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Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.

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Let's get into it. The fog had a hunger of

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its own that evening. It curled around the battered sign

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for the Larkspur In, swallowing the black paint and swallowing

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the last hope foreorrainge of the sunset. My breast looked

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solid in the cold, and each step up the mossy

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flock stones crunched louder than felt possible, the kind of

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sound that if you aunt Kevil, swells up in your

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mind and convinces you not alone, even when you know

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you are. I managed to key from the manilla envelope.

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It's paper, gritty and damp from the journey stuffed in

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my back. The old iron key looked like a prop

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from a play about which is heavy ornate rust tickling

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my palm. The lock didn't want to turn, croaning once

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twice before jerking open with a metallic snap that seemed

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to echo much further than it ought. The door pushed

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and in the thick mineral scent of old stone dust

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and something faintly sweet swept over me. My first view

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inside was clutter and half light from the insecure gray

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outside the wall shadowed an indistinct I stepped forward, swallowing

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any hesitation, and dumped my duffle just to the left

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at the door. The main hole was nearly silent, some

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dick of hidden pipes, the faint static whine of ancient

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wiring above the tiled ceiling. A heap of meal sprawled

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over a narrow table Beside the stairs envelopes their coroner's curl,

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stark windows showing governments, stamps, and messy handers and addresses

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in my aunt sloping style. I barely glanced at them,

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walking further in my eyes caught on a photograph propped

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against a lamp. Margaret, younger than when I'd last seen her,

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arm curl tied around a figure. I didn't recognize. The

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two of them, half caught in laughter at the porch,

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I just stepped through. Beside it, a scoff hum like

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a flag, left behind red wool and mistakably hers displayed

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as though blown there by a rough wind, not folded

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or forgotten at all. I held the scarf up, run

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me them over. Its chewed up tassels still smelled impossibly

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like the lemon sage soap she favored. Placing it on

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minual posts. I forced myself to get a grip. This

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was just a house, I told myself, and I reminded myself.

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I'd promise Margaret one day I would return here. I

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owed her that much. As I started upstairs, my footsteps

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seemed to rouse a soft, uneven rustping somewhere below. I paused,

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straining to listen, but all that surfaced was the house's

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shallow breeding, the layer of hush that sits just up silence.

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By the time I set my bags in Margaret's my room,

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the fog had surrendered to full night. One lamp and

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another flocked weakly to life. I peered out through the

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mottled window glass, seeing nothing but my own face. Staring back.

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For a few moments, I tried to believe the inn

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was only exactly what it appeared. Four warm walls, well

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love furniture, the small triumph of having a roof over

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my head that wasn't a friend's to seuze fruit on

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aor rendered room with too thin walls. But a minute later,

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as I wandered back down stairs to hunt for the kettle,

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anothers grape touched my hearing the faintest moors transient scratching,

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maybe below the foreboards, maybe beside my feet. I pressed

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my pomp to the scuff paneling, but felt nothing except cold.

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The kitchen offered little comfort, only more still in the

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empty cupboards, remnants of tin soup, and the stark flood

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of a silent refrigerator. After poking around, I gave up

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shoot away fatigue and decided food could wait till morning.

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I found myself wandering, passing through old territory without meaning

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to the mussy loungeul the breakfast nook with its winds bench,

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finally circling back to the central entryway. There in the Dame,

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I caught my faint, ghostly reflection hovering over Margaret's scarf

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in the photograph. Again, as I studded the image, my

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mind wandered to the reason I come here, not just

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out of obligation or inheritance, but out of a hope,

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a foolish child like one, perhaps, that here I might

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start something resembling the future I'd left behind, a city

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that didn't want me any more, and a relationship with

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too many cracks to fix, no matter how stubbornly I

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try to patch it. Sometimes a place can grow so

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sharp around you, that it's safe to fee before it

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cuts you to nothing. I resolved to get supplies and

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meet him of a still cold this little mountain village home,

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if only to tie myself to the well beyond the inn.

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I needed faces and voices, boundaries marked by mundane routines,

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and recognizably humanize. The next morning, the fog had receded

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just far enough to reveal the disheveled trees bordering the

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gravel drive. I picked my way down the path boof

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slippery would do, and found the village by roads barely

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wide enough for two cars. The general store waited near

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the cross roads, a chip flickering sign reading Monday and Daughters,

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its window thick with aging advertisements for bread and kindling. Inside,

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a practical warmth greeted me an iron stove, faint smell

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of ease and paraffin, and shells crowded with jars for

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I goods, buckets and inch of magazines. Two women stood

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behind the counter, The older one hair iron gray and

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coiled in a tidy knot, sized me up as I entered.

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Her companion, probably around my age, offered a brisk knot

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good morning. I managed, setting my list down I've just

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arrived at the Locksbury in the exchange to look quick

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but not unfriendly, Margaret's niece argue. The older woman asked,

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not quite smiling. Her accent drew the words out, middle

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vowels buried under centres of mountain speech. That's right, Lee Addison.

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The younger woman ride my items through tea bags, bread candles,

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and a battered coil of rope without comment, but glanced

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my way as she searched for change. When will they

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inn reopen? That caught me off balance, though I tried

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not to show it. Not sure, I'm not decided yet.

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It's been closed since Margaret, since my aunt passed, hasn't it.

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The older woman nodded, lips thinning shame about Margaret, good woman,

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Some houses the best left to rest, though she added,

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almost to herself. She shuffled my groceries into a waxed

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paper bag. Some say the larks wass got its own mood.

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Margaret had trouble the last winter, or toothed, her voice

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trailed off. The girl frowned but said nothing. They hesitated,

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exchanging another glance, this time uncertain, as if they crossed

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some invisible line. The old old woman finally looked up,

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faced cautiously kind. If you need anything, dear, just say

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names Annesley, don't mind if frook seemed brisk outside, hers

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never stay long, not since she stopped again, The silence

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suggested an unfinished sentence. I wasn't welcome to finish for her.

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I paid and left, with the mixture of gratitude eneknease,

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trotting back through the slick morning to the inn. There

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was nothing overtly menacing, not yet, but the conversations felt rehearsed,

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the air of a village. Keeping certain doors closed back

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inside with provisions tucked away, I woke the holes again,

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my boots scuffing over a scuffer on her rugs and

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cracked tiles. The main lounge, even with sunlight, felt too cold,

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though the chimney stood tall and broad above the mantle.

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I tested the damber, rearranged kin ling, and after three

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frustrating attempts, finally coaxed a weak flame from old locks.

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As I paced, I tried to recall where everything had

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been in my childhood. Margaret's lamp ere her collection of

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al figurines. There, the bat at green arm chair, where

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she'd read my fortune from a deck of carts. The

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air was colder now than I ever remembered, like something

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had shifted indelibly since my last visit upstairs. I checked

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the bedrooms. Most were bearages, spase bears, and dust motes,

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the faint shadow of long gone guests in the throat

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bear quilts. My own old room had a shelf lined

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with children's books, their covers modeled by age neglect. And

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half way up the staircase, right where I used to

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leave it, lay my stuff bare. One button eye ere

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newly severed from the head. I had left it here

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when I was twelve, and Margaret had promised to keep

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it safe from me. I scooped it up, surprised at

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how the fabric scene cool and strangely damp. The hallway

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beyond grew colder as I moved, icy plumes trailing my breath.

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I tested every radiator, finding them all cold and inert.

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In Margaret's room, the fireplace offered my only hope. As

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I arranged the firewood, I noticed the singular key, ringed

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in black tarnish, hung on a nail side her dresser.

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It fit the lock trunk at the foot of her bed.

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Hindus squealing as I lifted the lead beneath stacks of netting.

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I discovered what looked like old journals, the covers marked

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with heavy, inky strokes, crooked constellations, tall circles, words etched

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in herds. Gripped the veilless thinness at night guard the threshoulder,

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I brushed dust from a cluster of pages. The journals

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were dense with scrawled notes, observations about boundary places, what

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must have been weather records, and sketches of odd symbols

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had twisted, branched wise shape mirrored in my antscafful draft.

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Again and again, the day faded, bringing early darkness. I

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moved about, trying to warm the other rooms, but nothing

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seemed to take. At one point I crossed into the

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kitchen to fetch an if, only to find the pantry

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door wide open. When I was certain I had left

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to chat, I closed it, bracing a heavy chair against

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the latch. Someone's joke, I told myself, Except who there

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was only me here? That night, sleep circled but didn't settle.

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I fought off the strange shills with every cold I

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could ground from the cob of linen closet, but the

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feeling only thickened, cold, radiating from the walls, itching at

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my skin. I lay awake, convincing myself there was no

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pattern to the sounds, just an old house, suggesting some

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animal beneath the floor boards, the wind funnel between rage

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and roof beam. But the scratching did not follow the

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mindless rhythm of an animal. It started and stopped, dancing

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behind the lath and stone. I would close my eyes,

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and then in a moment, in the thin edge of sleep,

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the soft tap, tap, tap would return, as if testing

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the walls for wheat points. I counted the beats, convinced

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myself nothing would happen if I just stayed very, very still.

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Morning brought with it a low haze, as if the sun,

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like the villagers, was unwilling to cross the threshold entirely.

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I forced myself into pattern's weeping, dusting, mending leaks, anything

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to ground myself in tasks with beginnings and ends. My

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first mission was to tend to the main fireplace. I

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shuddled cinders into a steel bocket. But when I returned

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to the lounge, the fire would i'd fetch had vanished,

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as though spirited away in a brief moment, had stepped out.

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In its place, a bundle of damp sprouting twigs sat

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on the hearth. The sense of emptiness intensified, not just

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a lack of people, but a lack of prisons, as

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if the rooms were bleeding away whatever warmth they held

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for more Margaret. That afternoon, the bell at the front

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door startled me out of a days. An older man

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with the basket of apples he left us in the steps,

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offered a hurried greeting, and walked off without accepting a

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single word of thanks. A while later I saw him

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through the front window, trudging down the driver with his

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collar up in his dog press close his glance, never

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once returning toward the house. I made the best at

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the food he'd left. When I took the remains of

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the corps outside to the com hose, teep, muddy prince

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caught my eye in a faint light. Not the neet

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ocks left by deer or raccoon. These were heavy, wide,

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clearly made by boots. I knelt, pressing a hand beside

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them for size. They faced toward the back entrance leading

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to the cellar's latch doors. I swallowed, scowning for neighbors

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or passing hikers. But the woods were empty and utterly still,

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animal tracks, I told myself, But the patterned infit. The

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cellar door was drawn tight with a rusty padlock, same

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as always. Still, I checked every window twice before nightfall.

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As dusk fell, the house drew back inside itself, shadows lengthening,

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corners thickening with gloom. The scratching returned, now joined by

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a faint dan thumping, almost inaudible, beneath the mammur of

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wind and rain knocking at the glass banes. I paced

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to the dining room, comforted for a moment by the

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starter of my own reflection in the ancient side board mirror.

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Then I noticed, beneath the faded floral curtain, the wall

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was marred, a rough gouge running up from the floor,

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about three inches long, dark beneath the wallpaper, the edges

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flaked out, jagged, as though claud or scraped. I tore

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back the curtain for a closer look. Nothing about the damage,

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said settling our mouse. Not With the paper hanging in

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strips and fresh plaster dust flecking the baseboard like pelsner,

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I pressed my finger tips into the groove and jerked

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back at the cold, colder than the rest of the room,

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an icy core that throbbed with my racing pulse. The

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darkness came thick and early again. I bolted the doors

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tightly and try as best I could to sleep. My

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dreams were splintered. Fivted a candle that stucky, spiraling down,

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objects flickering in and out of focus at the edges.

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At the bend of the stairs, a tall figure masked,

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chanting in a ton I instinctively mistrusted. The voice sharpened

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into Margaret's, saying words I almost understood, but not quite,

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the syllables, and spooling like ropes around my chest. I woke,

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sweat up that she twined round me. In that instant.

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The scratching reverse mirrored my heartbeak, softer but unmistakable, coming

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from behind the baseboard. Had it always been there? Or

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was it only once I'd quieted every other noise that

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had found away in When sunlight finally won against the gray,

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I woke the village again, Now searching for information. I

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nodded at folks near the market. Most met my eyes,

238
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but only briefly. Some offered the insulated politeness of people

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who long ago resolved not to know their neighbors too deeply.

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I stopped at the little post office, handing over a

241
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few of Margaret's letters to forward. As I waited, two

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men by the sorting room banded in low whispers, their

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voices turning flat. As I entered, I half caught a

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phrase the ritual, and then the silence as they noticed me,

245
00:11:40,519 --> 00:11:44,000
matching expressions of awkwardness and worry. I paid and left

246
00:11:44,080 --> 00:11:47,840
my errand unfinished. Walking back, I followed a winding path

247
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around the village edge. An accidental deter brought me to

248
00:11:50,960 --> 00:11:54,360
a neglected hillock. Brambles concealed an ultrine, a slab of

249
00:11:54,399 --> 00:11:57,759
mossy rock like a needin, and half submerged. I knelt

250
00:11:57,840 --> 00:12:00,840
curiosity overcoming nerves, and push brush aside to uncover a

251
00:12:00,840 --> 00:12:03,759
shallow carving, maybe six inches across the same symbol from

252
00:12:03,759 --> 00:12:06,240
Margaret's journal of the Wye branch joined at the base

253
00:12:06,519 --> 00:12:09,840
with two crescent circling either side, something tight and lead.

