Deepwoods | Creep Cast
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I am trying so hard to try to find a Totino's sponsorship somewhere. I mean, we probably could. Can you imagine if we got a Totino's pizza flavor? Yo, that would be, you know how happy I'd be to be in a grocery store and be like, there we are. They put green dye in the cheese, so it melts the green. It's like green cheese, and we call it like... Little black pepperonis? Yeah, what would we call it? Green and black pizza roll.

Crazy pepperoni. Yo. Whoa. Hold on. Hold on, cowboy. Let's calm down there. You're really opening up a lot of doors. Scary. Scary salami. Scary salami is pretty good. But there's no salami in it. It's pepperoni. Hazardous hamburger. What about creepy pepperoni? Like the peas play off each other? Creepy pepperoni. Yeah.

Creeperoni! Yo! He's got it. Look at this guy. What about... No one really jumped at this, but I'm still going to say it again. Hazardous hamburger. Say it again. See if the third time gets us. Hazardous hamburger. Yo!

Welcome back to Creepcast. Today, we're talking, uh, we're reading a story written by the author of Baraska, a.k.a. the Dalek Emperor, a.k.a.

Sorry, I was looking at the subreddit making memes about your grandfather shooting your dog. I think the use of AI. Also written by CK Walker, which is the pen name of Rebecca Klingle. So obviously, not only do you guys know the impact Baraska has had on your well-being, but the impact it's had on us. Because most of the time when we talk about one of the best stories we covered, Baraska's always in the top three, right? Yeah.

And everyone, we love it. A lot of you all love it in spite of the trauma it caused, which you're welcome for that, by the way. So we figured there is an episode or sorry, a short story written by the same author called The Lost Town of Deepwood, Pennsylvania. So that sounds like an interesting title. We know we like the author. Sounds perfect for an in-person episode. I am still going to go back to, I think that the abuse of AI episode.

in our subreddit depicting me as a fat child. I want to just go on record saying that those posts are going to be removed. I'm going to repel those from existence on the subreddit. And there's just going to be, it's just going to have to be a lot stricter. And I hate to be this guy.

But it's un-fucking-fathomable what they've started to do to me. And I have started therapy because of it. Okay. Uh, here's a picture of him as a fat little child next to, uh, a man holding a shotgun pointed at a small dog and it says, uh, "Hunter's Grandfather's POV." And I think that's really cool and you all should keep doing it. Anyway, so to get into- So I don't have to tell you why that's- we're removing that, okay?

And we're getting into the story. And I will say, I think the title of the story is good. Yes, it is interesting. It reminds me of the one we did during a grab bag. What was it called? The disappearance of Shelby, Kansas or something. It was a woman's name. Kansas, Ashley, Ashley, Kansas. That's it. Yes.

the disappearance of Ashley, Kansas. So the title kind of reminds me of that. But again, from, I think honestly the only one of Rebecca's works I've read is probably Barofska at least to my knowledge. I think that's the only one that we've read. It's definitely the only one we've only read on the show. You're saying just in general, I think in general, that's the only one I've read. I thought you had way more of her stuff.

I guess not. I've heard of more of her stuff. Like, I've heard of, like, Mayhem Mountain, I know, but I've never read it, stuff like that. So there are...

I know she has written a lot of other famous works. Boroska, far and away, though, is the most popular. She's also done the work on The Haunting of Hill House. Okay, I should clarify, in the creepypasta community, Boroska is the most popular. But yeah, she's like a very accomplished author who wrote on Haunting of Hill House and stuff like that. We stay in her very much. Rebecca, for some reason, you see this. Does Pennsylvania have any bodies of water? Because this could very well be an Atlantis situation. Deepwood?

I feel like deep wood makes it sound like it's in the woods. That's, you know, you're putting up a, I just want, when are we going to start talking about mer creatures? I actually know a few creepypastas about like ocean people and stuff like that. I want to start digging into that soon. Okay. Not now. Okay. Okay, buddy. When we start rolling in, it's like, Oh, I think that my husband's a fucking fish person.

I want to be on that gravy train. Okay. All right? All right. But I'll let you know. I'm excited. I hope that this is equally as good as Baraska. If so, I'm going to be a very happy little boy today. Do you also want it to have, like, female impregnation forms? Yeah, like the sex slave weird impregnation. You know, I think we could probably do without it. I'm open to a lot of things, though. How many stories does an author have to write with that in it before it becomes questionable? I think three. Three.

We're on the right track. So if this one does have it, totally fine. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's one more. I mean, like, you know, everyone, who doesn't from time to time? We look at every one of our stories and they're all just impregnation. Okay. Well, come on. This is more than three. Maybe we dial it back a little bit. All right. Well, without further ado, let's get into the Lost Town.

of Deepwood, Pennsylvania. Let's get into it. As always, everyone, thank you so much for watching. Oh, yeah. Spotify. Spotify. Listen to us there, baby. Rate us good. Rate us hard. We're halfway to Hawk Tua. We are. Hawk Tua podcast is at 15 right now. We're still above Ben Shapiro, but we want to get above. I want to get above fucking Markiplier, which his show is presented by Mug. Root Beer. How the hell do we get? When can I get a Mug?

presented by we can we can steal that i think we can if we overtake him we can and i have to get by for i will if by the end of the year we have not surpassed the talk to a podcast i will that has to be bleeped there's no way it cannot be can we do you think we can at least try to get a mountain dew presented by mountain dew i think our logo is green where's it at hold on

Did we not have one? We had one. We drank it. That's how much we like it. Harry, go grab the Baja Blast Zeros. Hold on. Didn't Red Bull and Monster sponsor creators forever? We don't need to talk about them. Our scopes need to be on Mountain Dew. That's where our love is moving forward. Isaiah, let's get into this story. And if there's a reference of Mountain Dew, we're going to give a lucky fan $60,000.

You're going to give a fan 60,000. I don't know what you're talking about. It's going to be a split joint here. I don't know what you're talking about. Lost town, Deepwood, Pennsylvania. All right. When I was a kid, my dad traveled a lot for work. Back then, his company was growing exponentially, and my father was sent to oversee the opening of new stores all across the country. In 2002, he had a particularly busy year.

My dad was assigned to a store in Pennsylvania and because it was a longer assignment and because it was summertime as well, he decided to take my mom and I with him. Since we were going to be there for two months, they gave us a fully furnished house in the suburbs. It was two stories tall and at the end of a very long cul-de-sac. The town itself was very small with a little over 3,000 residents and the suburb where we stayed was even more rural. Our neighborhood was relatively new and most of the houses were still empty.

The housing development, Lone Wood, had only just started cutting into the dense forest that surrounded it and all the empty houses gave it a very eerie, albeit boring, feel. Lucky for me, there were a few other kids who lived in Lone Wood and one of them happened to be my age. Jamie and I were both 12 and really that was all we needed to have in common. We had a lot of fun that summer. Being a city kid, I was eager to explore all the bike trails local kids had made out in the woods.

the city of middlesborough was a very old town which was incorporated sometime in the early 1800s the town had tons of history but nothing really to do one particularly boring sunday jamie and i even went to the town's museum it's pretty boring as expected until we heard some kid ask an employee about the lost town the employee replied that that was just a legend

But that was enough to pique my curiosity. I do love that. Random kid comes in. What about the lost town? What about the lost town? Yeah. I don't think I've ever had anything to that extreme, but I've definitely heard of like... In my hometown, we had a little city museum thing that was also really boring. But there was a guy who's like, what about the butcher? And it was like something like that, where it's like, oh, we had a serial killer in this town. And then the guy was like...

We don't know. That makes it even more interesting. We're not trying to put him in here. And I've never, I've still never known like who it was or anything. Wow. But it was still one of these, like that weird serendipity. I like this. I like this beginning of being like, what about the lost town? What if the lost town? Yeah, exactly. I will say right now, this is smacking on the pulpit of Boroska pretty hard.

I was new to town. I was 12 years old. I met a local kid named Jamie. Oh, true. We went to the local historic place and there was the lost town, which is the exact same. It was like the lost mine or whatever. Refresh my memory. He was new to town.

Yeah, his dad, they had just moved there because his dad got a job as the sheriff's deputy. The sheriff, okay, that's who I was. Okay, I'm just making sure. Because that was the whole thing with that story. It was fucked up. Was it the dad? The dad turned out to be one of the people running it and gave his daughter to the thing. Which is why I want to read the next part of Roscoe because I hope he gets...

We should put that out there. We will be doing Boroska 5 at some point. At some point, yeah. It's just long. It's long. I think Boroska 5, if I recall right, is longer than 1 through 4 together. Yeah, I think we were looking it over. It's like a five-hour read. Yeah, it's going to be like a long-ass episode. Which I'm down for. Yeah, we just need to prepare it. We just need to block out a day for it. A full day. I quizzed Jamie about it, but he didn't seem to know much either.

it was a full five weeks into the summer before i finally got my questions answered jamie and i were building a bike ramp over a narrow stream late one afternoon when we saw a group of five teenagers boisterously heading up out into the woods they were carrying flashlights and beer several of them trying to scare the girls of the group into turning back i wonder where they're going i'm used as i glanced over at jamie he stood up and wiped his brow i know where they're going where i stood up and dusted the dirt off my shorts

The novelty of living in a small town had weeks ago given way to boredom, and I jumped on anything that sounded remotely interesting. They're looking for the lost town. He sighed regretfully. Okay, seriously, what is that? I knew you knew more than you let on. I need to know, Jamie. I need to know. I shook his shoulders in mock hysteria, and he stumbled for balance. All right, I'll tell you. Jeez, Katie. Jamie picked up his bike and started walking down the bike path.

I grabbed his mind and followed him. The Lost Town is just a dumb legend. The stories say that Middleborough had Sister City nearby, somewhere out in these woods. Then one day, like a century and a half ago, the whole town just disappeared. The people left or died. Nobody knows. Nobody even remembers the name of the town. It's like a rite of passage or something for kids to go looking for it. Jamie, we should... No!

He stopped and turned to look at me. Some kid went looking for it in the 70s and never came back. They found his body like 10 years later in the middle of nowhere. He got lost out there. It's easy to do. Everything looks the same. He was a total idiot, probably on drugs. I mean, it was the 70s. We're totally different generation.

We have Sat Nav. Sat Nav. What's Sat Nav? Satellite navigation. GPS, yeah. Sat Nav? He looked at me curiously. Jamie had lived in this town his whole life, and sometimes I forgot how sheltered he was. Satellite navigation? That's me impersonating you. It's so cringe that we just had this conversation. I know, I fucking hate myself. My dad has a GPS that he totally wouldn't notice missing for a day. Come on, Jamie.

It'd be so much fun. I better get back. I love whenever you have conversations with yourself because it's like hysteria setting in. Jamie looked at his watch and then mounted his bike. My dad is taking me to a movie tonight. We rode in an uncomfortable silence until an idea struck me as we rolled over the abandoned train tracks.

They were old and almost buried by plant growth. "Hey, I know you don't want to talk about it, but has anyone ever found anything?" "No, well, my friend's older brother said he found some human bones out there once, but nobody believed him." "Oh, and where do people look?" "Well, almost everybody goes to the lake," he pointed to the left of us, where we'd seen the teenagers heading earlier. "It's pretty deep back there, but they figured if there was another town, they would have lived by the lake, so that's where they go." "Well, you know what I would do?"

I would follow the train tracks. I mean, they look pretty old. I don't know why they would lay them going back into those woods unless there was something back there. So that's where I'd go. Jamie considered this and then nodded. Yeah, I guess I could buy that. No one follows the tracks that way, though. That's where that kid disappeared went. I wasn't swayed. I didn't bring up the lost town again until two weeks later. It was the weekend before we were moving home, and my parents had a barbecue for the employees of Dad's new store and some of our neighbors.

Jamie and I hung out inside the house and played my Nintendo 64 while we flirted pretty outrageously. Hot. How old are these kids? 26, I think. Bases covered. Bases covered. Man, these kids on bicycles building ramps playing N64, thank God they graduated college eight years ago, yeah. What does it look like whenever you're flirting playing Nintendo 64?

What was that? What kind of shenanigans was that? You were never, like, in high school playing games with the girl you liked? Some of the boys, maybe. It's my turn! It's my turn! Stop! Stop it! No, stop, Michael, stop! Stop! Stop! That's how I flirt.

You do that thing when like you're playing a game together and then one of you is like beating the other and you're like doing the "haha" like the shove thing or whatever. Okay, come on. That you're cheating! Sure, yeah. That's probably what's being described here, yeah. There's a lot of this going on, you know. Dude, stop! You're just tickling me! I don't like- I'm not gonna describe anymore because you're gonna do it. It makes me uncomfortable. I'm looking directly into the viewer's eyes right now. Stop it! You're tickling me! I'm up next!

I want that people can practice their flirtation. I'm going to keep reading. Good Lord. There had been an unspoken sort of mutual attraction throughout the summer that no one had the guts to act on. Stop moaning. Since I was moving home in five days, there really was nothing left to lose. Although his intentions were probably pure and genuine, I'm embarrassed to say that mine were not.

I thought that if I could make him want to impress me, he would agree to go looking for the lost town. What a bitch. I mean, this is like standard high school stuff. Yeah, but still, that is not... I mean, what the fuck? I mean, like, sure, it's rude, but I mean, like, there's a bunch of girls in high school who are like, oh, that guy likes me. If he gets all flustered, he'll go to that weird town where the guy died. What? Well, how many... Just to impress me. How many girls... It's my turn. How many girls in high school and stuff like that, like, you know, they try to...

Like get a guy to like them for like social cloud or like because he's like big on the baseball team like they don't actually like him They just want something out of him, right? It's like it's I think it's a fine part of being a kid now when you're an adult doing like serious relationships off of this is different. Is this what they call negging? Negging? What is the definition of negging? Negging is a manipulative tactic that involves making backhanded compliments or negative comments. Oh, that's what you're just like. You look really good for a fat girl. That's negging.

That's nagging. I don't think that's nagging. No, I've been given a tactic that involves making backhanded comments or negative comments to make someone feel bad about themselves. What you just did is just mean. Nagging is being mean. No, it would be like this. It'd be like, yeah, you look a lot better today. That's...

that's just kind of similar to what I did. No, no, the different saying you look really good for a fat girl. First off, I didn't say that. I'm saying that's the example of someone. But it has to be manipulative. If I say you look better today, you're like, thank you. And then maybe you're later to like,

Oh, did I look not good the past few days? Which is what the incentive, the underline was. Saying you look pretty good for a fat girl. It's just like, what are you talking about? What? Like there's no, there's no manipulation. You know, for a guy this big, you look really good. Okay. Here's one. Hey Hunter, your last video was a lot better. Oh, thank you.

It was really good. The other ones are good. This one's really good too. Wow, I'm good at everything. That's what he meant. There's never one negative thing. Hmm. Okay, well that's fine. Well, I'm glad I have an understanding of what negging is now. Okay, alright. I'm just gonna keep going. The legend had thoroughly consumed me. I'd been to the local library every morning for the past week looking for more information on the town and had found nothing. Legends don't just come from nowhere.

I'm sure of it. I knew if we didn't leave by 2:00 PM, we wouldn't have enough daylight to carry out my plan. I already had a backpack packed with water, flashlight, a camera, and a can of red spray paint. I figured if we left the tracks, we would need a way to find our way back to them. I thought I was so clever. Nothing in that backpack made a damn bit of difference in the end. I was a fool. I set my controller down and turned to look at Jamie. - So do you want to go to the woods one last time?

I raised my eyebrow at him and smiled. Yeah. He said excitedly and jumped up off the couch. Then, embarrassed, he cast his eyes down at the floor. Yeah, you know, if you want to, that's cool. Cool, let's go. This is an impersonal thing because I'm glad I get to act and be the character here. Yeah, I get it. The whole time you were reading, I was like, don't look at me, don't look at me, like...

Cool. Let's go. Thank you. I grabbed his hand and ran out the front door, grabbing my strategically placed backpack on the way. Jamie didn't even notice it. He was walking faster than I was. When we had gotten a decent way into the trees, Jamie turned around and looked briefly at my face before casting his eyes to the ground. He rubbed the back of his neck. I've actually, like, wanted to kiss you all summer. Don't look at me when you do that line, Reed.

It doesn't help that anytime I imagine you as a kid, it's just you, your head now, but on a smaller body. I was stunned to silence. Absolutely dumbfounded that Jamie had found the guts to say anything like this. I knew I needed to feel the awkward silence left in his wake, so I did the only thing I could think of. I leaned in and kissed him. It was... Dude, why did your lips perch when you said that? He's like leaning over and shit.

I immediately hate the in-person format because you can do physical bits right next to me while I'm here and I don't realize them until... I've been really wanting to record in person for a long time. I can tell.

It was the awkward first kiss of two 12 year olds. But it made me feel warm. It's in a flight of butterflies swirling into my stomach. So I actually really did like Jamie. How about that? I let him go and his face was the same shade of red that I imagined mine was. He quickly changed the subject to how long he'd wanted to ask me out, but that he didn't think I liked him back. We walked for a while carrying this conversation. I'm oblivious to his surroundings. Me subtly leading the way.

It took him stumbling over the tracks to break off his monologue and finally notice the backpack. It looked to me like I'd punched him in the face. You can't be serious. Jamie, I know, but look, this is the last time I'm going to see you in a really long time. And I want to remember today. We will only be out for two hours max. We'll be back before they even realize we're gone. Jamie stared at the tracks for a minute and seemed to be considering it all. I held my breath until he finally let out a deep sigh. Ahem.

Okay. Oh my God, Jamie. He held up his finger, cutting me off. But we follow the tracks the entire time and we turn around after an hour. Okay. I was so excited that I hugged him. It would be the first and last time I ever did. Ooh. I want to say too, real quick, this author does a really good job by like setting up mysterious, like world building places. Like almost like fantastical dream. Like who knows if it's real or not.

Well, she does... And also the relationships between people quickly. She does a great job, like, establishing her characters quickly, right? But in a meaningful way. Like, I feel more attached to these two than I do a ton of the different characters we read about, right? Like, I think of Jamie and Katie, like, more than I think of, I don't know, main characters from stories like 1999, where it's just kind of like a faceless person. So it establishes... Not to say it's a bad story, just I'm thinking of a good story in comparison. Like...

