Hi Nay - Feed Drop

Speaker 1 Rusty Quill Presents.

Speaker 2 Good evening, gentlemen and gentle ladies of hell. First and foremost, thank you for tuning in.
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Speaker 3 Join us at www.patreon.com forward slash Meltopia And embrace the darkness.

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Speaker 2 Greetings, everyone.

Speaker 2 We'd like to introduce you to an awesome horror audio drama called Hainai, which is an atmospheric analog-style horror audio drama featuring folk horror, mythology, and chilling supernatural terrors in an urban setting.

Speaker 2 Hainai, literally translated to Hai Mom, follows Mari, a Filipina immigrant who lives in Toronto.

Speaker 2 Mari first gets roped into Toronto's supernatural crisis after saving their neighbor Laura from being killed.

Speaker 4 From then on, she assists detectives Donner and Murphy in dealing with supernatural threats using her upbringing as a Babylon, which is a shaman.

Speaker 4 Mari finds herself dealing with a multitude of supernatural issues in Toronto, tied to cursed artifacts and the sinister order behind their creation.

Speaker 4 She has a great aptitude for magic, though her abilities seem to have a price she's not forthcoming about.

Speaker 11 She calls her Nanai, mother, often and recounts her experiences over the phone.

Speaker 4 This exciting audio drama is filled with mystery, suspense, and most importantly, horror.

Speaker 11 Listen to Hainai on the Rusty Quill website, on ACAST, or wherever you get your podcasts, or learn more about Hainai on its official website.

Speaker 4 If you want to support Hainai and its creators, you can subscribe to their Patreon at www.patreon.com forward slash High NaiPod or make a one-time donation to their Ko-fi, ko-fi.com forward slash HiNaiPod.

Speaker 4 Thank you and enjoy the show.

Speaker 12 You're listening to

Speaker 12 Hainai

Speaker 12 by Matsi Dapul

Speaker 12 Episode 1

Speaker 12 Bulok

Speaker 12 Hi Nai.

Speaker 12 I I know it's it's been a while since we last talked. I've been

Speaker 12 busy.

Speaker 12 Yeah, that sounded way worse out loud than did my head.

Speaker 12 I know it's a bad excuse, and I've made too many excuses not to call, but it's not like you're in any state

Speaker 12 Anyway,

Speaker 12 I guess I have to start from the beginning.

Speaker 12 Last week, I mean, I guess that's the beginning. I I didn't call then,'cause I really didn't think it'd go anywhere, but after what happened, there's no denying that you

Speaker 12 you need to know what's going on.

Speaker 12 As far as

Speaker 12 I know what's going on anyway.

Speaker 12 It started last Thursday.

Speaker 12 You know, I've got a home office, uh, perks of working with your own editing suite, and having a decent setup means I don't have to go in except for meetings.

Speaker 12 My apartment isn't exactly in the quietest part of the city, but it's big, it's comfortable, and the rent's dirt cheap for the size, which

Speaker 12 probably

Speaker 12 should have been my first clue.

Speaker 12 Ugh, well,

Speaker 12 after my last place was such a crapshoot, I wasn't going to complain about the questionably cheap two-bedroom apartment in downtown Toronto where everything's still new.

Speaker 12 It made sense. They weren't done building the place after all.

Speaker 12 Renovating, I guess. Building over an older place, as far as I can tell.

Speaker 12 The fact that we had to suffer through an entire first month of them testing the fire alarm at odd hours in the morning was worth it if I could just live in the finished floor for as long as I wanted after that.

Speaker 12 I love my new apartment, and nothing short of a fire will get me to leave.

Speaker 12 But

Speaker 12 I don't think I can say the same for Laura.

Speaker 12 Laura, by the way, is my downstairs neighbor.

Speaker 12 I don't know if she's gonna be my neighbor for much longer,

Speaker 12 but I don't know her situation well enough to judge.

Speaker 12 Like I said, it happened last Thursday.

Speaker 12 I was working from home then, like usual. I don't know if it was luck or providence that I had my headphones off at the time.