254
00:12:09,840 --> 00:12:12,960
And clenched my gut. I hurried home, clutching the finding

255
00:12:13,039 --> 00:12:14,879
like a secret in my fist, and clean furiously. For

256
00:12:14,919 --> 00:12:17,039
an hour of scrubbing out, Floorda never seemed to lose

257
00:12:17,080 --> 00:12:20,240
its grit. The villagers aloftness stuck with me. The warning

258
00:12:20,240 --> 00:12:23,279
from missus Annesley at the store echoed with the new edge.

259
00:12:23,279 --> 00:12:25,519
Some houses are best left to rest. What did she

260
00:12:25,559 --> 00:12:28,759
meant by that? Was it simply grief or something older?

261
00:12:29,360 --> 00:12:31,960
That night, I glanced over my notes and listened. Realized

262
00:12:32,080 --> 00:12:35,440
uneasily that things weren't lining up. Surely I'd written that

263
00:12:35,480 --> 00:12:37,279
I locked the front door before going out, yet the

264
00:12:37,320 --> 00:12:39,879
bolt was open when I stepped in. My mental check

265
00:12:39,919 --> 00:12:42,759
is swabbled in memory. I stood in the parlor, anxious,

266
00:12:42,840 --> 00:12:45,440
and scribbled a quick note for tomorrow. In the morning,

267
00:12:45,559 --> 00:12:48,440
the skull looked faintly different, this slant off center. I

268
00:12:48,480 --> 00:12:51,759
shook myself and turned to Margaret's journals. Againe under the

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00:12:51,840 --> 00:12:54,399
uncertain yellow of a bedside lamp, her handwriting scene to

270
00:12:54,440 --> 00:12:57,200
tremble and flare, as if written in haste or fear more.

271
00:12:57,240 --> 00:13:00,000
Passages darted between weather records and receipts. The tapping grips

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00:13:00,080 --> 00:13:02,559
rose every night. I fear the old promise will be

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00:13:02,559 --> 00:13:06,519
broken soon. If anyone finds this. There in one brittle

274
00:13:06,639 --> 00:13:09,720
entry was my own name Lee. If you ever come back,

275
00:13:09,840 --> 00:13:12,600
do not trust the mirrors off dusk, Do not open

276
00:13:12,639 --> 00:13:15,639
the west door above all do not light the black candle.

277
00:13:16,120 --> 00:13:18,960
It is not what it seems. The words crawled under

278
00:13:19,039 --> 00:13:21,720
my skin. That night. I left every mire covered with

279
00:13:21,759 --> 00:13:23,919
bed sheets, my heart pounding each time I passed a

280
00:13:23,960 --> 00:13:27,480
sliver of glass. The scratching searched from the walls so loud.

281
00:13:27,480 --> 00:13:29,440
At one point I pressed my palm over my ears,

282
00:13:30,000 --> 00:13:33,080
desperate for quiet. Early morning blurwed into us a real

283
00:13:33,120 --> 00:13:36,080
half dream. I was half way down the stairs, journals

284
00:13:36,120 --> 00:13:38,320
pressed to my chest when I spotted in a mirrored

285
00:13:38,360 --> 00:13:40,559
hall wisconce a person shaped blur at the far end,

286
00:13:41,279 --> 00:13:44,759
block against a deeper black indistinct and shifting. My throat

287
00:13:44,759 --> 00:13:48,240
clamped tight. But when I turned nothing the air hunt

288
00:13:48,279 --> 00:13:52,320
almost sang with a charged silence. Left behind, I started searching,

289
00:13:52,480 --> 00:13:55,960
frantic for explanations that made sense. In the attic. Amid

290
00:13:56,000 --> 00:13:58,399
the piles of Motheian curtains and trunks of account books,

291
00:13:58,480 --> 00:14:00,960
I found Oddmond's margaret must have hit, and wax candles

292
00:14:00,960 --> 00:14:03,639
tucked into holes behind beams, a chipknife that looks horremonial

293
00:14:03,679 --> 00:14:05,960
as point broken, but its blades stained darker at the tip,

294
00:14:05,960 --> 00:14:09,039
and a handful of strange nubby clay figurines, each painted

295
00:14:09,039 --> 00:14:11,039
with loops and lines like the cymbals in the journals.

296
00:14:11,600 --> 00:14:14,200
A piece of fabric Margaret's unmistakable was not of round

297
00:14:14,279 --> 00:14:16,159
one candle with a tag. Do not let the flame

298
00:14:16,200 --> 00:14:18,320
go out before dawn. As I rotated the objects in

299
00:14:18,360 --> 00:14:20,799
my hand, a memory roars, mbidden and so out of place.

300
00:14:20,840 --> 00:14:23,919
I nearly laughed to bonfire once Margaret's arms around my shoulders,

301
00:14:23,960 --> 00:14:26,279
seeing its dusk sweat the yard, my child's mind full

302
00:14:26,279 --> 00:14:29,360
of shadows, made safe by her presence, That comfort fell

303
00:14:29,399 --> 00:14:32,720
far away now. The last journal entry, dated March nineteen,

304
00:14:32,759 --> 00:14:34,840
the Knight of Margaret's death, thread simply I fear I

305
00:14:34,919 --> 00:14:38,200
failed the boundaries week then later squeezed between frantic Penmarck's

306
00:14:38,240 --> 00:14:40,440
If you find this, do not light the black candle.

307
00:14:41,000 --> 00:14:43,279
The sharp snap of fire was splitting below reminded me

308
00:14:43,320 --> 00:14:46,720
I'd left the lunch hearth burning in a rush, hot pounding,

309
00:14:46,799 --> 00:14:50,080
I hurried down. The flames had shrunked, smaller, orangey light

310
00:14:50,120 --> 00:14:53,399
flickering over the tails. Among the ash logs in the grate,

311
00:14:53,440 --> 00:14:56,279
A candle had melted. Thick air, black edged with wax,

312
00:14:56,320 --> 00:14:58,519
puddled and spread in a way that looked almost intentional.

313
00:14:59,120 --> 00:15:01,759
The arab of the hot wist rank, a minutely sulfurous,

314
00:15:01,759 --> 00:15:04,639
a bitter scent that didn't belong. I gathered the pieces,

315
00:15:04,679 --> 00:15:08,240
extinguished the last ember with water. My fingers prickled anxious

316
00:15:08,279 --> 00:15:09,840
as I wrapped the remains in an old towel and

317
00:15:09,840 --> 00:15:12,679
tossed them outside to the compost. Only as I shut

318
00:15:12,720 --> 00:15:14,360
the door did I realize how late it was, only

319
00:15:14,399 --> 00:15:16,919
a few minutes to midnight. My watch as second hand,

320
00:15:16,919 --> 00:15:19,240
staggered and stopped, as if incertain it wanted to move

321
00:15:19,279 --> 00:15:22,000
forward at all. Sleep was elusive, the vision of the

322
00:15:22,000 --> 00:15:25,440
bramble shrine in Margaret's warnings following me into every feverish doors.

323
00:15:26,120 --> 00:15:28,600
The fog grew thick again outside, until it pressed against

324
00:15:28,600 --> 00:15:31,159
the glass with the weight of water, muffling every noise

325
00:15:31,200 --> 00:15:33,720
from the village beyond. It was as if the house

326
00:15:33,799 --> 00:15:36,840
lay at the bottom of a slow rolling sea. A sharup,

327
00:15:36,879 --> 00:15:39,720
frantic knocking, and my front door startled minard on. I

328
00:15:39,799 --> 00:15:42,240
jerked upright, pausing for any sound, but the loud. I

329
00:15:42,279 --> 00:15:45,399
hadn't dreamed that echo in my chest through the warped glass.

330
00:15:45,440 --> 00:15:48,480
Miss s Annes's face snapped into view, pale, her hair askeue,

331
00:15:48,600 --> 00:15:50,600
eyes wide and wild in a harsh porch, bulb that

332
00:15:50,639 --> 00:15:52,480
seemed to be swallowed by the fog even a few

333
00:15:52,519 --> 00:15:55,120
feet away. She pressed her pomp flat to the door.

334
00:15:55,759 --> 00:15:59,399
You have to leave, she hissed, between ragged breaths. Now, lee,

335
00:15:59,519 --> 00:16:02,200
they were awake. It's awake. You don't understand, You're not safe.

336
00:16:02,320 --> 00:16:05,039
Not hearer? I stared, frown by the volume and the

337
00:16:05,120 --> 00:16:09,039
terror in her voice. What what's awake? But missus Annesley

338
00:16:09,080 --> 00:16:11,279
only shook her head, looking past me to the depths

339
00:16:11,279 --> 00:16:13,720
of the inn. Don't stay, do you hear me? No

340
00:16:13,799 --> 00:16:16,000
one stays now, not even the debt. Please for your

341
00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:19,639
own sake. Then, almost as suddenly as she arrived, she

342
00:16:19,720 --> 00:16:22,000
rushed off, boots, splashing through puddles that weren't there the

343
00:16:22,039 --> 00:16:24,600
day before. The fog sucked her away until she was

344
00:16:24,679 --> 00:16:26,440
little more than a streak of motion in the gray.

345
00:16:27,039 --> 00:16:30,600
Behind me, the walls reverberated, not just with scratching, but pounding,

346
00:16:30,639 --> 00:16:33,360
now deep and insistent, a rhythm like something massive beating

347
00:16:33,399 --> 00:16:36,679
at the boundary between worlds. In the whole mirror, words

348
00:16:36,720 --> 00:16:40,440
was crawled, reversed and streaked with moisture. Not enough, not yet,

349
00:16:41,039 --> 00:16:44,399
I spun, gasping hard, a trap burden my chest. Each

350
00:16:44,399 --> 00:16:46,200
direction I face seemed to shift and blow. I was

351
00:16:46,200 --> 00:16:48,559
stepped forward, only to find myself one room further than

352
00:16:48,600 --> 00:16:51,200
I meant to be do, always whipping and lengthening, Impossibly

353
00:16:51,879 --> 00:16:54,600
drawn toward the noise, I gathered the richual items almost

354
00:16:54,600 --> 00:16:57,600
without thinking, clutching the broken dagger journal and half burned

355
00:16:57,639 --> 00:17:00,399
candle to my chest as I moved, compelled towards the source.

356
00:17:01,120 --> 00:17:03,919
The pounding led me down the kitchen steps, flashlight trembling

357
00:17:03,960 --> 00:17:06,359
in my hand, bass boxes of canned goods, and the cold,

358
00:17:06,400 --> 00:17:09,119
earth floored cellar with the stone wall's pooled moisture. Year round,

359
00:17:09,759 --> 00:17:12,079
the sun grew, swelling and with it a spreading chill

360
00:17:12,119 --> 00:17:14,640
that sunk into my bones. At the far end of

361
00:17:14,640 --> 00:17:17,240
the cellar, behind shelves of rusted tools and jars, stood

362
00:17:17,240 --> 00:17:19,799
a bricked off alcove. It had always struck me as

363
00:17:19,799 --> 00:17:22,279
ot a wall within a wall, bricks mismatched and morter

364
00:17:22,400 --> 00:17:25,359
new within the building's other bones. The bounding now shook

365
00:17:25,440 --> 00:17:28,039
us from the ceiling, and on the brick surface, crack

366
00:17:28,079 --> 00:17:30,559
spidered to the net first, then too wide bleeding blackness,

367
00:17:30,599 --> 00:17:34,119
not just shadow, something pressing out, hunger, distorting the stone,

368
00:17:34,160 --> 00:17:37,720
trying to find the weakness. The air was thick, almost vibrating,

369
00:17:37,839 --> 00:17:40,960
filled with voices whispering, not foreign but familiar, snatches of

370
00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:43,480
Margaret's voice in my own, strung together with words I'd

371
00:17:43,480 --> 00:17:48,160
never said. I stumbled backward, flashlight beam wavering. The boundaries here,

372
00:17:48,319 --> 00:17:51,640
I realized had always been fragile. Margaret had tried to

373
00:17:51,720 --> 00:17:54,680
keep what heaver lay within Knes walls contained. Maybe the

374
00:17:54,680 --> 00:17:56,559
burning candle had been the last link in the chain,

375
00:17:56,599 --> 00:17:59,319
and I, by failing to understand, hadn't done what little

376
00:17:59,319 --> 00:18:03,000
protection remained around me. In every crack and shire, the

377
00:18:03,079 --> 00:18:05,920
fog pressed deepest swhirling now not just outside but inside,

378
00:18:05,960 --> 00:18:09,119
snaking along the baseboarts and in its depths, I caught

379
00:18:09,240 --> 00:18:11,880
for the first time the gleam of eyes. I could

380
00:18:11,960 --> 00:18:16,720
not move, not forward, not back. The pounding rose to

381
00:18:16,799 --> 00:18:20,559
shifted on ancient beams Above the black cracks widened, something

382
00:18:20,599 --> 00:18:24,240
pushing through with a desperate, hollow strength. At night, the dupe,

383
00:18:24,319 --> 00:18:27,279
the interloper, the girl who wanted so foolishly to begin again,

384
00:18:27,319 --> 00:18:29,480
stood at the threshoulder. As the chains began to break.

