Episode 20: Our Unburied Dead

Episode 20, Our Unburied Dead.

*Recorder clicks on*

    *We hear the crackling of a low fire from smoldering equipment.  The wind of the plains is audible as the tent has been ripped apart.*

Luca: *Pained* Ughh, what hit us?

Voncid: [Coughing] *Grunts in pain* I’m not sure.

Nijal:  *In pain* It was an explosion.  Whatever the thing was it drug a bunch of heavy machinery underground, right through the stone. I guess it didn’t much care for the taste of industrial drilling equipment.

Luca: *in pain* Ohh, ohh, I think I broke a rib.

Voncid: It would have been worse if not for that hasty ward conjuration. I see a lot of [Coughs] shrapnel around that well might be in us otherwise.  Thank you for that Nijal.

Nijal: *Shaking it off* It’s instinct.

Luca: [Coughing] So much dust…

Voncid: It might still be here.

Olivia Biers-Weather:  It is not.

Voncid:  [Clears throat] Lady Biers-Weather, are you harmed?

Olivia: I am not.  That warning was just in time.  Four of the five Observers are missing, I assume taken down through the ground.  I saw the last climbing some of the digging equipment to escape.  I believe the explosion was the creature expectorating.

Nijal:  Is it still here?

Olivia: I drove it off.

Voncid: We have to hurry.  I believe the presence of a connected individual in that cavern woke this entity from some sort of hibernation.  

Luca: So now it’s hungry.  

Voncid:  I imagine it is starving.

Nijal: Hard to imagine something like that escaped our notice all this time.

Olivia: We can self flagellate over our failures later.

Rugen: Are you all right?

Voncid: Good enough.  We should hurry.

Rugen:  I looked from that ridge to get out of the dust.  It’s traveling near the surface, there’s a plume going up, we should be able to follow it just by sight, but it’s fast.

Olivia: We need to go by air, it could double back and ambush us too easily.

Rugen: [Smug] Well it just so happens yours truly came by helicopter.  

Olivia: No wonder your expense reports are always such a nightmare.

Rugen: [Chuckles] You never know when you might need a helicopter.

Olivia: We will waste no more time.

Luca: This is still recording…

*Recorder clicks off*

*Recorder clicks on*

*Helicopter blades whirring*

Voncid:  Will we be heard over the rotors?

Luca:  Should be.

Voncid:  Good, keep recording as much of this as you can.

Olivia: We need to get between the nearest major city and that thing.  If it gets to a major population center we will be in full blown crisis.

Rugen: How exactly do we plan on stopping this… Voncid, what the hell are we dealing with anyways?

Voncid:  From the reclaimed memories… the best I can surmise is that it is something akin to a, a great worm.  A cavern or tunnel that lives and hungers.

Olivia: Do we know if it’s “foreign” or “domestic”?

Voncid: If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say we are dealing with something from before the walls went up.  Deep underground and unknown, dormant all this time.

Nijal:  It's certainly not dormant anymore.  That dust trail it’s kicking up is a mile high.

Olivia: Get everyone we have in containment on this.  People in the park, passing airplanes… there are too many eyes that might spot this.

Nijal: Don’t forget passing satellites.

Rugen:  This job was a lot bloody easier before satellites.  Cameras too.  We should take everyone’s cameras… just ridiculous.

Luca: What is that?

Nijal: Looks like it stopped.

Luca: Look at the trees…

Voncid: It is pulling down trees… like it did when the Observer tried to climb out of its reach… oh lord it’s after someone.

Rugen: Good lords above do something!  How did you drive it off Olivia?

Olivia: I generated a very unpleasant frequency… I need to touch the ground.  Nash set down next to where I land.

Luca: holy shit!

Nijal: she fell!

Voncid: No, she jumped.

Rugen: [Chuckle] Show off.

*High pitched frequency*

Voncid: Luca! Turn off the recorder.