Speaker 12 I was having a lunch I made for myself and a nice little milky I ordered in.

Speaker 12 And And I know what you're gonna say. It's not good for me, too much sugar, but we've been having this argument for 10 years.
And if I haven't stopped already, I probably never will. So.

Speaker 12 Sorry. Off topic.

Speaker 12 I was having my lunch

Speaker 12 and my milk tea

Speaker 12 when I heard the screams.

Speaker 12 I thought maybe at first it was a TV show, someone on another floor opening a video and forgetting to turn the volume down.

Speaker 12 But then I realized it was coming from the

Speaker 12 echoing stairwell from across the hallway.

Speaker 12 A long...

Speaker 12 carpeted hallway.

Speaker 12 The kind you'd expect to see creepy twins at the end of, asking you to play with them as an elevator opens up behind them to spill blood all over the carpet.

Speaker 12 Since the building's new, it fortunately doesn't have the usual creepy blinking light nobody ever bothered to fix.

Speaker 12 But it does have its own more modern creepiness.

Speaker 12 Motion-activated lighting.

Speaker 12 That was the weird part, though.

Speaker 12 The motion-activated lighting should have kept the halls and stairwell dim until someone moved through it.

Speaker 12 But

Speaker 12 the stairwell remained pitch black, which was impossible. It was never perfectly dark.

Speaker 12 Safety reasons, you know?

Speaker 12 But then...

Speaker 12 But I couldn't see a thing in that black box behind the door. All I could do was

Speaker 12 hear her.

Speaker 12 Her desperate gasping screams and the sound of stumbling footsteps.

Speaker 12 Then...

Speaker 12 She broke out of the darkness.

Speaker 12 Laura, her light hair covered in blood, gashes all over her arms. She saw me looking out my door and took off at a dead sprint toward me.

Speaker 12 And right behind her, breaking from the darkness, grabbing at the place she had just been,

Speaker 12 was a hulking figure.

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 12 Not a figure.

Speaker 12 A mass.

Speaker 12 A mass of

Speaker 12 stretched grey skin.

Speaker 12 Human skin, but from someone long dead. Stretched so thin you could see something rotting and roiling beneath, but somehow keeping its shape, keeping itself together, a flimsy flesh sack.

Speaker 12 Dragging itself across the floor.

Speaker 12 I caught Laura when she all but crashed into me, dragging her into my room and locking my door. A nice, solid deadbolt that I suspected wouldn't stand against whatever this thing was.

Speaker 12 But it gave me enough time to grab what I could. Salt, spices, vinegar, candles, and whatever religious iconography I could grab from my little altar near the door.

Speaker 12 Then

Speaker 12 then the knocking started.

Speaker 12 Well,

Speaker 12 I say knocking, but

Speaker 12 it'd be more accurate to say it was

Speaker 12 throwing itself against the door.

Speaker 12 Laura kept screaming. I don't think she could stop if she wanted to.

Speaker 12 But at some point,

Speaker 12 just as I'd blocked out the incessant false fire alarms in the first month of living here,

Speaker 12 I was able to tune her out,

Speaker 12 focusing only on the heavy,

Speaker 12 dull thudding

Speaker 12 against my solid wood door.

Speaker 12 Then after one sharper crack,

Speaker 12 right where the deadbolt held,

Speaker 12 that startled us both into silence, it

Speaker 12 stopped.

Speaker 12 I thought maybe

Speaker 12 that was the end of it.

Speaker 12 I hoped.

Speaker 12 And then it started flowing

Speaker 12 under the door,

Speaker 12 like whatever it was had begun to

Speaker 12 melt.

Speaker 12 Not completely. You know, when this thin film forms over chicken fat that breaks right apart when you poke into it?

Speaker 12 That's what it reminded me of: a filmy, slick liquid going between the cracks and reforming right in front of us.

Speaker 12 I didn't wait for it to come back up before I started throwing the salt. It didn't stop it, but it certainly had a reaction.

Speaker 12 Where it touched, the skin sac started to bubble, and you could smell the scent of deep rot.

Speaker 12 Then

Speaker 12 I threw the spices

Speaker 12 and the skin began to smoke.