385
00:18:30,079 --> 00:18:32,799
I was alone, For at least I was the last

386
00:18:32,799 --> 00:18:34,799
thing standing between the thing behind the wall and the

387
00:18:34,839 --> 00:18:37,640
rest of the waking world. The house, half mad with

388
00:18:37,720 --> 00:18:40,039
cold and grief, bent beneath the weight of something ancient

389
00:18:40,200 --> 00:18:42,680
and hungry, and I sensed deep in my marrow that

390
00:18:42,720 --> 00:18:45,319
the true Knight had only just begun. My feet slid

391
00:18:45,359 --> 00:18:47,200
backward on the earthen floor, the beam of my flask

392
00:18:47,240 --> 00:18:49,519
fight chasing after its own trembling shadow, as the pounding

393
00:18:49,519 --> 00:18:52,039
from behind the bricks turned almost wet, as if something

394
00:18:52,119 --> 00:18:54,119
was cawing at the stones with more than nails claws.

395
00:18:54,799 --> 00:18:57,440
I didn't want to imagine the voice ringing in my

396
00:18:57,480 --> 00:18:59,920
head now. It splinters of Margaret's cadence, fragments of how

397
00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:02,319
I sung lullabies, but looped through. It was my own voice,

398
00:19:02,319 --> 00:19:05,359
low and strange, fretting sentences I had never spoken. Fog

399
00:19:05,400 --> 00:19:07,960
trickled along the scenes where floor met wall, swirling in

400
00:19:08,000 --> 00:19:09,920
line with tendrils, as if drawn by a slow breath

401
00:19:09,920 --> 00:19:12,799
from deeper in the earth. I watched, helpless as cruxwoiden.

402
00:19:13,440 --> 00:19:15,480
A thin line of inky moisture seep from the bricks,

403
00:19:15,480 --> 00:19:19,319
slick and viscous. My hand clutching the broken dagger felt numb.

404
00:19:19,960 --> 00:19:23,440
Somewhere above, a door slammed. I flinched, the sound shaking

405
00:19:23,440 --> 00:19:25,359
me loose enough to take a single step backward. But

406
00:19:25,480 --> 00:19:27,920
the fog behind me cult dense now, and when I spawned,

407
00:19:27,960 --> 00:19:30,319
the stairs seemed impossibly far. The way you collapsed into

408
00:19:30,319 --> 00:19:33,920
a blur of shadowed distance. The cellar wall shuddered. There

409
00:19:33,960 --> 00:19:36,119
was a sharp physostatic in my ears, then a voice,

410
00:19:36,160 --> 00:19:39,359
then a near lee, Lee, don't answer. The voice definitely

411
00:19:39,359 --> 00:19:42,079
margarets ragged with warning, drifted not from behind the wall,

412
00:19:42,240 --> 00:19:45,759
but bafflingly from inside my own chest. I pressed my

413
00:19:45,799 --> 00:19:48,200
back to the damp stones, sharp de bribiting through my coat.

414
00:19:48,839 --> 00:19:51,640
Every urge creamed for escape. Instead, my mind clawed for

415
00:19:51,680 --> 00:19:54,440
anything I could do, recalling the journal's InCD warnings of

416
00:19:54,480 --> 00:19:56,400
the veil as thinnest at night, A circle must not

417
00:19:56,440 --> 00:19:58,359
be broken. I scrambled to fish the piece of chalk

418
00:19:58,400 --> 00:20:00,519
had taken from the upstairs basket out of my pocket.

419
00:20:01,160 --> 00:20:04,480
My breath heaved, ghosting white. I circled in place, knees buckling,

420
00:20:04,519 --> 00:20:06,519
and with shaking fingers, began to scroll one of the

421
00:20:06,559 --> 00:20:08,440
white shaped figures on to the ground before the brick

422
00:20:08,519 --> 00:20:11,720
duck of my first line wobble, chalk splintering beneath my

423
00:20:11,759 --> 00:20:14,759
grip from the black gap, I whisper threaded into something

424
00:20:14,759 --> 00:20:17,759
almost like a word, a syllable press against flesh. My

425
00:20:17,880 --> 00:20:20,440
teeth ached as my hands worked faster, looping the crescents,

426
00:20:20,480 --> 00:20:23,480
closing the circle again and again. The pounding faltered as

427
00:20:23,480 --> 00:20:25,880
my last chalk line closed, and for a heartbeat out

428
00:20:25,880 --> 00:20:28,720
of silence, drop up like a stone. The next instant,

429
00:20:28,920 --> 00:20:30,880
something struck out from inside the brick wall of how

430
00:20:31,079 --> 00:20:34,599
definite blow knuckles or something that wanted to mimic knuckles

431
00:20:35,240 --> 00:20:37,200
mortar has shivered onto my face. The gap in the

432
00:20:37,240 --> 00:20:40,559
brooks gaped black and slick. The voice warped, slipping between

433
00:20:40,599 --> 00:20:43,279
Margaret and my own voice again, but lowered now and strained.

434
00:20:43,359 --> 00:20:46,200
You can't close it alone. The candle, the boundary. I

435
00:20:46,319 --> 00:20:48,240
jerk my head, scounting the dark for the piece of

436
00:20:48,240 --> 00:20:51,720
blackened candle I tossed in my pocket in my panic. Reflexively,

437
00:20:51,759 --> 00:20:54,000
I placed it just outside my new chalk circle. Then,

438
00:20:54,079 --> 00:20:57,039
despite a rising sense of rawness, thicked my lighter. The

439
00:20:57,039 --> 00:20:59,200
flame caught slow and sullen blue, and the air at

440
00:20:59,200 --> 00:21:01,880
once seemed to flatter, suddenly thick and solid as stone.

441
00:21:02,240 --> 00:21:04,680
In that locked instant, the whispers pulled away from words

442
00:21:04,720 --> 00:21:07,559
to become high, keening pressure, vibriting just behind my eyes.

443
00:21:08,160 --> 00:21:11,000
The fog sat backward, coiling into the cracks as though

444
00:21:11,039 --> 00:21:14,759
sucked by a tide. The pounding pause for a moment,

445
00:21:14,880 --> 00:21:18,400
nothing move except the candle's tiny oily flame. Cold swap

446
00:21:18,440 --> 00:21:20,839
my buns shop. We are now almost surgical in his shell.

447
00:21:21,440 --> 00:21:23,839
The memory of Margaret's arms ran my shoulders. Summer time,

448
00:21:23,880 --> 00:21:25,759
the earthic with the scent of cut grass are singing

449
00:21:25,880 --> 00:21:28,759
washed over me, so forcibly, a stagger falling to my knees.

450
00:21:29,440 --> 00:21:32,000
Another memory, not from my own mind, a young Margaret

451
00:21:32,039 --> 00:21:34,319
digging with trembling hands in wet earth, burying something in

452
00:21:34,319 --> 00:21:36,359
a wooden box just outside the same bricocco, w her

453
00:21:36,480 --> 00:21:39,200
lets moving in frantic prayer. As quickly as it came,

454
00:21:39,240 --> 00:21:42,000
the image went, leaving a hollow ache grief, cut with terror.

455
00:21:42,599 --> 00:21:44,839
I forced my stiff legs to move, my fingers pried

456
00:21:44,880 --> 00:21:47,440
the chalk's doub blues, and I drew another figure, this

457
00:21:47,480 --> 00:21:49,799
one awkward and huge, just as I'd seen in her

458
00:21:49,839 --> 00:21:53,200
most frantic sketches. That's when the temperature plummeted, it breath

459
00:21:53,200 --> 00:21:56,200
frosting before my lips in the thick, dark air, from

460
00:21:56,200 --> 00:21:58,759
deep within the wall, I faint rhythmic thud began, as

461
00:21:58,759 --> 00:22:01,599
if something vast, impatient press to spolke into an endless pattern.

462
00:22:02,119 --> 00:22:05,079
The voice, now no voice at all, slithered up my spine, hungry,

463
00:22:05,119 --> 00:22:07,160
always hungry, let us out, let us in in it.

464
00:22:07,599 --> 00:22:10,720
My hands spasmed around the dagger's hilt. Nail scraped the

465
00:22:10,720 --> 00:22:14,400
mortar somewhere unscene. Thus sifted subtly across the circle I'd made.

466
00:22:14,920 --> 00:22:17,359
Not yet, I croaked, echoing the words from the mirror,

467
00:22:17,960 --> 00:22:20,880
you are not getting out. My own voice sounded paper

468
00:22:20,880 --> 00:22:22,759
thin and foolish. I was talking to the very thing.

469
00:22:22,799 --> 00:22:25,160
Every piece of this house's history was designed to contain

470
00:22:25,720 --> 00:22:27,839
a blinding, white, crackling race from my left shoulder to

471
00:22:27,880 --> 00:22:31,880
major static memory cold. The flame gouted sideways, and in

472
00:22:31,880 --> 00:22:33,839
that flicker, the shape in the blackness behind the bricks

473
00:22:33,839 --> 00:22:36,359
pressed forward with renewed force. Two points of reflected fire.

474
00:22:36,400 --> 00:22:40,279
Twinn Ember's wet would need as form swelled, filling the

475
00:22:40,279 --> 00:22:44,240
widening hole with bottomless shadow. The champ rows were less straining, writhing.

476
00:22:44,839 --> 00:22:48,440
The circle held, the whispering built further. Now layers voices

477
00:22:48,480 --> 00:22:50,640
not just of myself and Margaret, but voices I felt

478
00:22:50,680 --> 00:22:52,960
must be every woman in our blood line, stretching back,

479
00:22:53,039 --> 00:22:55,680
each bearing a shape of my face, each ringing hollow

480
00:22:55,720 --> 00:22:59,920
with exhaustion and fury. Then the pounding stopped, sudden quiet,

481
00:23:00,079 --> 00:23:02,759
so absolute, my own heartbeat sounded like a drum. For

482
00:23:02,839 --> 00:23:05,839
a beat, the world itself seemed to pause. A soft

483
00:23:05,839 --> 00:23:08,160
trickle of mortar slough to the floor, and in it spass.

484
00:23:08,200 --> 00:23:10,799
I heard a different sound stairs above, creaking under someone's weight.

485
00:23:11,480 --> 00:23:14,559
I froze every hair along my arms, standing prickly and raw.

486
00:23:15,160 --> 00:23:19,279
Another living person, a villager Annesley, come back from me,

487
00:23:20,079 --> 00:23:22,039
or was at the house, shifting in sympathy with the

488
00:23:22,039 --> 00:23:26,119
fog plea. It was a whisper, fragile, and not quite ray.

489
00:23:26,759 --> 00:23:28,839
I wanted to believe it was Annesley, but something in

490
00:23:28,880 --> 00:23:31,559
the tone echoed. The voice from the mirror flat, slightly blurred.

491
00:23:31,599 --> 00:23:34,720
Every vewl guttered at the edge. Who was there? My

492
00:23:34,799 --> 00:23:36,920
voice was barely about a choke. The coal filled my

493
00:23:37,039 --> 00:23:40,240
lungs like water, foots that patched above, moving along the

494
00:23:40,240 --> 00:23:42,839
hole toward the kitchen. A shape flickered at the base

495
00:23:42,880 --> 00:23:45,200
of the stairs, a silhouette just beyond the reach of

496
00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:48,279
my candle, in distinct and listing The circle's heat pressed

497
00:23:48,319 --> 00:23:50,720
against my skin, pushing me to stay within its perimeter.

498
00:23:51,359 --> 00:23:53,920
The silhouette stopped outside the open cellar door. A soft

499
00:23:53,920 --> 00:23:56,880
shuffling sound, then a cold one tumbled in. The fog

500
00:23:56,920 --> 00:24:00,519
swirled again, drifting between the upper steps. The voice with

501
00:24:00,519 --> 00:24:03,079
it almost playful. Now come away, lee, leave that thing.

