10 | Grando

A dead man is born, and takes the first steps in a long, bloody journey.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:05):
Listen with that phones.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
Havoctown is a production of iHeart podcasts and Grimm and
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Speaker 4 (00:22):
Where to south toward Lancaster. We can pick up highway
to there? Are we going to Maine? I'm just picking
a direction where we're not going to be safe here.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
What's in the diary?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
A lot?

Speaker 4 (00:39):
A century has passed and I am only now coming
to realize the limits of even an immortal's memory. Jesus,
okay ah, this is absurd, Sylvie.

Speaker 5 (00:54):
This is the national goal. A state of emergency has
been declared by the governor of New average Waite.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
Are they not letting people through.

Speaker 5 (01:02):
The township of having it's under warrantine until further notice?
Residents aren't struggling to return to their halls. The shelter
in place.

Speaker 4 (01:13):
Shit, I'm gonna pull you turn?

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Hang on?

Speaker 4 (01:18):
Where should we go?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Well?

Speaker 3 (01:21):
I could use a drink?

Speaker 4 (01:23):
Will bar the doors? Well, I guess we'd better get
to it. Then they'll start reading I I.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
A century has passed and I am only now coming
to realize the limits of even an immortals memory. My
life before is a fever dream. The early years of
this blood does not clearer in my heads, and the
memories of early childhood disjaunted me. Flashes of images only

(02:30):
the most salient points, resolving themselves into scenes of folk color.
And so I must write them down before they lost forever,
and with them the tenuous connection to my own history.
Dream images of hysteria, my mother's rough hands, my father

(02:55):
thus cruel and then dead. Of them, there is but
Lucia with a terrifying clarity. I see her eyes in
my mind to the time has won away match. Else
an image of her running across the field to me,
rassing against each other on the night of averting, losing

(03:18):
one child after another to disease or accident. My Lucia,
her resolve is clear to me, and her voice, that
lovely melodic voice whispering to me in the night. I
love you, Eah. Jory the name my mother gave me,

(03:39):
Jory gran Davalilovitch. Though I never liked the name until
it was whispered by the one I loved. It was
the first voice to greet me each morning, the last
I heard before falling into slumber. It was also the
final voice I heard as a mortal man, though by
then it was strained Ralph, broken from.

Speaker 4 (04:00):
Exhaustion, Seria, I will see you in the next life.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yet this was Christiania. Chavo tip a koi swoogie baga
branda halleguyah. At the show the eleventh of October sixteen

(04:40):
fifty six, Kringer hysteria, our call first the darkness, even
our blackish knights held their stars. A fire in the field,
the torch left burning at the entrance to the church,
a cant lin, the window of an insomniac. But this

(05:03):
darkness was complete, an ancient darkness. It was the darkness
from before the world was made. It was into this
darkness that I was born ah Lucia for mositm for Mositimi.

(05:35):
But it was no use. The deadness of the air,
the hardwood planking inches from my face, I believe, and
that I had been buried alive, with something new stirred
within me, such a simral farm. I had not possessed
a desperate trust that seemed to botherm on madness, and

(05:56):
I could use that madness. So I did ah ah
in such a way, violently battering at the pine ands
and whipping at it with bloody fingers, and digging at

(06:18):
the dirt above did I finally free myself from the
gray Hello, But no one had witnessed my exit from
the death. That was just a wind through the graveyard,

(06:39):
bats flying above the judge belfree. This was my village, Cringer,
my beloved home. This is where I have been raised,
had married, had raised my children in their turn. Where
I became ill, took sick to my bed, the village

(07:01):
where I had died, and were despite the rods, I
found myself again, terribly alive. So I was wearing nothing
but a woolen burry or shroud. I felt little of
the chill. Still, I thought it best that I'd not
be found standing over my own grave. I may have

(07:25):
been a simple man, but I was not stupid, and
so as quietly as I could, I made my way home.
As I've walked, I noticed a certain heightening of senses.
The black night was vibrant's color, A candle in the
window throwing off in a light for me to pass

(07:45):
through the streets With that, tripping over my own chateau,
I could sense the bats in the sky overhead, hunting
and the stars. I had never seen such an undress night.
They lit the firmament, burned as one hundred thousand suns,
galaxies filing and exploding. I was stopped in my tracks

(08:08):
by the beauty of it all, but continued on the
root of my heart to my Lucia. When I entered
the house, I was assaulted by the smells of it.

