Episode 41: Hole in the World

Narrator: Welcome to Ghost Wax, a Far and Tall Tales Production. The following story may contain graphic content. Listener discretion is advised. 

[Intro Music]

Episode 41, Hole in the World

Recorder clicks on

we hear altered voices, we can’t place.  The ghost wax is picking up communication through layers of the ardent’s walls, muffling and distorting it.

Unknown: panicking, losing their minds No no no , pleeaase, oh god please don’t make me, please just let it be over, I don’t want it I don’t want it I don’t want it…

We hear furniture smash and glass break followed by silence

Glorious: genuinely kind shhh, calm now, calm now, it’s almost over.  Hush, hush my love.  We believe in you.

Unknown: I can’t.  pathetically please.

Glorious: You knew this would not be easy.  You knew that.  You cannot stop now, it is too late.

Unknown: Please don’t make me.

Glorious: This is what you chose.  It is the right choice.  None of this… none of it is real.  It’s all just a vivid dream.  You choose to wake up.  Just a few steps further my love, free yourself.

Unknown: hyperventilating and sobbing 

Glorious: Almost home.

The recording cuts and returns, we are hearing another scene in another place.  A fire crackles.

Olivia: unconvincing pleasantries What else… The hive is well?  A new queen is being born I hear?

Emea: Please Olivia, you didn’t come to ask about the new flavorings of the tea offered and you didn’t come to ask after the hive.

Olivia: I suppose not.

Emea: in russian ask what you are going to ask me.

Olivia Fine, to the point then.  What is he up to?

Emea: I am not sure.

Olivia: Come now, surely he’s confided in you.

Emea: about many things, but not anything clandestine, though I’m flattered you think i’d so easily break a confidence.

Olivia: ever so slightly flustered I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.  I can’t have him going rogue, not now.  I am… regains composure I am to face a Glorious, soon, very soon, and our plan of attack was just cut out from under us.  We are at a fairly desperate disadvantage… if we fail… do you have any idea how deep the Cypher’s tendrils have reached?  If we fail to expel it… 

Emea: We will not fail.  You will not fail.

Olivia: showing a tiny bit of vulnerability.  She wants to believe Emea is right  How can you be sure?

Emea: Because you must not.

Olivia: I’ve seen the projections… if the Cypher breaches the vessel… we lose so much.  So many.  The excision will be the worst since… I don’t know, since I don’t know… The Hungering?  The Tenth Midnight?  It will be catastrophe.

Emea: Trust him.  Trust yourself.

Cypher: the fear, the fear.  I’m almost here.  So it’s to be an Olive for my welcome martini, how delicious.

Recorder starts

door bangs open

Luca: What did you say to her?

Pip: Gods! You scared the crap out of me! Hello to you too, by the way.

Luca: I need to know what happened right now.

Pip: What happened with who?! What are you even talking about?!

Luca: Mayberry. 

Pip: softer Oh. I… realizing wait… what everyone was talking about last night… she wasn’t involved was she?

Luca doesn’t respond but from his face she gets it

Oh my god… totally lost for words Are you okay?

Luca: furious No, Pip. I’m not okay. Mayberry wasn’t “involved” in the accident at the field office. She was the accident at the field office, now she’s dead.

Pip: …no…

Luca: voice breaking Voncid had to reclaim what was left of her, we were barely able to pry it out of the building... She said when she went to you for help, what did she say, we need to know anything she said.

Pip: I- realizing how horrible this is and not wanting to say any more

Luca: What happened, because it sounded like you maybe told her to fuck off, but that couldn’t be true.

beat as her face tells him it is

down Tell me that isn’t true.

Pip: She said it was a relationship issue! Like… like … She was trying to make a decision about some person and wanted me to look at the cards.

Luca: That “person” was the Cypher.

Pip: ashamed I told her that whatever was going on, she needed to figure it out for herself. The way normal people do.

Luca: How could you be so cruel? She was a nice person who just wanted your help!

Pip: I didn’t know it was about doesn’t want to say his name out of fear him! I thought she just wanted me to fix things in her personal life.

Luca: Was that such a crime, for her to ask for help?

Pip: Do you know how many Ardent workers have asked me to solve their personal issues since I’ve started here? Dozens. All. stupid. problems. Just because I can read people’s futures, doesn’t mean I should! It’s draining and terrifying and I can’t do it anymore.

