Speaker 1: Welcome to May's Mouth, a Ghostwax interlude. May's Mouth is
Speaker 1: set in the worlds of Ghostwax, but is a shade
Speaker 1: darker and contains graphic content. Listener discretion is advised. Episode four,
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: We gonna call nine one one or something.
Speaker 3: Nobody is coming. We just emptied three handguns and a
Speaker 3: shotgun in a residential neighborhood ten minutes ago, and there's
Speaker 3: no sirens. Nobody is coming.
Speaker 5: Wrong bandwidth, but maybe she's right. The front door was
Speaker 5: open and Ben's left hand was laying on the front step,
Speaker 5: so I don't know.
Speaker 4: I went to get it. It seemed like I should
Speaker 4: just leave it out there. I picked it up, looked.
Speaker 6: And the old guy across the street was staring at me.
Speaker 6: He fucking waved at me like I'm not covered in
Speaker 6: 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
Speaker 6: 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
Speaker 5: or something?
Speaker 8: No, I want you to fucking put a bullet in
Speaker 8: 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
Speaker 3: we are too close. There's a way into the maze
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 8: 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
Speaker 2: a big chunk of it. It fucking hanging off. You can't
Speaker 2: sneak up on people with a chunk of your head
Speaker 2: 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,
Speaker 9: rooms you never saw that no one saw. And there
Speaker 9: 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
Speaker 3: the night Cooper was taken. Some unpleasant bits have become relevant.
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 10: 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
Speaker 3: on the weather report, so my dad would have called
Speaker 3: and warned me about it. Just suddenly battering water on
Speaker 3: the windows. Cooper yelped from upstairs, and I went up.
Speaker 3: I did the whole storms out, bad rains good for flowers.
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 3: was going to have to do twice as many of
Speaker 3: those kind of parent speeches and have half the margin
Speaker 3: of err on fucking up. When when Cooper screamed again different,
Speaker 3: I went back up. I remember, I remember the stairs
Speaker 3: seemed to creak so loud. He was under the covers shaking.
Speaker 3: I did my best. I hugged him, told him that
Speaker 3: sometimes bad dreams seemed like they follow you out of sleep.
Speaker 3: He said there was a man in his Closetesh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that been going on a while, said there was a
Speaker 3: lady in his closet watching him. We'd been making progress,
Speaker 3: he was getting braver, but wow, the storm.
Speaker 7: I looked.
Speaker 3: I did the five point inspection with a flashlight, talked
Speaker 3: about being brave. I told him I told him that
Speaker 3: it's just a bad dream, and that bad dreams can
Speaker 3: be blown away like smoke if you just tell them
Speaker 3: they aren't real. Hi, eh, I remember, I remember just
Speaker 3: ignoring the mud in the closet, like, oh, you know, kids,
Speaker 3: stuff gets dirty. Right thinking back on it, it was
Speaker 3: wet right, hi. Shit, If I'm honest, My big glass
Speaker 3: of wine was on the table downstairs and I really
Speaker 3: wanted to get back to it when I heard him
Speaker 3: screaming again.
Speaker 7: You aren't real, you aren't real, over and over. You
Speaker 7: aren't real, You aren't real. But his fear was so
Speaker 7: real I knew, are you right away?
Speaker 3: Oh god, I am. I don't really remember what went
Speaker 3: through my mind. It's like those neighbors outside me. Maybe
Speaker 3: some stuff you kind of wipe out for self preservation.
Speaker 3: Here the thing could have been mistaken for a person
Speaker 3: at a distance, but the clothes were just more skin,
Speaker 3: and the hair was it was like thin worms. I
Speaker 3: can't picture much, but oh god, the sound his little voice,
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 3: an animal. I got a big chunk of its arm
Speaker 3: in my mouth and I bicked down. Its bones were
Speaker 3: like spongy, and its blood was oil. I clawed at
Speaker 3: its base, tried to gouge at its eyes, but it
Speaker 3: didn't fucking have any. But it did have the teeth.
Speaker 3: It smiled at me. It opened its mouth. I'll never
Speaker 3: get this out of my head. It just slowly pushed
Speaker 3: out its tongue. It had like all this white scarring
Speaker 3: on it, this white pattern on the dark purple flesh.
