Transcript
Ben (0:00)
Every week here at Haunted Cosmos we release a special story driven show called the Dusty Tome just for our monthly supporters over at Supercast. But while we prepare a brand new season of the main show in the Haunted Cosmos Laboratory, we decided to give all of you a peek behind the paywall. So welcome to a special release of the Dusty Tome. It was the winter of 88 or 89 in Savannah, Georgia. In that part of the world, the winters are little more than what an early fall day might feel like in the higher mountains to the west. The sky was grayed over with clouds riding the wind off the chilled and tumultuous Atlantic during that day, and though it could not really be described as cold, the air was cool and breezy enough for the locals to justify the coats they loved but hardly ever got to wear. To be sure it was not warm after all, it was the dead of winter in a morning frost here and there painting the barren trees a sort of rosy pink in the morning sun over the ocean. It was night, and the echoing streets of the historic downtown rattled with the clinking of boots, the running and laughing of children, and the rumble of cars over the brick laden roads as the night became very dark with no moon and no stars to retard the darkness. Rain started to fall now, adding to the cold air thick with wetness. There was the chilled drops of southern snow, which is just rain. The previously tranquil streets seemed to churn under the quickened pace of people rushing home to escape that rain. Puddles formed in mere minutes, smoothing out the cracks between the cobblestones and making the whole town glow orange and yellow. As said puddles reflected and refracted the bright street lamps guiding the running family's home. It was dark, a wet dark and a vibrant dark because of that wetness, the evening wetness of the East. Through the streaming rain, there rode four bikes belonging to four friends with backs soaked through from the rear wheels, kicking up all the water the riders shirts could hold. The teenage friends stopped beneath a general store's overhang and propped their bikes up against the red brick. Though it being dry beneath the overhang, the brick looked a dingy brown compared to the almost oily, wet red bricks just beside them. They entered the store with a ring of the little bell atop the jam and stood just inside, being careful to wipe their shoes and drip as much excess water they could onto the welcome mat. The store's general manager and owner was a kindly old man, homely and gentle like the kind of person you might find well manning a general store in an idyllic southern town. The place was so quiet inside that it seemed to sing like faint traces of wind chimes times on a cold spring day. It was like all the greatest achievements of the antebellum south, without any of the vices to tarnish it. The old man greeted the boys with a smiling nod as he looked down through his glasses at the ledger for that day's sales. For their part, the boys waved and said hello before stepping right up to the counter to interrupt the man in his study. Finally, the two parties exchanged words. The apparent ringleader of the friends made friendly eye contact with the old man and held up a dollar bill. He asked for change and quarters. The old man, not at all confused at the request for change, but merely confused at the request for change at this hour of the day, asked the boys what they needed the quarters for. They were honest lads and told him straight, we're going to visit Gracie and want to leave her a presentation. At that, the man dutifully folded the single bill into his fold and counted out the quarters. He even threw in an extra with the parting request, Give her one from me, too, will you? The boys nodded and walked straight back out of the store into the rain, now properly pouring an increasingly bitter cold through the heavy darkness of the night. They rode and rode until their tires streaked patches of dry down a freshly tarmac side street that toed the line between the Savannah city limits and the adjacent town of Thunderbolt. In the midmost of the riding, the rain stopped and the wind off the coast gained more momentum. The clouds could be seen to grow thinner and thinner by the moment, as the same cycle of pressure that brought them so suddenly in also ushered them suddenly away. Soon enough the four boys were riding, their leader's pocket jingling with each turn of the pedal into a darkness soaked with water but now lightened ever so slightly by the silvery light of the moon shining above them. After riding for another quarter of an hour down that same road, one much less peppered with streetlights than those of downtown Savannah, the group finally skidded to a stop in front of a black iron gate blocking a grave road. They silently surveyed the gate and what lay beyond it, breathing heavy and with open mouths from the ride. Their breath looked like clouds of tin tinkling in the moonbeams, and they all took a moment to wipe the water from their faces. Over the course of the ride, the cold rain and cold wind had stopped having such a cooling effect. What remained caked on the boys was a most uncomfortable mixture of water and salty sweat that was sure not to simply dry off in the muggy nighttime air. So often this place felt like a cauldron to them. They took turns pushing one another and pulling one another up and over the thick and square stone posts that flanked either side of the tall fence. Once inside, the canopy of black tree branches looked like silhouettes of lightning or veins of tributaries of the Amazon against the backdrop of the moon. Dead and waterlogged