The October Records - A Month-Long Halloween Nightmare (Episode 11) - "The Substitute"

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Miss Holloway died three days ago in a car accident, but she's teaching her third-grade class anyway—the children won't look directly at her because she "hurts to see." When students make contact with her, their skin becomes waterlogged and begins sloughing off, while she teaches impossible lessons where every answer involves drowning. Margaret discovers Room 237 shouldn't exist in a school with only 200 rooms, yet finds Miss Holloway there with half her face missing—not injured but erased—revealing her drowned body still belted in a submerged car. The most horrifying revelation comes when the children show Margaret a mirror: she's been at the bottom of Miller's Lake since playing the first recording, and everything since has been her dying brain trying to make sense of drowning. The tenth point is marked as Margaret realizes she's still in that classroom, teaching with a face that's no longer her own, while her real body discovers scales growing beneath translucent skin.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Calarugu Shark Media.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to ghost Scary Stories and the October Records, a
month long Halloween nightmare.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
This is episode eleven.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
The Substitute.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Ahem October eleventh, nineteen seventy four. Silas Crane, Miss Holloway
died three days ago car accident on Route nine closed
cartsket I attended the funeral myself. But this morning she
walked into Blackwood Elementary and taught her third grade class.
The principal swears he didn't hire a substitute. No one

(00:50):
called her. She just appeared Room two thirty seven, her
old classroom. The children won't look directly at her. They
say she heardtz to see. Tommy Morrison vomited when she
touched his shoulder to look at his work. Where her
fingers made contact, his shirt was wet, soaking, wet, and
beneath it, his skin had changed like he'd been under

(01:15):
water for days, pruned soft, starting to slough off. But
here's what truly disturbs me. She's teaching them wrong things.
Math problems where the answer is always the number of
seconds until drowning. History lessons about cities that never existed
or don't exist yet. Geography of places underneath, and the

(01:39):
children are learning. Their test scores are perfect. They're answering
questions in languages that shouldn't exist. But the worst part
happened at lunch. She ate with them in the cafeteria,
opened her mouth to take a bite, and lake weeds
fell out, wet, dark lake weeds. She didn't notice. Kept

(02:00):
talking about the importance of today's lesson while algae dripped
from between her teeth. The children didn't run. They couldn't
because when she smiles, they see their futures in her mouth,
and every future ends the same way.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Before I continue with today's recording, I need to be
clear about something. These aren't ghost stories anymore. What's happening
in Milbrook has moved beyond haunting into something far worse.
We're being prepared, changed, made ready for something that requires
us to be different than we are. I can feel

(02:44):
it happening to me. Each recording I play leaves something
inside me, a weight in my lungs, a taste of
salt and rot that won't go away. My reflection in
water shows someone else looking back. But I continue knew
one recording per day, the consequences of playing more were

(03:06):
demonstrated again yesterday when I accidentally let the October eleventh
record play while October tenth was still spinning on another
turntable I'd forgotten about. For those overlapping seconds, I existed
in two places in the library, yes, but also at
the bottom of Miller's Lake, my lungs full of water,

(03:28):
my eyes watching schools of fish swim through my body.
I managed to stop the second player, but the damage
was done. My left lung hasn't worked right since every
breath sounds wet. This morning, I visited Blackwood Elementary Room
two thirty seven shouldn't exist. The school only has two

(03:51):
hundred rooms, but there it was between two hundred fifteen
and two hundred sixteen, as if space had stretched to
accommodate it. Through the doors window, I saw her, Miss
Sarah Holloway teaching, But Sarah Holloway was also in the
hospital comatose since her car accident three days ago. I'd

(04:13):
verified this myself. I entered the classroom. The smell hit first,
low tide and decay. The children sat at their desks,
twenty three of them the same twenty three from the bus.
But they were wrong. Not just their clouded eyes, their
skin was translucent. I could see their veins, but the

(04:36):
veins were filled with dark water instead of blood. Miss
Holloway turned to me. Her face was perfect from the
right side, young pretty, the dedicated teacher, everyone remembered, But
the left side, the left side was missing, not injured, missing,

(04:57):
as if that part of her had been erased, leaving
a gap through which I could see the blackboard behind
her class. She said, and her voice came from everywhere
except her mouth. We have a visitor. Everyone say hello
to Miss Blackwood. Hello, Miss Blackwood, they chorused. When they

(05:19):
opened their mouths, water dribbled out. We're learning about pressure,
Miss Holloway continued, the pressure at different depths. Would you
like to demonstrate, Miss Blackwood. Before I could respond, the
air in the room thickened. My ears popped, then popped again.
The pressure increased until I thought my eyes would burst.

