Speaker 1: Caloroga Shark Media, Hello, and welcome to ghost Scary Stories.
This episode is titled A Thanksgiving Horror, Part two.
Speaker 3: The harvest.
Speaker 2: Morning at Blackwood House comes reluctantly, as if the knight
wishes to linger. I watch the sun crawl across the
breakfast room's persian carpet, its lights somehow dimmer within these walls.
The house is awake, now, greeting its occupants with subtle
shifts and sighs. The children are first to breakfast, drawn
by sense that make their pupils dilate. Emily leads them
as she's arranged the silver with disturbing precision, all the
forks with their times pointing inward toward the heart of
the house. The table needs feeding, she announces, in that
voice that sounds like many children speaking at once. Her
cousins nod in unison, their movements synchronized in a way
that makes my throat titan. Elizabeth enters next, one hand
pressed against her swollen belly. There's only one heartbeat now,
where yesterday there were two. Nature has taken its course.
She catches my eye, and I see the question there,
the dawning horror of understanding Daddy.
Speaker 3: She whispers, I had dreams last.
Speaker 2: Night about mother, about what we really are. Before I
can respond, Grace appears with her notepad and two sharp eyes.
She's been up for hours. I heard her pacing the library,
pulling books from shelves, discovering things she shouldn't. The house
wanted me to stop her, but curiosity stays my hand.
Speaker 3: Let her dig, Let her find. She'll learn soon enough.
Speaker 2: Sarah bustles in, all forced cheer and trembling hands. I
thought i'd start on the preparations, she says. Where's mother's
cook book, the red one on the kitchen shelf, I
reply carefully.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Emily interrupts, not looking up from her precisely arranged silverware.
The other one, the true one, the one bound in skin.
Sarah's smile freezes. A memory flickers behind her eyes, her
at Emily's age, watching Margaret cook, seeing things no child
should see. She shakes her head, denial stronger than memory
for now. Michael is last, stumbling in with bloodshot eyes
and a fresh cut on his hand. He's been in
the root cellar, despite my warnings. I smell Margaret's preserves
on his breath, the jars, he says, hoarsely. The things
in the jars there's still a lie. Of course they are,
Emily says, cheerfully. Grandmother knows how to keep things fresh.
Grace's pens scratches across paper, recording everything journalist's instincts, but
her hand shakes. She's found the town records, then the
pattern of disappearances, the impossible photographs. I've been reading about
the family history, Grace says, trying to keep her voice steady,
About the original Blackwood settlement, the winter of eighteen forty seven,
when the food ran out. But we didn't run out.
Emily corrects her, we just changed what we ate. The
silence that follows is heavy with inherited memory. I see
it rippling through my children, understanding, dawning in their eyes, horror,
wrestling with hunger, the east wing. Michael suddenly announces, I remember,
now that's where mother, Perhaps we should discuss dinner preparations.
I interrupt smoothly, but it's too late. The memories are surfacing,
the truth unfold like a flower made of razors. Elizabeth gasps,
doubling over the baby. She moans it's changing. We help
her to the settee as the house creaks around us.
The walls pulse, slightly, matching the rhythm of Elizabeth's transformed child.
Grace reaches for the phone but finds it dead. Outside,
clouds gather with unnatural speed, darkening the windows.
Speaker 3: The harvest begins. Emily announces.
Speaker 2: The other children echo her words, their voices harmonizing in
that ancient tongue that tastes of copper and moonlight. Sarah
has found the true cookbook. Now, I hear her scream
from the kitchen. The sound cuts off, abruptly, replaced by
the wet sound of turning pages. When she returns, her
eyes are different, older, hungrier mother's handwriting, She says, softly,
her recipes. I remember, I remember everything. Grace finds me
in the library as afternoon shadows lengthen impossibly across the floor.
She's clutching photographs, ancient de geratypes, Victorian portraits, modern snapshots.
In each one, Margaret appears unchanged eighteen forty seven, nineteen
twenty three, nineteen eighty six, always the same knowing smile,
the same hungry eyes.
