Speaker 1: Calorogu Shark Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Ghost Scary Stories and the Hunger.
This is episode four The Feast.
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving Day arrived in silence, no wind, no snow. The
blizzard had stopped, but we were buried. The windows on
the first floor showed nothing but white. We were in
a tomb of ice and snow. Marcus had been cooking
all night. The smell filled every room, seeped into our clothes,
our hair, our dreams. I dreamed of feasting of meat
so tender it fell off, bones, of flavor so rich
it made me weep. I woke with my mouth full
of saliva and Emma shaking me. Mom, you were trying
to leave the room, sleep walking toward the kitchen. I
wasn't the only one. David had to be physically restrained
by Pete. Dana was found standing at the kitchen doorway,
staring at Marcus as he worked, tears streaming down her
face from hunger. We need to eat something, Patricia said, anything.
We're getting weak, But we'd tried. The canned goods tasted
like ash, the crackers like dust. Nothing satisfied except the
smell of what Marcus was preparing. At noon, Marcus announced,
the table is set, the feast is prepared. The guest
of honor will arrive at sundown. We looked into the
dining room. The table was magnificent, turkey, golden and glistening,
hams studded with cloves, bowls of stuffing that steamed impossibly hot,
pies that seemed to breathe with warmth, wine that caught
the light like liquid rubies. And the thirteen empty chairs
were now filled not with people with shadows, shadows that
had faces. If you looked sideways, all the family members
from eighteen seventy four, from nineteen twenty four, from nineteen
seventy four, all sitting patiently, hands folded, waiting. Don't look
at them directly. Pete warned, They're not really there. They're
what we could become. Emma pulled me aside. Mum, I
found something while you were sleeping. She showed me pages
from the journal, not torn out, but hidden, folded into
the binding. Mary Brennan's writing continued, Unless we refuse the feast,
and Thomas's curse works only if we choose to eat,
choose to feed, choose to continue the cycle. If we starve,
truly starve, refuse all food, no matter how tempting. The
hunger dies with us. The wendigo cannot force us to eat,
It can only make us want to. The choice is
always ours. But more important, I discovered why Josiah killed Thomas.
Thomas had found something in the caves, something older than
the native people's, an alter a presence. He was going
to make a deal with it, trade the family for power.
Josiah killed him to stop him, but too late. Thomas
had already touched the Altar, already made contact. When we
ate him, we ate that connection. We became the Altar.
Emma looked at me, Mum, we can end this. We
just have to not eat, no matter what. We're already starving.
I pointed out, how long can we last? Longer than sunset?
That's all we need. I wanted to believe her, but
the smell from the dining room was overwhelming. My stomach
cramped with hunger, real hunger, now not supernatural. We hadn't
eaten in over twenty four hours. At three pm, Patricia cracked.
She ran into the dining room, grabbed a dinner roll.
Pete tackled her before she could bite it. The role
crumbled in her hands, revealing maggots, thousands of them, she screamed,
clawing at her hands to get them off. When we
looked again, the role was perfect, golden steaming, No maggots.
It's playing with us, Pete said, showing us what the
food really is, then hiding it again. Four PM. As
the sun began to set. We could tell by the
dimming of the snow against the windows. Marcus stood at
the head of the table. He comes, Marcus announced, in
that voice that wasn't his, The father of our hunger,
the birth of our curse. Thomas Brennan, who was murdered,
who was consumed, who became consumption itself. The front door opened,
not unlocked, not forced, simply opened as if it was
never closed. The cold that entered wasn't winter cold. It
was deeper, the cold of spaces between stars, the cold
of endings. Thomas Brennan entered, or what Thomas had become.
Eight feet tall now his body was a mockery of
human form, stretched twisted, made of hunger given shape. His
skin was tight over bones that were too long, too many.
His fingers dragged on the floor. His mouth opened sideways,
showing rows of teeth that went back back back into darkness.
But his eyes, his eyes were human, suffering aware. He
sat at the head of the table. The shadow figures
all turned to face him. Marcus stood beside him like
a waiter. The feast, Thomas said, his voice like wind
through a rib cage, begins now. Marcus began serving, placing
plates before each shadow figure, then before us, the living
family members. The food was perfect, beyond perfect. It smelled
of every happy thanksgiving, every family gathering, every moment of
warmth and love and belonging. Eat, Thomas commanded, No, I
said to Thomas's head turned toward me. The movement was wrong,
like his neck had too many joints. You will eat,
or Emma will be eaten. No, Emma said, standing beside me.
We know the truth. You can't make us eat, You
can only make us want to. Thomas laughed. The sound
broke windows. Want you think this is about want? Look
at yourselves? He was right. We were wasting away. I
could see my own bones through my skin. Emma's face
was gaunt, David was shaking, Diana had collapsed. Three days
I've been starving you, Thomas continued, three days of preparation.
Your bodies are eating themselves. Your minds are breaking, and now,
at the moment of greatest hunger, I offer you salvation.
Eat and live, refuse and die anyway we choose to
die human, I said human. Thomas stood his head, brushing
the ceiling. You haven't been human since eighteen seventy four.
