Low and Sad, Like a Hymn

A haunting little melody; a child gone missing in a blizzard; a murder of wassailers on a dark, cold night. Featuring the voices of Malcolm McDowell, Gina Rickicki, and Tara Ochs. Written by Alayna Huft Tucker.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M twelve Ghosts is a production of I Heeart three
D audio and grimm and mild from Aaron Manky Headphones. Recommended.
Listener discretion advised. The night is darkening round me. The

(00:22):
wild winds coldly blow, but the tyrant spell has bound
me and I cannot cannot go M. Speaking of the devil.

(01:00):
This should be interesting? Is that carol ers? M? So
it would seem. Do you normally get carolers out here?
Not all at once? There's no one out there, must
have been carried in on the wind from elsewhere. Hard

(01:22):
to believe they're up to any good with the hymn
they're singing. Traditionally, westsellers would demand something in return for
the carols they sang, and could get quite roundy if
they didn't receive their due. Well, we're beyond harm here.

(01:43):
Perhaps we'll receive an explanation shortly. Oh ah, and there
it is. Come in. Then we've been expecting you, though
from the look on your face, I can't imagine you've
been expecting us. Who are you? Why did you bring

(02:07):
us here? I'm afraid I had no hand in bringing
you here, My dear, Then you're not one of them.
The carolers. You heard them, Perhaps you'd like to sit Tom, Oh, God, Tom,
Tom will be fine. Sit, take a breath, a drink,

(02:33):
and then tell us what you heard. Sarah disappeared back
in nine. All I remember feeling back then was how
the whole thing ruined Christmas. I would have been almost six.

(02:58):
I think that sounds right because Sarah was nine when
it happened, and we were a little more than three
years apart. Kids are all self centered like that, so
I don't beat myself up for having had those thoughts.
At the time, Somerville was having an unusually cold winter.

(03:20):
Dad had the news on all week, lasting forecast updates
at such a loud volume you could hear it in
every corner of the house. There was some kind of
front coming through that was predicted to bring in a
lot of snow in the days following Christmas. There was
concern that it could come in earlier and screw up

(03:41):
holiday travel. So Dad was following the news like a
bloodhound on a scent trail, trying to determine if this
would affect our two mile drive to Grannie's house for
Christmas dinner. He had the fireplace going, poking the logs
with placed anxiety. As Mom a rough cut celery in

(04:03):
the kitchen for stuffing to take to Granny's. I listened
to the sound of her knife in repetition against the
cutting board as I flipped through a highlights magazine I'd
read a hundred times already. Sarah was lying on the
sofa with Harvey, our salt and pepper Schnauzer, and was
busying herself with tugging at the fuzz on the quilt

(04:26):
that hung over the back of the couch. She was
bored out of her mind and trying to stay out
of the kitchen so as not to get recruited by Mom.
I must have dozed off at some point, because I
stirred suddenly at the sound of the front door closing,

(04:47):
pinching off the howl of the wind, and Harvey's high
wine from the porch. Sarah must have taken him out
to relieve himself. That's what ended up, and the police
were boar it anyway. But I can still to this
day swear that I recall some other sound being tossed

(05:08):
about on the wind, beyond the pounding of my own
heartbeat in my ears, that was pulling me back into sleep.
The static on the TV, the electric buzz of the
Christmas lights, something low and sad, like a hymn sung

(05:29):
from mere air, but strong enough yet to steal a sister.
I've been pricking my ears for it for almost thirty years.
It was the way she looked at me when I
told her my mother. She was happy, but there was

(05:54):
something else there too, a kind of worry. Maybe all
mothers worry for their daughters, especially when they become mothers themselves.
I hoped that was all it was. Tom said she
was probably thinking about Sarah, and I suppose that makes sense.