Luca: But what about the one that really needs your help!?  Pip, that’s all we get, the one in one hundred chance to actually save someone!

Pip: suddenly angry Why didn’t YOU try to help her then?? Did you even ask her what was going on before sending her my way??

Luca: I-, that’s not-

Pip: You didn’t, did you? She went to YOU for help, and you brushed her off like you've been doing with everyone! 

Luca: I’ve been busy!

Pip: More like you got a boyfriend and suddenly you don’t have time for anyone else. This is the first time you’ve even spoken to me in weeks!

Luca: Charlie is not my boyfriend, it isn’t like… and it hasn’t been weeks.

Pip: Tell me one conversation we’ve had since the Dottie Jean incident?

Luca: Not that it's anything, but I thought you wanted me to start seeing someone?

Pip: I do! but I didn’t think it would mean I get shoved aside, cut off and cut out.  You haven’t responded to basically any of my texts, haven’t stopped in to see me like before, nothing.  We said we would be there for each other, remember?  That we would get through this nightmare together.  Then…

We start to hear faint crackling in the recording as the Cypher feeds

Pip: And then you just disconnected. 

Luca: It’s not my fault you don’t have anyone else. 

Pip: Wow.

Luca: You know I didn’t mean-. You should have helped her, even if you were mad at me.

Pip: I didn’t know.  Am I supposed to just live to serve everyone else?  Bleed myself dry navigating every possible future?

Luca: You don’t seem to be able to navigate any possible futures!  This is the second woman you’ve let the Cypher devour right under your nose and you’re magical fucking fortune telling didn’t do me any good when Dottie nearly skinned me alive…

Pip: You know I tried to- you know what, Fuck you, Luca!

Luca: Don’t worry about me sending people to you for help anymore. Wouldn’t want you to have to fail to save anyone else.

Door slams

Pip softly crying.

We hear crackling on the recording as the Cypher feeds

Cypher: More… more, yes, yes…

Voncid: I have everything I need.  We go to find the spark, you will provide the fuel, I will tend the flame and give it oxygen… 

Adreanna: So the dead girl is what, the kindling?

Voncid: I… yes that works.

Adreanna: So where are we going, salem?

Voncid: No.  Appalachian mountain chain, up above the state line in canada.

Adreanna: I was kidding. 

Voncid: Dress in layers.  The trip up the mountain will be cold, but the descent into the cavern will be quite hot.

Adreanna: Where the fuck are you taking me?

Voncid: The cavern is one of the oldest in the western hemisphere.  Within there is a flame, burning since… well since the world was very old.  That flame is the last piece of a very powerful puzzle.

Adreanna: Actually, I don’t give a shit about any of this. I’m just here because you’re the one that got me out of that cell.  

Voncid: Fair enough. This endeavor will require a good deal of bravery from us both.  I’m weaker than I’ve ever been… this is all starting to feel like a last hurrah… Well, if you’re still ready? Still willing to make this journey back to the living, I will think no less of you, but please, if you no longer want this, tell me now.

Adelaide: No… I’m ready.  I have more life to live… even if it’s what you said.

Voncid: Very well, the die is cast.

Cypher: Rekindling.  Complication.  Let's move the time table up a hair.

the audio cuts and returns in a new place

Charlie: Do you know what this is all about?

Luca: No.

Charlie: Has he ever done anything like this before?

Luca: No.

Charlie: This isn’t like… we aren’t going to get blood sacrificed or anything are we?  Like this all hasn’t been some long con?

Luca: I really hope not.

long pause

Charlie: How did you wind up with the Order anyway?  I’ve never asked.

Luca: They approached me… after I built something… it was changing things around it while it was on, It um… well it had unintended secondary effects that caught the Order’s attention.

Charlie: Wow, I’d love to hear that story…

Luca: Not now.

Charlie: Sure.  

another long pause

Luca: Voncid and I were talking once, on the way to a scene… it was a kid, so we were dreading it and I think it made him more talkative than usual We’d been working together almost a year and when the recorder isn’t on… he’s kind, and he answers questions… but it’s like he’s only half there… anyways, I asked him… I asked him “How much is real?”

