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The Delaurier Invitation · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Greek past.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Today we're going to be reading one of our all
• 0:19
  time favorite authors, Strange Accounts, on his little story.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Called The deloys High Invitation, Part one of two. It's
• 0:27
  a two parter, folks, and it's in the nineteen thirties.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: If this doesn't go skew into some kind of Lovecraftian thing,
• 0:34
  then I.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Don't know the number. What are we even doing here?
• 0:36
  If you put me in the thirties, you better make
• 0:38
  a love craft.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: You've had all the highlights for yourself. Love crafty and
• 0:42
  mispronouncing a French name. All that so good, good, That
• 0:46
  was a great opening from you. The Delourier Invitation is
• 0:51
  by Strange Accounts, or his real name, Travis Weaver, not
• 0:55
  only an author that we love. We've covered his story
• 0:57
  before I forget the name of it right now, but
• 1:00
  it was the one about the band of headhunters who
• 1:03
  came across the owl Woman in the Frontier, and during
• 1:07
  the live show we covered his story about the coal
• 1:09
  Miner's Daughter Diary of a coal Miner's Daughter. Both of
• 1:12
  the stories we read from him have been incredible. I
• 1:14
  love his writing style. I love how he does like
• 1:16
  these historical fiction things and now I am very proud
• 1:19
  to announce, which I should make it clear this is
• 1:21
  not sponsored. I'm saying this because I like him. Travis
• 1:23
  has a book out. He has a book out called
• 1:25
  Strange Accounts from the American Frontier that is an anthology
• 1:30
  book that's a collection of different stories, as the title says,
• 1:32
  from the American Frontier. One of them is the story
• 1:34
  we covered at the live show, the Diary of a
• 1:36
  coal Miner's Daughter. But there's also stories in there, like
• 1:39
  the Journal of a Louisiana planter or the Journal of
• 1:43
  a lumberjack. So if you like you know his stories,
• 1:47
  you can get a whole slew of them. We'll have
• 1:49
  it linked in the description. Again, Strange Accounts from the
• 1:51
  American Frontier frontier well worth your time, and you can
• 1:54
  get it on I was looking at the link. You
• 1:56
  can get it on Amazon as a paperback or on
• 2:00
  Kindle as an eight book. So be sure to support him.
• 2:04
  This story to that we're reading today is not in
• 2:06
  the book. I don't know the story is not in
• 2:08
  the book, but again, everything we've read from him so
• 2:11
  far is great, so I'm excited to get into it.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: No comment on that, no, oh no, I would have
• 2:21
  just I was actually just patiently listening. I was looking
• 2:23
  up his book online and adding it.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: To my cart.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: So sorry, dude, Yeah, well you should because this is
• 2:30
  a show where we're supposed.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: To I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry that you've been, you know, globe trotting around
• 2:38
  the world, traveling, doing your big time stuff. For those
• 2:42
  who don't know, Hunter's been on vacation lately. He was,
• 2:44
  if I recall, he was in Kentucky trying to get
• 2:49
  some charges reversed. Which did that go? Well? Do they
• 2:54
  you said you were going to meet someone? Well, yep,
• 2:56
  this is a live show. We'll talk about my bad
• 2:57
  I forgot where live. We'll talk about afterwards. Yeah, he's
• 3:00
  been very busy, but you know, the show must go on.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Right, you know what?
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: Man?
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Fuck you? Okay, because you know good and goddamn well,
• 3:11
  I would never step foot in Kentucky.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: Ever again that if I recall, right, that's the phrase
• 3:17
  you said that led to a lot of the problems
• 3:19
  you have to No.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know. I say, that's that's
• 3:23
  all I'm gonna say. No, no, No, that's all I'm
• 3:25
  gonna say.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, hopefully hopefully the show could keep going on,
• 3:29
  and if it doesn't, well, guess what one of you
• 3:32
  lucky patriots gets to be the new co host?
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: What does the de Laurier? What does the Dalaier mean?
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: Like?
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: What does Dlaier mean?
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: It's a name?
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, so this is the last name.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a French fancy last name, the Lorier,
• 3:48
  uh son Loier de Larier. Yeah, so I imagine if
• 3:54
  I had to guess nineteen thirties French. This is going
• 3:57
  to be a New Orleans story. Now Gombia might be
• 4:02
  back down on to buy. You might be down to
• 4:05
  miss so well or you like that?
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, very good. This is a one of two parter.
• 4:13
  Pretty excited, always nice dipping into strange accounts. I feel
• 4:16
  like we've had a lot of, uh, I don't know,
• 4:18
  weird stories lately. I feel like this is going to
• 4:20
  ground us back down in reality. I'm pretty excited.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: Have we had a lot of weird McDonald sitcome okay?
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah?
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: Happy Appy? Yeah? Yeah you know what after happy Appy?
• 4:35
  Within a month of this, this is going to be Shakespearean.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: The uh, the the seismic shift that still is happening,
• 4:41
  the uh, the kind of the the third tower that
• 4:45
  was hit quote unquote, being Happy Appy has been catastrophic
• 4:49
  for this fandom.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Never there already been quite so. I mean like I
• 4:55
  mean divisive. I guess I don't know people. It's it's
• 4:58
  I don't know.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: The number of like comments I read that were like, uh,
• 5:03
  you know what today maybe I work in silence or
• 5:07
  you know what. This taught me to appreciate not listening
• 5:09
  to a podcast. Yeah.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: The amount of the amount of people that were just like, actually,
• 5:15
  I figured out that I don't like podcasts through that
• 5:17
  episode was was very horrowing to hear.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: It was, Yeah, someone hit us with the Justin Bieber
• 5:25
  copy pasta, and it was like, I want to thank you.
• 5:27
  My sister's been in a coma for two years and today,
• 5:31
  while listening to Happy Appy, she woke up to turn
• 5:33
  it off.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: That's a Justin Bieber creepy creepy pasta, no.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Copy copy pasta copy. Yeah, it's The joke is like,
• 5:41
  I want to thank Justin Bieber because my sister got
• 5:43
  up to turn his music off. So that's that's the
• 5:46
  levels we've got to.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: There was somewhere I can't remember where it was on
• 5:51
  Twitter or I saw it in a comment section or
• 5:53
  something where someone was like it was in reply to
• 5:57
  us reading it, and they're like, happy appy didn't cause
• 6:00
  at eleven they just witnessed it, and it's like, all right, you.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Know, man, this is the this is the this is
• 6:08
  the dance. We're dancing.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: You know, we we we're.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: It takes two to tango and we are tangoing. I
• 6:14
  guess as it was how it's supposed to be.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: You are, in fact tangoing. You'll like that little slide
• 6:20
  that was cute, wasn't it.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I saw that.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: I saw that it was something a thousand vulture shirt though,
• 6:25
  that's that's that's hot.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah yeah, our boy Dathan Auerbach, the pin pal
• 6:32
  man himself. You know again, after Happy Happy, you got
• 6:35
  a refresh. I got my thousand Vultures shirt on. I've
• 6:38
  got uh my, I'm reading strange accounts. You know, we're
• 6:44
  set up for success here and what no matter what, Hunter,
• 6:47
  you can't take this away from me. And that's what matters.
• 6:49
  Even though the entire chat in the Patreon is saying
• 6:52
  the word sniff in all caps right now doesn't bother me.
• 6:55
  It's not going to change things.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: So I when the one who said I appreciated it.
• 6:59
  I don't know why you're coming at me as if
• 7:01
  I'm one of them, damn.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: Because I'm looking. I'm looking at the chat right now
• 7:06
  and it's just sniff and it's just like lips and
• 7:09
  other things that you have said about me that are
• 7:11
  gonna follow me to the great.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Sniff lips and assholes that last one has never applied.
• 7:17
  That's the that's the baloney that makes you all.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: That's awful.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Lips and assholes.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: This is this is awful, Okay, I'm.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Right, sniffs, lips and assholes. Also, I like that you're.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Like that your mouthformed fucking hand is all healed up
• 7:36
  now too, and I'm glad to see that was.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: This one's just kind of scarred a little bit. This
• 7:41
  one's still like the scab is so deep it just itches.
• 7:44
  I think it's going to be like that forever now.
• 7:46
  So that's cool.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: You've been able to hop back on that dirt bike
• 7:48
  and really give her hell since then or now shut shut.
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: My buddy texted me he saw a clip of you
• 7:56
  making fun of me, because he's been making fun of
• 7:59
  me religious and he called me just to be like,
• 8:01
  I saw that guy you do a podcast with making
• 8:03
  fun of you too, and I just hung up. So
• 8:06
  I'm getting it everywhere from every angle.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, it was getting it from everywhere in every angle.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, we're gonna have a good time.
• 8:17
  We're gonna have a good episode. All right, Are you ready, hunter?
• 8:20
  Are you ready to get into it? We let's do it.
• 8:25
  The Deloreer Invitation, nineteen thirty, Monday, October twentieth, nineteen thirty.
• 8:31
  The invitation. The post came in the afternoon, bundle of
• 8:36
  political circulars and subscription flyers, and one curious envelope the
• 8:40
  color of bone, no return address. A gold seal pressed
• 8:45
  in the wax, showed two wings spread inside a triangle.
• 8:48
  It had the sort of symmetry one finds in the
• 8:50
  blueprints of the New Modernists, neither abstract nor realistic, simply exact.
• 8:56
  Inside was a letter written in a precise, meticulous hand.
• 9:00
  Paper was heavier than common stock, faintly perfumed something metallic
• 9:05
  like freshly minuted coins or struck brass.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: To the recipient, rowan MCALLI.
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: You are hereby invited to document as journalist and witness
• 9:13
  the opening of my private estate in the northern forest
• 9:16
  of the Adridac Mountains of New York. Your stay shall
• 9:21
  begin Friday morning and conclude Sunday evening.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: All provisions have been prepared. You'll be housed and comfort
• 9:27
  and permitted full access to the grounds, provided you observe
• 9:30
  the itinerary enclosed within the main hole. Yelsen aught and
• 9:34
  order ed.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: The ad can only be one man, August de Laurier.
• 9:41
  He was once the sovereign king of the Art Deco world.
• 9:44
  His facades rose like temples across New York and Chicago.
• 9:49
  He had designed the Grand Atrium of the Pittsburgh Stock Exchange,
• 9:52
  the Ecliptic Theater in Chicago, and half the civic buildings
• 9:55
  between Albany and Montreal. Then he vanished in nineteen twenty,
• 9:59
  leaven behind no statement, no scandal, and no grave. For
• 10:03
  a decade he has been a myth, half genius, half lunatic,
• 10:08
  and now ten years to the month since his disappearance,
• 10:11
  a letter arrives in biting me, of all men, to
• 10:14
  document his resurrection. I read the letters thrice before folding
• 10:18
  it again. Torn on its authenticity, I'd half a mind
• 10:22
  to toss it into the stove and be done.
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: With it.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: But this is the kind of story that wins a
• 10:26
  man an entire column, or better yet, the kind that
• 10:30
  writes his whole career for him. That evening, I took
• 10:33
  dinner with Mercer and Denton at the Press Club. They
• 10:37
  made short work if they're whiskey. Before I told them
• 10:39
  what I'd received, Mercer leaned back and tapped his empty glass.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: You serious, the old ghost himself is calling you up
• 10:46
  into the pines, that's what he says.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: He's dead, Denton said flatly.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Everybody knows that he's just a bait of It's just
• 10:57
  a debate on how side so say he drowned in Paris,
• 11:02
  but they all agree he's gone and buried. Why the
• 11:06
  hell would you go and wish your time to see
• 11:08
  this fraud? Because I was invited, and because as far
• 11:12
  as I'm aware, there's no grave better than the name
• 11:14
  Augustus doty Wig.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Why are you?
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: Are you okay?
• 11:22
  Speaker 7: There?
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: Then it sounds like you're just out of stroke.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: No, no, no no, I just had in doing doctor
• 11:26
  saying I have never seen that name of Augustus doll
• 11:30
  loa whet.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: I've never heard of august Dollywood in my life. Mercer
• 11:38
  grinned across the table.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: You think he's still You think he's alive and well,
• 11:42
  waiting up there in a marble palace, just for you. You
• 11:45
  know what, maybe you're right. Maybe the man just wants
• 11:48
  some company from postmote, from posts most Auster a congleumnist,
• 11:53
  or he just someone, or he just wants someone to
• 11:55
  tell bach, or he just wants someone to tell the
• 11:58
  world he's still worth remembering.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Men like that don't vanish forever, the only real retrieved
• 12:03
  for a time until the applause grows quiet enough to misshearing.
• 12:06
  He has a legacy to maintain. Fuck, he has a
• 12:09
  legacy to maintain. After Oh my god, fox, he has
• 12:12
  a legacy to maintain.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: After all, it's not that big of a deal. You
• 12:20
  could just ride over it. It doesn't have to It's
• 12:24
  so frustrating. I don't are you come apart every time?