You are all my children, my blood, my hunger. Watch,
he gestured. Marcus's face began to change, elongating his teeth,
multiplying his fingers, stretching. The youngest generation carries its strongest,
Thomas explained, each generation more Wendigo than human. Emma, there,
she's practically mine already. I looked at Emma in horror.
Her eyes were clouding, white frost spreading from the edges. Mum,
she whispered, I'm so hungry, so hungry. Fight it, baby,
fight it. But David had already gbed his fork. I'm sorry,
he said, I'm so sorry. He took a bite of turkey.
The change was instant. His body convulsed, stretched, his human
form tearing apart as something else emerged, another Wendigo, smaller
than Thomas but growing. Dana followed, then Patricia, each bite
transforming them. Peter and I held Emma between us, as
she thrashed her body, trying to transform. Let me go,
she screamed, in a voice becoming less human. Let me eat.
Thomas laughed. You see, the hunger was always yours. I'm
just the excuse, the permission. Josiah knew that when he
killed me, he needed someone to blame for what he
wanted to do. Anyway, That's when I saw it on
the wall in Mary Brennan's handwriting, no appearing as I watched,
as if she was writing it now. The altar still
exists in the cave. Break it and break the curse.
Thomas saw it too. His roar shook the cabin. You
will not. But Emma had seen it, and in a
moment of clarity, her eyes human again, she did something
I didn't expect. She bit her own hand, drew blood,
and spoke, I transfer the choosing, I transfer the hunger.
I transfer the curse to you. Thomas Brennan thrice spoken,
blood sealed, willingly given. Thomas froze. You can't, you wrote
the rules in Josiah's journal. Emma said, the chosen one
can transfer the hunger to another of the blood. You're
of the blood, you are the blood, and I choose you.
Thomas's form began to shift, collapse, the hunger turning inward. No,
I am the hunger. I cannot hunger for myself exactly,
Emma said. Thomas began to eat his own fingers, then
his hands, his arms, consuming himself in an endless loop
of hunger feeding on hunger. The transformed family members David, Diana, Patricia,
Marcus began to convulse, the wendigo forms, fighting with their
human selves the altar. I shouted, we need to destroy
the altar. Peter and I ran for the cellar behind us.
Thomas's screams were becoming something else, something like crying. In
the cave, past the bones, we found it, an obsidian stone,
natural but wrong, covered in symbols that hurt to look at,
and in its center a handprint human sized together, Pete said,
we placed our hands on the stone. It was warm, alive,
beating like a heart, and in my mind a voice
not Thomas, older, hungrier. You would break the bargain, yes,
I said, Then you will take his place. The altar
requires a guardian, a hunger, a witness to the feast
that never ends. No, Pete said, we refuse, then all die,
Then all die. We agreed. We pushed the altar cracked,
light poured out. No, not light, the absence of darkness,
the negation of hunger above us. The screaming stopped. We
ran upstairs to find the dining room empty, no feast,
no shadows, no Thomas. Our family members lay on the floor,
human again but unconscious. Emma sat in a chair, exhausted
but smiling. It's gone, she said, I can feel it.
The hunger is gone. Outside, the snow had stopped, actually stopped,
and through the buried windows we could see light, sunset,
real sunset. But on the table, one plate remained with
a single piece of paper. I picked it up. It
was in Josiah's handwriting, but fresh ink. The hunger never dies,
it only sleeps, and when it wakes, it will be
hungrier than before. The altar is broken, but not destroyed.
The curse is lifted, but not ended. Every family has
its hungers, every table has its empty seats. And someday,
when the winter is long and the food runs out,
someone will make the same choice I did. Someone always does.
Happy Thanksgiving, Josiah Brennan ps check the cellar. We looked
at each other. Pete grabbed a flashlight in the cellar.
In the cave where the altar had been was a
new journal, leather bound, empty, waiting, and the first page
had writing, my writing, though I hadn't written it. November
twenty fifth, twenty twenty five. The storm has passed. The
family survived, But I can still smell the feast, still
feel the hunger. It's not gone, it's waiting. We are
all waiting for the next storm, the next Thanksgiving, the
next time someone is hungry enough to make the wrong choice.
Emma took the journal from me, threw it in the fireplace,
but we all knew it didn't matter. Somewhere, in some
other family's cabin, another journal would appear, another hunger would wake.
We left that afternoon, digging out cars with desperate efficiency.
No one spoke about what happened. No one mentioned the
scratches that were already healing on the walls. No one
talked about the dreams we'd have, the hunger that would
never quite leave. But as we drove away, I saw
Emma looking back, and in the reflection of the car window,
just for a moment, I swear I saw Thomas, not
the monster, the man, young, healthy human. He was crying
and mouthing two words thank you, or maybe it was
I'm sorry, or maybe it was still hungry. We didn't
go back to check. We never will. But every Thanksgiving
when we sit down to eat, we remember, We say grace,
we give thanks, and we try not to think about
how good the meat smells, how tender it would be,
how easy it would be to make the same choice,
how hungry we really are. The Brennan family curse isn't broken.
It's sleeping, and we are its keepers now, the guardians
of a hunger that must never be fed again until
someone does. Someone always does.
Speaker 2: Ghost Scary Stories is a production of Calaroga Shark Media.
Some elements of AI may have been used in this production,
but it was written, edited, mixed, and produced by Real
Live People Executive producers Mark Francis and John McDermott