Charlie: like “is this all a dream?”

Luca: No like, how much of myth and legend and superstition is real.  Vampires, werewolves, curses, demons, evil gods, psychic powers… fucking lake monsters? … how. Much. pause

Charlie: ok, and?

Luca: He stared ahead for a long time… I could see he was thinking about lying to me, but decided not to.  He took a deep breath and said: “Everything.”

Charlie: beat fuck.

Luca: Yeah.

Charlie: that isn’t possible, is it?  

Luca: That’s what I thought.

Charlie: Is there some… I don’t know, an evolutionary blind spot?  If we look the other way or, white it out?  Some huge spell they have going to “men in black” anyone who sees anything they shouldn’t?

Luca: Yeah, I’ve been thinking about things like that, some of the mages in the order… sigh it’s so fucked up, but i’ve seen them make people forget, edit things.  That case I mentioned, with the kid that got killed… it wasn’t a natural thing that did it.  One of the silvers, Nash, have you met him?

Charlie: The hot one with the fucked up scar on his jaw?

Luca: yeah, he caught the thing, had it pinned to a tree with a spear, but it wouldn’t die… like he couldn’t kill it.

Charlie: slightly excited what did it look like?

Luca: I… man I really don’t want to think about it… It had too many bones… skin over too many bones.

Charlie: Ok, forget it.  

Luca: Yeah, so anyways by the time voncid and I got there the tree was cracked through and it seemed like it might get loose soon.  Kat had tried everything, burning, acid, silver… oh have you ever seen a chemical blade?

Charlie: a what!?  No, what is that?

Luca: Ok, I have one, I’ll show you, but don’t touch the blade.

Charlie: Laughing OH, Really?  Not even to check its mouth feel?  I’m a toddler, I’m going to grab the sharp part.

Luca: You say that, but the way it looks… it has kind of a hypnotic effect on people.

we hear the chemical blade being drawn.  His hissing and produces a clear beautiful tone

Charlie: slight gasp  woah.

Luca: yeah.

Charlie: What is it?  It’s like… it’s moving.

Luca: the hunters call it a chemical blade, but they’re always trying to keep magic sounding stuff out of their lingo.  It’s actually an ALchemical Blade.  It’s metal, and bone and stone and… it’s everything.  It’s in a constant state of flux.  See how all those colors move through like it’s liquid?

Charlie: hypnotized it looks like oil with sunlight on it, that like, rainbow?  Or like a bunch of water soluble paints, those guys who will like dip your arms at music festivals, then you’ve got rainbow arms all week.

Luca: Yeah, it’s like cycling through all the things it “might be” super rapidly.  I heard Kat describe it once: “there are so many fucking monsters now, we can’t keep up with all their allergies and immunities.  These help us cut down on guess work.”

Charlie: I really really want one.

Luca: If they are going to start bringing you on, away missions, or whatever this is we are doing, we should get you one.

Charlie: Why don’t you give me this one and just say you lost yours and get a new one.

Luca: Uh.

we hear the chemical knife being sheathed

Charlie: kidding.

Luca: yeah anyways, that thing pinned to the tree, Kat had stuck a sword version of one of these into it everywhere he could think of might hurt it and nothing. The knife was useless.

Charlie: don’t disparage the knife.

Luca: Worse than it being basically immune to physical harm, or its impending escape… it was crying.

Charlie: what?

Luca: It was crying… wailing, like a little kid.  beat  and we realized that it had like… absorbed something about the boy it had killed.  It sounded just like him.  The father… his mind shattered… the look on his face was worse than any monster I’ve seen.

Charlie: I can’t imagine…

Luca: Voncid doesn’t get angry very often, but when he does it’s… it’s terrifying.  He shouted three words, or not words, I didnt… still don’t, know much about magic yet, but he like let loose these three sounds.  The first one ripped its skin off, the second ground its bones to powder and the third… doesn’t want to think about it anyways after it was dead we were left there with the father just… broken.  They made him forget, which was a kindness I guess, but I don’t think the memory stuff is perfect.  He, the father, kept coming back to the ardent.

Charlie: remembering the guy with the dark mustache?  The one who kept asking if they could help him find something… he kept saying he knew he’d misplaced something but couldn’t remember what… oh… I see… damn.