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: It's annoying. I fucking hate it.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: I messed up reading too, and I just like, I
• 12:34
  just keep I just go back. Dude again, you have
• 12:37
  to beat yourself up. It's okay, it's okay, sweeting, we'll
• 12:40
  get through this. Didn't wipe the corner of his mouth
• 12:44
  with a napkin and frowned.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: But honestly, rowan, if he's gone ten years, what makes
• 12:49
  you think the letters legitimate could have been posted by anyone?
• 12:52
  Hell could have been written by a loom from Pinhurst.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: I shrugged.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Then I'll find out three days won't kill me, he muttered,
• 13:01
  I don't remember that for the headline when.
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: You go missing?
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: Mercer raised his glass, did a fool with a death
• 13:07
  wish to the fool with a story that earned a laugh.
• 13:13
  We parted near midnight. I walked home through the cold,
• 13:16
  thinking how the city's newest towers gleamed like still fingertips
• 13:19
  under the moonlight. Right proud and lifeless. Dahlier truly built
• 13:25
  his own world in the woods. I mean to see
• 13:27
  it with my own eyes, see even stuff like that
• 13:30
  Travis does where he'll take We established this guy to
• 13:35
  be some huge art deco like Roaring twenties designer, and
• 13:38
  now he's gone. And then even he looks at the
• 13:40
  city and describes it as right, proud and lifeless, as
• 13:43
  if it's like it's pride as meaningless because of the
• 13:46
  greats like Dahlia. So it further mythologizes this figure we've
• 13:51
  only heard spoken of in like a phrase.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: My dick is getting hard over like a horror great
• 13:57
  gatspeed kind of thing.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: That's where I think this is going too. Yeah, yeah,
• 14:02
  it's like Jigsaw. But he's wearing like a twenty swing outfit.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Are you talking about It's just the puppet. Yeah, it's
• 14:11
  just a belly the puppet. Yeah, who's on the little trasure.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: He's got like a swing dress on. There's like music,
• 14:17
  like like the mask music. That Friday, October twenty fourth,
• 14:26
  nineteen thirty, en route to the Estate, the train pulled
• 14:31
  from the Albany depot near noon, the whistle bleeding through
• 14:34
  fog that hung over the river like smoke from a
• 14:36
  dying fire. I carried one suitcase, a field coat, a
• 14:40
  leather notebook, and a brass fountain pen. Everything else stayed behind.
• 14:45
  A story travels best when the load is small. The
• 14:48
  journey north carried me through towns that grew smaller and
• 14:51
  stranger with each stop. Plaster gave way to timber, timber
• 14:55
  to sheet metal roofs. Near the end of the line,
• 14:58
  we stopped at Montclair. I stepped down for coffee while
• 15:01
  the conductor worked the freight. The diner crouched by the tracks,
• 15:05
  windows filmed with both the steam and grease of the griddle.
• 15:09
  The man behind the counter was old and narrow with
• 15:11
  the face. Whether to match the road outside cold one
• 15:14
  for travel, he said, as I used my coat over
• 15:17
  the back of the stool.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Suppose it is heading up toward Labro near Saranac. The
• 15:24
  Laurier manner, you know the road.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: I'm I'm gonna lose my fucking mind. Why can't it
• 15:30
  just be like Jacob's manner? Why the fuck do we
• 15:33
  have to do this French bullshit the whole goddamn time.
• 15:36
  The Laurier manner?
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: You know the road again?
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: Anytime you do that? I mentioned the character doing that,
• 15:46
  he walks up to him. That says the name wrong
• 15:50
  in this diner? Is I Aniot? Like? Every time we've
• 15:52
  got to do it with the French? Why can't it
• 15:54
  be Jacob?
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Honestly, a very real sentence that has probably been said before.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he stopped wiping the counter.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: You mean the stone house up there near the Black
• 16:05
  Fork trails, and imagine that's the long got a look.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: At the window, though there's nothing to see, but missed.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: The trees ain't much up there, nothing worth seeing anyway.
• 16:17
  I wouldn't go vow you there's something wrong with it.
• 16:22
  That house hasn't had a guest in years.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I figured that's for a good reason. It took them near.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Seven years and seven dozen crews, seven years and a
• 16:30
  dozen crews to build that place, and not one of
• 16:33
  those crew members came back the same. It's quite the declaration.
• 16:37
  Do you have any sources for that claim? I suppose
• 16:41
  they're just stories. Lumbermen and mason see strange things when
• 16:45
  they sit on a project too long. A few of
• 16:48
  them happened to pass by and share a tailor too.
• 16:51
  August has a proclivity for flair. For a man like him,
• 16:54
  encouraging a few tales to frighten some workmen seems more plausible.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: He nodded once than muttered.
• 17:01
  Speaker 5: Maybe, but I.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Get to see a servant of a laborer come down
• 17:05
  that path in the last three years.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Doesn't give me a good feeling to think on why
• 17:10
  even a centric man needs a few groceries from time
• 17:12
  to time.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: Bro, I am so high right now, just like this
• 17:19
  dude in the woods, and the people that built the
• 17:21
  house aren't the same anymore. It's uh. It reminds me
• 17:25
  of a It's giving me House of the worm vibes
• 17:27
  right now. That sep I really like so much. It's
• 17:29
  just the idea of like this guy building this fortress
• 17:32
  out there like super lovecraftiing, as you said, machinations. I'm excited.
• 17:37
  A waitress set down my coffee. She looked no older
• 17:40
  than twenty and had a ring hung from a string
• 17:42
  at her throat.
• 17:43
  Speaker 8: Are you planning on standing up there?
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: I missed it just for three days.
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: Her eyes moved towards the black surface of the mug
• 17:51
  that lay in front of me.
• 17:52
  Speaker 8: I keep the lamps lit with oil, the five WithU electricity.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: A here he tends to.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: Bell over the door. Raing logger came in and beat
• 18:01
  mud from his boots. Thought died. Talked turned to weather
• 18:05
  and wages, and I finished my cuff. See just sentences
• 18:08
  like that sentence. It risy of old, like crime serials
• 18:10
  I would read and stuff like that. The talk turned
• 18:13
  to weather and wages and I finished my cuff. It's
• 18:15
  like it's like an old detective novella. I love it.
• 18:18
  I think the old man had stepped back into the
• 18:19
  autumn air. By noon, I had transferred to a hired
• 18:22
  motor car. The driver was a thin fellow with grease
• 18:26
  on his cuffs and a pipe clamped between his teeth.
• 18:29
  We rode in silence for miles, the forest deepening around us,
• 18:32
  until the road itself became rough patches of limestone and dirt.
• 18:36
  Kept his hands tight on the.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Wheel, strange place, far in the state.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: He held the pipe stem aside and said.
• 18:43
  Speaker 9: Yeah, uh, stranger still for a man to live in
• 18:46
  and alone, besides for his staff. Of course, you've been
• 18:51
  up there close enough to see the gate a few
• 18:54
  years back.
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: Didn't like the way it looked. The whole force leans
• 18:59
  towards it.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Strange thing.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: It so good. We fell quiet again. The sky turned
• 19:08
  the color of lead. Rain flirted with a windshield, sweat,
• 19:12
  sweet and earthy in the air. I jotted a few
• 19:15
  quick notes in my lap Landscape, austere atmosphere, anticipatory something ahead.
• 19:23
  As the miles lengthened, I fell to change, not in
• 19:26
  the car or the weather, but in the depth between
• 19:28
  the trees. The woods seemed to draw inward. The branch
• 19:32
  was closing like a cage thing. When the driver finally breaked,
• 19:36
  I saw the start of a private lane vanishing into
• 19:39
  black spruce. Ahead.
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: This is where I'll leave you.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: The land goes on for maybe another mile. You see
• 19:47
  the gate. When you reached the manor.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: I stepped out, the frost biting through my gloves.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: You're not coming up, I'd rather not.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: I paid him. He had the car turned before I
• 20:00
  I'd finished gathering my things from the forest floor, the
• 20:02
  wheels hissing away on the wet leaves. I watched the
• 20:05
  tail lights fade into the midst until they looked like
• 20:07
  two dying lanterns. Then I faced the path ahead. The
• 20:12
  lane was sparse and tight, choked with needles and half
• 20:15
  swallowed by soil. The air had the crisp taste of
• 20:18
  iron and lightning. I felt an energy carry in the wind.
• 20:22
  I could not pinpoint set. My caller opened my notebook
• 20:26
  and wrote the first true words of my record. The
• 20:29
  road to d'lourrier manner begins where the world decides it
• 20:32
  does not wish to be followed. I walked on Friday,
• 20:38
  October twenty fourth, nineteen thirty. The arrival, the lane narrowed
• 20:43
  until it felt like a shoot, hewn from leaves and stone.
• 20:46
  Black spruces stood with arms locked. Their tops swayed as
• 20:50
  if they spoke to one another in a tongue made
• 20:52
  of a bitter breeze.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: It almost feels like this is like I said, does
• 20:54
  this not have like an inkling like Dracula or something like?
• 20:58
  I was thinking of Great Gatschet first, but now just
• 21:00
  feels like straight up Dracula.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah, it feels like a Dracula like some ancient manner.
• 21:08
  It feels not like the original Frankenstein story, but like
• 21:11
  the Frankenstein movie, you know, like Castle Frankenstein kind of thing.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the idea of like this anticipation for some great
• 21:23
  known like the way you said, like a whoror Great
• 21:25
  Gatsby kind of thing. I'm vibing with it. I'm excited.
• 21:29
  I walked, counting my steps and keeping the time by
• 21:32
  marking the small panes on my feet. When I broke
• 21:35
  from the trees, I'm at a wall of masonry that
• 21:37
  rose like a frozen cliff. Set into it stood a gate.
• 21:41
  At its forefront stood a simple crest, two wings inside
• 21:44
  a triangle, same symbol that had sealed my invitation, I thought.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: To myself, So you do exist, mister d'lourier.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: The stature of the gateway was a ladder for the eye.
• 21:58
  Its scale was far more than just in Poe adventured
• 22:01
  into domineering long the iron works in her band. A
• 22:04
  faint text have been chiseled into the metal, the letters
• 22:07
  so shallow they hit until the overhead light struck them. Hush,
• 22:11
  draw the curtain, set the lights, let moths attend. A
• 22:16
  mask begins where midnight praise and actors bow and bend. Curious,
• 22:23
  I thought, I think that's a bit of a down
• 22:28
  play of what the thing says, set the light, let
• 22:33
  moss attend, because where midnight praise, actors moouth.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: It's like, ha, interesting, that's kind of a bit odd.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: He like walks up to it in the gate says
• 22:48
  something like, uh, if it's like at midnight, you're gonna
• 22:52
  get hit with a comedically large hammer. Uh, we are
• 22:56
  going to kill you. This is not a joke. We're
• 22:58
  going to kill you. And he's like, hmm curious.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Interesting. Me thinks, hmmm, I'll have.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: To post this one to the weddit see if they
• 23:09
  can put anything together. Sunburst reliefs crowned. So I imagine
• 23:16
  from that, draw the curtain, said the light, So it's
• 23:18
  like at come night time, a mass begins, an actor's
• 23:21
  bound bend. So there's probably gonna be like some masquerade
• 23:23
  cult thing happening. Yeah, I guess. Sunburst reliefs crown the
• 23:27
  top of the arch. Their ray is struck in the metal,
• 23:30
  as if the very sunlight had been casted and hammered there.
• 23:33
  I peered through the bars beyond lay a forecourt pell gravel.
• 23:38
  The banner held the far side of the clearing in
• 23:40
  a single great face, clean and severe. The term sprawling
• 23:45
  felt diminutive to its true nature. And yet as I watched,
• 23:50
  I observed no smoke from any chimney, nor birds on
• 23:53
  the parapets. I stood with my suitcase and said, aloud.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: All right, Grand architect, I have arrived.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: The gate did not answer. It did, however, stand unlocked,
• 24:06
  to say that trespass was only ever a matter of
• 24:08
  effort and will. I pushed the latch open and said,
• 24:11
  because the silence made me theatrical.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Of course, only at you're beckoning, sir.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: The gates hinges screeched, They're welcomed behind me. As gate
• 24:21
  closed across the courtyard and took stock. The exterior of
• 24:25
  the estate bore stacked levels and sharp recesses where a
• 24:28
  traditional house would have offered bays and porches. Corners of
• 24:32
  every side cut inward and upward, then flared out with
• 24:35
  a rigid grace. Windows ran in disciplined bands across the
• 24:40
  entirety of its face, while repeating engravings of triangles ran
• 24:43
  the length of the roof line. There were statues in
• 24:47
  the courtyard, not of saints or kings, but figures abstracted
• 24:50
  into clean effigies. They had no faces, only curved and
• 24:54
  polished mass. One lifted a disc, another held a spear.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: It seems to gotten to give them mouths. My dear friend,
• 25:03
  there's no one to sing with me.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: But that wasn't true. The grounds did sing along in
• 25:08
  its own way. The gravel sounded to him underfoot, and
• 25:11
  my own pulse kept percussion with it.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: If the earth there's a throne, it is not cushioned,
• 25:18
  it must certainly be like this, made up entirely of
• 25:21
  right angles.