*Recorder clicks off*

*Recorder clicks on*

Voncid:  [Sighs] Continuing the audio log of the current crisis. We believe that the living cavern has been driven to the depths.  Olivia correctly surmised that, like many burrowing creatures, this one is very sensitive to certain sounds and frequencies.  We are currently in the remains of a campsite. Nearby trees, huge conifers, now protrude at odd angles partially swallowed up by the ground beneath them. It is strange to see the tops of these trees down at eye level.

A camper trailer sits similarly absorbed, jutting at an unnatural slope from the ground.

Winnifred:  *Cries out in pain*

Voncid: My associate Nijal Delang is inspecting a very… unfortunate occurrence.  A woman named Winnifred Kellar finds herself in a most painful and terrifying predicament. The entity was in the process of pulling her down through the ground when it was driven off by the sound. It let her go and she is now sticking out of the ground from the waist up and, well as one could imagine the situation is very precarious and painful.

*Voncid approaches Nijal and Winnifred across the gravel.*

Voncid: How is our brave new friend?

Nijal:  I’m trying to make a mental map… seeing how pulling her up with geomancy will go.

Luca: Winnifred this is Owen Voncid, he’s one of the most senior members of the Order we were talking about.

Winnifred:  *Gritting through intense pain*  You guys hunt monsters right?  You’re like, Mulders and Scullies?

Luca: [Shrug] She asked, didn’t seem right to lie under the circumstances.  

Voncid:  *crouching next to her*  We do.  We try.  Our goal is not to hunt exactly, but to try to protect.  Our ultimate goal is as safeguards. We have failed you though, I’m afraid.  Terribly.  I cannot apologize enough.

Winnifred:  Seven years.

Voncid:  Pardon?

Winnifred:  This was our seven year anniversary.  That’s what this trip was about.  He loved camping.  I hated it.  We always had these good natured little fights. Did camping suck… didn’t it?  Was it dangerous or not?  I… I can’t believe I’m never going to get to rub it in his face how I won… *sweetly* See? camping IS dangerous you asshole.

Voncid:  I know your loss is unspeakable, and that nothing will ebb the pain, but stay strong. If you can stay strong, I may be able to help you say your goodbye and get the last word on the matter after all.

Nijal: Voncid, a word.

Voncid:  Hang on.  I will be right back and we will devise a solution.  We will help you, I promise.

*We hear footsteps as they walk out of earshot*

Nijal: It’s… not good.  She’s not just buried, she’s… she’s fused with all the rock and dirt underneath her.  If I call her up she’ll be ripped to shreds… She’ll bleed out immediately, and that’s if she doesn’t die of shock first.

Voncid: Rugen, can we dig out the surrounding rock?

Rugen: I started to excavate a little but the pain was too much. It’s, ugly. She’s in agony. Not to mention watching her friends… her husband pulled down… she’s at her limit.

Voncid:  Nijal, lift the surrounding stone out, I will use my art to keep her alive and out of pain.  You will go on without me and send a team back, between myself and some of our better surgeons we can keep her alive.

Nijal:  A lot of her lower organs are compromised.  The only thing keeping her alive is the pressure of it all, she’s gone as soon as it’s released.

Voncid:  Not if I am with her.  We will have to let the legs go, but I can keep her alive.  

Olivia: What if I leave you here and it comes back?  You’re weak.  You’re compromised.  Can you fend the creature off while you protect her?  By yourself?  Don’t be ridiculous.

Voncid:  I… A word in private *sounds of them walking a little ways away.*  I can do this.  I know you may need my skills later, but she needs my skills now.  We can’t just leave her here.

Olivia: I’ve no intention to.

Voncid:  … Don’t.

Olivia: It’s only right.

Voncid:  [Angry] Olivia, don’t make me.

Olivia: Give her a gentle death and then we are leaving.  That is an order.

Voncid:  I made you.

Olivia: And then you crippled yourself precisely because of this.  Because you can’t let go. Your view has become too narrow.  You’ve been one person so long you’ve totally lost your perspective. You made me, but now you answer to me. Euthanize the woman and then let us proceed to stopping this crisis and saving a great many more.

