M thirteen days of Halloween is a production of I heart radio, Blumhouse television and grim and mild from Aaron Monkey. Headphones recommended. Listener discretion advised. Good morning friend, I trust you slept well. No interesting dreams? Well, no matter. After today's exploration you're sure to be riddled with visions. Step lively now. While we were in the old bathhouse, I warn you not to breathe too deeply. You'll notice that this is one of the only stores of the manner.
That's more for the protection of our guests inside than for anyone else. m deep breath now, mm HMM. This bathhouse was constructing atop an old hot spring, but it wasn't into a completion that the architect realized the psychological effects of the ever rising guesses. At first it's only a mild lightheadedness, but then things change. You can hear whispers of something of the beyond, see movements in every shadow. Once, while tidying up, I swear I saw the walls breathing.
One unfortunate guest was trapped inside overnight and by the morning he claimed to have witnessed the construction of the dire universe. Saw The future edged in Obsidian. Allegedly, he met with death himself and declared him a nice fellow who couldn't seem to shut up, just name dropping who'd he'd taken. Normally we would not put a guest yet to stay, but if anything, the vapors seem to have calmed ricky. Perhaps they remind him of his past, who knows? Ah,
speak of the devil. Hello, Ricky, this is my friend who wishes to speak with you. Ah Ha, there we are, there we are. Take special note of the markings on his arm and need you to draw them from memory. No pressure, but it's important. So well, you to enjoy your visits. I'll come back for your friend before you've breathed the vapors too long. If you do happen to start drifts, well, just enjoy it. Dah, yeah, uh, Hey, he told me I could have a smoke if I
talked to you. You got one, I mean, they won't let me keep no lighter here, right, no smokes, no lighters, no nothing. Thanks. So I thought I found a real reason to be alive. At least that's the way she made me feel. So we started out with needles right out of the GIG. I mean it's how we met. She danced, I worked the floor. She thought I was cute and she liked what I could get for her. We were at it a real long time, keeping our
heads above water. You know, I felt like the Lucky Skuy in the world, with the sexy witch junkie girl all my but it wasn't enough. It isn't ever enough the longer you're in the ship. She wanted something bigger, said she wanted something that could make her taste the other side. Do you ever do anything crazy just to make a girl smile? Well, that was my whole damn existence. So I did what I could. I had a guy who was selling jackpot papers. Easy, peasy, no worries about
mixing up too much. When we cooked, it's just simplest, dropping acid right. We've done that lots of times. Her and her candles and her weird drawings and herbs and ruins, a brush with the beyond, that's what she kept calling it. We made a date of that night. We lit some candles, got as Frisky as we could and I let her write things on me. I always let her write things on me and put them stupid little paper tigers on each other's tongues, the whole thing. Let's get wild and
weird together, you know. except I passed right the hell out and she was left to her own devices, and those devices included eating more papers, a lot more, and she always did go harder than me, and she was searching. She said so herself. I mean she found it and when I came to, she was sprawled out on the floor next to me, ice cold, and I'm telling you, she was so cold her her preface was laying in her own vomit, papers still stuck on her damn tongue,
her lips. Man, I haven't, I haven't seen anyone goes so blue before. It was like looking at a doll, and those gorgeous green eyes were all rolled up in the back of her head. I'm not an idiot, you know. I mean I had an emergency stash of subs and I turned the whole damn apartment upside down looking for the dose, and I found it and I I did of it to her, and I mean it isn't like I just let her die. It was just it was
too late. It was way way too late. There she was dead, ask one forever, all on account of a few micrograms, too much oblivion, or so I thought, and I did not call the cops. Now I cried a lot, I paced, I shot up, but I didn't call no cops. I dragged her to the bathroom, I washed her up and brushed her hair, and then I nodded out, right there on the side of the TUB. It was just a dream at first. She stood there looking beautiful sweet, batting those lashes at me like reaching out. Don't let
me go, I can be here with you. Don't let me go, hold on. I didn't want to let her go. I also couldn't be keeping a whole damn body around the apartment. You know, I'm not a serial killer. I cut off her braid. I didn't know why then, but it seemed important to keep something like like, like the victorians did. She told me about that, you know, Memento Moriy she called it, and then I went about getting rid of the rest. You don't want to know about all that. And the dreams did not go away. Every
time it was more and more vivid. I took to falling asleep with that braid, with their clothes. Everything smelled like her, felt like her. I lit her candles and I brewed her tea. I left her favorite books in her favorite spots, played the music she loved. I did not touch those papers ever again. With what was left, at least, I couldn't bear it, I left him on her little alter. I didn't really know what else to do. It really really popped off the night that I got
ship faced and braided some of her hair into mine. Right. I got no idea why I did it. It ain't like I believed all the weird stuff she did. It just it just seemed right. I wandered it close to me. I laid on her side of the bed, you know, drunk and crying and drooling all over her pillow. And then I smelled her. Okay, not the memory of her mind, you her. And there was, there was like this, this touch, a voice, her voice. I told you not to let me go, Ricky, I told you not to give up.
She was not a ghost, all right, I gotta really really stress that. She touched me, she moved my hair. I fell asleep with her wrapped around me, though I couldn't see her, not yet at least right. But that changed. So when I woke up, there she was, standing front and center at the end of my of our freaking bed, naked, a little blue, her hair hacked off, just like she
looked before. I reached out to her and she came to me like this junkie angel, blue, lipt and glowing and whispering all the lovely, sweet, filthy things she used to. I mean, it seemed like a resurrection. She was just as warm and as firm as she'd ever been. And the more we were together, I mean the more I told her I loved her, the heavier she was, the more real. I mean, it was like heaven, man. Everything I ever needed come right back at me, as if
that awful night had never happened. She didn't even talk about it. At first. I could hardly bear to leave the house, I mean I didn't want to let her out of my sight. I thought maybe she just disappear. So we talked about the old days. She drew those signs all over me, all over the walls, and told me they were for remembering. And funny enough, man, I guess they were. And she wanted to know all sorts of things, like what did I look like when I was dead? Did you kiss me? Where am I now?
