Agent Conroy (24:20)

Warning Signal interruption detected.

Shopify Representative (24:26)

This episode is sponsored by Sacrilege Curse of the Embirui There's a new terrifying psychological thriller from Audible you should be listening to right now. Sacrilege Curse of the MBIRWI starring Caleb McLaughlin from Stranger Things fame, is angst ridden Teen Dash and Wallace directed by Nyasha Hatindi and presented an immersive Dolby Atmos as an audible original. The Wallace family's vacation to a luxury game reserve in Zimbabwe becomes a living nightmare when Dacian unwittingly desecrates hallowed ground and unleashes the Mbirwe, a vengeful entity born from the centuries old wounds of colonialism. As possessed wildlife and shapeshifting horrors close in. Dacian must confront not only the supernatural threat but also the horrors of his own past to save what remains of his family. Sacrilege blends pulse pounding suspense with profound explorations of identity to deliver a thriller as thought provoking as it is terrifying. I can't wait to listen to Sacrilege myself, and I think you're gonna love it. After all, we're all folklore and horror fans here. So join me in Zimbabwe and listen to Sacrilege. Today we all have our demons. Listen to Sacrilege. Curse of the Mbirwi now on audible. Go to audible.com sacrilege hunted by skinwalker Sweating Darn near to death. The ticks are eating you before the monsters do. It's summer, alright, but you don't have to be haunted by your phone bill too. So switch to Mint Mobile and live life without worrying about your wallet. Get the coverage and speed you're used to for way less money. Mint Mobile sent me a SIM card to try out just to see if it really does beat the heat. And it absolutely does. Setting it up was quick and easy. Reception and data speeds were good or even better than my previous provider. And it's much less painful on my bank account. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with Animent Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Ditch overpriced Wireless and get three months of unlimited service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month this year. Skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com Ericast that's mintmobile.com Ericast upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to 15 bucks a month limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. C Mint Mobile for details when you.

Lululemon Representative (27:16)

Hear Lululemon, you probably think of Align yoga pants, weightlessly soft, like you're wearing next to nothing. That's why you see them in class, at the grocery store and in the park. But did you know about skirts with built in liner shorts? You can still jump for the Frisbee and tanks and bodysuits with Align's iconic stretch you won't want to take it off. And with endless style options, you don't have to shop in store or online@lululemon.com Signal connection restored.

Sam (27:50)

