draft a tersely worded memo reminding everyone of the company dress code and that outerwear was not meant to be worn indoors, that it disrupted the image of professionality they strove to project as a company.

Anyone found in violation of the company dress code would answer to him

directly.

By lunch, they would all be shivering in their shirt sleeves and trying to work out sneaky little ways to keep warm,

which he would inevitably discover and forbid.

If the home office of barrel mineral resources was a labyrinth, Then Conrad was the Minotaur at its center.

He was top-fisted, close-minded, and petty.

No perceived slight or minuscule violation of the most trivial detail of company policy escaped him thanks to the many watchful eyes he had embedded in every department.

When Conrad's father had bound the family to the darkness that sang under the mountain decades ago, Conrad, the eldest of his two sons, had been designated his heir.

He was promised the time would come when they would craft him a a special casket just like his father's.

Then he would be lowered into the underneath alongside E.P.

to commune with those who sleep beneath and eventually ascend to godhood when those ancient and hungry beings rose to claim what was rightfully theirs.

This had yet to happen.

In fact, Conrad felt less like the monster in the center of the labyrinth than more like a paper-pushing middle manager.

His father had told him, in the brutal psychic language he used to communicate, that there was no one he trusted to keep the company in the black more than Conrad.

He had made him nigh immortal, given him powers that few men could even comprehend,

and then forbade him to use them unless absolutely necessary.

He was needed behind a desk, keeping the drones working hard in the hive so that their masters below would have all the sweet, dark honey they needed.

Even now,

as the winter solstice approached and his father retreated from this plane of existence to fully commune with those who sleep beneath, severing himself from his earthly empire and the hearts and minds of his children, it was Conrad who was left in charge.

Good old, reliable, pathologically responsible Conrad,

who grew angrier and more bitter with each passing year.

Some days, he just wanted to walk away, set the whole place to the torch, and just

run.

But he couldn't do that.

Not only would his own honor never allow such a betrayal of blood and promises, but he quite literally couldn't run.

His father's reach was immeasurable.

There was nowhere on the face of this misbegotten world that his family wouldn't find him.

And Conrad had worked hard to be patient, to be a good and obedient son.

After all, when the day of sacrifice came and his father was lowered into the depths below Bear House, had he not been the one to slit his younger brother's throat and cast his bleeding body into the crevasse to seal the pact?

Had not he himself designed the system of ropes and pulleys and the specially worked chains that held his father's coffin in place?

Had he not tolerated

her

existence for decades

after E.P.

Barrow's ascension to well, whatever he was now,

Conrad and his late brother Benuel, who had risen from the same void as a fully corporeal ghost three days later, had done their utmost to run the the company according to their father's wishes.

Conrad kept the I's dotted and the T's crossed on the business side of things.

While Benuel

operated in the field, terrorizing and manipulating the workforce from the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania to the bitter bituminous coal fields of central Appalachia, Benuel being both dead and dedicated as an offering to what slept beneath the mountains was not exactly what you'd call

right.

Conrad had been changed, and his heart beat with the black icker of those his family served, true enough, but Benuel

had been well and truly unhinged by his journey into the darkness.

When a mine went on strike, for example, Conrad would assign staff to handle the situation, flesh and blood enforcers to twist a few arms and make a few key figures disappear.

If that didn't do the trick, he'd send a couple of hollow men to the area in question, which was usually more than sufficient to see the matter closed.

On the other hand,

if Benuel were tasked with such an assignment, he'd escalate the entire operation as violently as possible.

Entire mountainsides would collapse in conflagrations of gas and fire and burning coal, leaving dozens or even hundreds of men burned and buried alive under the suffocating weight of ancient stone.

Folks who had the ill luck to encounter the entity that the men in the coalfields called Old Man Barra's dog

were left changed by the experience and never for the better.

The youngest Barra's sibling was not interested in hiding his horrific demise or supernatural resurrection.

In fact, he reveled in flaunting the changes his transformation had brought.

His feet often floated a good three or four inches off the ground, his whole body bathed in a colorless light that made him visible in the deepest and darkest of minds.

Those who saw this glowing vision rise from the depths or step out of a solid stone wall often took leave of their senses.

What Conrad managed with cold bureaucratic cruelty, Benuel wrought in horrific, terrifying violence.

These were the sons of E.P.

Barrow.

And as the old saying goes, poisoned apples rarely fall far from the tree.

Once Benuel's way of handling things finally impacted the company's bottom line one too many times, rather than destroy him, E.P.

had ventured even deeper into the inner dark to father a new child with the hope of balancing the scales.

And balance them she did.

Polly Barrow was special.

She was cunning and beautiful, charming and remorseless.

She moved through the mortal world, making deals and enforcing their father's will with grace, poise, and deadly efficiency.

She filled her father's heart with pride, and both Conrad and Benuel's with raging jealousy.

Oh

how they hated her.

Their sister was perhaps the only thing that could unite the brothers Barrow in common purpose.

They had conspired for years to expose her as imperfect, as flawed, as unworthy of their father's favor.

And thus far, their efforts had been a categorical failure.

She had fallen short of their father's expectation a time or two through her own hubris, but being a creature birthed from the cradle of the inner dark, their father saw her as a tool to be reshaped, honed, and transformed, emerging even better than before.

He saw his boys as two frustrating lumps of meat and borrowed power that were ultimately of limited utility.

To Conrad, Polly's single failure represented one thing, an opportunity.

If she could stumble, he reasoned, then she could be made to stumble.

They had simply yet to construct a noose with sufficient rope to allow her to hang herself.

She had been handcrafted as a perfect emissary and weapon for their father's cause, and she was quick of mind and quicker of wit.

She had sidestepped every snare the brothers had laid before her and only truly fallen short when she tried too hard to win their maker's approval.

Oh, her love for her dear old daddy was her Achilles' heel.

After pondering and persevering on this point to the brink of near madness, Conrad reached out into the void, summoning his little brother to go over his latest plan to bring about the downfall of their despised sister.

Oh,

blood-bound sibling of mine, hear me

and hear me well.

I stand here in our father's house, heart of empire, font of power,

well of the black breath, and I call upon you, Benuel, Herod, Barrow.

Banished from this world by the same hand that summons you now.

As I cast you forth from this place, I now call you home.

Come to me, little brother.

We have much to discuss.

Nothing happened for a long moment, and Conrad shook his head in frustration.

Do not play with me, boy.

You will come when called.

Across the massive slab of oak that served as both Conrad Barrow's workplace and altar, a dull blue-gray light flickered, then flashed like summer lightning as Benuel Barrow was torn from wherever he had been in this world or the next and thrown unceremoniously onto the floor of his older brother's office.

He landed gracelessly on all fours, steam rising from his body in the frigid air of the chamber.

At first glance,

The dead man wasn't much to behold.

Benuel Barrow was a middle in height and middle in girth, with a beard that hung at a middle in length.

Which was to say, it did not cover his most distinguishing feature,

his torn and ever-bleeding throat.

It was a wound that would never heal, forever pulsing with ghostly blood that nevertheless sometimes left stains in its wake.

All you have to do

is say my name, brother.

There is no reason to invoke the old words or the tether that binds me to this place.

I will come if you ask nicely

when you have something to say that is worth my time.

Oh,

but I like the assurance that you will be on time

and in your proper place, dog.

Our father handed me your leash when he left me in charge and- Call me a dog again, office boy and i'll show you the things daddy's partners left me in charge of the lights in the room flickered and benuel's maniacal grin twisted his features in an instant an ancient stained hunting knife appeared in his right hand dark spectral fluid oozed from his gaping throat dripping onto the marble floor beneath his feet

comrade farrow tensed pondering whether he could draw upon his own dark gifts before his brother had time to strike.

The moment stretched for what seemed an eternity before Conrad shook his head and released his anger, sinking into his chair.

Enough!

We don't have time for this.

I knew you were chicken shit.

Do you want to know why I called you or not?

Benuel narrowed his eyes, regarding his older brother cagely.

Usually, old Connie was good for a little bit of a tussle before they got down to brass hacks.

This must be serious.

Benuel slumped into the chair opposite his brother, his backside hovering an inch from its fine upholstery.

I'm listening.

Conrad sifted through the stacks of paper on his desk: invoices, memoranda, and other official correspondence.

His hands moved with unnerving speed and precision as he examined and discarded documents.

One of our men in Tourniquet, West Virginia, brought me some very interesting information last night.

You'll want to read it yourself.

Tourniquet?

We still have men out there?

Yes.

Certain volatile assets in the area still warrant observation.

What assets are left to observe all the way out in Tourniquet?

There ain't even a proper saloon for a fella to dip his willy or get a drink anymore.

That place has been as dead as I am for almost 20 years now.

What could be interesting in that old shithole?

Charming as ever, brother.

What if I told you that in that old shithole, as you call it, there lay a solution?

to a certain problem you and I have been trying to solve for far too long.

Which problem would that be?

The one who spends company funds on designer dresses and Italian leather shoes, and yet can seem to do no wrong in our father's eyes.

Ah!

Here it is.

Read this, and I believe you will see the same opportunity I do.

Oh,

that problem.

Hmm.

Yes.

But how do we get her out there?

Moreover, how do we convince her to go inside?

She won't just do it because we tell her to.

She might be a stuck-up, half-haint, mule-headed stepchild who ain't even a proper barrow.

But she's no fool, Conrad.

What could be in that old ruin that she'd even want?

Oh,

I'm certain she wouldn't follow any order issued by one of us.

For love, death, or money, but I think she would go anywhere her daddy asked her.

Dear old daddy is as unreachable as can be when it's near the solstice.

We all know that's when the old man goes into the deepest part of the underneath to bask in the presence of our allies.

I haven't felt him in my mind for at least a week.

Nor have I.

But I imagine if our father left orders for us to follow while he is away, we would all be duty bound to see them done.

Yes?