502
00:24:03,599 --> 00:24:06,720
I gripped the dagger tier until my knuckles ached. Show

503
00:24:06,799 --> 00:24:09,960
yourself a snarl, furious teeth rattling together in my cold,

504
00:24:10,039 --> 00:24:13,079
numb mouth. There was a beat of silence when the

505
00:24:13,119 --> 00:24:15,279
figure moved. At last, I saw, for just an instant,

506
00:24:15,279 --> 00:24:18,920
a face glimmering with the suggestion of Margaret's features, but strange, slick,

507
00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:22,440
with an unnatural sheen. The eyes, though, were wrong, deep pits,

508
00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:25,200
stillness within stillness, reflecting the dull blow of the candle.

509
00:24:25,839 --> 00:24:28,319
Finish what she started, though not quite. Margaret pleaded, voice

510
00:24:28,319 --> 00:24:31,839
swelling above the cellars. I see hash before it's too late.

511
00:24:32,519 --> 00:24:35,440
A vibration rippled through the concrete below me, a low resinance,

512
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:38,119
like a groan from deep underground. The thing behind a

513
00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:41,559
wall pressed again, restless, and small flakes of stone tumbled free.

514
00:24:42,039 --> 00:24:44,720
I don't know how what did she do? I asked,

515
00:24:44,799 --> 00:24:48,920
desperate voice cracking along. It seems sacrifice, the specter answered,

516
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:52,000
too quick. In the next breath, the draft changed, sweet

517
00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:54,720
and rotting, almost as if the house itself exhaled. I

518
00:24:54,759 --> 00:24:57,400
saw out of the corner of my vision more symbols

519
00:24:57,559 --> 00:24:59,960
lying scratched into the stonework by hands or claws or bow.

520
00:25:00,759 --> 00:25:03,720
I've completed circles hastily, clothes, all radiating up from this

521
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:07,000
very room. Don't trust it. Another voice interceded, this one

522
00:25:07,039 --> 00:25:10,480
definitely Margaret, faint but fier, sir. Somewhere inside my own ears,

523
00:25:11,200 --> 00:25:14,519
it wants a body, a mind. Adrenaline searched through me.

524
00:25:14,640 --> 00:25:17,359
I reached for the journals, flipping frantic pages with clumdy

525
00:25:17,400 --> 00:25:20,599
freezing fingers, searching for anything, an incantation, a sequent, a

526
00:25:20,640 --> 00:25:22,759
final passage she might have scribbled in her last hour.

527
00:25:23,640 --> 00:25:25,759
On the back page of the oldest journal, nearly torn

528
00:25:25,799 --> 00:25:27,599
by the press of the pen, I found a single

529
00:25:27,599 --> 00:25:30,680
line in Margaret's sharpest scroll. A hunger cannot create torny feed.

530
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:34,160
The ward must endure, not break the chain. The candle

531
00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:37,480
at midnight marks the boundary until dawn. I read it again,

532
00:25:37,759 --> 00:25:40,200
slowly aloud, as if the words themselves could build a

533
00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:43,400
wall from behind the bricks. Something howled, not in anger

534
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:45,880
but an aching animal yearning, as if the very sound

535
00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:48,799
would coax me across my own chalk line. Then not quite,

536
00:25:48,799 --> 00:25:51,200
Margaret pressed at the edge of the candlelight faceless and

537
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:53,640
then suddenly dissolving, swept up and away. In Augustus. The

538
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:56,680
wind raised heavier through the cellar, sending the flame streaming sideways.

539
00:25:57,240 --> 00:25:59,920
My legs carried me, instinctively, joking to renew half faded

540
00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:02,799
lines of shock, voice, mumbling every line of Margaret's notes

541
00:26:02,799 --> 00:26:04,839
I could recall, over and over, a shield built of

542
00:26:04,839 --> 00:26:07,839
the only things I still trusted. The pounding sank to low,

543
00:26:07,920 --> 00:26:11,240
steady thuds. In the fog thick silence. I realized my

544
00:26:11,279 --> 00:26:13,480
watch had stopped against Jack, as if this place had

545
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:16,400
cut itself loose from time. The only light was the sick,

546
00:26:16,759 --> 00:26:19,400
receding glow of the candle, now nearly spent, and the

547
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:22,480
scrambling gleamed from deeper in the split bricks. I didn't

548
00:26:22,519 --> 00:26:24,480
know how long I sat like that, guarding the circle.

549
00:26:24,599 --> 00:26:27,200
Margaret's journal's griptites were at freezing in my clothes before

550
00:26:27,200 --> 00:26:29,839
something inside the wall shifted with a final rending sigh.

551
00:26:30,240 --> 00:26:32,880
The hunger for now faded behind layers of stone and night.

552
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:36,240
When finally I staggered upright, bones, ash and thoughts splintered.

553
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:38,119
The fog at my ankle seemed to thin by inches.

554
00:26:38,839 --> 00:26:40,599
The pain in my right ankle flared as I limped

555
00:26:40,640 --> 00:26:43,240
up the stairs, desperate for air, for morning, for a

556
00:26:43,279 --> 00:26:45,640
way to pull myself together with the dawn. At the

557
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:48,759
top step, the silence was brittle, no pounding, no whispering,

558
00:26:49,039 --> 00:26:50,880
just the distant clatter of the windies in the porch.

559
00:26:50,960 --> 00:26:54,359
Sign Once again, I embraced myself against the old refrigerator,

560
00:26:54,440 --> 00:26:57,240
letting my breath slow. Had I repaired the boundary or

561
00:26:57,279 --> 00:27:00,240
merely delayed what was coming? There were things in its

562
00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:03,119
older than Margaret's notes, things older perhaps than any warning

563
00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:06,319
the village's cut muster. I scanned the kitchen counter top

564
00:27:06,400 --> 00:27:09,039
to skew doors hanging slightly wider than before. A muddy

565
00:27:09,039 --> 00:27:11,799
prince mudge faintly on the linoleum at the edge of

566
00:27:11,839 --> 00:27:14,240
my vision. The fog thickened, pulling at the back window,

567
00:27:14,319 --> 00:27:16,160
and then I swear it retreated, as if it sensed

568
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:18,640
I was watching. The faint town of burnt wax and

569
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:21,480
bitter herbs filled the air. I caught my own reflection

570
00:27:21,559 --> 00:27:24,000
in the dusty pane, hare wild as far too wide.

571
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:26,240
I pushed a chair under the handle of the back

572
00:27:26,279 --> 00:27:28,960
door and collapsed into the nearest seat, hugging Margaret's journals

573
00:27:28,960 --> 00:27:31,920
to my chest. Alone in the waning dark, I forced

574
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:33,880
myself to log in my notebook everything i'd seen, the

575
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:36,119
pattern of the cracks, what Margaret's voice had tried to

576
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:39,119
teach me, the words from the old pack. My handwriting

577
00:27:39,160 --> 00:27:42,519
was jagged, half unreadable. Above, somewhere in the eaves, the

578
00:27:42,559 --> 00:27:46,559
now familiar scratching continued, softer, almost subdued. I waited for

579
00:27:46,599 --> 00:27:49,119
the first confidence bark of daylight to break over the mountains.

580
00:27:49,799 --> 00:27:52,400
I did not move. The air felt less frigid for

581
00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:54,519
the first time in days, but I knew better than

582
00:27:54,519 --> 00:27:57,319
to imagine the house was only resting. I gathered what

583
00:27:57,359 --> 00:27:59,640
courage I had left and checked every door, every window,

584
00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:02,759
every hidden seen where cold might slip through. The scars

585
00:28:02,759 --> 00:28:05,759
on the warclaw marks symbols child wax would not vanish,

586
00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:08,319
no matter how many times I wiped it them. I

587
00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:10,759
wanted so badly to run, to find a neighbor, to

588
00:28:10,759 --> 00:28:13,519
make another plea for help, but I'd seen now the

589
00:28:13,559 --> 00:28:16,400
thing that lived within the brickdlcove. I knew, with the

590
00:28:16,400 --> 00:28:18,880
cold certainty of the marrow, that running would not save me.

591
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:21,279
Margaret had tried to run, and in the end all

592
00:28:21,279 --> 00:28:22,839
she could do was buy a handful of knights for

593
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:25,680
the village for me. Later, as the new day asserted

594
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:27,799
itself against the mist and hunger behind the wall, an

595
00:28:27,799 --> 00:28:31,079
aimage crystallized Margaret sitting in this very kitchen, quilt, tip

596
00:28:31,119 --> 00:28:33,960
in hand, face drawn with purpose and love. She'd never

597
00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:36,240
really wanted me to have this legacy, yet she'd left

598
00:28:36,279 --> 00:28:38,400
me every piece i'd need, if only I understood how

599
00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:41,480
to use them. The true question rose and circled, cold

600
00:28:41,519 --> 00:28:45,599
and unanswerable. What exactly sleeps within these walls? And when

601
00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:48,559
not a foot it wig again? My legs refused to steady.

602
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:50,960
Every muscle seemed to buzz with the memory of what

603
00:28:51,039 --> 00:28:53,920
oppressed and clawed from behind the ruined bricks below. There

604
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:55,720
was grit in my mouth, in my hair. It took

605
00:28:55,799 --> 00:28:58,759
me effort to breathe anything but that cellar stenchriff, wet stone,

606
00:28:58,799 --> 00:29:01,759
bitter wax, and the iron tang of fear bight at

607
00:29:01,799 --> 00:29:04,119
the window had begun to bleed blue dawn tickling past

608
00:29:04,119 --> 00:29:06,599
the fog, promising a day that my behave like days

609
00:29:06,599 --> 00:29:09,880
were supposed to do. The morning passed in blurred fragments.

610
00:29:10,599 --> 00:29:12,319
I washed the soap from my hands over and over,

611
00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:15,359
though the chill wouldn't leave wiskin. Up stairs, the air

612
00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:18,599
held that bruise flavor of old storms. Charged restless, I

613
00:29:18,680 --> 00:29:20,400
pressed my ear to the walls and heard nothing but

614
00:29:20,480 --> 00:29:23,000
the faintest haush, just the shifting of the old In settling,

615
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:26,200
I told myself I could sleep, that everything was contained,

616
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:28,759
if only for a little while. But sleep was thinner

617
00:29:28,839 --> 00:29:31,119
than a dream. I drifted in an out of shallow,

618
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:34,240
colorless rass. Sometimes I'd snap awake, convinced. I felt a

619
00:29:34,279 --> 00:29:36,440
hand hovering close to my face, the tickle of breath

620
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:38,960
on my cheek. Sometimes I jerk upright at the softest

621
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:41,839
twitch of the floorboards, expecting fresh pounding at the basement wall.

622
00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:44,119
When the chiming of the old clock told me it

623
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:46,480
was mid day, loneliness crushed against my bones so fully

624
00:29:46,519 --> 00:29:49,799
it left me hollow. Food felt impossible, but necessy pushed

625
00:29:49,839 --> 00:29:52,720
me ontoun steady feet. The kitchen waited a quiet and

626
00:29:52,880 --> 00:29:56,160
raw ethie with spent smoke. I shewed bread and apples

627
00:29:56,200 --> 00:29:58,440
so slowly, and nearly wept with relief when nothing tried

628
00:29:58,480 --> 00:30:00,200
to drag me under the table, upon me through a

629
00:30:00,279 --> 00:30:03,279
rift in the wall. Still, every window offered up visions

630
00:30:03,279 --> 00:30:06,079
of shifting, mister Curling, retreating, but never so far as

631
00:30:06,119 --> 00:30:09,039
I wished. It was only after I found my voice again,

632
00:30:09,079 --> 00:30:11,200
after a full eye was slumped by the half Margaret's

633
00:30:11,240 --> 00:30:13,359
journals found in a semicircle around my knees, that I

634
00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:17,480
realized I needed someone else, human eyes, human warmth, not

635
00:30:17,680 --> 00:30:19,799
just a voice whispering from memory or the wavery hush

636
00:30:19,839 --> 00:30:23,240
of fog filled holes. Dressed in yesterday's jeans and Margaret's

637
00:30:23,240 --> 00:30:26,079
old shawl, I stepped into the day. The cold outside

638
00:30:26,200 --> 00:30:28,720
was cleaned by comparison, bracing enough to bring color to

639
00:30:28,799 --> 00:30:30,680
my cheeks. As I headed for the main road. Like

640
00:30:30,799 --> 00:30:33,240
sore and weak with fear, I hadn't shaken off. The

641
00:30:33,319 --> 00:30:37,319
village seemed abandoned at first, doors, bolted windows, clustered with

642
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:40,839
all curtains or thick glass, Dead leaves bowled along the gutter.

643
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:43,279
I knocked at the shop and got no reply. Walked

644
00:30:43,319 --> 00:30:45,960
past the post office, the padlock hanning with finality from

645
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:48,599
the chain. My footsteps were swallowed by the mist, and

646
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:51,960
above the hushest birds hitter left completely. Finally, at the

647
00:30:51,960 --> 00:30:54,680
well behind the market, I spotted missus Annesley, hunched over

648
00:30:54,759 --> 00:30:57,799
three shopping baskets, struggling to coax a handguard over the threshold.