Spanish moss hung down from nearly every branch in this metropolis of weeping willow. The tufts of the witch's hair swayed slightly in the wind, pointing the boys along the gravel path that led deeper into the cemetery, for of course a cemetery is where they were. Gravestones with epitaph markings, many of them caked in moss, or at least stained a brownish green by the ivy hanging above, met the boy's widening eyes and gave all but one of them pause. Only the leader had done this before. Only he knew the potential harm of of all the whispering air floating just around them. The rest of them had not been to this place at night and had not visited Gracie with gifts. They all had heard her playing in the witching hours of night in the green grass of the park just outside of her family's old hotel. They had seen her cloudy and white dress leaving traces of itself on the bench she continuously sat in and got up from next to the park, too. But only the leader with the change had ever come to the place she was supposed to be resting in. A stone monolith akin to some old Roman arch for the Empire's glory rose from the ground, immovable and unfeeling, 10ft ahead of the boys. It gave them a sense of being intruders. They felt like divers in a school of swarming things deep underwater. It was as though the arch shouted silently at them to leave and let the dead be, to let the dead bury their dead. Of course they didn't heed the warning and pressed on deeper into the rows of headstones and mausoleums and plinths in the ground, until finally they stood before it. The light radiating from the dripping wet marble sculpture was like a thing painted by mercury. The boys wondered silently how each one was seeing what he himself was seeing, for each boy wondered how the drops of pert quicksilver falling from the wrinkles in the dress did not paint the pine straw around its base a shimmering white. The carving of the girl, Gracie, so lifelike in her dress and boots and curling locks, stared blankly out at them. The plump cheeks of the six year old face appeared anything but solid and the delicate fingers, some placed in her lap and others, propped with their hand on the handle of a wooden bench she sat on, looked at any moment as if they might move. As he studied the image, the boy in the rear of the group felt an impulsive shiver run up and down his spine, and he gave a start at the sound of a little girl giggling behind him. He jerked his head quickly around but saw nothing and heard nothing more. All tricks of the mind, he supposed. He was relieved to discover, once he turned back, that none of his friends had seen his short little episode. The leader reached into his pocket and pulled the quarters out. He kept two one for him and one for the store clerk, and handed each of his friends their own. The plan was very simple. They would leave the quarters at the base of Gracie's statue and then lock hands to walk in a circle around the grave three times. The stories said that upon completion of the third circle, the group could look down to see their quarters magically gone, accepted by the cheerful and still childish Gracie. And this is exactly what they did. Under the pale face of Luna, they spun around the grave together and then eagerly looked down at the same time to see, to their disappointment, that the quarters were all still where they had left them. They muttered the Christian teenage version of curses under their breath and wondered what they had done wrong. Perhaps they supposed it didn't work, since the old store clerk had not chosen joined them. He tried to leave a gift without making a trip. This, they figured, may have upset the sensitive girl inside of the marble. Thus it was that they filed back out of the narrow corridor of bushes guarding the grave from crowds and started the long and dark and wet walk back to the bikes, where they'd be in for a late and muggy ride back home. But the fourth boy, the one who had thought he heard the laughing, lingered behind. Just for a moment. He faced away from the grave and hesitated before turning back in a quick rush and taking his quarter back from the ground. He thought he may try again tomorrow night, but all on his own. But as he stood up and turned again until his back faced the statue, he noticed the night darken. Gone was the light of the moon and stars. Gone again was the silver hope making sparkles of the wet world. Gone was the gentle breeze, and in came a swirling gust of violence that made whatever cold he had felt before that night feel as warm as summer. He heard the rustling leaves behind him and could swear that somewhere beneath and in the midst of all those sounds, he heard the sound like that of weeping it was weeping. It was the sorry cries of a little girl. Slowly, and not one wanting to, he turned around to face the statue once more and was cut to the quick by the gory sight where the moon had lit Gracie up, an almost religious beauty just before she now sat dark in brooding, like a goddess of death and magic, surveying the subjects she was too immature to care about. Her mouth looked to be a chiseled frown filled with hate, and the once solid and white hair now shook like the stiff gray Spanish moss hanging above it. From the eyes cast down in anger, there flowed what looked like streams of blood, thick and warm. It fell to the earth and just kept pouring out of the despairing eyes. The weeping turned to screams and the screams turned to shrieks, and the boy, frozen up to then, was jolted into a run out of the cemetery by the image of a ghastly figure with bleeding eyes and golden hair jumping out at him from the statue.