I’m not here.
I’m not in the woods.
I’m not in this clearing.
I’m just listening to myself. Out there.
In the woods.
See the difference? It’s so simple. The headphones make it so easy. All this has already happened. I’m just listening to myself in the past. I’m not even here.
There, I correct myself. I meant out there. In the woods.
I’m not even there.
So if I’m listening to myself, listening to the recording of my sojourn into the dark woods with Amber Pendleton, that means I must be somewhere else. Somewhere far, far away from the surrounding pines.
Somewhere safe.
Where could I be? My imagination scrambles for a breath before placing me back in Brooklyn, in my apartment, so warm, on the couch, editing this episode. The sound quality to the coverage is great. So crisp. Listening to it on the playback, it almost feels like I am—
Here. Here in the woods. In this clearing.
With Amber Pendleton.
She’s staring at the ground. The darkened earth. There’s an oil spill at her feet. It seems to be growing. Expanding. Darkening itself even further. Something’s welling up from below.
Oil. Bubbling crude. No—no, that’s not oil.
Soot.
The dirt here has been scorched. The moon just makes it look as if it’s wet. Somebody must’ve built a bonfire out here recently. It had to have been a hiker or a family camping or—
Or—
Something is burning.
There is a flame. It’s blue. Almost invisible in the dark.
Can fire be imperceptible? It looks like one of those Sterno cans, the coldest flames. I have to squint to see the butane blaze flicker and lick against the shadows. The heat of it swells over the ground, the patch of ground directly below rippling and fluctuating from the temperature.
Amber drops to her knees without a sound. Her legs merely fold into themselves, her body softly collapsing like a marionette’s strings have just been cut. She’s in a supplicating pose.
Like she’s praying. Praying to this blackened patch. To this phantasmal fire.
“Miss Pendleton…?”
That’s strange. I didn’t even realize I had said anything—and yet I just heard my voice seep through my headphones. Did I just call out her name?
I hadn’t.
Didn’t.
So whose voice was that?
I try again. My lips move. I say the same thing, calling out her name.
But I don’t hear anything.
Not in my headphones.
I’m positive I said it this time. I said her name out loud.
My jaw moved.
My lips moved.
My tongue moved.
All the muscles in my mouth did exactly what they are supposed to do.
But there’s no sound.
No voice. I couldn’t hear myself say the—
“Where are we, Miss Pendleton?”
The sound of my own disembodied voice pours into my ears. It comes out of nowhere, jolting me right where I stand.
There’s some kind of delay. That has to be it. I said those exact same words, less than thirty seconds ago. My voice is suddenly out of sync with the rest of myself.
So I speak again. Forcefully. A full-throated declaration.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
I’m positive, absolutely positive I just said—
“Miss Pendleton, I think we should leave now.”
Jesus Christ! The sound of my own voice bursts my eardrums. I yank off my headphones. They fall to my neck, the cord tangling around my throat.
Everything falls deathly silent.
There’s nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
No sound whatsoever.
No swaying pines, no bristling needles. No heavy breaths. No breeze. No cracking branches. No thrumming pulse. It’s as if I had accidentally pressed the mute button on my—
On my—
I slowly, slowly pull the headphones back over my ears. As soon as the padded cups settle over the lobes, the sound of my surroundings suddenly returns.
The wind. The swaying pines. The bristling needles.
My own breathing.
Hyperventilating.
Just to test myself, better safe than sorry, I tug the headphones off again and return to an empty world devoid of sound.
It’s so quiet out here.
In the woods.
I know I’m panicking. I know my breathing has deepened. My exhales fog up the air before me, these bursts of blue. But there’s no sound to them.
No gasp.
Amber is digging. Digging with her bare hands. Her fingertips perforate the soil, grabbing handfuls of dirt. She scoops fistful after fistful, tossing them into the air.
Over her shoulder.
At her waist.
I see it.
I just can’t hear it. There’s no sound to Amber.
No sound at all.
I slide my headphones back on. I return to the comfort of their padded insulation, like a pair of small hands—a child’s hands—cupping each of my ears. Squeezing them tight.
I am all ears now.
There. There it is. The soft tear of soil. Each handful of dirt striking the ground.
There, that’s much better.
I’m listening. I don’t need to see. I can hide inside the safety of my headphones.
Now I hear everything. Oh God, I can hear everything.
Everything.
NINE
There was a time, once, when Amber was younger, that she remembered Nora Lambert getting so wrapped up in her role that she completely forgot who she even was. She lost herself within her character.