(06:16):
I thought about Sara too. What must it feel like
to lose a child? It was hard on my mom.
There were so many cops and investigators and reporters and
fucking dizzy bodies buzzing around for months on end, when
none of us could even give ourselves permission to grieve

(06:37):
because there was no body, only questions, Where's Sara? What
happened to Sarah? Where did she go? When Emily heard
her slip out with Harvey on Christmas Eve? In the
Great Snow Storm of eighty nine, Dad buried himself in
Dad's ship, spent more time working, more time cutting grass,

(06:59):
really hamburgers. Work work, work, provide, provide. Tom would never
act like that toxic masculinity. He'd cry, He'd go to
therapy with me. We'd let ourselves come undone and come

(07:20):
back together stronger instead of turning into robots like Mom
and Dad did. But thinking about how we'd grieve the
baby Tom and I might hypothetically lose someday made me
want to know more about how Mom and Dad actually
lost theirs. So I made the decision that it was

(07:41):
finally time Mom and I talked about the thing we
absolutely don't. They made me sign a death certificate. Did
you know that? Mom said I hadn't known, and I
just shook my head at her. I could have said no,

(08:02):
kept on their asses to keep up the investigation, but
Sarah wasn't going to just show up back in our
lives after eight years and everything go back to normal.
It'd be stupid for me to keep hoping we could
be a normal family, So I signed it. The truth
m is that I knew she was gone forever that

(08:26):
very same night. I think I knew it before I
called for you girls to go brush your teeth, and
no one answered. The storm was just like last time,
only when it was my sister and we didn't have
my daddy around to blame your sister, I asked her,
I didn't have any ants on my mom's side. I

(08:50):
know you think I'm an only child, Emily, but your
grannie had another little girl, Jeanette before me. I never
knew her, or I only vaguely remember her. I was
a toddler when she went missing, went missing. I blurted out,

(09:11):
you had a sister that went missing, like Sarah. Why
have you never told me this? Did you tell the police?
Why would I tell the police? What would they have
to do with one another? Jeanette disappeared almost thirty years
before Sarah. That had be an awfully and effective serial killer.
Em If you asked me, a tendency for wandering just

(09:35):
runs in our family, and coyotes run in our woods. Okay,
Well you said the storm was just like last time.
What do you mean it was like last time? Well,
back in sixty one, we had a mess of a

(09:57):
blizzard like an eighty nine, arting on the solstice and
running up through Christmas Eve the day she went missing,
Real bad wind and several feet of snow in just
a few days. Daddy had finally killed himself with all
the drinking the year before, so we had been on

(10:18):
our own as far as money for a little less
than a year. Mama told me she was busy sewing
pageant gowns for extra cash in the back room when
Jeanette must have slipped out. Mama tells me that she
had the radio on next to her sewing and still
thought she heard carolers singing hymns out in the storm.

(10:42):
I can't believe anybody would be stupid enough to be
out in that mess. That must be what got Jeanette
out of bed, though, instead of going to sleep and
waiting for Santa. When Mom finished, I felt strange. It
was a lot to take in, But what I really

(11:04):
couldn't get past was the smallest thing of all that
Granny had thought she heard singing over her sewing. I
had almost forgotten. I've been half asleep when Sara slipped
out onto the porch, so when I thought I heard
that howling hymn tangled in the wind, it was easy

(11:26):
to sort it into the dream side of my consciousness.
Now Here was a waking woman not only hearing the
same sounds I'd heard, but she was down one daughter,
just as I was a sister. Mom maybe wouldn't allow

(11:47):
herself to see the connection, but for me, I could
only feel haunted hunted. Mom add made one connection between
the two events, though you know em, you better hope

(12:07):
Tom isn't as useless as your dad was or mine,
for that matter. If my dad had been around instead
of drinking himself into an early death, Mama wouldn't have
been spending her Christmas Eve and most every night doing
odd jobs to keep us fed and in nice clothes

(12:27):
for school. Not all women could have bank accounts in
their name back then. You know, we had handfuls of
cash hidden away in coffee cans and cookie jars and
under the mattress. Thank the Lord, we were never robbed.
I'm sorry, Mom. And if your father wasn't such a

(12:49):
worthless piece of shit that actually lifted a finger to
help with anything around the house enough to notice when
his own daughter was trying to go out in a
damp blizzard. Mom, it's okay. I know you're always going
to be mad at Dad for that. I get it.
You don't need to worry about Tom, though he's a

(13:12):
good man. He's so excited about this baby he's going
to be a great father and be an equal partner.
You'll see. I want you to be excited for us.
He can take care of us. He makes great money.