We have our setup that we like, and it's doing fun stuff with the writing as well. Stuff like his face was as red as I imagined mine was. Like there's, you know, fun writing tricks there, but it stays focused on where it wants to go. I think she has a good, you went good with these stories too. Them being 12 years old, that perfect time where it's like youthful ignorance, but also like kind of upbeat edification.

adventurous kind of people. You have enough agency to go do stuff, but still enough stupidity to put yourself in dumb situations. It's like the innocence of believing that someone, like if they were 26, you'd be like, do you have nothing better to do with time? But them being 12 years old, I think really leans into that. How old were you when you had your first kiss? 30. I don't know. I looked at my wife and I was like,

Can we kiss?

Also talk about how real that is though. The little boy asked the girl, I've been wanting to kiss you for a long time. He does. And then now the floodgates are open and he's just like, yeah, I've been really wanting to ask you out for a long time. I think that's very classic young boy. I think that's exactly how mine first kiss went. Oh yeah. Kissed and I immediately like, oh yeah. So I think you're really cute and I want to like, you want to go out? You want to date? Like, yeah. There's a lot of people who say a lot of stupid shit after the floodgates are open like that.

Yeah. I think I've known you for so much longer. Do you want to get married? Whatever. As we walked, we talked about all sorts of mundane things, stopping only to make sure we were still on the tracks. It felt like we had only been walking for 45 minutes, but when Jamie checked his watch, it had been three hours. That's weird. It hasn't been three hours. It says five o'clock. He trails off. I swear we just left after two. It can't be five, dude. Your watch is busted.

I gave him a playful shove. Jimmy raised his eyebrow at me and smiled. "Even so, we should probably turn around." He wasn't wrong. The sun was setting. The shadows were long and looking around, I wondered if it really was 5 o'clock. But I wasn't ready to give up just yet. As we had been walking, I noticed something taking shape off to our right. A large mass, maybe a quarter mile away.

It was denser than the area around it and seemed to have clean, man-made lines. "Jamie, look!" He turned. "Yeah, I was hoping you hadn't noticed it. It's a long way off though. We would never find the tracks again." "Yes we would. Check it out!" I triumphantly pulled the spray pan out of my backpack. "It's for the trees!" He took the can and shook it. It made an experimental X on a nearby tree. "Okay, but I gotta do the spraying." And I didn't argue.

The closer we got to the mass, the more it took shape. First, we could tell it was a building. Then we could tell it was church. By the time we got to the front door, we were looking at a very old and dilapidated chapel. Remembering my camera, I took a picture of the wooden plaque over the door. Whatever had been written on it had long ago worn away. We walked around the church in awe. The building was small, maybe 500 square feet.

The windows were, surprisingly, all intact, but were so caked with dirt and grime that we couldn't see anything inside. How do we get in? I asked quietly. I don't know, but we're going to have to figure it out. Wait until my brother hears about this. I mean, holy shit, look at this place. His excitement was contagious. The front door had a pull handle, but try as we might, we couldn't seem to open the door. Do you think it's locked? I asked as I watched Jamie struggle with it. Yeah, maybe. I mean, it must be.

There was a door around back though. The door at the back was a lot more sympathetic and let us in with relative ease. We were standing in a small room with an old wooden desk attached to a wall. There was a small fireplace and old portraits hung up around the tiny office. The people in the pictures were all standing in front of the same maroon background and were looking down at us disapprovingly. Books were scattered everywhere, most in a language I had never seen before. The floor was covered in dirt and a pair of old shoes were laying haphazardly in one corner.

"Whoa." I said in awe. "Yeah, whoa." I looked over at Jamie, who had a huge smile on his face. He was holding up a cross and a piece of paper. "What is it?" I walked over to see. "It's a list of names. There's like 60 people on this list. Maybe a town census? Let me see." I pulled my flashlight out of my backpack and shined it on the parchment. "Deepwood. Do you think that's the name of the town? All these names are crossed out. I'll accept this one." I pointed to a name at the very bottom.

Maybe it was the plague? You think it's a list of the dead? Jamie shrugged. Makes as much sense as anything else. I walked over to the desk and leaned against it. Why do you think they left? I mean, look, there's a jacket or something on that chair. His shoes over there. The town pastor or whatever, he just took off and left everything like this? Or died? Said Jamie as he folded the paper and put it into my backpack. Yeah, died. Either way, it must have been creepy as hell to be alone in here.

I stared at one of the portraits for several long seconds. The young woman painted there seemed to be staring down at me with a very accusatory look. It made me incredibly uncomfortable. So basically, just to recap, this is just a small little church. Books all over the floor. There's like people's clothes kind of scattered around here and there. But then like, it's pretty well in shape.

Like, the inside of it. They didn't say that it's, like, decrepit or... Well, it's an abandoned church. Well, it's abandoned, but they're saying that, like, the deep reds and, like, the paintings and stuff like that. It's not, like, destroyed, but I think it's been abandoned for a long time. Because, like, there's the list of names and there's the paintings and stuff. But there's, like, books across the floor that are laid open. And...

They also mentioned like maybe the plague got them, which obviously wouldn't be the plague as in European plague. But I could see two kids thinking like, Oh, a hundred years ago, the plague. Sure. You know? Yeah. It's something trying to justify like a mass death. Yeah. Like there was some huge, cause there's 60 names. All of them are crossed out except one. And then you have like the, the paintings of people along the walls that all have like the same matching background, which is interesting. Um,

I just want to appreciate like how well the author sets up mystery in such a short amount of time. Cause I like, I'm in, I want to know. Yeah. Like they said the name deep wood, right? Was that on a piece of paper? Yeah. I think it was the, uh, let me see here. Pulled a backpack and shined it on the parchment and the deep wood. Do you think that's the name of the town? Yes. Yeah. So on it, it says deep wood. So like,

I've named the town was deepwood. It's abandoned. There's an empty church. The light the books are in languages They can't read probably my first thought this is Pennsylvania, maybe Germanic or Dutch Population. Yeah, I was like an old kind of like Dutch like really kind of like almost Amish true. Yeah Classic wooden like like it doesn't have to be a supernatural reason for the books to be a different language But it adds to the mystique of everything. Yeah, I thought be really funny if it was in Spanish. I

She's like a language I've never seen before. It's like all the other books are in English, but one Spanish book's out. She's like, whoa, what? You think a demon wrote this? And it's just like, I don't know.

it's just like the giving tree in spanish like yeah spanish for dummies whoa i was so absorbed in the paintings that i didn't notice the slow creaking from overhead until the ceilings cracked loudly as it started to cave in i screamed and covered my head but the next thing i knew i was lying on my back over the threshold of a door jamie on top of me protecting his head thanks i mumbled as i gently pushed jamie off of me don't mention it

Jamie climbed to his feet and brushed himself off. I glanced behind him at the office, which was now filled floor to ceiling with decaying debris. Jamie, that was our way out. That's okay. We can unlock the front door now that we're inside or break one of the windows. If the back office was unsettlingly, the chapel was downright disturbing. Even though the grimy windows allowed very little sunlight in, it can make out eight rows of pews lining a narrow aisle and a tall podium at the front of the chapel.

Jamie and I stumbled around the small nave breaking windows on either side with pieces of wood we had found. The sun was still setting and I wondered how much of a difference the muted light would make. When I broke the last window on my side, I turned back around to survey the chapel. Disappointed that the lighting wasn't much better, the room itself seemed to repel light. The wooden pews were completely rotted. In fact, the wood we had used to break the windows of the church were leg stands from the front row.

The narrow aisle in between the rows of pews was littered with leaves and rotting wood. But that was nothing. Nothing compared to what sat upon the altar. It wasn't a podium, as I had thought earlier. It was a statue of the Crucifixion, but unlike any I had ever seen before. The paint had been worn away on every part of the statue, except the blood of the Crucifixion wounds, which stood bright and realistic and seemed to be oozing before our very eyes.

The only other surface left untouched by the decay of time was the face of Jesus. The details of his face were still so incredibly minute and perfect. He had the same accusing eyes as the portraits in the pastor's office. He seemed to be staring directly at me and I could tell Jamie felt the same, though he was across the room from me. The statue's stare awarded me an edge of panic and I suddenly realized that we needed to leave. We weren't wanted here.

I had the sudden feeling that we were trespassing on some sort of hallowed ground. We had found the church, we had documents proving we had been here, and now it was time to go. I turned to Jamie to tell him so and could immediately tell that he did not share my feelings. He had been born and bred on these legends and nothing was going to tear him away from our discovery. I watched him walk over to grab the camera out of my bag.

He took pictures of everything he deemed interesting, including the crucifixion statue, much to my unease. I gave him several minutes before I said something. Jamie, I think we need to leave. I said in a low voice. Jamie stopped and looked up, seeming to remember I was there. Are you kidding? This is what we came here for. We have to bring some evidence. Of all of it. It's going to be dark in half an hour. It's already hard to see in here. Duh. That's why I'm using a flash.

Hey, could you get a picture of me next to the creepy Jesus thing? Um, I guess. Whoa, the forever bleeding statue? Yo, get a picture. I'm gonna pog at it. Give me a picture. I mumbled as I took the camera from him. I didn't even want to look at it, much less photograph it. But if it would help me get him out of here, I was gonna stomach it. Jamie wrapped his arm around it just as I snapped the picture. Don't touch it! Oh, crap. Why did you touch it? There's something off about that thing, Jamie. Jamie?

Can we freaking go now? Yeah, fine. Jamie walked over and picked up the backpack as I headed towards the front door. I noticed there was no lock on it. I pushed against the door as hard as I could. It didn't budge. My heart sank. There wasn't even a handle or a knob. It was just a solid piece of wood with strange markings on it. Symbols I had never seen before. Jamie, the door stuck. I said as I turned around to see him testing a piece of floor with his foot. What are you doing?

I asked, hearing the edge of panic in my voice. He was still at the front of the chapel, a foot from the Jesus statue, hopping back and forth from one part of the floor to another. The statue's eyes seemed to be only on him now. There's something under here. See? I heard the floorboard creak under his left foot as he put weight on it. Jamie, don't. No, it's like under the dirt right here. The floor is hollow. He kneeled down and started digging through the thin layer of dirt. It's like a trap door or something.

And it was indeed a trap door. The time I had walked the length of the pews, Jamie already had the edges dug halfway out. Let's just leave it and your brother and his friends can come back and see what it is. Please, Jamie, I want to go. There's something wrong with this place. Terribly wrong. The thought of spending one more minute here had me on the precipice of a panic attack, something I hadn't experienced in over a year. I sat down against the front pew and put my head down.

I heard a roaring in my ears and my breathing grew labored. I had to leave here, even without Jamie. I rocked back and forth for a few minutes as I tried to calm myself down. I wouldn't climb out of a window and run in any direction. It didn't matter. "There's something here, under the church." Jamie's voice sounded a million miles away. By the time I pulled myself together enough to lift my head, Jamie was knelt next to me. "I didn't know you were claustrophobic."

at least that's what i think jamie said i better remember the horror i felt as i stared at the hole in the floor jamie had opened the trap door two minutes jamie said as he stood up we go down we take a couple pictures of whatever's down there and we come right back up and leave just two minutes katie that's all i'm asking i wanted to say no i intended to but i felt myself slowly nodding as jamie pulled me to my feet

To this day, I don't understand why I agreed, but I suppose that's better that what happened down there didn't happen to Jamie alone. We're going to come back with a story of a lifetime. What if there's valuable stuff down there or something? Old shit is always worth money. We could be rich. So rich that your family could stay here. You could buy the house you're living in and come to school with me in September.

This is incredibly sad. Well, it's kind of what I like about this so far is like the awkward kid that you kind of rooted for is now it's, it's turned into switch. Yeah. Well, he's now manipulating. Well, it's, it's interesting because she started by manipulating him of being like, well, I'm going to flirt with him. Yeah. And now he's now he's now he's like, okay, well, if it is really here and we found it, this is the story that everyone's talked about for so many years. So I want to go see it.

And also it's like, oh, well, if we get rich, then maybe you could stay. Maybe you could stay. He can buy the house. It's like... Do you think it's more malicious or just like foolhardy? I think he's saying whatever he can to stay in the situation. Or is it he actually does like her? And he's like... I'm sure it's a mixture of both. But I think at the moment, it's the same. I think that it's a mirror of what she did earlier of like, oh, I'm flirting with him in the guise of wanting somebody to impress me so someone will go with me there. Yeah.

I think that it's something similar where I think he does like her, but I still think it's one of those things where he's like, and also when we go down there and find something, we're probably going to be rich. You know, it's like he's kind of...

She's trying to talk her into it somewhere. Yeah, leading her along down this thing, comforting her. I'll also say the setting they're in is very, very frightening. Yeah. Very well done. I hate that this is a short story because I want to see what else is in these other buildings and whatever else, but also just to spend more time in this church. I love the idea of that statue kind of like only looking at him. It looks like it's still bleeding. I like the idea that it looks like

both of them feel like it's looking at them. Yeah. But when Jamie gets to the trap door, she says, it seems the statue is only looking at him now. Yeah. Which is a very, like the idea of the visual, because like it's for creepy for one, the idea of like the crucifixion, but in my head, it's very like,

emaciated and spider-like depiction of Jesus, you know, like very spread out. Yeah. Very spread out and stuff. And it's still bleeding, but it's like looking straight down at him from the cross. The agony face of the whole, like, Oh yeah. Yeah. Walking, looking around. You ever, ever seen any of those fucked up paintings? You ever see like a portrait of somebody and it does look like their eyes follow you. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I,

That's the weird thing about those optical illusions, but if you're in a weird, horrifying space, it's very easy to let your mind run wild and be like, this thing is fucking... That painting's something else than just a painting. I'm a huge fan of this so far. It's got me hooked, yeah. I love that immediately it feels like, I don't know, just a really solid writer. It feels like if you've ever read anything else from her, it's just going to be solid. Yeah, I feel like she's a safe bet to go with. Yeah.

It is very like at the beginning I was like, oh, this wraps of Borosco, which it does a little bit. But I feel like it's diverted enough. It has its own identity. I think people are also always going to find their tropes that they have in some ways. Like writing about a kid in a small town. Yeah, exactly. I think that it's you're probably going to pull from very similar places, I would assume. And we've also I mean, I have no idea how many work she has. She could have hundreds and we've just picked the two about kids. Who knows? Right. Yeah.

because we are youtubers it is our thing so anyway i managed a small smile of all the things someone could think to buy with wealth jamie's first thought was to keep me here with him he was right there could be anything down there and almost all old stuff was valuable i took a deep breath okay two minutes i agreed as we leaned over the trap door and peered down the first thing we noticed was an intense heat emanating upwards from the hole second was a strangely out of place spiral staircase leading into the depths below

Jamie rolled the flashlight over to me with his foot, and I picked it up as he pulled his lighter out of his pocket. Ladies first. He smirked at me. I stared at him, slack-jawed. No way. You found this door. You go first. Between the black staircase and the heat, I feel like we're descending directly into hell, and I'm not going first. I crossed my arms and glared at him to reinforce my point.

Jamie simply shrugged and stepped onto the staircase. The only real place I have to suspend my disbelief with this story is that two 12 year olds would keep going, right? Yeah. Like I get to, I get all the way to breaking into the church. Like I probably would have done something like that if I was with a friend when I was, especially if it was to impress a girl, I would do some really dumb stuff. Um, but I feel like,

The door, the trap door is like, no. I think realistically, yes. But I think once again, that's what I was saying earlier is you have that nice element of...

youthful ignorance or kind of like ignorance is bliss being young and not really understanding the severity of something. Yeah. Granted, you can still see something that's dark or whatever and be afraid of it. But I think that's where this story, you get a lot of leeway whenever you age people in this, in this kind of age range is because there really shouldn't be a lot of like, not necessarily intelligence, but just, I guess, social cues or, you know, stuff like that. I took several deep breaths as I watched his head disappear into the darkness below.

I almost didn't follow him. I was still deciding when he yelled at me to shine the flashlight down the stairs so he could see. I started down the stairs after him. They went down much farther than I thought, and it became warmer and warmer the further down we went. When we finally reached the bottom, I was holding back what threatened to be a massive anxiety attack. We were farther beneath the church than I thought we'd be, and it was hot, muggy, and difficult to breathe.

Hoping to get this over as fast as possible, I swung the flashlight around the chamber hoping to reveal its hidden treasure. What I saw there, I can never describe, though I have tried many times. The room was entirely empty, save two things. One was a desk in the corner, much like the one in the pastor's office. The second was another statue. This one was roughly 12 feet tall. It remains, to this day, the most terrifying thing I have ever seen.

To put it mildly, it was some sort of demon. It towered over us and as such I could only see the bottom of its jaw from where I was. It was looking directly ahead of it, at the staircase we had just descended. Its tail was long and swept around the entire room. There wasn't a lot of room to move. It had claws, like any modern depiction of a demon, and as I moved around the chamber to view its profile, I noticed it had horns as well. Neither Jamie nor I spoke as we shuffled around the room.

Our backs to the wall as far away from the demon as physically possible. I stepped carefully over the tell as I made my way to its back and came around to the other side of the statue. I couldn't take my eyes from it. I couldn't trust it. If the statue upstairs seemed to bleed, what could this one do? As I eyed the talons on the gigantic stone feet, Jamie broke the silence. "Can you believe this shit?" His voice was coming from the other side of the room.

I searched the darkness for the weak glow of his lighter and was relieved to see it moving towards me. I turned my flashlight upward to shine it on the side of the demon's head. The horns had to be at least a foot tall. As I brought it down to see where Jamie was, I hit my arm on something hard. My head. Jamie squeaked as my flashlight fell to the ground and rolled under the desk. God damn it, Jamie. I whispered in a panic. I dropped to my knees and felt around under the desk, searching for the flashlight.

what it's not my fault you cracked on my head you cracked me on my head i stood back up and swung the light around to see jamie trying to relight his lighter but it wasn't him that stopped me dead i will forever be frozen in that moment i don't know why i couldn't speak couldn't scream couldn't move all i could feel was my own intern descent into madness

As I had moved the beam of light up to Jamie's face, I had seen another face right next to his. A twisted, angry, soulless face. The demon's. The statue had bent down and turned to the side, its head mere inches from Jamie's, and it was staring at me. I cannot describe its face, and I am not sure my mind will ever let me remember it in detail.