Amber now realized that it wasn’t her mother who had pulled her out of the ground, all those years ago. It had been Nora.
Nora had saved her. Brought her back to life. It was a bittersweet revelation, but fitting in this moment. To be back here, in the woods, where she had first been found all those years ago.
Now it was Amber’s turn to lose herself in her character.
Of Jessica. Always Jessica.
She felt the girl’s presence slip into her body as soon as she took her hand. They had walked together through the woods, heading for the clearing where Ella Louise waited.
Waited all these years.
Yearning.
Amber’s fingernails began to give, but she wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop digging. The nail on her right index finger tore back a bit with each handful, but that didn’t matter. Not anymore.
Not out here. In the woods.
In the ground.
Amber knows better. She’s always known better. A mother needs to be reunited with her daughter. It’s always been her role in life to keep their story alive.
The role of a lifetime.
Amber will let the people of Pilot’s Creek, along with the rest of the world, know that Ella Louise and Jessica have always been witches. Their souls will never be at rest. Not truly. Not after what the men of Pilot’s Creek did to them.
The Fords aren’t done yet. Their story has always been their revenge—and they demand it be told, no matter what the medium may be. Nathaniel Denison is merely a messenger. He will usher in the next iteration of their tale. Jessica will reach out and enter the fresh ears of listeners everywhere.
There.
There she is.
Once Amber’s ravaged hands reach Ella Louise’s scapula, she allows herself the briefest respite. Her fingers are wet with her own blood, chilling in the air, but she only takes the quickest of breaths before leaning back into the ground and digging around the bones.
Amber’s fingers worm throug
h the cold clay until they come upon Ella Louise’s skull. She pushes back the soil, rubbing the mud away with her thumbs until the moon casts the faintest blue glow over the slope of Ella Louise’s frontal bone. Her eye sockets are clogged with clay, but to Amber, to Jessica, they are full of such yearning.
Such love.
Jessica cups her hands underneath her mother’s jaw. She tugs, tugs until the soil finally gives and releases her mother.
Jessica lifts Ella Louise out from the earth, from the ground, and holds her aloft.
Ella Louise blinks. She takes in her daughter. Her beautiful girl.
And smiles.
LISTEN CLOSELY.
We did not choose this life.
You men had.
We had not asked for this.
You men made it so.
So when you kneel next to your beds tonight and pray, why, why is this happening to me, why, why, He will never answer. He never had the answer.
We do.
So hear this…
Hear me.
You brought this upon yourself. Suffer a witch to live? We had done nothing to deserve this. Nothing. And yet you could not suffer a witch to live. Now you must suffer. You must all suffer.
Let your suffering be your legacy, let it be the story you tell your children, your children’s children, let your dreams of me be the tale you tell for generations to come.
Let this story be your penance, your punishment, for what you have done to us.
Suffer a witch to live.
Suffer a witch to live.
You men always try to tell our story. You men always get it wrong.
So listen. Listen closely.
Are you all ears?
Listen…
This podcast was produced by B-Side Studios, with support from the Winters Foundation. Special thanks to Colin Zimmerman, the Geddes family, and most importantly, listeners like you.
Acknowledgments
Bow down to Eddie Gamarra at the Gotham Group. I don’t know what I did to deserve you. You always find ways for me tell stories and for that I’m eternally grateful.
Jhanteigh Kupihea saw something in my muddle of a story idea and let me run with it and told me to never look back. She gave me a campfire, a beautiful campfire, to spin this yarn. To her and the rest of the crew at Quirk, bless your dark hearts.
Thanks to Jeffrey Dinsmore and Kyle Jarrow for giving me a chance to write “The Monstrosity Exhibition: Lost Terrors of VHS Sleeve Cover Art” for Awkward Press.
Thanks to Milly Shapiro, Joshua Erkman, Chris Steib, Noah Greenberg, Craig William Macneill, the fine folks at Kilter Films and the Roosevelt Hotel.
To Indrani, Jasper, and Cormac…You are all too young to be reading incendiary filth like this.
Clay McLeod Chapman is the creator of the storytelling session “The Pumpkin Pie Show” and the author of rest area, nothing untoward, and the Tribe trilogy. He is co-author of the middle grade novel Wendell and Wild, with Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick. In the world of comics, Chapman’s work includes Lazaretto, Iron Fist: Phantom Limb, and Edge of Spiderverse, among others. He also writes for the screen, including The Boy (SXSW 2015), Henley (Sundance 2012), and Late Bloomer (Sundance 2005). You can find him at claymcleodchapman.com.
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