Speaker 12 It roiled and twisted. It seemed startled, almost, like it didn't expect someone to start fighting back, especially not like this.

Speaker 12 Not with folk magic and intent.

Speaker 12 It really didn't like when I grasped the anting-anting around my neck and started a bullung,

Speaker 12 whispering my prayers,

Speaker 12 prayers to a belief that holds the minds and hearts of billions, and prayers to an older, kinder ear

Speaker 12 that still cares for its people.

Speaker 12 It hadn't yet fully reformed when it melted again, this time seeming to disappear into the floor, no longer as solid as it was.

Speaker 12 The smell that was so strong and cloying dissipated, and soon

Speaker 12 it was gone.

Speaker 12 Not destroyed.

Speaker 12 Gone.

Speaker 12 Laura called 911 and I stayed with her until they arrived. Made sure her wounds were as clean as they could be, though she started screaming again when I walked over to the sink to get some water.

Speaker 12 Had to use some bottled, bottled, and then I used my first aid training to disinfect the wounds and wrap her arms in gauze. She didn't protest when I started a boulong over them.

Speaker 12 Lit a candle, melted the wax over a bowl of water, looked over it with a critical eye to see if she had anything

Speaker 12 else

Speaker 12 wrong with her.

Speaker 12 If that rot had set into her skin.

Speaker 12 Police came and checked the building for any wild animal animal or intruder, and they, alongside her compunctuous concierge, guided me and Laura out of the building to the paramedics.

Speaker 12 Laura begged me not to leave her alone.

Speaker 12 She seemed to think I was the only reason the monster hadn't come back, and they couldn't get her into the ambulance while she was clinging to me, so I rode in the back of the ambulance with her.

Speaker 12 They said I did a good job with her arms, but when we got to the hospital, she needed more than a few stitches anyway.

Speaker 12 She didn't let me go until she was sedated, and I gave my statement in the waiting room.

Speaker 12 I knew how this worked, so I told them I saw her running and bleeding, and got her into my room, but I hadn't seen who or what was chasing her, and it had stopped trying to get into my room after a while since I'd locked the door.

Speaker 12 I wasn't sure what they'd find in the CCTV.

Speaker 12 I wasn't sure if they'd see the pitch-black stairwell or the thing made of skin and rot.

Speaker 12 What I was sure of was that Laura hadn't been

Speaker 12 infected by it, as far as I could tell with my Tawas.

Speaker 12 Presuming I could know the nature of it with old Filipino candle scrying anyway.

Speaker 12 Maybe I just couldn't see what it was.

Speaker 12 Maybe it was already inside her, and nothing I did would change that.

Speaker 12 But when I got a call the next day telling me Laura was safe and seemed to be healing nicely, I was

Speaker 12 hopeful.

Speaker 12 I was expecting some kind of follow-up from the police, and that eventually came in the form of two detectives asking me to come down to the station to give them another statement.

Speaker 12 The building itself was an architectural marvel, all sharp and asymmetrical edges without feeling cold or unwelcoming. It felt old and new at the same time in that Toronto way.

Speaker 12 I'd never seen real, actual police detectives outside of TV, so to see them not in uniform, but nonetheless wearing light coats and dark colors over officewear made me realize the image of a trench coat-wearing investigator wasn't too far from the mark.

Speaker 12 The older one introduced himself as Donner. He didn't look remotely friendly, watching me with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

Speaker 12 But for all that his resting anger face had me cowed, I didn't feel anything truly hostile coming off him. The opposite, in fact.

Speaker 12 I thought maybe the wrinkles between his brows and the frown that he wore, weighed down by what I guessed were years of practice, made him seem older than he was.

Speaker 12 The younger one seemed his polar opposite. He exuded friendliness, and with his bright eyes, an easy smile, and exceptionally good looks, he looked more like a supermodel than a policeman.

Speaker 12 The kind you'd see go viral in a Twitter post.

Speaker 12 This one introduced himself as Murphy.

Speaker 12 You know, like that

Speaker 12 the movie with the Robocop. Yeah, that one.