649
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:00,599
She looked up as if she'd been expecting me for days.

650
00:31:01,279 --> 00:31:03,119
He shouldn't be here, she said, in a rasp crashed

651
00:31:03,119 --> 00:31:06,440
by fatigue, Yet her eyes softened the words I didn't

652
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:09,319
know where else, I croaked, wanting to spill everything, wanting

653
00:31:09,359 --> 00:31:10,839
her to reassure me that what I had seen and

654
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:13,480
felt could fit in the world everyone else inhabited. She

655
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:16,000
gestured with her chin, drawing me into a thin strip

656
00:31:16,039 --> 00:31:18,759
of sunshine behind the shop. The cobbles there were dry.

657
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:21,799
We leaned against some warm stone, just long enough for

658
00:31:21,839 --> 00:31:24,039
her to light a stub of cigarette, the smoke tumbling

659
00:31:24,079 --> 00:31:26,920
away too quickly in the returning breeze. He saw it,

660
00:31:27,079 --> 00:31:30,279
she said, deliberately, not a question. Something in my posture

661
00:31:30,359 --> 00:31:32,279
gave me away. Or maybe it was the smudge chalk

662
00:31:32,359 --> 00:31:34,839
on my cuffs. The soot rinsed only halfway from my nails.

663
00:31:35,519 --> 00:31:38,519
I nodded. She let her breadth out slow as fixed

664
00:31:38,559 --> 00:31:41,960
in the shop window. You weren't told, she murmured. No

665
00:31:42,079 --> 00:31:44,920
one tells outsiders. We want wanted to believe the package,

666
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:47,720
just hold run on its own. She pressed her hand

667
00:31:47,759 --> 00:31:49,599
to her chest, thumb hooked in the edge of her scarf.

668
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:52,119
Your aunt, poor soul, She tried a different way. It

669
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:55,039
cost her. I bit my lower lepentil pane grounded me.

670
00:31:55,799 --> 00:31:58,920
What is what's down there? My words fumbled, every syllable

671
00:31:58,960 --> 00:32:01,519
lace with disbelief and new terror. What is it that

672
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:05,359
feeds there? Older than the village, she replied, older than

673
00:32:05,400 --> 00:32:08,240
any of us, always hungry, always testing. We built over it,

674
00:32:08,359 --> 00:32:11,119
thinking stones and presquataine hunger. But it's not stopped, only

675
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:14,200
quite so long as the bargain holds. Her fingers wore

676
00:32:14,319 --> 00:32:17,359
the fringe of her scarf. A ward stays keeps a

677
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:20,519
circle candle at midnight every night, the one left behind Margaret,

678
00:32:20,559 --> 00:32:23,880
she was the strongest we'd had. My voice cracked. Why

679
00:32:23,920 --> 00:32:27,119
didn't anyone tell me? Why didn't she? A sadness creased

680
00:32:27,160 --> 00:32:30,039
her face so profound I almost jerked away. What use

681
00:32:30,079 --> 00:32:32,599
would it have done, she hoped, I think you could

682
00:32:32,599 --> 00:32:36,200
be spared. She seen too much, lost, too much. Annie

683
00:32:36,319 --> 00:32:39,839
was gay sharpened. She tried, child, they always do wasn't fair.

684
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:42,119
It had to be one of us from here, always

685
00:32:42,119 --> 00:32:43,759
someone with a seed in the soil. And when she

686
00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:46,720
when she died, things got thinner, the hunger started pressing worse.

687
00:32:47,279 --> 00:32:50,519
The street had quite it absolutely around us. I lowered

688
00:32:50,519 --> 00:32:53,480
my eyes, struggling for composure. I can't I don't know

689
00:32:53,599 --> 00:32:56,440
what I meant to do, I confessed. Anneselef flicked her

690
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:59,960
cigarette lips, twisting. Say alive first, keep the circle closed,

691
00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:02,920
the Flamelet don't break the chain, for all our sakes. Ended.

692
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:06,400
She reached out hand rough and bon lights, squeezing my wrists.

693
00:33:07,119 --> 00:33:08,880
If you get the chance to leave, take it. Don't

694
00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:12,000
look back. Something behind us clattered as shut a baryant

695
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:15,359
shot or just the window, and she bolted upright go home,

696
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:18,000
she whispered, and don't open your door after sunset. I'll

697
00:33:18,039 --> 00:33:20,480
bring what help I can. With that, she bundled up

698
00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:23,440
her baskets and disappeared, head low, voice lost to the hush.

699
00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:26,440
A hollow resignation followed me as I made my way

700
00:33:26,480 --> 00:33:29,359
back up the hill. Every corner tousted too far, every

701
00:33:29,359 --> 00:33:32,039
step a little heavier than the last. I passed the

702
00:33:32,079 --> 00:33:34,960
shrine again, its cymbals staring bluntly from beneath draggle vines.

703
00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:38,279
I touched the stone fleetingly with two fingers, and let

704
00:33:38,359 --> 00:33:40,720
what little hope I had trickle into the rock a

705
00:33:40,839 --> 00:33:42,880
silent bar again, if there could be such a thing.

706
00:33:43,440 --> 00:33:44,960
By the time I reached the end, the light was

707
00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:47,039
curt in gold at the edges the air and knife shop.

708
00:33:47,680 --> 00:33:50,359
I shut every window, braced every door, checked and rechecked

709
00:33:50,400 --> 00:33:53,359
the cellar padlock. The house felt twice its size, each

710
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:56,519
room bigger and empty them before the scratching was back

711
00:33:56,559 --> 00:33:58,960
the evening, before the sun had finished abandoning the house,

712
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:02,319
A furst light like mice restless behind the woodwork, But

713
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:05,279
soon enough it slid into low, guttural whispering, as if someone,

714
00:34:05,400 --> 00:34:08,400
now several someone, stood breathing just behind a faded wallpipper.

715
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:11,320
I pressed my hand there no not expecting one, but

716
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:15,360
something much darker. Even the notion of running felt utterly impossible,

717
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:18,599
trying to ground myself as spread Margaret's journals out in

718
00:34:18,639 --> 00:34:21,199
the dining room table, lining up entries and sketches like

719
00:34:21,280 --> 00:34:24,079
a puzzle. The roll seemed simple, but every time I

720
00:34:24,159 --> 00:34:27,320
traced the ink, a new line suggested itself. Cymbals must connect,

721
00:34:28,119 --> 00:34:31,159
circle must never break. A flame must burn each midnight

722
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:34,400
till dawn. Once darkness stirs, the hunger will test for

723
00:34:34,559 --> 00:34:37,840
dream and waking alike. I tore through the kitchen drawers,

724
00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:41,360
scavenging every candle I could find. Some were fat and shapeless,

725
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:44,639
others twisted in yellow with age. At the stroke of midnight,

726
00:34:44,719 --> 00:34:46,679
as the clock fell from above the stairs, I drew

727
00:34:46,800 --> 00:34:48,880
chalk and loops, marking the circle on the cellow tiles,

728
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:50,639
and backed it up with a ring of Margaret's salt,

729
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:53,440
her old canister, heavy in my palm. The candle never

730
00:34:53,559 --> 00:34:55,719
black quacks again, not if I could help. It stood

731
00:34:55,719 --> 00:34:58,400
at the circle's edge. The match flow blowed in the

732
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:02,159
swollen silence. The first ire, I sat knees, hunched to

733
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:06,000
my chest, reciting half remembered lullabies and childhood prayers. Nothing

734
00:35:06,079 --> 00:35:08,599
happened except the tick of my heart. But near two

735
00:35:08,639 --> 00:35:10,519
in the morning, the fog pressed and so thick at

736
00:35:10,519 --> 00:35:12,400
the window wells I could barely see the hand before

737
00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:16,440
my face. The whispering began, anew, this time skirling, inviting,

738
00:35:16,519 --> 00:35:19,280
said an icy fingers, chasing up my arms behind my ears.

739
00:35:20,039 --> 00:35:22,800
Each word was a coaxing and finished promise shown fragments

740
00:35:22,880 --> 00:35:25,280
tumbling and rejoining at the edge of sense, let us

741
00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:28,039
and let us out. Margaretly lead the candle. I slammed

742
00:35:28,079 --> 00:35:31,239
my eyes shut. Behind my eyelids, visions formed figures in

743
00:35:31,280 --> 00:35:33,840
the hallway. Masks look with candle lights spinning slowly in

744
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:37,639
a stately circle, Margaret beckoning me, her hands, trumbling, her mouth,

745
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:40,719
uttering warnings at once clear and shrouded. When the candle

746
00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:43,440
gutted and stretched, tall shadows swept the walled, all fingers

747
00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:45,480
and grasping hands, and then re seated. Just before sun

748
00:35:45,519 --> 00:35:48,559
split the sky open. I stumbled to my feet. More

749
00:35:48,599 --> 00:35:51,000
sleep served monster than girl, and buried my face in

750
00:35:51,039 --> 00:35:53,199
the couch cushions as the first bird dared its absurd

751
00:35:53,280 --> 00:35:57,400
song outside again a day of false comfort, the hungerer.

752
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:00,800
Whatever it was needed, darkness needed dream. I went about

753
00:36:00,800 --> 00:36:03,960
the muhs, brushing my teeth, coiling Margaret's scarf tight, chopping

754
00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:07,760
apples that nearly tasted sweet. Each movement was hollow. The

755
00:36:07,880 --> 00:36:09,880
rooms began to twist it they air just, always covering

756
00:36:09,960 --> 00:36:12,599
further than their limits. Reflections flickering and glass were none

757
00:36:12,639 --> 00:36:15,920
belonged in the mirror of the mantle. That afternoon, I

758
00:36:16,000 --> 00:36:18,480
saw not only myself, but the glimmer of another presence,

759
00:36:18,519 --> 00:36:21,800
Margaret's familiar shape, eyes wild with warning lips mouthing something

760
00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:24,239
I could not hear. I covered the glass with a

761
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:27,199
towel and retreated, wishing desperately for a friendly neighbor or

762
00:36:27,199 --> 00:36:31,119
a world not governed by invisible, fooricious things. Just before sunset,

763
00:36:31,400 --> 00:36:34,559
another knock I jumped, the old, fierce, swamping my gut.

764
00:36:35,159 --> 00:36:37,519
I considered not answering, but couldn't shake the idea it

765
00:36:37,599 --> 00:36:39,800
might be Annesley come back with Enso's war at least

766
00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:43,360
company instead. On the other side of the doorstoir two villages,

767
00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:45,599
a man I'd only seen distantly, his eyes locked on

768
00:36:45,639 --> 00:36:48,159
my nose, and a woman with braided hairtock firmly under

769
00:36:48,199 --> 00:36:51,119
her cap. They looked almost sheepish or guilty, the stiffness

770
00:36:51,119 --> 00:36:54,400
of their posture speaking louder than any words, Miss Addison,

771
00:36:54,519 --> 00:36:57,519
the woman said, with a brittle politeness, we understand your

772
00:36:57,559 --> 00:37:01,039
staying on at Larsborough. Her companion show her asidelong glare.

773
00:37:01,639 --> 00:37:03,639
He held a bundle swaddled in brown paper, which she

774
00:37:03,679 --> 00:37:08,519
shifted to place in my arms. Bread cheese, the traditional peace,

775
00:37:08,599 --> 00:37:10,880
offerings of people who hoped to keep disaster at bay.

776
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:14,159
We know the night along, Margaret, she paused, voice trembling.

777
00:37:14,840 --> 00:37:18,320
She was good to the village a beat. He should

778
00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:21,079
keep the light burning after sunset, not just for power outages.

779
00:37:21,079 --> 00:37:24,920
It's safer. I nodded, hoping I'd mass my panic. Thank you.

780
00:37:25,679 --> 00:37:28,440
Neither said more. They left as quickly as they come,

781
00:37:28,599 --> 00:37:31,360
heads duck low, shoes, scuffing the bath. I stood with

782
00:37:31,440 --> 00:37:33,400
my hands full, half longing to beg them to stay,

783
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:35,159
to help, to explain, to simply not leave me. As

784
00:37:35,199 --> 00:37:37,800
the darkness thickened once more. Down in the kitchen, the

785
00:37:37,840 --> 00:37:41,079
shadows were already stretching thin. I bolted every door, checked

786
00:37:41,079 --> 00:37:43,280
the circle in the cellar, refreshed the salt, set out

787
00:37:43,280 --> 00:37:45,599
three candles, one as Margaret had described to his back.

788
00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:48,760
The fear by now felt less like panic and more

789
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:52,159
like an ache, familiar and constant. When midnight told, I

790
00:37:52,199 --> 00:37:54,360
sat inside the circle and watched the flame fight every

791
00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:57,840
twitch of wind. This night, the hunger pressed harder, whispered,

792
00:37:57,840 --> 00:37:59,880
scraping like calls in my mind, a pressure behind me,

793
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:02,599
my eyes threatening to burst into visions and memory. The

794
00:38:02,679 --> 00:38:06,639
candle nearly died twice before writing itself. At last, near dawn,

795
00:38:06,679 --> 00:38:09,320
the pounding began again, softer than before, a rhythm set

796
00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:11,840
to the pulse of my heart. I could almost convince

797
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:14,400
myself it sounded like Margaret knocking from the other side.

