Rest a Spell

Published Dec 15, 2022, 8:01 AM

A draught of an ancient brew; a trip to the end of the road; a mysterious prisoner with static on his breath. Featuring the voices of Malcolm McDowell, Gina Rickicki, and Suehyla E. Young. Written by Zoe Cooper.

M twelve Ghosts is a production of I Heeart three D audio and grim and mild from Aaron Banky Headphones. Recommended listener discretion advised. Out of the bosom of the air, out of the cloud, folds of her garments, shaken over the woodland's brown and bear over the harvest fields forsaken, silent and soft and slow, descends the snow. But we are warm here inside. Who are you? I'm the innkeeper, now, Annabel, who are you? More wine? I think the Romans called this conditum paradox um, and it was a bitter brew, but it fortified the soul all the same, warmed the body, relaxed, the mind, loosened the tongue. Over time, recipes changed based on what was available, and eventually, praise all that is good. It became palatable. But it doesn't matter, does it. The spirit is still the same. So to speak. We fill ourselves with the warming spices and alcohol courses through our veins, and for a little while at least we forget the cold wind rattling the windows. M Look at the time, will you? Oh? We should be expecting our next guest right about huh, Well, pardon me, won't you good evening traveler. I've been expecting you come in. I was, I don't remember. It's so fine. Please sit. This is Annabelle. Hello. We were just having a nice warm cup of mulled wine. Would you like to join us knock a little of the chill off your bones? Yes? Yes, thank you. Annabelle and I were just discussing the history of drunkenness of in a warmth. Here join us. Thank you. Something troubles you? Noel? Have we met? We've not, but I've read your name in my ledger earlier. Oh what is it that weighs on your mind? I have a question, please, How does one know if they've encountered something supernatural? Are are signs spectral symptoms? Or are we ready made with just some base human instinct where we can like smell the lack of blood in their hollow little veins. I can't smell anything. Have you ever been to Homer, Alaska? Folks call it the end of the road. One way in, one way out, and you have to really try to get there. You don't just stumble upon it blindly. You have to seek out the finite ends of things in this world. There aren't many of them. And Homer is one of those few. The town looks like a postcar it mountain back drops nestled right up against the sea. Thousands are small and candy colored. The air feels like cold nourishment, and I see snake nuzzling your lungs, reminding you of the life somersaulting through your body. If there's a heaven, it looks like Homer. It's a small town, beautiful but small, just over five thousand residents. Now, five thousand sounds like a big number until you realize that you know everything there is to know about each and every one of your neighbors. Which ones are cheating with which other ones, who's hiding their drinking problem, who's not hiding their drinking problem, and which ones came all the way to some tiny village to start a new life where no one would come looking. Now that last one, that's most of them. No shame in it. I believe most people think about disappearing at one point or another, leaving all of your possessions and loved ones behind. The Residents of Homer were just brave enough to pull the trigger and actually do it. You've thought about doing it too, haven't you? Or you're thinking about it now, at least just you alone, staring down the end of the road. M HM. I used to work the overnight shift at the Sheriff's Office rookie officer, which in this sense means I was essentially a glorified night porter. In all my time there, not one person had ever been brought in late night. So naturally it took me off guard when I found a stranger in the holding cell halfway through my shift on a blustery Tuesday evening, Dan, I'm near scared the iron right out of my blood. No clue how long he had been in there. There was no intake paperwork, no note from the previous guard, just a sallow husk of an older man, gaunt, his face patchy and red, chewed raw by the cracked teeth of Alaskan winter air. He was thoroughly dehydrated, his muscles and veins popping from his frame like a failed escape Trapped to his body by only the worn elasticity of his paper skin. The man was haggard, chased by a massive debt of sleep. His eyes were open, though yellow and bloodshot, as they were tracking my movements. As I stepped closer to peer into his cell like he was some diseased animal and a roadside zoo. I thought it was a simple enough question, jen