(08:29):
Cold ashes in the chimney, old cooking smells, and something
earthier beneath it, something that excited my senses, something human,
something alive, the stale sweat of bodies that have worked,
the salt of urine and tears, but deeper saliva, sour breath,

(08:56):
and deeper iron copper.

Speaker 5 (09:01):
Lord.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
I was drawn to it, as it seemed also to
me the source of these soft sobs. Then I was
standing above her, Lucia, my heart now lying disheveled on
my desk bed, clutching at the straightback blankets, weeping. I

(09:22):
stood staring down at her in the dark, realizing that
perhaps she could not see me in return, and so
I spoke to her, my love, to not your friend, Lucia,
who are you?

Speaker 5 (09:39):
You?

Speaker 4 (09:40):
You carry my dead husband's.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Wis I am your husband? It is sure Are you
a spirit? No, love, I am here in the flash
here feel feel your hands are so cold? Husband, Yes,
the night is cold, and I wear nothing but a

(10:02):
muddy shroud. Will let me start the fire? No, darling,
Let me lie down beside you. That will be fond
of enough. Come then, you are shivering? You're very cold?
Are you afraid?

Speaker 4 (10:23):
I do not know how you came to be here?

Speaker 1 (10:26):
I buried you eight hours ago. Does it matter how
I came to be here? Will you say the Lord's
prayer with me? Do you believe me to be a devil?

Speaker 6 (10:39):
No?

Speaker 4 (10:41):
No, I just wish for the comfort of the Lord.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
In this moment, I could hear a pulse thickening, could
smell it pumping in her veins. Hot sweet. It was
this moment when I first fully realized the terrible thirst,
as if mine, our body had been drained of its fluids,
as if I were dry bones in the bed next
to this vibrant the animal. All I needed to do

(11:08):
was to bite, attend the flesh of her neck. And
what is it, dear, my love? I think that perhaps
perhaps I am not the same man you bear it today?
After all? What do you mean? I must remove myself
from here from you until I can better understand why

(11:28):
I work this night? Your husband? What are you doing
dressing living this house? Why? Because you're in the angel
to s here? I dressed as quickly as possible, grab
my old cloak from a peg on the wall, down
to her, sitting in a pile of bed clothes, staring

(11:49):
at my silhouette lost. I wish you were don't know
when who saw me? Where are you going? Far far away?
Will you return? Not as your husband? And we said

(12:10):
my after life began. The first order of business was sleeking,
this horrible first that had overtaken me. I found my
way to the wheelich well. My body passed with expectation
as I pulled up a bucket full of cold water.
I bought the bucket to my mouth and drank deeply,

(12:35):
but realizing if the water tasted of ash, bunt and
my throat churned my stomach and once more it would
not stay down. Damn it. I did not have time
to recover before I was interrupted. You is everything all right? Friend?
I turned to find my neighbor, brass Lover, a large

(12:58):
stupid man, who have myself frequently bickering with over trifles
needless to say he was surprised to find me there,
you recranto Aliovik Brusselva, my friend, stay away, devil, quiet,
listen to me the devil. The devil has come to Cringer.

(13:20):
Braut's laving you, damny did rise neighbors help? I moved
forward to quiet him. But as I got close, I
felt it his pulse, the heat coming off him, the
smell of iron in his blood, and I knew the
cause of my ters. Before I knew what was happening,

(13:46):
I was on him, my it suddenly aching sharp, found
his throat and pressed the flesh, yielding with a gentle pop.
The hot blood flood in my mouth. I'll sing down
my throat, feeling my empty stomach. Before my thirst was

(14:07):
fully vanquished. Though he was dead. The spigot what's closed,
And it seemed my time in Cringer was up.