Luca: yeah.

Charlie: He’s an observer now, isn’t he?

Luca: yeah.

Charlie: but that’s what I’m trying to say, if they can’t put the whammy on everyone, or in every case, and all of it, all the nightmares, are all real… well… how?

Luca: I really don’t know.

Charlie: think they’ll tell us if we make them like us enough?

Luca: well Voncid definitely seems to like you.

Charlie: Yeah, I think so too.  I mean, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t going out of my way to make a good impression.

Luca: We’ve noticed.

Charlie: Yeah, Voncid called me out.  I didn’t mean to be… but yeah, I’m not going to say I’m not after something.  I just think…  This has all been a nightmare, but what if there’s something good behind all the ugly?  Sure monsters are real, but so is magic.  Magic.  I could learn. Magic.  

Luca: Yeah… I’m not sure I want to mess with that stuff.

Charlie: You mean more than you do every day??  This wax made from the bees with the weird little faces and skulls on their butts?  The bees that whisper to each other when they don’t think we’re listening and sing songs late at night?  The bees whose wax can record the voices of the dead, and ghosts and demons and things from other dimensions?  You’re a mage dude.  Your craft, that’s what they call it right, your craft is just building stuff.  The others do words, and gestures, and blood and pacts and sigil circles and shit?  You build stuff.

Luca: fuck.

Charlie: Don’t be so glum chum.  Magic.  

Luca: beat I have heard a lot of people in the order talking about how Voncid is way overdue to take an apprentice.

Charlie: laughing admitting that’s his angle  I’m very aware.

Luca: You seem like you have a better shot than the academy grads.

Charlie: have you seen the way they scowl at us?

Luca: all. year.

Charlie: How about you, would you be jealous if he picked me?

Luca: Lets not get ahead of ourselves.

Charlie: No, would you?

Luca: I don’t think it matters how I feel.

Charlie: awww, cm’on.

Luca: No, I mean… I think there’s something wrong with me.  I don’t know what it is, but I don’t think it’s in the cards for me.

Charlie: you’ve spent too much time with Pip.  cards are just paper.

Luca: Pip… yeah.      Either way, reclaiming seems like such a burden.

Charlie: beat yeah… but what would you endure to unlock the secrets of the universe?  If that’s what it takes, I’ll interview all the dead people you’ve got.

Kat: hey, we’ve got work to do.  Here are detailed notes on what he needs.  

Luca: They roped you into this?

Kat: yeah, apparently my not knowing anything makes me weirdly valuable at times.

Luca: ready made plausible deniability.

Kat: Sure.  We need everything on this list loaded at row eight within an hour.

Luca: do you have any idea whats going on ?

Kat: Like I just said, my head is empty.

Luca:  taking a moment to look over the list Have you looked at this?  

Kat: he told me not to.  So I didn’t.

Luca: what the hell is he up to…  

Kat: Whatever it is, it needs to be ready to go in an hour.  You did catch that right?

Luca: This is serious.

Charlie: Good.

Kat: Maybe.  

we hear cat dropping off bags

Kat Here’s the luggage.  Get packing.

Luca: hell…

We hear them finish their drinks and leave the bar.  After a short time footsteps return to gather up the recorder from its hidden spot.

Rugen: I don’t know what he’s up to, he’s covering his tracks too well.

Olivia: to be expected.  I shouldn’t have bothered asking, you’re busy enough.

Rugen: You think he’s lost it?  Think the sumerian has overtaken him and his judgment is human? 

Olivia: I don’t think so.  Besides… if you knew him… well, he was no fool, even if he was just a man.

Rugen: He’s weak enough we could just lock him up until the crisis has passed, or if you want to be really decisive I can force the issue.

Olivia: How distasteful.

Rugen: This is war, we do what we must.

Olivia: this isn’t war Rugen, it’s much worse than that.

Rugen: all the more reason.

Olivia: leave him alone, I can’t be bothered with this anymore.  When he steps out of line, we may well have all the pretext we need to take corrective measures.  I need to prepare and you need to find me an anchor.  Whatever foolishness Voncid is up to, it's out of desperation.  When I defeat the cypher he will come back to his senses.

Rugen: Sure.

Olivia: Don’t give me that look.

Rugen: I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about.