what's your name? The man blinked at me, a whirlpool of delirium behind his eyes. He opened his mouth, moved his lips around a series of words, but soundlessly, like someone had put the old bastard right on mute. Most unsettling thing I'd ever seen at that stage of the night. Anyway, I repeated, sir, what is your name? And there he went, moving his mouth again. But this time I thought maybe I could hear something buzzing deep in his gullet, like a tiny faction of bees. I'm having a little trouble hearing you, I said, Can you come a little closer? He stood, wavering on his feet and shuffle toreward to the bars of the cell. I planned my feet firm and pulled my shoulders back. I'm not a big woman, but I've learned how to fake stature in my time. I asked him a third time, can you tell me your name? This time I could confirm the man was indeed speaking. He sounded like a recording of a recording put on the lowest volume setting. And trapped in a tin can, he said. His lips continued crawling around the shape of his words long after the sentence fell from his mouth, like a poorly dubbed movie, and then he jerked a purple hand into his multi jeans pocket and pulled out his wallet for me. I d red Kyle Gibbert, Los Angeles, California. I told old Kyle he was quite a ways from home, and in that staticy, faraway voice, he simply repeated, I mean no offense to our host, but this wine tastes like the forgotten dreams of a used up band aid. It's weak as hell. You water it down. Oh, I would never, but go on. I could probably stand to drink more water anyways, So I put Mr Gilbert into our database. Turns out he'd been missing since and was officially pronounced dead seven years later. Funny thing. The man prowling around in that cell like a feral animal only looked half dead to me. But this wasn't the first time someone new showed up in Homer to disappear. So I ran a full background check. No jobs, no residences, no taxes, paid nothing at all to indicate that Kyle Gilbert should be standing here in front of me, sucking in the air that was intended only for the living. I asked if he went by any other aliases, but through that same thick, mismatched static, he wheezed again. I just need to waste m hm. So I did the next logical thing. I called his estranged wife in the middle of the night, woke her plumb up and asked, Mrs Gilbert, I swear to God, you never heard the grog drop from somebody's voice faster in your life. Set me straighter than spider silk. Mrs Gilbert made it very clear that she did not go by that name anymore. I older that I had Kyle with me, thirty miles away in a dinky, little drunk tank at the end of the road. Kyle, my Kayle, she asked. I checked the idea again. The little picture showed a healthy young man, handsome by some standards, life coursing through his cheeks and hanging plump around his face and neck. This thing in the cage across from me bore no resemblance. But before I could say so, the woman on the line told me she had long since made peace with the death of her husband, and she'd take legal action if harassment of this nature were to continue, and even if he were alive, she didn't want him no more. She was done, moved on, remarried and all and then click, she was gone, and Kyle Gibbert was fully my problem. A saggy gray holding cell ain't no proper place to get a good night's eap. I knew nobody else would be coming in that night, and I knew what it's like to turn up brand new for the first day in a fresh life. Second chances are everything. We don't judge or ask questions. And Homer, you want to wander out of your Los Angeles apartment, disappear off the face of the earth, convinced the world you're dead, then show up nearly ten years later, ready to start all over. Well, I suppose I'm going to give you a warm bed to sleep in that night, and a hot cup of coffee in the morning to get you on your way. It's the neighborly thing to do. The world looked different walking beside Kyle on the way back to my home. I remember thinking, maybe I just never really paid attention to the world. At night, Those candy colored houses dulled to mute shades of their daytime glory. In the shadows. I could feel the wind sawing at the tip of my nose, but couldn't hear it's normally persistent whale, and the snow that dripped from the sky white crystall line fluffs during the day smeared like ash on my fingertips under the moon's two tone pallor. Kyle's mouth moved wordlessly as we walked, a steady drone of static buzzing from his windpipe. At one point he threw his head back, mouth wide, his throat undulating with the heft of a screeching, feedback laden belly laugh. He quieted contemn wide smile on his sunken, cracked face. I lived alone in a cozy one bedroom. A rookie sheriff's salary doesn't buy any much, but what I had suited me just fine. Besides, the overstuffed couch stationed in my living room had seen its share of wayward visitors, and it's time never once with any complaint. I layered the cushions a thousand blankets deep and fluffed my finest down pillows for my guest. But Kyle stood frozen in the door frame flickering underneath the faulty porch light. I took him by the hand to lead him inside, cold, his fingers rigid like they had snap under the pressure of my gentlest touch. The winters are harsh and home. Come on, let's get you to sleep, I whispered to Kyle. I just me to rest, to spell. He crackled. The chill of the next morning woke me earlier than usual. I thought the pilot light must have gone out at some point in the middle of the night. I bowled on my thickest robe and warmest house shoes, hoping that the veritable sauna I'd created out of blankets had been enough to keep Kyle Gibert warm on the couch that to no one's real surprise, Kyle wasn't there. The blankets were pulled tight and ducked in, completely undisturbed aside from their wetness, damp and freezing cold like, Kyle was nothing but a man shaped block of ice that had melted right through the sofa into the floorboards, absorbed into earth itself. Mh. I didn't go back to work after that, never called in or gave any notice. I just walked right past the sheriff station, and kept on walking. They call Homer the end of the road. One way in, one way out. I never tried walking past the end of the road before until that next day. The sky was overcast, blinding white, perfectly camouflaged against a new layer of fresh snow, impossible to tell where the ground ended and the sky began. And then in all that whiteness, night fell, and everything blotted out into an inky abyss there and then nothing. There was something, the buzzing of a tiny faction of best Kyle Gilbert's feedback laden laughter. And there were others too, Recordings of recordings of droning, indecipherable whisper spattered through the dark, static e siren songs for me to follow. So I did, and then well you know where this is going, sparked from the void. There was suddenly a beacon of light, of flickering orange flame through thick tempered glass windows and olden you all hunkered down inside. Oh yeah, I have to say, it's been so nice meeting all of you. I'm sorry, I think the Knight's caught up with me all of a sudden. I'm who's so tired? That's all right, though, I'll be better. I just need to rest a spell. You've come a very very long way, Noel, and it just so happens that you've arrived at the very best place to rest. Yes, good, I happen to have here a beautiful key, simple brass, polished to shine, an older key, hollow barrel, and baroque bow, one of my favorites. It belongs to a door on the second all the second door on the left. On the other side is the very thing that you have come to find. I'll give it to you. I hope that it will suffice. Thank you. Go now, Noel, good night, good night? Ah Now where were we? Oh? The wine? We were talking about the wine, and before that you were going to tell me your story? Was I I do believe so I don't recall agreeing to that. Oh well, I must be mistaken. But the night is long, Annabelle, and there is more than enough time. The True Out Twelve Ghosts, starring Malcolm McDowell as the Innkeeper and Gina Rikiki as Annabelle. Episode two, rest a Spell written by Zoe Cooper with additional writing by Nicholas Takowski, editing by Chris Childs and Stephen Perez featuring Suhila E. Young as Noel. Directed by Nicholas Takowski. Original score and sound design by Chris Childs. Executive producers Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alexander Williams and Nicholas Takowski. Supervising producer Josh Stain. Producers Chris Child's and Stephen Perez. Casting by Sunday Bowling c s A and Meg Mormon cs A. Production coordinator Wayna Calderon. Recorded at Lantern Audio in Atlanta, Georgia, engineered by Chris Gardner Arrows Sound and recording in Ojai, California, engineered by Ken Arrows. Twelve Ghosts was created by Nicholas Takoski. Then is a production of i Heeart three D Audio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Learn more about the show at Grim and Mild dot com and find more podcasts from my heart Radio by visiting the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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12 Ghosts

Starring Malcolm McDowell, and produced in immersive 3D audio! Eleven travelers find themselves at  
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