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: Ooh ooh, I like the way that one felt, Oh
• 25:29
  what are you doing to me?
• 25:30
  Speaker 7: Oh?
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: It must be made that goes hard. I like that.
• 25:34
  So maybe the statues are the things that come alive
• 25:38
  at night.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: That what what you said, that come alive at night?
• 25:44
  It was just interesting after you got done, like beating
• 25:47
  your soft pud there for a bit. You have been
• 25:49
  dry rubbing it this whole time, though you keep being like,
• 25:51
  oh my god.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: Oh I want to take a moment. The thing today's
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  Speaker 3: At the foot of the main steps, the single sheet
• 28:54
  of paper had been fixed to the door. Yeah, just
• 28:56
  curled and feathered rain and kissed it off. The ink
• 29:00
  remained legible. Head and read itinerary in house rules for
• 29:05
  mister mcally, let us see you a law. I read
• 29:09
  the whole of it with care. The directives were set
• 29:11
  in numbered lines with no ornament. Number one enter alone.
• 29:16
  Number two, remain within marked paths. Number three, keep to
• 29:20
  scheduled events. Number four, do not attempt to meet staff.
• 29:24
  Number five, do not DEVI eight from times innter alone.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: I suppose we have begun well. At least, they.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: Continued down to the itinerary. The schedule was written below
• 29:35
  the rules in our blocks Friday through Sunday. First event
• 29:39
  was a Gramophone lecture March for this early evening. Meanwhile,
• 29:43
  the final item for Sunday bore only one word, stay
• 29:48
  very well.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: I'll keep to you in demands August, if only to
• 29:51
  see what leads.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: Press the iron latch door yielded.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: It's interesting that he's like just so willingly to just
• 29:59
  be like, all right, cool man, I'm down, I'm done
• 30:02
  to play ball.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: I'll give a fuck.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: Well, it's like you told the guy earlier, like if
• 30:09
  there's anyone who is going to like if this guy's
• 30:16
  out here, fake or not. He's like a journalist, so
• 30:19
  he wants to see. So whatever this grand encounter is,
• 30:22
  he gets to be the one to write about it.
• 30:24
  He gets to be the witness of it. I imagine,
• 30:27
  to stay at the ends because he's gonna die or
• 30:28
  be trapped there in a very Hotel California esque fashion. Also,
• 30:35
  the mentions of the symbols being a triangle with wings.
• 30:38
  A triangle is super common in a lot of like
• 30:41
  you know, cult imagery and stuff like that. And the
• 30:44
  upright triangle represent fire, I think if I remember right,
• 30:51
  and fire has to do with like passion and purpose
• 30:54
  and drive and justice and things like that. So or
• 30:58
  it could just be a triangle in this of like
• 31:00
  the trinity, you know, the three The triangle imagery can
• 31:04
  mean a lot with wings. It could be explicitly religious,
• 31:08
  like Trinity of Angels, trinity, whatever, it could mean, but
• 31:13
  there's clues as to what may be happening here. The
• 31:15
  idea of an itinerary is fun like. As he stays
• 31:18
  the weekend, there's going to be a series of things
• 31:20
  he's forced to see. It's getting closer to his sauce
• 31:23
  in Airyo, as we go on, just saying Friday, October
• 31:27
  twenty fourth, nineteen thirty. The entryway across the threshold instead
• 31:32
  in the vestibule hall, the air held a mineral scin
• 31:35
  the kind that lingers over quarry after rain. Floor tiles
• 31:40
  formed a radiating script that steered my attention to the
• 31:42
  far wall, where a colossal bronze sunburst presided over the
• 31:45
  inner door. At the base of the nearest array, a
• 31:49
  bronze plate lay etched with another stanza from cratered courts.
• 31:54
  The rebel host a career, their glittering plan, a city
• 31:57
  hewn from smoking dreams to disbelief of man. I let
• 32:02
  the words settle and took stock of the room again.
• 32:05
  There were no rugs, no umbrella stand, no scatter of boots.
• 32:09
  The place held the undisturbed neatness of a stage set
• 32:12
  before the curtain.
• 32:13
  Speaker 5: Call.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: I raised my side above and witnessed grand statues from
• 32:17
  the rooftop, peering down at me through the adream's glass ceiling.
• 32:21
  They appeared to stand in judgment of the guests who
• 32:23
  arrived at the threshold. Off to my left, the clock
• 32:27
  made itself known. I broke my attention away from the
• 32:30
  faceless giants overhead and fixed on the dial. I listened
• 32:34
  past that steady metronome and hunted for any other life
• 32:37
  in the marble runs. After some time, it became clear
• 32:41
  that there would be no clatter of servants, no drift
• 32:44
  of talk my company. It would seem would remain to
• 32:47
  be only the machinery of the manner. I must admit.
• 32:51
  The hush went to work at the base of my skull,
• 32:54
  and the same way worms were a wet patch of sod.
• 32:57
  It moved with an appetite. Oh, I'm not good, you
• 33:03
  know what. I actually have to stop because you made
• 33:05
  fun of me for being into the story before.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: No, I'm just you can you can jack the soft
• 33:10
  pud all you want. I'm just saying, no, I see,
• 33:12
  there you go, there you go.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: But the way it's phrased, the it worked in the
• 33:17
  base of my skull like worms in a patch of sod.
• 33:20
  Moving with an appetite alliteration like that, I faced the
• 33:25
  sunburst once more. A pedestal waited near the door, a
• 33:28
  waist high granite block with a copper plate in front.
• 33:32
  Upon it rested a gramophone of black finish and muscular lines.
• 33:35
  Its horn flared like a night blooming flower. The crank
• 33:39
  lay at the side. A single record re stood on
• 33:41
  the plate. Beside that, a leaflet lay pinned beneath a
• 33:45
  small silver weight shaped as a wing. I laid my
• 33:49
  suitcase by the wall and read the notice, A simple
• 33:51
  neat line orientation to commence at five o'clock. Stand under
• 33:56
  the eyes of this atreum and play this record at
• 33:59
  tend to well. My watch read four fifty six. This
• 34:04
  was to be theater. I would not miss my cue.
• 34:08
  I worked warmth back into my fingers and paced the
• 34:10
  vestibule to test the echo of my bootfalls, of which
• 34:13
  there were many, Yet each returned with the lag, as
• 34:17
  if the room's corners ate a fraction of each step.
• 34:20
  Then my companion rings echo outdid my boots five had
• 34:25
  arrived stepped onto the bronze crescent before the gramophone. The
• 34:30
  horn waited, flower open, black mouth turned to the room.
• 34:35
  I wound the handle and lowered the needle. The gramophone
• 34:39
  answered with a deep, belt driven purr. A hairline hiss
• 34:42
  rose from the record. Then a man's measured tenor filled
• 34:45
  the atrium, clipped and punctual, as if each word had
• 34:50
  been drawn with the gold ruler.
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: Welcome, mister Ruin. I trust your trips too well. You
• 34:58
  stand on the vestable, the loyal state, my home, the
• 35:03
  threshold well functioned government's form. Now before we begin, know this,
• 35:09
  the state is prepared for your comfort. You'll change of sin,
• 35:13
  you'll supper, arrange your round marked. You will not need
• 35:17
  to sell on anyone. Those who serve will move where
• 35:20
  they belong. It will not intrude in kind. They're not
• 35:24
  intruded upon them. I mean to give you a story
• 35:27
  fit for print, so others may bare witness to my creation.
• 35:32
  In order for that to happen, I must ask you
• 35:34
  to attend to what is before you, and not what
• 35:36
  is behind you. Who wish to look over your shoulder
• 35:40
  times as that you resist that temptation. The house prefers
• 35:44
  your attention for it, as do I, and they'll be done.
• 35:49
  Take a moment to look around and enjoy the artistry
• 35:51
  of my work. I will walk. I will walk you
• 35:54
  through this palace.
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: Starting here.
• 35:56
  Speaker 5: You will see that this vistible is laid in bands
• 35:58
  of travity and belgium of black altering to train the
• 36:02
  eye forward. Stand upon the inner crescent, feel the stone,
• 36:06
  settle in your stance.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: I walked through the under circle and allowed the room's
• 36:10
  presence to close in. There was a strange weight to
• 36:13
  the air, like a charge and a shock, not the.
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: Bronze sun burst above the inner door. Each rays are
• 36:19
  not ornament, They are vectors. They tell you where to walk,
• 36:23
  how to hold your frame, how to breathe. If you
• 36:26
  lose your banners at any point in your stay, return
• 36:28
  to a sun burst and take instruction from its lines.
• 36:31
  Should that fail, you look upon the baseboards. You will
• 36:35
  find narrow inlayers of dark stone. These are also guide
• 36:39
  marks that the room commands you resist nothing from it.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: The horn shimmered a little with the deeper valves, and
• 36:48
  could feel it through my shoes.
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: Now lift your hair and consider the dimensions ceiling. Steps
• 36:54
  upward in three separate planes. Each step is a fox six.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: Each step is pretty cool.
• 37:07
  Speaker 5: Step.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Each step is each step is the men of order.
• 37:15
  Each step is Nintendo. Each step, each step is a demento.
• 37:24
  Each step, I fucking declare.
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: It's step. It's taken from an entry in the Harry
• 37:32
  Potter series.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the definitely hollowed my friend.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: It's like what yeah, huh of order demon endo the.
• 37:52
  Speaker 5: Men.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: It's all right, we get we see the word, we
• 37:56
  get it.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Then demanding the.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: Men, I raised my focus. There were indeed three tears
• 38:03
  that met me. The echoes of the recording climbed into
• 38:06
  triplicate and gathered at the feet of the figures on
• 38:08
  the roof. I studied their empty visages. Well. The record
• 38:12
  gave off its warm crackle. It almost felt wrong. When
• 38:16
  the architect's voice returned, You.
• 38:18
  Speaker 5: Have no doubt mocked those statues above you, but you
• 38:21
  must have a stained that they had knocked me of men.
• 38:24
  The ideas given a limit crown, do not describe them faces.
• 38:29
  A face weakens an idea.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, fired up, Lord, Help Lord, help your fucking
• 38:39
  your fingers and your thumbs.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: Man, roll that putt around in your hand must be exhausting.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: You can't, you can you can alliterate. You can talk
• 38:47
  about me and enjoying a story without it being some masturbratory.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: And you didn't then then change the sound you make,
• 38:53
  because literally every time I'll be like, I'll say a
• 38:56
  face gives it, Like, what was the line that says
• 38:58
  a face weakens an idea? And I literally just hear, it's.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: Not the noise I made. It's I'm recording. People can hear.
• 39:06
  That's not the noise I made. It's not sound like
• 39:14
  that at all. Actually mean, tonight, tonight, this is a
• 39:18
  this is a horror story podcast. Can a man enjoy
• 39:22
  a horror story? Okay? This is what I mean. You
• 39:24
  put me through, happy appy, your idea, you put me through, uh,
• 39:30
  just even during good stories like the sitcom one where
• 39:33
  you are just hammering me about the lips and the
• 39:35
  dirt bike, and then and then in this one, it's
• 39:37
  a perfect story. I'm wearing my thousand Vulture shirt. Everything's
• 39:41
  going well, and you just have to find a way
• 39:44
  to bully me and to wedge yourself in. For some reason,
• 39:48
  everyone I surround myself with in life bullies me. And
• 39:51
  I don't know why I do that to myself. Everyone
• 39:54
  I keep close is rude to me. Why do I
• 39:57
  do that?
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: I will say?
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, like you know, I feel you it is
• 40:03
  very good writing. But I will say you are you
• 40:04
  got two different colors of plate and you're rolling around
• 40:06
  your hand.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: You can at least say that.
• 40:09
  Speaker 7: Gross.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: I felt as though more faces joined the congregation above
• 40:14
  the glass. Since the verdigo is set over me at
• 40:16
  the mere scale.
• 40:18
  Speaker 5: You'll fast out would be simple. You may now proceed
• 40:21
  to the dining hall. Do not hurry. Your police has
• 40:24
  been set to your measure. There's a play prepared for you.
• 40:28
  It will be hot and fresh. You will find the
• 40:31
  arrangement corrected to your liking, and afterwards you will visit
• 40:35
  the bath house to the east and clean yourself. Afterwards,
• 40:40
  you will visit the bath house to the east and
• 40:41
  clean yourself. Fresh towels are waiting on the bench. You'll
• 40:45
  rope pangs within your chamber, which will reach by following
• 40:49
  the eastwood. The eastwood guy marks when you return.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: I feel like I'm like in a fucking like video game.
• 40:54
  Does this feel like a video game or something? Yeah,
• 40:57
  it feels very exposition in a way that like it's telling.
