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- [00:00]
A
Hey, how's it going? Welcome to Scary Stories in Rain. Before we begin, I just want to remind you that there is now one week left to get your name in the pot to win a Nintendo Switch 2 bundle. If you want to be eligible to win, join my podcast. For $2.99 a month, you get rid of all of the ads, which is really great for sleeping and relaxing. And I might be contacting you to ask where to send your new Nintendo Switch 2 bundle. Also, I do want to say that I'm going to be announcing the winner on the first and I'm also going to be dropping a photo on my Instagram account showing the proof that I have the console, the shipping information that I actually did send it, and by the way, I just got my hands on a PlayStation 5 and I'm going to be giving that away next. So if you want to automatically enter to win the Nintendo Switch 2 bundle, go ahead and subscribe. Get rid of all of the ads and listen to every episode completely interruption free and you'll be automatically entered to win the PlayStation. I'm going to start doing giveaways every single month. And again, I just want to say thank you for being here.
- [01:07]
B
This episode is brought to you by FX's alien Earth, the official podcast. Each week, host Adam Rogers is joined by guests, including the show's creator, cast and crew. In this exclusive companion podcast, they will explore story elements, deep dive into character motivations, and offer an episode by episode, behind the scenes breakdown of each terrifying chapter in this new series. Search FX's alien Earth wherever you listen to podcasts. The club, I thought, was just another unremarkable, if weird place that I would forget about the next day. It seemed so familiar and the people seemed so typical. The ecstasy ran its course, took hold, and eventually the sun would come up and the people would come down. When I first saw it, there wasn't one iota of me that thought that this particular building location really would become the central focus of my life for the better part of a week. It all happened in the summer of 2005 in a fairly small town of about 25,000 people somewhere in New England. I haven't talked about it since then because I'm the only person who remembers it, the only one who was chosen by this piece of land to tell its story. Here's how it started. I and two friends were out driving around on an unusually warm night. We spotted the club and decided to go in, have a few drinks, enjoy the music. We walked in and were immediately greeted by blaring music so loud the servers could barely hear our orders. I also took notice of a dj, tall, at least six four, with a tattoo on his hand that looked like a scorpion and another on his knuckles that read trap. My friends and I mocked the club for being too cliche. And as techno music played and glowstick swirled sickeningly, I started to feel nauseous and my head began to pound. The DJ shouted this next one straight from the heart and began spinning the discs like a madman. I ran to the bathroom to puke, pushing my way through a horde of young people my age. Once in the bathroom, I I flung the stall door open and projectile vomited into the toilet two or three times. And when I went to clean myself up and splash some water on my face, I noticed that someone had written I want to leave so bad in what looked like blood. This didn't totally freak me out. It wasn't the weirdest thing I had seen at a rave, or even in a bathroom for that matter, so I mostly dismissed it as the drug fueled confusion of an angsty teen. Back out in the main room of the club, I told my friends I thought we should go, that I wasn't feeling well and that the club had a creepy vibe. They wanted to stay though, and so I told them I would meet them outside. I walked out back behind the club, pulled a cigarette out of the pack and began to smoke it slowly when I suddenly noticed a large shadow lurching towards me, limping. Who's there? I asked, not too concerned, but I got no answer. I asked again, but then the shadow hobbled away and I assumed it was some kid on drugs having a bad trip until I heard it retching around the corner, making noises that sounded completely inhuman. It thrashed around, knocking into the trash cans and slamming into a car that was parked on the side of the building. This freaked me out and I ran around the other side of the building so as to avoid it and back inside the club. Sweet Dreams by the Urithmics was pounding over the stereo. At that point, as the DJ was nowhere to be seen, I was totally out of breath and completely scared. I finally found my friends sitting at the bar, totally hammered and they asked me if McDonald's was still open. I finally convinced them to leave, but before we could, a woman with dark red hair stopped us at the door and said thank you for coming, please come again before stamping our hands with a barcode. I found it weird, but just wanted to get the hell out of there