Speaker 3: It looked like a map, like on the back of
Speaker 3: a cereal box, kind of map. And its teeth were
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 3: watched me, let me tie myself out, and then I
Speaker 3: don't really know, but it hit me. It hit me.
Speaker 3: And when I was little, I remember wandering into the
Speaker 3: surf when my parents went looking, and getting just rocked
Speaker 3: by a wave. Everything just turns into spinning. He was
Speaker 3: so helpless. My limbs just exploded as I tumbled across
Speaker 3: the ground, slammed into what was left of the Cooper's bed.
Speaker 3: The banister went straight through my stomach. I don't know
Speaker 3: how I got myself, you know, unimpaled, But the next
Speaker 3: thing I remember, well two things. I remember knowing how
Speaker 3: I was dying, and I remember being determined to die,
Speaker 3: crawling after it, trying to attack it for what it
Speaker 3: had done, like I'd earned some kind of runners up award,
Speaker 3: like the heroics mattered. I crawled. I fucking crawled where
Speaker 3: the closet was. The back of the closet there was
Speaker 3: this hallway, portraits on the wall, all of Cooper. I
Speaker 3: crawled and crawled, and I realized I didn't hurt. I
Speaker 3: wasn't bleeding anymore. I crawled I don't know how long,
Speaker 3: but after a while I could stand. After a while
Speaker 3: I was running. I ran, and I must have gotten
Speaker 3: turned around, because I wound up running right back out
Speaker 3: of the closet. And when I turned around, the entrance
Speaker 3: was gone. And after that, the police, the funeral, the reporters,
Speaker 3: home invasion gone wrong, man hunt for feral dog. No
Speaker 3: one knew shit. I half thought it was a psychotic
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 3: that Snatcher did too to torture me more, let me
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 2: 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,
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 8: 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
Speaker 8: had to.
Speaker 3: I felt like that earlier. I just told the thing,
Speaker 3: that thing that was pretended to be the little girl
Speaker 3: who lived here. I told it to die. I don't
Speaker 3: 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
Speaker 8: come with him back to the truck to get the stuff. Molly, VICKI,
Speaker 8: you finish your top to bottom of this basement. See
Speaker 8: if there's any other ways in. We don't know how
Speaker 8: lung until they come to check on this site or
Speaker 8: they're already on their way. Time is a factor, so
Speaker 8: 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
Speaker 10: dress and and parayed her around in front of him.
Speaker 10: Fucking show them, fucking show them, you know, you know
Speaker 10: after Stay took Kayley, after.
Speaker 2: Day took her, everyone said the most terrible things to me.
Speaker 2: Did she did? She ran away? That even.
Speaker 10: My mom, my own mom, testified in court about this stuff.
Speaker 10: You were a bad mom.
Speaker 2: You left her alone. My mom comes over and finds
Speaker 2: 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,
Speaker 10: and like you can't be there all the time.
Speaker 2: And I did what I could and it's my fault.
Speaker 2: How many Mother of the Year awards did she win? None? Right,
Speaker 2: I was a better mom than she ever was. I
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 10: that's a bruise. I'm look how skinny she is here,
Speaker 10: 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
Speaker 10: He's like Hey, you failed him, right for how you
Speaker 10: fox up?
Speaker 2: Probably lots thought you did it.
Speaker 3: People people don't know how to deal with this kind
Speaker 3: of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we're gonna show them. We're gonna show them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 1: Foreign Tall Tales. Find us at Foreign Tall Tales dot
Speaker 1: squarespace dot com. If you like the show, please rate
Speaker 1: and review and consider joining us on Patreon at Patreon
Speaker 1: dot com. Slash far and Tall Tales. Ghost Wax is
Speaker 1: written and directed by Robert Knutson, production and editing by
Speaker 1: Aaron Schoenrock, with music by Colton war And. This episode
Speaker 1: features Michael mcgeekon as Ben, Abigail Ramsdale as Molly, Adrian
Speaker 1: Northam as Vig, Allison Cossett as Vicky, and Billie joe'connes
Speaker 1: as Mom,