Rest a Spell

A draught of an ancient brew; a trip to the end of the road; a mysterious prisoner with static on his breath. Featuring the voices of Malcolm McDowell, Gina Rickicki, and Suehyla E. Young. Written by Zoe Cooper.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M twelve Ghosts is a production of I Heeart three
D audio and grim and mild from Aaron Banky Headphones.
Recommended listener discretion advised. Out of the bosom of the air,

(00:24):
out of the cloud, folds of her garments, shaken over
the woodland's brown and bear over the harvest fields forsaken,
silent and soft and slow, descends the snow. But we

(01:10):
are warm here inside. Who are you? I'm the innkeeper, now, Annabel,
who are you? More wine? I think the Romans called

(01:31):
this conditum paradox um, and it was a bitter brew,
but it fortified the soul all the same, warmed the body, relaxed,
the mind, loosened the tongue. Over time, recipes changed based
on what was available, and eventually, praise all that is good.

(01:54):
It became palatable. But it doesn't matter, does it. The
spirit is still the same. So to speak. We fill
ourselves with the warming spices and alcohol courses through our veins,
and for a little while at least we forget the
cold wind rattling the windows. M Look at the time,

(02:19):
will you? Oh? We should be expecting our next guest
right about huh, Well, pardon me, won't you good evening traveler.

(02:39):
I've been expecting you come in. I was, I don't remember.
It's so fine. Please sit. This is Annabelle. Hello. We

(03:03):
were just having a nice warm cup of mulled wine.
Would you like to join us knock a little of
the chill off your bones? Yes? Yes, thank you. Annabelle
and I were just discussing the history of drunkenness of
in a warmth. Here join us. Thank you. Something troubles you? Noel?

(03:34):
Have we met? We've not, but I've read your name
in my ledger earlier. Oh what is it that weighs
on your mind? I have a question, please, How does
one know if they've encountered something supernatural? Are are signs

(04:02):
spectral symptoms? Or are we ready made with just some
base human instinct where we can like smell the lack
of blood in their hollow little veins. I can't smell anything.

(04:27):
Have you ever been to Homer, Alaska? Folks call it
the end of the road. One way in, one way out,
and you have to really try to get there. You
don't just stumble upon it blindly. You have to seek

(04:48):
out the finite ends of things in this world. There
aren't many of them. And Homer is one of those few.
The town looks like a postcar it mountain back drops
nestled right up against the sea. Thousands are small and
candy colored. The air feels like cold nourishment, and I

(05:11):
see snake nuzzling your lungs, reminding you of the life
somersaulting through your body. If there's a heaven, it looks
like Homer. It's a small town, beautiful but small, just
over five thousand residents. Now, five thousand sounds like a

(05:32):
big number until you realize that you know everything there
is to know about each and every one of your neighbors.
Which ones are cheating with which other ones, who's hiding
their drinking problem, who's not hiding their drinking problem, and
which ones came all the way to some tiny village

(05:53):
to start a new life where no one would come looking.
Now that last one, that's most of them. No shame
in it. I believe most people think about disappearing at
one point or another, leaving all of your possessions and
loved ones behind. The Residents of Homer were just brave
enough to pull the trigger and actually do it. You've

(06:16):
thought about doing it too, haven't you? Or you're thinking
about it now, at least just you alone, staring down
the end of the road. M HM. I used to
work the overnight shift at the Sheriff's Office rookie officer,

(06:38):
which in this sense means I was essentially a glorified
night porter. In all my time there, not one person
had ever been brought in late night. So naturally it
took me off guard when I found a stranger in
the holding cell halfway through my shift on a blustery
Tuesday evening, Dan, I'm near scared the iron right out

(07:02):
of my blood. No clue how long he had been
in there. There was no intake paperwork, no note from
the previous guard, just a sallow husk of an older man, gaunt,
his face patchy and red, chewed raw by the cracked
teeth of Alaskan winter air. He was thoroughly dehydrated, his

(07:25):
muscles and veins popping from his frame like a failed
escape Trapped to his body by only the worn elasticity
of his paper skin. The man was haggard, chased by
a massive debt of sleep. His eyes were open, though
yellow and bloodshot, as they were tracking my movements. As

(07:48):
I stepped closer to peer into his cell like he
was some diseased animal and a roadside zoo. I thought
it was a simple enough question, jen what's your name?
The man blinked at me, a whirlpool of delirium behind