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: You the world and the map like your objective, like
• 41:03
  where to go and stuff like that. When I'm thinking
• 41:06
  of the house, it reminds me of a in Black
• 41:08
  Ops for zombies. There was a map called Dead of
• 41:11
  Night that was about like zombies and this giant old
• 41:14
  grand like Great Gatsby Estate. It said, like this curse
• 41:18
  come upon it, so everything's like demented and change. So
• 41:21
  I'm kind of thinking of that. Some of it seems
• 41:23
  very clean. It feels it's almost like a museum, but
• 41:26
  you're the only one in it. There's something I was
• 41:29
  trying to think. There's a story I remember. I can't
• 41:31
  remember if it was a video game or what, but
• 41:36
  there was some story I remember about a guy being
• 41:40
  in a large house and it was similar to this,
• 41:42
  where he was getting directions of what to do, and
• 41:44
  then at the end it turned out of some abandoned
• 41:46
  rundown building, but the illusion of it made him see
• 41:49
  it as a new house. I can't remember which story
• 41:52
  that was, but I don't think that'll be the twist here.
• 41:55
  But it's just giving me reminiscence.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: Of it, making me think about it.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I took up my suitcase and put a foot
• 42:02
  on the first tile beyond the crescent. Mind yourself, the
• 42:07
  record said curiously. In time with my steps, you will
• 42:10
  feel mull that's acceptable.
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: That was approved of.
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: That feeling hot draft moved across my ankles. The final ripple,
• 42:20
  almost like a chuckle, laid beneath the static, and a
• 42:23
  release The machine fell still. I went on as directed.
• 42:28
  Sixty feet from the atrium's heart brought me to the
• 42:31
  stair The bronze rail bit the palm with a friction.
• 42:34
  As I climbed. Somewhere at my back, a footfall followed
• 42:37
  me from the bottom of the staircase. I did not
• 42:39
  turn to see what had made it. Oh, oh, that's
• 42:43
  so cool. It's like there's butlers and like things taking
• 42:46
  care of him every step of the way, but he's
• 42:48
  not supposed to see him. It's like he's in a
• 42:49
  giant what do you call those clocks where like there's
• 42:54
  the little wooden statues that come out on tracks and
• 42:57
  do stuff. You know, a cuckoo clock, the hour comes out.
• 43:00
  What a cuckoo clock? Yeah, kind of like a cuckoo clock.
• 43:03
  There's like little wooden guys. It's like the whole mansion
• 43:05
  is one of those like as things need to be done,
• 43:07
  they come out, do their steps and then go back
• 43:09
  into hiding. And he's not supposed to look for them Friday,
• 43:12
  October twenty fourth, nineteen thirty the dining room and bathhouse.
• 43:17
  The corter to the dining room ran close and spare.
• 43:20
  At the end of its run, it opened all at
• 43:22
  once into a broad chamber. A lacquer table stood there,
• 43:26
  linen bare of crumbs, place set for one. I checked
• 43:30
  my watch on the dot of six. Service door eased inwards,
• 43:34
  somewhere out of sight. I turned toward the sound and waited.
• 43:38
  No figure came, and I faced the table again. Steam
• 43:41
  braided up from a covered dish that had not been
• 43:44
  there an instant earlier. I raised the lid and side
• 43:48
  laid trout lost with butter and salt. Beside it heel
• 43:52
  of fresh bread and a cup of coffee that carried
• 43:54
  the same fragrance of the freight station brew. I raised
• 43:58
  my chin and let the mystery server have their praise.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: This looks exceptional, Thank you, my friend.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: No reply came. Only the chandelier gave a faint sway,
• 44:07
  if something had skimmed across it on its way out.
• 44:11
  What I don't excuse me, What do you mean the
• 44:17
  chandeliers swayed? He's like eighty foot tall giant people serving him?
• 44:23
  Trout behind the scenes. He is remarkably cool with all this,
• 44:30
  Like food appears at the table in like impossibly fast time,
• 44:34
  and he's like, thank you, my friend, my extra dimensional representation.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: In the darkness. That's awesome. And then it's just like bad.
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: He looks out the window. He's like an eighty foot
• 44:49
  tall giant, like tearing down the trees. He's like, your
• 44:51
  trout is exceptional.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: I also, I got a I got a drawing for you. Sorry,
• 45:01
  that's why I've been a little occupied.
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: You don't have to see. Here's the here's the problem
• 45:06
  with streaming to the Patreon. You feel like you need
• 45:07
  to entertain them by showing out, by doing these little drawings.
• 45:13
  It's gonna be a drawing of me, and it's gonna
• 45:15
  be something. It's gonna be something absurd.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Is just gonna be for us.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: This is we don't get We don't even gonna show
• 45:23
  this to them, but I felt inclined. This is how
• 45:27
  this is me. You're ready to send it almost like
• 45:31
  two seconds.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: It's gonna be.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: It's gonna be you.
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: It's gonna pause the story, it's.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: Gonna it's it's gonna be It's just it's gonna be you.
• 45:40
  Uh reading this story. Yeah, here we go. That's probably
• 45:46
  okay enough.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: It doesn't make a lot of sense, but you might
• 45:49
  appreciate it for what it is if you get it.
• 46:05
  Every time you stop.
• 46:05
  Speaker 10: I hope you realize that this is what I see.
• 46:22
  It doesn't help too that there's the nicocado picture like
• 46:26
  to post about that.
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: I'm speechless.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: I thought that you. I thought you'd like it. I
• 46:37
  don't know you thought that I'd like this. I mean,
• 46:43
  I guess not.
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: H Can you crop it? Can you crop that bottom
• 46:52
  half out so I can show the audience part of
• 46:55
  what you've done. He named the five putting around I
• 47:02
  was gonna see me solid.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: He named the file puddn around.
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: You.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: I'm not I'm not even playing with you, the guys
• 47:21
  watching this right now, I can't show this to you.
• 47:24
  It's it is exactly what you think. It's me bent
• 47:27
  over a table in the file.
• 47:32
  Speaker 7: It's it's me bits.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Over a table were kind of bent. You're nailing.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: I've got one hand on the table, my other hand.
• 47:42
  You know. Earlier day I was on TikTok and I
• 47:44
  saw a TikTok start and it was just a pair
• 47:47
  of lips with a little bit of hair on top
• 47:48
  of them, and I knew it was about me, and
• 47:51
  sure enough fell listen to it was about me. That's
• 47:54
  the level of damage you've done to my reputation, to
• 47:58
  my character.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: Every time I join more though, now I feel like
• 48:01
  you become more and more cave man. Like ho, I'm
• 48:05
  kind of out of my giant lib aer and I'm
• 48:06
  becoming more cave man.
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: I like, Okay, here's a censored version for you.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Guys. You have no you have no idea how but
• 48:20
  I don't want to animate the original drawing and just
• 48:23
  do Oh my god, I love that is a little
• 48:26
  rational That is so good.
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: Being serious dough.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: I can't.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: This isn't funny anymore, you know, you know, because the
• 48:40
  way the way the meat can and cartoons work is
• 48:42
  there like vaguely based around some controversy characters had or
• 48:47
  like something they've done in real life that's getting joked about.
• 48:50
  So everyone's going to see that. It'd be like is
• 48:52
  Wintergon like some like pervert? Like what? Yeah, hold on, Kayla,
• 48:59
  can you entertaine out for like three minutes while Kaala
• 49:01
  needs help with the baby? I think for a second, sure, okay,
• 49:04
  one second, talk.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: To them that was my kid, I'd fucking punt it
• 49:09
  like a nerf football. If my woman tried to interrupting
• 49:12
  my work, oh my god, don't even get me started.
• 49:14
  I would freak the fuck out.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: I'd take Hi, I'm putting bridle on the table, That's
• 49:21
  what I'd say.
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: Alright, I'm back.
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: I ate.
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: Each bite tasted as if it had been made a
• 49:27
  minute ago, and no earlier. Its taste was immaculate season
• 49:31
  he knew its place. The chair furthest for me creaked once,
• 49:35
  as if a knee set against it. In anticipation. I
• 49:39
  kept to my place and finished, folded the napkin. The
• 49:42
  plate set bare. I turned toward the service corners. Only
• 49:46
  a closed door met me. I waited whether to wash
• 49:49
  the dish myself. When I faced the table again, the
• 49:53
  plate had vanished. You're clever, whoever you are, I said,
• 49:57
  let out a kurt laugh. For retreating tread, there was none,
• 50:03
  only the sound of woods settling in a pipe, carding
• 50:06
  its contents off through the walls. I told my notebook
• 50:10
  that only an exceptional staff could perform to the minute
• 50:12
  like this. Then I told my mind they must use
• 50:15
  a trick of doors and serving apertures. To keep from
• 50:18
  being seen. Most of all, I told my thoughts to
• 50:22
  keep close to center and not to let fear take me.
• 50:26
  I'd been provided an exact itinerary for a reason. I
• 50:29
  was in an orchestral play requiring precise timing. The actors
• 50:33
  clearly did not want to be seen and spoil the production.
• 50:36
  I would not rob them of that. The next cuse
• 50:40
  sent me to the bathhouse. It's even creepier, stood and
• 50:42
  left the dining room.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Even creepier, just being like, you've come to terms with
• 50:46
  being like, oh, this is going to be a weird
• 50:49
  performance art thing. You know that it's basically happening here
• 50:52
  and I'm not going to be you know, I'm not
• 50:53
  going to spoil the but just even the idea of
• 50:55
  going to the bathhouse and people are definitely going to
• 50:57
  be watching you. At what point do you say that
• 50:59
  this is just a bit invasive or you know what
• 51:02
  I mean? Like, at what point it does the illusion
• 51:04
  of like this being curious break and you're like, actually,
• 51:06
  this is very fucking weird, because I feel like that
• 51:08
  would have happened to me already.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: I would have been long gone. The guy said.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: The chandelier moved as if something had touched it, and
• 51:15
  he was just like, huh, that's kind of weird, just
• 51:17
  up going with it. So I think it takes a
• 51:20
  lot to break this guy. I mean, it's also like,
• 51:24
  you may assume that this is some famous guy with sensibility,
• 51:27
  so he wouldn't like prey on him while he's naked,
• 51:29
  but there are people around the corner. I do agree,
• 51:31
  he's not taking it for as creepy as he should.
• 51:34
  The next cue sent me to the bathhouse. I stood
• 51:37
  and left the dining room. I followed the marked path
• 51:40
  that led to the eastern wing. What opened a head
• 51:43
  earned its own line in my future article. A covered
• 51:46
  way took me in. Glass panes formed a long throat
• 51:50
  of light, a kaleidoscope of late sun moving over the floor.
• 51:54
  Somewhere in the machinery of the place, a fan turned on.
• 51:58
  Could feel the warm air draw across my skin, as
• 52:00
  if the house blew a sweet breath upon me. At
• 52:03
  the end of the walk, wasted the baths, the room
• 52:06
  presented itself as a gallery of chrome towels lay rolled
• 52:10
  in pairs with their edges aligned. Soap scored with the
• 52:14
  letters A and D lay on a dish by the trap.
• 52:17
  The tub ran the length of the room like a
• 52:19
  trough in a temple. Heat bulged from the water's surface
• 52:23
  with a white thread of vapor. I touched the surface
• 52:26
  with a finger and pulled back at once. Another man
• 52:29
  judged the heat for me, and his scale ran high.
• 52:33
  The water was near scorching to my skin.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: All right, old man, you mean for me to be comfortable,
• 52:39
  and I must say food was quite remarkable, But you
• 52:42
  severely misjudge the heat a man's body can take. This
• 52:45
  water is near the boiling.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: The room echoed my remark two beats late, as if
• 52:51
  a second bather had repeated them from the far end
• 52:53
  of the tub. I surveyed the shining run of the
• 52:57
  tub and set my coat on the bench. Took me
• 52:59
  some time, and I cleaned myself proper. I dried myself
• 53:03
  with the towel that been set for me. The mirror
• 53:07
  above the counters showed a man's face resembling my own
• 53:10
  through the steam, so that man looked further aged, tired
• 53:13
  than I had last seen. I tested my reflection and
• 53:17
  raised a brow. The image match, which settled the matter.
• 53:21
  It confirmed the tired looking man was indeed me. At
• 53:24
  the edge of the silver backing of the glass land
• 53:26
  inscription A conqueror that eats all pageants that paid the
• 53:31
  house a courteous visit. Friday, October twenty fourth, nineteen thirty
• 53:37
  the bedchambers. When I stepped back into the covered way,
• 53:41
  the light had shifted toward late evening. The house grew
• 53:45
  larger in the half dark, its reach extended by the
• 53:47
  black of visible ends. A trace of machine oil came
• 53:51
  through the vents from the generator below. The itinerary called
• 53:54
  for an early retirement. I cannot argue with that, but
• 53:58
  he get settled on me like a manding hand to
• 54:00
  the back of the neck. A door marked quarters stood
• 54:04
  at the far end of the passageway. Beyond it ran
• 54:07
  a wing of rooms. My name was printed on a
• 54:11
  small card near the frame of one of the doors.
• 54:13
  When I pressed my hand to the knob, the mechanism
• 54:16
  clicked once with a dry, satisfied sound. The hinges swung
• 54:20
  inward without complaint. I found the bed shamer prepared with
• 54:24
  the same meticulous precision that marked every room before it.