Speaker 12 I gave him the same spiel, knew she was chased, didn't see what chased her, but

Speaker 12 Donner looked at me like he knew I was lying or leaving something out.

Speaker 12 Murphy just looked friendly. Looked like they had the good cop, bad cop routine down to a T.
10 out of 10 execution.

Speaker 12 Donner asked me then if I knew what lying to the police would get me.

Speaker 12 I asked if there was any reason I'd lie about protecting someone from an animal or a maniac, especially when I spent most of my night accompanying her to a hospital to make sure she was okay.

Speaker 12 The two looked at each other, had an entire silent conversation in a matter of seconds with some pointed facial expressions, and it was Murphy that spoke up next, leveling me with a warm but firm expression.

Speaker 12 Turns out, they got exactly what happened from Laura,

Speaker 12 which either made her look crazy or made me look like a liar.

Speaker 12 I knew which one was more likely, but I didn't like either option. When I asked what the CCTV showed, they said they just got in the building to release the footage from the day of the attack.

Speaker 12 I asked then, a bit pointedly, if there was anything else. I was definitely pushing my luck beyond what might have been considered wise if I didn't think Donner's impressive scowl was just for show.

Speaker 12 He didn't ease up on the look, and I was beginning to wonder whether I'd read him entirely wrong when he gave me a phone number to call if I

Speaker 12 remembered anything else.

Speaker 12 Like he knew exactly what I'd lied about.

Speaker 12 I mean, anyone who looks at me will see a lot of round edges. So malice isn't exactly an aura I let off, but it was still strange for a detective to feel like he knew I was lying and let me go anyway.

Speaker 12 And for a few days, there was nothing.

Speaker 12 Laura wasn't moving back until the investigation was done, doing her recovery with her family down in Oakville.

Speaker 12 The first time she called me was when she wanted to introduce herself properly, and she wanted to talk more about what happened, but I held off.

Speaker 12 I promised I'd talk to her when we were face to face, and she agreed.

Speaker 12 I'm glad she's safe, and far away from

Speaker 12 whatever it was that wanted to get her.

Speaker 12 I tried going down to her room a few times, but it was locked up and under investigation, so I didn't get far. I did try to get a feel of the hallway hallway outside of the door.

Speaker 12 I felt her fear and the malice and rage of the thing that chased her three flights up.

Speaker 12 But I didn't get much more than I already knew.

Speaker 12 There was.

Speaker 12 something else.

Speaker 12 Something I couldn't quite get the shape of.

Speaker 12 After my half-baked attempts at figuring out what was going on and doing some extensive cleansing and protection rituals over my front door, I had to get back to work.

Speaker 12 Deadlines, you know.

Speaker 12 For a while, I lost myself in the rhythm of editing, until a loud rapping on my door penetrated the thick layer of foam over my ears.

Speaker 12 I was wary.

Speaker 12 I remember the last time somebody knocked on my door, but this time I didn't sense any wrongness.

Speaker 12 And after a look through the peephole, I welcomed Detectives Donner and Murphy into my home.

Speaker 12 Murphy complimented my little space like his mother probably taught him, and Donner looked at my altar with a critical eye, as well as the little paper talismans I stuck to the wood, invoking the names of old gods with little cups of rice on either side of the door.

Speaker 12 They both accepted when I offered them drinks, a sugary black coffee for Donner, and unsweetened, but drowned in cream for Murphy.

Speaker 12 Donner asked me if I could read minds on top of killing monsters,

Speaker 12 and I

Speaker 12 told him the truth.

Speaker 12 The only thing I was better at than guessing how people took their coffee was making Instant taste halfway decent.

Speaker 12 They told me they'd look over the footage and found

Speaker 12 interference.

Speaker 12 Video cutting off right when Laura made it to my floor.

Speaker 12 Donner told me this wasn't surprising, that it was like this with the

Speaker 12 other ones.

Speaker 12 He then asked me if I'd tell tell him the truth this time.

Speaker 12 Off the record.

Speaker 12 He had yet to take a single sip of his coffee.