and not think about the place again in the car. My friends were way too drunk to talk to them about the things I experienced at the club, so I just kept it to myself, convinced myself that it was nothing to worry about, and just drove us home, back to our respective houses. For some reason, the next day, I had to see the club again. I had to see it in broad daylight. I also had to face it alone, without my friends. There was a sort of peace of mind that I needed closure, even just to see that the club was what I thought it was, totally and completely unremarkable, harmless, just another place and nothing more. I had forced myself to believe that if I saw it in its most harmless state during the day, that I would be able to forget about it. The sound the shadow made as it retched and gagged kept reverberating in my head, and my nausea would return whenever I thought about it, which was almost constantly, even in my dreams. That early morning, when I finally got home and collapsed into bed, the location of the building was very inconspicuous, and I had a bit of trouble finding it again. It sat near railroad tracks, the same tracks I had grown up hearing, the roar of the trains down every night. Eventually, I remembered how we found the club the first time, and I followed the tracks down a dirt road and onto gravel until finally I could see the neon glow of the building. However, when I reached the exact spot the club was at last night, I instead found myself outside of a grocery store. The store was an exact replica from the outside of my local store that I had been going to since I was a small child. You'll never want to leave, a sign said in bold green lettering glowing so bright I couldn't look at it for too long. I got out of my car and considered all of the possibilities. Maybe I was dreaming. Maybe I was on an acid trip and I never even left the club. But there was no logical explanation. The grocery store was supposed to be at least seven miles in the opposite direction, nowhere near train tracks. I leaned up against my car and stared at the store for what seemed like forever. I briefly considered calling one of my friends from the night before, but it seemed useless. They were too drunk to know where they were. Last night I decided to just walk in. When I entered, it was deja vu. The store was the same on the inside as my local grocery store, and the shoppers there didn't seem to notice. Maybe they just didn't know. I walked around aimlessly for a bit, completely dumbfounded as to what was going on in my town. I decided to buy something. A pack of gum. $1. And before I checked out, I went to the bathroom to make sure nobody had written any ominous messages on the mirror. But unlike the club, the store's bathroom was completely clean. Not a blemish. No blood. When I got to the checkout counter, I vaguely recognized the cashier. I paid for the gum and asked him how long this store had been at this location. I don't know. A while, I guess, was all he said. His eyes were dark and gloomy and I couldn't see any emotion in them. I was about to walk away when I noticed his tattoos, a scorpion on his hand and the word trap on his knuckles. I stopped, looked around as if I was expecting expecting someone or something to jump out and attack me. The lights above our heads hummed. Music faintly played over the radio. Didn't I see you at the club last night? I asked. Weren't you the dj? Yeah, I do that too, he said with a laugh that made me uncomfortable, and he just kept staring at me with an emotionless smile. Have a good day. My voice trailed off. Yeah, bro, but it's nighttime, he said. I ran out of the store and sure enough, it was nighttime. Black as a crow. I moved to my car, threw the pack of gum on the passenger seat, and looked back at the store. The neon light emanating from it was now unbearable, and the bright green sign that once read you'll never want to leave had been changed. I want to leave so bad. At this point I was completely sure that I had either lost my mind entirely or that something terrifying was happening. I remember researching for hours on the Internet all the different possibilities. String theory, mental illness, the effect drugs can have on the human psyche, shape shifters and skinwalkers. Everything. Nothing made sense. No one theory fits a narrative. Nothing I researched or had ever heard about up until this time was the piece of this cosmic puzzle that I was looking for. This is the part where I have a hard time discerning reality from fantasy, the messed up places my mind took me while I slept. What I do remember is at around 2am the next night, I had drank enough to gain the courage to drive back to the building. By this time I knew where it was located by heart. The train tracks looked more ominous to me now. My stomach dropped when I saw them and I wanted to turn back and forget about all of this. But something propelled me forward and I continued to follow the track. Drunk driving too