• 54:28
  The coverlet drawn flat as a sheet of paper. Two
• 54:31
  glasses on the nightstand filled to identical measure, one of water,
• 54:36
  one of milk. I smiled at the I smiled at
• 54:40
  the childish touch, and spoke aloud, you have.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: A keen sense of for hospitality, old builder.
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: A wardrobe door stood open. Within hung a robe that
• 54:49
  was of exquisite quality, heavy weave red with a faint
• 54:53
  gray and black gleam along the lapels. I ran a
• 54:57
  hand along the sleeve, warm and velvet. I left the
• 55:01
  bedroom door open behind me. I was not keen to
• 55:04
  seal myself into any room in this place. Yet the
• 55:07
  latch drew itself shut with a clean, polite click. I
• 55:11
  tried the handle.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: No give will, so much for free will.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: All right, Well, now now I'm on board with you.
• 55:18
  He's way too chill with this, I mean doing me wrong.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: I'm sure there's something where it's just like you know,
• 55:23
  I mean, like how many warning signs has he had
• 55:25
  since then? I mean he is completely driven by curiosity.
• 55:29
  But at what point? I mean, I'm just saying, like
• 55:30
  in terms of me, like fight or flight, whatever, I
• 55:32
  would I feel like I would have freaked out a
• 55:35
  long time ago.
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I mean now you're at the point where
• 55:38
  it's like I am I'm in someone's house and there's
• 55:41
  like ghost people in the walls, and I'm now trapped
• 55:44
  in a bedroom. And his response is, well, so much
• 55:47
  for free will. It's like, yeah, dude, I guess. So
• 55:52
  I set an ear to the panel. Nothing. I tried
• 55:55
  the knob again with more force. Still nothing. I wanted
• 55:59
  a better look at my captor. I struck a match
• 56:02
  and lit the bedside lamp. Flame sparked. It was enough
• 56:05
  to show that the lock on the door was a
• 56:07
  simple contraption, nothing more than a bolt worked from the outside,
• 56:11
  a trick of the staff. I reasoned, they mean to
• 56:13
  keep me from wandering the halls at night and discovering
• 56:16
  their little machinations. I decided to get comfortable for the night.
• 56:20
  I poured the water into the washbowl, stripped down into
• 56:23
  the dressing gown, and set to making my notes. The
• 56:26
  power source below sent a steady hum through the floorboards,
• 56:30
  deep rolling, drawn with leaves, like a beast at rest.
• 56:34
  At precisely nine, the hum changed pitch. I lifted my
• 56:38
  head and listened. The sound grew taut, as if the
• 56:41
  power were being choked away. The corridor light outside the
• 56:44
  chambers went dark. I crossed to the window and raised
• 56:48
  the blind. More lights died each going in perfect order
• 56:52
  across the estate. From my window, I could trace the
• 56:55
  progress in rows moving east to west, each room blacking out,
• 56:59
  as if some unseen crew move wing to wing, extinguishing
• 57:02
  lamps by a rule of measure.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: Who wanted you down house, he said.
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: To the glass. Not a single shadow crossed any window pane.
• 57:11
  When the last glow faded from the lerestory over the
• 57:13
  service wing, the generator gave one last groan an east.
• 57:17
  The gravel core below turned to a blank field, no moon,
• 57:21
  no star. Manner held like a husk of a colossal shell.
• 57:27
  I set my palm to the class. For a moment,
• 57:31
  I thought I saw a flicker along the far wing,
• 57:34
  a movement behind one of the blackened pains. But when
• 57:36
  I leaned closer, it proved only my reflection. Checked my watch,
• 57:41
  nine thirty, my last minutes awake, I wrote, lights extinguished
• 57:46
  in perfect sequence, no staff scene, possible mechanical control. That's
• 57:51
  how sleeps with its guests. Man, this is so cool,
• 57:56
  I thought, I saw a flicker. He sees his flicker
• 58:03
  on the far wing, similar to where earlier he saw
• 58:08
  his reflection in the mirror. Thought it was an older man,
• 58:09
  but it proved to be himself. Maybe like once you're
• 58:12
  stuck in the house, it's like a timed thing, right,
• 58:15
  Like that is him at a different point later on,
• 58:18
  you know, age older, forever trapped in the house. Yeah,
• 58:23
  I made a Hotel California joke earlier, but it may
• 58:25
  actually be the Hotel California. You can check in anytime
• 58:30
  you like. Or again. We bring it up nearly every story.
• 58:37
  But I am getting a little bit with the lines
• 58:40
  of the motor underneath, sounding like a beast, a little
• 58:44
  bit of final prayer vibes, just a touch, you know,
• 58:48
  maybe there is maybe this is some Lovecraft entity. Maybe
• 58:50
  the house is alive. Maybe it's just monster house.
• 58:53
  Speaker 5: You know.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a down for a monster house.
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: I'm down for a monster house. I love monster house.
• 58:58
  Movie's awesome. October twenty fifth, nineteen thirty the North Loggia
• 59:05
  dawn came. With the click of the latch. The door
• 59:08
  stood free. I dressed, packed the notebook, set my mind
• 59:11
  to the day's work. I stepped into the corridor. Gramophone
• 59:15
  waited on a rolling cart. A typed card sat under
• 59:19
  a silver clip. Please play upon waking, All right, let's
• 59:23
  hear it. I wound the handle and lowered the needle
• 59:27
  belt took hold the same measured tenor from orientation, carried
• 59:30
  down the hall.
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: Good morning, mister mckolly. Follow that follow the diagonal, Marcus.
• 59:36
  Set the base boards to your next stop. Do not
• 59:39
  straight with the lines. Meet you will be a way
• 59:43
  I need you to be.
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: I lowered my focus dark inlays, ran the length of
• 59:47
  the skirting, converging like rivers towards a single point. I
• 59:51
  set the cart in motion along their guidance, nodded to
• 59:53
  no one, and walked with my eyes set on the stones.
• 59:57
  Lift your head, the record carried.
• 59:59
  Speaker 5: You are capable to buy and go attention. Your direction
• 1:00:02
  would be instructed by the man. The line under your
• 1:00:06
  feet is but givanted anyone who is capable of listening.
• 1:00:10
  I suppose I could use that forgiveness you and the
• 1:00:14
  rest of those species.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: M m, the Record answered, as if he had heard
• 1:00:18
  me through the horn. Huh, that's kind of weird. Let's
• 1:00:27
  see what the sub reddit has to say about this.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: Okay, hold on a second, did you just you have
• 1:00:32
  me talk?
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: Guys? This is kind of weird. Anytime one of the
• 1:00:38
  secret Butler people's behind him, he's like and it's the
• 1:00:41
  right behind me, isn't it corridor widened into the north
• 1:00:44
  latia long gallery of columns and windows that set the
• 1:00:48
  grounds in a frame. The cart cannot go farther. The
• 1:00:52
  second gramar phone waited on a marble plinth by the
• 1:00:54
  first column in the gallery. I crossed to it and
• 1:00:57
  set its needle down.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 5: Do you see it?
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: The record asked me.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 5: Stand at the scene with a floor patterned meats, and
• 1:01:05
  then turned toward the panel with a small brass latch.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: I found the seam floor showed two mosaics pressed edge
• 1:01:12
  to edge, each pulling the eye in contrary directions until
• 1:01:15
  they resolved to a single band. Brass latch waited in
• 1:01:19
  the wall at a chest height. Flipped the mechanism. A
• 1:01:23
  concealed panel slid back to show a shallow bay filled
• 1:01:26
  with bake light. Levers warm air fluttered the vine dust.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: Within a switchboard record and toned a house is a machine.
• 1:01:36
  The machine must be spoken to Each lever is a word.
• 1:01:40
  It is in the right word in the house moves
• 1:01:42
  as you commanded.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: A lean closer. The so called board was not merely
• 1:01:47
  wires and screws. Copper paths ran in narrow veins that
• 1:01:50
  bent and looped with a purpose I could not parse.
• 1:01:53
  Curved cables and relaced with tiny crossings, then sudden angles
• 1:01:57
  that met and parted like fish at a wear. Between
• 1:02:01
  the traces, tiny marks repeated and grew grammar of hooks
• 1:02:05
  and circles, stokes, crossed at angles not used in any
• 1:02:08
  alphabet I knew, passed, nodded at black studs, then unwound
• 1:02:13
  to a comb of steel teeth that vanished into the wall.
• 1:02:17
  The intricacy of this system of circuits superseded any article
• 1:02:21
  I had ever read on the matter. The schematics very
• 1:02:24
  nearly came across as drawings rather than advanced engineering. I
• 1:02:28
  narrowed my focus and tried to follow a single strand
• 1:02:30
  from stud to tooth. It led me into a wire
• 1:02:33
  figure that was neither star nor wheel, in some union
• 1:02:36
  of both. The longer I looked more, it felt as
• 1:02:40
  if something looked back at me through the copper.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: Do you employ men to speak for you, or do
• 1:02:45
  you personally sculp this house flipping its switches?
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: Mister de Lawyer, I asked the room gallery answered with
• 1:02:51
  a single click. Somewhere above. Soft thrum heaved and strained
• 1:02:55
  from the walls. The glass beads on the switchboard winked
• 1:02:58
  at me with a red light. Gramophone continued, leave.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 5: The circuses who found them, and proceed to the northern
• 1:03:04
  stairs to make your descend. I did not take the lift.
• 1:03:09
  The next eventch will be outside.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: The shadow shifted at the end of the loggia, and
• 1:03:14
  a lift door parted of its own accord. The cart
• 1:03:17
  waited with its gate open, empty as a mouth that
• 1:03:20
  expected food. Its cage lights flickered in a rhythm, but
• 1:03:24
  matched the lights of the board nice of the stairs.
• 1:03:28
  Delourier's recorded tenor repeated.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: The lift as for the others hm hm.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: The gate slid shut again Without a hand the car sank.
• 1:03:37
  I found the stairs and began to descend. At the
• 1:03:40
  first landing, I paused a handrail ran along the wall.
• 1:03:45
  When I set my skin upon it, the metal had
• 1:03:47
  a trace of heat, as if a palm had just
• 1:03:49
  left it.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: So I'm working up here with me. I would like
• 1:03:53
  if you showed yourself.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: Somewhere within the wall. Long muscle of pipe gave a
• 1:03:58
  satisfied groan. Man gosh, I love so that description of
• 1:04:06
  the wires being bent into shapes that not inny alphabet.
• 1:04:09
  He knows of that almost reminds me of that whole again,
• 1:04:13
  going to the triangles outside and like possibly demonic or like,
• 1:04:17
  you know, spiritual imagery that almost sounds to me like
• 1:04:21
  ruins or like the coppers arranged. And you remember, I
• 1:04:25
  think I've talked to on this podcast before, the idea
• 1:04:27
  that like technology and wires and stuff is basically sigils
• 1:04:31
  and like electricity and things like that come from us. Yeah,
• 1:04:35
  like circuit boards are basically like runic marks to call upon,
• 1:04:39
  like extra dimensional demons or entities and stuff like that.
• 1:04:43
  So the description of the walls and like the house
• 1:04:46
  speaking to him almost implies that that's how this place
• 1:04:48
  is ran It's like tapped into the other side of
• 1:04:51
  the veil. The whole house itself is like an alter.
• 1:04:54
  Almost Saturday, October twenty fifth, nineteen thirty grounds left by
• 1:05:01
  the Northern Gallery and stepped into the grounds, A gramophone
• 1:05:04
  waited in a weather hood, a bird house with the
• 1:05:07
  black tulip for a beak. I wound the crank belt,
• 1:05:10
  steadied the even tenor came bright and sure to in.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 5: The skin of my creation. Poors, ducks, gut as valves
• 1:05:19
  observed the reflecting pool on the channel that feeds it.
• 1:05:22
  You'll find a waste here only transit.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: It took the flag to walk along the basin. The
• 1:05:28
  pool carried the manner on its face, and broke only
• 1:05:31
  when a gust passed against it, Like a patient knife.
• 1:05:34
  Beneath the rim, small slots strength the overflow at each
• 1:05:37
  pass of a wave. The hooded horn addressed me again
• 1:05:41
  from its post.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 5: After all, hydrology is discipline. Oldrome did not conquer with
• 1:05:47
  sword alone. I was doing as much as spears.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: The voice cracked and died at the far end. Second
• 1:05:56
  hooded gramophone stood beside a square pump house of poured
• 1:05:59
  walls and a steeled The record resumed when I wound
• 1:06:02
  the next handle.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 5: You are the pump. Beneath you. The veins take rain,
• 1:06:08
  melt and ground water, and moved across the state. What
• 1:06:12
  you would here was perfectly bounced through a put What
• 1:06:15
  you bathe in when you drink all purified through the bowels.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: Of this house.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: I opened the pump house stores and surveyed the room.
• 1:06:23
  The interior contained multitudes of cages, blinking with endless of needles.
