The Gentleman From Hell |S1| Ep. 29

Rusty Quill presents.

Good evening, gentlemen and gentle ladies of hell.

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There's no running away, Mr.

Rhodes.

We'll take you and your friends

straight to hell.

You hear me?

Straight to fucking hell.

My god.

I...

I don't even know what to say.

What should we do about it?

Do you think...

I don't know.

Maybe go to the police?

They're both on there talking about witches and crazy shit.

Plus, it's Scott Mace pulling a gun, threatening the guy's reputation, pushing him around.

But the man said, confessed, he'd been involved in kidnappings, drugging people, and from the sounds of it, even murder.

He says as much, but we don't have any proof one way or the other.

However, it goes down, I'd have to assume it'll be one hell of a media circus.

Given the reputation you three have, and then with us thrown into the mix.

I wouldn't involve anyone else.

I did what I did on my own.

Period.

Makes no difference.

You know that.

If things heat up, they'll look into what we were doing.

Eventually, everyone's name would get out there.

But considering what was said between you two, I honestly don't know how things would go down.

Legally, I think the four of us would be fine, if not our reputations, but...

Mace,

I honestly don't know.

And that's coming from an ex-FBI agent.

Well, at that point, I'd just come clean about the the underground tunnels, the cult, the whole shebang.

Let the bureau sort that shit out.

But I mean, this is all if we go to the police.

Otherwise, I seriously doubt any of it's going anywhere.

If Stedman has more of those pills on him, they might look deeper, but given what goes on here,

I can't imagine he's their first jumper.

And I doubt they'll want anyone getting suspicious about a doctor running around with a bottle full of killer pills on him.

Nah, they're gonna take that body, rule the cause of death, a heart attack, or whatever, and then have some other dirty doctor sign off on it, and that'll be that.

And I sure as hell don't feel compelled to rock that boat, because as far as I'm concerned, that fucker got off light.

I really don't see any sense in going to the police about it.

Especially not here.

We all heard what he said about how connected this cult is.

So where do we go from here?

The mansion and the elevator seems to be a big part of all this.

But how in hell, if you part in the phrase, do we risk going back there?

The resonator's there.

So we at least have to go back for it.

I hate to say it, but we'll get no closer to solving this by staying out of the city.

But I'd recommend learning as much as we can before heading back.

Maybe there's something more on that website that could help us.

I saw that there were two other major books associated with Mephitica, and maybe we could look into those.

Yeah, one of those books, the Cyclist Damnatorium or the Cycle of the Damned, does have some some translated pages we could check out.

But the other, the nameless book, is pretty hard to come by.

And most of the passages that do exist have some pretty questionable attribution.

That, and no one's seen the actual book in years.

I still can't help but shudder at the thought of that man, whatever he is, having been at the mansion, getting his portrait painted next to the goddamn beast of a thing.

It's all just so macabre.

Normally, I'd question if this gentleman from hell really exists and isn't just some sort of Mephitican legend.

But with all that's happened,

I wonder if there isn't some kind of hierarchy to this shit with that guy sitting at the top of the pyramid.

He is supposed to be the first of these assholes to get himself out of hell, which is where the witch came from.

Christ, just saying this shit out loud makes me feel like a lunatic.

And it's witches, not witch.

What

the witch, The sparrow at the hospital wasn't the same as the one from my vision.

The one I saw speaking with Edward looked and sounded different.

I'd say they're all up.

The entire sparrow clan.

And they all came up through the elevator in the mansion.

Hmph.

And you thought the shit you just said sounded bonkers.

They might have, but it seems to me there could be other locations where the damned come up.

Take the castle from the Outer Barrens.

Veronica McKay said she heard strange chanting from beneath the place, and then Edward screaming.

And it's got the same sort of setup as Cold Sparrow.

Specifically, a huge cavern underneath.

We're not really supposing that hell is some kind of physical location, as in underground somewhere, are we?

I'm thinking caves are just great ways to hide large groups of people in whatever crazy shit they get up to.

A good deal of occult rituals are best performed in darkness.

And caves are essentially darkness on demand

while i was in the hospital speaking with that thing she referred to her compact with the devil as being foolish it wasn't like she regretted the compact itself but rather the very notion of a compact was foolish like an adult looking back upon their childish notions of the world i guess what i'm trying to say is that wherever these things are coming from it isn't hell at least not in the classical sense but according to the lecture we just listened to it sounds an awful lot closer to this What was it called again?

Diabolon.

