Speaker 1: Welcome to May's Mouth, a Ghostwax interlude. May's Mouth is
set in the worlds of Ghostwax, but is a shade
darker and contains graphic content. Listener discretion is advised. Episode four,
Other People's Basements.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, shit, shit, shit, shit shit, just keeping the bush.
Speaker 3: The cushions stopped, but his stomach is open.
Speaker 4: What what's that?
Speaker 3: A guard dog?
Speaker 2: We can't we can't get out of here.
Speaker 3: No, if there's a god dog, there's something to God.
Speaker 4: Ben is going to die.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, we gotta get him to a hospital.
We gonna call nine one one or something.
Speaker 3: Nobody is coming. We just emptied three handguns and a
shotgun in a residential neighborhood ten minutes ago, and there's
no sirens. Nobody is coming.
Speaker 5: Wrong bandwidth, but maybe she's right. The front door was
open and Ben's left hand was laying on the front step,
so I don't know.
Speaker 4: I went to get it. It seemed like I should
just leave it out there. I picked it up, looked.
Speaker 6: And the old guy across the street was staring at me.
He fucking waved at me like I'm not covered in
blood and holding a severed human hand.
Speaker 4: So I waved back with three hands. He didn't flinch.
Speaker 7: They can't see.
Speaker 6: Shit, can't hear shit, And for once, I don't think
it's because of me.
Speaker 2: His place is blanked out.
Speaker 8: Why the fuck has no one killed me yet?
Speaker 2: Oh jesus, you're conscious.
Speaker 3: Shit.
Speaker 5: Did you want me to put your hand on ice
or something?
Speaker 8: No, I want you to fucking put a bullet in
my hand, you piece of shirt shit?
Speaker 4: Who where are the extra clips?
Speaker 3: We aren't killing him?
Speaker 4: Oh, well that's rude.
Speaker 3: Oh, we don't have time to fight about this. But
we are too close. There's a way into the maze
in that fucking basement, and he is coming with us.
Speaker 4: My sure, whatever you say.
Speaker 3: Get his legs, are they still attached?
Speaker 8: Give me a gun. I'll kill fig and then I'll
do myself.
Speaker 7: It's good of you. Well you're coming with us.
Speaker 8: Fucking hurt, didn't drink? God damn matter with you? People?
Speaker 3: Just trust me.
Speaker 7: I always trusted you.
Speaker 3: Just trust me.
Speaker 2: I head hurts, don't chase its fucking crush.
Speaker 4: Fuck whatever is the matter?
Speaker 2: You fucking scared me?
Speaker 4: Oh God, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: You got shot. You got shot in the head, and
a big chunk of it. It fucking hanging off. You can't
sneak up on people with a chunk of your head
is hanging off. That should be a rule.
Speaker 7: Sorry, heads empty?
Speaker 4: What's it always lemonade? What do we do with it?
Speaker 1: You got the hell on with it?
Speaker 3: I'll just leave it. What's the lady thing doing.
Speaker 7: Making lemonade?
Speaker 2: Apparently?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Fine?
Speaker 7: Leave it.
Speaker 9: On every street you've ever lived in, there were houses, yards, windows,
rooms you never saw that no one saw. And there
were basements.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of shit down here.
Speaker 3: Stop looking for what.
Speaker 7: A guys?
Speaker 2: What is it? Funny feeling?
Speaker 3: Follow it? Follow that feeling?
Speaker 6: What?
Speaker 2: Why do I?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 8: I don't. I don't hunt.
Speaker 4: Going into shock? Just father the light man.
Speaker 7: That's not it.
Speaker 3: He's not bleeding anymore.
Speaker 5: Ah, I'll be damned.
Speaker 3: There really is an entrance here.
Speaker 2: What do you mean? What are you saying?
Speaker 3: I never told you all of the grizzly details of
the night Cooper was taken. Some unpleasant bits have become relevant.
People king under behind inside everything.
Speaker 2: Speak the fuck up, miss Molly.
Speaker 10: I cannot believe we haven't shared all the intel on
the extra dimensions we are all after.
Speaker 2: But please do fucking spill.