798
00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:17,559
I tried at first to last the day upright, with

799
00:38:17,639 --> 00:38:19,679
nothing to show for my sleepless efforts, but a mounting

800
00:38:19,719 --> 00:38:22,639
pile of strange, useless trivia scold over every other surface.

801
00:38:22,719 --> 00:38:25,119
How long the candle burned, where the pounding originated, the

802
00:38:25,159 --> 00:38:27,639
shape of the fog at dawn, The words made sent

803
00:38:27,719 --> 00:38:29,719
as I wrote them, then swam and twisted off the

804
00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:32,440
page whenever I tried to read them back. Then I

805
00:38:32,519 --> 00:38:35,840
found myself drawn to Margaret's journals again. I shuffled through

806
00:38:35,880 --> 00:38:38,840
her earliest entries, piecing together the fever of her preparations.

807
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:42,119
She spoke of a first sacrifice, a seeker the village

808
00:38:42,159 --> 00:38:45,079
still tried to bury. Each year, the pack required someone

809
00:38:45,159 --> 00:38:47,800
to ensure the boundary held, Someone chosen all left behind.

810
00:38:48,440 --> 00:38:51,559
Margaret's handwriting, previously neat, turned ragged near the end. I

811
00:38:51,599 --> 00:38:55,280
can't keep it back alone. The hunger mounts, The villagers

812
00:38:55,320 --> 00:38:58,039
look away till it wants to be seen. Every generation

813
00:38:58,159 --> 00:39:01,239
one left, but then to hold or die trying. I shuddered,

814
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:04,079
bone deep, realizing what she risked, what she chose, my

815
00:39:04,119 --> 00:39:06,840
own family, our blood twisted through every brick and prayer.

816
00:39:07,559 --> 00:39:09,760
As dusk crawled in, I found myself pulled to the

817
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:11,480
old chest in the attic, one place I had not

818
00:39:11,559 --> 00:39:14,840
searched since the first hour day. I wrenched open the lid, half,

819
00:39:14,880 --> 00:39:18,440
expecting only dust and fan. Instead a small lidded wooden box.

820
00:39:19,119 --> 00:39:21,679
It was carved with those same white branching cymbals, edges

821
00:39:21,679 --> 00:39:24,800
worn by hands desperate o loving inside a wisp of

822
00:39:24,880 --> 00:39:26,719
white hair wrapped in linen and tied round with what

823
00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:29,639
looked to be a child's friendship bracelet. Three old coins,

824
00:39:29,679 --> 00:39:32,400
tork with age, a slim bone needle, a lock of long,

825
00:39:32,679 --> 00:39:35,039
reddish hair that could only have come from Margaret herself.

826
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:39,239
My hand shook a memory crash, Margaret sitting cross like

827
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:41,440
it before a roaring fire, telling me stories of the

828
00:39:41,519 --> 00:39:43,599
logs burn at secret hat, of traditions that had to

829
00:39:43,639 --> 00:39:46,559
be kept, even when no one understood why She'd hid

830
00:39:46,599 --> 00:39:49,239
in the tokens, not as mementos, but as Anka's familial

831
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:52,119
ceremonial land. I suspected as a desperate backet to the

832
00:39:52,159 --> 00:39:55,159
circle of he weaken. They melted, dreadfolding itself into the

833
00:39:55,199 --> 00:39:58,239
folds of my skin. The house vibrated with tension, as

834
00:39:58,280 --> 00:40:01,239
though waiting for the worst to arrive. As darkness thickened,

835
00:40:01,320 --> 00:40:03,599
I laid out the tokens around the candle's base, bring

836
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:05,800
them with a fresh sifting of salt, and for the

837
00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:08,400
first time whispered my own prayer, Nothing from any book,

838
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:10,559
just the ropili of some one who had lost everything

839
00:40:10,599 --> 00:40:13,159
and could not bear to lose a scrap more. Midnight,

840
00:40:13,239 --> 00:40:16,440
once more, dread, now both familiar and enormous. As the

841
00:40:16,519 --> 00:40:18,840
candle burned, the false Margaret appeared in the corner, her

842
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:21,920
shape at thoughts, with her shadow features rippling, liquid and defined.

843
00:40:22,599 --> 00:40:26,000
Her words were sharp, urgent circles. Not enough, give it memory,

844
00:40:26,079 --> 00:40:28,960
give it grief. Her head cocked a natural as if

845
00:40:29,039 --> 00:40:31,920
listening to music beneath the floor. It knows you, it

846
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:34,679
wants you. I spat it a nial, gripping the dagger

847
00:40:34,760 --> 00:40:37,280
so tightly my finger nail split at the beds. It

848
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:40,360
can't have me or any one. Her smile bloomed, sickening,

849
00:40:40,960 --> 00:40:44,360
and no sacrifice, no boundary. We all go fog poured

850
00:40:44,400 --> 00:40:48,840
from every hallway. Outside the village lay shouted, still and unresponsive.

851
00:40:49,400 --> 00:40:51,719
Red globehole slow and deep. From behind the cellar door,

852
00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:55,320
an animal heartbeat. The hunger began to press. No longer

853
00:40:55,480 --> 00:40:57,719
just drew vorses, but sent and shape as weakness, so

854
00:40:57,880 --> 00:41:00,000
rawy clad at the lining of my throat promises, strong

855
00:41:00,159 --> 00:41:02,679
and ugly, glittering words. Let us out, Let us in.

856
00:41:02,920 --> 00:41:06,760
Remember Remember, I fell back, staggering, mind dizy. As the

857
00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:09,599
walls pressed in through my terror, I saw it. The circle,

858
00:41:09,679 --> 00:41:11,719
thinning liner raised in a gap of salt and shruck

859
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:15,119
had once overlapped the candle's flame, jumped spat, then shrunk

860
00:41:15,119 --> 00:41:18,599
into hard blue corkscrew. In that moment, the cellow stares

861
00:41:18,599 --> 00:41:20,800
to solved longer than they should be, sharper with each

862
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:24,159
descending tread. I tried to retreat, but invisible hooks spun

863
00:41:24,239 --> 00:41:27,159
me towards the basement below. The panding rose not just

864
00:41:27,239 --> 00:41:29,840
a clawing, but shuddering through the entire structure of the inn.

865
00:41:30,360 --> 00:41:32,639
The braked alcove bulged, spout out more to and dust.

866
00:41:33,400 --> 00:41:35,920
My memory twisted with every step. Margaret leading me by

867
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:38,760
lantern light, my mother younger than I remembered locking a

868
00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:41,559
cellar door with her body. Distant relatives, a deep percession,

869
00:41:41,599 --> 00:41:44,079
with hollow eyes urging me forward, all sharing a piece

870
00:41:44,119 --> 00:41:47,079
of my name. Fog lake, the cellars each swell, more

871
00:41:47,119 --> 00:41:50,199
solid than the last, a congregation of hungry shadows. The

872
00:41:50,280 --> 00:41:54,679
circle had breached. The burning kendle guttered out, My heart ceased.

873
00:41:55,400 --> 00:41:58,159
Then from behind the fracture wall a voice, not Hunger's

874
00:41:58,360 --> 00:42:01,400
not mine, but Margaret's, steady and define. The chain isn't broken.

875
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:04,239
A few shoes to bear, I screamed, angry and afraid,

876
00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:06,760
both child and grown woman. I won't. I can't let

877
00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:09,079
me go, Let us go, all of us. But the

878
00:42:09,119 --> 00:42:13,199
pressure grew, pulsing. The vision of sacrifice sharpened, Margaret kneeling

879
00:42:13,199 --> 00:42:15,760
on this very floor, drawing her own blood into the dust,

880
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:17,760
chanting not to defeat the hunger, but to keep it

881
00:42:17,880 --> 00:42:20,960
pleased at bay and away from the world above. In

882
00:42:21,039 --> 00:42:23,119
a friends of tumble, a snash who tokens the hair

883
00:42:23,119 --> 00:42:25,480
at the coins, the needle, the bracelets lay them once more,

884
00:42:25,599 --> 00:42:27,480
not in a perfect circle, but in the only patter

885
00:42:27,559 --> 00:42:29,360
my mind could make sense of a spiral in what

886
00:42:29,519 --> 00:42:31,960
meant to draw something home? Blood well from my split

887
00:42:32,039 --> 00:42:34,320
finger nail. I pressed it to the linen. The flame

888
00:42:34,360 --> 00:42:36,599
flickered back to miserable life. As I whispered, let me

889
00:42:36,679 --> 00:42:40,920
be the ward, not the feast. The pounding hesitated Fogg's world,

890
00:42:40,920 --> 00:42:44,119
close faces blinking in enough, Margaret's my own a different ages.

891
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:47,400
Dozens of unfamiliar eyes lipped mouthing the word holt. I

892
00:42:47,519 --> 00:42:50,320
repeated the plea again and again, until it was hardly words,

893
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:53,320
but animal need holt, Let me hold it. What followed

894
00:42:53,400 --> 00:42:55,679
was not an answer, but an exhalation of sucking silence,

895
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:58,360
the pause of the houses if listening for judgment. The

896
00:42:58,400 --> 00:43:02,159
brooks shivered, the back stopped spreading. The voices dropped to

897
00:43:02,159 --> 00:43:05,800
low mutterings, less needy, more tired. The candle spotted, but

898
00:43:05,880 --> 00:43:09,360
kept its glow, small and land The coal persisted, now gentler,

899
00:43:09,400 --> 00:43:12,360
heavy but not deadly. The fog retreated inch by inch,

900
00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:14,679
curling a long windows and under doors, until by the

901
00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:17,000
time the first pink streak split the sky, the cellar's

902
00:43:17,039 --> 00:43:19,360
only company was mean ees, silk, sweat, and salt stinging.

903
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:21,559
Every open nick had sagging. Under the confession that I

904
00:43:21,559 --> 00:43:24,440
would not now be leaving, I climbed to the kitchen

905
00:43:24,639 --> 00:43:29,320
muscles shuddering, barely registering my own weight. Outside stillness spurred calls,

906
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:31,400
emerging one by one, as if embarrassed to sing after

907
00:43:31,440 --> 00:43:34,639
such a night. The village had not burned. The inn

908
00:43:34,679 --> 00:43:37,960
creaked and groaned. Beheld later that morning, as I sat

909
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:40,400
with Margaret's journals in the last crust of bread missas

910
00:43:40,400 --> 00:43:43,599
Annesley knocked, slow and soft. She hadn't the words for

911
00:43:43,679 --> 00:43:46,119
what sat between us. Her eyes wet and haunted. It

912
00:43:46,199 --> 00:43:48,840
told enough. She brought me a sturdy candle and a

913
00:43:48,880 --> 00:43:52,039
coil of fresh white cord. He the ward now, she said,

914
00:43:52,079 --> 00:43:54,760
a chimley gentle. He won't be able to go, not

915
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:57,599
for a time, maybe not ever. In my bones, I

916
00:43:57,719 --> 00:44:01,119
believed her. The world beyond the indoor seemed impossibly far.

917
00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:04,880
I'd already tried to wander away past curled back horizons

918
00:44:04,880 --> 00:44:08,000
folded into the fog, my steps always soaking home. No

919
00:44:08,159 --> 00:44:11,800
bus cane, no cur stopped. Even phone calls faded to static,

920
00:44:11,880 --> 00:44:15,239
as though my voice existed elsewhere. Annesley lingered a moment,

921
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:18,400
I searching my face for cracks, ring. The belle fits bad.

922
00:44:18,559 --> 00:44:21,320
The rest well, we'll remember, We'll bring food when we can.

923
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:24,199
Her hand on my shoulder was warmer than any candle.

924
00:44:24,800 --> 00:44:27,599
She left, and I resumed my new routine, cleaning, sorting

925
00:44:27,639 --> 00:44:30,440
through neither hope nor despair, sitting the circle waiting for night.

926
00:44:31,039 --> 00:44:34,480
The weeks blurred. Each evening, as fog slid up the hillside,

927
00:44:34,559 --> 00:44:36,920
I made ready, laying out the candles, ringing, the warts

928
00:44:36,920 --> 00:44:40,280
were sawed, anchoring the tokens. At midnight, the flame flight,

929
00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:44,199
The voices swelled, the scratching returned. Sometimes the pounding threatened

930
00:44:44,239 --> 00:44:47,320
another breach. Each night, I pressed back, with every answer

931
00:44:47,360 --> 00:44:49,960
will left me. After a time, the hunger learned the

932
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:53,480
shape of me. The temptations grew sly for his promising escape.