Speaker 4 (14:18):
Murderer, murderer.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
I did not pause. Immediately, I ran, and I called
muscles heating and nourished my birth's love as hot blood.
I was revived, really fully revived from my time in
his grave, more alive, it seems, than I had ever been.
As I left the town of my Berth's behind and
entered into the great forest of the night. I would

(14:45):
not return for a long long time, and so I
ran faster than I had ever run, a wolf uneagal,
long past the time that the village's voices dropped away
through the deep wood. I felt a mad sort of
CLEAs I cut through the cold air, I radiated heat.

(15:09):
Finally I found the rods that cut through the heart
of my country, the trade road, and I continued on,
avoiding the occasional trader's encampment. I ran for hours that night.
What stopped me finally was the appearance of the light
in the east. It occurlled to me in that moment

(15:30):
to ask the question what was I becoming? What, in fact,
had I already become in life? I never had the
thought even to ask. I was the son of a Stonemason,
and so became a Stonemason myself, I was a husband

(15:51):
of was a Christian. TI faster way of our lives.
There was no doubt about it. It seems had broken
all of the responds. And now where now I was
awakened into a body transformed hungry, the charge of wonders,

(16:12):
of fiends who fed in the night, against whom he
hung crucifixes, wreaths of garlic. Was I such a fiend? Now?
I hadn't been alive in this form an hour when
I killed my first man. Ra's love was a fool,
but our disagreements had always been minor. He was no

(16:35):
enemy of mine, and I quite tortlessly trained his life away.
Perhaps I deserved to die, and wasn't some light of
weapon against creatures such as myself. I sat on a
large stone on the side of the road and allowed
my situation to sink in, and as it did so

(16:56):
rose a sudden wave of grief. Not to my shame
for Proslova left head on the public swearing linger, nor
even for my policier, by now had surely heard of
our husband's horrible crime. No, I moan for Tchory Grandalliedovitch,
the stone Mason, the husband the Christian mourned his short,

(17:23):
unremarkable life and his forgettable death. I mourned for his
eternal soul too, Now that he had taken the life
of an innocent, if stupid man, I had committed a
mortal sin, the worst of them all. The Holy Father
would not forgive me. I thought too, in that moment

(17:44):
that perhaps the most Christian thing I could do was
to remove myself from the great filthy wash of the world.
Perhaps the sun would burn me away along with the
morning dew. And so I sat there on the side
of the road, over within raw dust and dried blood,
and watched as the sky grew lighter, from indigo to

(18:07):
red to orange. I shivered as the horizon grew bright.
I closed my eyes as the first rays of sunlight
raised across the land and touched my face, and did
nothing but form my eyelids. I would not get an
easy way out. If I were going to die, I'd

(18:29):
have to commit another mortal sin, suicide. And so the
next phase of my existence began in earnest. At first
I kept to the forests and fields, subsiding on nourishment.
I could keep from the birds or rodents caught in

(18:50):
handmade snails, and then with the theft of a strong
bow and they quiver full of arrows larger game. But
his hands yielded little in way of sustaining blood. I
had never been a great hunter, and evens dear that
I did occasionally manage to injure and run down, would

(19:10):
only heard so much. For the heart stopped when drained
into flasks would keep me a couple of nights before
becoming putrid. Finally, the horrible burning thirst. That way any
spiritual guilt that murder may have caused, and so I

(19:32):
began to make little moral calculations. I moved north into Austria, and,
traveling from town to town, began to pray on live stock,
a lost lamb here, and aarn cats her, a sheep
dog himself gone astray. I tried to be as careful

(19:56):
as possible, never visiting the same place twice. One lamb
gone missing can be overlooked, but two three would draw
unwonted attention. I had seen for a time the fate
of before live stock thieves. Though it lay varying from
town to town, it almost always ended at the wrong
end of a blade. I had no wish to meet

(20:20):
death the second time. In this way, I made a
sort of miserable parts for myself, skulking in the shadows,
looking off my shoulders, cold and damp boots, perpetually care
to his mud, a lone wolf cast out from its society.