The sun had just began to climb over the horizon when I stepped off the road and into the trees. The forest was thick with mist and dew, accompanied by a silence that felt all consuming. The kind of silence that waits and watches that dares you to make the first noise. Each step I took felt like it echoed despite the mud beneath my boots absorbing most of the sound. The air smelled like mildew and wet bark, and somewhere beneath that, just faintly, something sour, something dead. Ahead of me stood the house, if you could still call it that. What remained of it sagged like a carcass left out in the rain, the frame twisted, half digested by rot and nature. Shingles lay scattered around the front steps, and a portion of the roof had collapsed inward, exposing the splintered bones of the attic. The front door was gone, just a yawning, crooked hole in the wall that looked like it might swallow anyone dumb enough to walk through it. Which apparently, was only me. I stood at the edge of the property longer than I meant to, gripping the pistol at my side like it was a lifeline. This wasn't a drill. There would be no instructor yelling at me to adjust my form, no one stepping in if I froze. If I failed. Here, this could be it. You're afraid, the eye whispered inside me, calm and without judgment. Yeah, no shit, I muttered under my breath. Good. Fear sharpens the instinct. I didn't respond. My mouth felt dry, like my nerves had sucked the moisture out of everything a file had said. This was likely a ghoul type subsurface entity, a low intelligence predator, hyper aggressive, with a preference for decaying environments and a tendency to burrow. Generally nocturnal. Poor vision, if any. They typically navigated by scent, sound, and vibrations. The report emphasized the importance of encountering it during daylight hours, preferably while it was dormant. But the report didn't mention the way the ground felt around this place, soft and unstable, like something had chewed through the foundations and replaced them with nothing. It didn't mention the way the trees leaned away from the house like they were trying to escape. And it definitely didn't mention the smell, a rancid cocktail of copper, rotting meat, damp earth, and old wet fur. It hit me like a physical force as I stepped onto the sagging front porch, and I had to fight the urge to gag. Inside, the house was barely holding together, floorboards bowed and buckled, warped by moisture and years of exposure. Wallpaper peeled the walls and long curling strips like dead skin. The air was heavy and every breath tasted like mold. Insects scattered across the floor as I passed, their nests tucked into the corners of the collapsed furniture. I kept my light low, checking doorways and shadows, trying to stay as silent as I could. The sound of my heartbeat was louder than my footsteps. I found the kitchen, or what used to be the kitchen near the back. Cabinets hung off their hinges and something black had crusted along the baseboards. The tile floor was shattered in a wide circle and that's where I saw it. A tunnel, freshly used, about three feet across. The dirt around the rim had been clawed, as if something pulled itself free from the earth one handful at a time. I crouched beside it, careful not to get too close. The hole radiated cold. It felt like winter lived down there, like the very concept of warmth had been stripped away. I could see no bottom, just darkness, dense and complete. It's close, the eye murmured. How close? Closer than you were ready for. I didn't like that answer, but I couldn't argue with it. My plan, if you could call it that, was overly simple. The thing was supposed to be dormant during the daylight. Maybe I could catch it off guard, neutralize it before it knew I was here. Quick and clean. That was the fantasy. A fantasy that would be crushed pretty much instantly as a sound broke the quiet. Not from the hole but behind me. A dragging noise, wet and uneven, followed by a sharp, frantic scratching. I turned. Something slammed into me too fast to register. We crashed through the dark tunnel, plunging into the crawlspace beneath the house. Dirt exploded around us. My back hit something hard, and the air was expelled from my lungs in a single burst. The thing was on me. It shrieked. Not like an animal, not like anything human, either. The sound felt like teeth scraping against my skull. Its limbs were long, gaunt, unnaturally flexible, its fingers ending in splintered nails, caked with black and brown. Its skin was gray and translucent in places, stretched taut over a frame that looked more bone than muscle. No eyes, just deep empty sockets and a mouth so full of teeth it barely seemed to close. It clawed at my vest, teeth snapping inches from my throat. I shoved it off, scrambled for my pistol, but it vanished into the dark with a speed that should have been impossible for something so skeletal. I was on my feet, chest heaving, dirt and blood filling my mouth. My flashlight flickered, maybe damaged in the fall. The darkness was near total left. The eye snapped. I spun left just in time to duck as it lunged again. Claws whooshed over my head. I fell backwards and scrambled away. Before I could get to my feet, it landed on me, pressing down, pulling itself towards me as I tried to push it away, but its strength was insane. I couldn't breathe, couldn't move. Then everything inside me lit up. The eye flared white hot, burning against my sternum like an ember pressed to my skin. My body reacted without me. I moved fast, efficient, precise. I grabbed the knife from my belt and drove it up into soft tissue. The ghoul shrieked, trying to push away, but now I was holding it in place. I stabbed again and again as foul, dark, rotten liquid poured down onto me with a final stab into the side of the neck, followed by a violent pull downwards. The thing collapsed on top of me, twitching, pouring the cold, rancid blood. It didn't