• 1:06:27
  Pipes ran their way down into the ground. I stepped
• 1:06:31
  out to look beneath the foundation, where a stone culvert
• 1:06:34
  ought to spill. The stream bolt was drup The stream
• 1:06:37
  bed was dry. White pebbles lined the channel like a
• 1:06:41
  rinse throat left without water. Yet the path gutters at
• 1:06:45
  my feet, clicked with a scatter of drops.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: Tick tip, Where do you steal this water from?
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: I asked the soil, the gravel off, for no answer
• 1:06:56
  beyond a small complaint under my foot.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 5: Instead the nixt mock stille, scorpture cort weights.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: I stepped forward. The path carried beyond the eastern wing
• 1:07:09
  and a flagstone staircase, and across a shallow terrace where
• 1:07:12
  warmth rows again from unseen vents. The woods ringed the
• 1:07:16
  property at a respectful distance. I followed the markers set
• 1:07:19
  into the paving until I reached a brass plaque that
• 1:07:21
  read simply Court of Figures. Another gramophone waited beneath an overhang.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 5: Hear the house reveals what it dreams of when it sleeps.
• 1:07:31
  Each ship was drawn from the image that kept me
• 1:07:33
  awake the longest.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: I walked the court while he spoke. In the center
• 1:07:37
  stood twelve statues, each cot between poise and torment. Their
• 1:07:42
  bodies were built of brass onyx and some darker alloy
• 1:07:45
  that refused to gleam even under the noonlight. Each one
• 1:07:49
  caught in an attitude of movement, yet none appeared to
• 1:07:51
  move in the same direction, nor toward the same end.
• 1:07:55
  Some reached skyward with stretched limbs, others bent as if
• 1:07:58
  burdened by an invisible weight. Their faces were featureless masks,
• 1:08:02
  drawn in long, perfect planes. The light touched their edges
• 1:08:06
  like a wound caut rized in gold. They rose at
• 1:08:09
  least twice the height of any man known in the world.
• 1:08:13
  The Laurier's voice continued.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 5: When I first saw them in my mind, they were flaeing,
• 1:08:18
  not burning, but right with knowledge. I've tried to shape
• 1:08:22
  the light here in hopes they may share some grain
• 1:08:26
  insights with those who view them.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: When swept through the cord and gave the statues a
• 1:08:30
  faint groan metals shifting on its base, took a step
• 1:08:34
  nearer to one, and saw them beneath the polish of
• 1:08:36
  its chest. The seams seemed to ripple, as if something
• 1:08:40
  moved under the skin of the metal, trying to make
• 1:08:43
  room for air.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 5: Now I stood here many evenings. The longer one looks,
• 1:08:49
  the more certain one becomes that they have not seized
• 1:08:51
  their work. It is amusing, you know that we call
• 1:08:55
  them sculptures because they do not move. But I counted
• 1:08:59
  that thought, perhaps the only way for a proper invitation, And.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: What invitation is That sound answered not from the horn,
• 1:09:08
  but from the court itself, a faint creek, settling bronze
• 1:09:13
  brush of grit, where nothing had stepped. When I turned,
• 1:09:17
  one of the figures had shifted only a fraction. Chin
• 1:09:22
  tipped a lower toward the paving, and the light bit
• 1:09:24
  differently across its cheek. I told myself it was heat
• 1:09:29
  with the play of shadow. Even so, when I left,
• 1:09:32
  I kept my back to the court of statues and
• 1:09:34
  did not look again until I reached the safety of
• 1:09:36
  the terrace. He has put together these like these statues
• 1:09:44
  based on something he said he'd seen, so, you know,
• 1:09:47
  creature's spirits or whatever, and now he's given them life,
• 1:09:50
  and they're probably what's given him the power to create
• 1:09:52
  this place. And I guarantee the reason that he's only
• 1:09:54
  speaking through the gramophone is because he's become a part
• 1:09:58
  of them, like he's effectively been dragged down to the
• 1:10:01
  creatures he created.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: I was just saying, that seems like it seems like
• 1:10:04
  a man talking from the beyond or whatever. It's kind
• 1:10:07
  of interesting because it sounded like almost like a ghost,
• 1:10:09
  like having like a new groundskeeper or something.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: It's like that intimate and like, I don't know, it's
• 1:10:14
  very interesting.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, man. The idea of the statues, He's like,
• 1:10:19
  when I saw them, they're beautiful, and I've tried to
• 1:10:20
  recreate them, and probably by recreating them is what did
• 1:10:23
  the like the ritual quote unquote that gave these things life,
• 1:10:26
  and they're probably what led to this place being abandoned,
• 1:10:29
  all the captive workers. It's why the end it says stay.
• 1:10:32
  I imagine he's never gonna leave. Saturday, October twenty fifth,
• 1:10:36
  nineteen thirty. I just noticed by the way it took
• 1:10:41
  me this long, but he posted this in our slash
• 1:10:42
  screet cast, which is pretty cool. That's pretty sick. The
• 1:10:47
  second night's rest, the afternoon's rounds ended at the gallery door,
• 1:10:52
  where a fresh card waited in the same tidy hand
• 1:10:55
  as the others. Supper at seven took the corridor that
• 1:11:00
  kept the day's last light and reached the dining room.
• 1:11:03
  The lacquer table waited, chandeliers cut their bulbs and white
• 1:11:06
  bowls of glass. The tablecloth lay stretched tight enough that
• 1:11:10
  it would sing if a coin ran across it. Vapor
• 1:11:13
  rose from a covered plate at the head of the table.
• 1:11:16
  I raised the lid, prime rib sliced, thick and red
• 1:11:20
  spoon of potatoes, dark gravy with a harbor sheen. A
• 1:11:23
  cup of tea stood steady beside it. I tried once
• 1:11:27
  more to catch the staff at work, friend, I said,
• 1:11:31
  pitching my voice to the corners.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: Let me thank you in person.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 8: You prepared another outstanding meal.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: Timber eased under a draft and offered nothing else back.
• 1:11:43
  I ate at an easy pace. The dish held the
• 1:11:45
  same impossible freshness as if the stove lived inside the table.
• 1:11:50
  When I lifted the napkin, a printed slip slid free retire.
• 1:11:54
  At eight, I checked the watch. My bedchambers were already calling.
• 1:12:00
  Heated the note and returned to the quarters that bore
• 1:12:01
  my name. The chamber admitted me. This time. The door
• 1:12:05
  did not wait before closing behind my back. The latch
• 1:12:08
  drew shut almost at once. After I crossed the threshold.
• 1:12:12
  I tried the knob, knowing I would not like. The
• 1:12:14
  result was expected. No purchase.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: Very well, We ought to repeat the same experiment for
• 1:12:21
  a second night.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: I lit the lamp and set my notebook on the desk.
• 1:12:25
  I began writing about the day I had just experienced.
• 1:12:28
  The generator's lament once more spoke through the floorboards. As
• 1:12:31
  the lights around the manner began fading, the machine gave
• 1:12:35
  the steady animal murmur of a draft horse and harness.
• 1:12:39
  Then the pattern changed. A soft roll came along the hall,
• 1:12:43
  the faint scrape of a cart. It paused outside my
• 1:12:46
  door and came to a perfect rest. A heartbeat later,
• 1:12:50
  a gramophone woke with the belt's small bite, and the
• 1:12:53
  horn spoke. It was not with words, but with a
• 1:12:56
  noise that had no business in a human corridor, But
• 1:13:00
  rose was a rehearsal of noises that a man does
• 1:13:02
  not care to name. Yet I must voices gathered huddled together,
• 1:13:08
  not speaking any tongue. I knew children at a school yard,
• 1:13:11
  heard through a long pipe, a woman laughing until the
• 1:13:14
  sound broke, a man counting, But the numbers arrived out
• 1:13:18
  of order and then ran backward, each noise overlapping yet distinct.
• 1:13:22
  A mass of individuals climbed for their own attention. I
• 1:13:25
  set my forearm to the panel as if to brace
• 1:13:27
  the door. Enough, I said, meant it.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: You have made your point.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: The horn replied by pulling everything down at once. Paul
• 1:13:36
  sank as if the floor dropped away, and to the
• 1:13:39
  fall came a choir without words, mouths open, throats, desert dry.
• 1:13:44
  A chorus of mouth sounds rose to the wet clack
• 1:13:47
  of lips, trying on words that did not fit. A
• 1:13:51
  scrape crossed the door, frantic and searching, as though the
• 1:13:54
  horn had growed a probe tip and a nail that
• 1:13:57
  sought an audience with me.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: Enough, Oh that is holy, I said. Enough.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: Static swelled, chair creaked on the other side, needles skated,
• 1:14:07
  and silence cut clean haul returned to the old stone.
• 1:14:13
  After some minutes, I studied my thinking, set notes in
• 1:14:15
  order trim, trim the lamp, and lay atop the cover.
• 1:14:19
  Lay with my boots on. I kept the lock in sight.
• 1:14:24
  The earth outside pressed its face to the pain. Somewhere
• 1:14:27
  a pipe clicked as it cooled. Heard only the soft
• 1:14:30
  grind of the earth under the foundations. The house had settled.
• 1:14:34
  I did not.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: Sleep.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: Eventually came for me, despite my protest.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 11: Gosh, man, so sick, there's so many, there's so many
• 1:14:43
  different elements, Like it kind of sounds like, uh, it
• 1:14:45
  sounds like the part of you know, uh, it's like
• 1:14:48
  when fucking Dracula asked the uh.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: The guy to come in, and like now he's being
• 1:14:53
  seduced by vampires and stuff. And it also has like
• 1:14:56
  remnants of like Poe of like House of Usher or
• 1:14:58
  something like that. There's so many different kinds of uh,
• 1:15:02
  so many different flavors that I'm you know, getting with
• 1:15:04
  this story.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: It's very interesting.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: Do you say, so that almost sounds like punishment, Like
• 1:15:09
  he did something wrong, so now it's threatening him with
• 1:15:12
  like the voices of all those who have trapped or
• 1:15:14
  letting him hear hell or something like that. And he's like, enough,
• 1:15:17
  you've made your point clear. Did he do anything wrong
• 1:15:20
  or anything to warrant that.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: I think he's I think he's just staying. But also
• 1:15:23
  to be fair, he's done, he's bending the rules a bit.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: He keeps like, he keeps talking to the staff, He's
• 1:15:28
  done other things like he's a look back. But I
• 1:15:30
  do think also just by staying there longer and longer,
• 1:15:32
  he's going to be more subjected to whatever's looking inside.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think maybe it's kind of like he's he's
• 1:15:41
  getting close, so now it's coming to him and it's
• 1:15:43
  letting him hear sounds of people, maybe all the people
• 1:15:46
  it owns or spirits and possesses. And then it's I
• 1:15:49
  love that description. A course of mouth sounds rose to
• 1:15:52
  a wet clack of lips trying onwards that did not fit.
• 1:15:54
  It sounds almost like a skin walker esque, like, you know,
• 1:15:58
  things trying to sound human. So it's like they're like,
• 1:16:01
  if the sound before is the spirits of people that
• 1:16:03
  are in tumbe there, then that's the sound of the statues, right,
• 1:16:07
  the greater the things.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's necessarily skin Walker's as much
• 1:16:12
  as I'm reading as like almost speaking in tongues or.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: Like not well by skinwalker, I meant the tone people
• 1:16:18
  typically attribute to skinned walkers, right, Okay, like that kind
• 1:16:22
  of speak that yeah, not literally skinned Walker's, just the
• 1:16:26
  sound that kind of thing, like like it's things trying
• 1:16:30
  to speak without really understanding what speaking is.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, like a husk of a man exactly,
• 1:16:35
  God helped me exactly, kind of like someone imitating alms, Yeah, exactly,
• 1:16:39
  the husk of a man of Like I think that
• 1:16:41
  they keep reading as like dead entities. It seems like,
• 1:16:45
  I mean, like, I don't know if you feel the
• 1:16:46
  same way, but it seems like he's going to be
• 1:16:48
  added to the staff at the end. He's being in
• 1:16:50
  doctor to all of their practices, to where when the
• 1:16:53
  time comes, he's going to be like a groundskeeper as well.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: Or it's like a helper, you know.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's going to be consumed by this thing, this place. Yeah,
• 1:17:01
  for sure. Gosh, man, this story is so good. All
• 1:17:04
  right well Part two, Part two, Sunday, October twenty sixth,
• 1:17:09
  nineteen thirty The living manner. Oh, let's go, baby, Let's
• 1:17:15
  go baby, all right. I woke to a sound I
• 1:17:18
  had not heard since Friday, the common music of a
• 1:17:21
  lived in home. Water ran in the pipes, the cart
• 1:17:25
  will murmured down a corridor somewhere, kettle sang. I lay
• 1:17:29
  still and listened. A hush of careful staging had lifted,
• 1:17:33
  and with it the dream of a museum kept by
• 1:17:35
  ghost finally parted. I ready for the day and stepped
• 1:17:39
  through the threshold. The estate did indeed bear life within it.