(20:40):
I was not content, of course, but had committed myself
to the ideas that my cursed blood meant said, I've
somehow deserved my misery. The dive was a shadow, a wraith,
a sneaking, sneveling's teeth in the night, A man who
will look his life and now his dignity, which seemed

(21:04):
to stink the first. But there was yet more for
me to learn on my night journey. It was in ends,

(21:28):
such strange old fortress of the cities that I found
my mentor. I was sticking through the detritus in anarly
while looking for a rats ness to prey upon. When
he passed from the door of the near by heaven.
A large man, gray builded and pot belly, threw a
smaller man out of the door and onto the damp cobbles,

(21:49):
walking out and towering over him as he scraped and begged.
My apologies happened?

Speaker 4 (21:55):
I did not know it was your person, HyET, you dog,
I have returned at my lord.

Speaker 1 (21:59):
I only stole it so that my daughters couldn't say
it quiet. He had d wrn a knife and pierced
the man's guts before he had been able to make
his case. Could not feel your daughter's in nowver. With that,
he wrapped his blade on the dying man's shirt and

(22:22):
walked back inside. I waited for someone to restrain the attacker,
to call out for the guard. A murder had just
been committed, but anyone who had witnessed the event turned
and went about their business, refusing to encomboy his slaughter
treat back into the tavern, and I was left alone

(22:43):
in the arry with a man who was quickly being
emptied upon the ground. I moved quickly to his side,
sticky sweet smell of his blood mixed with the filth
and shet of the alley, and the stink of fear
in his sweater as he lay dying, making my mind
re with the trust. But there was business to attend

(23:03):
to you. Who was that man? He looked up at me?
Days and half dead?

Speaker 7 (23:13):
Are you an angel?

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Who was that man? That is Herr Bernheim? Who is he?
He is a merchant? M is he ferthy? Yes? What
I took he wouldn't have noticed. Will you? Will you
go to my daughters and please tell them that I

(23:37):
loved them? I'm sorry, but no, I would not raise
such a gift. I've finished the move, allow as the
taste of hot human blood to once again fill me.
For once I had no fear of reprisal. After all,

(24:00):
the man's death was inevitable and protected against consequence because
the mother had been committed by a fatcy man. At
that moment, a fire burnt brightly in my skull, casting
all the shadows of the previous months. The next morning,

(24:28):
after scrubbing myself as clean as possible, making inquiries about
the whereabouts of Belnheim's offices, I made my way towards
them and opened his heavy wooden door into a large
room filled with clocks hunched over large lettres. Come in
and shut the door.

Speaker 7 (24:48):
You're letting in the cold.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
No One buzzed looking up, and the wife would say
I was nobody. I made my way up to the
largest table in the room, where a gray head man said,
checking figures. Excuse me, sir, yes, what is it? I
wish to speak to Herbhenheim? Who is asking for him?

(25:10):
Jorek Grando le Levitch?

Speaker 7 (25:12):
Who are you a beggar? Herb Bahrenheim does not suffer
beggars at his door?

Speaker 1 (25:20):
I am not. Then?

Speaker 5 (25:21):
Who are you?

Speaker 7 (25:22):
I am looking for a job. Do you understand mathematics?

Speaker 1 (25:27):
I do not? Can you write? No? Are you a sailor?
I am not?

Speaker 7 (25:34):
Young man what can you do?

Speaker 2 (25:37):
I can't kill hmm. Wait here, young man, be respectful
for your own good.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
Thank you, don't just stands there, enter and shut the
door behind you. What are you doing here? I wish
to ask for a job, yes.

