Episode 128 - Haunts

## Haunts

A black background with a border of a very faint double set of double lines that loop in the corners in white. Inside the border is a humanoid figure wrapped in bandages, with more red bandages flowing out around it. It holds a limp white figure with its red hands under the white armpits. The white figure's head is tipped back to the viewer's left, and the legs are crossed at the ankles. They are wearing a sweater, knee pads, and boots. The left arm has wooden patterns. Below the image but within the border is the text, "128 . HAUNTS."

### Author

William A. Wellman

Percy focuses on the present, Zelda refuses to quit, and Ricou visits an old abode. The theme of tonight's episode is Haunts.

> ***Content warnings**:* *Abuse, Animal death (Dogsmell as usual), Suicide (implied), Violence, Kidnapping and abduction, Death + Injury, Blood, Religious Violence, Transphobia, Homophobia, Birds, Gun Mention, Strangulation/suffocation, Misgendering, Emotional Manipulation, Body horror, Car Crashes, forced sedation, Isolation, Restraints, The Quilt being a skeleton wrapped in skin strips as usual*
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## Intro - Always a Spirit

Nikignik speaks to the Dreamers of someone who was a spirit, but felt as if they had always been, even when they were wrapped in flesh. They had clung to their grim life because it had been all they'd known, and when the night of black rains came, and they were called North, they denied it, instead marching to the ends of the earth for their own song. And they had died, and now the sky called for them, beckoned them up, and they consider it, but are still unable to bring themselves to do it.

Nikignik resides in the Blizard summoned by Olivier Song in Episode 124 - Educations, only to suddenly instead be under a tree of blossoms on a sunny day, the Reed household not yet burned (see Episode 65 - Miles) sits beyond the garden, and Percy Reed, although no one yet known him by that name, sits beneath the tree.

## Story 1 - Falling Upwards

Percy Reed sits under the trellis at his old house in Huntsville Alabama (see Episode 65 - Miles), at his birthday party. He laments to himself having not been ablet to experience a 'normal' young adult life when Abigail Reed approaches him and asks what he was doing separated from the party. He tells her that the people weren't his friend, just people who knew Solomon Reed from their church, but she tells him that they were good Christin people, and that he was being rude, which she says is likely the influence of his friends. Percy asks where his father was, cursing and asking why they couldn't just act like a normal family. Abigail scolds him for this, before having a sudden change of heart, telling Percy that she was going to kick everyone out and then take him ice-skating. However, this was only a change in history that Percy like to imagine. Percy reflects on all that he'd been though as he floated upwards following the events of Episode 122 - Creeps.

Falling upwards, he suddenly realises that he was terrified, a speck of dust in front of the endless expanse of sky. He hovers over the blizzard below (see Episode 124 - Educations), knowing that he couldn't leave, he had to find the others and lead them to Diggory Graves to they could be freed from the ice. Despite this, he knew it was over, he could float away but none of the others could, Diggory, fall all their love was like his parents in that their want to destroy the heart was an obsession that would lead to destruction. Feeling himself begin to deteriorate already, be drifts down to the storm and begins looking for his friends, quickly finding, to his surprise, Dogsmell who bounds towards him and licks him face. He wraps his arms around its neck, and weeps.

### Interlude 1 - Beauty in Brevity

Nikignik tells the Dreamer that if they were human, when the world was still untouched by the black rains their kind had not known much of spirits. All spirits one day burned out, but there were perversions of Marolmar’s work that find solutions to this. The cabinets, he thought Marolmar would have been aghast to see what had been done with them. Until their world was quarantined, the majority of spirits were taken to the Industry, commonly by their messenger-birds, and the industry’s absence, certain parasites had flocked to a world still rich with fire.

## Story 2 - Old Birds

Zelda Duckworth sits in her chair on a porch overlooking a bonfire at Scoutpost Two in celebration of Virgil Kane returning Russell McGowan safely (see Episode 124 - Educations). Everyone was happy but Zelda, because Al Buckley had not come home and no one was missing him. So, once everyone had stopped acknowledging her, she left, having packed her shotgun, a few biscuits, and an extra blanket for the Scoutpost parking lot. She goes for Virgil's truck but jumps when she finds Clementine Maidstone seemingly also in the middle of running away. Zelda tells her to scram, but Clementine pleads with her, telling her that Riot Maidstone was in danger, Danielle O'Hara had told her so (see Episode 127 - Hooks), she couldn't tell anyone at the Scoutpost but she needed to go and bring Riot back.