move again. I shoved it off, crawled backwards until my spine hit the wall. My breath came in ragged gasps. My hands wouldn't stop shaking. It was dead. Somehow, against all odds, I had killed it. I didn't feel triumphant. I didn't feel powerful. I felt like I'd walked into a wood chipper, got spit out, and the fucking Eye came to pick up the pieces. The air was still. The house creaked above me. We're alive, the Eye whispered, sounding almost surprised. Barely. Barely is still alive. I sat there for a long time, waiting for my heart to slow down, my hands to steady. It wasn't by choice that I scrambled back to my feet. It was an involuntary reaction when I heard it faint from somewhere down the tunnel. Another scream. I froze in fear. My whole body was still vibrating from the fight I'd just survived. Every muscle ached. My lungs burned. The knife in my hand, slick with blood, felt like a hundred pounds. My brain was still trying to process what just happened. I hadn't even begun to consider what came next. Run. Run, the Eye said. Where? I choked out. I turned toward the way I came, the shattered slats of the rotten kitchen floor above me. The dim gray light of morning was still bleeding through, filtered and pale. I stumbled forward, one hand reaching for the tunnel's edge edge, the other bracing the side of the opening, boots slipping in a slurry of mud and the blood covering me. I managed to leap upward and catch the rim of the tunnel. My fingers dug into loose soil, trying to haul myself up. I'd managed to get one of my elbows onto the kitchen floor, so close to freedom I could taste the fresh air. Something slammed into me, knocking the wind out of me as I flew back into the putrid tunnels. I hit the ground hard, ribs flaring with pain as I landed flat on my back. A fog of dust and debris rolled around me as I scrambled to regain my bearings. Get up. The Eye snapped, voice sharp and unfamiliar. I twisted just in time to see it. Another ghoul lunging from the dark. Its mouth was open wide, its arms outstretched like it wanted to climb inside me. My shaking hand gripped the pistol in its holster, pulling as quickly as I could and managing to fire once blindly. The shot went wide, ricocheting off something hard. It didn't even flinch. It collided with me, a split Second later, the impact slammed me against the tunnel wall, the side of my head connecting with the solid earth hard enough to knock the world sideways. My ears rang. My vision was briefly lit up by a white flash, which quickly gave way to a growing darkness. The creature was all limbs and teeth and speed. No hesitation, no wasted motion. Its only goal was to kill me somehow. I twisted beneath it and rammed my elbow upward. It staggered just enough for me to scramble out from under it, pushing toward the narrow side tunnel. The eye now pointed out. Crawling, I dragged myself down the tight corridor, every inch of motion scraping fresh pain across my battered body. The tunnel closed in around me, pressing into my stomach and back. Every breath pulled in dirt and rot. The walls pressed so close, it felt like every inhale was going to overinflate me and trap me. Behind me, the ghoul followed. Faster, faster. The eye ordered. I'm going as fast as I can. I spat through gritted teeth. My arms shook. My hands were going numb. My pistol clanked against the dirt. Every time I shifted to the left, I heard the creatures, breathing wet and eager, closing in. I tried to focus on the noise my pistol made. There's another, the eye said. Up ahead, to your right, in the wall. What the? 3 in total. Another further in, heading this way. You gotta be fucking kidding me. There wasn't much I could do. I pulled myself from the tunnel into a bigger space, knowing what awaited me. Turning immediately to the right, I saw it. A face peeking out from the soil. Those same eyeless holes. Lips peeled back. If the eye hadn't warned me, I probably wouldn't have noticed. It launched at me with a shriek that caused me to flinch. I barely reacted fast enough to raise my arm. It bit down on my forearm, its teeth puncturing through the reinforced jacket like paper. I screamed. The sound I made frightened me even more, and I slammed my elbow and its head into the wall, over and over, trying to shake it loose. It didn't let go. I stabbed the knife sideways into its cheek, twisting and pressing as hard as I could. It yelped, loosening its grip. I shoved it backward and rolled into a crouch. It was already coming again. I raised my pistol and fired, this time, landing a shot straight into its chest. It staggered, let out a grotesque sound, fell forward and kept crawling towards me. It leapt and dove at me as I lunged forward, closing the distance before it could strike. I fired several more shots, unable to tell if they connected or not, before I buried the knife under its jaw, driving it up until I felt the hilt scrape against cartilage it convulsed once, then fell limp, twitching on the ground. I collapsed back into the tunnel wall, panting, the foul blood coating my hands. Once again, the sleeve of my jacket hung in tatters. My leg was bleeding from somewhere. I didn't know where. Everything hurt. That's too, I said aloud, though I didn't feel even the slightest sense of confidence. I got back to my feet, unsteady, shaking. The pistol felt heavier than ever, my arms like rubber. Keep moving, the eye whispered, its tone low and unreadable, but something about the way it spoke felt off. For the first time since this whole thing started, the eye spoke with almost zero authority. It sounded like it was just as afraid as I was. That didn't make anything better. I pushed forward, dragging one foot behind the other, the sounds behind me moving closer and closer. I didn't even know how to get out at this point. These tunnels are an entire network, and I had wandered in like bait with a flashlight and a Free Meals T shirt. Might as well have seasoned myself.