Why didn't you let me die? I didn't let her die. I didn't know how to say that without sounding and she hit the table with her fists and her face got all twisted up and I felt my guts get all cold, like when you know a situation is about to go real sideways. Answer me. She slapped the Blue Hell right out of me. I shoved her. I don't know what else to do. I mean, she was screaming how I let her die and how I wasn't no good junkie bastard and that her mama wouldn't even know
what happened to her, that she didn't deserve that. But she was right. It ain't like she was lying. I had thought every single thing. She screamed at me a million times. She threw a chair and I was too damn stupid to duck. You gotta you gotta understand. I wasn't used to this. We we hadn't been like this. This was ugly and I told her so and she just laughed at me. told me I'd made her this way,
I'd made her ugly inside, just like me. And I ran out of the apartment then, hoping what I worried about before would be real, that that without me there, she just go go wherever the hell she came from. And I stayed, gone to a few days. Uh Hey, uh, let me get another one, please. You don't have to light it for me, it's fine. So so I came back hungry and and not hungry and dope, sick and
smelling like a damn dead animal. And soon as I opened the door I saw her sprawled on the freaking ceiling, same as she'd been on the floor, eyes rolled up white, hissing at me. You killed me, you killed me, you kill me, you killed me, you killed her. Mouth was bluer this time, covered in vomit. The whole apartment smelled like it, like like worse, an Outhouse, a slaughterhouse, like bleach, like it did then. Oh my God man, we fought. We fought like a couple of game dogs out for blood,
out for souls. I mean she was screaming like a bandh and I was crying at her to just go the hell away and leave me alone. And she crawled down the wall towards me, all back bent and white eyed, whispering words that didn't even make sense, and the ink on my skin, it burned, I mean it burned like fire and I screamed at her to stop. I told her I loved her. She kept coming right up over the table hissing at me, and I reached up and yanked that hair I braided from my head, pulled out
a huge damp chunk of my own too. I didn't I didn't know what else to do, but it sure seemed like a start. You think, wow, that's it, Huh, break the spell, smash up the Junkie Witch Magic. Hell now, life ain't ever that simple. She jumped at me and we went to the ground and she was beating my head against the floor, calling me a lying, murdering loser of failure, every damn thing she could think of. And she was strong man, stronger than any figment of anything
had a right to be. But how do you kill the memory of a person with a knife, with that Shair, and not with that baseball bat? I set fire to her altar and I threw it out the window and she didn't go nowhere. I ripped up her clothes. She called me a coward. I lost track of how many times I had things from at me. How many times this skittering awful thing that wasn't my girl anymore bounced off the wall and landed on me and beat me
into the floor. H You're never gonna get rid of me, she held, and you're gonna remember what you did for the rest of your filthy, useless life. And that's when I realized I couldn't kill them memory of a person, but I sure as hell could kill the person who remembered the Jackpot papers. They had fluttered to the floor when I flung everything else out the window. So I stuffed the papers into my mouth and I told her to go to hell. She wasn't anything with me dead,
and it was. It was the last good idea I ever had. Uh Oh, well, it wasn't a perfect idea and I still don't know who got to me before I was gone, but I woke up here, wherever here is, all scribbled up with this. Those are her symbols. I still see pieces of her sometimes. I mean when I look in in the mirror. When I closed my eyes, somebody sure as hell carving all this ship on the walls. I didn't do it. He won't let me have any NIES.
He won't let me finish US off, not yet. But now you know what I did, what I can do. MM HMM. Hey, Um, if you would mind, I'd really appreciate you doing me a favor. Let me let me hold that lighter, just just for tonight. I mean, what could be that? Hey, wait, hey, hey, man, come back. All right, ricky, we'll visit a gid soup. How are you feeling? H different? Did you see the blueprints of the universe? RECOGNIZE ANYTHING IN THE SHADOWS? Have no fear,
the effects will dissipate soon enough, though. Tonight you will dream of it further. Oh, did you get a good look at the markings? I myself have only seen flashes, but they seem to match symbols left in one of the architects old journals. We are getting close, my friend. Ascension is around the corner, but for now you must go and take ink to paper and record what you've seen. Show no one. This remains between us. Tomorrow, my friend, there's a special set of stairs that require a visit.
Are you thirteen days of Halloween was created by Matt Frederick and Alex Williams and executive produced by Erin May key, starring Keegan Michael Key as the caretaker. Today's story was written by led West over performed by Adam Laborde and directed by Alex Williams, with editing and sound designed by Josh Thain, additional writing and script supervision from Nicholas Dakowski casting by Jessica loser. Only five days remain. Tomorrow another story.
The low light still tinted the room orange when I woke disoriented, my heart pounding with such force I could feel it in my back and in the thick red quilt beneath me. I lay waiting for the nightmare or whatever had shunted me from sleep to fade until calm, until I realized that it was not my heart knocking, but something below, something inside the bed. Thirteen days of Halloween is a production of I heart radio, Blumhouse television
and Grimm and mild, from Aaron Mankey. For more podcasts from my heart radio, visit the I heart radio APP, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, and learn more about thirteen days of Halloween at Grimm and mild dot com.