• 1:17:43
  Outside a window show two gardeners crossing the far terrace
• 1:17:47
  with rakes slung along their backs, boots printing the gravel
• 1:17:50
  still wet from night air. Inside a porter passed through
• 1:17:54
  the hall with folded plindon.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: Good morning, sir, said.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: A steward at my elbow. His coat was dark and.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: While brushed, breakfast is being prepared for you.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: I fought a laugh.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: Well aren't you welcome?
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: Side he gave the smallest bow.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 8: I'm pleased to hear that, sir, please come this way.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: As we walked, he kept pace beside me, the steps
• 1:18:16
  a half step out of rhythm, as if learning a gate.
• 1:18:19
  Long rehearsed in theory and never performed. How how see
• 1:18:23
  stuff like that? Little things like that give the implication
• 1:18:25
  like maybe these aren't people. Maybe there are things just
• 1:18:27
  trying to be people. But is like the way he
• 1:18:30
  says it, long rehearsed but never performed, tells everything. It's
• 1:18:33
  been an empty house. They've been expecting company, but they've
• 1:18:35
  never had a walk before. But now they do.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 8: Ah man forgiven and putting a question, where were you
• 1:18:42
  all yesterday?
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: The parents?
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 5: Sir?
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: For what for today?
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 5: Sir?
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: I was beginning to think the house was empty, he said.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 8: After a time, I regret to say your inkling was wrong.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: Sir, we were here listening to you. Listening.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: He cast a look towards the stairwell.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: Of course, sir, you've spoke to us. What do you
• 1:19:11
  mean when one speaks, one is heard. You were never alone.
• 1:19:17
  We valued your kind remarks. It cannot wait for you
• 1:19:20
  to join us this evening. And here I thought I
• 1:19:23
  was just speaking to empty halls. Why if I may
• 1:19:27
  ask Apere now, but not before paused of the landing.
• 1:19:31
  It was desired by whom, by those who serve, we
• 1:19:37
  have not been seen for a long time. Be expressed
• 1:19:40
  a desire to attend you in person. We found great
• 1:19:43
  enjoyment in hearing the sounds of a guest, and the
• 1:19:47
  Master of proved of this deviation.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: Trace of light reached his eyes like the flame of
• 1:19:53
  a fever.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: He was he was persuaded, sir. Great works are often
• 1:19:59
  amended by this and passions. It would hope that you
• 1:20:02
  sought us out first.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: Oh man, Okay, so because he called out creepy bastard,
• 1:20:10
  a little creepy fuck walking around, he's well, yeah, he's
• 1:20:13
  like a demon or like something something like a little
• 1:20:16
  mel whatever he's just mentioned, like a nome with a
• 1:20:17
  full fucking like tent pitch right there.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 8: He's just like, maybe you've called to us, and when
• 1:20:22
  we answered.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: It's like, you look like a little tripod. Thank you, sir.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: Why are you a foot and a half tall? It's like,
• 1:20:32
  I'm actually the tallest of my species, sir.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: So because he called out, like with the compliments about
• 1:20:41
  the food and stuff like that, the house answered. But
• 1:20:44
  he wasn't supposed to do that. And with the record
• 1:20:46
  playing the night before, I feel like it's a bad
• 1:20:48
  thing that he sees everyone now right, it has to be.
• 1:20:53
  It's like, okay, you want to see what's behind the veil,
• 1:20:55
  here you go, and now he can never leave. Yeah,
• 1:20:57
  this is this is again, last time I say it.
• 1:21:00
  This is the plot of the song by the Eagles
• 1:21:03
  Hotel California. And that's okay. It's a good song, like
• 1:21:06
  the idea of a mysterious manner you check into with
• 1:21:09
  spirits that you are trapped there. I like that. But
• 1:21:14
  this is Hotel California, which is good. I like. I
• 1:21:16
  like both those things. So I really this is what
• 1:21:21
  do you what? Trick your discardly He's sending the image
• 1:21:24
  of me been over the table like at least two
• 1:21:27
  dozen times as as a friend, as a friend and
• 1:21:36
  a business partner. I'm asking that this picture does not
• 1:21:40
  see the light of the.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: Is not is that?
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: Because if anyone sees a meat canyon drawing of me
• 1:21:48
  doing that, it'll immediately become what did he do? And
• 1:21:54
  the answer is nothing besides this podcast, which might have
• 1:21:56
  been a mistake. But here we are just in the
• 1:22:01
  middle of me like just going on about how beautiful
• 1:22:03
  this is and the rioting style and stuff. You're just
• 1:22:05
  sending me a drawing you did this? Is you realize
• 1:22:07
  how weird of a relationship this is. You could just
• 1:22:09
  draw me doing that and then that no one else
• 1:22:12
  has that interaction with people.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: You can do that to me if you want. That's
• 1:22:15
  such what you can do it to me if you want.
• 1:22:18
  I can't do that, Sure you can. I can't do that.
• 1:22:23
  I can't. Actually I was gonna do something's a bit,
• 1:22:29
  but I don't have a pin around me, so never mine.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: Uh No, I can't. I can't. I have no ability
• 1:22:34
  to draw. I let the mystery go. Coffee floated up
• 1:22:38
  the stairs, and with it the light salt broiled fish
• 1:22:41
  and the sweet tank fresh fruit. He guided me to
• 1:22:44
  the dining room. The faces along the sideboard held fresh
• 1:22:47
  plants and stems, their leaves still wet. Please, Stewart said,
• 1:22:52
  drawing a chair.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: And if you'd like your morning paper instead.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 3: Of folded broadsheet by my cup. The mastad was from Albany,
• 1:22:59
  and boy yesterday's date. I saw an article from Denton
• 1:23:02
  advertised on the front page. A woman in gray set
• 1:23:06
  down a dish in front of me.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 8: If you required another egg, she said, ring Once.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 3: Her vows were neat and her attention was fixed on
• 1:23:14
  the rim of the plate, I thinked her. She bowed
• 1:23:17
  him went I ate like a man found exonerated on
• 1:23:20
  all charges.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: This man a mixed for some strange bedfellows.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: I said, a mouthful of sugared fruit.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Sir, that wasn't meant to be an insult. You keep
• 1:23:32
  good order, that is the intention. Will the Master join
• 1:23:36
  us at any point today? They get to meet the
• 1:23:39
  man who invited me.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: He opened a shirt pocket and reached inside an embossed
• 1:23:43
  creaming card lay within the letters Raised and Sober Black.
• 1:23:48
  He offered it to me.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: Your invitation, sir. It read this evening in the Great
• 1:23:53
  Salon at eight o'clock, the tererennial procession will be presented.
• 1:23:58
  Your attendance is no longer a quest a meo journalists.
• 1:24:01
  There's a profit tenant of this estate.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: Maybe I touched the car, I turned the cost.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: He was like, you're no longer work for anyone. You
• 1:24:09
  live here now. It's pretty much what that is.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: What that reads like, you're stuck here forever, so good luck. See.
• 1:24:17
  Maybe it's like maybe it's dimensional, right because he slept
• 1:24:19
  there that night, he heard the things, and now he's
• 1:24:21
  in the other plane where the workers are. So this
• 1:24:24
  is what it always looks like here. But to the
• 1:24:26
  new guests, those who arrive from our world, they're invisible.
• 1:24:30
  It's just happening around them. Also, his initials being ad
• 1:24:34
  is like you know, Anno Domini, year of our lord,
• 1:24:36
  after that, after death. Yeah, so it kind of goes
• 1:24:40
  back to that idea that maybe he is in a
• 1:24:48
  not really not to say that Deloier is time or
• 1:24:55
  mortal or something like that, but it gives the idea
• 1:24:57
  that he is all encompassing, right, Yeah, I turned the
• 1:25:02
  cart and felt the bite of the letters against my skin.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: At last, a point toward which all this is matched,
• 1:25:09
  as you say, sir, will there be many in attendance.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 3: All who seve he answered, which I took to me
• 1:25:17
  in the entire staff and the house. I'll tend two,
• 1:25:21
  I said, half in jest. Ghost of a smile touched
• 1:25:25
  his mouth.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: The house is always present.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: I bet it is. He stepped back and let two
• 1:25:31
  porters pass, with a folded carpet between them, both sharing
• 1:25:35
  its weight. Behind them came a boy with a box
• 1:25:37
  of bulbs, wrapped in paper and tied with shrink. Took
• 1:25:40
  the sides end and fell to ease. Moved through me
• 1:25:43
  to a sense of safety in the company of others. Sunday,
• 1:25:46
  October twenty sixth, nineteen thirty, the library and workroom. When
• 1:25:52
  I finished eating, my plate was taken without flourish. Another
• 1:25:55
  cup of coffee was prepared for me at my right hand.
• 1:25:58
  Steward waited until I had emptied my second glass, before asking.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 8: Would you care to walk the room? Set oh the
• 1:26:03
  la staffa on out entry.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: I suppose I would, I stirred from my seat.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: That sounds like a wonderful gift.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: We set out on our tour. The library opened like
• 1:26:13
  a great chamber car from ember green glass lamps cast
• 1:26:17
  their calm over the reading tables, shelves rose from floor
• 1:26:20
  to ceiling each year, numbered gilded characters that caught in
• 1:26:24
  the light the ladder weighted among them. Wheels chocked in place.
• 1:26:28
  Between the shelves hung framed blueprints of bridges, arches, and
• 1:26:32
  grid cities, drawn in heavy ink. Even though every shelf
• 1:26:36
  stood full, nothing felt random. Of her tears held architecture,
• 1:26:40
  city planning, hydraulics. The middle ranks turned stranger, with titles
• 1:26:44
  such as Treaties on Natural Order, Structures of alesioned design, Magnetism,
• 1:26:50
  and Manifestation. On the lowest shelf, a set of volumes
• 1:26:54
  in tarnished leather bore a single embossed title, Mechanics of
• 1:26:59
  Deform out of tanks. Their spines carried diagrams of orbits
• 1:27:02
  and cogs.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 8: The master to read from those the most often imported
• 1:27:07
  from unic I.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 3: Believe deform adaptation, so like the forms of deity, like
• 1:27:14
  how it changed them. He read, He reads that one
• 1:27:17
  all the time. He likes to read that one and
• 1:27:19
  float in the garden, And uh, what anyway? These this
• 1:27:24
  is the coffee machine. I set a finger to the
• 1:27:27
  edge of one of their covers, binding held warmth, though
• 1:27:30
  the lamp above gave a little heat drew back, uneasy
• 1:27:33
  at the sensation.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: Good Lord, he has catalog creation itself.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 3: The seward gave no reply, but his attention lingered on
• 1:27:42
  the books. As I have to confirm my exaggeration. Beside
• 1:27:46
  a writing desk resided a small lectern. Upon it rested
• 1:27:49
  a chained tomeb of heavier make than the others. It's
• 1:27:53
  title read merrit Tables of the ninth Configuration. I turned
• 1:27:59
  a page and met with the same drawings I had
• 1:28:01
  seen behind the wall panel lattice diagrams of motion, spiraling
• 1:28:05
  kurds rendered and metallic pros, each depiction label with symbols
• 1:28:09
  from no language I knew. Between the lines ran fate,
• 1:28:12
  notations of ideal temperatures and prime decibel rates.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: The master craft of that text himself. He called it
• 1:28:19
  his great magnum opus. He says, shoot, the same order
• 1:28:23
  that guides both Adam and Empire.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: I'm just gonna say, what's it about? It's kind of funny,
• 1:28:29
  It's just like it guides Adaman Empire. Hi Yah, Really,
• 1:28:31
  what is it about it?
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: What's that sounds cool?
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: We saw earlier, I mean, along with all the supernatural
• 1:28:37
  things he's seen, But he saw earlier this configuration of
• 1:28:40
  wires that was a language he couldn't perceive. And now
• 1:28:44
  he sees in like the ghost book room that he
• 1:28:48
  has nine tables of these which nine tries nine goes
• 1:28:52
  back to like trinity symbolism, like threes and triangles and
• 1:28:55
  stuff like that. So he has like this occult book
• 1:29:00
  that is these unspeakable shapes and designs that control everything
• 1:29:05
  from madams to empires. And he's like, oh, really, so
• 1:29:07
  like is there like pictures and stuff? I followed the
• 1:29:13
  ink line by line.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: What is it about?
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 3: The Steward studied the text without a change of face.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: The study of language. I believe the master held that's small,
• 1:29:23
  held that small and that vast share single alphabet he
• 1:29:27
  called the law resemblance. It's not the same grammar could
• 1:29:30
  guide living engines.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: Oh, living engines.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 8: The difference between faith and voltage is smaller.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: The most care to see.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 3: Oh, oh you know what draw the picture of me?
• 1:29:44
  I don't care that line ever. Okay, I've talked about
• 1:29:48
  this concept like a dozen times on the show before,
• 1:29:51
  Like how cool it is to think that like electricity
• 1:29:53
  was ran by like spiritual stuff perfectly encapsulated in the sentence.
• 1:29:57
  The difference between faith and voltage is smaller. The most
• 1:29:59
  care to see. That's so good, that's so good, that
• 1:30:02
  hits so hard. Oh my gosh, I'm fired up. I'm excited.