Agent Conroy (45:34)

Warning Signal interruption detected.

WhatsApp Representative (45:40)

On WhatsApp no one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat, or trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast, your personal messages stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone With a.

Venmo Representative (46:09)

Venmo debit card, you can Venmo more than just your friends. You can use your balance in so many ways. You can Venmo everything. Need gas? You can Venmo this. How about snacks? You can Venmo that. Your favorite band's merch? You can Venmo this. Or their next show. You can Venmo that. Visit Venmo me Debit to learn more. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp bank and a pursuant to license by MasterCard International Incorporated Card may be used everywhere. MasterCard is accepted. Venmo purchase restrictions apply.

Agent Conroy (46:39)

If you went on a road trip and you didn't stop for a Big Mac or drop a crispy fry between the car seats, or use your McDonald's bag as a placemat, then that wasn't a road trip. It was just a really long drive.

Sam (46:53)

At participating McDonald's.

Agent Conroy (46:55)

Signal connection restored.

Sam (47:00)

I tried to double back after the second kill, adrenaline still burning hot through the cuts on my arms and the torn flesh in my thigh. But the moment I retraced Even a few feet. I heard the movement closing in behind me and the other one circling through the side tunnels to cut me off. The eye said nothing. It didn't need to. We both knew I was running on borrowed time. My leg was stiff, bleeding sluggishly into my boot. My shoulder throbbed with every step, arm half useless, fingers tingling from nerve damage or blood loss, maybe both. The only thing keeping me upright was the certainty that if I stopped, I'd be torn apart by literal monsters. I stumbled into a slightly wider chamber, a junction of burrowed out shafts. The walls here were ribbed with claw marks and packed earth moist and black like mold. I backed up slowly. My flashlight flickered. The beam caught motion to my left. Then it stepped into view. Bigger than the others, taller, more muscular. Better fed. Probably the Alpha. If ghouls have alphas. Its bones jutted at unnatural angles, skin a pale gray with streaks of black filth clinging to its chest and shoulders. Jaws hung loose, twitching. Claws long and blackened, clicking together like knives in a butcher's hand. I turned to run, but before I could, the second one dropped from above, landing hard in front of me with a thud and a cracking of bones. I raised my pistol, but its claws shot out quicker than I'd anticipated, causing me to bring my arms to my chest and take a step backwards. It lunged before I could recover, driving a shoulder into my gut and slamming me into the wall with bone jarring force. The air left my lungs in a single wheeze. I collapsed to one knee, vision doubling. Claws dragged across my chest, slicing through the vest, carving heat into my ribs. One of them shoved my head back against a wall, pinning me in place, while the other pressed closer, mouth opening like it wanted to smile, speak, but didn't remember how. Their claws moved. Slowly now, deliberately. One ran a finger along my cheek, down to my collarbone. Almost tender. They were enjoying this, showing me all the pain that was to come. The eye was silent, but I could feel its panic right alongside mine. I was slipping. My arms refused to lift. My legs stopped responding. There was only pain. Please, I choked out, not sure who I was talking to. No, I knew who I was talking to. The eye. Difficult. Something, I thought. We're going to die down here. A sound cut through the growing fog. A scream. It took me a moment to realize it wasn't mine. The Eye. The scream was coming from within me, Growing, spreading. It was everything I felt. Raw, wounded, panicked. A full body expression of primal terror. It didn't want to die. It refused to die. And it wouldn't let me Die either. The change was nothing I could have prepared. For one moment I was pinned, breathless, bleeding. The next, I was splitting open. It started between my shoulder blades. A pressure, sharp and foreign, like someone was threading wire through my spine and pulling everything attached to it outward. My vision went white. I couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't even think. The pain wasn't pain anymore. It was sensation without name, like I was being reshaped from the inside out by rules that didn't belong to this world. My flesh moved, reorganized. Tendons unzipped. Muscles unfolded. And then they emerged. Two limbs, impossibly long and wrong, humanoid only in the vaguest anatomical sense. Their forms