933
00:44:53,519 --> 00:44:56,079
Secrets whispered in my mother's lilt, future visions where the

934
00:44:56,119 --> 00:44:58,519
patch was broken and the village prospered. So long as

935
00:44:58,559 --> 00:45:01,519
I gave up my post, I resisted because to do

936
00:45:01,639 --> 00:45:03,199
less was to deliver a world to a thing that

937
00:45:03,239 --> 00:45:07,039
would never be sated, only emboldened. Sometimes I told myself

938
00:45:07,079 --> 00:45:11,159
I was strong. Sometimes I only wept. The villager was

939
00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:15,000
visited rarely. They always left gifts at the stoop, baskets, jaws,

940
00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:17,519
once even a fat tabby cat that made itself at home,

941
00:45:17,639 --> 00:45:20,599
purring in the warm patch. When my shadow fell. Thessessa

942
00:45:20,639 --> 00:45:24,159
Ennesley brought books, puzzles, rusting tins of tea. She stayed

943
00:45:24,199 --> 00:45:26,159
only so long as the wind remained mild and the

944
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:30,000
like gold never After dusk days grew sire and slow. Then,

945
00:45:30,239 --> 00:45:33,480
with the turn of summer, almost bright, I kept my vigil.

946
00:45:34,039 --> 00:45:36,039
The hunger did not sleep, but it grew less, greedy,

947
00:45:36,039 --> 00:45:39,199
a satisfied perhaps by the presence of sommon Wille, while

948
00:45:39,199 --> 00:45:42,760
simply biding its time, patient as old mountains. One day

949
00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:45,480
I tried the road again, walking down hill for fresh

950
00:45:45,519 --> 00:45:48,920
clayed air. For hours, I wandered, always hopeful, but every

951
00:45:48,960 --> 00:45:51,360
path bent gently back to the crumbling sign at the ingates.

952
00:45:52,079 --> 00:45:54,480
I laughed, then, short and sharp, and named myself what

953
00:45:54,599 --> 00:45:57,920
I had become. The Addison lockspur'snow stancher, blad and bunshaped

954
00:45:57,920 --> 00:46:01,000
to an old urge in need. At night, I sometimes

955
00:46:01,079 --> 00:46:02,920
dream of the cellar, not as it is, but as

956
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:05,920
Margaret first found it, clean stone, fat candles, as warm

957
00:46:05,960 --> 00:46:08,760
as any holding place could be. She sits by my side,

958
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:11,239
pale but content, her fingers warm in mind, whispering we

959
00:46:11,400 --> 00:46:13,920
keep it so we hold for them for us. All

960
00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:16,920
the women before her flicker and out of sight, nodding solemnly,

961
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:19,880
hands clasped, And then the dreams rot at the edges,

962
00:46:19,920 --> 00:46:22,880
splitting into shadow, hunger, wetting through cracks, voices sliding up

963
00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:25,719
to a break. We want no more wards, only open doors.

964
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:28,599
I wake, sweating, hollow eyed. But each time I go

965
00:46:28,679 --> 00:46:31,199
to the cellar and light the candle once more. Each

966
00:46:31,320 --> 00:46:35,480
time the pounding wanes, Months pass, the cat grows fat

967
00:46:35,519 --> 00:46:38,920
and sleepy. I tend Margaret's garden and the old Chrina's sidetown,

968
00:46:38,960 --> 00:46:41,480
scrubbing moss from the y shaped carving, placing a coin

969
00:46:41,519 --> 00:46:44,280
and twist of yarn where the roots breakstone. I see

970
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:47,320
faces in the fog sometimes, but none troll close, none demand.

971
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:50,119
One night, near the edge of sleep, I hear voices

972
00:46:50,159 --> 00:46:52,360
in the walls, clear and beckoning, sounding not hungry now

973
00:46:52,440 --> 00:46:55,880
but mournful. You are us, they murmur, you are now,

974
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:59,400
the line resigned. I take out Margaret's last batted ledger

975
00:46:59,519 --> 00:47:02,360
and begin my own warnings. I write simply in my

976
00:47:02,440 --> 00:47:05,360
own settling hand. If you come here, be worry mind

977
00:47:05,400 --> 00:47:08,039
the symbols, keep the flame. Do not trust the hunger,

978
00:47:08,159 --> 00:47:10,800
no matter whose face it wears below me. As the

979
00:47:10,880 --> 00:47:14,239
night stretch is taught scratching begins, a new, insistent, clever, bolder.

980
00:47:14,920 --> 00:47:17,280
I place my hands over the fresh chalk lines, steady

981
00:47:17,360 --> 00:47:20,440
my thought against the coming irons. The window panes tremble

982
00:47:20,480 --> 00:47:23,480
at the weight of gathering fog. I cannot see the village,

983
00:47:23,719 --> 00:47:26,159
nor the path out, nor any promise beyond the bounds

984
00:47:26,199 --> 00:47:28,440
of this coast tethered in. But as I left my

985
00:47:28,519 --> 00:47:30,639
candle to the glass, in what shadows call at the walls,

986
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:33,239
I tell myself, as Margaret must have one morn, I

987
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:37,800
one more circle closed, one more dawncat safe in that

988
00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:40,119
lonely vigil. I keep my place, unsure if I hold

989
00:47:40,159 --> 00:47:41,960
the hunger at bay, or only give it new ways

990
00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:43,840
to dream, but knowing the work must go on until

991
00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:47,119
someone wiser or stronger relieves me. At last, the scratching

992
00:47:47,159 --> 00:47:51,119
results pauses and resumes, always there, always hungry, waiting for

993
00:47:51,199 --> 00:47:54,320
the day, perhaps when it learns what comes next. The

994
00:47:54,360 --> 00:47:58,159
scratching rose in pitch, the rhythm shifting, not random, not

995
00:47:58,280 --> 00:48:01,119
animal any more. It sounds like fingers spelling out a

996
00:48:01,159 --> 00:48:04,480
message snared in some ancient psychical code. Even the cap

997
00:48:04,519 --> 00:48:08,360
brestled at the baseboard, haunches, quivering, ears flat. I watched

998
00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:10,960
his peoples go wide, reflecting what little light had cooked

999
00:48:11,000 --> 00:48:13,639
from the kerosene lamp. It went still, then darted in

1000
00:48:13,719 --> 00:48:15,960
a low, crowed scuttle toward the parlor ver, brushing the

1001
00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:18,039
leg of a chair Margaret used to claim as her own.

1002
00:48:18,639 --> 00:48:20,880
My hand tightened compulsively, and the notebok I had left

1003
00:48:20,960 --> 00:48:22,880
up and on the kitchen table, a list meant to reassure,

1004
00:48:22,960 --> 00:48:25,320
now only evidence of how few tasks remained to distract

1005
00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:27,840
me beyond the model of gas. The night was thick

1006
00:48:27,880 --> 00:48:30,760
with fog, the windows reflecting overlapping versions of my face

1007
00:48:30,880 --> 00:48:34,320
layered and uncertain. I could not sleep. I tried to

1008
00:48:34,360 --> 00:48:36,880
read a chapter, made tea I left cooling beside the sink,

1009
00:48:37,239 --> 00:48:40,280
watched the candle's flame strain against every stray breath. The

1010
00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:42,920
house performed its leturgy, a very quiet, then a creek,

1011
00:48:43,079 --> 00:48:45,280
then a drawn out exhalation from the pipes deep beneath

1012
00:48:45,280 --> 00:48:48,679
the stairs, and after a while those ever boulder scratches

1013
00:48:48,679 --> 00:48:52,119
stitched upward, sending tides of shivers through the floorboards. When

1014
00:48:52,159 --> 00:48:54,719
at last, exhaustion forced me into a fragile drouse, my

1015
00:48:54,840 --> 00:48:57,719
dreams provided no solace. I walked circles through a home

1016
00:48:57,760 --> 00:49:00,239
that rearranged itself behind ify closed door. Holes there bent

1017
00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:03,199
into vaults, bedrooms that opened into damp forests, cellars, and

1018
00:49:03,239 --> 00:49:06,320
froling in impossible calls. Each step took me back to

1019
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:09,920
the beginning, the braked alcove, now crumbling, now restored, always bleeding,

1020
00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:13,159
a blackness that poles to Yonn like a mouth. I woke, shivering,

1021
00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:15,960
my pillow, gritty with salt from tears of sweat. The

1022
00:49:16,039 --> 00:49:19,039
cat had pressed up against my knees, trembling. The candle

1023
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:22,559
nearly spent, guttered low. I touched my temples and found

1024
00:49:22,599 --> 00:49:24,599
them raw, as if I'd been pressing my skull against

1025
00:49:24,679 --> 00:49:27,360
rough plaster all night. From somewhere else, the room I

1026
00:49:27,400 --> 00:49:29,239
hadn't entered, or perhaps the stair while, I heard the

1027
00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:32,480
hush of words, not the slurred, luring voices of hunger,

1028
00:49:32,599 --> 00:49:36,440
but a single, deliberate phrase, It's almost timely. I jerked up,

1029
00:49:36,639 --> 00:49:40,320
heart lurching. Margaret. The name burst up before I could

1030
00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:44,960
weigh the risk. Silence. Then in the hallway, another insistent

1031
00:49:45,039 --> 00:49:48,079
round of scratching, this one traveling arking across the wainscoating,

1032
00:49:48,199 --> 00:49:51,039
Drawing nearer to the cellar door. I steeled myself and

1033
00:49:51,159 --> 00:49:53,719
rose slippersoft over the warped ward, hands bold in the

1034
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:56,679
pockets of my dressing gown. The lamp I clung uncertainly

1035
00:49:56,719 --> 00:49:58,760
to me, my own shadow, the only thing moving in

1036
00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:01,480
the brittle hush. I reached the mouth of the stairs

1037
00:50:02,199 --> 00:50:04,360
below the hear I looomed black, heavy than it should be.

1038
00:50:05,119 --> 00:50:07,400
I drew a breath and stepped down the cat hestating

1039
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:09,079
at the top, before letting out a choked owl and

1040
00:50:09,159 --> 00:50:12,360
vanishing behind a bookcase. Coward, I thought, with a flicker

1041
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:15,199
of envy. The cellars cold chewed at my cheeks, sharp

1042
00:50:15,320 --> 00:50:17,480
of the memory, the sword of cold that feels personal

1043
00:50:18,079 --> 00:50:20,320
each day, sounded hollow, though I'd have sworn the last

1044
00:50:20,360 --> 00:50:23,000
time I checked the planks with thick and sturdy. Down

1045
00:50:23,079 --> 00:50:25,519
I went, feet careful, the circle of lamp light shrinking

1046
00:50:25,559 --> 00:50:28,679
as I descended. The bricked alcove was visible even before

1047
00:50:28,679 --> 00:50:31,679
I reached the bottom. Its outline had changed more boilting now,

1048
00:50:31,760 --> 00:50:33,880
the mortar pail with the fluorescence, the air thick, with

1049
00:50:33,920 --> 00:50:36,840
the scent of stone, earth, and something newly rotten. The

1050
00:50:36,920 --> 00:50:39,079
spiral of chalk had drawn only a few nights ago,

1051
00:50:39,159 --> 00:50:41,960
lay mostly intact. Both foamy moles crept in along its edge.

1052
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:44,719
As soon as I stepped on to the last stair,

1053
00:50:44,800 --> 00:50:48,320
the scratching stuttered, then stopped. The silence was so profound

1054
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:51,320
I wondered if the world above still existed. I crouched

1055
00:50:51,320 --> 00:50:54,719
beside the circle, breathing shallowly. You aren't getting out, I whispered,

1056
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:58,920
a lassifiant moriply, not to night. The voice that answered

1057
00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:01,440
slid just beneath here, ring, and yet every word was clear.

1058
00:51:01,559 --> 00:51:04,639
Let me in, lee, let me out, chewt. I closed

1059
00:51:04,639 --> 00:51:07,599
my eyes, clutching the spiral of tokens at my throat. No.

1060
00:51:08,519 --> 00:51:11,280
The house responded not with rage, but with a juttering,

1061
00:51:11,320 --> 00:51:14,679
exhausted sigh. The brick swalled, a thin crack glancing up

1062
00:51:14,679 --> 00:51:18,239
the center. Mister, something like it leaked through coiling and

1063
00:51:18,400 --> 00:51:21,559
within the fog. Faces pressed children, women, men, each holding

1064
00:51:21,639 --> 00:51:23,559
my gaze for a terrible and soon before dissolving into

1065
00:51:23,599 --> 00:51:26,519
the mass. You cannot keep me forever. Sleep with us.

1066
00:51:26,639 --> 00:51:29,960
The fosses sign no longer strictly Margaret's no precisely my own.

1067
00:51:30,159 --> 00:51:32,920
But a chorus and inheritance forced ung generations of wardens

1068
00:51:32,960 --> 00:51:36,000
and daughters, and frightened villages to paralyzed by history, to intervene.