If this guy, this Professor Philip Luctrum, is so knowledgeable on the topic of Mephitica, shouldn't we drop him a line?

I'm guessing he might be interested in what we might have to say.

Granted, we can't let all the cats out of the bag, but maybe just enough to see if the guy could help us out.

I think that's a fantastic idea.

Hell, I'll shoot off a message right now.

His email is probably given somewhere in the notes under his lecture.

Yeah, there's a link to his website right here.

Professor Philip Martin Locktrum, PhD.

Thurston University, Vermont.

Specializes in ancient religions and cultural studies, as well as process theory.

A recognized scholar of Mephitica, he is the author of several acclaimed publications.

There's also a list of his press materials.

Uh, hold up.

What's this?

What is it?

An article from 2010 says, Thurston Professor comments on discovery of mysterious 16th century text in South Dakota Mineshaft.

Pages believed to originate from the Cyclist Damnatorum, a rare occult manuscript dating back to the same era, have reportedly been discovered by a local couple during a weekend exploration in rural South Dakota.

According to sources, the couple found the ancient pages within a small metal box resting atop a pile of rocks in one of the numerous winding tunnels of an abandoned mine.

The discovery has drawn the attention of Dr.

Philip Lochtrum, a professor at Thurston University specializing in historical occult literature.

Thurston remarked that authentic pages from the Cyclist Damnatorum would constitute a extraordinary find, given the text's notorious mystery and dark reputation.

Additionally, found alongside the pages was a

get this, a wax cylinder, a historical recording medium typically played on phonographs.

Preliminary examinations suggest the cylinder may hold a disturbing recording, purportedly created by now-deceased serial murderer James Binder.

Law enforcement officials are currently investigating any link between Binder and the recovered materials.

Huh.

There was a literal crate full of those cylinders back in that underground room in Coldsparrow.

Is there a link to the recording?

Not seeing one.

But this article is over 10 years old, so I'm betting that recording managed to find its way onto the internet somehow.

Yep, plenty of hits.

Let's try this one.

Looks like this podcast, Lost But Not Forgotten, has a copy.

Can't say I care what these bozos have to say about it, so I'm just gonna go straight to the audio file for the cylinder.

Okay, here we go.

Can you hear us?

Is this James Binder?

If you can hear me, say yes.

Yes.

Who's there?

There was never anything special about me.

Except...

Maybe...

That I had some idea of how one might

become a monster.

See, you had to be permitted into the liminal world,

a home of perpetual strangers.

You had to be Jane Goodong amongst the apes.

You had to be accepted.

So

I went amongst the strange.

I slept in abandoned houses.

I always kept odd things on my person.

They were required to help push me out of the light.

If people found me or just saw me with all those weird things,

they'd wonder about me.

They'd put me

in their minds.

File File me under the bazaar.

Right where I wanted to be.

And if they found me at night in out-of-the-way places, with those same strange things on me,

I'd frighten them.

This time I'd force myself into their minds.

And pretty soon, by the sheer weight of fear, I'd go beyond just their waking thoughts.

I would enter their sleep, where I would be reborn.

A nightmare.

One night, I put my favorite talismans in a bag.

Broken puppets, piano music, poems, drawings of burning clowns, and I walked into the woods.

I walked until I found something old.

Something slightly misplaced.

Eventually, I found an old derelict house right next to a creek.

I squeezed into its darkest corner, where all the spider webs and encrusted felt pressed from all sides.

And I waited

to become a monster

after a while a whole big bunch of policemen showed up following the trail of body parts I'd left for them to follow they moved through the house like scared little children Their weapons gave them no comfort.

By the time they found me, it was already too late.

I'd already become

what I was always intended to become.

For the first time, I heard the screams of people through the ears of a monster, where they echo like the taste of sugar tolling upon the tongue.

In the process of killing the first few cops, I'd been shot mortally.

I was coming to the end of my human cycle.

I had just enough strength to leap out a window

and look at the moon one last

time.

To my surprise, just before I hit the ground, the earth yawned opened.

And I plunged down a long metal chute.

I fell for what might have been weeks along with the corpses of everyone I'd killed.

There was no light,

but I could still

see them.

Dead eyes in freight fall, soulless.

Just the bodies I'd taken from them.

They apparently belong to me now.

I landed in a mountain of debris.

talismans.

There were broken toys, old garbing huts, vintage cameras, all piled into the darkness that didn't blind me.

I thought I'd finally made a home for myselves in the minds of men, where I was to live forever.