fast, more scared of a building than getting pulled over. At least I knew jail was real, and I could feel the bass from the back of my car pounding against my seat as the full moon briefly blinded me and then hid behind the trees just as I pulled up to the exact location of what was a grocery store the last time I saw it. What stood now was a beautiful house. Large glass windows made for natural lighting allowed me to see a packed party full of people dancing and screaming and doing drugs, and I swear I heard someone shout, he's here. But it could have been just my imagination. I again stepped out of my car and leaned against it. I stared at the house party, waiting for someone to greet me or at least acknowledge me. I pulled a couple of shooters of whiskey from my pocket and downed them quickly before marching forward with a false sense of confidence that the voice in the back of my head told me I would regret. I tried to open the door, but it was locked, so I pounded on it and screamed for somebody to let me in, but I only saw shadows float by in the windows. I decided to walk around the back and see if I could get in that way. And then I heard that sound again. It stopped me dead in my tracks and sobered me immediately. It retched, chalked, gagged, screamed, puked, coughed, barked, howled, and struggled to swallow something. It sounded panicked, like it was dying. I turned around and saw its eyes, yellow like the moon and bright as a bonfire. It looked at me with fear and confusion as it began pulling the thing it was trying to swallow whole back from out of its throat. It stood tall, too tall for a normal man, about 8ft. Its knees were all bent backward, and its face was sickeningly malformed. Its flesh was rotting and its smell turned my stomach. Its mouth gaped like a black hole. Its arms were twice as long as its legs. I realized then that the thing I was locking eyes with was the same thing I heard, and that's the shadow I saw two nights prior at the club. It continued to regurgitate what it had swallowed in a morbid, vile manner. It was a girl my age that it had swallowed. After it spit her back out, it grunted, puked, and fled into the bushes a few feet away from where it stood. I asked the girl if she was okay, but she only laughed, and her eyes were the same grotesque yellow as the thing that ate her and then hacked her back up in the yard. Her laughter freaked me out, and as I was about to leave, the slider door opened. A man in a Jason Voorhees mask had flung it open and then pulled me into the party, where a song had just started playing and everyone was wearing shirts that said I want to leave so bad. But they were all smiling and the music was distorted and I regretted ever showing up. And then I saw the DJ again. Same tattoos as before. We have a guest. He shouted through a microphone over the already oppressively loud music. Everyone turned to me, still smiling. I tried to turn back and leave through the slider door I was pulled in through, but when I turned the thing was standing right outside of it, banging on it, yellow eyes peering right at me, crying, begging to be let in. I turned back around and pushed my way through the sea of young people partying. I recognized some of their faces. Some of them I went to school with. Relax. Someone shouted at me. Let him leave. The DJ screamed. He'll be back. I finally reached the front door. I opened it and immediately heard the sound of the thing still pounding on the slider door from the backyard. Its cries spurred me on as I ran to my car and drove away. So if I have to be honest, and I wish I didn't, I spent the next three days drinking and getting high and trying to forget about the location. I had pretty much accepted that something completely out of my control was going on, and I didn't think going back was worth the risk. I fell asleep one night, high on anti anxiety medication and not entirely sure that the feeling of euphoria the drugs were giving me wasn't just another false hope. In that chaotic time, I remember waking up and falling back asleep rhythmically. Every now and then I would wake and drift back off to dreamland. At some point, though, I woke up to the feeling of motion. I was moving and I wasn't entirely sure why, but I figured it was the Xanax making me feel that way. I didn't think anything of it until I heard the sound of a train whistle and the roar of the wheels against the tracks. I jumped out of what I thought was my bed, but was by now just a cabin on a train. I fell to the floor and shouted, where the hell am I? The train halted and I looked out my window. I was pretty sure that the train had stopped at the location. The club, the grocery store, the house party, all were gone. What stood now was absolutely nothing but a graveyard. Thousands of headstones and memorials stretched across the land. I ran the length of the train and forced forced the door open and stepped out. I cautiously entered the graveyard, certain that at