Speaker 1: Calarugu Shark Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to ghost Scary Stories and the October Records, a
month long Halloween nightmare. This is episode four, The Basement.
Speaker 3: October fourth, nineteen seventy four, Silas Crane. The Brennan family
called me this morning. They know I'm documenting these events.
Everyone knows. In a town like Millbrook, secrets are currency,
and right now everyone's bankrupt. Their son, Timothy, seven years old,
has been spending time in their basement hours, sometimes all night.
They find him standing in three inches of water that
floods their basement every October, standing perfectly still, perfectly dry,
talking to some one they can't see. He says it's
his grandmother, Patricia Brennan. She died in nineteen sixty three
when Timothy was barely walking, eleven years dead. But Timothy
describes her perfectly, the mole on her left cheek, the
way she hummed while cooking. Details he couldn't know. But
what she's teaching him, Missus Brennan showed me his drawings.
Cymbals that hurt to look at, patterns that make your
eyes water, and words. He's been speaking words in languages
that shouldn't exist, words that make his nose bleed, words
that leave burns on his tongue. This afternoon I went
to see him, found him in the basement. As they said,
the water was black, reflecting nothing. Timothy stood in the center,
eyes closed, reciting something. When he opened his eyes they
were clouded, but only for a moment. Then he looked
at me, this seven year old child, and said, she says,
you're documenting good. Someone needs to remember how we invited
them in, how we opened the door. The children are
always the key. We're small enough to fit through the cracks,
pure enough to be believed, young enough to be shaped.
Then he laughed, not a child's laugh, something else, wearing
a child's voice. He's being prepared for something. All the
children touched by this are being prepared.
Speaker 1: I arrived at the library at three am, unable to
sleep after what I'd witnessed at the hospital. The fourth
recording was waiting for me. Though I'd locked it in
my desk drawer, it sat on top of my keyboard,
the vinyl slightly warm to the touch, as if someone
had just handled it. Timothy Brennan, I knew that name
too well. There's a Timothy Brennan who comes to my
story hours, seven years old, like his predecessor in nineteen
seventy four, Quiet boy always sits in the back, always
staring at something just over my shoulder. His mother says
he's imaginative. His teachers say he's troubled. But after hearing
Silas his recording, I think he's something else. He's a conduit.
I found the current Timothy Brennan, the one who was
seven in nineteen seventy four, at his family's home on
Willow Street, Fifty seven years old, now working as an accountant,
living in the same house where he grew up, the
same house with the same basement. He answered the door
before I knocked. You're playing the recordings, he said. His
voice was flat, resigned. I wondered when they'd surface. Silas
said he was making them for the future. Guess the
future is now. He led me through a house that
felt heavy with memory. Family photos lined the walls, but
in each one, young Timothy stood slightly apart from the others,
as if occupying a different space. The basement, he said,
opening a door that had too many locks. You want
to see the basement. The wooden stairs creaked under our weight,
The air grew thick, damp, cold at the bottom. The
concrete floor was wet, not flooded, just wet, perpetually wet.
It never dries, Timothy said, fifty one years, and it
never dries. She made sure of that. Your grandmother, he laughed,
bitter and sharp. That's what she claimed to be. But
grandmothers don't teach you how to drown while breathing. Grandmothers
don't show you the spaces between seconds where the dark
water lives. On the walls were drawings, decades of them,
layer upon layer, some in crayon, some in marker, some
carved directly into the concrete, all showing the same thing.
Figures standing in water, hands reaching up from below, and
at the center, a child holding something, a key, a door,
a hole in the world. I drew those, Timothy said,
from age seven to seventeen, every time she visited, every
time she taught me something new. Then it stopped. October
thirty first, nineteen seventy four. She said, I was ready,
said I'd served my purpose, but she lied, pulled out
a photo album pictures of his family, his wife, his children,
and his grandson, another Timothy Brennan, aged seven. It wasn't over,
he continued, It was just waiting, waiting for the next Timothy,
the next seven year old Brennan boy. She needs one
every fifty years, to be her hands in this world,
to draw the symbols that weaken the barriers, to speak
the words that invite them through, invite who through The
ones in the dark water, the ones who were here
before the town, before the settlement, before anything human walk
this land, They never left. They just sank deeper, and
every fifty years they rise a little, each time getting
closer to the surface. He led me to a corner
of the basement where the concrete was cracked. Water seeped through,
continuously forming a small pool. In the pool, impossible as
it was, I could see a reflection that wasn't ours,
an old woman with a mole on her left cheek
standing behind a small boy. That's happening now, Timothy said,
three floors up in my grandson's room. He thinks he's
in his bed, but he's really here. In nineteen seventy four,
in nineteen twenty four, in eighteen seventy four, all the
Timothy's all at once, all learning the same lessons. I
leaned closer to the pool. The boy in the reflection
turned to look at me. His eyes were clouded white.
He's almost ready, the older Timothy whispered, three more days
of lessons. Then he'll do what I did all the
Timothys do. He'll go to the place where the pattern
converges and speak the words that make the town remember
what it's tried to forget. What words? Timothy pulled out
a notebook, pages yellow with age inside. Written in a
child's hand were words in a language that predated human speech,
words that hurt to read, words that made my nose
bleed just from looking at them. These words, he said,
the invitation, the permission, the consent, because they can't come
through without consent. And who believes a child's words more
than adults who want to dismiss them as imagination. As
I left, Timothy grabbed my arm. His touch was cold,
wet despite his dry skin. Tell my grandson's parents to
leave tonight, take him away from Millbrook. It won't stop coming.
But he doesn't need to be the one who speaks
the words. Any child will do, any innocent voice will
open the door. When I returned to the library, I
found wet footprints leading to the children's section, small feet,
child sized. They led to a corner where someone had
been drawing on the wall in water, the same symbols
from Timothy's basement, but these were fresh. These were from tonight.
The fourth point of the pattern isn't a place. It's
a person, a child, a key, and somewhere in Millbrook tonight,
seven year old Timothy Brennan is learning words that will
unlock something that should stay buried.
Speaker 2: Most Scary Stories is a production of Calaoga 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.