(08:08):
his eyes. He opened his mouth, moved his lips around
a series of words, but soundlessly, like someone had put
the old bastard right on mute. Most unsettling thing I'd
ever seen at that stage of the night. Anyway, I repeated, sir,

(08:31):
what is your name? And there he went, moving his
mouth again. But this time I thought maybe I could
hear something buzzing deep in his gullet, like a tiny
faction of bees. I'm having a little trouble hearing you,
I said, Can you come a little closer? He stood,

(08:57):
wavering on his feet and shuffle toreward to the bars
of the cell. I planned my feet firm and pulled
my shoulders back. I'm not a big woman, but I've
learned how to fake stature in my time. I asked
him a third time, can you tell me your name?
This time I could confirm the man was indeed speaking.

(09:20):
He sounded like a recording of a recording put on
the lowest volume setting. And trapped in a tin can,
he said. His lips continued crawling around the shape of
his words long after the sentence fell from his mouth,

(09:41):
like a poorly dubbed movie, and then he jerked a
purple hand into his multi jeans pocket and pulled out
his wallet for me. I d red Kyle Gibbert, Los Angeles, California.
I told old Kyle he was quite a ways from home,
and in that staticy, faraway voice, he simply repeated, I

(10:11):
mean no offense to our host, but this wine tastes
like the forgotten dreams of a used up band aid.
It's weak as hell. You water it down. Oh, I
would never, but go on. I could probably stand to
drink more water anyways, So I put Mr Gilbert into

(10:35):
our database. Turns out he'd been missing since and was
officially pronounced dead seven years later. Funny thing. The man
prowling around in that cell like a feral animal only
looked half dead to me. But this wasn't the first
time someone new showed up in Homer to disappear. So
I ran a full background check. No jobs, no residences,

(11:00):
no taxes, paid nothing at all to indicate that Kyle
Gilbert should be standing here in front of me, sucking
in the air that was intended only for the living.
I asked if he went by any other aliases, but
through that same thick, mismatched static, he wheezed again. I

(11:20):
just need to waste m hm. So I did the
next logical thing. I called his estranged wife in the
middle of the night, woke her plumb up and asked,

(11:44):
Mrs Gilbert, I swear to God, you never heard the
grog drop from somebody's voice faster in your life. Set
me straighter than spider silk. Mrs Gilbert made it very
clear that she did not go by that name anymore.
I older that I had Kyle with me, thirty miles
away in a dinky, little drunk tank at the end

(12:05):
of the road. Kyle, my Kayle, she asked. I checked
the idea again. The little picture showed a healthy young man,
handsome by some standards, life coursing through his cheeks and
hanging plump around his face and neck. This thing in
the cage across from me bore no resemblance. But before

(12:28):
I could say so, the woman on the line told
me she had long since made peace with the death
of her husband, and she'd take legal action if harassment
of this nature were to continue, and even if he
were alive, she didn't want him no more. She was done,
moved on, remarried and all and then click, she was gone,

(12:50):
and Kyle Gibbert was fully my problem. A saggy gray
holding cell ain't no proper place to get a good
night's eap. I knew nobody else would be coming in
that night, and I knew what it's like to turn
up brand new for the first day in a fresh life.
Second chances are everything. We don't judge or ask questions.

(13:14):
And Homer, you want to wander out of your Los
Angeles apartment, disappear off the face of the earth, convinced
the world you're dead, then show up nearly ten years later,
ready to start all over. Well, I suppose I'm going
to give you a warm bed to sleep in that night,
and a hot cup of coffee in the morning to
get you on your way. It's the neighborly thing to do.

(13:38):
The world looked different walking beside Kyle on the way
back to my home. I remember thinking, maybe I just
never really paid attention to the world. At night, Those
candy colored houses dulled to mute shades of their daytime glory.
In the shadows. I could feel the wind sawing at

(14:00):
the tip of my nose, but couldn't hear it's normally
persistent whale, and the snow that dripped from the sky
white crystall line fluffs during the day smeared like ash
on my fingertips under the moon's two tone pallor. Kyle's
mouth moved wordlessly as we walked, a steady drone of

(14:23):
static buzzing from his windpipe. At one point he threw
his head back, mouth wide, his throat undulating with the
heft of a screeching, feedback laden belly laugh. He quieted
contemn wide smile on his sunken, cracked face. I lived