any moment the dead would shoot up from the ground and drag me under with them. What actually happened shook me to my core. The first thing I noticed was a shadow. Its shadow off in the distance, 50 to 60 yards off. It was, as usual, grunting and it briefly looked at me and I saw its disgusting yellow eyes again, even from so far away, and I realized it was eating something and I assumed it was a person. What do you want from me? I called out. Being eaten by the thing didn't seem so bad anymore. Why are you torturing me? I walked forward, ready to possibly confront the thing and maybe the DJ if he was there as well, which I assumed he was. Before I could reach the beast, I was stopped in my tracks by a voice from behind. Just make sure they know, the voice said. Know what? I asked as I whirled around. The DJ was standing there, face all distorted and tattooed. Now what do you want me to tell who? I demanded and a tear streamed down my now shallow and sunken cheeks. There is nothing to fear. You were never happy. Nobody is, the DJ said as he sat on one of the tombstones. Whatever happens to you and yours, it was always going to happen. That thing back there eating people, it's not so bad. People eat people all the time. The DJ looked down and opened his jacket, revealing his ribs and organs. I don't understand, was all I could mutter. It doesn't matter. You aren't good enough. Nobody is. Your fate, like everyone else's, will be the same as mine, he said and gestured at his rotting, distorted body. I looked back at the thing and it was gone. And when I looked back at the dj, he was gone too, and I slowly walked over to where the thing had been eating and whatever or whomever it was eating was now gone as well and I felt like the whole situation was gone. I looked over now at where the train had pulled up and now only saw the railroad tracks and by the tracks on the road I saw my car parked, door open, lights on. I started towards my car and as I walked I finally noticed what the tombstones all read. I want to leave so bad. I got in my car and followed the tracks back to my house and not long after I graduated college with a degree in archaeology. I think about these events every day of my life and the effects they had on me. I feel now was the time to write this story as an exorcism of sorts. All I have to say about the situation is what I saw. I can only relay the facts. The interpretation is up to you.
- [20:58]
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- [21:28]
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The Local by R.D. winter My local pub is over 140 years old. I have been buying pints there ever since I was legal or thereabouts. Hell, Jim's family has owned the pub for five generations. If anyone can judge whether you can handle a beer, it's Jim. No one really cares around here anyway. It's a small village in the country where everyone knows each other's business, but no one tells the question Coppers looking back. Maybe that's where the trouble really began. The secrets, the silence. Like I said, it's my local. I pop in most nights for one on my way home. Or I used to before the accident. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Since the crash, I find it difficult to hold on to a train of thought for too long before it pulls away from me and I'm left there, sitting on the platform just watching the empty tracks. I need to start from the beginning. If not for myself, for you. This needs to end here. So I head in there on Friday as usual, propping up my end of the bar as normal. I'm driving so only have the one. I'm sure of that. Very sure. The police refused, refused to believe me, of course, insisting I must have been well over the limit and the hospital's test wasn't accurate. I had lost too much blood by then anyway. That's not important. Not really. I know I've never been drunk enough to imagine something like this. I walked out of the pub. It was about 6:30pm and the sky was a golden red where I could see it elbowing its way through the trees. Though it was the evening, I could remember thinking how calm and warm it was and that it should be a nice day on Saturday. Too busy thinking about the future. I didn't realize that my present wasn't so much a gift as a nightmare waiting to wrap me up. I rolled down the windows as soon as I got into my car. It was a banger, so if I didn't want to overheat quicker than the engine, it was necessary. One of the nurses said it was probably what saved my life. Less glass in the wounds. He was wrong, but I appreciated the sentiment. I also heard one of the nurses in the hospital confirm to the cops that I had been wearing a seatbelt. I think that's when they were trying the attempted suicide angle. Funny how coppers hear who hooves and think zebras. I pulled the car out of the pub car park, easing it onto the country roads. I don't speed on the back roads where I live. The hedges are mostly granite under the bushes, so any kid that grew up here