(05:43):
The children watched with interest as blood began to run
from my nose. Thirty feet down. Little Sarah Henderson said,
reading from her textbook, But the textbook was wrong. The
pages were soggy, the words shifting like living things. Subject
begins to experience nitrogen narcosis. The pressure increased, my knees

(06:08):
buckled sixty feet Marcus Holloway. Red tissues begin to compress,
air spaces in the body collapse. I tried to leave,
but the door had become a wall of water, solid
as glass one hundred feet. The Patterson Twins read in unison,

(06:28):
the human body begins to forget it was ever meant
for air. Miss Holloway walked toward me, and with each
step she became less human. Her skin rippled like water,
her hair floated as if suspended in liquid, and through
the missing left side of her face, I saw not

(06:49):
the classroom but the interior of a car submerged with another.
Sarah Holloway still belted in the driver's seat, eyes open,
mouth moving, teaching even while drowned. The lesson she said,

(07:10):
reaching for me with fingers that were too long, too flexible,
like tentacles, is that teaching never stops, even after death,
especially after death. The children need to learn what's coming,
what they're becoming. Her hand touched my face where her
fingers made contact. My skin went numb, then soft, then

(07:35):
began to peel away like wet paper. Underneath wasn't muscle
or bone, but something else, something dark and wet that
had been growing inside me since I played the first recording.
The children stood up from their desks in perfect unison.
They walked toward me, and I saw that their feet

(07:56):
weren't touching the ground. They were swimming through air that
had become thick as water. Lesson time, they said together,
time to learn what you really are. The first child,
Timothy Brennan, reached into his desk and pulled out what
looked like a mirror. But when he held it up,

(08:18):
I didn't see my reflection. I saw the truth. I
saw myself at the bottom of Miller's Lake, standing in
the mud, surrounded by other versions of me from every
time the pattern had manifested eighteen twenty four, eighteen seventy four,
nineteen twenty four, nineteen seventy four, all of us, documenting,

(08:42):
all of us, recording, all of us, drowning so slowly
we didn't realize we were already dead. You've been underwater
since you played the first recording, Miss Holloway, explained, her voice,
now coming from inside my skull. Everything since then has
been your dying brain trying to make sense of drowning.

(09:04):
Put your learning. Soon, you'll understand. Soon, you'll teach others.
I screamed and pushed through them through the door that
became liquid, into the hallway that was suddenly filled with
rushing water. But I kept running, running through water, through air,
through something between both. When I burst out of the school,

(09:28):
I vomited water, black water, full of small moving things,
tadpoles maybe, or something pretending to be tadpoles. The custodian
found me and helped me to my car. His hand
on my arm was warm, solid, real. You went into
two hundred and thirty seven, didn't you, he said, quietly.

(09:51):
Don't go back. That room doesn't exist most of the year,
only in October, only when the pattern needs teachers for
the deep school. As I drove away, I looked back
at the school through the window of room two thirty seven,

(10:13):
which shouldn't exist. I saw myself still standing there, still
surrounded by children, still learning the lesson. Miss Holloway waved
at me with my own hand. When I got back
to the library, I found my skin had changed where
she'd touched me. It's translucent now I can see through

(10:35):
to the muscle, to the bone. But between the layers,
something else is growing, something that looks like scales or gills.
The tenth point is marked the school that teaches impossible lessons. Tomorrow,
I'll play October twelfth. Tomorrow's silas reveals the pattern itself.

(10:58):
But I'm beginning to suspect I won't make make it
to October thirty first, not as myself, not as human.
The thing wearing my face in room two thirty seven
is still teaching. I know because I can feel it,
Feel every word it speaks with my mouth, feel every
lesson it writes with my hand. We're not just documenting

(11:20):
the pattern, We're becoming it.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Ghost Scary Stories is a production of Caloroga Shark Media.
Some elements of AI may have been used in this production,
but it was written, edited, mixed, and produced by Real
Live People Executive producers Mark Francis and John McDermott