It shook me to my core in a literal sense. My body was having a dark, violent, visceral reaction to this impossibility. Jamie finally noticed the flashlight shaking in my hand and turned to see what I was looking at. It wasn't until he started screaming that I was shaken from my paralysis. I dropped the flashlight, Jamie dropped everything else, and we ran. Do you think it's just a stone, still a stone statue, or do you think it has like a fleshy kind of... So in my head, this is kind of like a,

you remember the exorcist, the Pazuzu statue kind of like that, where it's like this weird combination of like demonic imagery, animal imagery, human imagery, like kind of like the biblically accurate demon, right? It has these massive, like the horns are a foot tall, right? And, um,

I don't imagine that it's detailed. I think it's still the statue, but I think it's much more animated now. Like maybe the expression on it has changed or something like that. Even the idea of it like twisting and it's like in a completely new position. Yeah, like it can bend and stuff like that. Also, is the room, did they say, is it just like a dirt floor room? Like it's just underground or is there actual flooring? I'm like perceiving it in different ways.

Kind of think of it as a cave almost. That's what I, my head. Yeah. It's creepier to me of going down dirt floor, like no actual structural shit. In my head, it's like a cavern down there. Yeah. And there's a desk in there. Also the whole thing, making it seem hotter. Seems like she's like almost crawling into the depths of hell. It's like you're getting closer to hell down there. Also, it's subtle, but I really liked the mention of the desk was much the same to the one in the pastor's office. The reflection. Yeah.

It's a reflection, but it also implies, especially because this, the passageway to this was at the altar of a church.

that whoever the pastor was that was leading that church up there was actually worshiping whatever this demon was down there, right? And the difference between the Jesus and the demon and stuff and perhaps whatever happened in this town was a part of that doing. Kind of reminds me of Borderlands. Yes, yeah, a lot like Borderlands. Like there's this entity beneath that is dictating what they do above. And it's so much world building, like imagination in your head established with the sentence of,

There was a desk in the room similar to the pastor's boom. Like that ties everything together. You can do so much with just a sentence or two. Yeah. Fires your fucking neurons for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Like so far, Rebecca, like two for two. Yeah. I'm curious to see where it goes. Cause also mind you earlier, she did say this is the last time she saw him or last time that she hugged him. Yeah. Yeah. Also they, they keep doing this thing where it's like, um, they keep,

in the story. So it's like big picture at the beginning. And there's something like, I'll never forget what happened. So what we're about to read about is something intense.

Then it's like, I hugged him or whatever. Last time I ever would. Okay, from here to the next time. We're coned in more. Something intense. And then it got all the way to when they get to the basement. Like, I'll never forget what happened. It's like, this is the moment. The basement we're about to go in is where things change. So it's like, it's this interesting way to keep you engaged through the process while you're still pretty much getting exposition early on and stuff like that.

It's just good riding. Yeah, no, it's awesome. We took the stairs two and three at a time. Jamie pushing me up ahead of him. Halfway up, I slipped and we both went tumbling down halfway to the bottom.

in that horrible moment we heard the grinding of stone against stone and we knew the statue was moving oh that's so sick jamie screamed but i was mute too horrified to make a sound we got up and kept climbing never taking our eyes off the small dying light above us our only salvation now we were almost to the top when we first heard it on the stairs it was so large and heavy that the entire staircase shook with the impact

Terrified that the stairs would come crashing down and we would be left alone with it below, we jumped the last three steps. Jamie pushed me up out of the opening. He climbed out after me and tried to slam the trapdoor shut but it was somehow stuck. We could hear the deafening thunder on the staircase as the statue slowly climbed the steps. I helped Jamie try to push the trapdoor closed for the first time noticed the symbols on the bottom of the wood, the same as those on the front door.

Before I could begin to comprehend this, I noticed the demon first penetrate the shaft of life down the staircase below. It was coming. Jamie saw it too and pulled me to a standing position while pointing at the front door. We both ran at it as hard as we could, but when we hit it, it didn't budge. We tried again, but it was unsympathetic. "Katie, the windows!" We ran to the closest one and tried to climb up to the wall to get out, but the windows were too high.

The thunder from below was getting louder, closer. It was more than halfway up the stairs. We tried to climb on the rotting pews to reach the windows, but they crumbled under our weight. "I'll push you out. Give me your foot." Jamie yelled over the sound bellowing from below. I shook my head. I wanted to. God, I wanted to. But I couldn't leave him. I couldn't leave Jamie to face that thing alone. We both looked over at the door again. Our only chance was to keep trying to break it down.

We stumbled back into the aisle and ran to the front door with everything we had. I thought I felt it move. We backed up even further and ran at it again. This time the impact knocked me backwards into the aisle and Jamie barely stayed on his feet. He looked at me in horror and I turned around to see stone horns rising up from the darkness of the trap door, three feet from where I sat. We were going to die here.

I stood up, refusing to turn around again. I knew that the next step it took would bring its head into the room, and the thought of seeing its face again had me running at the door with every last bit of strength I had. Jamie reached it at the same time, and I felt it give way as we crashed through the threshold and landed outside the church. Jamie had picked me up off the ground before I could think to move, and we were running toward the train tracks at an Olympic sprint.

We could still hear the thundering on the stairs no matter how far we got from the church. Every step echoed through the woods like a gunshot until they stopped. It was here. I had no idea if we had run in the right direction or if we would forever be lost in the woods. It was now dark outside and the temperature was dropping fast. I was beginning to panic that we would never find the train tracks when I noticed Jamie wasn't next to me anymore. I turned around in panic to find him sprawled on the ground a few yards behind me.

He had tripped over one of the rails. He was up and running down the tracks before I could even ask if he was okay. We ran until we couldn't anymore. Our running eventually slowed to a jog and the jog to a walk. We hadn't spoken, neither of us had any idea what to say, and it wasn't until we both got in our breath back that one of us finally broke the silence. How long have we been on the tracks? Jamie's voice had an edge of barely suppressed fear. I looked at his wrist and noticed his watch missing. It didn't take us this long to get...

to get to find that place. Or did it? Do you think maybe we went the wrong way? Jamie asked hesitantly. I couldn't afford to think like that. If we had somehow gotten turned around and ran the wrong way down the train tracks, then we were deeper into the woods than ever. No, we went the right way. I said to convince myself. That thing, I thought it was a statue, but maybe it was some crazy undiscovered giant reptile that was like hibernating and we woke it up.

So we were going to delude ourselves into thinking that there was a scientific explanation for this. I understood why, but I just couldn't accept it. Yeah, did you, um, do you see the weird writing on the front door? It was on the trap door too. Do you think it was keeping it down there? Because, Jamie, all those doors are open now. Well, if it's an animal, words mean nothing to it anyway. Yeah, if... I trailed off hoping he would challenge my implication. He didn't.

That's, that's, uh, I like the, uh, kind of the justification to yourself. Cause it's clear that like, okay, whatever this church was, uh,

whatever potentially these people were, they were trying to keep it down there, right? Like the incantations and they, the kids basically broke all the seals to it. And it's like, Jamie, we opened all the James, like, yeah, well, lizards can't read Katie. We're really doing that much. Yeah. Let's be honest. You fucking drop it. I also love the idea of two 12 year olds, just like unleashing a demon back into the world. Yeah. That would be the most plausible thing to about two kids just being like, I don't know. Let's, let's crawl down.

down there spells and shit on the door I don't know what that is I can't read anyway also do you think that the books also were in that language that was on

I think it's Latin. You think it's Latin? I think it's certainly Latin. Probably some books of spells or some shit. I don't know. I also think that it now makes sense. See, this is what I mean by good world building. It now makes sense why all the adults in town didn't want to talk about it. What about the lost town? Lost town, whatever. Because...

I'd imagine there were some survivors, at least a couple of this whole experience, right? And the town is lost because something is stuck down there. What was the town called again? Deepwoods. No, no, no, the town that she moved to. Did she say? I thought that they did at the beginning. It was something similar to Deepwoods, I thought. I just didn't know if it's going to be, oh, this is a new sect of the town that was known as Deepwoods before. Hold on, stand by. I'll get down to this really quick. New works, store in Pennsylvania. Yeah.

store decided to take me with him suburbs our neighbor was new Lonewood Lonewood's the name of the town so you're probably right oh it seems too similar to have it just be you know I bet you're right hope there's some more flirting scenes oh do you between the 12 year olds I don't know so are you still gonna stay in town it's like no there's a fucking demon around

Well, okay, I guess. All right. I could tell this was something Jamie's mind wouldn't accept, but he hadn't seen its face. Not like I had. It was no animal. It was made of stone. It was something sinister and anciently evil, and it had seen me and had seen right down into my soul. It was aware of me, and I was aware of it. Now it was free. Whatever had been keeping it beneath the church had been awkwardly destroyed by Jamie and me.

That thing was free to walk the woods and go God knows where. We walked in silence for another half hour until Jamie suddenly stopped short and started yelling. Hey, we're here! He booked it down the tracks towards a swarm of flashlights and I followed close behind him. As soon as Jamie reached his parents, he collapsed while I ran into my mother's arms and cried like a child. I couldn't hold it together any longer. The police report says we were found at 4 a.m.,

by our sense of time, about three hours after the sun had set. We had spent less than an hour in the chapel, and yet we seemed to have lost ten hours there. We were never told... We never told anyone where we had actually been or that we had found the lost city of Deepwood. He simply said we went for a walk to the lake and got lost in the woods. My family left Middlesbrough the following Monday, two days ahead of schedule. My father had another store to open, and there really...

and there was really no reason to wait. Jamie didn't come to say goodbye to me, and after we left Middlesboro, I never saw him again. I kept a copy of the police report to remember him. Over the following year, Middlesboro slowly disappeared. First, I could just feel the memory fading unnaturally from my mind. My parents couldn't remember that we had ever been there, which scared me more than anything else. I taped the police report to the ceiling over my bed so that Jamie would be the first and last thing I thought about every day.

Then, the Middlesbrough City website disappeared, as did that of the local paper and the town's two public schools. The store my dad helped open in 2002 also disappeared from the company's website. After that, I could never find any mention of Middlesbrough anywhere online ever again. Over the years, I searched public records for Jamie's full name and found nothing. I hired someone to illegally search private records, and he came up empty too.

in the end the only proof that jamie ever existed at all was the police report with his name on it and then nothing was left one day the paper i taped to my ceiling for so many years was blank i remember what it was and what it looked like before but now it's just an old weathered piece of blank paper all that remains of middlesbrough and the people who live there are my memories this is why i'm writing this story down and uploading it to the internet once it's on the internet it can never die right

Or perhaps one day it will just disappear and you won't remember even seeing it and I won't remember ever riding it. I can only hope this ended with Middlesbrough. If it has moved on to other towns, who would know? Who'd even remember? I wish I had answers, but all I have are questions. And that is the end of the Lost Town of Deepwood, Pennsylvania.

I love it. That was great. That was so awesome. That was great. That was great. I really enjoyed it. I'm going to start throwing stuff. That was fun. I really love the idea of like a stone demon. You don't get a lot of like...

You don't get a lot of stone demons. Well, you don't get a lot of statues coming to life even in a compelling way. Yeah, they're always just like a mannequin. It's always the Doctor Who weeping angel thing, right? Where you look at it and it's still and you turn around and it gets closer. I like the idea of a living statue where like... Something so old that it's almost become stone and can move around. And now this thing, you know, the story it seems now is they were able to trap it at one point. But now these kids fucking...

katie way to go in my head in my head i imagine the statue kind of looking again like the ancient depictions of demons where it's animalistic but it has like

These super small eyes that are intense, always open. It's kind of like pronounced features, like huge brow and stuff like that. Like a very foreboding face, but it's moving. It's alive. The scraping of stone and the kind of audio-visual cues that they had in the story were pretty haunting too. I mean, that real scraping edge and the loud thunderous steps that it had too. I like the idea too that it is like...

Once it got out, it made that town disappear too. What I'm saying is... It's like a mind play. The last town disappeared and they locked it there. I'm almost wondering if the town disappeared and if it's locked in Lonewood now. Probably. If it got locked down that way. For some reason, whatever, people are just gone again and now this is just going to be another urban legend that people look for as well.

I really like, it's short and sweet. It's definitely one of those things where I could see myself falling into a story like this, though, like a Baraska time jump. Oh, yeah. And then all of a sudden, you know, she goes back or whatever else. Yeah, there's two other parts. Yeah, it looks like the other two parts are Return to Deepwood and Death of Deepwood. Yeah, so maybe in the future we'll have to check those out sometimes, too. I agree. You know, and there wasn't a child sex scene.

There wasn't. Embryoning plant this time. There wasn't. Is that a negative or is that a positive? I don't know. For YouTubers, there's no way to tell. This is the second author we've looked at two of their stories, right? Because... Tommy Taffy. Yeah, what was the author's name for Tommy Taffy? Yes, Elias Witherow. Thank you. Yeah, Elias did that in Feed the Pig. And we loved Feed the Pig. That one's great. Feed the Pig was good. Tommy Taffy caused a little bit of discourse. Yeah, it did. But I really liked Tommy Taffy. I thought it was scary.

I think that it has its place, for sure. I like Feed the Pig better, to be clear. I like Feed the Pig. The description of the guy going into the pig's mouth is just so good. So great. That was an all-time remember. Tommy Taffy is a internet creepypasta. I think has its place. It's like, this is primo creepypasta bullshit, whatever. But we're proving here that you don't have to have, I don't know, the...

I liked how Baraska is like, you think it's going to be something paranormal of some kind, and then it turns into a very real world horror kind of like enslavement, trafficking kind of thing. And this one took a very similar in tone, but it did go into that fantasy, spiritual kind of stuff. I'm also always a sucker for, put me in a fucking dilapidated church,

Give me some religious iconography that is bleeding or oozing, and I'm going to have a good time. Yeah. It's hard to not have a good time. So this is right up my alley. And I'd be curious, too, with these other sequels, if we just had to speculate on it now, would it be something where she comes back and do we see the same kind of demon? Or is it something where does it reset? Is there more differences? I think it might be the same demon. I think we're going to see more of the cult version.

or whatever. Maybe it's not even a cult. Whoever was trying to stop it way back. At the end of that, I'm curious, do you still think that, to me, it seems like a religious guy who was keeping evil at bay is how I'm reading it versus a facade of... Potentially, but the desk in the room with it tips me off a little bit.

Yeah, I mean, it does seem evil versus it just being like, oh, it's just a statue in there. It's not just chained in there, yeah. The desk in the room makes it sound like there's a piece with it almost, right? Now, something I really do like in hindsight is all the paintings and the pictures of the people there as well as the statue of Jesus looked on the kids with an accusatory look. Yeah. Almost of like, you don't know how much we suffered to keep this thing locked up, and now you're going to go open the box. That's kind of something with...

a lot of old churches in general, too. The very kind of, like, feel... You should feel bad for even existing. That's kind of, like, a big part of it. You know, that's an interesting point. The story starts out with the tone of, like, this is, like, your typical, like, scary religious setting, right? Like, the old-timers who look at you angry and, like, oh, the Jesus cross looks evil and stuff. But now, with hindsight attached to it, it's like, no, they were trying to protect...

of people around there. Yeah. These kids are about to let that loose. It's kind of interesting. It's one of those things where even you see that in Borosco where it's like people know about this dark secret.

Which is also, I almost, if this was longer, I'm curious to see if, would you have something with the older kids going and with the flashlights and the beers and stuff? Do they actually know where it is? Or is it just the presumption that you think that they're looking for that thing? Because you never really know. Yeah. Right? Jamie's just kind of like, oh, they're probably looking for this. Yeah. But you never, I mean, who knows? So I am curious to see. I'm sure they'll come up in the next parts. Yeah, I imagine so. It's just, it leaves a lot of fun stuff. Sometimes these stories end, you know,

And you're just kind of like, oh, well, you know. Or it ends on that cliffhanger where it's like, and we never heard from him again. But this is something where, you know, I want more information. I want to be deeper. But I don't think if you just stop now, too, it would still be a fun story. It still works for what it is. Yeah, it's still a working story, I think. I'm very happy with it. I would like to read the other two parts sooner than later, though. Yeah, I think that would be worth doing it for sure. Let's see what our beautiful, beautiful viewers have to say. And I don't know, maybe...

Maybe we'll have to read this again soon. Like, I don't know. And then maybe we can kiss? Okay. Alright, thank you all for watching. Thank you all for... Thank you all for watching Creepcast. This has been another enthralling, spooky episode. And also, live tour coming up. By the time this episode drops, I think we'll be on the road. I think so. So, you know, we'll read this one and then...

We should give them a prompt or something so when you listen to this, whenever you go to the show, in the first five minutes, I'm going to say banana at some point. And then people need to put their hands behind their head like this and do them. So that way we know who was there and who wasn't. I'll be like, yeah, I really like bananas. And they'll look out and I'll see what people do. And for audio listeners, I'm putting my... I think I would rather them do anything else. Actually. I'm not saying it's a good thing. I'm just saying that... Here, here. We're trying to get a sponsorship, right?

What's your favorite drink? Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew. So when we say, what's your favorite drink? Say Mountain Dew. There you go. Don't do that. Mountain Dew? Okay.

Yeah, that'd be nice. Very excited to see you all on the tour. Hunter's about to have a panic attack over it, but I'm excited to see you guys. So I'll be happy to kiss babies and shake hands and all that stuff, and he won't. That's the way it is. But we appreciate you all watching on YouTube and also all the support on the audio platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all that jazz. And also, once again, be on the lookout next month, I believe, for the Creepcast hoodies that are coming. Yep.

Um, they are, they're, you know, I just trying to reiterate. Cause I know last time people were like, how do you even know? Or I missed out too soon. So just be on the lookout. Don't look out coming up. All right, everyone. Bye. Bye. Stay spooky. Can I go home now? Yeah. Okay. You are home. You've been home. All right. Bye everyone.

Welcome back to Creepcast. Actually, if anything, what are we going to do? This isn't a welcome back. It's the same episode. That's right. We were going to release the first part when we were together.