shimmered, partially translucent, partially solid, coated in glistening strands of something like mucus and stardust. Each arm was double the length of my own. Triple jointed, they sprouted from the back of my shoulders like the wings of a fallen angel. I felt them like an extra set of limbs I hadn't realized I'd been missing. I could feel the tunnel walls under their fingers. I could feel the cold radiating off the creatures in front of me. The ghouls stopped just staring with mild puzzlement. That pause was all I needed. The right phantom arm launched outward, burying its fingers into the mud packed wall behind the nearest ghoul, pulling me forward with explosive force. My legs dragged uselessly as I closed the distance. In the blink of an eye, the left limb shot out in front of me and caught the creature by the neck, lifting it off the ground mid motion. The momentum didn't stop. We slammed into the wall together, hard enough to crack something deep in the creature's chest. Before it could scream, the other phantom arm wrapped around its right shoulder. The left released its neck and grabbed the other arm. Both began to pull. I didn't plan it. I didn't try to interfere. I gave in to the desire, the bloodlust. The ghoul's arms stretched outward first resisting, then tearing, the skin separating with a wet, fibrous sound like pulling apart roast chicken. It shrieked an awful bubbling sound, and I silenced it with the knife, driving it into its neck and face over and over until there was no fight left. In slumped and the phantom limbs let go of the creature's two arms that thumped onto the ground in a wet, useless pile. I stood, coated in gore as the alpha creature made its move. It lunged, but I didn't even turn my head. I knew where it was, how fast it was moving, even had a pretty good idea of what it weighed. I could feel it. My right Phantom limb struck sideways like a backhand from hell, catching the creature mid charge and sending it flying into the tunnel wall. With the ground shaking force, it staggered. Dazed, I spun, pivoting on one foot in a motion that felt like flipping inside out for a fraction of a second. The movement wasn't natural, but it was right, like bending the laws of the universe and knowing the world can't correct you. By the time I completed the turn, I was already drawing my sidearm. I raised it one handed, blood dripping from my elbow. The creature tried to get up, but I didn't give it the chance. I emptied the magazine into its head. The first shot slumped it, but I didn't stop following its falling body until the slide locked back. The grouping was so tight it almost looked as if there was only one hole right between the eyes. Silence fell in a blanket of death. My breath came in heavy, broken gasps. I stood in the narrow tunnel, the rotten blood soaking into my clothes, into the dirt coating the phantom limbs that still trailed behind me, and slowly they retracted. The shimmering arms folded back into my flesh, the sound somewhere between reverse breathing and a zipper closing in slow motion. The sensation was unbearable and intimate and electric. I collapsed to my knees, body shaking from exertion and pain and something else. I should have felt like a monster, but for the first time in my life, I felt powerful. Or alive. I whispered, barely. The eye finally responded after a lengthy silence. Barely is still alive. I knelt in the dirt, body trembling, pistol loose in one hand, the other pressed to the side of my torn vest where the warmth hadn't stopped leaking. I waited for another sound, but thankfully nothing came. The eye was still like it too, was trying to make sense of what had just happened. I don't know how long I sat there. Five minutes, maybe 15. It didn't matter. Time had stretched, thinned, and bled like everything else in that place. Eventually I forced myself to move. Not because I had energy left, I didn't, but because I knew what would happen if we stuck around here too long. For all I knew, the Bureau had gotten a reading from whatever had just happened to us, but I wasn't going to leave anything behind. I retrieved the explosive charge from my pack and staggered back through the tunnels, one hand trailing along the walls for balance, the other holding a flickering light. The eye told me the best place to drop the explosive. As we made our way out, I looked at the corpses, at the wreckage I'd left behind. It was hard to believe that I had done all this. No, not I. We. Climbing out wasn't easy. I slipped twice trying to reach the surface, my leg screaming every time I used it for leverage. My right arm had long since gone numb. My jacket was stiff with half dried blood. Everything I wore felt like it weighed 50 pounds and smelled like a moldy