S1/E9 | The Winding Stair

your wits about you. What you see and hear will likely be confounding. A trap door in the floor, a winding stare that carries you hundreds of feet upward to another small trap door. underwhelming. Yes, you were expecting something mind bending. Well, here's the best part. Take Note. When I opened the trap door in the floor, the door

in the ceiling likewise opens. And if we shout into it, my dear fair do you see, my dear friend, this door below US somehow opens into the ceiling above us, and vice versa, an impossibility made possible by the genius of the architect. A Chamber of Endless Echo. A famous poet from Nova, Scotia was once a guest and after hours, climbing up and down, being driven nearly to madness, swearing that his own voice must be that of another man mocking him. wrote a poem about the UNCANNY experience. It

became quite popular. Yesterday, upon the Stair, I met a man who wasn't he wasn't there again today. Oh how I wish he'd go away. Of course, there was no other on the stairs. The board was terrified of nothing more than his own reflection, an occurrence more common and comfort would allow. Oh well, shall we? Ah, look who it is. Nathaniel, be a dear and tell my friend here about your journey. Be Wary of this one. He's a little off even for this place, likely his room's

proximity to the tower. You'll be fine. Just follow along until I return. Now, fellows, I must run to remove the birds from the BELFRY that make such a mess of the stone work. I shall make short work of them and return post taste. He calls your friend. Huh, my name is Nathaniel, or at least it was once. Please join me. I had set out for a sharp October stroll. I wanted the bracing air and the ripening

colors all around, nothing more than that. I was young then my wife had stayed behind in the cottage where we were presently boarding. She was too burdened by the fullness of our first child to join me in the wood. We were far from home but close to family, a necessity for the birth. I became lost so quickly as I meandered through the wood, a roof of clouds encroached upon, then devoured, the remaining sun and behind it the creeping

blanket of mist. All sense of time reduced to the crunching dead leaves neath my boots and the low panic in my chest. I attempted to retrace my steps and failed. At some point I emerged onto the road. It wasn't so much a road as it was a tunnel of trees, but I blessed it all the same. The Path was hard packed, wide enough for a coach, and I made my way along. Yet telling myself of a refuge was not far off. The moon cast blue slivers through the

foliage and fog. I pictured the haze of gas like almost hearing a wash of voices from a pub that was shortly drawing nearer. For roads have destinations. They lead to towns and to people and to warmth. Instead the first true curve of the Path brought into view the hers waiting beside the road, the tall spoked wheels of here undamaged. speckles of Moonlight revealed a set of red

curtains drawn closed inside the rear door. As I gazed upon this curiously placed her, grateful for the glimpse of civilization, from inside came a heavy wooden fud. Then something within produced a terrible sound. The fog somehow began to thicken, narrowing my focus on this now undulating black box. Then the rear door burst over and out from it crawled would appeared to be an old woman. She emerged with hair hung over her face like a wet gray veil.

She drew herself to the ground and all fours limbs bent like a spider. Her body was terribly withered and thin, but it was too long in the darkness I couldn't make out if she was naked or if all that skin was instead some many jointed fabric trailing after her. Her head turned to regard me from within that shroud of hair, and then she slipped around the hearse and passed into the wall of trees, a white blur guttering

into the black like a candle. I stood there paralyzed, contemplating what I had witnessed, questioning all I had previously believed about this natural world and its possibilities, until I glimpsed something small and white in the ground where one of her hands had rested. I was drawn to it, a scrap of paper so rich that it was more akin to cloth bearing a strange symbol in rusty ink, a shaky horizontal line with three circles joined at the

right end, like a clover laid on its side. I tucked it in my suitcoat pocket, remembering my dear wife an hour soon to be child. I gathered all remaining courage and set off down the road past that godforsaken hearse on I trudged with purpose beyond my own. To be with them again, I would have to first survive the night. When the trees withdrew at last and the structure rose up under a crowd of muddled black sky,