Speaker 6 (26:09):
Kloud said, is much what you have suggested is a
very nasty sort of job against the loss of men,
not to mention God's law.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
So why should I not have my men arrest you
here and take you down to the city jail. Perhaps
what you say is true Habanheim, Bobby. If that is
the case, why not bring yourself to the jail. Excuse me?
Last night I happened to witness you handling a thief.

(26:45):
You believe that you can come into my office and
blackmail me? You are sadly mistaken, young man.

Speaker 6 (26:54):
Do you believe that anyone would dare hold me to
account in this city which I hold it? It's the
palm of my hand.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
You misunderstand, Sir?

Speaker 6 (27:04):
Educate me then, before I slit your throat for impertinence.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
I do not wish to blackmail you, sir. I recognize
that a man of your stature has a certain obligation
to protect his business interests. Go on, I'm merely suggesting
that perhaps you should not have to dirty your hands.
So I wish to be your hand. And what makes

(27:30):
you think I need such a man on my payroom?
What makes you think that I don't already employ such men? Sir?
I do not need your money. So you wish no
payment for your services? I did not say that. Then
what you saying as payment? I wish only to learn

(27:51):
more of your trade? In exchange, I will collect any
debt audio, no matter how unwilling the data. I will
clear your part of anyone who against your goals. Anyone
at any time. You needn't even know that they are gone.
You will only know that your business is made easier,
and you wish to learn the trade. That is all,

(28:12):
no payment. Perhaps since the future and you find my
service is useful, you will reconsider. But for now, all
I ask for is knowledge. What is your name? I
am sure a grando, sir at your service where you're

(28:33):
a grandle.

Speaker 8 (28:35):
I do believe that we are in business, and so
I found gain for employment under the tutelage of our
breath Burnheim.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
The work was simple enough, collections and retributions. So many
were indebted to burn On, so many government officials in trial.
I'd seen power the phone in its basis for physical violence,
which I myself excelled at. But Bernheim taught me true power,
that of the purse. So I ran nextport business. His

(29:09):
true business was control of men. I was very little
that troubled me in these years. I was a shadow
that stopped the night and then walking down a side
street one evening, flushed with the blood of another poor data,
I suddenly called out to from the dark of Narryway.

(29:31):
I stopped, searched the darkness, and in it found the
purse liver of a man dressed in wrecks. I stopped
and considered him as he scouted out of the shadows
towards me. What do you want of me, beggar, I
haven't any money to give you. Oh, I doubt that

(29:52):
very much.

Speaker 9 (29:53):
You pocketed my own money weeks ago, and then I
begged for my.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
You took it. You seem to be living it as
we speak, stranger.

Speaker 9 (30:06):
This is not a life when your trains have loved
for me. You loved enough for me to live, but
only for a bit, and then the fever took me.

Speaker 10 (30:22):
I died, raving in my bed, covered in sweat, and blood,
cursing your name, grandle, I know that.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
You are devil, and.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
What is that?

Speaker 1 (30:41):
You are? Rafiend, a bloodsucker, a.

Speaker 10 (30:47):
Dead man walking around like the living, borrowing time from hell.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
It was not enough that you took my money, my life,
but you have made me like you. What do you
want from me? I want joy? And I'm afraid that's
A man attacked me with a false that I have

(31:17):
not been counted in any other living man. A sharpened
steak in his hand, we grappled the zak of wrestling
the angel. He bit and scratched, punched and kicked. He
very nearly had the best of me when I managed
to wrest the instrument from his hand and plunged it
down into his chest.

Speaker 9 (31:35):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
He could no longer speak, which, to be honest, was positive.
But Safary, hatred in his eyes, scorched me and then
was extinguished. Was I responsible for the rifts that had
attacked me? Did I infect him with my own curse?