But then we thought the episode was so good that we should just go ahead and read all of them. So this is just a continuation from the last town of Deepwood, Pennsylvania. And now the sequel. And there's, it's a three-parter. So return to Deepwood, Pennsylvania and the death of Deepwood, Pennsylvania, I think are the next stories. But,

I figured we should go ahead and just start reading return to deepwood. Just keep going Also, should we do like a little we should it doesn't matter this show is just a convoluted way for us to Read stories that we like and get paid for it. So we were like hey deep woods was cool. So let's finish it Yeah, I saw a lot of people I just want to do I want to take a second to say something I want to take a fucking second to say something the response to people saying that we were gonna miss a week Let me tell you something

If we want to take a week to get you a goddamn episode, then you're going to sit there politely and we're going to pat your head and you're going to shut the hell up and wait till we get the goddamn episode out. All right. Because also, Isaiah, you know that if we wouldn't have done that, people would have been like, I wish they would have just released it all in one episode. Well, that's what you get.

This is what it is! We knew for a fact everyone would be like, well, why don't you read parts two and three right there? Hey, average creepcast sounding person.

That's what our listeners sound like. That's very true. They sound exactly like your dog shortly after it was shot by your grandfather. I just want to say that between us recording in person and now that episode has gone up, and I'm glad everyone else thought it was as absolutely bonkers of a story as I did. Nobody really cared.

No conversation about it. We are. It definitely wasn't the funniest thing I've ever seen. I have seen so many edits of like Stephen Hawking approaching a dog in a forest at night. It's just beautiful. I appreciate you guys. Thank you. Well, we're also on tour right now by the time you're watching this. So that's cool. I had a crazy dream.

What was your dream? That we got booed offstage at our first show. You are terrified of this, aren't you? It's an actual nightmare. I'm not going to lie. I have been, ever since Sunday, my stomach's been in knots. I've been having diarrhea, like nervous shits. And I have a feeling we're going to shit the bed big time.

The only saving grace, I think we've said this before, the only saving grace is if I shit myself on stage and it's that memorable. That was not, okay, we've talked about that, but that was not a saving grace. That was like a worst case scenario. No, no, that's not a saving grace. That's a saving grace at this point. The substance is going to be so poor, so lackluster, that it's going to take one of us to either have a heart attack on stage or shit themselves. And I got to say, I am probably the candidate for both. Hunter, Hunter, Hunter, listen.

People who come to these shows want to have a good time. You're not going to have a good time. We don't have to be at our very, very best, like 10 out of 10 for people to have a good time. We absolutely do it. They're paying people. They pay for the show. It's a performance. Yes, and we're going to put on a good show for them. I'm not saying we're not going to do that, but they want to have a good time. We just have to offer it up. This was full. I am showing to the camera right now, I'm showing...

A almost empty bottle of Captain Morgan private stock that was full on Saturday. All right. And sure, you could equate a lot of this to the Chiefs game, the big win we had on Sunday. But a lot of that is nerves. All right. So there you go. Anyways, I forgot where you were reading an episode. So with all of that out of the way, let's continue on to part two. Let's do it. Return to Deepwood, Pennsylvania.

Harrisburg is an antiquated yet charming Pennsylvania town on the Susquehanna River with roots reaching back into the 18th century. At least, that's what the tourism brochure read. I'd really have to take their word for it. I'd researched a lot of Pennsylvania townships in the last year, but this wasn't one of them. I handed the brochure back to the tall, red-faced girl behind the hotel desk.

She sniffed loudly as she took it and unceremoniously slid my credit card back across the counter at me. "Thanks." I muttered. The girl dropped a brass key on the counter, which I eyed with suspicion. I hadn't seen a hotel with actual brass keys since I was a kid. I didn't know if it was my limited funds or Harrisburg's antiquated charm at work, but either way, it sent an involuntary shudder down my spine.

Room 217. Checks out Tan. The girl said, wiping her small, watery eyes with the back of her sleeve. Eager to be done with it, I hadn't bothered to ask where to find room 217. When I finally located it on the other side of the building, I was exhausted and ready for whatever awaited me on the other side of the door. It was as you suspect, dated, troll, and dusty.

I took a short shower and spread my maps out on the painfully flat yet somehow still lumpy hotel mattress. It was strange to be back in Pennsylvania after all these years. Honestly, I was just happy it was still there. I had spent years trying to pretend I dreamed it all, trying to convince myself that I had a very vivid psychotic breakdown and I'd never actually been a Pennsylvanian at all. And I might have believed it too, if it weren't for Jamie. He was as real to me as the face in the mirror.

I couldn't have dreamed him up if I'd wanted to. And if he had been real, then so had everything else. The damn church, the demon, and the hell I'd brought down on Middlesboro. How many more had died since then? I needed to see for myself. I needed to see for myself. I needed to prove I wasn't crazy, even if doing it meant I would have to face the consequences of my actions. The death. I stared at my notes and topographical maps until my vision began to blur.

I've been researching and preparing for this trip for a year and yet here I was in Pennsylvania still with no real direction. It had been 13 years since I stepped foot in this state and only for one of them had I considered coming back. I'd lived only half a life for the last decade, slowly suffocating under the heavy, pungent cloak of guilt.

I could escape it in ambient lace dreams or when I was utterly blackout drunk, which is an easy order to fill when you work in a bar. Yes, ma'am. But a year ago, but a year ago, my tricks had abruptly stopped working and it had been too long since I'd come up for air. I don't, it was time to go back. So this is, this is after the fact 13 years. So she's probably mid, mid late twenties by this point. Well, she said she was,

12 or 13 in the first 12 or 13. Okay. Weren't they that they were like 12 or 13. I'm pretty sure. I, I assume that she's like 20, 25, 26 right about now. Yeah. I'd say that's right. And then now, because it's been long enough that she's moved and she's back in Pennsylvania. Remember everyone else has forgotten that, uh, the town of Middlesbrough ever existed, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, but to, I like setting up this, uh, this character again, that has been kind of plagued with this guilt, uh,

or this kind of... I say guilt, but I would say more so just haunting visuals. But I would assume some kind of guilt because you let it out. It's guilt because, yeah, she let it out. That's what she was saying. The hell I unleashed on Middlesbrough. Yeah. Because the town of Deepwoods got wiped off the map, but they successfully managed to contain the thing. And now Middlesbrough...

Seems to not have done that. Also, when she referred back to Jamie, was she saying it was Jamie? I wonder, we haven't said it yet, but do you think that he reached back out to her for this? No, he vanished, remember? The newspaper clipping. Okay, so I know through the bottles of Captain Morgan, it may be hard to remember. I can't remember any of these fucking stories, dude. God damn.

I spent an hour trying to find a comfortable position on the worn-out hotel mattress. When that failed, I picked up the maps again and studied their details. Though I'd memorized them all. Suppose I was waiting for something to just click. Some small detail I'd overlooked that would suddenly make all the difference. A clue as clear as daybreak that had been in front of me all along. But none came, and when I woke again, it was buried under a pile of legal pads and maps and suffering a sore back.

I showered again, not trusting the comforter, and reluctantly drank the motor oil that passed for breakfast blend coffee. I packed up my research, checked out of the hotel, and sat in my car watching the sun slowly brighten the populated downtown area. At least the creature hadn't made its way here. The city had a population of around 50,000. But how many other cities with similar populations were gone because of me?

Wasn't something I wanted an answer to. So I had no other data to go on. My plan was to drive to the least populated areas and see if what wasn't there would give me a clue to what had once been. Basically, I was looking for an area that, by all logic, should have a city, but didn't. I put the Ford Focus in drive and headed west of town.

Half a day was spent driving in the middle of the state, and another two days aimlessly driving around Pennsylvania looking for something familiar. A mountain, a water tower, a road, anything. But it was as if I never lived here at all. On the fourth morning, discouraged and frustrated, I checked out yet another shitty motel.

I only had three more days before my flight back to Arizona, and so far the trip had been utterly useless. The man at the front desk took my key and gestured toward the continental breakfast, prepackaged muffins, and horse piss coffee. No thanks. I grumbled. Is that your voice of this young lady? Yeah, or sorry, no thanks. Sorry. No thanks. Well, it said I grumbled, so I was trying to be like, no thanks. Whatever, like she's like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let me retake it then. Leave it at the old one. Thank you. There you go. Where are you headed? He repeated more slowly. I couldn't place his accent. The closest I could get was maybe Southern. Oh, I don't know. Well, if you're headed down to 320, guess it before you leave town. There ain't no gas stations or towns between here and Landenburg.

That's like 90 miles. Yeah, never just did it myself. People get stuck on the road all the time. Blowing tires and running out of gas. I don't know why the government hasn't done something about that. Because they're broke! Someone yelled from the back office. That's it, most likely. Stain ain't got no money for it. I'll get gas before I go.

I promise, and received an approving nod in return. So effectively, her little goof-up with Jamie has eliminated 90 miles of civilization. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. This little fucking oopsie butterfly effect thing really was detrimental. Well, also, here's the thing, too. Here's the thing, too. They've said before that this is, we theorize that this had probably happened to other towns before this.

Before this, before this. I wonder how often it is. Do you think it's like, do you think the gargoyle is something that wakes up and it's almost like, I don't know, trying to think of a similar monster. Like Jeepers Creepers rules is he only wakes up for a certain amount of time every certain amount of years. Yeah. Right. So it's like, what if, what if it's something similar that way there's has to be some kind of lapse of time because if it happens so suddenly and all the time, I doubt that it could be kept a secret realistically. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the idea is that the deep woods town that caught it was an old, old town, right? So it was wreaking havoc up until like, I don't know, early 1900s, late 1800s. And then they caught it effectively. But now it's unleashed in modern age. Yeah. Well, I guess to think about all the towns in your own state that you have no idea about.

that they're even there. You know what I mean? Yeah, this also makes a fun game for yourself whenever you're driving through an area and it's like, yeah, there ain't a gas station for 40 miles. It's like, oh...

Why is that? Well, that's a nice, weird, odd thing. It's like whenever I drive through Nevada, outside of Vegas, there's this really long stretch of land between Vegas and some other part, I think on the California border, where there's no other gas stations. So you have to feel up at this one spot. And it does feel kind of almost dystopian or even kind of like wasteland kind of vibes. So to have that in a Pennsylvania setting would be kind of creepy because you're like, wait, what?

Yeah, you're in the middle of the woods while you're doing it? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a fun idea. I like it. I practically ran out the door. For days, I'd been looking for the out of place, the not quite right, the bizarre. And this was, well, it was odd, at least. It was all I had. I gassed it before I left town and followed the signs to the 320. As promised, it was nothing but dark asphalt for miles. No exits, rest stops, signs, or even mile markers. This was it.

It just had to be. There's no one else on the road. I drove well under the speed limit, taking in every detail. Eventually, I began to notice that periodically there was a gap, not in the foliage, but in the coloring of it. Every so often, a grove of trees would be duller, sicker. It was something you'd only notice if you were looking for it.

So the creature, as I'd taken a call on it, could technically give life in the process of filling in the hole of previous existence, but not very good life. The fauna in these spots was weaker and bore dull, almost muted coloring. I continued noting these spots until I couldn't count them anymore. These had likely been cities or homes of people with lives, families, futures, all taken from them because of me. I felt the panic begin to claim the edges of my vision and quickly popped to Xanax.

My panic attacks had become unbearable after Middlesbrough. I suffered from them still. The edges of my vision got hazy and I was able to relax a fraction. At some point, I processed the presence of the dilapidated railroad tracks running parallel to the road. I noticed them early on, but my mind had hidden the significance of this until now. They had not been THE tracks, but to me it was a sign that I was on the right track, so to speak.

I was close. I had to be. And if Landenberg was still there, that meant the creature hadn't made it that far yet. I somehow knew, like I knew that I'd once lived somewhere off this road, that the creature had been moving north, but it hadn't claimed Landenberg yet. Why? Was it satiated? Had it left the area? Or was it just slow moving? Whatever the answer, I felt I'd learn it in Landenberg.

As I reached the outskirts of the city, I saw my first road sign since I merged onto the 320. Landenburg. Next 17 exits. I decided to take the exit that would get me into the heart of downtown Landenburg, if there was one. I hadn't researched the city of Landenburg either, thinking it was too far north to matter. And yet, here I was. The downtown area began to take shape off my right like the damn church had in the woods so long ago. But I didn't need spray paint to find my way anymore.

Exited the highway and drove around the cityscape until I found a centrally located hotel that I could afford. I parked and heaved my bags out of the car, hoping they had vacancy. They did. I was told by the overly flirty college senior behind the front desk, slinging his guitar behind his back. What kind of a loser? God. Do you have Wi-Fi? I asked as he handed me the key card. We do. But there's a $10 a day charge for the password. Damn.

I was on an extremely tight budget. Well, I can give it to you for free if... Let his voice trail off suggestively. If what? I raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. If you let me write a song about you. He rided my credit card receipt so he could read it. Caitlin. I sighed. Okay, yeah, fine.

At this point, there wasn't much I'd say no to. I was going on four days of restless sleep. This is very cute. The idea that in a small town, like the, uh, the controversial thing the guy wants is to write a song. Oh yeah, definitely. The, uh, it's, it's cute that the guy's, uh, blackmailing the woman so he can force write a love song for her. That is cute.

Yeah, you know what? I'm not backing down from this one. That is cute. It's bad of all the things he could have done just being like, hey, can I write a song about you, princess, so we can fall in love and we have sex? Hey, he did say she had to do all that for her to get the passport. Well, that's why in the back of his mind, he's like, she'll love the song. That is in the back of his mind. She'll be so happy and I'll get a slow blow from it.

It's gonna be awesome. Okay, and then he starts playing third eye blind. I wish you would step back from that ledge my friend He's playing guitar like that caitlyn and like just starts. Yeah, caitlyn. She's like Are you saying i'm suicidal? He's like, uh No, I don't know Yeah, that was rough Tour got you nervous, huh, buddy?

Yeah, sorry, I'm flustered now. Now I'm picturing singing my own song to all the pretty ladies out there for key cards and Wi-Fi passwords. See, if you do stuff like that on the tour, you should be embarrassed and you should be nervous about it. Who here wants a love song? What's your name? I was like, Janice. I'm like, ew, gross name. Who's that? What other person? He eagerly gave me the password and I retired to my room. First floor, thankfully.

I took out my shitty laptop, connected to the hotel's equally shitty Wi-Fi, and pulled up the Wikipedia page for Lannenberg. It's a larger city for this part of the state, around 55,000 residents, mostly due to the fact that Lannenberg hosted a state university. It's a progressive, young, educated town filled with hipsters and young professionals. Where to even begin? I threw my notes, my phone, my GPS, and my backpack and decided to start with the front desk of the motel, much to my own dread.

The college kid who checked me in was strumming chords on his guitar and softly humming. "Excuse me?" He looked up at me and winked. "You're pretty eager, foxy lady." And I liked that. "The songs take time to write, even for the most talented." "Yeah, actually, I was just wondering, where can I find the university?" I interrupted, suppressing an eye roll. "Mama, this whole city's a campus. I mean, where'd you want to go? You a new student?"

I'll show you around. I got off at, no, I just like to find the, uh, the. This has been a horrible mistake. Think of something quick, genius. Admission office. I need to talk to admissions. Ah, well, that's about a half mile down the Rooker street. That's the one running in front of the building. Got it. Thanks. He started to say something else, perhaps which way to go down Rooker, but I was already out the door, not knowing what else to do and wanting to get as far from the board gate as possible. I picked a direction and started walking.

Wait, what? MGTOW? Men Going Their Own Way? Subreddit or whatever? Yeah. What's the reference to this? I think that she's breeding a monster, basically, with that interaction. Yeah, Chad's always get the Stacys. Yeah, I guess I'm never going to be able to write a fucking beautiful song for a girl. Nice guys like me who like music never get what they want. Yeah, nice guys like me never get...

never get ahead he goes into his full joke society wonders why we go a little crazy yeah yeah and then society i say peacock and no one bats an eye i say if i say poop cock well everyone loses their minds yeah everyone loses their freaking minds even though it was may i was still freezing

I'd have been built for the far north and my blood had thinned out living in Arizona. With my backpack and my age, I probably would pass for any other college student on campus. If it wasn't for the hoodie I'd pull tightly around me. I envied them all. Kids just a year or two younger than me going to classes, hanging out with friends, making stupid yet amusing mistakes. Could have been mean ones, but I hadn't grown up like them. Ever since Middlesboro, I had struggled with school and life in general.

I couldn't focus, I couldn't laugh, I became a sarcastic, guilt-ridden introvert, and I lost all my friends. Me. Then my dad died, and my mom started to look at me differently. I stopped talking about Middlesbrough the day I heard the word "hospital" whispered to my mother by a psychiatrist. Even though I stopped trying to prove it had all been real, my mother never really saw me as her little girl again.

I moved out at 18 and lived alone for years, working in an English pub, trying to forget how many people were probably dead because me, including Jamie, the knife that dug deepest. I walked the downtown area all day. I didn't know what I was doing, where I was going, who I should approach, or what I should ask them. I just knew I was in the right place. I've been drawn here for a reason. I felt it in my gut.

This was where I was supposed to be. But for the fifth time in as many days, I had asked myself, "What now?" I suppose I could have spent days wandering around Lannenberg. I could have left empty-handed and never known what happened all those years ago. I could have never found him. But as fate would have it, it only took half a day to find what I was looking for. It was well past noon and I had stopped at a small cafe to eat a sandwich. Since the restaurant was packed wall-to-wall with students, I went outside and leaned against the brick wall by the door.

I supposed I noticed it because it was so brightly colored. Or maybe because it was the only piece of litter I had seen all morning. Or, just maybe, it was simply because I was supposed to. But for whatever the reason, when a bright red flyer blew past my feet, I reached out to step on it. Curious, I bitten him to pick it up and read the heading. Teeth and History Museum, Lannenberg, Pennsylvania. Upcoming Exhibitions: 13th to 14th Century Judeo-Christian Relics and Artifacts.

What the fuck? They're going to get there. It's a little drawing of the demon. And it's like, oh, welcome to the demon of the... Could there be any... Do you think there's any way that they have the demon there? Like a gargoyle? Like there's just a statue that is just asleep. That would be kind of cool if it was like Torbent. Well, I got to say, I love this. But they didn't know what they had.

I love the setup that the Lannenberg town is just a college town. Because the entire time I was sitting here thinking, I was like, you have all these crazy in-betweens. There's no gas station for 90 miles. It's literally nothing. And then it's just...

Like, it's just so suspicious and odd, right? But then, of course, it's just like a weird college town where it is probably just a bunch of, like, kids focusing on school or just kind of like, you know, being young and stupid would amass and that's where they would live. It's not in the middle of nowhere going to the school. I'm glad that that's the infrastructure to it versus if it was like, yep, the whole town, it's a plastic factory town.