Despite this Zelda tells her that she couldn't steal Virgil's truck as she was stealing it, and Clementine was going to keep her mouth shut. Clementine suggests that they work together, figuring out that Zelda was going to Downing Hill Public Library to get Al, but Zelda tells her that she'd only slow her down, tells her to go back and if she [Zelda] got chased then she'd blame it on her. Clementine nods, leaves, and Zelda gets into the truck and drives out of the Scoutpost gates, having bought the allegiance of the guard with sewing supplies and a Christmas ornament shaped like a flamingo, and into the forest beyond.

### Marketing - Pigeon Bridge

Lady Ethel Mallory interrupts Nikignik's broadcast with her 'marketing' segment. She tells the Dreamers that she was standing in the middle of a bridge and congratulates herself for having made it this far. She tells them that the name of the bridge was Pigeon Bridge, and as soon as she stepped across the midway line, she would enter what used to be Canada, then in maybe two weeks she'd by at Solomon Reed's house (see Episode 106 - Departures), wondering how he had been doing (see Episode 47 - Regrets). The sound of muffled screams can be heard, and she tells the Dreamers that bandits had been trying to waylay people at the border, followed by the sound of her pushing one of them into the water. She tells the remaining one that since they'd tried to hit her in the face, she was going to remove theirs.

### Story 2, Continued - Old Birds

As Zelda drove, she thought about Jonah Duckworth, becoming distracted by this so that she almost doesn't notice the black van half parked on the road until she'd crashed into it. The airbags go off, and she's sent spinning to the other side of the road, finding no blood when she checks herself. She hears people approaches, and reaches for her shotgun despite her confused state, kicking open the car door. She finds Atticus Raven and George Writingdesk (see Episode 127 - Hooks) on the other side, the latter of which asks if she was alright. She ignores the question, demanding for them to stay back. George points out to her the state of her truck, that it was not going to be road worthy, and tells her that they had a camp if she needed medical attention. Atticus protests this, but a few minutes later Zelda was sitting at camp with them.

She asks them why they were parked half on the road, and George tells her that they hadn't seen anyone else driving around, introducing himself and Atticus, asking for what her name was. She introduces herself as 'Missus Cake', and that she was on her way to do something stupid. She asks what they were doing, and they tell her that they were going to do something similarly stupid. He tells her that they were on their way to retrieve two young adults (see Penny Rescher and Friday Rescher) who were missing. Zelda asks if they were heading for a library, shrugging off the two's confusion of how she could have known that and tells them that they had her kid as well. George agrees that they were going to get their people home.

### Interlude 2 - Which Ghost?

Nikignik asks if Marolmar was the ghost, or if he was. On one hand, Marolmar was the one who was dead. And yet he persisted, and it haunted him. Who was Nikignik but an invisible spectre, watching over all he had made (see the Hallowoods). He tells the Dreamers that perhaps that was all that is left of him [Nikignik], asking when he would on, if he ever would? Or perhaps the Dreamers were the ghosts as they were the ones dwelling on the shell of a planet they'd used to own. They knew as well as he did that the age was beginning to forget them, and the things that were coming may not notice them at all.

## Story 3 - Death From the Mountain

Ricou Chapman and Nolan Thair walk up the Shuddering Peaks to retrieve their belongings (see Episode 95 - Homecomings). Nolan comments that it was strange going back up, as there were some painful memories in the mountains, and it was hard not to think of them (see Episode 53 - Rivers). Ricou tells him that he understood this, as he had not been his best when he lived on the mountains. Nolan comments that it had not all been bad, saying they'd have to make the best of the hot spring while they were there (see Epsiode 31 - Anchors).

They walk until the cabin was in sight, when Nolan taps Ricou on the shoulder to get his attention. Ricou looks up to see The Quilt approaching them carrying Hector Mendoza (see Episode 123 - Evolutions). The Quilt tells them to help him.

## Outro - Haunts

Nikignik waxes poetics to the dreamers about haunts, asking if it frightened them to know they could never escape the end. All humanity passed by marking their lives in segments, and in time all gods did too. But they left behind legacies. He asks the Dreamers how they wished their spirit to be remembered, telling them that they would haunt the lives of everyone they had touched. His creating this message was Marolmar’s legacy, for he spoke of his forest, and it was their legacy, for it is they who spoke. When he was gone, he wondered if anyone would still dream of a hundred burning eyes in the dark.

## Trivia

* At the end of the standard episode there are still 4 minutes and 35 seconds left of the recording. This 4.35 is mostly silence until the 50 min mark (may vary between listening locations), at which point an instrumental parody of "Fly me to the Moon" by Frank Sinatra - "Fly Me To The Hallowoods" by Rat Grimes - will begin to play. This song will continue to play until the end of the episode. Fly me to the Moon is also referenced in Episode 115 - Fishes and Starcrossed Gods.