knows better. Even the police had to admit the brake marks on the road confirmed I was only doing between 20 and 26 miles per hour max when I swerved. But I'm getting ahead of myself again, no matter how many times I tell this story, and trust me, that's a lot by the time you count the police, the doctors, the nurses, the psychiatrists, every single one of them wanting to hear it over and over and over again. And I know how it sounds, honestly I do. I get it. If I had heard the story a few months ago sitting in my local, I'd have laughed and offered to buy the teller a pint for the entertainment. So anyway, there I was driving down the back roads, heading home. It's a 10 minute journey at most and one I do so often I sometimes find myself zoning out, surprised when I pulled up to my drive, marveling at my ability to navigate like a homing pigeon. The roads are generally quiet, especially outside of tourist season, so it's usually just me in the woods and whatever lives in them. I don't remember seeing any other thing, not even a bird or a fox. Until I see him. The farmer. I described him as a farmer from the start. When you live in the country you learn to spot them. There's something in their walk and weather beaten fish face which shows they are in a constant battle with nature and everyone knows she's a cruel mistress. Hard life farming, backbreaking work which never appealed to me. I got an office job in the nearest town as soon as I could. A couple of the neighbors thought I was a snob for it, no doubt, but I'm not made for farming. The psychiatrist had asked me if I had ever felt like an outsider in my village. I never used to. The farmer was dressed in typical farmer clothing, but something about him felt strange from the get go. It wasn't the gun though the police sure did love that. What type of gun was it? Was it loaded? Did he point it at you? All these questions like I was some kind of gunslinger. I had no damn idea about most of it. A rifle I think. God knows if it was loaded. How the hell would I know that and no, he never even looked at me, not even once, not even when he walked directly in front of my car. He had stormed out from the woods behind the pub and into the road before I could blink, and without thinking, I'd swerved. I had never even hit a rabbit before, and I sure wasn't going to start with a farmer if I could help it. But I had never swerved like this either. I can remember how the thoughts slid through my brain as my hands worked as if in slow motion on the wheel as the car veered across the road. Should I steer into it? No, that's ice. Tree or hedge? Tree. Would I stop in time? No, I hit the tree, driver side on. I don't remember much, just the pain taking root in the core of me and flowering out into my body. And the blood was everywhere, though I couldn't tell where it was coming from because it felt as though every inch of me hurt. I knew immediately with dreadful certainty that this was the type of pain that changes a person if there was a person left behind after it at all. I must have blacked out then, because I don't remember calling for help, which wouldn't have come anyway. I was too far away from the pub for them to hear, and the nearest home was mine, useless and soulless, a mile or so further down the road. When I eventually woke, the women were there helping me. I distinctly remember how soothing it was to open my eyes and realize help had arrived. The pain was still there, of course, but suffering it so much easier in the company. One lady, the one I think of as the blonde lady, was cradling my head in her lap. I later found out in hospital she had practically held my skull together like a cracked egg leaking yolk onto her white skull skirt. They had somehow pulled my unconscious, broken body out of the wreckage. At the time, I don't think I even thought about that. I was glad I could see the sky, though. The sun was setting and the sky was a beautiful symphony of pinks and reds. I remember thinking I could just fade away, bleeding out on the tarmac in a twisted caricature of the blood red sun in the sky and be without pain, my broken tune adding to the harmony. But the women, the women pulled me through. I'm not sure how long we waited there in the road before the ambulance arrived. The pub had called them. The police had been interested in that, wanting to know how they had known about my accident. I told them it must have been the second lady, the one I call the whispering lady to be Honest, though, I don't remember much about her. Even now, I remember her comforting me for a while, singing songs in my ear and whispering promises of how I would survive, about how I would get through this nightmare. I do remember how grateful I was to her, though. I held onto her voice when I thought I couldn't bear the weight of my pain. And she carried me through. I believed her. I trusted her. Maybe I shouldn't have. When the paramedics arrived, they peeled me off the road like a