Speaker 1: Calarogu Shark Media. Hello and welcome to Ghost Scary Stories.
This episode is titled Veale's Edge, The Unraveling of Hollow Creek,
Episode one, the first tear.
Speaker 2: Good evening. Dear listeners, I pray you're seated comfortably, perhaps
with a warm beverage to ward off the autumn chill.
For the tale I'm about to relay is one that
may well leave you feeling unsettled. I implore you draw
closer to the fire, for the shadows seem to lengthen
as I speak, and one never knows what might be
lurking just beyond the circle of light. Our story begins
in Hollow Creek, a quaint town that until recently I
would have described as un remarkable. Nestled in a valley
surrounded by ancient forests whose trees whisper secrets on the wind.
It was a place where time seemed to move a
touch slower than the outside world. How ironic that description
would prove to be. It was on a crisp October morning,
just nine days before Halloween, when young Timothy Holloway vanished
without a trace. Now, a child going missing is always
a tragedy, a horror that no parents should ever endure,
But in Hollow Creek it was unprecedented. It was as
if the very fabric of the town's reality had been punctured.
I remember the day vividly, etched into my memory like
a scar. The air was thick with the scent of
decaying leaves and wood smoke, and an unseasonable mist clung
to the ground, coiling around our ankles like something alive.
Search parties combed the forests, calling Timothy's name until their
voices grew hoarse, the sound echoing un naturally in the
dense woods. Police officers knocked on doors, their faces grim,
eyes shadowed with a fear they dared not name, and
young Timothy's mother, Sarah, stood on her porch, her eyes
red rimmed and vacant, clutching her son's favorite stuffed bear.
I stood with her for a time, offering what meager
comfort I could. The bear in her arms, a cheerful
thing with button eyes and a stitched on smile, seemed
to mock our despair. As the day wore on, I
could have sworn those button eyes followed me, and that
stitched smile grew wider, more knowing. But as the sun
began to set, painting the sky in hues of blood
and bruise. Something changed. The search parties returned, their flashlight beams,
cutting through the growing gloom, and there, walking calmly out
of the woods, was Timothy. One might expect joy, relief,
a Hollywood ending to a day of terror, but dear listeners,
that was not to be. As Timothy emerged from the
tree line, the very air seemed to ripple around him,
as if reality itself recoiled from his presence. Timothy walked
with a strange, fluid gait, as if his joints weren't
quite where they should be. His eyes, once a warm
brown that reminded one of hot cocoa on a winter's day,
now shone with an opalescent sheen, reflecting colors that had
no place in our world. And when he spoke, his
voice echoed as if coming from the bottom of a
deep well, or perhaps from somewhere much much further away.
I'm home, mummy, he said, his words slithering through the
air like oil on water. The nice man in the
woods showed me such wonderful things. Sarah rushed to embrace
her son, but as her arms encircled him, she gasped
for a moment, just a moment, mind you. Timothy's form
seemed to flicker, as if he were a faulty hologram, or,
perhaphaps a radio signal struggling to maintain coherence. I saw
it too, though in the days that followed I tried
desperately to convince myself it was a trick of the light,
a product of stress and exhaustion. Oh how I wish
that were true. In the days that followed it became
clear that that Timothy who returned was not the same
boy who had vanished. Objects around him would move of
their own accord, drifting lazily through the air or skittering
across surfaces like frightened insects. Clocks in his presence would
run backward or stop entirely, their hands occasionally spinning wildly
as if trying to escape the confines of their faces.
And sometimes, when he thought no one was looking, he
would smile, a smile that was far too wide, with
far too many teeth. I saw it once reflected in
a window, and I confess I had to stifle a scream.
It was the smile of something that had never been human,
merely wearing humanity like ill fitting suit. Doctor Eleanor Simmons,
the town's physician and a woman of science, if ever
there was one, examined Timothy thoroughly. I was present when
she delivered her findings to Sarah, and I'll never forget
the tremor in Eleanor's usually steady hands. Physically, he appears
to be in perfect health, she told Sarah, her voice
tight with poorly concealed unease. But his brain scans, I've
never seen anything like it. It's as if entire sections
of his mind are simply elsewhere. And his blood work,
she trailed off, shaking her head. There are structures in
his cells that I can't even begin to classify. It's
as if, as if he's not entirely here anymore. As
for Timothy himself, he spoke of his time in the
woods in disjointed fragments that chilled me to my very soul.