Speaker 12 I asked him then,

Speaker 12 how could I tell you about a monster that melted into the floor when I prayed and have you not think I was crazy?

Speaker 12 Donner looked me in the eye for what felt like ours.

Speaker 12 Our eyes were the same color, but

Speaker 12 couldn't have looked more different.

Speaker 12 People always told me mine were

Speaker 12 soft,

Speaker 12 warm, even.

Speaker 12 His eyes seemed too

Speaker 12 deep and dark for light to penetrate.

Speaker 12 So that light reflected in a way that made them flash the sharpest eyes I'd ever seen,

Speaker 12 like they saw as much as I did,

Speaker 12 even without the generations spent preserving the sight in our bloodline.

Speaker 12 Eventually, he took a sip from the cooling brew and complimented me on getting it perfect.

Speaker 12 Turns out, the only reason I didn't sound the fool was because I was talking to the two detectives who had dealt with cases similar to this one. Ones where everyone involved turned up dead.

Speaker 12 Laura was their first survivor, and

Speaker 12 I was the reason why.

Speaker 12 They grilled me on what I saw, the methods I used, and I tried to answer them as best as I could.

Speaker 12 But a lot of what I did had been guesswork based on past experience that I couldn't be sure applied here.

Speaker 12 I told them, in as much detail as I could manage, without gagging, what the thing looked like.

Speaker 12 The skin sack, the

Speaker 12 smell of it.

Speaker 12 The more I said, the more skeptical they looked, but when I emphasized this was the exact reason I didn't want to tell them what I saw, they relented.

Speaker 12 I told them about my trips down to Laura's room to check on whether something there might have triggered the attack,

Speaker 12 and Murphy asked if I wanted to assist in a long-running police investigation. Donner asked if I was sure that the thing going after Laura didn't now have my scent.

Speaker 12 I told him about the cleansing rituals and told him I was protected.

Speaker 12 When he asked me by what, I told him love and good vibes, which he very clearly didn't believe, but he didn't ask again.

Speaker 12 He muttered something I think sounded like Jamaican patois, I think the word was. Don't know what he meant, but it didn't exactly sound open and accepting of my clearly honest answer.

Speaker 12 And it was

Speaker 12 honest.

Speaker 12 Maybe not extensive or detailed, but it was honest.

Speaker 12 They unlocked Laura's room, and I could

Speaker 12 feel the wrongness in the air, like the scent of nearby garbage.

Speaker 12 A rot that wasn't cloying, but noticeable.

Speaker 12 They spread out to check the area, and I began to feel my way around,

Speaker 12 eyes closed, trying to get a sense of the space and what didn't belong in it.

Speaker 12 I almost bumped into the table when I felt it.

Speaker 12 I touched something, small and round, on the table.

Speaker 12 And I immediately had to run to the nearest sink to vomit. You know I hate it, the feeling of it in my throat.

Speaker 12 I've gone through some minor surgeries fully awake, and it's never been as bad as the feeling of vomit.

Speaker 12 Luckily, nothing had come up but spit off to the side of the square sink, and I could barely hear Donner shouting at me not to contaminate the crime scene, and Murphy asking if I was okay over the pulsing of my ears.

Speaker 12 And I saw it

Speaker 12 right in the drain.

Speaker 12 A piece of dead grey skin stuck to the black mouth of the drain pipe. Donner wasted no time getting gloves on and taking a sample while Murphy tried to keep me standing.

Speaker 12 Donner presented the evidence to me in a plastic bag, confirming that it was like the thing I'd seen. There was worry that the thing had gotten to the pipes and was long long gone by now, but that

Speaker 12 didn't feel right.

Speaker 12 I went back to the table and found what looked to be a sewing project, a lovely vintage-looking dress that Laura had been working on, halfway done sewing these beautiful carved buttons into the fabric.

Speaker 12 I didn't have to touch him again to know they were wrong.

Speaker 12 I asked the two to beg him for evidence, and with the look on his face I expected Donner to question it, it, but between the two, he

Speaker 12 was quicker to act.

