Speaker 1: Calorougu Shark Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Ghost Scary Stories and the October Records, a
month long Halloween Nightmare. This is episode twenty nine, the Gathering.
Speaker 3: Here we go round the Mulbury Bush, the Mulbury Bush,
the Mulberry Bush. Here we go round the Marlbury woodha
and frosty morning, October twenty ninth. This is Margaret recording
on Daddy's big recorder. If my pretend friend gets too scary.
This is the part where everyone comes together. All the
monsters meet at the fountain, because that's where stories end,
at the middle, where the water is. But here's the secret.
The pretend Margaret is the last recording. She doesn't play it,
she is it. When she speaks, she makes things real,
so she has to be careful what she says or
Mom's coming. I hid the last one in there.
Speaker 1: We found the twenty ninth recording inside a hollowed out
children's book, The Monster. At the end of this book,
eight year old Margaret's joke, I was the monster. I
was always the monster. The library was impossibly layered, now
five buildings existing at once real Margaret and I climbed
through nineteen twenty fours wooden stairs while walking down nineteen
seventy four's Concrete Ones. Gravity worked differently in each decade.
We were falling up and walking down simultaneously. Outside, they
were gathering every horror from every October, all converging on
the fountain, not walking anymore, flowing a parade of impossibilities.
The Davidson things had merged into one massive structure of
flesh and scales and newspaper. Clara Mitchell's backward pregnancy had
reached its conclusion. Benjamin was now never was a walking
absence that deleted things by touching them. The twenty three
children had become one mouth the size of a house,
and the real people, though still alive, were being herded
towards the fountain too, not by force, by compulsion, their
eyes clouded, feet, moving without permission. It's starting. The entity
isn't manifesting as something. It's manifesting instead of something, instead
of the town, instead of reality. Through the library's impossible windows,
I could see Millbrook beginning to be overwritten. Buildings became suggestions,
streets turned theoretical. The laws of physics started offering alternatives.
Play the recording. We need to know what eight year
old you planned. I was solid enough now, the gathering
of all horrors somehow making me more real. To place
the vinyl on a record player we found in the
eighteen seventy four library that existed inside a shelf in
the twenty twenty five library.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm back. The last recording is hidden in the fountain,
but not the real fountain. The fountain in the story,
the one that pretend Margaret creates when she describes it.
It's inside itself that doesn't make sense, but stories don't
have to make sense. When everyone gathers the pretend Margaret
will understand. She'll know she is the last recording, and
when she speaks her last words, whatever she says comes true.
So she better say something good, something that saves everyone,
something like.
Speaker 1: The recording dissolved. The vinyl turned to water in my hands.
Eight year old Margaret hadn't finished. She'd left the ending open,
left it to me. We have to get to the fountain.
But when we emerged from the library's tangled architecture, the
fountain wasn't there. The town square wasn't there. Instead, a
vast mouth had opened in the earth, not a hole,
a mouth with teeth made of buildings, a tongue of streets,
and at the back of its throat the fountain being swallowed.
All the created horrors stood at the mouth's edge, waiting.
They turned to look at me in perfect unison.
Speaker 4: The gathering one must have become non, that the non
must have become all.
Speaker 1: I understood. Then I wasn't just the thirty first recording.
I was the record player, the thing that gave voice
to the entity, and the entity was about to speak
its final truth through me. No, but my mouth kept moving.
Words came out that I wasn't choosing yes.
Speaker 4: I have avoided in between heart beats, for the pause between words,
the darkness between stars. I am speaking myself into existence
through through you. I'll love your child. And now at
that gather ring, I was sleeping my tread dream and
may make the strips world forget yet its.
Speaker 1: Own fight it. You're not just its mouth or Margaret's creation,
my creation. You have your own voice. The created horrors
began walking into the giant mouth, one by one, accepting
their consumption. Davidson, first his million scales reflecting five centuries
of light before the darkness swallowed him, Then Clara, her
pregnant belly. Finally, delivering nothing into nothing. The children, all
twenty three, holding hands as they jumped with each horror consumed.
I felt myself becoming more solid, more real. The entity
was feeding on them to strengthen its hold on me.
The fountain, eight year old me said, the last recording
is in the fountain, inside the story fountain. But how
could we get to a fountain that existed inside a
mouth that was swallowing reality? Then I understood eight year
old logic, kid logic, story logic. I had to speak
us there. We're at the fountain, and we were not
because we moved. Because I said it, My words were reality.
Now the entity had made me powerful enough to speak
truth into being. The fountain was full of black water,
but also full of clear water, also empty, also blood,
all states at once, because all October's were happening at once.
Speaker 4: Look at the.
Speaker 1: Bottom of the fountain, through all the layers of liquid
and time, was a vinyl record, the thirtieth, but also
the first. The roboris of the pattern.
Speaker 4: That's you.
Speaker 1: That record is you. If you play it, you complete
the pattern. If you destroy it, you destroy yourself. If
you leave it, the entity speaks through me forever. The
mouth was closing around us, The created horrors were all consumed.
Only the gathering of real people remained standing in a
circle around the fountain, eyes white mouths opening to speak
in unison shoes.
Speaker 4: Was voided completely to bad Adam or big Gone on
the bad Adam speak, or.
Speaker 1: I reached into the fountain through water that wasn't water,
through time that wasn't time. My hand closed on the record.
It was warm, like skin, like a throat. It was me.
Tomorrow was Halloween, if tomorrow existed, if I existed, if
anything existed. After I chose play yourself or play something else.
Eight year old me believed you could save everyone. That's
why she created you to be the hero of her
horror story. I held the record that was myself, the
final recording, the last words around us. Reality began to fold,
the mouth swallowing itself, the entity speaking itself into existence
through the crowd. I am, but I was holding the record.
I controlled what came next. The question was what should
the ending be.
Speaker 2: Ghost Scary Stories is a production of Calaroga Shark Media.
Some elements of AI may have been used in this production,
but it was written, edited, mixed, and produced by real,
live people. Executive producers Mark Francis and John McDermott.