Speaker 1: Calarugus Shark Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to ghost Scary Stories and the October Records, a
month long Halloween nightmare. This is episode fourteen, The Warning.
Speaker 3: October fourteenth, nineteen seventy four. Silas October fourteenth, Silas Crane
It doesn't Want, Doesn't Want. October fourteenth, nineteen seventy four.
Elizabeth Blackwood came to see me. Not old Elizabeth, who
runs the flower shop. Young Elizabeth, twenty three years old,
the same age she was in nineteen twenty four. She
hasn't aged a day in fifty years. She sat across
from me and water ran from her eyes, not tears, water,
continuous streams, like facets, she said. She said, I chose
wrong in nineteen twenty four. I saved the town, but
damned my blood line. Every Blackwood woman will be the witness,
Every Blackwood woman will document the drowning. But only one
will break the pattern, my granddaughter Margaret. In twenty twenty five.
She'll have a choice I didn't have, because by then
the pattern will be complete enough too, two to reverse.
Instead of thirty souls going down, thirty souls can pull
every one up, but she has to has to let
herself drown. First, completely become water, become the thing that
drowns others. Only then can she She gave me these
blank records, told me to document everything, said Margaret would
need to know, would need to know about the pregnant women.
What happens to the pregnant women? Oh, God, silas, what
happens to the.
Speaker 1: The record is broken, physically cracked down the middle, held
together only by the label. But it played anyway, played
in pieces, in fragments, in horrible half truths that might
be worse than complete knowledge. My grandmother, Elizabeth, I need
to explain about her before I continue. She died when
I was twelve, Well that's what I was told, drowned
in her bath tub, closed casket. But the night before
her funeral, she came to my room, sat on my bed.
Her nightgown was soaked, dripping, but the bed stayed dry. Margaret,
she said, some day you'll find records in the library.
You'll play them, you'll learn what I did, what I
had to do, and you'll hate me for it. But
remember I chose this for you because you're stronger than
I was. You can do what I couldn't. Then she
kissed my forehead where her lips touched. The skin has
never been warm since, a cold spot that throbs every October.
After playing today's damage record, I went to my grandmother's house.
It's been empty since she died. My family maintains it,
but no one lives there. No one can. The walls
weep constantly, not water, something else, something that smells like
amniotic fluid. In her bedroom, I found them the photographs
she'd hidden. Elizabeth Blackwood through the decades. Nineteen twenty four, young, beautiful, terrified,
nineteen thirty four, the same age, holding a baby, my
mother's older sister who died at birth nineteen forty four,
still twenty three, holding another baby, my aunt who was
still born nineteen fifty four, unchanged, another dead baby nineteen
sixty four, another nineteen seventy four, holding my mother the
first to survive. Thirteen pregnancies over fifty years, twelve dead babies.
Only my mother lived. But here's the thing. The dead
babies were in the other photos too, Behind her, growing aging,
twelve ghostly children, each ten years older than the last,
all with clouded eyes, all dripping water. I found her
journal hidden in the same place. The final entry dated
the night before she died. Margaret will read this. Margaret
will understand. The pattern requires a witness from each founding family,
but the Blackwood witness is special. We are the only
ones who can choose to reverse the flow. Instead of
thirty souls drowning to feed it, thirty souls can poison it,
make it, vomit up everyone. It's ever swallowed, every soul
from every fifty year cycle. But the witness has to
become the same substance as it first. Has to become living.
Water has to drown so completely that drowning becomes breathing.
I couldn't do it. I was pregnant in nineteen twenty four.
When my time came, I couldn't drown my unborn child.
So I made a deal. I would provide witnesses for
every cycle, bear children for the pattern, twelve for the deep,
one for the surface. Margaret is the one for the surface,
the thirteenth grandchild, the one who can breathe both air
and water, the one who can exist in both states,
the one who can choose. But first she has to
die completely, not the half death, the recording's cause, true drowning,
true transformation. And then when she's made of water, she
can flow backward up instead of down, bring in everyone
with her. I set the journal down and looked in
her mirror. But it wasn't my reflection. It was her Elizabeth,
still twenty three, still in nineteen twenty four, but also
here now in twenty twenty five. You're starting to understand,
she said through the glass. Every Blackwood woman exists in
all octobers simultaneously. We're not documenting the pattern. We are
pattern the female line that connects all cycles. The twelve babies,
I said, your twelve dead children, not dead, transformed. They
live in the deep places. They've been preparing the way.
When you drown, truly drown, they'll guide you to the center,
to the original Blackwood, the one who made the first
deal in seventeen seventy four. What deal? She pressed her
hand against the inside of the mirror, where her palm
touched the glass began to crack. Water seeped through, black
water that smelled of birth and death, combined the deal
that saved humanity, the thing beneath Millbrook. It was going
to surface in seventeen seventy four, consume the entire continent,
return everything to primordial ocean. But Sarah Blackwood offered an
altar alternative, thirty souls every fifty years, a controlled feeding,
a slow drowning instead of immediate consumption, and the Blackwood
women would be the witnesses, the documentarians, the ones who
ensure the feeding happens correctly. But you said it could
be reversed after two hundred fifty years, after five complete cycles,
the pattern would be strong enough to work both ways,
like a throat that can swallow or vomit. And twenty
twenty five is year two hundred fifty one. This is
the first time it can be reversed, but only by
a Blackwood, only by you. The mirror shattered water poured
through impossible amounts from a surface that should have led
only to wall, and in the water floating were twelve children,
my aunts and uncles who were never born, ages ranging
from infant to fifty, all with gills, all with webbed hands,
all reaching for me, sister. They gurgled in unison, Come home,
Come to the deep. Mother has prepared your place. I ran,
but when I reached the library they were already there.
Twelve water children sitting in the children's section, reading picture
books that dripped, leaving puddles that reflected not the ceiling,
but the bottom of something vast and dark. Sixteen more days,
they sang, sixteen more days until you drown. Then the
choice feed thirty to it, or feed it to thirty.
Make the pattern swallow, or make the pattern vomit. But
first you have to die. One of them, the oldest,
who would have been my aunt Sarah, stood up. Her
legs didn't work right, they bent in too many places,
but she walked to me anyway, leaving wet footprints that
hissed and steamed. She handed me something, a photograph I'd
never seen. It showed me, but not me now, me
in two weeks on Halloween, standing in the fountain in
the town square. But I wasn't standing. I was drowning.
The water was up to my neck, my eyes were
completely white, my mouth was open, and instead of screaming,
I was singing. And behind me, rising from the fountain,
were thousands of people, everyone who'd ever drowned in Millbrook,
all climbing out, all following me up or following me down.
The photo was dated October thirty first, twenty twenty five,
two weeks in the future. The choice, my never born
aunt whispered, is which direction you lead them? The fourteenth
point isn't a place, It's a moment, the moment when
the witness realizes they're not recording the pattern, they're completing it. Tomorrow,
I'll play October fifteenth. Tomorrow, the second week ends, and
the hunting begins. Tonight. I'm surrounded by the children who
were never born, my grandmother's sacrifice. Dozen They're teaching me
to breathe water, teaching me to think like liquid, teaching
me to flow backward, teaching me to drown correc so
that when the time comes, I can make the choice
that Elizabeth couldn't save thirty or save everyone. But either way,
I have to die first. Completely.
Speaker 2: 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