(13:34):
We'll never want for anything. But that's how it always
is for women, isn't it, Emily. The man pays the bill,
but the woman pays the price. I was about four
months along on the first day of winter when the

(13:57):
local weather man announced the blizzard that I already knew
within my bones was coming. I stayed up late the
next few nights waiting for them, listening, camped out on
the glider in the baby's room, rocking myself like a baby,

(14:20):
rocking our baby in the womb. They can't take her
while she's inside me. Not this year, but every year
they come. Someone's baby isn't safe. And as every woman knows,
if any one of us aren't free, none of us are.

(14:43):
The sound came on Christmas Eve, low and moaning. It
was not unlike the wind itself, but with a rhythm
offbeat from the chaos of nature. Tom went to bed annoyed,
and I had stayed up again, unwilling to function as

(15:06):
his teddy bear when I wasn't tired, so He didn't
hear the front door cracking open like a seal, or
the low moans coalescing into song, or the wife and
baby disappearing into snow like static on the TV. Outside

(15:32):
was all sound, wind buffeting the hood of my coat
against my ears, and carrying the song down the road,
where I could just make out a group of shadowy
human forms, all holding dim candles that refused to even
flicker in the violence of the wind. They moved as

(15:54):
one down the road that led toward the fields at
the edge of town. The what should I do then?
But follow? The longer I followed, the more order I
found within the sound. It wasn't so much a song
as a chant, uttered low and slow, overlapping and round,

(16:18):
as no mouth that spoke. It started or ended in
the same place, building into a hypnotic, stuttering spell that
suddenly spun its dark magic into being. When a neighbor's
door cracked open and out piqued a child, I didn't

(16:38):
recognize the girl, but she couldn't have been older than Sarah.
The figures didn't move toward her, They merely continued on
down the road. As the girl turned to follow, I
decided to wait to intervene. Maybe I could save her

(17:00):
mhow and also figure out what they've been doing with
all of these missing girls, and then stop them. The
candle flames held steady all the way to the edge
of town, where Somerville's wheatfield lay barren. That apparent barrenness
gave away immediately what was wrong about the place. A

(17:24):
large pit dug into the center of the field, the
deep recess of it emitting a warm, fiery glow, much
like that from the ever burning candles. The child was
drawn to the warmth like a moth, and there was
a stillness within it that promised refuge from the tattering wind.

(17:49):
I knew nothing good could come from following her down
the rickety stick ladder to stand beside the pyre, But
at the very same moment, our daughter gave me the
faintest kick from inside her own refuge, and I made
up my mind. Down inside the pit, I could no

(18:09):
longer hear the wind, but instead could now make out
the moaning chant from the men surrounding us. From above.
It lapped like waves, going round and round the circle.
The girl seemed drowsy as she listened to the swirl
of noise droning above her. I noticed my own daughter

(18:35):
had ceased stirring, but I, very much still aware, had
picked up the scent of gasolene in the straw beneath
our feet, And before my brain had even fully formed
the wholeness of what was about to happen, I was
lunging for that neighbor's daughter. Just as the latter was

(18:56):
kicked away from the wall and into the pyre. Everything
seemed to happen in slow motion. The hooded figures dropped
their candles into the pit, and flames descended hungrily to
feast upon the straw below. Fire erupted like the pages
of a children's Papa book, instant and exciting, coloring the

(19:22):
whiteness of the storm world. It hurt to look at
almost as badly as it hurt to be held by it.
The flames wasted no time, enveloping my body, creeping under clothing,
and tearing at my hair, the cruelest touches from hands
as soft as air. I'd have lost myself in it

(19:45):
if the child hadn't screamed. Without thought, I ran to
her and hoisted her up as if she were made
of feathers, shifting her up and over me toward the
edge of the pit, until I had no per just
on her but the soul of her shoe against my palm.
As I jumped and thrust her upward with one final push.

