Speaker 1: Calarogu Shark Media, Hello and welcome to Ghost Scary Stories.
This episode is titled Veil's Edge, The Unraveling of Hollow Creek,
Episode four, Reflections of Madness.
Speaker 2: Is anyone still listening? Can anyone still hear me? I?
I'm not sure who I am anymore. The name Arthur
Blackwood feels like an ill fitting costume, a role I've
been playing for so long that I've forgotten It's not
really me. But if not Arthur Blackwood, then who what?
Forgive me? My thoughts are scattered. Hollow Creek has changed,
or perhaps It's always been this way and I'm only
now seeing it clearly. The veil between what is and
what could be has grown so thin that reality itself
seems to be splintering, fracturing into a thousand possible versions
of itself. It started with reflections, innocent enough at first,
a face in a window that didn't quite match the
person standing before it, a ripple in a puddle that
showed a sky of a different color. But then then
it got worse. Missus Abernathy from the post Office came
to see me yesterday or was it last week? Time
has become unreliable. She was shaking, her eyes wild with fear. Reverend,
she said, her voice barely above a whisper. I saw
myself today, not in a mirror, walking down Main Street,
bold as brass. But it wasn't me. It smiled at me.
And its teeth, oh god, its teeth were all wrong.
I tried to comfort her, to offer some explanation, but
the words died in my throat. I caught sight of
my own reflection in the window behind her. It wasn't
looking at me. It was staring at missus Abernathy, a
hungry gleam in its eyes that made my blood run cold.
I blinked and the moment passed. But missus Abernathy had
seen it too. She ran from my office, screaming about
impostors and demons wearing human skin. She wasn't the last.
Over the next few days, if days they truly were,
more and more people came to me with similar stories.
Husbands returning home to find their wives already there, cooking
dinner as if nothing was amiss. Children seeing versions of
their parents that were subtly, terrifyingly wrong, and always, always,
these doppelgangers seemed to know something. Their smiles were too wide,
their eyes too, knowing, they moved with a fluidity that
was almost obscene, as if they were not quite solid,
not quite bound by the laws of physics. I wish
I could say I was, But every time I pass
a reflective surface, I see him, the other me. Sometimes
he mimics my movements, a perfect mirror image, but more
often he acts independently. I've seen him reading books that
don't exist, speaking to people who aren't there. And sometimes,
when I catch him unawares, he's staring right at me
with an expression that his equal parts pity and hunger.
Last night, unable to sleep, I found myself drawn to
the full length mirror in my bedroom. The other me
was there waiting, But this time he spoke. It's time
to remember, he said, his voice a distorted echo of
my own. Time to see the truth of what we are.
I asked him what he meant, what I needed to remember.
His smile widened impossibly wide, splitting his face almost in half.
We are the architect and the destroyer, he said, the
Alpha and the Omega. We are hollow Creek, and hollow
Creek is us. As he spoke, the mirror seemed to ripple,
like the surface of a pond disturbed by a stone,
And in those ripples I saw everything, every possible version
of Hollow Creek layered on top of each other like transparencies.
I saw myself in a thousand different lives, a thousand
different roles, reverend, teacher, murderer, savior, monster, God. The visions
overwhelmed me. I fell to my knees, my mind reeling
from the onslaught of information. When I looked up again,
my reflection was gone. In its place was a swirling
vortex of colors and shapes that hurt my eyes to
look upon. And from that vortex something began to emerge,
something vast and terrible and beautiful, something that wore my
face but was not me, not entirely. I scrambled away
from the mirror, my heart pounding in my chest, but
I could still hear its voice echoing in my mind. Soon,
it said, soon, we will be whole again. I've barricaded
myself in my study, now, covering every reflective surface I
can find, but it's not enough. I can feel him,
it pressing against the edges of my consciousness, trying to
break through and out. In Hollow Creek, the situation is
deteriorating rapidly. People are disappearing, replaced by these smiling, knowing
versions of themselves. Those who remain are paranoid, suspicious of
everyone and everything. The very fabric of our community is unraveling.
I fear we're approaching some kind of tipping point, a
moment when the barriers between realities will collapse entirely, and
Hollow Creek will become something else, something that exists in
all possible states simultaneously. Part of me is terrified, but
another part, a part that grows stronger with each passing moment,
is exhilarated, as if I'm on the cusp of remembering
something vital, something that will change everything. The symbol I
saw in the woods, the one that's been haunting my dreams,
is everywhere now. I see it in the cracks on
the sidewalk, in the arrangement of leaves on the ground,
in the very constellations themselves. It pulses with a life
of its own, calling to me, urging me to what
to remember, to forget, to become. I don't know how
much longer I can hold on to who I think
I am. The lines between Arthur Blackwood and the thing
in the mirror are blurring. I find myself doing things,
knowing things that Arthur shouldn't be capable of. Yesterday, if
it was yesterday, I found myself standing in the middle
of Main Street, my arms raised to the sky. Words
poured from my mouth in a language I didn't recognize
but somehow understood perfectly, And as I spoke, the sky
itself seemed to crack, revealing glimpses of other worlds, other
realities bleeding through. I came back to myself hours later,
huddled in a corner of my study. The walls were
covered in writing, equations, symbols, diagrams that hurt my mind
to look at directly. They speak of geometries that shouldn't exist,
of realities folded in on themselves, like infinite origami. Dear listeners,
if you're still out there, if you can still hear me,
I beg you, be careful of your reflections, Be wary
of those who smile too widely, who seem to know
too much. The lines between what is and what could
be are breaking down, and in the chaos that follows,
anything is possible. I will try to speak to you again,
to warn you of what's coming, but I fear that
the next time you hear my voice, it may not
be entirely my own. The thing in the mirror is
growing stronger, and I'm growing different. Remember Hollow Creek as
it was, Remember me as I was. For I fear
that soon, very soon, both will exist only in memory,
lost in the infinite possibilities of what could be.
Speaker 1: This is.
Speaker 2: This was Reverend Arthur Blackwood, signing off from the edge
of madness, from the cusp of a transformation. I can
neither understand nor resist. Good Night, dear listeners, and may
your reflections always and only be your own.
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
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