Speaker 12 I don't know if I imagined him pausing when he picked a couple up with gloved hands.

Speaker 12 Like, maybe he could feel what I felt,

Speaker 12 but that's unlikely.

Speaker 12 I think.

Speaker 12 Murphy looked like he wanted to ask, but seemed to think better of it.

Speaker 12 On the subject of the thing that had apparently come up through the pipes, I...

Speaker 12 I had a theory, but I couldn't go it alone, which is how I ended up between two armed men taking point and watching my back as we made our way down to the unfinished basement level of my building.

Speaker 12 I could smell it now.

Speaker 12 Stronger than ever. And from the look on Donner's face as he turned to me,

Speaker 12 he could too.

Speaker 12 Murphy asked if this was where all the garbage in the building was going. So three for three, the rotting thing was here.
A presence strong enough that I wasn't the only one to feel it.

Speaker 12 Well,

Speaker 12 smell it anymore.

Speaker 12 The smell got stronger as we got closer.

Speaker 12 If we'd asked building security, they'd have told us construction was delayed in this section, since they were waiting for someone from sanitation to find the source of the awful smell, but we didn't.

Speaker 12 We didn't really talk to anyone beyond the one guy who led us through with a flash badge when we descended one of the few areas in the building residents were under no circumstances to enter.

Speaker 12 The smell, and the sick feeling I got where my stomach felt like it might rebel against my throat again,

Speaker 12 was strongest by this one stretch of concrete, where the only break in the gray was at the end of one drain pipe that was,

Speaker 12 to nobody in our group's surprise,

Speaker 12 dripping this thick, dark, slick-looking liquid from which the smell seemed to be emanating.

Speaker 12 It was here,

Speaker 12 but it wasn't showing itself.

Speaker 12 And if we had any chance of stopping it now, we had to force it out.

Speaker 12 I asked for the bags of evidence and

Speaker 12 I spilled the buttons out into the little puddle that had begun to form.

Speaker 12 And it happened all at once. A human scream and an animal snarl.
And the sound of melting, bubbling, blasting outward, and something else I couldn't name, but that sounded horrifyingly familiar.

Speaker 12 I saw the grave face of a dead man screaming right in front of mine.

Speaker 12 His teeth were made of animal bones, the ribs and skulls of rodents, the fangs of a cat opening to bite my face off, had Donner not dragged me back by my collar, the force of it enough to throw me down to the side.

Speaker 12 Got a few bruises, ended up toppling over a few spare cinder blocks and lumber, but...

Speaker 12 it was better than the alternative.

Speaker 12 I think he tried to shoot his gun, but the gray rotting thing wrapped around it and the gunshot was lost in the thick of it, like shooting bullets into ballistic gel.

Speaker 12 I heard two more loud shots echo in the enormous basement level, and saw that one of them caught the thing in its face, shattering the cat's skull and causing the rotting thing to turn its attention to Murphy, even while it had Donner's arm wrapped in its melting grip.

Speaker 12 That's when I realized its attention wasn't on me.

Speaker 12 Grabbing one of the heavy cinder blocks and dragging myself closer to the fray, I found what I was looking for and raised the block right over my head.

Speaker 12 And I slammed it down onto one of the ivoroid buttons, shattering the bone-white patterns and warping the metal base.

Speaker 12 And like a garbage bag cut through with a knife, the rotting thing seemed to lose its shape, a hole forming in the thin, translucent grey of its skin, and spilling what looked to be the half-gone remains of animals, rats, raccoons, and even dogs and cats.

Speaker 12 Still,

Speaker 12 it retained much of its form as it lunged toward me. Its sharp bone claws sliced into my back as I crushed the second and third button much the same way.

Speaker 12 It hurt so very badly, sharp and debilitating, but there were only a few more to go, and I knew I had to destroy them before the rotting thing did us in, when another couple of loud shots filled the basement,

Speaker 12 and I saw two more buttons shatter from the impact of well-aimed bullets. Donner, I learned later, with his sharp eyes and steady hand,

Speaker 12 was one of the best shots in the force.