Speaker 3: What are you?
Speaker 2: Grace demands, her journalist's composure, cracking what is this family?
But her question is answered by something else. The house shudders,
rippling like muscle beneath wallpaper. A door appears where none
existed before, the east wing calling. Emily stands in the doorway.
Margaret's smile on her young face. Show her Grandpa, Emily says,
show her what Grandma wrote. In the spaces between the recipes,
Sarah's voice drifts from the kitchen, reading aloud from the
true cookbook. The hunger passes from mother to child, but
only those who feed it survive the others. We preserve,
keep fresh until the family needs sustenance. Michael stumbles in, preserves,
staining his shirt like blood the jars. He gasps, I
saw them moving, all those faces, years of faces, Mother's
special preserves. Elizabeth screams from upstairs, a sound of pain
and transformation and ancient memory. The baby comes early, they
always do, when they're ready to feed. The photographs, Grace whispers,
still clutching her evidence. Some of these are dated after
Margaret disappeared, and the town records every November people go missing,
not just here, but everywhere. The Blackwood family has lived
for centuries. We are what we've always been, I tell her,
as the house groans around us. What we became that
first winter when the food ran out and we discovered
what we could become, what we had to become to survive.
The children gather at the doorway, eyes reflecting a light
that isn't there. Their shadows stretch wrong, showing shapes that
their bodies don't match. Emily steps forward, taking Grace's hand.
My granddaughter's fingers are longer now, sharper. Don't you want
to know what happened to Grandma Margaret, Emily asks sweetly.
Grace tries to pull away, but Emily's grip is impossibly strong.
She's here, Emily continues. She's always been here, in the walls,
in the foundations, in the preserves. She became part of
the house.
Speaker 3: You see.
Speaker 2: That's what mothers do in our family. They feed us,
they sustain us, they become us. The truth hits Grace
like a physical blow. She looks at Elizabeth, understanding blooming
in her eyes. The baby, she whispers, the nursery being
prepared in the east wing. Every generation needs a mother's love,
I explain. Margaret gave herself to the house, to the family.
Elizabeth's child will need the same nourishment, the same preservation.
Sarah returns cookbook clutched to her chest, her smile now
showing too many teeth. I remember how to make mother's recipes, now,
she says, all of them.
Speaker 3: The house shudders again.
Speaker 2: Upstairs, Elizabeth's transformation progresses. Soon she'll understand her role, just
as Margaret did, just as every Blackwood mother has since
that first desperate winter. Michael laughs, suddenly, a sound of
breaking and becoming. I always thought I was fighting a diction,
he says. But it wasn't the drugs or alcohol I craved.
Speaker 3: It was this.
Speaker 2: It was always this. Grace backs away, but there's nowhere
to go. The house has sealed itself, preparing for tomorrow's feast.
The children move in perfect synchronization, their shadows dancing on
the walls like ancient cave paintings of hunts and rituals.
Welcome to the family, Emily says to Grace, Really, to
the family. Tomorrow's dinner is going to be special. I
watch as understanding and horror war on Grace's face. She's
piecing it all together, the photographs, the preserves, the recipes.
Speaker 3: The transformations.
Speaker 2: Tomorrow is Thanksgiving at Blackwood House, and now she knows
what that truly means. The harvest begins. The children chant
in unison, the hunger awakens, The family feeds from the kitchen.
Sarah starts preparing the marinades, humming Margaret's old lullaby. The
house ripples with anticipation. Soon, very soon, another generation will
take its place in our great succession. After all, as
Margaret always said, a family that feasts together survives together.
And tomorrow we feast.
Speaker 1: Ghost is a Calaroga Shark Media production written and hosted
by Alexander Ian McIntyre, produced by Mark Francis. Executive producers
Mark Francis and John McDermott. Portions of this podcast may
have been created with the assistance of AI. This show,
along with hundreds of others from Caloroga Shark Media, is
available commercial free on any player has or free just
look for the link in the episode or show notes.
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