*Changing her focus*  Nash get ready to get back into the air.  Circle the area and look for signs it’s moving again.  Leave the last Observer with us, we will need bait. You’ve got ten minutes.

*Recorder clicks off*

*Recorder clicks on*

Luca: What was all that?  It didn’t look good.

Nijal:  I don’t think it was.

Luca: Were they talking to each other?  I couldn’t hear anything.

Nijal:  They don’t need words to talk to each other. Apparently they can communicate over basically any distance.

Luca: Hm. I wonder if the wax picked it up?

Voncid:  How are you Winnifred?  

Winnifred: *Dazed* That stuff that umm… Nijal is it?  

Nijal: That's right.

Winnifred: that Nijal gave me is helping. I don’t hurt so much anymore.

Voncid: I’m glad to hear that.

Winnifred:  What are we going to do?  I’m really stuck aren’t I?

Voncid:  I’m afraid so.

Winnifred:  It’s bad isn’t it.

Voncid:  It is.

Winnifred:  I guessed so.

Voncid:  Excuse me, gentleman, could I have a moment with Winnifred?

Nijal: Of course.

Luca: *handing him the recorder* Do you want this?

Voncid:  yes, thank you…  Winnifred… I have some bad news.

Winnifred: *struggling*  I… am I going to… umm… [Crying]

Voncid: Yes.  You are going to die.

Winnifred:  *shakily*  Ooh.

Voncid:  Before we are born… we are free from all this. a body, worry, pain.  Then life comes along and, without our say so or a, by your leave, it thrusts all this upon us.  The responsibility of being alive. Not only to be alive but to live?  To be a person? To be aware? To make choices?  To know what we have, and to ponder and pain over what we will lose?

It is a lot to ask in exchange.  Fear, and loss and the agony of knowing and feeling! what do we get for all this?  Moments, just moments. A laugh, a touch, warmth… 

Some of us far less. far less than that.  Some of us, nothing nice at all.  Some only ever know fear and pain.  If life is a bargain, perhaps we are all being played for fools.

I’m very old you know. I saw the Nile break along its first length. I saw the first stone give way to the first marks of the first language.  The rise and fall and rise again. It has been quite a lot to take in. But I can say, most certainly, that when all is said and done you are a noble thing.  A brave thing.  [Voice quivers] And I am glad you are here with me.

Winnifred:  [Gasps for air]  I hope I get to see John.

Voncid:  As do I.

Winnifred:  I hated camping, but I loved being with him. He made everything better. Were you ever married?  

Voncid:  I was, in a way. A very old way.  He’s gone now too.

Winnifred:  I don’t feel well.

Voncid:  That will not last.

Winnifred:  *Groggily* Would you tell me about him? I think I’d like a story. Please? 

Voncid:  I will.  I remember the way he caught the light. I don’t remember his height, or the curve of his jaw, the color of his eyes… I can no longer see those things. Time, so much time. So many little changes year by year. I no longer remember things like that. but the way the light caught on his skin oh that was glorious. The gold inlaid into his flesh did not shine half so brightly as his beautiful skin, like copper. When he smiled at me from my hiding place in the reeds, I was never so pleasantly surprised.  

Azem: Hello there. Who are you?

Voncid:  Ohhh, his voice! It dripped with the honey of kindness.  I’d never had anyone speak to me like that. no fear, no repulsion.

“I have no name,” I told him.

Mine is Azem.  He told me.

“I have been watching you… I think you are quite fine.” I said, embarrassing myself.  I had meant man, mankind in general, but as I said it, it certainly seemed I meant him in particular.  I must have sounded quite strange, but he had a way. He always assumed the best of everyone.

“I am flattered”  Was all he said for a time. 

*Trumpets sound in the distance*

“That sound means they will close the gates against the darkness in an hour, I must return to the city soon,” he said.

I so badly did not want him to go.

“What brings you here to the river side?”  I asked.