Because I feel like it would just be a little too cliche, maybe. Oh, it's the town where we make... Yeah, or even just something where it's like, yeah, there's only nine people who live here ever since this. But I like that it's kind of a thriving, bustling...

college town there's like life to it and stuff which i mean makes sense because like the curse or the demon hasn't got there yet right it's like right at the border i'm gonna laugh my ass off if she just destroys another town then she's actually a monster

Well, she's not destroying it. It's like the demon keeps progressing territory, right? Well, that's what I mean. But I'm saying that if some way, if she wakes this thing up again somehow and it does that again, I mean, she is indirectly again responsible for that or directly responsible for that.

Well, I mean, eventually, we don't know what this thing does. It could take over the world. It could. Below that was a blurb about the museum. Nothing too interesting. And below that was a description of the exhibits to be unveiled. I skimmed down the list quickly, seeing little of interest until the very bottom.

Statue of the demon Metaraxis. Now, God. Yeah, well, there it is. There he is. Oh, I wonder who that could be. That's a legitimate, like, bruh moment.

I'm looking right now on one of my pages that's like all the demon names and stuff like that. And I don't see Metaraxis. I don't think that is a real demon. There's not like a real history to it. It's not like Beelzebub or, you know, Balaam or something like that. My mouth fell open. It was too much of a coincidence. Nothing to be ignored. I checked the date on the flyer. May 2nd, 2014. Three weeks ago.

I threw the rest of my sandwich in the trash and took off. I'd seen the museum that morning and I knew where exactly where to find. Okay, that's a typo. I thought I was having a stroke. I'll also say you could bring your sandwich with you. I feel like.

I feel like that's okay. There's no time to eat and process. That would be one of the things that you have to throw it away because if she was running and still chowing down on like a meatball sub, it just, it would be so uncanny. Like, it's just like throw the fucking sandwich away. You got business to do. In my head, she has like a tiny little cold cut sub, but it's funnier to imagine her like standing outside with one of those three foot long, like Italian meatballs. She has, she has an extremely large sandwich in her hand, like way too heavy of a meal. Like,

She's like, it's 11. It's 11 a.m. I'm going to have my pastrami sandwich. And it's like, God, really? That heavy of a meat? It's like this early in the day. Tripping off of it as she's standing there. Why is it? Why is it that whenever people have pastrami sandwiches, too, that you have they have to put so much pastrami?

on the sandwich. Have you noticed that? Yeah, it's never a normal amount. Yeah, it's always like three layers of pastrami. A palpable amount of pastrami. Well, to be fair, I feel like if you had just a normal amount of pastrami, it would just kind of taste like any other, like, might as well be a pepperoni at that point, right? I think they're trying to thin out the herd. They're like, whoever orders a fucking pastrami sandwich, we're trying to

send them to a heart attack early as much as you can eat it all. I think I will. Can I have more mustard on this, please? Big pastrami organizing all the sandwich chains. Yeah, big pastrami coming out being like, we want to kill them all.

We're going to have a really hot about 60 years and then no more after that. Better than going to a sub shop. I would rather hear someone say, hey, can I get a pastrami melt or whatever, right? Versus nothing enrages me more than when I go to a sub shop and someone's like, can I have a BLT? Like what kind of fucking sandwich is that to order?

At an actual place. That's like an at-home sandwich you make. A BLT is like a camping sandwich. You have limited supplies. You're working on what you can't. In my fridge, I have nothing. A BLT is a gas station sandwich. That's what I used to get. It absolutely is. So then to go to an establishment that is chock full of supplies to make you any sandwich you want and to spit in God's face and just be like, oh, can I have a BLT?

spit in God's face. I mean, what the fuck is going on? You have options for meatball subs, turkey clubs, all kinds of stuff. And then you're a BL fucking tea. Can I have two strips of bacon, lettuce and some tomatoes, please? Oh my God. Thank you. And you might disagree on a lot and get into a lot of little tiffs on this show. But on this one, I'm with you in solidarity. We found common ground.

We found common ground. You know what? It's ridiculous to get a BLT at any place that has more than a BLT at any time past 8 a.m. Yeah. Agreed. Totally socially acceptable at your house at any time.

But also just like heating up ramen packets is acceptable at your house at any time. It's safe. No one can see you there. Well, it's like, yeah, it's any other option. It's like, was there literally nothing else available for you? And I just don't believe it. It's like, all right, this is sad. Like you're not that poor. I agree. Yeah. It was only three blocks away and I got there in under five minutes. Flew up the building steps and stumbled straight to the cashier window.

"Student ID please." The old man said flatly. "I'm not a student." "Well you look-" "How much?" "Eleven dollars." I was gladly willing to pay. I didn't stop to grab a map, instead joining a tour group already in progress. The museum, I could tell, was a veritable labyrinth and I certainly didn't want to get lost. Not in here. Not with that... thing. If indeed it really was what I half hoped, half dreaded it could be.

It took the longest 20 minutes of my life, but we finally came to the room I'd been waiting for. Now behind this door is our newest exhibition on ancient Judeo-Christian artifacts. Please do not try to touch anything or you'll be escorted out. These pieces are centuries old and may be damaged by the lightest touch.

If you have behind the door what I suspect you do, then I highly doubt it. Also, please no flash photography. My heart beat a million miles a minute as the decent... As... What's that word? Docent? Docent? What the fuck is docent? This probably... That's probably... We're holding up the story once again. That is probably the term for someone who's like a museum curator. Dude, come on. Just fucking say the... Like...

dumb it down. Curator. Yeah. My heart beat a million miles a minute as the fucking, as the guide, tour guide, opened the door. I mean, like, what does that, it adds, docent, fuck you! I don't like that, Isaiah. I don't like that. They're big leagueing me. I don't like that at all. It's okay, buddy. We'll get through this. I'm gonna slip in docent. Do we, do we fucking need docent? What's wrong with tour guide?

What the fuck am I? What is wrong with just saying tour guide? You might have found common ground over the VLT thing, but you watch your mouth about Rebecca. She's done a lot for us. I love Rebecca and her work. I'm just saying cool it with the docent. That's what I say. I say delete that. That's what I say. Delete that.

I lingered toward the back, letting everyone go in front of me. I'd come thousands of miles and done months of research to find that statue, to prove I wasn't insane. And when the time came to possibly face my nightmare, I was hesitant. Finally, I was the last and the guide had to wave me in with a polite but impatient hand. There were about a hundred things in that room. All sorts of things, really. Sculptures, paintings, pottery, even other statues. But I only had eyes for the thing in the middle.

It was larger than I remembered. Not the 12 feet I had guessed. It was actually closer to 20. But every detail of its face and body was exactly as I'd remembered, though it was positioned differently now.

This reminds me of like a Trojan horse, right? Like it appears a museum takes it in. And to me, that marks that this town is next on its list, right? Like the next place it's going to destroy. So it's like it's posed there. But well, I mean, what can she do against it, right? Like even if she knows it's real, even if she knows it's going to be a problem. The difference between 12 feet and 20 feet is insane, by the way.

Well, she was also, she was a child. I'm just saying, like, the realization of it now, of seeing it through adult eyes, makes it so much more menacing, as if it already weren't before. Yeah, 20 feet's ridiculous. That is terrifying. In the church, all those years ago, it had seemed as if it was standing, waiting, yet content. But now it was positioned as if it was ready to leap off the stone square that it stood upon and

Its tail was paused in midair, instead of wrapped idly around its legs as it had been before. Though it was smaller than I'd remembered, I could at least see its face this time. It wasn't particularly scary, just an empty, stony face, far from the hungry, animated one it became when it woke. Like the crucifixion statue in the damn church, it had eyes only for me. The rest of my group took photos, oohing and aahing as they made their way around the room,

I stood directly where I was against the now closed door going no further. The guide walked around the room discussing notable pieces of the collection and I only moved from the door when she finally stood before the creature. And finally, the jewel of the expo- Oh my god, why the fuck can I not say ex- It's okay, buddy. Exhibition. Exhibition. My god. And finally, the jewel of this exposition- My god, whatever. A granite statue from the 14th century-

This is a representation of... Is it Metaraxis? This is a representation of Metaraxis, a lesser known demon of Christian mythology. It is unique in its size as well as its crisp detail, especially from something so old. Our conservationists are unable to discover its place of origin or creator.

It's a place of origin or creator. But they know it's 14th century. Well, I guess that tracks because you could tell time periods of statues and also what it's a depiction of based on other depictions. So yeah, I edge closer and closer to the red velvet rope. Its eyes followed my every step. The room seemed to grow hotter. The guide moved to the side so people could get pictures in front of the statue. Though I couldn't blame them. I barely kept from yelling. This was madness.

The stone platform on which the demon stood was covered in red velvet, which pooled at the creature's feet. It hid the words inscribed on the front of the granite stand that Jamie and I couldn't read those many years ago. The guy droned on about nothing and I read the description of the plaque. Fourteenth century representation of the demon Metaraxis. Artist unknown. No shit. And then I saw what I didn't know I'd been looking for. The triangles. The symbols I would never forget, etched into the doors of the damn church.

And once I found one, I found another, and another. There were half a dozen of them. So that's how they're doing it. They, whoever they were, had placed wards all around the base of the creature's stand.

The museum not only knew what this thing was, they knew about the sigils of the doors of the damn church and were using them to trap the statue here. The revelation was like a punch to the face. Someone was aware of what the statue really was and was blatantly risking innocent lives anyway.

It was insane. I thought it was a Trojan horse thing at first. I thought the statue was like in control this whole time. Right. But if the people who have the statue here know what it is and are successfully keeping it trapped with new sigils and wards, why don't you just shut up and let them keep doing that? I think I'm wondering, is there any way that this thing could be a group of people that like,

I mean, you're keeping it locked, quote unquote, so far, but could it also be people who are also unlocking it? Like the church that we saw earlier, was it really a church for Christ or was it like a temple for the demon? And it was just like a front before. And now this is maybe a new front. I feel like whoever put that demon down there wanted it to stay down there.

uh yeah man it's probably true that's not to say the pastor wasn't worshiping the demon or allowed the demon to enter the world or something like that but whoever trapped the demon down there i think actually did want it to stay down there well at least i i i'm glad that we at least have some kind of uh understanding of the sigils or like wards that are apparently locking this thing in place yeah in a panic i turned to find the guide and saw her conversing politely with an elderly couple

Excuse me? I interrupted loudly. Yes? She failed to mask her irritation at my rudeness. Um, where did the museum acquire the statue? This piece is on loan from a private collection. Whose? It belongs to Jameson Scott. The guide, filling the exchange with over, turned back to finish her conversation. Jameson Scott? I knew that name, but from where? No, there's no way it's Jamie. Ain't no way. Alright.

Wait, I thought she lost her memory of Jamie, right? Well, she just said that she, uh, she just said that that was the last time she spoke to him. She still referred to him at the beginning of the story. It could be Jamie. That's what I'm saying. But Jameson Scott is so close to Jamie. It just would feel it's, I don't know. I'm just curious. Oh, he, dude, keep reading. Look at this. As our group began to move out of the room, I took one last look at the creature, Metaraxis, and shuddered. Its eyes had never strayed from me.

i took i took my phone out and pulled up a wikipedia page of jameson scott i had to know who could be this stupid he was young my okay it's jamie he was yeah yeah yes jamie he was young my age but wealthy at his own company and well known in the tech industry for multiple inventions the words brilliant pioneer and industry leader were scattered throughout his wikipedia page which had no picture

At the end of the article, under personal life, was a short paragraph about his interest in symbolism and ancient artifacts. This would make sense too because Jamie was obsessed when he found the, he was taking pictures of everything. She basically had to beg him to leave. Yeah, I mean, heck, wouldn't you be? Imagine. Like you meet a demon, like an actual one. I would very much be in her shoes where I'd be like, come on, please, can we get out of here? That'd be me.

I want to go home. Come on. I shook my head and I'm there being very brave and stoic and taking pictures of artifacts, being like, we can trap the creature. And you're like crying and peeing your pants next to me. Is that accurate? Yes, that's true. That is true. I shook my head as my group was herded into the museum's gift shop. What did he want with the statue? How had he acquired it? And how did he know about the wards? None of it made sense.

I wandered through the gift shop by idly picking up trinkets and wondering just what to do. Should I warn the guide? The curator? Or did the Scott person know what he was doing? Were the wards enough?

Somehow I didn't think so. If this thing is now trapped, we're going to find out it's Jamie and everything. And it's going to like, she'll be incorporated into the story. But if she didn't know it was Jamie, just leave. Like, yeah, good. Good for you. They've got it locked up. Great. Yeah. Well, I think I wonder how much of it becomes the thing of like, yeah, it's there and it's sealed, but you want it to be destroyed. So it could never, there's never the possibility. Like, I wonder if that's going to be her obsession.

Anyways. Yeah, I mean, depending on how much they follow like real quote unquote demonology, you can't kill a demon. Humans can at least. You can only exorcise it or banish it back to hell. Yeah, only God and angels can kill demons. I see. Are you going to lecture tonight? Someone asked for behind me. I swung around my backpack, nearly taking out a postcard stand as I did. Oh, sorry. I thought you were someone else.

The red-headed girl turned to leave. "What lecture?" "The lecture our guide was talking about. Jameson Scott's lecture on the exhibit." "He's in town?" "Yeah, that's what she said." "You should go." "He's really hot." She turned to leave. "Wait, where's the lecture again?" "The auditorium in the history building. Building E?" She said as if I should have known. And I guess she wasn't wrong. I was only a few years older than her and I looked like a college student. Apparently everyone thought so. "Thanks!"

I yelled after her as she walked off with her giggling friend. Okay, so a couple of theories. For one, there is some supernatural element at work that is pointing her down this direction. I agree, but also at the same time, I'm kind of liking the Fifty Shades of Grey angle they're taking this now. I don't think that's the angle they're taking with this. You have girl coming into town with high, high, high-tech glasses

billionaire guy that all the girls are gushing over, right? Oh, and he's hot. How do we know that this isn't going to take a little turn to erotica? If this really cool statue demon story becomes like smut, I'm leaving. We're ending the episode. I would be so thrilled. It would be so good. You know what? As soon as that happens, you can read it. I'll just sit here. How's that sound? Deal.

I would definitely be there. I had a few things to say to this guy, and I wasn't leaving Pennsylvania until I did. I sat in the back of the auditorium, as was my custom. The room was filled wall-to-wall with people, faculty and students alike. An empty podium sat in the front, and a tall, blonde-haired security guard stood to its left. He had a gun on his hip, and his hands were folded behind his back. Maybe he wasn't a security guard after all. I was pretty sure state campuses were gun-free, which meant he was with somebody important. Jameson Scott, no doubt.

The guard stared straight ahead, his eyes boring a hole into the wall behind me. Lots of things about him made me uneasy. The murmurs and whispers died down a moment later when a thin, attractive man walked purposefully onto the stage. "Good evening." He began. He graced the room with a smile that couldn't fool me. The emotion didn't quite reach his eyes. If anything, he looked like the most stressed out, entire 25 year old I'd ever seen. "My name is Jameson Scott.

I'm here to speak to you tonight about a few ancient and interesting items I've collected over the years. I'm sorry, but I will not be answering questions about my company, our newest patents, or my personal charities. Easy, Christian Grey. What? Yes! You looked ahead. Yes! You looked ahead and saw that. I did not. I swear. I swear. You had to. You can look at my screen record of this. You can look. I did not look ahead. I fucking knew it. I love it. Uh-oh.

There's no way you just threw a Fifty Shades of Grey Hail Mary and then the story said Christian Grey. Do you remember, what was the one time, there was one time we were reading an episode and something like that happened? I can't remember. It was like Angel and Mother, do you remember that? I can't, dude, you're asking the wrong dude. Yeah, sure, you forgot what story this was. Yeah.

No, there was some story we read where it was like, oh, my mom said something about an angel or an angel and my mom. And then we read like that exact sentence. Yeah. Paragraph later or something like that. We've had a couple of good calls on this. We have our moments. We dabble. Yeah. I saw that. I saw that deep fucking from the billionaire a mile away. There were a few disappointed. I also like in horror media, especially it throws me off a little bit whenever I

it references other media because that implies that, okay, in this universe, approximately 20 years ago, uh, a series of towns in Northern Pennsylvania were wiped out by a demonic entity. That's now changed within one of those towns. Um,

And somehow this created a series of events that also led to the exact same production of Fifty Shades of Grey as we know it today. Yeah, but it was a book, a popular book before that. Was it? Like back in... Oh, yeah. Fifty Shades of Grey came out a long time ago. Fifty... Well, no, it was... Now, Fifty Shades of Grey was Twilight fan fiction originally, so it had to be after that. It was...

Because in my head, like all of this went down in like 2005. The town disappeared and stuff like that, right? It was self-published 2011. Yeah. I'm just saying it's not out of the realm of possibility. I don't mind it in this case. I'm just nitpicking. I'm just being you for this episode. I was optimistic until the Christian Grey reference and now I'm over it. I'm even more optimistic now. I can tell. My future's looking up.

there were a few disappointed groans from the audience but james and scott smiled and directly a oh and directed a flirtatious wink at no one in particular he was an alarmingly charming man i have i have been interested in ancient relics particularly those of religious significance for many years since i was quite young actually somewhat traumatic experience played the catalyst and i've been uh studying and collecting ever since

I'll begin with some of the more well-known pieces and then move on to one more exotic. She needs to put together quickly that this is Jamie or it's going to drag me down a bit. She just keeps being like, where do I know that name? What is going on with this? Scott began his lecture on a bowl from Mesopotamia that was supposed to bestow on the user unnaturally long life. As long as you drank from it, only water siphoned from the bottom of the Euphrates River.

He spoke extensively about several other equally uninteresting artifacts before finally coming to the one I cared about, the statue. Please tell you this photo for a minute. Scott clicked to the next slide in the slideshow and the demon statue appeared again, a blood red back, appeared against a blood red background as imposing and terrifying as it was in real life. A blanket of heavy, uncomfortable air descended on the room as people averted their eyes from the screen and mumbled uncertainly.