Speaker 3: I I so that night there was a storm. Nothing
on the weather report, so my dad would have called
and warned me about it. Just suddenly battering water on
the windows. Cooper yelped from upstairs, and I went up.
I did the whole storms out, bad rains good for flowers.
Flowers are good for bunnies. You love bunnies, Song and dance?
Speaker 4: Did you hear that boiler noises?
Speaker 3: I went downstairs, trying not to think about how I
was going to have to do twice as many of
those kind of parent speeches and have half the margin
of err on fucking up. When when Cooper screamed again different,
I went back up. I remember, I remember the stairs
seemed to creak so loud. He was under the covers shaking.
I did my best. I hugged him, told him that
sometimes bad dreams seemed like they follow you out of sleep.
He said there was a man in his Closetesh, yeah,
that been going on a while, said there was a
lady in his closet watching him. We'd been making progress,
he was getting braver, but wow, the storm.
Speaker 7: I looked.
Speaker 3: I did the five point inspection with a flashlight, talked
about being brave. I told him I told him that
it's just a bad dream, and that bad dreams can
be blown away like smoke if you just tell them
they aren't real. Hi, eh, I remember, I remember just
ignoring the mud in the closet, like, oh, you know, kids,
stuff gets dirty. Right thinking back on it, it was
wet right, hi. Shit, If I'm honest, My big glass
of wine was on the table downstairs and I really
wanted to get back to it when I heard him
screaming again.
Speaker 7: You aren't real, you aren't real, over and over. You
aren't real, You aren't real. But his fear was so
real I knew, are you right away?
Speaker 3: Oh god, I am. I don't really remember what went
through my mind. It's like those neighbors outside me. Maybe
some stuff you kind of wipe out for self preservation.
Here the thing could have been mistaken for a person
at a distance, but the clothes were just more skin,
and the hair was it was like thin worms. I
can't picture much, but oh god, the sound his little voice,
Oh oh fuck.
Speaker 7: He called for me, Mummy, mummy, no, mummy, Christ.
Speaker 3: It had him and I just attacked it like like
an animal. I got a big chunk of its arm
in my mouth and I bicked down. Its bones were
like spongy, and its blood was oil. I clawed at
its base, tried to gouge at its eyes, but it
didn't fucking have any. But it did have the teeth.
It smiled at me. It opened its mouth. I'll never
get this out of my head. It just slowly pushed
out its tongue. It had like all this white scarring
on it, this white pattern on the dark purple flesh.
It looked like a map, like on the back of
a cereal box, kind of map. And its teeth were
all bloody night.
Speaker 2: Please, please, just God, just don't tell us anymore.
Speaker 3: No, I have to tell you how how so it
watched me, let me tie myself out, and then I
don't really know, but it hit me. It hit me.
And when I was little, I remember wandering into the
surf when my parents went looking, and getting just rocked
by a wave. Everything just turns into spinning. He was
so helpless. My limbs just exploded as I tumbled across
the ground, slammed into what was left of the Cooper's bed.
The banister went straight through my stomach. I don't know
how I got myself, you know, unimpaled, But the next
thing I remember, well two things. I remember knowing how
I was dying, and I remember being determined to die,
crawling after it, trying to attack it for what it
had done, like I'd earned some kind of runners up award,
like the heroics mattered. I crawled. I fucking crawled where
the closet was. The back of the closet there was
this hallway, portraits on the wall, all of Cooper. I
crawled and crawled, and I realized I didn't hurt. I
wasn't bleeding anymore. I crawled I don't know how long,
but after a while I could stand. After a while
I was running. I ran, and I must have gotten
turned around, because I wound up running right back out
of the closet. And when I turned around, the entrance
was gone. And after that, the police, the funeral, the reporters,
home invasion gone wrong, man hunt for feral dog. No
one knew shit. I half thought it was a psychotic
break myself.
Speaker 2: So what the maze heels you and it can heal people?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I never knew if it was something
that Snatcher did too to torture me more, let me
live with it, or what? Then? He's still with us.
Speaker 8: I'm alive.
Speaker 3: I think that's decent evidence both that the maze doesn't
let you die and that it's close.
Speaker 4: I think, so help me move this. We did it? Damn?
Speaker 7: What is that.
Speaker 6: This?