A monster of the inside

But instead

I ended up in that place

Just silence

at first

But then I was lifted in the darkness that wasn't quite darkness

and put here

And roll the credits.

Sounds a lot like that tape we lifted from the farmhouse.

At least the beginning does.

Can't say much about anything else, though.

Guess sounds like a complete whack job.

Nothing really clicked until that last part.

The fall.

The witch, she said, showed me practically the same thing.

She She spoke of the everlasting silence, tumbling and tumbling into darkness.

So that would mean that this

James Binder, a serial killer, is the same as the witch.

Someone who came back after death,

came back from hell.

But what are these recordings for?

Like I suspected with the voice on the tape from the farmhouse, they sound like a recording of a seance or something approximating one.

Except you don't generally hear the spirit's voice anywhere near that clearly.

Or, at the very least, not for such a long period of time.

It's almost like whoever's speaking at the beginning is recording a phone call between themself and

the damned.

Well, we're paid up for another day,

and we've got plenty of groceries to get us through.

Please tell me they had my brand of tea.

One box of Lady Whitmore's Lavender Delight.

Black tea with lavender and chamomile.

Oh, there's still some good left in the world after all.

I'll put the water on for you.

And if you don't mind, I think I'll join you in a cup.

I'll make a tea drink out of you yet, young lady.

We also drove by Charlie Prist's place just out of curiosity.

And?

And it's up for sale, and his car is gone.

Ah, shit.

I hope he managed to leave on his own.

The poor man.

If it's for sale, that means we might be able to get a guided tour free of charge.

That'll be worth a shot.

What about the church?

You find it?

Like the hotel, it was the only one in town.

Fellowship of the Resurrected.

And I didn't see a soul outside.

How about you you guys?

Find anything encouraging?

Nothing so far.

But the good professor did email us back.

He said he'd be delighted to video chat with us at our earliest convenience.

I thought tonight would be fine.

The sooner the better.

I was also thinking we might relocate for a while.

Anyone remember how far the next town is from here?

Uh, Casey Creek.

It's a little over a half hour, so we're looking at almost a three-hour commute to and from Cold Sparrow each day.

That is, if we're still planning on working there.

I see the sense in not staying in Cold Sparrow proper, especially in the mansion at night.

But apart from that, I mean me don't think moving one city over is going to do us much good.

I guess we can hang around if that's what everybody wants, but I don't know how we're gonna stake out the priest if everyone here knows our business.

Whatever we do, we don't do it alone.

Message received.

I imagine we could do the same thing we did with Charlie Priest, just visit with him while I try to sort things out, and he should be considerably more accessible given that he's a priest.

Leave it to Phil.

And don't you forget it.

Incidentally, there was no mention whatsoever of Dr.

Stedman in the local news.

That figures.

By still trying to figure out how they want to spin it.

It might be easier to disappear him than to lie about the cause of death.

What with all that poison in his system?

I got a feeling folks around here are pretty good at hiding bodies.

Anyway, as far as working at the mansion goes, I agree with Phil.

We gotta go back if we plan on getting intruders, but not until we can protect ourselves somehow.

Well, here's hoping the good professor can give us some pointers in that department.

Because the engineering department is still scratching her head over how to do it.

I've got a few ideas, bro.

But we'll need time with the primary resonator to experiment with them.

For right now, I recommend we get out for a bit, clear our heads.

There's a little lake not far from town, and I read there's even a little pavilion for the public.

Be a good place to take a breather.

I'm all for it.

That's a big yes.

Well, since the coffee maker died, we should stop at the diner up the street and grab some before we drive out to the lake.

All right, then.

Let's hit the run.

Why, hello again, sir.

How can I help you?

Hey there, uh, the coffee maker in our room seems to have died.

Oh dear,

my apologies.

I'll just have to send maintenance right away.

ASAP, in fact.

Actually, you've got some time.

We're about to head out.

Of course, sir.

We'll get it replaced before you return, I promise.

Thanks.

I really appreciate it.

Hello.

They're leaving right now.

The Gentleman from Hell is a Maltopia production.

Today's episode was written by Mark Anselone and performed by Stephen Zivik, Sam Stark, Aubrey Akers, Jesse Van Hove, Kelly Baer, and Matt Van Hove.

Sound editing was completed by Stephen Ansloan, and script editing was conducted by Walker Kornfeld.

Be sure to rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

And follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Meltopia.

If you want unique art and animations of Meltopia's stories, visit our YouTube page or click on the link in the show notes.

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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.

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A little play can make your day.

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