I did take my eyes off of it. This is the piece I spent most of my life trying to locate. May I introduce you to the demon Metaraxis. You pause for a minute and click to the next slide. A Dante S depiction of hell. Metaraxis belongs to the second hierarchy of demons, though he is virtually unknown. And this is simply because of his nature. Metaraxis doesn't kill or possess.

he doesn't vie for power bring darkness into the hearts of men or try to influence innocence metaraxis eats but he eats more than the flesh of man eats their homes their histories and their souls if you were to be eaten by metaraxis it'd be as if you never existed at all no one would remember you and the now empty piece of life you have carved out of yourself and the world would fill in as if you were never as if you were never there

Everything that was you or ever would be you is gone. Kind of a horrifying concept of like, not only does it eat your soul and stuff, but your entire, like you literally never existed. Jameson Scott paused artfully to let his words wash over the audience. Every soul in the room hanging on every syllable. I suppose it really was quite interesting if you didn't know the heartbreaking truth of it, which I knew he did. Someone held as a genius seemed utterly reckless of him to romanticize all this.

I crossed my arms and slumped lower in my chair. When this was over, one way or another, Jameson Scott and I would be having a conversation. And this is why Metaraxis is an unknown. There is no one to speak his name or his deeds, alive or dead, or there wasn't for many centuries. At some point in history, Metaraxis grew tired of being unknown and unworshipped. He proclaimed that those who prayed to him and brought him sacrifice would not only be spared and would not only be spared and

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. This is... This is really cool.

Because now Jameson's the villain of the story, effectively, right? Yeah, Jamie, it seems as if he was obsessed with it.

started worshiping it. And now is this like high tech billionaire dude? Yeah, because it says that the demon would give the worshipers gifts that it ate from other people. So all of those ideas Jamie has of like all the tech inventions he has, all the charities, all the money was stuff that was eaten up from other people and then gifted to him. And this would have gone on for many years until a name was called that refused to be sacrificed.

Metaraxis chose his tribute selectively, but eventually a name would come up of someone rich or in power. That person would maneuver out of it or simply commit suicide. In these instances, Metaraxis would grow angry and eat the city and all the people therein, leaving no trace that he or they had ever existed. This would have happened many times over the centuries. So we were also right there about how it's been kind of going on for centuries.

It's been going on for a long time, but it says that someone would refuse to be sacrificed and this would cause him to become furious. Maybe that was them escaping out of the basement. Whenever they awoke him, I imagine that was supposed to be their sacrificial moment and then they ran and that basically pissed him off. Probably. Now, this was interesting. The creature could be tamed like a pet. That is not at all what he said. What? What?

She's like, she hears all this and she's like, now this is interesting. This creature is kind of like a dog. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to be tame like a pet. As long as you gave it the treat it wanted, you would be not only saved, but rewarded. That's assuming that you're in control of the negotiation, which I feel like is a misstep.

uh uh uh since it's science was too busy asking if they could they never stopped to ask if they should something else to consider is that no one ever knew how often metaraxis called a name this person would be absorbed by the demon no one ever remembered if they had existed at all it could have been one person a year or five a day and no one would know the demon himself

you will you will find mentions of metaraxis scattered in religious texts dating back as far as 1700 bc the statue is rare and that is the only one likeness of him to ever be found

This is kind of interesting too, because even if you Google him, it's supposed to be like, well, Metaraxis is like, no one's ever been able to remember writing him down. Yeah, we can't find him, right? So that's a fun caveat. That's a fun way to, because most stories would just incorporate a name demon, right? But saying that it is a demon whose history is unknowable and then, you know, making up your own to fit in there and then like closely tying it to other demonic beliefs. That's fun. It's pretty cool.

Jameson graced the many hands in the air with another tired smile and said, I'm sorry, but no questions tonight. If you haven't yet had a chance to see the statue of Metaraxis, I encourage you to experience it before it's shipped to New York next month. New York City just disappears. Yeah, no shit. Man, someone should really put a massive city here on the coast. Then, without any ceremony at all, Jameson Scott simply walked off stage and the lecture was over.

A security guard, who I realized was more likely a bodyguard, stepped forward to block several girls who jumped the stage to follow his boss. Jesus. Him busy. I knew I had a chance. It's like he's Justin Bieber. For real. As the throng of people pressed forward to the upper exits, I fell back and went out the rear. I sprinted out of the building and ran to the corner, hoping to see what I'd gambled was there. And it was. Jameson Scott was climbing in the back of a white SUV when I spotted him.

He glanced in my direction at the sound of his name, but then shut the door and rolled down the window of the SUV as the SUV began to pull away. I threw a Hail Mary. "You words on that demon will never hold!" A voice echoed down the alleyway. The brake lights came on immediately, but no one exited the car. Taken as an invitation, I ran up to his window. For a mere 25 years old, he sure looked like he'd seen some shit. His lined, pale, yet attractive face no longer carried a tired look, but a surprised one. I bent over to catch my breath.

He didn't speak, but opened the door and scooted over. I climbed in. "Who may I have the pleasure?" "Caitlyn Ross?" I held out a shaky hand. His surprise seemed to turn to shock. "Caitlyn Ross?" He said slowly, with a strange inflection of reverence. "Y-yes? I'm Caitlin Ross. In your words, they're bullshit." He didn't even bother to ask how I'd known, which in turn bothered me. He simply tapped the seat in front of him and his driver let go of the brake.

"Those wards have held for six years, Miss Ross. I assure you, they'll hold." "You have no idea what you're dealing with here." "Oh, I assure you I do." There was a hard yet sad edge to his voice that suggested personal tragedy.

I wondered if I misjudged him after all. Oh my gosh. Dear fucking God, Kalen, put the fucking pieces together. Figure it out. Good Lord. My apartment. Oh, here, see, here we go. Here's the 50. My apartments are, my apartments are only a block away. Perhaps we should speak more in my study.

This isn't a conversation for anyone over here. He's gonna tie it. She's gonna be tied up and flipped upside down. Maybe some bondage and ass play while we're at it. Maybe. Do you know what these are? These are anal beads. I want you to count how many X in me as we have this conversation.

Have you ever heard of sounding, Mrs. Ross? I noted the finality in his voice and, nodding, sat back in my seat. As long as I got to say what I'd come to say, I didn't care where we went. We were led off at the corner where several men in his personal detail were already waiting. Scott escorted me into a private entrance and private elevator with only one button marked "Penthouse."

This is a funny amount of security to have in like a small town in northern Pennsylvania. Yeah.

But I'm rich and I'm a bachelor. He has like a multi-floor penthouse and everything else is like a one-story like cottage. Yeah, he's like, could you believe it? 800 square feet. It's all mine. They'll never take this from me. Jameson sat down behind his desk while I continued to stand. He gestured to an empty seat in front of him. He gave a suit yourself shrug, turned to his bodyguard. His eyes continued to bore angry holes through me as they did everything else he looked at.

This was quickly becoming enemy territory. "Scott's for me, Bannock." "Anything for you, Caitlyn?" "No thanks." I mumbled as the guard, Bannock, raked his hair back from his forehead in exasperation. I assumed it Scott's familiar use of my first name. "No threat to your boss, buddy. If anything, he is a threat to everyone else." I returned his icy glare, never wavering until his lips grew into a thin line and he curtly nodded to Jameson and left the room. "First,

i want to establish do you have any idea what you're doing i asked suspending all platitudes jameson leaned back cautiously in his chair giving me a casual go on gesture why would you bring that thing to a populated city why would you put it on display for all to see and touch what sort of arrogance allows you to think that you could control it with a with a few poorly uh copied sigils he had made no move during my short outburst other than to tint his fingers and stroke his jaw with his thumb

Which question would you like me to answer first? I'm telling you, this is getting very erotic very quickly. I don't know. Stop. Also, I have...

There's been a lot of focus on the guards. My Hail Mary that I'm going to throw is that the guards are some kind of spiritual entity. Angel may be a bit too campy, but like some kind of supernatural thing, I think. The guards that are around him all the time. Just then, the one called Bannock opened the door with a little too much force and brought his great lord and master, a Scotch.

He turned to stand beside Jameson's desk, which seemed a natural and familiar spot for him. You may go, Eric. Jameson clipped without so much as looking at him. The guard didn't move, and I continued to stare daggers at him. We engaged in our own little personal silent standoff. He, like the statue, had eyes only for me, and they were filled with rage and fire. He can stay. I ground out, finally. Let him know I'm not afraid of him. If he was grateful for my help, he didn't show it.

As you wish. Your question? I slid my eyes reluctantly back to Jameson. How did you get it? I bought it from the government. The government had it? I asked incredulously. The state of Pennsylvania. It appeared on government land in the middle of nowhere. According to the surveyor who found it, they shipped it off to PSU, who dated and appraised it, and they put it up for auction. They just sold it to the highest bidder?

I winced. He didn't need to elaborate. He's taken from me, too.

but I'm not parading him around in public, risking people's lives. Their souls, according to you, if you listened to my lecture, you would know why I do that. I remain silent. Jamison sighed and leaned forward. You're right, Caitlin. The wards won't hold him. Not forever. And we don't know what it will. The only reason they're holding now is because I'm giving him what he wants. Uh-oh. He's probably feeding people to him.

I think he means the worship. Oh, I see. Yeah, you're probably right. You assume that being exhibited in a museum satisfies the creature's desire for worship? And you're willing to stake people's lives on that? I am. That creature has not moved a millimeter since he came into my care. I've employed teams of symbologists and demologists to research, test, and advise me on the safest course of action. And for our efforts, the statue has remained dormant. Yes, it's not dead.

You're going to kill someone someday. Jameson sprung up from his desk and was in front of me before I even had a chance to take a step. His bodyguard took an almost involuntary step toward him, but it was too late. Jameson was only inches from me and much more intimidating at eye level. Panic seemed uneasy and ready to pounce if I tried anything. What would you have me do, Caitlin? Would you like me to take custody of it? What would you do with it? Tell me, and I'll consider it. Destroy it! He gave a sad, desperate bark of laughter.

If the church was even still there, and if I could find it. No one can do that. Who did it kill? Who that you loved?

I don't know. Also, the visual of him hitting it with the tank is very funny. Yeah, him like bulldozing over it is pretty funny. Yeah, it's just like it won't break at all, but it's just like on the ground in the pose. I don't know why I cared so much, but I couldn't let it go. I had to know. Scott took a step back, but held his ground. She was cheap. And just how did you escape the creature when it came for you? The question hit him physically, like a bullet.

He leaned back against the desk, suddenly weaker, defeated and less imposing. Bannock, visibly relaxed, his hand sliding off the handle of the gun I hadn't noticed was still holstered in his belt. This is a story for another time. Oh, come on! How long are we going to do this? I know who Jamie is! Fine! Then why you? Why are you the person who's qualified to own the statue? Because I've seen its face. My fate is bound to it, as surely as yours.

Jameson Scott rubbed his face in genuine exhaustion. If he hadn't been speaking the truth, then he was a damn good actor. He looked up at me, finally, from hooded eyes that burned with some intense, unnamed emotion. And who did it take from you? Jamie. I had nothing to hide, and I wouldn't disrespect Jamie by hiding the truth. Wait, I wouldn't disrespect... Okay. Oh, oh, she's saying she wouldn't disrespect her memory of Jamie, not knowing it's Jamie she's talking to right now. I raised my chin a little higher and crossed my arms.

Scott's expression had turned milder, almost pensive, and a sad smile graced his handsome face. Tension in the room abated, though Bannock was looking at me intently, his expression unchanged since the moment he'd walked into the room. When Scott didn't reply, I decided it was now or never. "I want to see it." "No." "Alone." "No!" This time both Jameson and Bannock had spoken at the same time. I'd known he wouldn't let me go. He never let me near the statue again.

I'd assumed this before I'd even met him, which is why I swiped the museum keycard off his desk as soon as I had the opportunity. Why not? Because he knows you. And you know he could break the wards if he wanted to. No, he could never get past the wards. They're perfectly drawn and blessed as they should be, but I won't risk your life. Jameson Scott suddenly seemed battle wary, so much older than his 25 years. Don't even try it, Caitlin. It will take you if you do.

The only one who will ever remember you is me." His plea was multi-layered, intricately woven with threads of both deceit and familiarity. Once again, I was put ill at ease. There was only one more thing I wanted from this room. "Who did it take from you and how? Tell me. Tell me that and I'll leave Lannenberg in the morning and never come back." It was a lie, but I was curious. Jameson's eyes shifted to mine, perhaps to gauge if I meant what I said.

He must have believed me because his gaze drifted off the window and he answered my question. I took her for myself. It was an unsatisfying answer. Now leave. Commanded his bodyguard before I'd had a chance to reply. Jameson stared at me as I took a step back from the desk. His eyes were again pregnant with an emotion I couldn't name, but it tread a line between longing and insanity. Perhaps desperate desire. Perhaps insane desperation. Perhaps something in between. I will walk her out.

Bannock bit as I made my escape out the door. To God, anyone but him. "No, I need you here. Andrews will see her out." The door closed behind me and I heard no more. Andrews turned out to be an older man with a bald head and a white beard. He met me at the elevator and escorted me all the way to the ground floor, saying little. "Do you need a ride somewhere?" He asked as we stepped out into the street. "No, I can walk." He said no more, just turned around and let the private door shut behind him. Nice of him to ask, at least.

As I walked back to the museum, I had time to wonder just what in the hell I was doing. Why didn't I listen to Scott and just leave? What did I hope to gain by seeing that thing again? Couldn't I just trust that he seemed to have everything under control? Scott had the resources, the money, the people, and most importantly, the motivation. He had lost someone too, after all. Someone he loved. Though, how that had come to pass was not clear. But I knew I had to see it again.

Perhaps I could prove to him just how dangerous that thing was, regardless of the precautions he was taking. I needed to convince him to take the statue off display before more people died. It was madness having it here. He was exposing innocent people to a demon on a reckless gamble. If I could make the statue move just an inch or two, maybe even a turn of its head, it would be on the museum security tapes and I could prove that this thing wasn't truly dormant.

I read him as a pragmatic, reasonable man. He would remove the exhibit at once. I trusted that much, didn't I? She is insanely stupid. Yeah. This is the most reckless thing I think I've ever heard. They're both being reckless and selfish, but it's coming to an extent that our protagonist here, Caitlin, it's becoming infuriating. My theory is, too, that...

The thing Jamie said where he's like, I pushed her or I lost her myself, whatever. I feel like something bad happens if Jamie recognizes Caitlin or like recognizes someone from that time period. I think Jamie knows who she is and isn't. He's trying to keep her safe. So they go out with bad off to where maybe he doesn't want to reveal that in front of him as well. Like he doesn't want him to be alone with Caitlin either. So I don't know. Once again, I pulled up Jameson Scott's Wikipedia page and

All I knew was that he was a pioneer in the tech industry, rich as a Rothschild, and interested in 14th century Judeo-Christian artifacts. It didn't fit. It just didn't. Unless Jameson Scott was telling the truth. But even if he was being honest about his past, Scott was still lying to me about something. Like everything else in the last week, I'd have to trust my gut. I arrived at the museum and walked around the giant building looking for the gift shop.

At the moment, I knew two things: Statue's room was next to the gift shop, and museums usually had nighttime security. I slid Jameson's card through the reader next to the door, and a light flashed green while the door emitted a soft click. The door opened and peered into the empty gift shop. Dim overhead lights gave the room an eerie and foreboding glow. The room reminded me of another room from over ten years ago. A nave, darkened by dirty windows, and a muted, setting sun. I was younger then, more innocent.

Not had Jamie then. Would I want to give to have him with me now? What would he say? Perhaps that he was a 25-year-old billionaire who I could ask. Would he trust Scott? Would he attempt to stir the creature for the greater good? Or would he say I was stupid for risking my life? Jameson was convinced the wards would hold. Would Jamie have been too?

Whatever happened, I hope I didn't fail him. That is the end of the return to Deepwood here. I just kind of want to hop right into the death of the Deepwood to kind of see what's going on. I am livid that she doesn't understand, like has not pieced it together. Granted, she does have...

She does have the ability. She has for years now, you could argue, you know, over a decade, she has told herself the story that Jamie's just gone, that he disappeared, that he's dead essentially, you know? So she has had like been living with that forever. So she probably doesn't, hasn't even thought about him actually still being alive, but it does seem kind of naive to have somebody be like, to have another experience with that.

I don't know. She is being incredibly naive. Yeah. Because like someone else has experience with it. They have for six years kept it from killing anyone. Yeah. We are on to part three. Death of Deepwood, Pennsylvania. I padded quietly through the dimly lit gift shop, pulling the straps of my backpack tighter over my shoulder like a security blanket. When I reached the opposite door, I leaned my head against it and tried to calm my rapidly beating heart.

Taking several deep breaths, I slid Scott's keycard through the blinking card reader and was rewarded with a green flash and another soft click. The creature was right where I'd left it. As still as the statue, it was pretending to be. I took my time wandering around the room, my eyes never leaving Jameson Scott's surprised exhibit. If the demon was as satisfied and successfully warded as Scott Bragg was, then the creature either wouldn't notice or wouldn't care about my presence.

I was starting to hope he was right. "Yeah, but he also said it remembers you and can get up whenever it wants-" Whatever, okay. I approached it slowly and unbuckled the velvet rope with a shaky hand. I was so close to it now that all I could see when I looked up was the underside of its gigantic head. I suddenly wondered if years of schooling would help me read the words inscribed on the statue's stone platform.

I bent down and started to pull up the velvet covering when I heard a quiet scrape above me, like stone on stone. It was the sound I'd heard before in the soundtrack of my nightmares. Though I'd been right all along. The statue wasn't dormant. It was a hollow victory. I dropped the velvet and backed away from the statue, trying to determine what had moved. Nothing had changed to my naked eye, but I know what I heard. Bumping against the back wall, I decided to play a wild card.

I needed it to move perceptibly if I wanted proof that the thing was still dangerous. I turned away from the demon and faced the wall, using an arm brace myself. I couldn't believe I was doing this. I pushed my chips all in. "Do you really think I'm scared of you? After all these years?" I asked quietly, my voice echoing around me like a gunshot. "You're just a piece of rock now. Harmless to me." I felt my breath and waited. Nothing.

feeling both disappointed and relieved i sighed and turned around dropping the key card as well as my jaw though it hadn't made a sound the statue was now not only facing me but leaning out as far off its stone platform as it could its mouth was opened and almost imperceptibly growing wider by the second that's awesome that's you can't leave your platform

I would attempt him. I breathed as much to myself as the creature. My whole body was shaking and I was quietly backing up slowly, slowly to the door. I got what I come for. Now it was time to leave. It happened in the breath of a second. There was a sudden crack as the demon's tail whipped through the air behind it from one side to the other as though it were not made of stone, but a flesh of blood.