Adelaide: I don’t remember where I was, I think it was a long time ago… but I was walking through a field.  The flowers were in bloom and I was surrounded by… I mean it looked like a blanket of jewels swaying in the wind on every side.  Bees and wasps and butterflies flew all around me, each checking every flower, taking a drink… It really makes you think.  We can see so little of what nature has to offer… uhh thinking of the word chromatically.  What does a field of flowers look like to a butterfly.  To a bee.  If it’s this saturated, bedazzled, gorgeous tapestry to us who have… like 3 cones in our eyes, what in the world would it look like to an animal with ten, twenty cones… whole spectrums we can’t even imagine.

But something was off.  Even in the bright sun, the breezy calm wind and the idyllic surroundings it sent a chill down my spine.  There was no buzzing.  This big fat bumblebee went wobbling right past my field of view and I couldn’t hear it.  The rustle of the grasses, and the air moving over my ears was there but… no buzz.

My eyes were able to focus on the bee for just a moment, just an instant.

In that instant I saw the skull.

The mark on its back.  A grinning white skull.

The ground under my feet went soft, my toes and heels suddenly sinking in.  As if just seeing had caused some change… had given me some massive, added, weight.

I turned to call out to my parents, my feet were stuck, I needed help, but they weren’t where I left them.  I looked for Jack, but our picnic blanket was empty, rolling up at one corner where the wind had caught it.  I called out to my brother only to remember he hadn’t come with us at all… or had he… panic was making me dizzy, making everything feel surreal.

My feet sank in deeper and deeper, something pushing down and down or was it that there was something so so heavy inside me, something I hadn’t known about before, becoming denser and denser, dragging me…

My right foot punched through first.

The horrible sensation of open air… of nothing beneath.

There was a hole.

A hole in the world.

Crescendoing panic and despair. 

And I was standing on top of it.  Falling through the mud and grass into nothing.

The weight in me pulling me down through some impossible threshold and on the other side there was just nothing and no matter how hard I pulled my leg, strained and shoved, there was no going back, no undoing what had been done.

I was going to fall… I was going to fall through!

I screamed for help, but my voice made no sound any more, my body had forgotten how to push the air, the panic was choking the life out of me, the weight was in every part of me.

My other foot pushed through, dangling about in the nothing.

I fell forward, trying to lay flat, remembering from some time or place some advice about spreading out wide if you were sinking… or maybe that was standing on ice, I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter anymore.

I punched through, gravity yanking me and the weight inside me down, down…

Light vanished.

Any sound other than the openness rushing past my ears was swallowed up.

I was falling.

My mind rebelled, screamed, tried to wake up.  This was some nightmare, some dream…

I reached out my hand, willing it to hit Jack, snug asleep in bed next to me, to  wake him up so he’d wake me up and we’d laugh about what a scary dream it was… but as I swung my arms out I felt nothing but air… air and then dirt and rock… a wall of dirt and rock, instinctively I clutched at it, but the force, the momentum of my falling was already so immense wincing at the memory all I did was snap my fingers, nails sheering off from the impact. The shock of pain and the splash of blood up my arm, left no question of how real this was.

The strike against the wall sent me spinning, ricocheting off of the sides of this… pit… I’d fallen into a pit.  Did that happen?  Did people just fall into pits… I grazed the wall on the other side of the chasm and a shock went through the back of my head.

As I blacked out I remember the last thing I thought was feeling grateful that I wouldn’t be conscious when I hit the bottom…

I don’t know how long passed… that’s the funny thing about getting knocked out is it just kicks you out of time.  The first thing I realized was how dry my mouth was… how dry my eyes were.  The darkness was absolute. Complete.  I wouldn’t have been able to tell if my eyes were open or closed if it weren’t for the air rushing past them, pushing my eyelids back… I realized that was why they were so dry.  While I had been unconscious, my eyes, my mouth had been pushed open by the air… I’d been falling, face down.

My body reacted with shock, like it remembered that it was falling… I hadn’t been out for more than a few seconds, I still hadn’t hit the ground, I was going to hit the ground! My body tensed, my heart kicked like a drum in my chest, my limbs pulled into a fetal position… but… pause each moment… pause each moment passed, and no bottom came rushing up to meet me. No rocks hurtled up, into and through my body.