1069
00:51:36,800 --> 00:51:39,039
I swallowed and traced the chalk lines. A new hand

1070
00:51:39,079 --> 00:51:41,960
shaking soul quivered on the stone, though they are remained

1071
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:45,639
perfectly still. Against my wishes, memory stowed shop as Ie

1072
00:51:45,639 --> 00:51:48,000
smuggers faced the knight she'd sent me away as a child,

1073
00:51:48,159 --> 00:51:50,320
her voice rough, her hand shaking as she nodded the

1074
00:51:50,360 --> 00:51:53,039
red scarf at my throat, goat lee, don't come back,

1075
00:51:53,599 --> 00:51:56,199
not until you must. I bent low and pressed my

1076
00:51:56,280 --> 00:51:58,840
forehead to the stern, letting my tears run into the cracks,

1077
00:51:59,519 --> 00:52:01,960
Take me if you wish, but leave them alone. The

1078
00:52:02,079 --> 00:52:04,519
reply was unclear. A sudden building of Prussia that made

1079
00:52:04,559 --> 00:52:07,440
my nose bleed and metallic trickle across my lip. I

1080
00:52:07,559 --> 00:52:10,480
let the blood fall, coloring the chalk line red. When

1081
00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:12,760
the drops touched the air twisted the chorus to solving

1082
00:52:12,800 --> 00:52:16,599
into a single brittle voice word warden anchor stay. I

1083
00:52:16,719 --> 00:52:19,880
remained croached, half defeated, until the first inkling of sunrise

1084
00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:22,679
reached the high window. Light soft and wlane, filtering through

1085
00:52:22,719 --> 00:52:25,199
dust sold It might have been borne alongside the hunger itself.

1086
00:52:25,760 --> 00:52:27,760
Only then did the oppression lift enough for me to

1087
00:52:27,800 --> 00:52:31,320
breathe easy. I staggered upstairs, half blind teeth chattering and

1088
00:52:31,400 --> 00:52:33,880
shirts soaked in sweat. The rest of the day was

1089
00:52:34,039 --> 00:52:36,760
like passing through invisible water. Every movement weighed down, every

1090
00:52:36,760 --> 00:52:39,679
attempt at normaltly shrunk into gestures of habit, not hope.

1091
00:52:40,280 --> 00:52:43,119
I went through the routines, breakfast lost in taste, herpes

1092
00:52:43,159 --> 00:52:45,239
gathered in the garden, the cats stalking at my heels.

1093
00:52:45,280 --> 00:52:48,239
Once more, Missus Annesley did not come that day, nor

1094
00:52:48,320 --> 00:52:51,480
the one after. The villagers, when climpsed, true fog or

1095
00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:53,880
between slats, and the shutters stepped out of sight, their

1096
00:52:53,920 --> 00:52:56,400
offerings thinning. Even the shrine at the edge of the

1097
00:52:56,400 --> 00:52:58,960
wood hunch lower, as if overwhelmed by the responsibility of

1098
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:02,239
standing God. One morning night, late one afternoon, as the

1099
00:53:02,320 --> 00:53:04,199
light lost its grip, a new sound threaded the in

1100
00:53:04,239 --> 00:53:08,079
sush a chime, metallic, faint but insistent. At first I

1101
00:53:08,159 --> 00:53:10,440
thought of the bell from the post office clock, but

1102
00:53:10,559 --> 00:53:12,920
as I listened, I realized it told not from outside,

1103
00:53:13,079 --> 00:53:15,840
but from the upper floor. I almost ignored it. One

1104
00:53:15,880 --> 00:53:17,840
more artifact of a mine ground down to the stub,

1105
00:53:18,440 --> 00:53:21,440
but it would not cease. Upstairs, the hallway was longer

1106
00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:24,440
than it should have been, Shadows peeled away from the baseboards,

1107
00:53:25,079 --> 00:53:27,000
a door at the end I didn't quite remember, opened

1108
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:29,480
onto a narrow room nursery or something like one with

1109
00:53:29,599 --> 00:53:31,800
a single wooden cradle, Its sides pinned it with faded,

1110
00:53:31,840 --> 00:53:35,119
vinted flowers. The bell rested atop the cradle's head board

1111
00:53:35,159 --> 00:53:37,000
of Margaret's hole skull bell, the one she'd used to

1112
00:53:37,039 --> 00:53:39,320
wake me on winter mornings for hot chocolate and stores.

1113
00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:42,960
I blinked, staggered closer, and saw the bell was ringing gently,

1114
00:53:43,000 --> 00:53:45,719
though no hand touched it. As my fingers reached, a

1115
00:53:45,800 --> 00:53:48,159
chill deepened, and then a vision took me Margaret kneeling

1116
00:53:48,199 --> 00:53:50,039
at the cradle, drawing chalk cymbals on the floor, as

1117
00:53:50,039 --> 00:53:53,159
a baby, as shadow, remembering slept eyes wide and unblinking,

1118
00:53:53,360 --> 00:53:56,320
silent as a stone, her face pinched and tired, bent

1119
00:53:56,360 --> 00:53:59,519
over scrolls of white branches and double crescents. I jolted

1120
00:53:59,599 --> 00:54:02,880
back behind me. The air horned more presents than n emptiness,

1121
00:54:03,039 --> 00:54:05,960
more threat than comfort. The hungry thing beneath the m

1122
00:54:06,039 --> 00:54:08,320
was not patient, ed had waited, and now pressed against

1123
00:54:08,360 --> 00:54:10,400
every scene, every memory, every answer of while I had

1124
00:54:10,440 --> 00:54:13,760
tored it over the lonely months. The scratching louder now

1125
00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:15,679
traced up the stairs, stick ticked to collighte. The dull

1126
00:54:15,800 --> 00:54:18,559
edge of a knife dragged a long bone. I reeled, clutched,

1127
00:54:18,599 --> 00:54:21,679
the bell nearly fell as I raced downstairs. Below the

1128
00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:24,920
kitchen windows boiled with fog. The cellar door rattled in

1129
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:28,079
its frame. The candles supply was low. Only two remained,

1130
00:54:28,280 --> 00:54:30,480
stark and stubby. They wak snicked by teeth in the hoop,

1131
00:54:30,519 --> 00:54:32,239
that nothing would come from me before I burned through

1132
00:54:32,239 --> 00:54:34,639
the last night. I went to the table, sat the

1133
00:54:34,679 --> 00:54:37,119
bell beside the candle, and began the circle again, salt

1134
00:54:37,199 --> 00:54:40,480
chalk tokens placed in their careful spiral. I drew in breath,

1135
00:54:40,679 --> 00:54:43,760
held Margaret's journal, and whispered her words, my own voice

1136
00:54:43,840 --> 00:54:48,119
joining hers circle unbroken candle Alie anchor in blood and

1137
00:54:48,159 --> 00:54:51,880
memoryle at this line hole no answer, not a verse.

1138
00:54:52,599 --> 00:54:54,760
Then the wall's moot contracted inward and outward in a

1139
00:54:54,840 --> 00:54:57,840
rhythm that pressed on my lawns. The cat shreaked, bolted

1140
00:54:57,880 --> 00:55:00,519
for the pantrary, eyes wide with terror. Out of the

1141
00:55:00,559 --> 00:55:03,480
corner of my vision, forms flickered to Margaret, my own child,

1142
00:55:03,519 --> 00:55:06,039
a shadow, strangers wherein the look of family, each one

1143
00:55:06,159 --> 00:55:08,400
rooting me. Here a chain I could not break. The

1144
00:55:08,480 --> 00:55:10,360
cellar door burst inward on a gust of wind so

1145
00:55:10,480 --> 00:55:14,320
cold it burned, exposed flash. The brick galco shuddered, mortar bancing,

1146
00:55:14,440 --> 00:55:17,039
loose cracks, yawning as they had in the first worse night.

1147
00:55:17,079 --> 00:55:20,840
The hunger pressed forward, impatient, jubilant. The voices overlapped in

1148
00:55:20,880 --> 00:55:23,199
a babble, all versions of myself and every woman who

1149
00:55:23,280 --> 00:55:26,639
had come before. But now the shape behind the wallgrew deliberate,

1150
00:55:26,719 --> 00:55:30,480
less brute, more cunning. It croon, let me out, be free.

1151
00:55:30,519 --> 00:55:32,440
The world owes you nothing, glee, Ye keep this place

1152
00:55:32,480 --> 00:55:35,199
for what. I shut my eyes, hands clamped over my ears,

1153
00:55:35,280 --> 00:55:38,519
knees pressed into the spiral full of I said, not

1154
00:55:38,639 --> 00:55:41,280
sure if I meant Margaret, the village, myself, or all

1155
00:55:41,320 --> 00:55:44,199
those nenameless voices in the fog, to keep the circle

1156
00:55:44,360 --> 00:55:47,000
so no one else has to break. A reptor through me,

1157
00:55:47,159 --> 00:55:50,000
pained beyond the body, memory, history, desire, jumbling into a

1158
00:55:50,079 --> 00:55:53,599
final brittle command, Stay or open? Stay or open? Stay

1159
00:55:53,719 --> 00:55:57,840
or opening? I sobbed, pain, rippling from scalp defeat, Stay,

1160
00:55:58,000 --> 00:56:01,480
I begged, I'll stay, just let the village be. Something shifted,

1161
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:05,239
The cracks in the wall wept black, Then ebbed, The

1162
00:56:05,360 --> 00:56:08,559
forces settled to a steady thrum. The fog outside hesitated

1163
00:56:08,559 --> 00:56:11,599
at the window, then slowly, sweetly unfurled, streaming away over

1164
00:56:11,639 --> 00:56:14,639
the hills. I thought I heard Margaret's voice again, gentle,

1165
00:56:14,719 --> 00:56:18,440
exhausted but relieved, thank'ye. The candle brightened slumb blue to

1166
00:56:18,440 --> 00:56:21,440
steady gold. The bells still clutched in my shaking hand,

1167
00:56:21,679 --> 00:56:24,280
ran once the most ordinary, humly sound in all these years.

1168
00:56:25,039 --> 00:56:27,440
I slept that morning, cold beside the table, cat curled

1169
00:56:27,480 --> 00:56:29,440
on my chest, A first sunlight sense, who knew when

1170
00:56:29,440 --> 00:56:32,880
spilling canded yellow over the mottel tiles. After that, things

1171
00:56:32,960 --> 00:56:37,039
changed subtly, but for good. The scratching slowed. Villages began

1172
00:56:37,119 --> 00:56:39,440
to leave gifts at the steep again, bread bundles of

1173
00:56:39,519 --> 00:56:43,679
Chad's jaws of summer preserves. Misseses Annesley returned, this time

1174
00:56:43,719 --> 00:56:45,719
with a basket of duck eggs in a tent to smile,

1175
00:56:45,960 --> 00:56:47,880
and sat with me while Tea steamed the dust from

1176
00:56:47,880 --> 00:56:50,920
our ferts. She said little, but her hand on mine

1177
00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:54,079
told me the rest. You can ask for help, she said, softly,

1178
00:56:54,199 --> 00:56:57,199
will come now you've done enough alone. The hunger and

1179
00:56:57,280 --> 00:57:00,920
the walls receded, not vanished, packaged, pacified by understanding not

1180
00:57:01,079 --> 00:57:04,559
just the ritual, not just the candle, but choice. Each

1181
00:57:04,719 --> 00:57:06,760
night I built the circle, lit the flame, and said

1182
00:57:06,800 --> 00:57:09,239
my prayer, and found the way a child lighter, not absent,

1183
00:57:09,440 --> 00:57:12,199
never that, but possible to bear. The house yielded to

1184
00:57:12,239 --> 00:57:14,920
me and you. Margaret's room swelled with peas, and the

1185
00:57:14,960 --> 00:57:18,679
mirrors reflected only my own face, drawn sober but recognizably mine.

1186
00:57:19,239 --> 00:57:21,679
The fog when it came, slid past, as if respecting

1187
00:57:21,719 --> 00:57:25,039
the boundary set by hopeful, tired hands. I did not leave,

1188
00:57:25,679 --> 00:57:28,599
but I was not alone. When I gardened, the laughter

1189
00:57:28,679 --> 00:57:31,280
of children drifted up from the village below. When I

1190
00:57:31,320 --> 00:57:33,639
walked the edge of the trees, I felt watched, yes,

1191
00:57:33,800 --> 00:57:37,760
but not with mouse, only witness memory warning. Every so often,

1192
00:57:37,920 --> 00:57:40,159
near midnight, the scratching would sharpen, just long enough to

1193
00:57:40,239 --> 00:57:43,519
remind me. The hunger learned and waits, But so do we,

1194
00:57:43,639 --> 00:57:46,000
the wards, the keepers, and to night the boundaries hold.

1195
00:57:46,639 --> 00:57:51,199
For now, that is enough, and that is the end.

1196
00:57:51,840 --> 00:57:53,519
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in

1197
00:57:53,559 --> 00:57:54,079
the next one.