(31:58):
And if I had, how many others were as her
out there waiting to take her revenge? For many months
I feared looked behind me asself went about my nightly business,
but no one came for me. I. Like all fears,

(32:19):
this one eventually softened, and so I went on. As
months passed, in two years, I learned to read, to write.
I began picking up out other languages of trade, Dutch
and English, French and Spanish, the languages of the far
East and the subcontinent. As I came further and further

(32:40):
into Bernheim's trust, I became privy to his balance sheets
and correspondences. What a witness for the wild verb that
spread across the whole of Europe and into the East,
as well as across the Atlantic into the colonies. There
After a time, I began to make money myself, reinvesting
it in to his businesses. I was no longer a

(33:03):
lowly enforcer. I was in his confidence. Fully his right
hand feeled in my own right across the continent at
his behast. I changed my name from its Yesterian roots,
anglicized it djuryel Levitch became Jerry Havoc. It was this

(33:27):
name I found myself written into his will many decades later.
This is too generous, albright nonsense.

Speaker 6 (33:46):
I never had children of my own if he didn't
go to use it or be left to the scavengers.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
But with you.

Speaker 6 (33:55):
The company will continue in the manor I have chosen,
and I do believe that with you it will be
carried forth for a very very long time.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
I hope said that to you justice what you must
tell me? You're a grandle.

Speaker 6 (34:16):
While all around you have each grown ill, lost tooth
and limb, you have remained unchanged these last twenty years.
You must have heard the whispers about you from within
the company and without How have you maintained your youth?

Speaker 1 (34:36):
I suppose that is my pioty nonsense. There is no
piety in you. What is your real question? Our brag Ah?
You s the devil? Ah? No, my friend, I am

(34:57):
not the shame. I would have liked to have had
your favor. And I make it to Hell alas alas
where you then touched by the devil? I do not
know if it was an agent of Heaven, no Hell,
who drew me out of my grave. It is the

(35:18):
singular mystery of my life. It is just as well.
But let me give you a warning, Grundle.

Speaker 6 (35:28):
Yes, it is good for men to fear you, but
if they fear you too much, they will try to
end you. You cannot continue to remain young as those
around you crumble to dust. If they find out what
you truly are, they will kill you.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
What's central Ago.

Speaker 6 (35:50):
They have offices all over the world which have not
seen your visage. Go to the London officers and announce
yourself is the son of Jerry Havoc, come to manage
local affairs after a time, announced that your father is dead,
and continuum as junior.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
In this way you will be able to move around
the world unmolested, Sacha Albrac, how sensible.

Speaker 6 (36:24):
But if you are ever challenged, violently crush that rebellion,
they will fear your name, and they will fear mine
too long after I am gone, Yes for you, relieve
my name on the company. Of course, leave me now

(36:52):
you must sleep, go out and conquer in my name.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
San of course, my first order of business upon taking
control of his company was to change its name from
Bernheim and Trading Partners too, so Havoc Trading Company. And

(37:22):
so it was forward to London, where my life as
he Much and Prince would begin.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
Havoctown was created by me Aaron Manke. The show was
written and directed by Nicholas Takoski. This episode was edited
and sound designed by Nomes Griffin. Starring Jewels State as
Coreine Avis, James Callous as Jerry Havoc, Felicia Day as
Sylvie Harris, with additional voice acting from Hannah Fearman, David Caprita,

(37:54):
Gabriel Menak, Charlie, David Newell, Beverly Bremer's, Jack Lafferty, Jay Jones,
Darren Heemes, David Davrees, and Aaron Mankey. This season is
directed by Nicholas Takowski, with assistant directors Sarah Klein and
Jake Diamond, casting by Sunday Bowling CSA and Meg Mormon CSA.

(38:15):
Production coordinator Wayna Calderon. Our theme song was created by
Chris Childs executive producers Aaron Mankey, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick,
with supervising producer Rima Lkali and producers Nomes Griffin and
Jesse Funk. Havoctown is set in the Bridgewater Audio Universe,
which includes the hit fiction podcasts Bridgewater and Consumed. Learn

(38:38):
more about both shows, as well as Havoctown at grimandmild
dot com, and find more podcasts from iHeartRadio by visiting
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows,