Lot 062 : If You Go Down, You Forget…- chapter 2 -

Today's episode is sponsored by I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Get it now on digital.

When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences.

A year later, their past comes back to haunt them, and they're forced to confront a horrifying truth.

Someone knows what they did last summer, and is hell-bent on revenge.

As one by one, the friends are stalked by a killer.

They discover this happened before, so they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport massacre of 1997 for help.

Starring Madeline Klein, Chase Sue Wonders, Jonah Hauer King, with Freddie Prince Jr., and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

I know what you did last summer is a perfect summer slasher, says Jordan Cruciolo of NPR.

Your summer is not over yet.

Don't miss a killer movie night at home.

W W equals Q.

Ah, yes, another journey begins.

You know, I just love when you drop by.

Today it appears as though the path begins where another one has ended.

Here in your hands is a sheaf of paper, yellowed with age, covered with arcane symbols and scribbles in ancient languages.

They are torn from the pages of the story of two friends of mine, Jack and Emma.

This

is

If You Go Down, You Forget

Chapter 2.

Before we begin, I want to point out some of the customers whose names have been etched in brass on this beautiful plaque I had made above the front desk.

These are some of the members of the inner circle of the antiquarium.

We go by the Obsidian Covenant.

Recent initiates include The Perceptor, Teeth, Sylvia Petzel, Shane Carraway, Maggie B,

Jigglepuff, Tori E.

Selznick, Jacqueline Graham, Michael Meyer,

and Alex Aventura.

We are ever appreciative of your devotion to the Order.

Go to theObsidiancovenant.com to receive the sacrament.

Now,

where were we?

Oh, yes,

welcome to the Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings

and Odd Goings On.

If you go down, you forget.

Chapter 2

There's a trapdoor.

No one knows what's below.

Sophie, 14 years old, hired me to help find her sister Chloe, 17, who disappeared down this trapdoor 10 days ago while urban exploring.

Not that I'm any kind of hero.

No.

I'm a former con artist turned paranormal investigator with a spine like wet tissue.

Following foul odors, scuttling around in the dark, and running at the first woof of danger are all part of my skill set as a clever coward.

Also the skill set of a cockroach.

Whatever.

Point is, I was made to go scuttling in creepy corners.

But Sophie wasn't.

I lost her when she followed me down.

Now,

I'm on the top step, staring into the blackness, as if I could see whatever lies below.

And all the hairs on my neck stand on end as I listen to her sobs.

But I keep failing to rescue her.

Because if you go down,

you forget.

The moment you cross the threshold coming back up those creaky stairs, everything you saw, everything you experienced below is just

fucking gone.

Cameras and phones don't work down there.

I've gone down a dozen times, and each time I've come rushing back up with my heart hammering and throat raw with screams, and no idea what happened below.

My only clues to what's down there are the things I brought out with me.

One,

yellowing pages with ancient writing in Latin and Aramaic.

Two, a message written in Sharpie on my arm.

Seven words.

Three,

a handwritten note riddled with misspellings.

I'm coming, Sophie!

I cut my hands and shout.

This time, I promise I'm getting you out!

So,

how do I stop myself from yo-yoing back up again?

Well, from my three measly clues, I've devised a plan.

One that guarantees one thing with absolute certainty.

Whatever happens,

this

will be my final trip.

And this time,

I won't forget.

Wreathed in the stench of death,

I plunge down into the blackness.

So, the plan.

It all starts with my first clue.

The yellowed pages.

You see, they're covered in arcane symbols and scribbles in ancient languages that I can't read because my only real degree is in BS.

What's that?

I'm a fraud?

Hey, show me a paranormal investigator who isn't.

So anyway, a few hours ago, I was sitting in a greasy Milwaukee diner, waiting for my ex.

The only person I could think of who could translate these pages on short notice.

When she entered the diner, her eyes fell on the gold locket around my neck.

I spread my arms and said, Hey, babe, don't call me babe.

Sorry, babe, that wasn't a...

Sorry.

It's just I still think of you in my head.

I don't care.

Shut up.

Just don't call me babe.

Yes, ma'am.

Suddenly, I wished I'd met her at the trapdoor instead, because then I could at least throw myself down it.

A little background on the two of us.

She gave me the locket I'm wearing on her anniversary.

Called me her

grifter with a heart of gold.

The locket is a heart shape, inscribed with smaller hearts, with a picture inside of her making a heart.

And it's absolutely not something a straight dude dude can wear.

Not just because it's girly.

I sometimes have been known to rock a ponytail or wear salmon or pose provocatively in the nude, paint me like one of your French girls.

But I am lactose intolerant.

And this heart of gold is way too much cheese.

Like any cheese you're going to be fucking pizza.

I probably shouldn't have told her that, though.

Anyway, I never wore it.

But then came that post-breakup life of booze and bitterness and bachelor salad.

You know, when you're standing at the sink chomping on a lettuce head, taking sways from the dressing bottle, suddenly it hits different.

The fact someone once thought enough of you to gift you this.

Why'd you call it cheesy fucking asshole?

I'm only helping you for the sisters.

Emma said, still glaring at the locket like she was imagining ripping it off my throat.

No take back, Cizema.

You're right that the Latin and Aramaic explains how the door was sealed.

The symbols etched into the floor around the trapdoor create a warding that makes you forget what's below.

I can break the warding so you'll stop forgetting, but all the research says I shouldn't.

That to break it is to unleash a terrible evil.

So you'd better have a damn good plan, Jack.

My pulse ratchets up now as I descend.

The blood in my ears drowning out the creak of each rickety wooden step.

My veins are spiked with adrenaline on this final trip down.

But also,

curiosity.

Because why have I failed over a dozen times?

What keeps setting me up screaming?

What the fuck is down there?

My clues aren't enough.

The desire to know is so potent, it's a craving.

An intoxicating urge.

Like I'm an addict and seeing what's down there is how I get my fix.

Even if the sisters weren't missing, I'd probably be on these stairs creeping down just to know.

By the time I hit bottom, I'm swimming in an inky darkness.

I hold my sleeve over my nose against the stench of decay, noting the crumbling stone, the dusty shelving under my flashlight.

Old cans sit on the nearby shelf.

Carnation evaporated milk.

Van Camp's pork and beans.

Campbell's soup.

It's mm good.

Though probably not anymore.

This stuff must have been canned decades before I was born.

I step across the room and grab a few of the cans, piling them in my arms and quickly stacking them on the stairs.

And it's as I'm stacking the last one that a fly crosses my light and whizzes past my ear.

Is it just me?

Or has the buzzing gotten

louder?

Dread knots my gut.

I realize I'm holding my breath when I suck in the next gulp of air.

I aim my light in the direction of the flies and freeze.

There's something there.

Underneath the staircase.

Oh

God.

My beam traces discolored fingers, greenish-gray and blotchy, up a delicate wrist.

I recognize the charm bracelet on that wrist because I saw an identical bracelet on Sophie's arm this morning.

The two sisters matching.

And my chest sinks.

The arm is bent at a strange angle.

The body crumpled like a broken puppet.

My beam finds the face, the eyes eaten away by flies.

It's Chloe.

The second clue I used to plan my final descent was the ink on my arm.

A scrawling Sharpie marker in my own sloppy handwriting.

Victim alive.

Must perform inscribed ritual.

Escape.

Clear enough.

Follow the inscription on the yellowed pages and break the warding.

But why such bad sentencing?

Why so dramatically cryptic?

Why not just tell myself what's actually fucking down there?

The answer, of course, is that I did tell myself.

Because I wrote those seven specific words in the specific order.

And if you put the capitals together.

Yeah, yeah, you get V, victim, A, alive, M, must, P, perform, etc.

And it spells out V-A-M-P-I-R-E.

Obviously, some sort of vampiric entity made you write the Sharpie message, knowing you'd forget when you came back up, trying to trick you into breaking the seal.

I read over your third clue, too.

Do not go back down.

Sophie will be safe if you use the notes to break the warding.

Do not come down again because your lilate

draws it to her.

Sophie is hiding blind in the dark from the thing that took her sister.

She was summoned here by the wards, which keep it in this world, but if you barakta rods, then that will kill its and set Sophie free.

When it is gone, Sophie may safely come upstairs.

Wow, man, that's a lot of mistakes.

I wonder if it's intended.

Uh-huh.

The question is, who's conning who, Jack?

We know next to nothing about whatever's below, except the fact it's horrible enough someone went to a lot of trouble to seal the trapdoor.

Breaking those wards could be the biggest mistake of your life.

life.

Nah.

Maybe the last mistake.

Which is also the biggest if it kills you, idiot.

Agree to disagree, babe.

I caught her glare.

I mean, Emma.

Breaking the wards isn't even close to the biggest mistake of my life.

I've got a list a mile long.

There was that time I raised donations for a cat rescue when I was actually cat fishing.

Or all the GoFundMes I ran that just funded me, or any number of misdeeds that mean, karmically, I'll reincarnate as a cockroach.

For the past year, I've been trying to do good deeds to make up for all my mistakes and get the demon that's chasing me off my ass.

So if using my skills as a scammer can save Sophie and dig me out of the red in this karmic performance review, hey, I'll take it.

Alright, hear me out.

This plan is gonna work.

I just need to go back down one last step.

Going back down is suicide.

You know what will happen.

On my last trip down, I came up holding a knife to my throat.

I'd nicked the skin, blood dribbling as I stared into one of the cameras I'd set up to document everything, and repeated a warning.

Maybe

you shouldn't fucking go back down.

Oh, I don't know, Jack.

I get the feeling Emma might have a point.

But you know how it goes.

This is the antiquarium, is it not?

Allow me a quick moment, if you could.

I have to run run out to sign for a delivery.

Shouldn't take long at all.

Why don't you make yourself at home?

And I'll be right back.

The Toxic Avenger is out now.

Experience the long-awaited, totally unrated monster mayhem exclusively in theaters.

Get tickets now at tickets.toxicavenger.com.

Today's episode is sponsored by I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Get it now on digital.

When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences.

A year later, their past comes back to haunt them, and they're forced to confront a horrifying truth.

Someone knows what they did last summer and is hell-bent on revenge.

As As one by one, the friends are stalked by a killer.

They discover this happened before, so they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport massacre of 1997 for help.

Starring Madeline Klein, Chase Sue Wonders, Jonah Howard King, with Freddie Prince Jr., and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

I know what you did last summer is a perfect summer slasher, says Jordan Cruciolo of NPR.

Your summer is not over yet.

Don't miss a killer movie night at home

Why, hello there.

You've reached the antiquarium.

If you wish to leave a message, please do so with the town and have a great day

Trevor!

Hey, how's my favorite head of procurement doing?

Anyways, hey, found something that I think your uh your creepy ass boss might like.

Uh don't tell him I said that though.

Got my hands on

an Omi mask.

You know one of those like,

what is it, like a demon, a Japanese demon, right?

Yeah.

Here's the cool thing though.

Put it on.

You can read people's minds, right?

Pretty cool thing, huh?

Eh, but pretty usual.

You know, there's a couple drawbacks.

You can't turn it off.

Yeah,

you pretty much constantly get to hear everybody's thoughts around you non-stop.

As well as it's permanently affixed to your face.

Previous owner, well, let's say he's a little

attached to

the mask.

Yeah,

it still smells pretty right.

So if you want it, you're probably going to want to get some bleach and some disinfectant to

take care of that.

Anyways, you got my number.

Go ahead and hit me up

if you think you might be interested.

Take care.

End of messages.

Let's catch up with Jack and Emma and see what kind of trouble they manage to dig up next.

Shall we?

Maybe

you shouldn't fucking go back down.

Flies buzz in and out of Chloe's sockets, and coffee from the diner searches up.

I heave my guts in the corner, keep heaving till I'm hollow, slam my fist on the crumbling mortar.

Fuck.

Oh, I knew.

I knew this morning from the very moment I pried open the trapdoor.

It was like cracking the lid of a Tupperware of rotting meat marinated in sewage.

There could be only one fate for the sister missing for 10 days below with no water.

But finding the source of the smell nonetheless rings my insides like a rag.

How many times did I run up and down those stairs with her corpse right below my feet?

Sophie, calling from somewhere further in, still alive.

Aiming my puny light into the blackness, I plunge down the hallway into a large bare room.

My beam is a small yellow circle traveling across a canvas of solid solid black, slowly revealing cracked floor,

crumbling walls,

a few items of slowly decaying furniture, an old trunk, an ottoman, a very old chair.

My light finds a door.

Darting over, I lean back against it, wrap my knuckles on the wood.

Sophie!

Jack!

Jack!

I knew you'd come back!

I knew you'd come back!

I knew you'd come back!

I knew you'd come back!

Are you safe in there?

I.

I think so.

It hasn't come in.

Chloe was in here.

She.

She used the corner for the bathroom.

But she's not here now.

Last week, when I called to her and the trapdoor was still closed.

Do you think that's when she left this room?

She.

She.

Is it my fault she went out there?

No.

I know it's not your fault.

But now, I'm envisioning Chloe's last moments.

Days hiding from whatever is down here in the dark.

No food or water.

And then hearing her sister's voice.

Fleeing the safety of this closet, scrambling for the stairs in the pitch blackness, only to find the trapdoor shut.

Jack!

I'm yanked out of my imagining by the tingling along my name and a shuffling sound.

The sensation of being watched.

Every hair stands on end.

Jack!

I strain my ears.

It's dark here.

Out there with you.

Thank you, Sophie.

I'm aware.

My light flicks around like my wrist is having a seizure.

My flesh crawls with the spider skitter of terror.

What the fuck is making that sound?

Like hands rubbing.

Like bare feet sliding on stone.

Like lips smacking.

I try to remind myself that the source of that sound is what I'm searching for.

My light catches on a figure.

In the split second in which my beam passes over it, the figure is hauntingly tall, stooped, naked, like the statue of a withered old man with freakishly long nails, frozen in an awkward slouch, mid-step towards me.

It smells like a corpse freshly dug out of a grave, and its eyes are squeezed tightly shut,

as if after so many decades in the dark, it cannot bear even my weak light.

I see all this in the fraction of an instant that my beam flashes over it.

Oh, Jesus Christ, fuck me.

I flicked the light back to that same spot.

Only that spot is now empty.

I'm on the ground before I even register the impact, and something knocks my flashlight away, spinning it out of my grip to crack against the wall, plunging the basement into blackness.

Your plan is dangerous.

This is just like when we broke up.

You, caught in paranormal bullshit and insisting on playing the hero.

Classic Jack.

Oh, I have to do this alone, Emma, in the most reckless and insanely stupid way possible.

Fucking macho bullcrap.

It's not macho bullcrap.

Fuck.

Then why not let me come down with you?

Because I'm a coward, Emma.

Okay, fuck.

Because last time you and I were facing the paranormal, remember what the fuck happened?

Because I remember, and I was not fucking heroic.

She flinched.

I clenched my jaw and dialed myself down.

I'm like a cockroach.

All right?

Very fast, hard to kill, at my best in the gutter, crawling through the fucking dark.

So just let me do the one thing I always do, which is be selfish and run.

And there it is, folks.

Cowardly?

Let's call that wisdom.

Lion or jackal, baby.

Always a jackal.

Until now, I've been spinning my cowardice into an asset.

It's what I do as a con man.

I spin stuff.

I lie.

Like the whole time, I'm not hating myself for the truth that I betrayed her.

This brilliant, beautiful girl.

I sold her out when the demon that marked me came for me.

And I told it to take Emma instead of me.

Take her, I said.

That's not just failing to save the princess.

That's throwing her into the maw of the fucking dragon so I wouldn't get eaten.

That's why we broke up.

So ever since I lost Sophie below, I've been wondering

what

really happened down there.

Did I try to save the kid?

Abandon her?

Ditch her so I could preserve my own precious skin?

I don't fucking know.

And so, I've been throwing myself down into the dark over and over and over.

In the blackness, I can't see the face hovering above mine, but I can taste its breath.

Like a gust out of a catacomb.

Um, Jack, why are you imagining making out with it?

I blame tropes for priming my brain and also because any closer and will lock lips.

And now, I can't turn off the mental image of sucking face with the fucking thing.

My nightmare.

This is my nightmare.

Meanwhile, my mouth is motoring.

I'm gonna give you what I promised.

You'll be free.

You can feast on everyone, the whole world.

Wait, what now?

I should probably rain in my mouth, but it keeps running.

I don't care who you eat.

Just don't hurt me, please.

We had a deal.

Probably, I can't remember, but just promise you'll spare my friends and I'll let you out.

Promise to spare us, and she'll break the wards.

That's what you want, right?

Withered limbs might as well be iron girders pinning me to the floor, and I can only imagine how powerful it must have been when it was first sealed here.

Before all those decades starving.

A waft of cold, rotten breath, ASMRing in my ear.

Its speech ends in an inhalation.

It shudders and takes takes a long sniff of my neck.

And its tongue snakes out across the blood at my throat.

Oh, God.

Please don't let this interview with the vampire go how I think it's gonna go.

It picks me again.

And then it releases me.

I quickly scramble backwards.

In the distance, a flicker of light from the top of the stairs.

And Emma shouts, Jack?

Everything all right?

Break the wards!

Are you sure?

Oh my fucking god, yes!

I'm fucking sure!

Why is she hesitating?

Dracula here is thirsty and I'm the only nearby drink.

Hurry up before he changes his mind about having a Jack and Coke minus the Coke.

The light dims and then the atmosphere shifts.

The tingling along my skin lightens.

It's like there was a symphony of cicadas and crickets, but the cicadas all went silent,

leaving only the crickets chirping their tingling tune on my flesh.

And then

my phone is receiving messages, which means the warding is broken.

The chills skittering along my body now are from the entity.

And with that prickling of my flesh, a deep dread curdles my gut.

The low chuckle sends the hairs on my neck on end, and I whirl.

The voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere.

The brush of a fingernail on my arm, the torn sleeve of my leather jacket exposes a tattoo on that arm.

An inked image of a lady in red.

The tattoo showed up one year after I made a wager with a demon.

And even though I won, her ink has a claim on my life.

Like a cattle rancher's brand.

She'll kill me soon.

Will feed on my screams when she makes a meal of me.

But until then, if any other entity poaches me, they risk bringing down the wrath of my rightful owner.

That's what it means to be marked.

Pros and cons, am I right?

But even as I feel myself ease, the nails click away from my ink to my locket.

And it whispers,

Mine.

It's gone.

Between one heartbeat and the next.

Emma.

It's going for Emma.

God, you're so...

So.

Ever since walking into the diner, Emma's been so fucking angry.

It threw me, honestly.

Even when we broke up, even after my unforgivable betrayal, she'd never been so hostile.

Why?

Is it always fucking about you?

Have you ever even once stopped to ask yourself how it felt for me, not knowing if you're dead or alive?

And if you didn't need my help with the wards, you would have gone down there with your dumb, reckless plan, could have died down there with the sisters, and I'd never even know.

Can you even imagine how pissed you'd be?

How fucking hurt if it were me, Jack?

If I went and died somewhere and you didn't even know until someone found my decomposing body?

You're not a coward, but you are a fucking asshole.

She abruptly stalked away from the table, her back to me, shoulders shaking.

And finally,

it hit me that she wasn't angry, but hurt.

Deeply hurt.

Because of all these weeks I dropped out of contact.

That she didn't want me going down because she was scared of losing me.

This is probably a duh moment for anyone listening, but honestly, I'd assumed she'd moved on.

Her Instagram, her Snapchat, and social media.

She looked happy, out with friends, living her life the way she's supposed to.

I didn't want her knowing where and when I'd die.

I can't outrun the claim on me forever.

I thought by removing myself, completely cutting myself out of her life,

I was setting her free.

I reached for her.

I thought

you'd forget me.

She clung to me tightly, and I inhaled the scent of her skin as all those old feelings ignited.

Emma's fingers dug into me like she couldn't decide between wanting to hold me forever or let go and strangle me.

No, you idiot.

I never forgot you.

Now...

In that split second between one heartbeat and the next, as the thing disappears, it hits me that it might not actually be me who dies first.

That maybe I miscalculated.

And that maybe...

No.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Emma!

I scream as I run towards the stairs.

Run, Emma, run!

Fucking run!

The cans, the cans all clatter and I shriek, no!

I'm nearly as fast as the entity.

So desperate I'm all but flying, racing past those rolling cans.

But I'm too late.

The trapdoor slams down above me,

trapping me in darkness.

To be continued.

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Thank you for your patronage.

Hope you enjoyed your new relic as much as I've enjoyed passing along its sordid history.

It does come with our usual warning, however.

Absolutely no refunds, no exchanges, and we won't be held liable for anything that may or may not occur while the object is in your possession.

If you've got an artifact with mysterious properties, perhaps it's accompanied by a history of bizarre and disturbing circumstances, maybe you'd be interested in dropping it and its story by the shop to share with other customers.

Please reach out to antiquariumshop at gmail.com.

A member of our team will be in touch.

Till next time, we'll be waiting for you whenever you close your eyes

in the space between sleep and dream

during regular business hours, of course, or by appointment, only for you,

our

best customer.

You have a good night now.

The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings, Lot 062, If You Go Down, You Forget, Chapter 2, Written by Quincy Lee, starring Trevor Shand as Jack, Addison Peacock as Emma, Romy Evans as Sophie, additional voices by Conan Freeman, featuring Stephen Knowles as the antique dealer.

Engineering production and sound design by Trevor Shand.

Theme music by the Newton Brothers.

Additional music by Coag and Vivek Abishek.

The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings is created and curated by Trevor and Lauren Shand.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Antiquarium Pod.

Call the Antiquarium at 646-481-7197.

Hello and welcome to the world of Scare You to Sleep.

I'm your host, Shelby Novak, a show for those of us who need something a little stronger than counting sheep, who find horror to be a strangely relaxing escape.

Here you'll find a myriad of fright-filled tales, from fictional to true stories, to high strangeness to guided nightmares, where I take you on a journey through your own personal nightmare.

So come get lost in the the terror with me.

Listen to Scare You to Sleep wherever you listen to podcasts.

Sweet Screams.