Speaker 1: Calarugu Shark Media. Welcome to ghost Scary Stories and the
October Records, a month long Halloween nightmare. This is episode
twenty four, The.
Speaker 2: Cover Up, October twenty fourth, nineteen seventy four. Silas Crane
Mayor Davidson just showed me something. God help us all.
I called the state police from his office, told them
about the deaths, the drownings, the pattern. I know what
I said. I begged for help, described everything, But Davidson
had recorded what the police heard on their end. He
played it back for me. In the recording, my voice
was talking about the weather, asking about road conditions, casual conversation.
The words leaving my mouth weren't the words arriving in
their ears. Then Davidson had me write a letter to
the FBI. I wrote about the thirty deaths, the transformations,
every horrible detail. I watched Davidson mail it, But when
he showed me the carbon copy from the typewriter, it
was a request for farming subsidies. Different words. Every cry
for help becomes mundane. Every evidence photo becomes a family portrait,
every proof becomes nothing. We're not isolated, we're edited. Something
is changing our words as they leave Milbrook has been
since seventeen seventy four. The town charter isn't a legal document,
it's a translation filter, and it's written on something that
isn't paper. Its skin, still alive, still growing. Davidson peeled
back a corner to show me underneath veins, blood flow,
a pulse. The charter is alive, and it's rewriting everything
we say to the outside world. But here's the worst part.
It works both ways. People trying to enter Milbrook to help,
they forget why they came, forget we exist, or they
remember wrong, think they're visiting somewhere else. We're not a town,
We're a stomach, and stomachs don't call for help, they
just digest.
Speaker 3: My scaled arm was right today today everything changes. Today.
I woke up drowning, not metaphorically. My bed was full
of water, water that came from inside me. I'd been
leaking all night, the human parts of me crying water
while the scaled parts drank it. Maya Davidson was in
my kitchen when I came downstairs, not breaking in, just
there like he'd always been there, making coffee with water
that was too dark, too thick. Morning Sarah, he said,
or do you prefer Margaret today? It's so hard to
keep track of which death you're experiencing. My scaled arm
was writing again on its own skin, now carving letters.
He's not Davidson. Never was Your arm knows, he said,
sipping coffee that had small things swimming in it. Davidson
was my first suit, seventeen seventy four, young man, ambitious,
wanted to be important. So I made him important, wore
him for fifty years, then wore his son, then his grandson.
But I'm not Davidson. I'm the one who writes the rules.
He pulled out a roll of parchment. No, not parchment, skin,
fresh skin, still bleeding at the edges. The town charter,
the real one, every word written in blood, every law
carved into living flesh. Want to see my favorite part,
He unrolled it. The smell rot and perfume and something chemical.
The words weren't in English, weren't in any language. They
were pictures, moving pictures showing the founding of Millbrook. But
it wasn't founded. It was summoned. The entire town, buildings, streets, people,
all rising from the lake at once, all made of water,
pretending to be solid. Millbrook is a lie, Davidson said,
a collective delusion. We're all still at the bottom of
the lake, have been since before the town existed. The
charter just makes us believe we're on dry land. He
showed me a specific passage. It was about communication, but
the pictures were horrible. Mouths sown shut, hands cut off,
eyes gouged out, and underneath my name Sarah Blackwood written
over and over. You sign this, he said, in seventeen
seventy four, with your dying breath. Agreed to keep the secret,
to maintain the lie, to let everyone believe they're alive
when they're all drowned. My scaled arm grabbed the charter,
touched a specific word. The word changed became a window
through it. I saw outside, the real outside, not mill Brook,
a lake, empty, no town, no buildings, just water and
at the bottom, barely visible shadows moving, all of us
walking around on the lake bed, thinking we're in a town.
Want to call for help, Davidson asked, offering me his phone.
Go ahead, try. I dialed nine one one. The operator
answered nine one one, what's your emergency? Millbrook is drowned.
Everyone's turning to water. Please help, ma'am. You're saying the
weather is nice and you're enjoying the water. That's not
an emergency. No people are dying there. You're welcome for
the dying flowers. Tip, have a nice day. The line
went dead. Davidson laughed. Every word you speak to the
outside world becomes its opposite. Every plea becomes contentment, every
scream becomes laughter. He stood, walked to my window. Outside
the town looked normal, people walking, cars driving life continuing.
Look closer, he said, I did. The people were walking wrong.
Their feet went through the ground slightly with each step.
The cars left no tire marks, birds flew through solid buildings.
We're ghosts, Davidson said, ghosts who don't know we're dead,
playing out our lives at the bottom of a lake,
and the charter keeps us unaware, keeps us thinking we're real.
My scaled arm was carving deeper. Now, blood or something
like blood welling up. He's lying. The charter is the trap.
Destroy it. Davidson saw what my arm wrote. His face changed,
not expression, structure, his bones rearranging under his skin. Your
arm is smart, he said, too smart. He grabbed my
scaled arm, pulled it came off, no pain, no blood,
it just detached, like it was never really part of me.
The arm kept writing, even severed. The charter is his body.
He is the the town is him. Davidson slashed, the town,
slashed the thing wearing Davidson's face smiled with too many teeth. Yes,
he said, I am Millbrook. Every building is my bone,
every street is my vein, every person is my cell.
And you, Sarah, you're my memory. The part that remembers
this isn't real. He ate my severed arm, swallowed it whole.
His throat expanded to accommodate it, like a snake. Seven
more days, he said, Davidson's face melting and reforming. Seven
more recordings, seven more rememberings, Then Halloween, then the truth.
Then everyone remembers they're dead and stops fighting it. He
walked out through my wall, literally through it. The wall
rippled like water as he passed. I looked at where
my arm had been already a new one was growing.
But this one was different, transparent. I could see through
to the bones, but the bones weren't bones. They were streets,
tiny streets with tiny people walking on them. Inside my
new arm was a miniature mill Brook, and in that
mill Brook a tinier Margaret was playing a recording, and
in her arm an even tinier town, down and down
and down, infinite recursive mill brooks, all drowning, all unaware.
The phone rang I answered with my new transparent arm.
Hello Margaret, my own voice, but from a side, my arm,
from the tiny margaret in the tiny town. Stop playing
the recordings. You're making us remember, and when we remember,
we dissolve. I looked at my transparent arm. The tiny
town inside was flooding, the tiny people dissolving. Every recording
makes us realer. The tiny Mea gasped as she liquefied.
And real things can't exist at the bottom of a lake.
Only dreams can live here, only lies can breathe here.
The line went dead. The tiny town in my arm
was empty, now, all drowned, all gone, But already a
new tier was forming, even tinier, even deeper. Tomorrow, I'll
play October twenty fifth. Tomorrow, I meet the survivor. Tonight,
I'm watching my transparent arm, watching infinite tiny millbrooks drowning
inside me, each one playing recordings, each one making the
same mistake, each one discovering We're all already dead, and
have been since before We Were Born.
Speaker 1: Ghost 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.