I could have fallen to my knees. The building looked as though it had seen a century of the elements and in my mind I kissed each crumbling brick. The pub I had envisioned was not in evidence. Nor was any hint of a village. The building stood alone amongst the trees and the road seemed to be swallowed back into the wood. Not Far ahead, somewhere beyond ellen, waited for me a lamp sputtered with gas on the pathway, next to a signpost missing its side and two of

the windows I could see wavered with oil light. It was civilization, it was something a road led to, and my heart swelled. The structure was equally faded. Inside a one sumptuous lobby, now threadbare and patched with gloom. A large dead fireplace, worn arm chairs, the sense that cobwebs had been swept away only moments ago. The smell of must and neglect hung in the air. An indistinct man

stood behind a scarred counter. As I shoveled eagerly toward him, tucking my hand into a coat pocket, I realized I had set out from our cottage without purse or money. I could only produce that inscrutable note the woman in the hearse had dropped at the side of it. The clerk said, very good sir, you are most locome to stay the night. I'm terribly sorry, but it is urgent. I contact my wife. Is a telegram possible tomorrow? Certainly

it's gone midnight now. No luggage. He pressed the key into my hand, a cumbersome brass rod with a bow formed by three circles touching one another. Room twelve, sir, up two flights and to the left. It is easy to blame my fatigue, the ache and my legs my burning eyes. I scarcely recall feeling any hunger then, though. I had not eaten in many hours, but nothing seemed so untoward that I could not wait out the night indoors, away from those trees and that creature now haunting them.

I turned back once to ask about it, but the man was gone. The buildings, landings and hallways were each hung with oil paintings of forests. I stopped by one of them, holding aloft the greasy lamp I had been given. It was grim, somehow mournful. Art Hunched between trees. A glimpse of a Pale figure could be seen, a small blob of white brush stroke that I would not have recognized an hour ago. A Vanity Mirror stood on a

small table just inside number twelve. Then a double bed halfway between the door and the single window a second table bore its hollow candle, and there the inventory of furnishings ended. No washstand, no chamber pot. I set the oil lamp down next to the mirror, turned its flame low and lay on the dead without undressing to save my boots. The mattress was hideously uncomfortable, near as unyielding as the floor. I sent up a prayer for Ellen

and our child and I was soon asleep. In spite of it all, 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. I

leapt across the room and twisted the lamp bright. When again I heard the knock, muffled but resounding, I reached forward and pulled the quilt towards me. It slid to the floor to reveal not a mattress, my two coffins, one nearest me shuddered as something within bumped against it. I sprang for the door. It was locked. I fumbled for the key, but there was no keyhole on this side. I hammered against the frame, but my efforts were to no avail. This was no rooming house. It was a

holding cell. But what was it keeping enclosed? I turned back to my discovery. Compelled drawn, I approached the nearest coffin. I pulled at the LID until the rusted nails on one side gave way through the crack. I saw it. Inside lay the old woman from the hearse, her body folded in half due to its great length, her limbs bent at extra joints, gray hair spilling away from her face, her eyes shone with black gloss. She turned them towards

me and smiled out. I forced him the lid back down and knelt upon it, praying my weight would suffice. The other coffin was more easily opened. It was not sealed with nails. Contained a man as withered as his mate, but clearly dyed. A mist of dark blood stippled the Pine Wall. With each rasping breath, his eyes crept up but could not stay focused on mine. I closed his lid and lay across both coffins awaiting the light of morning, but morning never came. That night never ended. It merely

has electric lights. Now it has elongated itself and will continue along gating the roof of clouds that ate the sun. That night never gave it back. The creature not in to be let out, kept him with her these long years. She kept me weak and fed me in this endless dark. She let me sit at the window from which I have witnessed other strange sights. There is no key hole on this side of the door. I withered too far here to the end of my companionship, but finally I

have found my predecessor. You seem a hail fellow. I do not think it will help you, but take this morsel of hope while it still has a taste. I am an old, wasted thing now, but you have been called. Your arrival here means that I can sleep at last. Ah, this is all so very expected. That, Daniel. I'm just going to steal my friend away now. Don't Fret, I'll be back field my lootine now. I trust you've learned something new. Well, add this little morsel of knowledge to

the feast. The trap doors in the north tower were built not as an entertainment but as it means to an end. They were the architect's first attempt at building the ascension door. As a matter of fact, much of what we have discovered along the way point towards this pursuit. We have four more nights, dear friend, we must use them well and with that, and once again take my leave, enjoy the rest of your evening here at Hawthorne Manner and try not to obsess over the construction of the

north tower. There will be plenty of time for that later. You. Thirteen days of Halloween was created by Matt Frederick and Alex Williams and executive produced by Aaron Manky, starring Keegan Michael Key as the caretaker. Today's story was written by Michael we hunt, performed by Ben Bolan and directed by Matt Frederick, with editing and sound designed by Trevor Young, additional writing and script supervision from Nicholas Dakowski. Only four

days remain. Tomorrow another story. They held my skeletal hand and looked at me through glassy eyes, searching for some sign of my former self and the tiny sliver of a human thing hidden underneath a heaping pile of blankets and they cried and they mourned and one by one they confessed. 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