Speaker 2: It's just mirrored? Does it look like yeah, looked like a.
Speaker 8: Cyst, like can cancerous cells.
Speaker 2: But it's a cinder block wall. It's a cinder block
wall with cancer.
Speaker 4: Okay, So do we cut into it?
Speaker 2: That's your solution to everything?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 5: I mean, we've all seen doors and windows and shit.
Speaker 4: This isn't that. It's like sealed over? Is it permeable?
Speaker 5: I don't even know what I'm looking at.
Speaker 4: Do we push on it?
Speaker 2: Help me up?
Speaker 8: I'll do it. I'm fucked anyway.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, maybe this isn't such a good idea.
Speaker 8: We haven't come this far to back off now.
Speaker 2: Uh oh, bucket, yeah, what are you doing? Oh my god,
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 5: Well, I guess you won't need this extra hand.
Speaker 8: Feels incredible. Hu huh, look at it. It even has
the tan line from my wedding ring.
Speaker 2: Why did you do that?
Speaker 8: I just felt I felt like I should that I
had to.
Speaker 3: I felt like that earlier. I just told the thing,
that thing that was pretended to be the little girl
who lived here. I told it to die. I don't
know why I didn't and it did.
Speaker 5: I don't know why I thought that was a coincidence.
Speaker 8: Okay, there's empty space behind this. We stay calm, fig
come with him back to the truck to get the stuff. Molly, VICKI,
you finish your top to bottom of this basement. See
if there's any other ways in. We don't know how
lung until they come to check on this site or
they're already on their way. Time is a factor, so
we go.
Speaker 4: Now, Oh good, the pause is all better.
Speaker 8: You want to be in charge?
Speaker 5: Fucking no, let's go.
Speaker 3: I can't believe we found it. I'm never going back in.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I'm really mad at you. I'm really happy too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sorry. I should have told you everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's okay. How I knew I was right?
Speaker 3: Huh?
Speaker 2: I knew she was alive?
Speaker 3: Your daughter? H yeah, Kayley, yeah, Kayley.
Speaker 2: Everyone said it was my fault.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 10: I can't wait to put her in her best little
dress and and parayed her around in front of him.
Fucking show them, fucking show them, you know, you know
after Stay took Kayley, after.
Speaker 2: Day took her, everyone said the most terrible things to me.
Did she did? She ran away? That even.
Speaker 10: My mom, my own mom, testified in court about this stuff.
You were a bad mom.
Speaker 2: You left her alone. My mom comes over and finds
Kaylee alone. And I was going for like an hour.
Speaker 7: It's like an hour.
Speaker 10: It's it's fine, but you know, stuff happens, Kids get hurt,
and like you can't be there all the time.
Speaker 2: And I did what I could and it's my fault.
How many Mother of the Year awards did she win? None? Right,
I was a better mom than she ever was. I
didn't do anything to them, and it was my daughter.
Speaker 10: It was gone taking the spider snatched her up, and I.
Speaker 2: Did what I had to do, you know, you know, suddenly.
Speaker 10: They're looking through old pictures, old photos and oh, oh
that's a bruise. I'm look how skinny she is here,
like like kids have bruises, kids go through growth spurts, And.
Speaker 2: I mean, sure, you know exactly what I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people don't understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like your kid got killed. Mine just disappeared.
Speaker 10: Like I can't even imagine how much people said you
He's like Hey, you failed him, right for how you
fox up?
Speaker 2: Probably lots thought you did it.
Speaker 3: People people don't know how to deal with this kind
of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we're gonna show them. We're gonna show them. Yeah,
she's alive.
Speaker 7: I knew it.
Speaker 2: You're gonna find her.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Ghost Wax, a production of
Foreign Tall Tales. Find us at Foreign Tall Tales dot
squarespace dot com. If you like the show, please rate
and review and consider joining us on Patreon at Patreon
dot com. Slash far and Tall Tales. Ghost Wax is
written and directed by Robert Knutson, production and editing by
Aaron Schoenrock, with music by Colton war And. This episode
features Michael mcgeekon as Ben, Abigail Ramsdale as Molly, Adrian
Northam as Vig, Allison Cossett as Vicky, and Billie joe'connes
as Mom,