(14:52):
alone in a cozy one bedroom. A rookie sheriff's salary
doesn't buy any much, but what I had suited me
just fine. Besides, the overstuffed couch stationed in my living
room had seen its share of wayward visitors, and it's
time never once with any complaint. I layered the cushions

(15:13):
a thousand blankets deep and fluffed my finest down pillows
for my guest. But Kyle stood frozen in the door
frame flickering underneath the faulty porch light. I took him
by the hand to lead him inside, cold, his fingers

(15:36):
rigid like they had snap under the pressure of my
gentlest touch. The winters are harsh and home. Come on,
let's get you to sleep, I whispered to Kyle. I
just me to rest, to spell. He crackled. The chill

(16:02):
of the next morning woke me earlier than usual. I
thought the pilot light must have gone out at some
point in the middle of the night. I bowled on
my thickest robe and warmest house shoes, hoping that the
veritable sauna I'd created out of blankets had been enough
to keep Kyle Gibert warm on the couch that to

(16:25):
no one's real surprise, Kyle wasn't there. The blankets were
pulled tight and ducked in, completely undisturbed aside from their wetness,
damp and freezing cold like, Kyle was nothing but a
man shaped block of ice that had melted right through
the sofa into the floorboards, absorbed into earth itself. Mh.

(17:05):
I didn't go back to work after that, never called
in or gave any notice. I just walked right past
the sheriff station, and kept on walking. They call Homer
the end of the road. One way in, one way out.

(17:29):
I never tried walking past the end of the road
before until that next day. The sky was overcast, blinding white,
perfectly camouflaged against a new layer of fresh snow, impossible
to tell where the ground ended and the sky began.

(17:49):
And then in all that whiteness, night fell, and everything
blotted out into an inky abyss there and then nothing.
There was something, the buzzing of a tiny faction of

(18:09):
best Kyle Gilbert's feedback laden laughter. And there were others too,
Recordings of recordings of droning, indecipherable whisper spattered through the dark,
static e siren songs for me to follow. So I did,

(18:32):
and then well you know where this is going, sparked
from the void. There was suddenly a beacon of light,
of flickering orange flame through thick tempered glass windows and
olden you all hunkered down inside. Oh yeah, I have

(19:02):
to say, it's been so nice meeting all of you.
I'm sorry, I think the Knight's caught up with me
all of a sudden. I'm who's so tired? That's all right, though,
I'll be better. I just need to rest a spell.

(19:29):
You've come a very very long way, Noel, and it
just so happens that you've arrived at the very best
place to rest. Yes, good, I happen to have here
a beautiful key, simple brass, polished to shine, an older key,

(19:52):
hollow barrel, and baroque bow, one of my favorites. It
belongs to a door on the second all the second
door on the left. On the other side is the
very thing that you have come to find. I'll give
it to you. I hope that it will suffice. Thank you.

(20:17):
Go now, Noel, good night, good night? Ah Now where
were we? Oh? The wine? We were talking about the wine,
and before that you were going to tell me your story?

(20:40):
Was I I do believe so I don't recall agreeing
to that. Oh well, I must be mistaken. But the
night is long, Annabelle, and there is more than enough time.
The True Out Twelve Ghosts, starring Malcolm McDowell as the

(21:22):
Innkeeper and Gina Rikiki as Annabelle. Episode two, rest a
Spell written by Zoe Cooper with additional writing by Nicholas Takowski,
editing by Chris Childs and Stephen Perez featuring Suhila E.
Young as Noel. Directed by Nicholas Takowski. Original score and
sound design by Chris Childs. Executive producers Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick,

(21:47):
Alexander Williams and Nicholas Takowski. Supervising producer Josh Stain. Producers
Chris Child's and Stephen Perez. Casting by Sunday Bowling c
s A and Meg Mormon cs A. Production coordinator Wayna Calderon.
Recorded at Lantern Audio in Atlanta, Georgia, engineered by Chris
Gardner Arrows Sound and recording in Ojai, California, engineered by

(22:12):
Ken Arrows. Twelve Ghosts was created by Nicholas Takoski. Then
is a production of i Heeart three D Audio and
Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Learn more about the
show at Grim and Mild dot com and find more
podcasts from my heart Radio by visiting the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.