Speaker 12 The rotting thing was spilling out in all directions now, covering us in the remains of things long and recently dead.

Speaker 12 And before I could break the last button, what felt like the bones of an all-too-human hand caught my wrist,

Speaker 12 and I looked into the empty eyes of a dead man.

Speaker 12 A jaw long since unhinged from the skull.

Speaker 12 I felt its rage as it tried to stop me from letting it rest.

Speaker 12 Then, Donner and Murphy pulled it back.

Speaker 12 The last vestiges of the rotting thing that could still hold itself together, the center of the rot.

Speaker 12 Finally, I could raise the cinder block with the last of my strength, and I threw it down,

Speaker 12 shattering the last button.

Speaker 12 And slowly,

Speaker 12 but surely,

Speaker 12 all the remains we saw scattered around us

Speaker 12 melted away.

Speaker 12 And I could finally breathe again.

Speaker 12 From what I understand, the story was that they found a rabid coyote and had to put it down, which is apparently a thing in Toronto. At least that's what they told building management.

Speaker 12 After the rotting thing melted away, the three of us found the narrow little space between the building and its seven-story neighbor and the hole where animals seemed to have fallen into, suffocating half underground.

Speaker 12 They got permits to dig and

Speaker 12 they found a bit of a horror show with a bunch of Torontonian wildlife piled on top of what they eventually discovered was

Speaker 12 an unidentified human corpse half-baked into the cement of the old building ours had been built over.

Speaker 12 I was made to sign a statement by building management not to tell a soul about what I knew and now I don't have to

Speaker 12 pay utilities

Speaker 12 ever.

Speaker 12 So something good came out of this and it looks like I'm gonna be sticking around here for a lot longer now.

Speaker 12 I didn't get to see the dig, though Donner and Murphy were kind enough to get me some gruesome pictures later on.

Speaker 12 They brought me to the hospital to have my scratches looked at, and Tonner was apologetic about putting me in danger and giving me the few bruises blooming on my thighs when he threw me.

Speaker 12 It was silly for him to worry. He basically saved my life.
Well, maybe I could have survived having my face ripped off by a cat skull, but I'd rather not think about it.

Speaker 12 Murphy offered to accompany me home, and

Speaker 12 I accepted.

Speaker 12 Made him coffee, and

Speaker 12 we had a nice afternoon talking.

Speaker 12 A weirdly normal afternoon, until I remembered to ask him about the buttons, and he told me Donner took care of that evidence.

Speaker 12 I asked them if they did this often.

Speaker 12 Fight monsters, I mean.

Speaker 12 Murphy was

Speaker 12 uncharacteristically grim-faced when he answered.

Speaker 12 We've only ever found the remains.

Speaker 12 And that's what happened.

Speaker 12 I oh, crap. Well, one sec.

Speaker 12 Hello?

Speaker 12 Donner?

Speaker 12 Yeah. No, I I'm just um

Speaker 12 well, I've I've got work, but

Speaker 12 d Saturday?

Speaker 12 Yes, I Mm-hmm.

Speaker 12 Oh, w wait, one sec, one sec. Um, t King

Speaker 12 Chinatown.

Speaker 12 Okay, yes, of course. Um, you're you're

Speaker 12 you're welcome.

Speaker 12 That was Donner. He said he found the one who sold Laura those buttons.

Speaker 12 I have a theory, Nane.

Speaker 12 They didn't feel right.

Speaker 12 I know they didn't. I

Speaker 12 whatever it was that was under this building,

Speaker 12 whoever it was that was left there for so long, it...

Speaker 12 There's a reason it didn't wake up until now.

Speaker 12 Donner asked me to help.

Speaker 12 Said he needed me to feel the place out in case I caught something you couldn't see beneath the surface.

Speaker 12 I said, yes.

Speaker 12 I know this has nothing to do with me, and I know you wanted me here, but

Speaker 12 with everything that's happened,

Speaker 12 and with all the questions we still haven't answered,

Speaker 12 I have a feeling this is just the beginning.

Speaker 12 You're listening to

Speaker 12 Hainai

Speaker 12 by Mozi Dapul

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