The glass encasing it on either side shattered. The makeshift wall behind split in two and the velvet ropes came crashing down. One of the poles sent a sigil flying across the room. I screamed like I never screamed before as the creature's neck seemed to stretch across the room toward me, one of its wards no longer effective.

I turned my back on it and ran for the door realizing too late that the key card now lay under a heap of rubble. I hate her. Yeah, this was insane. This was a horrible, horrible... She went to a demon and was like, I'm gonna mock you so that you move a little bit but not a lot. Fuck you. I bet you have a tiny dick. Yeah, this is ridiculous.

I turned my back on it and ran for the door realizing too late that the keycard now lay under a heap of rubble. I reached the double doors and tried to jerk them open, hoping they weren't locked from the other side. They were. The creature was once again still as stone, everything but its eyes, which followed my every move hungrily. I beat on the door, yelling for security and wondering if I was doomed and which thought would be my last.

In my hysterical panic, I suddenly remembered how I'd escaped this fate 13 years before. I stumbled back from the doors as much as I dared and ran at them shoulder first. So the demon also here probably remembers her as the person that was supposed to be sacrificed but didn't, but ran away and got away. Yeah, remember what I said? It's like it wants you. Like it picks a target, basically. Yeah, so that was the target before. He probably definitely remembers her. Yeah. They moved, creaked even, but ultimately laughed at my efforts.

These were no rotten, decaying church doors. Crazed with fear, I backed up to try again and this time just as my shoulder reached the door, it opened from the other side and I went spilling over on top of something hard or someone. I rolled over and I passively registered that I'd landed on an enraged Bannock. He was standing and pulling me up by strapping my backpack before the door had even closed behind us. Bannock struggled to say something, trying several times, but was too angry for words.

I didn't care. I threw my arms around him, just happy to be on the other side of the door. He didn't hug me back, just froze stiff and waited for me to get off of him. When I finally pulled back, I pulled my hood down and looked him full in the face. Did you see what it did? I asked, pushing hair back from my face. That thing is not dormant at all. Tell your boss that. And that needs to be moved tonight, if possible. I hate her. She has no business to say any of this. It's unfathomable.

This is such a deeply stupid person. In lieu of a response, Bannock grabbed my arm and headed toward the lobby. Since it was away from the exhibit room, I didn't care. He could take me to jail if he wanted, as long as Jameson Scott heard what happened here. I made my point to him and lived to tell the tale. Or had I? I suddenly wondered. Honestly, if I'd learned anything in that room, it had been that the creature hadn't forgotten me. The girl that got away.

My life was a black mark on its record, an insult. And I had gone into its lair and challenged. What did I think was going to happen? Yeah, what a great time to think about that. After you made it mad. Of one thing I was abruptly certain, it wouldn't stop until it had my life. That the creature would burn through a hundred cities, perhaps a thousand to claim me. It had told me all of this somehow, hadn't it?

I suddenly realized my mistake. The creature had been dormant when I'd arrived in Lannenberg as it had been dormant 13 years before in Deepwood. And once again, I had awoken it from its harmless lover. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her so much, Isaiah. I can't do it. This is the second time she has walked into a place with the demons surrounded by sigils and done something to make it upset and like draw it out.

How many would pay the price this time? How many people had to die before the end? You have killed 20% of the population of Pennsylvania. I want to say that is on. Yes, the demon did it, but it is indirectly her fault. Like at least Jamie has spent the rest of his life trying to stop it with like actual methods other than just like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

She's certainly not one of the worst characters we've read. Or she's definitely not the worst character we've read, but she is getting up there to me of like, you're just having someone just be like, well, should I press this button that, you know, sets off a nuclear bomb? Yeah.

well i don't know seems like there seems like they it's gonna go off eventually so i might as well do it myself right finally understanding the true cost of my arrogance i let out a muffled cry and faltered wondering with revulsion if perhaps i should just go back and face my fate yes you should sacrifice yourself to the great demon redeem yourself wait i coughed trying to apply the guard's fingers for my arm banik suddenly spun me around and pinned me against a wall his arms braced on either side of my head

My eyes snapped up at him in shock and I recalled from what I saw there. What the fuck are you doing here? I was, I was just. Why'd you come back, Katie? After all these fucking years? Well, I was wrong. My objection died in my throat, but couldn't be. It wasn't possible. And yet somehow it was. My legs gave out under me, but Jamie caught me on the way down. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. All right. Well, you know what?

Me and you, we were a little bit off. A little bit. I mean, he was there, we were just a little bit off. He was older than he should have been, and stronger than I ever thought the skinny kid from Middlesbrough could be. But his eyes hadn't changed. It was Jamie all the same. Even his expressions were familiar to me, I realized. What I first thought was seething anger was actually just barely controlled fear. Had the creature killed me, after all? Was I swirling in the dark abyss with Jamie and all the others who had been taken?

"Jamie?" My voice broke over his name. "Christ, Katie. You need to leave now and never come back. Hell, leave the country if you can. They'll never stop looking for you now." I couldn't register what he was saying. Who wouldn't? Leave what country? Jamie, how is Jamie here? He kept me pinned there, his hold frigid, his eyes desperate and a little bit pissed off. "Jamie, how did you- how did I know you'd come here? When has the word 'no' ever kept you from something you wanted?"

No, I mean, how- Whoa, whoa, hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on, what is that? I'm sorry. We'll take her from here, Bannock. The voice behind him interrupted me. Jamie slowly turned to face the three men, only one of which I recognized. This one has been too much trouble. I want her gone. Jamie returned Tyson his voice. Mr. Scott says we're not to take orders from you anymore, Bannock. Give her here. Jamie suddenly pushed me out of the way and I went sliding across the floor. The wind knocked out of me.

A rushing filled my ears as I tried desperately to catch my breath. When my hearing came back, Jamie was yelling at me. "Go!" I looked back to see two men down and Jamie struggling with the third. My sneakers struggled for purchase on the slick marble floor and when they finally found it, I was up and running toward the lobby on the wings of adrenaline. Suddenly, I heard a sound like a book slamming onto a table. I spun around just as Jamie went down, clutching his shoulder.

Well, now that is impressive. Cringe.

I know, yeah. Very anime. That 100% strikes me as like an anime thing. Pushes up glasses. Yeah, exactly. Now, that is impressive. And I'm not impressed by much at my age. I stumbled over to Jamie, but Scott stopped me with a single click of his gun. He walked over and rested a foot on Jamie's chest. I froze where I was. Okay, so Scott shot Jamie, right? Yeah, I'm going to assume so. I saw you take my key card, you know.

He played the role perfectly. In fact, everything went according to plan. Except him. Scott kicked Jamie in the ribs, but he didn't make a sound. What do you want? Your name came up. I want you to die. Why? Scott gave a pretentious scoff. This isn't a James Bond movie, Miss Ross. I don't need to explain myself to you. I'm looking down two paragraphs and he is explaining himself in very thorough detail. But you will, won't you?

You want me to know how clever you are? What? I don't know. What happened? What? Where did this come from? I think that she, I think she's just trying to buy time. Yeah, okay. I was playing with fire, but why not? We were far beyond caution now. Hmm. You're quite bright. There might have been a place for you on my staff if things had been different. Don't flatter yourself. Why then? Why are you giving a demon what it wants? Didn't kill someone you loved?

Oh.

do you realize i've single-handedly guided the history of modern technology oh god here we go i i'm law i'm falling deeper this is getting cringe it's true i reached my 70s and then my 80s and my vision began to fail my hands would shake i'd forget coding i could barely manage to read at one point i made millions i hadn't even started i just decided the world couldn't afford to lose me yet

So I tracked down every piece of ancient lore I could that helped me reclaim my youth. Most of it was rubbish, of course, but I was desperate. I'd almost given up until Mataraxis found me. I... The story did dupe us pretty good because it is so clearly supposed to be that Jameson is Jaime, right?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I like the trick when the guy's name is Jameson. Like, it's just to me, I'm like, okay, that's the name should have been different. And then it's like, because you're referring to the other guy. It's almost where it's like, it's my old friend's name used to be Sally. And this is, I don't know, this is a new girl, Sally Field. And there's another girl in the room. Her name's Zeebok.

It's like, okay, well, I'm not really an under... I'm not really an indie under... Like, I'm not, like, supposed to be like, oh, Baddock is probably... You know what I mean? It feels kind of cheap in a non-visual format, maybe. I think just make both of their names nothing like Jamie. Well, yeah, exactly. And you're fine.

Other than that, I do like how the story completely set up that Jameson was an altruistic character who had suffered at the hands of this demon and was trying to do something to satiate it only for the rug to be pulled on us in part three. I mean, I agree. I don't think that the name throws it off too much. But I think it's just, it's a bit, to me, I felt...

I thought I was more like, well, that's just cheap. Like it feels unfair, whatever. I think if his name was not Jameson. Yeah. Yeah. No. I mean, I like the setup of it being like, oh, maybe he is doing something good because he really pushes and pulls you. I want to finish the story before I, I guess divulge too much. I knew what he was as soon as I saw him. So I bought him and watered him using the sigils I'd read about in ancient text.

Of course, there was an expensive trial and error period. Many of my staff were killed in the process, but eventually, we discovered the right sigils. The first thing I did was track down the man whose name was etched into the granite into Madarax's feet. I presented him for a sacrifice, and I was rewarded. That was six years ago. I adopted a new name and started a new company. All was going well until your name came up about four years ago. You really stumped me because Madarax's only desires those who are connected to him.

Somehow. I didn't know who you were and you're far from only Caitlin Ross in the world. I did try several others. Metaraxis would take them. For certain. But the name never changed. I was getting desperate. So you can imagine how happy I am that you showed up at my doorstep. God is telling me that he approves my methods. And that I must stay alive for the good of humanity. My company is in the middle of revolutionizing surgical robotics. For Christ's sakes. I will take a few lives to save a million.

Furious at his arrogance, I struggled to keep my voice level. Don't lie to yourself, Scott. You're no hero. Just an old man afraid to die. No, Caitlin. I'm just a man refusing to grow old. What can I say? I'm determined and resilient. I want to be young until the day I die. That's not resilience. That's vanity. Vanity is what you're buying with my life. There's always a price for social change, Miss Ross. And today, the cost is you. Oh, but you look upset.

"Don't be afraid of death, my dear. Not for such a worthy cause." "I'm not afraid of death, and I don't care about your diabolical plan. I just want you to get to the goddamn point!" Jamie's breathing was growing shallow and my voice dripped with animosity. "As you wish." When I woke, I was lying on a cold marble floor. My brown mass of hair fanned out underneath me, stiff with dried blood and my wrists bound. I sat up slowly and tried to brush the hair out of my eyes.

I knew where I was. There was no point in turning around to see it. But I did anyway. It wasn't the fact that my name was engraved at the base of the statue that the velvet cloth had covered. It wasn't the wards which had been moved from the demon's feet to the doors and walls of the room. It wasn't even the fact that the demon's head was turned as to be looking directly down at me. What terrified me most in that room was the man leaning against the wall, hands bound behind his back, as condemned to death as I was.

The blood on his chest had dried and he was awake, his eyes only partly open, watching me with an unreadable expression. "You look like shit, Jamie." I said matter-of-factly as I pulled myself up to lean against the base of the statue, the only thing nearby. "I've been busy." He said, mouth curling up into a sarcastic smile. "I'm sorry I killed you again." I tried to smile back, it's only to keep the tears at bay. "Nah, we'll survive this."

I admire your optimism, but look around. I rested my elbows on my knees and sunk my head into my arms. I lived through it once before, didn't I? Yeah. About that. How? Oh man, this exposition dumping is fucking ugh. Woo! Don't you love it? Aren't you so happy that the mysterious creepy creature is now just like a bunch of dialogue? About a week after you left, things started disappearing around town. People, buildings, even roads. No one remembered them but me.

then one day i woke up in an empty house my dad and my brother were gone so i fled the only place i knew was safe the damn church i figured it was the one place the demon would never go i don't know how long i lived there but it felt like years i slept to the church and traveled to nearby towns to steal what i needed to live and then one day the towns were gone all of them so i decided to find the thing

My dad was gone. My mom didn't remember me. And the only person who knew who I was lived in a thousand miles away. So I went from town to town until I found it. It was just there. Standing in the center of town. Nobody even thought it was weird. I was a pro at drawing sigils. But then since I spent so much time at Deadwood, and sigils have to be perfect to work, so I tried to ward it. It would take a little while, but the statue always managed to break them. I'd find it a little further from its base every night.

People didn't even seem to notice the statue had moved. What they did notice, however, was some kid loitering around their town. Since I looked older, the town was getting wary of me anyway. I joined the local police force and spent my nights on patrol downtown, keeping an eye on the thing, reapplying sigils. Occasionally, I'd wake up outside and I'd know my wards had finally failed. Then I'd have to track it to a new town and start all over. Why didn't it just kill you?

I asked myself that a few years ago when your name came up. I think it needed me to find you, ironically. In the end, it didn't need me at all. It came anyway. Okay. I thought about that and wondered for the first time if I actually had come back to prove myself sane. Had I really intended to kill it or prove I'd been right? Or had I actually been about Jamie all along? It took a long time and a lot of towns, but I finally figured out what I was doing wrong.

A sigil will slow it down. But in order to stop it, the warden needs to be blessed. And not just by anyone. The second son of a Roman Catholic. Preferably from Assisi? Assisi, Italy? Assisi, I think, yeah. Preferably from Assisi, Italy. Or at least near the region. Don't ask me how I figured that out.

It'd be funny. She's like, how'd you figure it out? Okay, I'll tell you. How'd you... How did you figure it out? During my travels, I went to Assisi, Italy, and... So what happened to your second son from Assisi, Italy? He disappeared. Shit. That'd be so funny if that ever comes up again. Yeah. It's like, you need the second son of a Roman Catholic from Assisi, Italy. What happened to him? He died. Okay, well...

That's not Pog. Yeah. By that point, I was a sheriff and I'd been in the city over. I came back to town to find my exit missing. The statue was gone. And that's when Jameson Scott got a hold of it. And that's why you're protecting him? You think I was protecting him? No.

Boy oh boy, the fall. The fall from grace.

Agreed. How does James and Scott know more about the statue than we do? Oh my God, so much dialogue. Because he had almost 80 people on his staff who did nothing but travel every corner of the globe. Are you still here? I'm speechless. I understand. I'm just going to keep powering through. I'm just going to keep powering through. The combat trial, I think, is the wildest. We're getting to levels of Monster Hunter. So what, you're a monster hunter? It's going to be like, so, Demon Hunter, huh?

Because he had almost 80 people on his staff who did nothing but travel every corner of the globe looking for any scrap of information on Metaraxes. All of this is inferred. I know. This could have been solved with, I spent time looking. It would come from town to town. I guess it wanted you. Done. That's it. The rest can be inferred. We can come up with it in our memory or in our mind or something. Why do we need to know that he had a hand-to-hand combat trial or that Metarax... Whatever. We aren't the first ones to live to tell the tale.

Just the first to stick around. I did all I could to keep people away from that thing. A name would be engraved on it one day, and a new name the next. It took me a long time to figure out what he was doing. And by then, your name had come up. He's became obsessed with you. And I damn sure wasn't going to let him find you. Well, that explains why you were mad when you saw me. Mad? Katie, I've never been more terrified in my life.

I spent years leading him down false paths, longing to have you present yourself like a lamb for slaughter. I'm sorry, Jamie. I wasted all your fucking time. You spent 13 years trying to protect me, and I spent all that time trying to forget you. Well, there's no lesson I wanted for you to forget about this place and me. I heard the familiar stone-on-stone sound from above me. Is there any chance of reasoning with him? Your boss, I mean? Not likely. He fed his own daughter that thing.

He what? For the greater good, he said. God, Jamie, I don't want to die. I don't want you to die. You're not going to die here. Not today. Why do you think this hasn't killed us yet? It's trying. Scott kept a close watch over his demon, but I managed to get one thing by him. A statue sitting on a sigil the size of a Mini Cooper. It's not blessed, but it's big. You're a brilliant bastard, James Karras. Ha ha ha.

No, you made that one up. Oh my gosh, it's in there. That's actually real. Well, I've, well, I've sure had a lot of time. Honor. Bro, I am just trying to push through this so we can be done with this. What happened? This is why, this is why I tell people too, why we shouldn't read the fucking sequels to stuff. Every time. Do creepcasts rule. Unless the story is known for its sequels, like the case of the role play. My wife's taking our role play too far.

Unless the story was written with sequels in mind or Boroska, right? The first four parts. We are not doing other parts. It's crazy. I don't know. I don't know. I just want to get through it.

It's big, you brilliant bastard, James Carrey. Did someone else start writing part three? Maybe she was possessed by a demon and got killed by a gargoyle. I don't know. He walked over and stood me up. He used whatever tool he had picked his own cuffs with to free me. I heard them click, but when they fell to the floor, all I heard was the loud grinding of stone on stone again. It was louder and longer this time. Don't look at it, Katie. Don't look up. Jamie. Jamie.

I breathed, terrified. Suddenly a face appeared behind Jamie, but this time I wasn't hypnotized by it. Jamie saw the color drain from my face and grabbed me. "Follow me now!" He yelled, pushed me in front of him to the gift shop door. I heard more movement from behind us and turned around while Jamie typed a long sequence of numbers into the card reader keypad. The creature had turned its head and it was watching me. It was alive, as alive as it had ever been.

The statue took a step off its platform, which shook the museum floor. Its movements were silent, yet fluid and flexible, like a cartoon on mute. "Jamie, working on it!"

Something else is like the creature design still cool. Like this giant thing that's completely silent, but it's made of stone and walking. Like I like the description of the cartoon on mute like that. There's still cool stuff happening adjacent to it, but whatever. Suddenly the keypad flash screen in the door clicked open. Jamie drew a black marker out of his pocket and drew a long line down the middle of the sigil negating it. What are you doing? Just trust me. Jamie pushed me out the door.