“I prepare the dead in my city, so that they may look their best when they return to the sun.  I use this mud, and many of the plants that grow here. What brings you to the riverside?”

“I eat shadow,” was all I could think to say.

“That seems a fine thing to do.” 

“Preparing the dead seems so too,” I really did think so.  “Would you show me?” I asked.

He did.  Eventually we shared everything.  Everything there was to share.

*A faint exhale of Winnifred’s last breaths*

Safe journey, as you travel afar…  I hope you found some value in the exchange.

*Recorder clicks off*

*Recorder clicks on*

Luca:  Nijal, uh Olivia and Voncid just called for us.

Nijal:  Ok, not excited for this.

Luca: Do you think we could have saved her?

Nijal:  No, but we should have tried.

Luca: they have the last Observer with them.

Nijal: Yeah.

*Footsteps*

Rugen:  Hello gentleman, perhaps you can help us settle a small argument about how to proceed.  You see, we know that the creature is drawn to those with a connection to the otherside, yes?  And Olivia and I have been trying to impress upon our idealistic friend Owen here that using the Observer as the bait only makes sense, but perhaps we are wrong?  Perhaps one of you would like to serve as the bait?

Nijal:  I… I mean maybe I could…

Rugen: *Interrupting* Oh no no, you haven’t heard the full of it.  Our only devised plan of action, is to slay this beastie with poison.  We will pour the bait full of death.  Full to the brim with pure death and when it’s devoured, absorbed, killed, it may just slay our fell foe as well.

*stunned silence*

Voncid:  It isn’t right.  The Observer is still a person.

Rugen:  Hardly!

Olivia: a person who agreed to the procedure that opens the mind by destroying the brain.

Voncid:  a procedure they agreed to to help us, to aid the Order, not to be used as a human sacrifice.

Rugen: They aren’t human!  They are lobotomized, mutated and… have you ever seen one cut open?  A Skin Spider got into a transport with me and two Observers once… after all the carnage had cleared, I couldn’t tell the difference between the insides of the Observers or the monster that had killed them. The process changes them. They aren’t people anymore.

Nijal:  *Muttering* That’s convenient.

Rugen: Excuse me?

Nijal: I said, it’s convenient that you rely heavily on the skill these people develop when they let us drill a hole through their sinus cavity and pry parts of them out with medical hooks, but this same process makes them totally disposable to you.

Rugen:  I use the tools I’m given, othersider. I use the tools to kill monsters.  To kill people who use dark arts they shouldn’t know.

Nijal: People like me?  The only thing that makes me any different than those people you kill is a stamp on a piece of paper in a vault.

Olivia: That's enough.

Rugen:  Well, since Nijal and Luca aren’t interested in being the poisoned bait, and I assume Olivia is similarly disinclined, that leaves the Observer.

Voncid:  Just give us time to come up with another plan! Perhaps no one else need die.

Olivia: We can’t risk it.  Come with me.

*Footsteps*

Olivia: We can’t risk this going any further.  Will this plan work?

Voncid: I believe it will.

Olivia: Then it is how we will proceed.

Voncid:  I ju…

Olivia: What Master Owen… What?  Will you stand in this man’s place?  You could, you know.  You could put enough life in (Phonetic) Vaun’ Sigh ’Ed to keep him moving and enough death to kill the creature.  You could finally let go after all this time. Unshackle yourself from the past and move on.  If you have such a moral objection, there is the other way, a way with no such ethical difficulty.

Voncid: *Pained*  I… can’t.  I can’t.

Olivia: Then what good were all your objections?

*Everyone rejoins.*

Olivia: I will construct a sigil.  No one will step foot off of it until the bait has been taken… Did you feel that?

Rugen: It’s coming back.

Olivia: Get behind me.  Cid, do it.

*We hear a hideous hiss of acid and smoke as voncid fills the Observer with ‘death’*

Voncid: *A great and dark spell is cast.*

Come then, come to me, come to me, I call you death.  I call.  The only roads end.  The last gasp of light’s breath.  I call and I pour you like venom.  