Indeed we would, Big Brother.

Indeed we would.

But how do we persuade her it's actually from him?

She's usually pretty good at sniffing out when we're lying to her.

According to her schedule, she should be on her way back to Pittsburgh after visiting assets near Slippery Rock.

There was a small situation involving rumors of a strike amongst the rabble.

I assume she killed them all, though I haven't read the report yet.

Hmm.

Perhaps it would be best if we sent her a telegram rather than calling her in.

She's gonna be mad as hell about being sent right back out in the field.

I think if the assignment feels

personal enough, something only father would ask for,

she would have little choice.

The sort of task that is its own reward.

You know how he spoils her like that.

Oh.

Oh,

I think I know just the thing.

We just have to get her through the front door.

Yes?

Think about it, little brother.

What greets every visitor to that loathsome place?

Hmm?

Now, let us craft a missive that will have Miss Priss so excited that she'll run right along into her unfortunate and horrible demise.

Conrad rubbed his hands together, looking eagerly about his office.

Dolores.

Oh, where is that woman?

Dolores, I need you to take a letter.

There was a creaking of an old cellar door, and cold air that reeked of mildew and long dead things blew through the room as a specter of a woman in a neat tweed skirt and ivory blouse rose from the floor.

Her skeletal fingers perched on the keys of a stenotype machine.

Conrad's lips twisted into a grim little smile of welcome at her arrival.

Benuel winked at her.

Hey, good looking.

If Conrad didn't know better, he would have sworn the eldritch old crone blushed.

Afternoon, Mr.

Benny.

Whenever you're ready, Mr.

Barrow.

Conrad shot Benuel a somewhat scandalized arch of one brow, to which Benuel responded with a playful shrug.

A man likes what he likes.

Ah,

yes.

Thank you, Dolores.

Dearest sister, we have been alerted by our agents in what was once the town of Tourniquet that the remaining structures there have all been reclaimed by the surrounding fauna and the territory should be written off.

As there was little value in coal or other resources in the area, this would not usually be a cause for concern as nothing of great value would be lost.

However, for the moment, Babylon still stands.

The presence contained within those walls is degrading and has become unpredictable and unstable.

When Babylon inevitably falls, it will destroy everything within it.

While the property is of no great material value, it has come to our attention that the sole remaining portrait of our father hangs in the entrance hall.

This painting is the last recorded image of his physical form before he transcended this world to serve our allies below.

As you know, our father ordered all such likenesses destroyed when he abandoned his corporeal body.

But it appears this portrait was overlooked.

Given that your birth occurred after Father's ascension, we know you have never seen a true rendering of his face.

We also thought you best suited for this errand as you are capable, durable, and cunning enough to deal with whatever may be left within Babylon and the most likely of the three of us to return with our Father's portrait in one piece.

Bring the portrait to Barrowhouse by the solstice, so that we might all gaze upon our father's loving visage and tremble together.

Your loving brother, Conrad.

There are days I'm almost glad Daddy left you in charge, Conrad.

And this might be one of them.

Well, hey there, family.

Welcome to the second arc of season five of Old Gods of Appalachia Run Like Hell.

We're hopping through the timeline once again, taking you back to one of the scariest places in our Appalachia, Barrow House.

Even those bound to their family and their home place by the darkest of deeds and the deepest of magics will have the urge to cut and run, and the Barrow siblings are no different.

Now we're super excited to bring you this arc which is based on a story shared at our holiday live show in Asheville, North Carolina back in 2023, now remixed and expanded for season five.

If you'd like to hear this and all our regular season episodes, add free in a day early, then there's no better time than now than to make your move to the holler, where for just a few dollars more, you can enjoy hours of exclusive programming such as Build Mama a Coffin, Black Mouth Dog, Door Under the Floor, and Familiar and Beloved, as well as other fun benefits dependent on how much you want to tithe.

Join us at old godsofappalachia.com/slash the holler today.

Now this is your if the other two Barrow siblings are in this episode, you know who has to show up next.

Reminder that Old Gods of Appalachia is a production of Deep Nerd Media and is distributed by Rusty Quill.

Our theme song is by Brother Land and Blood, and our outro music is by Those Poor Bastards.

Today's story was written by Steve Schell and Cam Collins, making his main feed debut as the voice of Conrad Barrow is Cecil Baldwin, and the voice of Benuel Barrow is Brandon Bentley.

We'll talk to you soon, family.

Talk to you real soon.

Go

I.

The hunt, it is over.

The Lord, he won't answer.

The walls must run with blood.

Oh, this house is a cancer.

And in this abyss, I've lost all control.

Is this path to glory?

It's so hard to tell

through God's dark heaven.

Go I,

go I

through God's dark heaven go I

through

God's dark heaven go I

through God's dark heaven

go

I

through

God's dark heaven

You check your feed and your account.

You check the score and the restaurant reviews.

You check your hair and reflective surfaces and the world around you for recession indicators.

So you check all that, but you don't check to see what your ride options are.

In this economy, next time, check lift.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly.

Must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

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