sewer. But eventually I made it. I crawled out of that house on my stomach, gasping into the daylight, clawing at the porch like a man escaping his own grave. I limped out to the road and triggered the detonator. The explosion was deeper than I expected, a slow earth swallowing concussion that didn't echo so much as ripple, sending a low growl across the land. The porch collapsed, the walls folded inward. The ground caved in around the den, and just like that, the whole place sank into itself, coughing up a cloud of smoke and dust that hung in the air. I stood there, watching the ruin. That was two days ago. Now I'm here, sitting in another nameless room in another safe house on the edge of nowhere. My cuts are bandaged. My tears are stitched. My body hurts fucking everywhere. But I'm alive. We're alive. The Eye hasn't said much since we got back. It doesn't want to answer my questions just yet. Maybe it's processing. Maybe it's exhausted. Or maybe it's just giving me space. I don't really know how to feel about that. But I do know this. Something shifted down there in me. Those limbs. The Eye didn't just push them out to save itself. It gave them to us. To me. And now that they've been here, I can still feel the echoes. Like I've grown phantom nerves for things that aren't here in this reality. But I think I get it now. This isn't going to stop. Not the Bureau. Not the creatures that crawl out of the dark. Not the things waiting in the walls and in the soil beneath our feet. The freakshows and nightmares, the impossible and the unexplained. They're not rare. They're just ignored and unseen until they aren't. And I don't get to walk away from it. There's no next chapter waiting for me in some quiet town, no peaceful life after this. I've been marked, forged into something else. Whether it's the eye or the fight or both. I've crossed a line I can't uncross. I've seen too much, felt too much. I carry something now that won't let me go back to the way things were. If this is what I am now, then I need to stop pretending I'm not. So I'll get better, smarter, stronger. I'll learn how to fight the people and the things that scare me. Learn to move before they move. Bleed less, hesitate less. I'll find ways to hurt the things that want to hurt me. I'll kill the things that don't die easy. Because I know they're still out there. And because I know the Bureau is still watching. If they don't already know what happened then, they do now. They'll mark me as dangerous in one of their little files. A liability. Something to own and contain. I'm not just a target now. I'm a problem. Something they can't predict, and that makes me valuable. But more than that, it makes me a threat. Conroy warned me. Said the more I learn to survive, the more I grow into what I am now, the more dangerous I become to. To the Bureau, to their goals, to their illusion of control. And he was right. But he said something else. Something I couldn't ignore even when I tried. He said that people have a right to know. They deserve the truth. About the things that claw up from the forgotten corners of the world. About what's waiting in the woods or the basements or the cracks between worlds that open up when you aren't looking. About the monsters hiding in government reports. The ones with sharp teeth and the ones wearing clean suits and Agency badges because the Bureau doesn't protect anyone. They contain. They lie. They preserve their own power, their own secrets, and leave the rest of us to die in agony. But we're not staying silent anymore. Not me, not Conroy, not the others who are still out there, still fighting, still leaking information and resisting. Most of us aren't special. We're not soldiers. We're just people who survived long enough to realize that someone has to push me back. And that's what we're going to do. One case, one monster, one classified file at a time. Even if it kills us. Because the Bureau isn't the cure. They're the disease. So if they're listening, and I know you are, hear this. I'm still breathing. And one day, we're going to fuck you up.

Austin James (65:39)

Hey, it's Austin James. Yes, I'm living with diabetes, but it doesn't have to define me. Thanks to the freestyle libre 3 plus sensor, I get real time glucose readings throughout the day. The freestyle Libre 3 Plus sensor is small and easy to wear, giving me the freedom to focus on my life as a parent and a musician. Now this is progress. You can get a free sensor at Freestyle Libre US offer available for people who qualify.

Sam (66:00)

Visit MyFreestyle US to see all terms and conditions. Certain exclusions apply.

Shopify Representative (66:03)

Data on file Abid Diabetes care or prescription only Safety info found at Freestyle Libre US.