The black sky, the bowl poured dry, 

the empty table, the world’s last fable.

Dead mortar, bone pestle, come death to your vessel.

*we hear rumbling and crashing of the world as the hungry cavern arrives*

[Explosion]

Rugen:  *Shouting*  Cid get away from it!

Voncid: Dammit!

*We hear the Observer be pulled into the earth, a wet, muddy sound with a crunch within it*

Rugen: It took it!  How long before it works?

*We hear an immediate eruption in the sound as the death is taken in by the entity*

Nijal: *Shouted* It’s thrashing!

Voncid: Mind the tail! 

*We hear the crack, snap, and creak of a tree falling.*

Rugen:  Cid, look out!  Dammit Luca no!

*More crashing, the recorder is smashed. The audio crackles and winds down, sounding like it is dying, before cutting.*

[Silence]

*Recorder clicks on*

Luca: Phew, I can’t believe the wax survived.

Nijal: I can’t believe we survived.

Luca: yeah, that was a lot.

Nijal: Could you believe the size of that thing?

Luca:  I could not.  Think it’s really dead?

Nijal: We can only hope.  It sank into the earth after its death and none of us can detect it any longer.  Hopefully it will just get crushed by the pressure, entombed in the earth and lost forever. Let’s go tell Master Voncid that we recovered the recording, he’ll be pleased. Hey, well done by the way.

Luca: what?  It was just luck, ghost wax is sturdier than the usual kind.

Nijal: No Not with that.  I mean saving Voncid.

Luca: Oh. Yeah. Didn’t seem like the world's last necromancer should die getting crushed by a tree.

Nijal: Yeah… ok, shall we?

Luca: Yeah.

*They leave the recording running forgetfully.  After a long pause there is a crackle and a hiss of something new, that we haven’t heard before.*

Unknown Voice:  Hmmm, what an interesting whirring toy you have there… When you listen back to this… hello. I’m sure that’s why you’re making these little logs… trying to keep things straight?  Are your memories getting all fuddy wuddy among the memories of the dead?  Forbidden fruit, forbidden fruit… but oh oh oh, doesn’t forbidden fruit taste the sweetest?  Don’t its juices run so warm?

Trying to keep them all to yourselves aren’t you?  I wonder… Do the pigs think the farmer is their friend?  Better than a wolf. Perhaps the pigs oink to themselves, but I'm not sure. The wolf is honest with you. The wolf is a predator. The farmer is their protector, true, but also their captor, their murderer. I don’t think “farmer” is right anyway. A parasite then. A parasite that makes the pig unpalatable.  The wolf will eat you from without… but they… “they” will eat you from within.

Either way, you can’t have them all to yourself… just not enough of them to go around, and you have more than your share.  We are coming inside, whether you like it or not.

We blew down your straw house, and your stick house, and the bricks, the bricks are starting to crack. And after that?  There’s nowhere left to run.

[Laughter]

Then along came a wolf, so big and so bad

The wolf was so hungry, and crazy and sad

Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in

Not by the hairs of our chinny chin chin

then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in

[Static] 

[Recorder clicks off]

Narrator: Thank you for listening to Ghost Wax, a production of Far and Tall Tales. Find us at farandtalltales.squarespace.com. Ghost Wax is an independent podcast so if you liked this show, please rate and review, and consider joining us on Patreon at Patreon.com/farandtalltales

Also give a listen to our fantasy role play show Could've Been Heroes for something completely different. 

Ghost Wax is written and directed by Robert Knutson 

Production and editing by Aaron Schoenrock

Our theme song is by Beau Hoover.

This episode features Robert Knutson as Voncid

Aaron as Luca

Mark As Rugen

Josh Esmay as Nijal

HJ Raider as Olivia

And Stephanie Olsen as Winnefred

Ghost Wax will return with the next volume of season 1 beginning April 2023. Until then stay tuned for a new variety show offering, Tales from the vault. Featuring new and classic stories, and real life supernatural testimonials. As always, thank you for listening.