I just kept falling.

No matter how impossible it was, I kept falling.  How could that make any sense?  The deepest sinkhole on the planet?  Did things like that even exist?  Could they even exist?  How would it not be full of water, or collapsed in?  Pinched shut by tectonic plates?  I had fallen thousands of feet at least, plus however long I was blacked out… how how how…

Even more time passed, each second compressed and expanded by the horrific, painful tension in my body… Human beings were made to survive trauma… not brace for trauma endlessly… forever and forever waiting for impact…

I think I had a heart attack… fire burned up and down my arm, in and out of my chest… I might have had a stroke too, or some kind of hypertensive episode… it sent a cold spike into my mind… It was horrific, but after a few white hot… minutes maybe?  It passed.

Still no bottom, still no change.

I made the conscious, excruciating effort not to think about how or why this was happening, but to focus… what are you going to do?

What are you. Going to do.

I had seen skydivers spread out wide, so I did that… I chuckled that my problem solving in this crisis so far had entirely consisted of “spread your body out wide” 

It seemed to slow my fall as I caught more of the air rushing up at me… though I supposed maybe I was rushing down at it…

Bottomless pit.  You are in a bottomless pit.

I pushed the terrifying impossible thoughts away.

What are you. Going to do.

When it felt like my descent had slowed a bit more, I tried angling, seeing if I could move my body.  I could control the way I was falling a little, bit by bit I moved one way, arms outstretched, preparing for the agony of contacting the stone wall, ready in my desperation to grind my arms down to nubs to stop my falling, grip the wall, just stop the falling…

Moment after moment passed.

But it seemed the hole no longer had any wall.

I flew down and along a pitch black expanse with no border, no edge. 

It was impossible.  Horrible.

Wet, soft… my heart thrilled when my hand finally contacted something, even if it was slippery and organic in a way no stone wall of a pit could be.

I pushed my fingers into it but it was so slick I couldn’t get any traction, but still too tough, too rubbery, to shove my fingers through and find a hold. My fingers, already ruined from my earlier attempt to stop my fall, snapped again. And still I fell. 

I think that was when I started to scream and cry.

I didn’t know what else to do.  That’s why our bodies cry.  It’s like in a musical when nothing else will do, you break into song.

I broke into the song of my sobbing.  Lost.

I was lost.

We hear soft sounds of her crying  

The shock and horror I felt, when the walls of the pit shook and made a sound… mimicking the sound of my sobs…

I can’t describe.

We hear a horrific cacophony of the massive Throat returning the sounds of her sobs.

I think I went a little mad then.  I think I cracked, up in the attic… there’s only so much you can take…

The tiniest little prickle of pain cut through all the other agonies.

I couldn’t see, but my hand went to the spot of the pain and between my fingers I felt the soft fuzz, the fluttering wings of a bee.

It had followed me.  All the way down.

Numbness, relief, spread out from the sting.

I could swear the little bee nuzzled my hand with a soft round head.

It will be alright.

I could almost hear it… I thought, even as I suddenly couldn’t hear anything else.

I lost awareness of exactly where my body ended and the darkness began.

Everything was slipping.

we hear the sound of monstrous crying again.

The sound of the massive throat I had fallen into, the sobbing… it changed.  Cruel, curious mocking, no genuine sorrow… it sounded like a child that had had something pulled out of its hands.

The little bee and I died together down there, in a hole in the world that both should never have been, but of course always was there… we went together… maybe no one goes alone after all.

Voncid: Adelaide, die no more.

we hear the stiff cracking of a corpse snapping to life

Voncid: Rise.

We hear crackling as she launches to her feet.

Adreanna: Oh my fucking god… 

Voncid: Walk with me into the earth, there we find a flame from the world before… there we shall reignite your soul… Adreanna… thank you.  Wait here… We will return, or we will not.  Regardless, thank you.

Adreanna: Yeah. Sure.

*We hear voncid and Adelaide walking away down an impossibly winding cavern… 

Adreanna: So quiet… except… what is that?

we hear her rummaging around in the bag of materials and components.  As she does the sounds grow louder, she is getting closer and closer to to the recorder.  Finally she lifts it out of the bag

Adreanna: What the fuck is this?  looks it over Is this running?  

audio cuts