He described impossible geometries, structures that seemed to fold in
on themselves in ways that defied the laws of physics.
He spoke of colours that had no name, hughes that
writhed and pulsed at the edges of perception. And he
mentioned over and over a nice man whose face seemed
to constantly shift and change. He told me a secret mummy,
Timothy whispered one night as Sarah tucked him in. I
was there offering a prayer for the boy's well being,
though I feared my words fell on deaf ears, both
human and divine. He said that Hollow Creek is special,
that it's thin here, whatever that means, and that soon,
very soon, we'll all see what he showed me. The
look of terror on Sarah's face will haunt me until
my dying day. It was the look of a woman
who realized her child had been replaced by something wearing
his skin, something that whispered of horrors beyond comprehension. Now,
dear listeners, I must confess that I am not merely
a dispassionate narrator in this tale. For you see, I
am Reverend Arthur Blackwood, Hollow Creek's longtime spiritual adviser, and
it was to me that many of the townsfolk turned
as strange occurrences began to multiply in the wake of
Timothy's return. Fiona mc grath, our town librarian, reported books
re arranging themselves overnight, their contents shifting to languages that
had never existed. She brought me one such tome, its
pages filled with squirming symbols that seemed to move when
viewed from the corner of one's eye. I tried to
read it aloud, and found my tongue twisting into knots,
tasting of ash and brimstone. Old man Jenkins swore that
his cows were giving milk that flowed up stream and
defied gravity. I saw it with my own eyes, purlescent
fluid that rose from the pale insinuous tendrils, forming shapes
in the air that made my eyes water and my
mind real and young. Sally Peterson, Timothy's class mate, began
to speak in voices not her own, describing events yet
to come. Her prophecies were fragmented, delivered in a cacophony
of tones that no human throat should be able to produce.
The veil thins, she said, her eyes rolling back to
show only whites. The hollow men come wearing faces that
aren't their own, and he who waits between grows hungry.
As Halloween drew nearer, a palpable sense of wrongness settled
over Hollow Creek like a shroud the very air seemed
to thicken, becoming syrupy and resistant, as if reality itself
was congealing around us. At times, if one looked quickly enough,
shadows moved in ways shadows should not, forming appendages and
moors that vanished when viewed directly. I counseled, calm urged, prayer,
and sought logical explanations. But in the deepest recesses of
my mind, a terrible suspicion began to take root. What
if Timothy's disappearance and subsequent return were not the cause
of these disturbances, but merely the first visible symptom. What
if God forbid, something fundamental had changed in Hollow Creek,
something that threatened not just our town, but perhaps the
very nature of reality itself. As I sit here in
my study, penning this account by candlelight, I cannot shake
the feeling that we stand on the precipice of something
vast and terrifying. The candle flame flickers, casting strange shadows
on the wall, and for a moment, just a moment,
I fancy I see shapes moving within those shadows, Shapes
that have no place in our world, Limbs that bend
at impossible angles, eyes that blink in synchronicity with my
own heartbeat. Tomorrow I shall visit Timothy and his mother. Perhaps,
with God's grace I can glean some insight into the
darkness that seems to be encroaching upon us. But I fear,
dear listeners, that this is only the beginning, the first
tear in the fabric of our reality, a rent through
which terrors beyond imagining might slither. For now, I bid
you good night, and I pray most fervently that your
reality remains more stable than ours here in hollow Creek.
Sleep well if you can, and may your dreams be
free of the whispers that now haunt our nights, whispers
that speak of a hunger vast and endless, and of
the thinning of the veil that separates us from whatever
lies beyond. And if perchance you hear a child's laughter
in the dark, a sound just a touch too joyous, too,
knowing well, I advise you not to answer, for it
may not be a child at all, but something wearing childhood,
like a mask inviting you to peer behind the veil.
And once you've seen what lurks there, dear listeners, you
can never unsee it, good night, and God help us.
Speaker 1: All a Ghost is a Caloroga 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 hassel Free. Just
look for the link in the episode or show notes.
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