scab. The pain was white hot and all encompassing. Both ladies tried to soothe it with their cold hands and low words. My last memory before blacking out again was of their fate. Faces, eyes desperate and mouths begging me to live. With hindsight, I should have listened. I should have bled out there in those woods, in that canopy of trees, under my blood red sun. Maybe that would have finished this whole thing. My body healed eventually, though. After months in the hospital, I was allowed home. I struggled to remember what had happened. At first, when I began assembling my fragments of memories from before the crash, it felt like I was trying to reassemble a broken mirror. No matter how I placed the pieces, it never felt right. The vision was never clear. Maybe that's why I was so insistent on finding the women, to find out what had really happened. Hoping they could hold up the mirror, smiling, and I would be whole again. See? No. Seven years bad luck for you. I was wrong, of course. I placed an advert in the local paper to trace them and to thank them for saving my life. And within two days, my life was changed. But I'm getting ahead of myself again. This is important. You have to know what happened to believe me. And you have to believe me. For both our sakes. The police had tried to trace the women, of course, and the farmer. But there were no leads. The paramedics confirmed what little description I was able to give of the women and informed the police that the women had saved my life by being there that evening. I believed that too. The police eventually wrote it all off as an accident. They were dangerous roads. A near fatal car crash wasn't unusual, but like me, they believed that something about this didn't feel right. I could tell that they thought it was me. Maybe I'd been drunk or suicidal, but I wasn't. And I'm not well, not then, at least. It was the psychiatrist who had suggested tracing the women for my own peace of mind. She had thought they might be more willing to get in touch directly with me rather than the police. She sure was right about that. I placed an advert with a simple thank you message and a number to get in touch. Most of me was hopeful that I would hear from them and that it'd turn out that they were distant relatives of a family down the road. I'd take them for a meal in my local and we'd laugh about this. But I think a part of me always knew that the truth was nestled deep down inside my scar tissue, and I was picking at it with dirty fingers insistent on opening the fresh wounds. I didn't have to wait long. Two days after my advert was published, I had a call, though it wasn't from the women. A man called in the middle of the night and left a voicemail. He didn't leave a name or a contact number, but I knew who he was. He told me that he was sorry and that I would hear from the women soon. They had saved my life, but that I had made certain deals which I needed to make good. He knew this because he had made those same deals on the same day at the same place 33 years before, with the same women. Like I said, he never said he was the farmer, but I knew it. I listened to that short message over and over again. I could hear the sorrow and emptiness in his voice. I imagine mine will be like that soon. The ladies arrived that night. They didn't knock. They were just there in my front room, standing by my coffee table when I walked in from the kitchen. I should have been surprised, but I wasn't. Since the voicemail I'd been expecting. Expecting them, maybe I'd been expecting them ever since the crash. The women looked as I remembered. They weren't threatening, but I was very aware of their presence, as if I was standing in the room with two lions or other deadly predators. I suppose I was. Neither of them spoke until the whispering lady held up a small bag which was filled with a writhing, opaque yellowish blob about the size of a kitten. I yearned for it with all of my being. Your soul was all she whispered, and I knew it to be true. I had given them my soul when I was bleeding there on the tarmac. It had seemed so small and unimportant at the time, and I thought they would protect it. My eyes welled with tears and I held out my hands, imploring them to return it. They stared at me with impassive eyes, studying me like a fisherman would a fish before pulling the hook from its mouth. You promised us 33 years worth of souls. Give us this and yours will be returned. Her whisper was soft, but her words hit me hard. I knew I'd have to make good. I can't live without the final shard of my mirror. I nodded and they vanished, taking my precious soul with them. They'll be back soon. I know this. I belong to them now. And soon they'll take all of me. I am their new farmer, their reaper of souls. So if you see me walking out of the woods one day, no, I'm sorry. And don't make promises you'll live to regret. Or even better, don't swerve it.
- [37:09]
C
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