(20:08):
It was just enough for her to drag her flaming
body the rest of the way out, to be extinguished
by the violent wind and disappear into it. I was
still burning as I rested the ladder from the pire
to try and save myself. And maybe it would have

(20:28):
held just long enough for me to make it out
if not for Tom, my hero come to rescue me.
A man made of flames and pain and stupidity and
strength and weakness and trying and failure and love and death.
M was all he could get out as the fire

(20:51):
stole his very breath and then claimed his lungs too.
I didn't run, did try to stop him. I just
stood there, burning as I watched this man I truly
do love, come hurtling towards me with so much intention

(21:12):
and not enough thought, waiting for him to kill me
with his love, and he did. Tom hit me like
a bull with his body. Maybe he thought he could
shield me from what was happening all around us. Take

(21:33):
it all himself, but we were both more burn than
skin by them. His instinct to protect turned his body
into a tomb for me, for us, and we died
needlessly in the dirt, in pain and pressure, under the

(21:57):
anvil of his crushing need to be our savior. The
fire didn't hurt nearly as bad as the weight of
what it means to be a woman with me died

(22:21):
any knowledge of the carol ER's They got my baby,
after all, and they'll take someone else's too, some white
night before Christmas, when the wind howls loud and carries
a song soft and low through the snow, another young

(22:43):
girl will be lured to her doom when the voices
of men promise her safety in a storm, warm and
stable in an uncertain world, and then use her for kindling.

(23:05):
Good God, h hardly did Tom pass this way before me?
Afraid not to you, though, I imagine we'll see him
before dawn. Perhaps you can rest while you wait for
his arrival. Perhaps this key unlocks the sixth door on

(23:30):
the left up the stairs. I think you'll find it
quite quiet up there. That sounds perfect, thank you. I
don't know what the rules are here, but i'd avoid
strange music coming from the dark given the storm. Yes,

(23:53):
I think I'll stay indoors where it's quiet. Good Night
to you both. Good night, sleep well, my dear. I'll
guide Tom up to you when he arrives. Thank you.
The carol ers. Who were they? I do not know, Annabelle.

(24:18):
If they are living men, then they will one day
die and I'll ask them. Something tells me though they'll
never pass this way. But there is so much night
left ahead of us. Perhaps someone will come with a
happier tale. Is that likely? Your guess is as good

(24:40):
as mine. Twelve Ghosts starring Malcolm McDowell as the Keeper

(25:00):
and Gina Rikiki as Annabelle. Episode six Low and Sad
Like a hymn written by Elena Huff Tucker with additional
writing by Nicholas Takowski, editing by Chris Childs and Stephen Perez,
featuring Tara Oakes as Emily. Directed by Nicholas Takowski. Original
score and sound design by Chris Childs. Executive producers Aaron Mankey,

(25:24):
Matt Frederick, Alexander Williams and Nicholas Takowski. Supervising producer Josh Thane.
Producers Chris Child's and Stephen Perez, casting by Sunday Bowling
c s A and Meg Mormon c s A. Production
coordinator Wayna Calderon. Recorded at Lantern Audio in Atlanta, Georgia,
engineered by Chris Gardner, Arrows Sound and Recording in Ojai, California,

(25:49):
engineered by Ken Arros. Twelve Ghosts was created by Nicholas Takowski.
Then is a production of iHeart three D Audio and
Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Learn more about the
at Grimm and Mild dot com, and find more podcasts
from i heart Radio by visiting the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

(26:28):
H