We slammed it behind us and tore across the gift shop to the exit. The door was locked. I turned around to tell Jamie as much, but he was already hurling a table through the window. It shattered just as I saw the door on the other side of the room begin to bend as it was pushed in from the other side. How'd you unlock that door? I asked as we ran across the parking lot. Scott isn't the only one who's good with programming. Ugh. I close my eyes...

Only for a moment, then the moment's gone. Dust in the wind. All we are is dust in the wind. I think I'm going to do it tonight. I don't think I can do it anymore. I think now's the time. Right before the tour. Right before our first date at the tour.

He's not the only one that's good with programming. Pushes up glasses, pulls out sword, slices demon in half. The demon sits still for a second and then looks around and then realizes he's cut in half and then falls apart. And then he explodes. Senpai Jamie. Jamie-san. Jamie, why are you just like trunks? I followed him to a black jeep sitting at the edge of the parking lot. We jumped in just as a loud bang echoed across the asphalt. God only knows what it meant. Jamie-

Hunter. Huh? Hunter. What? Just read the sentence at the end of this paragraph. The beginning chords to Highway to Hell blasted from the speakers. Hell yeah, dude. Are we getting punked? Highway to Hell!

Yeah, I will say this is to where I'm like, this isn't cute. This is just, I'm like, this is the cringe is building up like beads of sweat on my skin. Okay, maybe we now, maybe part three is supposed, maybe it's like Army of Darkness. Oh my God, wait. Why not? I shrugged as I turned it up. Yeah. Okay, okay. 100. Okay.

Okay, Hunter, clearly, okay, clearly this is a comedy, right? No. It's like, no, it's been taking itself seriously this entire time. It's Army of Darkness, right? No, it's not Army of Darkness. It's not Army of Darkness at all. It's not being campy and fun the whole time. This is not Tales from the Gas Station. This has 100%. That is a Tales from the Gas Station line and event right there.

Is it not? I feel like this part three is a Tales from the Gas Station vibe, though, because I can't think of it being serious at any point. You haven't had the characters react at all in a way that would indicate that it's supposed to be that, though. In Tales from the Gas Station, it plays it very... From the beginning...

Like it, it, it doesn't dip its toe. It's fully jumps in. It's like, this is what this is. That maybe part three is supposed to be campy. No, I, well, you know what? If it is, that's bullshit. You can't, you can't give me something one through two and then completely tone shift. It's almost like if you fucking, if you had the movie, the pianist on and all of a sudden it becomes a slapstick comedy at the end. It's like, okay, well it's been about the fucking hall.

fucking holocaust this entire time you can't all of a sudden make it an early 2000s comedy you know what i mean the audience saw that on screen but for the audio listeners who don't know the sentence i freaked out over uh get in a jeep and it says jamie shoved his keys in the ignition and turned the car over the beginning chords to highway to hell blasted from the speakers why not i shrugged as i turned it up

Jamie nodded and peeled out of the parking lot. We tore through town like the devil himself was chasing us, which wasn't far from the truth. It was early. The first rays of sunlight streaming through the trees as we hit the highway. We had to go. We had to go more than five miles when a white SUV appeared behind us. It followed at a considerable distance. Why aren't they overtaking us? Because this is what he wants. Scott knows where we're going.

Where are we going? Deepwood. Fuck. I said as I leaned back in the chair, but I trusted Jamie, so I didn't object. Won't it take the creature days to make it there? I asked. I and Jamie's speedometer, which was at 90. It doesn't always move like that. It sometimes travels on another plane. I can't explain it. Everything changes and warps around that thing. Even time. That's why I'm about eight years older than I should be. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

I gotta explain every single fucking thing to you, by the way. In the first couple parts of the story, we mentioned how time changes around it, and it has been mentioned twice now that I am significantly older than you. So the audience cannot put those two factors together. So I will now explicitly say that I am precisely eight years older than I should be due to time differences created by the demon. I'm over here!

Shoot the three! Shoot the three! Shoot the three! Shoot the three! Shoot the three!

So that is going on on the speakers blaring. And the guy's like...

Yeah, that's even why he doesn't really travel like we do. Also, that's why I'm eight years older. She's like, right. That makes sense. Thanks for explaining that. We better get to Deepwood fast. Yeah. I'm doing it tonight. I can't take this anymore. Benny, come here. Come over here. Okay.

Okay. He suddenly whipped off the road and headed for the tree line. The truck behind us did the same and we maneuvered randomly through the trees. Though I figured Jamie knew where we were going. How far? I asked after 10 minutes. Six miles. But you know how time is out here. Did I ever.

Four minutes, yet somehow six miles later, we bumped over a set of railroad tracks and arrived at the damn church, which looked smaller and more impotent than it did in my nightmares. The front door opened easily this time, and I gave an involuntary shudder when I saw the Jesus statue. Looking more judgmental now than ever before. The trapdoor was open. You lived here for years, and you never closed the trapdoor? Believe me, I tried.

Jamie grabbed my hand and guided me to the hole in the floor. We have to go down there. Fuck no! It's the only way this will end, Katie! You've got to be kidding me! I muttered as I took the first reluctant step down. Wait, you said it wouldn't either come back in here. It would for you.

I think you're doing it right at this point. Just reading full bore anime. Like, well, it's like, that's kind of what they've been reading. So I feel like that's probably, I'm guessing that was the author's intention of it's like very dramatic, right? Yeah. Yeah. It went for you. I think, I think we've nailed it now that it is supposed to be like, regardless if you think the story should have gone that way or not, this is a horror comedy for sure.

It has to be. You don't accidentally write a Highway to Hell reference into it. I was caught in the big thunder and I ran. There was no thunder. And I ran and I thought, what could I do? There was no help. No help from you.

Yeah, the whole time is you sitting there just like you've been you've never shut the trapdoor behind her Oh

I didn't realize until halfway through us singing Highway to Hell that we switched into Shoot to Thrill. Yeah, I couldn't remember the lyrics to Highway to Hell, so I just went to Shoot to Thrill. Okay. What? It worked for you. Jamie followed me. Yeah. Jamie followed behind me and took the stairs down on shaky step at a time.

If he was already down here, why couldn't we stay up there? He wasn't.

There were no wards to protect us now and nowhere to run. I couldn't help thinking this was a bad plan. Well, he's here now, so let's go. We can't, Katie. If we leave now, he will too. Well, then what's your plan, Jamie? Jamie said nothing, just stared at the demon who was now staring back at him. Suddenly, I felt something like a tug in the pit of my stomach. I stepped back and then it happened again.

I looked up into the creature's eyes, which had moved to mine and suddenly realized what was happening. There was another tug, harder this time, and I felt my mind, if not my body, being pulled towards the demon's head. A long black tongue jutted out to welcome me and the creature's mouth began to widen. So this was it. The nothingness. The demon's mouth was so wide, I could have simply walked into it. If I had a body.

The blackness started to close in on all sides, creating a sort of tunnel vision, and then, in a violent jolt, I was snapped back into my body, a perfect sigil drawn on my chest in black marker. The creature screamed an ear-splitting sound, and Jamie flung me over his shoulder before I had even re-established my bearings. We were to the top of the staircase, and under a minute, the demon still emitting a deafening wail. Something was wailing in my ear from the ACDC song. Then I realized it was the creature.

I heard ACDC only to realize it was the creature that plays ACDC. It was only Bon Scott, the creature. I'm sorry! I was sure it would come for me first. We burst into the nave and Jamie, seeing our company before I did, pushed me across the altar towards the crucifixion, which I took out as I fell. I scrambled back, kicking it away from me as I did.

Get back down there, Miss Ross!

This is like a Nathan Drake scenario. Okay. Yes. Fuck you. The last words was drowned out by a loud cracking sound that echoed through the little church as the spiral staircase came crashing down below us. Oh, my God. I thought it was actually going to be thunder for a second, and I was going to laugh so hard. Like, you know what would make this, I think, the best story on Creepcast ever? Hmm.

if like an angel flies in through the top of the church and like kills them there's a lady who knows all that really hasn't gone Katie don't Jamie caught a knee to the ribs some of which I was pretty sure were already broken scrambled back further there's no staircase now there's no way to get down there oh sure there is his hired men laughed

You're going to die either way. At least this way, you'll save his life. Metaraxis is trapped down there. Now see, fucking Metaraxis sounds like a goddamn Yu-Gi-Oh card, so I can't take it serious. At least this way, you'll save his life. Metaraxis is trapped down there for the time being. So it's to Seller you must go. Perhaps you shouldn't have injured him by breaking his bond mid-feed. Don't be fucking stupid! Just run!

Fuck no, Jamie. I didn't leave you in this place and I won't now. Time to pay my dues. I stood up to walk to the edge of the trap door. Perhaps if fate was kind, I would die when I hit the floor 30 feet below. I looked up at Jamie and took my last words to be for him. I knew the moment he realized that intent. Jamie jerked his body forward and threw himself and Scott into the dark hole between us.

i screamed as scott's been scattered out the door i skid over to the side of the hole tripping over the smaller statue on the way came a pain girl from jamie who was just barely clutching onto the side thanking every deity i knew of i pulled him out of the hole and back into the nave his how did she pull him his wound was bleeding fresh blood and i knew we didn't have much time i laid him on his back as he started to slip in unconsciousness applying pressure to his shoulder the bone came from the trap door behind us help me

Please, I'm hurt. So Scott had survived the fall. I grimaced and pulled myself over to the edge to peer into the darkness below. Okay, I'm just guaranteeing you right now, right now, there's going to be... Hold on, hold on. There's going to be a quip. There's going to be a one-liner when she shuts the door or something. Something just like, you know, I don't know. I have just a feeling there's going to be a quip and then all of a sudden the demon's going to be like... and grab him instead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll be like...

No, I'm saying she's going to make a quip at him. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. And then he's going to be like, then you still get grabbed. It's like the Rancor scene in Star Wars. My blood began to boil as I let Jameson Scott wail away his swan song. Please! It's staring at me! I can feel it. Please, name your price! I'll pay it to save me! Ha ha ha ha!

- Oh no, why would I do that, Mr. Scott? This is what you wanted after all. - Suddenly the trap door slammed shut, Jamie standing over it as the entire building began to shake. The edges around the door grew bright like molten metal before darkening like a blown out flame. Did it just incinerate him? Like a furnace? - Will it hold? - I yelled to Jamie over the increasingly loud earthquake. - Is it blessed? - Some say by God himself.

I'd say that counts. Jamie hoisted me up next to him and ran for the door as bit of ceiling began to cave in. The door to the church swung open of its own volition before we got there and slammed shut behind us. The church came down in a butt of dust and splintered wood. When all had settled, Jamie was barely conscious. I walked him to the car and pushed him into the passenger seat.

He was out before I'd shut the door. I took one last look at the pile of rubble before climbing into the driver's seat and staring and starting the car. I followed the same train tracks home that got us out of Deepwood when we were kids. I made it to the road without ever looking back. I can tell you exactly how long Jameson Scott lived. Four days. By the dawn of that fourth day, he and all of his inventions abruptly disappeared from the world.

If he was right about technology, it's like all planes fell from the sky. Billions are dead. No shit. There were a few I was sad to see go. Like the rise of inductive charging and eyeglass. What? Wait, so they just disappeared? Hold on. How do you remember any of this? I don't know, dude. We're so close, please. Please, we're so close. You're right. What am I doing? You would have loved eyeglass, and you probably did, honestly. God.

Contact lenses that were actually cameras. They put GoPro out of business. You can never afford it, but you may have had one. I miss those YouTube videos.

Jamie spent a month recovering from his gunshot wound. After he was really... This is literally like the end of movies where it's like the character freeze frames with the thumbs up and it's like he went on to blah, blah, blah. Jamie's recovered after, you know, yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah. We spent a few weeks weighing our options. In the end, we decided to hunt down people like Jameson Scott and the powers they wield. What? What?

I don't know. Hunt down people like Jameson Scott? What do you... What are you hunting? Rich people? People who have demon powers? You didn't... You... You have messed up one demon hunt so much that 20% of Pennsylvania never existed. That is how bad you are at this thing. So now you're just hunting...

You don't know about them, and if we have our way, you never will. Haha. Due to Jamie's time with Scott, we have some good leads. We have a lot of blood on our hands to atone for and a lifetime to do it in. Deepwood is dead. Only Jamie and I even know where it is, so the town dies with us. I wouldn't try to find it if I were you. I've changed a lot of details, names of towns, names of roads. Perhaps even when this all happened, I won't tell you, and you don't want to know anyway.

Somewhere out in a hundred mile sea of trees and dirt lies the demon store still under there, under a pile of rotting detritus that used to be a small church. The door may be found again someday. It may even be opened. But one thing is for damn sure. It sure as hell won't be because of me. The end. No, God, that is the end. Okay. First off, just want to say the story is the idea is there. It's well-written, but just the way that this second half is,

after the last two parts, the way that they unfolded, especially in part three, it's unbelievable. 40% of the story. Yeah. Honestly. Yeah. I would say like even the introduction in the beginning. Yeah. I mean, love the beginning. Wish we wouldn't have read the part two and three, even part two of having a, some kind of connection years later and returning to this place.

I like that approach, but it just always accumulates to like, what would you have really done? Like, what is there to really be gained? That becomes like a big thing with a lot of like sequels and stuff with horror media is it's just the idea of like, what kind of thing do you plan on gaining besides some kind of hope that there is a resolution that can ease the pain of your past? You know, during the break, you had a good, um,

A good thought where it's like, it kind of reminds us of it, where you really only give a fuck about the kid version of it. And then watching the adults go back and try to make sense of this crazy thing out of something that is so crazy that it could only exist in some of this childlike wonder. It just doesn't hold the same candle. You're also trying to make too much rationale out of something that is so absurd. So that's why it doesn't really land. And I think the first one ends in such a fun way of...

girl who is kind of like flirting with a guy to go find something spooky stumbles across essentially a haunted house it's like the wanderlust of childhood it's like there's the unexplainable them stumbling across something they can never hope to best and in there it ends on the note of like because of their foolishness the creature got out right and that's like that's like a haunting it's a heavy moment

It is the ultimate creep cast. It is the biggest creep cast curse, which is you start with a really strong idea. You get really bought in with it of just like having so fun in the universe, which this author does that very well. Like we, I think we even talked about that during our first recording of the first part of the story is that she does a great job by just like setting you up, really liking the characters, liking the hook of the story of what's happening. It

It's setting that like motion forward. And I think that it's become, it's a, it's, it's an ongoing complaint we have where it's just like, it was just so you had your hook line sinker and it's just something whenever it's like you really try to overexamine these simple or like kind of face value ideas and,

that it kind of falls apart in the second half where, you know, it does, it can't really hold up to that kind of a fun mystery or that fun question that the story is presenting to you. And sometimes I think that's just what a story should be. It's just like, wouldn't this be crazy? I think a big way, the second half of this story would have done well for me. And I will say I am biased because one thing I really don't like is in even media, like in a lot of horror media or media in general is like rich bad guy.

I'm the rich bad guy who is nefarious and who wants like the Dr. Evil parody. That's the kind of like whole vibe of what this is. We grew up with it. We've just seen it so much that it's like, oh, the rich guy with all the money was the bad one? What? No. Well, I like the idea that you go back through the story, right? Or the way the woman goes back, Caitlin goes back to...

tried to recollect to try to once again get some kind of resolution to this pain she's feeling and this guilt she has of letting this thing out I almost wish that it was something where there was maybe only a handful of characters or it was just her in the woods trying to find something and then whenever she does find this thing it doesn't over explain we don't get all these kind of crazy you know she does it's a human experience of like some things humans you just can't wrap your head around

There's a lot of... That's a lot of big, fun ideas. Something is so old and so mysterious that you can't wrap your head around it. But she had to find some kind of way to make peace with herself in the woods somehow as well. I think you can have a similar ending. I don't know. Maybe she still finds Jamie somehow or something. But I wish it was just a bit more condensed and a bit more...

If you do want the villain rich guy who owns it route, then I think the suggestion you made is really good. Make Jamie become corrupted. And he feels like what he's doing is for the greater good because you have two people who had the same experience years ago and then two different ways they branched out. One trying to long for their friend and the other trying to keep it at bay through any means necessary, right? Well, it's kind of interesting. You have Katie who's completely plagued by it and then you have

a Jamie who has done nothing but profited from it. And those are two different angles that I think could breed a lot of fun conflict with when they come back together and they interact again. Yeah. You know, it would have been, it would have been cartoony and it is cartoony. And I don't think there's anything wrong with the stories going to the cartoony room. Yeah, definitely.

I'm sure that our viewers loved it. You know, I will say memorable episode. I really liked the, just the setup. Like if anything, if anything comes from this, I really love just how this author sets up characters, younger characters with that kind of innate young optimism and kind of like wonder to go out and search for this thing. And I love that she uses children in a great way where it's like the ignorant,

uh seekers that will do dangerous things because they don't really understand how creepy and odd it is boroska is one of my favorite stories i've ever read about like that whole thing about the young kids like wanderlust because it's just like oh there's the skin men up in the mountains and it like captured the childhood like uh magic so well and then it preyed upon that you know from now we can see it too she's done these kind of these fun bait and switch

kind of uh like reveals uh in her stories where in the brosca the masterful reveal that like oh wait all the kids are like related to each other and the guys that were dating they're technically siblings or whatever and the skinned men you know like that being a red herring exactly being a red herring as well as she likes her red herrings because jameson was also a red herring

And the but the the the Jameson thing, once again, I still personally, I was just kind of like it left it kind of a better taste in my mouth of I enjoy it not being Jameson. But I don't know. I don't like the way that it went about it just with the name being so similar. It's just kind of like, oh, yep, I guess I am stupid for thinking that was supposed to be him, you know.

Yeah, the name didn't need to be the same. All in all, an enjoyable read, albeit very emotional at the end. I think that I'm glad that it went. If anything, here's another thing, too. I'm glad that if it went that direction, I'm glad she went full force for it. Like, I'm glad that it wasn't just, like, mediocre. They were playing ACDC and making quips as they killed them. Yeah, I mean, like, go for it, have fun with it, and I think that it translated well with even our reading, even if it was this exhausting kind of Sisyphus dialogue.

like pushing the boulder up the hill it was at least a fun push i had airpods and listening to ecdc while i was doing it so all right everybody we will talk we'll see you in the next one thank you so much for listening stay creeped out there my friends bye-bye which one of us said that if we hit number one we would kill ourselves on air i'm already stopped recording okay