• 1:30:08
  This is this is the most removed from happy happy
• 1:30:10
  we can possibly be. I got I gotta say, I
• 1:30:16
  gotta say to be honest with you. So far, this
• 1:30:21
  is like just just the tone, the setting, the rioting
• 1:30:24
  and all that. This is one of my favorite stories
• 1:30:26
  we've read on the show. Wow, I think. But really,
• 1:30:30
  Mother Horse Eyes is still my favorite, I think, and
• 1:30:33
  that's gonna be a hard one to beat. But this is,
• 1:30:37
  this is getting me. It's got my goat pretty good
• 1:30:41
  right now. So and the idea of like he figured
• 1:30:45
  out the reason he's so powerful is because he figured
• 1:30:47
  out like this secret, hidden thing that these spirits gave
• 1:30:52
  to him long ago, and he's tried to recreate it
• 1:30:54
  and he's almost like a prophet writing down the symbols
• 1:30:57
  that control everything, and it's allowed him to create this
• 1:30:59
  living how this extra dimensional space and the statues that
• 1:31:02
  he builds is him trying to build like effigies of
• 1:31:05
  them to try to give them life again. But they
• 1:31:07
  can't have a face like ah. I traced the outline
• 1:31:10
  of one sigil with the bear. Oh, I said sigil
• 1:31:12
  earlier too. Man, I just bear trapped this whole thing
• 1:31:15
  so hard. I am awesome. I traced the outline of
• 1:31:18
  one sigil with the barrel of my pen. It resembled
• 1:31:21
  a circuit's spine that its pattern held the balance of
• 1:31:23
  a cathedral plan. There was beauty in it, along with
• 1:31:27
  something that repelled my eye. I looked toward the shelves again.
• 1:31:31
  Certain books borno titles.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: May I see one of the unnamed writings?
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 3: He considered for a moment that drew a single volume
• 1:31:39
  free and set it on the table.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: You may read what is written, but you may not
• 1:31:43
  speak the words aloud, the words it meant only for
• 1:31:46
  the master's mouth.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: The pages held mechanical sketches that seemed to shift under
• 1:31:50
  the lamp. Some represented tools, while others proposed devices of
• 1:31:53
  unclear purpose. Among them stood human figures composed of gears
• 1:31:58
  and valves, limbs rendered in cross sections, with their hearts
• 1:32:01
  replaced by spoils of copper wire. Let's go, baby mes
• 1:32:07
  necro mechs. People like he figured out how to use
• 1:32:11
  wires to control so all the stuff behind the scenes
• 1:32:13
  is like mechanized people. That's literally house of the worm.
• 1:32:16
  The thing I said earlier is the SCP I like
• 1:32:18
  so much. That's the idea that people grow, like converted
• 1:32:21
  into machinery, necro evag alien meme. Yes, yeah, gosh, that
• 1:32:27
  goes so hard. He figured out how to get the
• 1:32:31
  like how to use these mechanics and these shapes to
• 1:32:37
  bring life into copper, like how to use voltage to
• 1:32:40
  create a living house, and he put it inside of
• 1:32:42
  people to make these puppeteered like steampunk zombies. That is
• 1:32:46
  so cool. This story is so cool. Oh my gosh.
• 1:32:53
  I oh. I closed the cover and stepped back. Stewart
• 1:32:58
  returned it to the shelf.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 8: The master rett here at night, he prefought the quiet
• 1:33:03
  hours of the evenings.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: He read more than he slept. I must say, this
• 1:33:08
  is a different house than the one I walked last night.
• 1:33:11
  It is the same house, only seen in a different night.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 3: Man bear trap again, I am okay, yes, so it's
• 1:33:19
  like it's the same house. They were always there, but
• 1:33:21
  he was just in a different dimension or a different
• 1:33:23
  plane and couldn't see what was happening around him. But
• 1:33:26
  now he's with them, He's in he's in the space,
• 1:33:29
  he's a part of it, and I don't think he
• 1:33:30
  can leave. He stepped aside and let me through. We
• 1:33:35
  passed the court windows, and I looked out upon the
• 1:33:37
  twelve statues in the garden. No statue had shifted. The
• 1:33:40
  brass giants kept their places for the first time since Friday.
• 1:33:44
  It truly came to me tho the last two days
• 1:33:46
  might indeed have been a careful spectacle, simple long curtain
• 1:33:50
  rays designed to sharpen the appreciation of a very private pageant.
• 1:33:54
  Stuart halted at a plane door at the end of
• 1:33:56
  a corridor. Its brass knob was unadorned, faintly tarnished where
• 1:34:00
  use marked it.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 8: Would you like to see the work room, sir? It
• 1:34:05
  is not often shown even to servants, though the mast
• 1:34:08
  has granted us permission very much so.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 3: He unlocked the narrow door with a small toothed key.
• 1:34:15
  The air within carried a sin of graphite sweat. The
• 1:34:19
  room stood vast and high lit by a single glass skylight,
• 1:34:23
  veined with steel. Drafting tables stood against the walls. Pencils
• 1:34:27
  lay where they had fallen. Compasses sat open across sheaves
• 1:34:30
  of linen paper. Some patterns around the room repeated the
• 1:34:34
  same sigil as I had seen in the Limerick tables,
• 1:34:37
  only here they were drawn with a deeper intention. Across
• 1:34:40
  the room, set of glass tubes ran from floorboard to ceiling,
• 1:34:44
  filled with a liquid metal that moved at the base.
• 1:34:47
  Small pistons pulsed along their links, keeping the substance in
• 1:34:50
  slow circulation. The light that passed through them carried the
• 1:34:53
  same color as the Manor's circuits.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 8: He he used mercury as a conductor. He keeps the
• 1:34:59
  thought lots of the house connected.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: To will of his hand.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 8: The thoughts the massive believe that if structure could be
• 1:35:06
  made precise enough, thought would follow. A perfect ratio invites
• 1:35:11
  a perfect mind. Thus he made it this event. Thus
• 1:35:14
  he made this man of his Oh my god, thus
• 1:35:17
  he made this manner of.
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 3: A vessel bro He is going that at the end
• 1:35:21
  the master killed himself or whatever, and now he is
• 1:35:23
  the house.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: It's the monster.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 3: It's monster house. It's monster house with flesh puppet people
• 1:35:30
  and like forbidden sigils, and like those things that speak
• 1:35:35
  without speaking and see with us sees. I walked to
• 1:35:40
  the central platform. There a great table stood ranged by
• 1:35:43
  iron lamps with shades blackened by dust. Upon its surface
• 1:35:47
  rested a full scale model of the manner. The details
• 1:35:50
  struck me dumb for a beat. Every corner and recess,
• 1:35:54
  every window and parapet, have been rendered with the jeweler's care.
• 1:35:59
  Even the court art figures stood where they should, fixed
• 1:36:02
  in their miniature devotions. But what surrounded the manor silenced
• 1:36:06
  me further. The forest was gone in its place, where
• 1:36:11
  was a vast city of angles and towers. Bridges arched
• 1:36:15
  in strict repetition. Roads formed concentric rings that drew toward
• 1:36:20
  the center, a lank closer. Thin wires wound through the
• 1:36:25
  model space, twisting in strange loops. The manner stood at
• 1:36:29
  the heart of the circuitry. The steward folded his hands
• 1:36:33
  at his waist.
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 8: He called this his rehearsal of the world to come.
• 1:36:37
  He believed this house would be the newest creation of
• 1:36:40
  a grand design, a gateway to cities thought unimaginable.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 3: The longer I studied the city, the more it's impossibilities showed.
• 1:36:48
  Streets folded into one another, becoming corridors without intry or end.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: Where would a man walk in such a place? He
• 1:36:55
  would not walk, sir, He would circulate. He would be
• 1:37:00
  only what he needs to function.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 3: Beneath the table, the machinery stirred. A pulse of light
• 1:37:06
  moved through the copper and up into the city. One
• 1:37:09
  tower flickered, then another to the low glow spread outward
• 1:37:13
  like a dawn through fog. The illumination reached the Manner's
• 1:37:17
  model and held it in the halo. I sot astonished
• 1:37:21
  at the glowing city. You've done well, I told the seward.
• 1:37:25
  I meant it.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 8: The show has been spectacular. We endeavored to please sir.
• 1:37:31
  Just remember eight o'clock you are expected. Until then, the
• 1:37:36
  estate is at your disposal.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 3: We left the room as we found it. The key
• 1:37:40
  you turned, the breath of graphite, and Cason stayed behind
• 1:37:44
  the door all afternoon. The house wore its best manners.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: I think I like to think that the house is
• 1:37:51
  like almost breathing, look almost like through the house, instead
• 1:37:54
  of there just being absolute sunds, you just you can
• 1:37:56
  kind of hear like a or you know what I mean,
• 1:37:59
  like just some kind of like almost like the not
• 1:38:01
  that the walls are moving, but just the faintest sound of.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: Like a breath or something.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like the house itself. Yeah, it's he's in
• 1:38:11
  the house, but it's like in this panorama he's almost
• 1:38:14
  in the city. Like it's this. Uh, he's creating a
• 1:38:17
  body for himself, this giant structure that goes on and
• 1:38:20
  on and on. Gosh, it's so cool, man, this is
• 1:38:23
  so cool. I'm fired up. Okay, all right, well, here
• 1:38:28
  we are the pageant.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 4: Here we go.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 3: Are you ready, hunter mus do it? Sunday, October twenty sixth,
• 1:38:33
  nineteen thirty The Pageant. I spent the early hours before
• 1:38:38
  eight in ordinary pleasure in a small sitting room. I
• 1:38:42
  found a tray of little cakes, sugar just enough to
• 1:38:44
  catch the light. I ate one and let a laugh
• 1:38:47
  slip out. In another life I might have stayed and
• 1:38:50
  written a polite column about a fine estate. And it's
• 1:38:56
  so weird, like where because at the beginning of this
• 1:38:58
  he was just coming to write about the right, about
• 1:39:00
  the guy seeing. And now it's so much more. Now
• 1:39:02
  it's the immortality through machines, turning yourself into the house,
• 1:39:07
  turning yourself into circuits made of faith.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 5: And uh.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 3: I made pass with the tray of small glasses. Side do, sir,
• 1:39:14
  gladly said, and took one, tasted like an entire orchard
• 1:39:18
  held within a single glass and a quarter before ate,
• 1:39:21
  the steward met me outside the Great Salon, if you would,
• 1:39:25
  he said, smoothing his coat. Several seams had darkened and
• 1:39:29
  appeared singed and Rewoven made it no mind, and I
• 1:39:32
  chose not to break the spell. I bet underneath the
• 1:39:35
  coat he's one of the automatons.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm million percent. He's definitely like a scorched piece
• 1:39:39
  of machinery.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah. This kind of reminds me of the ending of
• 1:39:44
  Church in the Woods or Spiring the Woods.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: Remember, oh yeah, with the with the like ballerina automaton. Yeah.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the people that got turned into the clockwork machines
• 1:39:53
  and stuff like that. Yeah, I had. The salon had
• 1:39:56
  been set as a theater. Chairs stood in ranks, each
• 1:40:00
  line to face a stage from lamps climbed in tears.
• 1:40:03
  Their reflective shades raised a white shimmer that setled like
• 1:40:06
  stars across the ceiling. Workers and servants filled and wearing
• 1:40:11
  pressed uniforms buttoned with small moons. A curtain at the
• 1:40:15
  far end of the stage held my sight a fall
• 1:40:17
  of dark glassy cloth, not velvet, some soft skin that
• 1:40:21
  drank in the light, but kept its sheen Above it,
• 1:40:24
  A familiar crush showed two wings nested in a triangle
• 1:40:27
  worked in gold thread. Stewart led me to his seat
• 1:40:31
  at the center.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: The master will attend shortly. Will the master be speaking?
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 3: Courteous? Curve touched his expression. The corners of his lips
• 1:40:39
  parted like cracked paper. Raised a forefinger as if to
• 1:40:43
  test for rain, then lowered it with a satisfied nod.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: He's here.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 3: The lamps dimmed from the wings of the room. A
• 1:40:50
  hush moved in like a tide. Then he came. The
• 1:40:55
  architect walked out from the wing, like a depiction from
• 1:40:57
  a drawing. He stood tall and act colt cut to
• 1:41:01
  a blade, hair white as ground salt. He did not hurry,
• 1:41:06
  Nothing in him hurried. When he halted at the center
• 1:41:08
  of the stage, the room seemed to lean forward an inch.
• 1:41:12
  My friends, he said, his voice as clear as a bell.
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 5: You have labored with me through seasons of frost and mud.
• 1:41:20
  You have kept the shine where it belonged, and taken
• 1:41:23
  the dust from where it did not.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: I promised you a.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 5: Complete work three years ago. I delivered it. Tonight I
• 1:41:31
  would deliver it again.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 3: Raised a hand towards the great window above him. It's
• 1:41:35
  a glass of blackened to keep out the sky.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 5: This is all night. Many years ago we opened our
• 1:41:41
  sight for the first time. You sat where you sit now,
• 1:41:45
  each of you faithful to my word. That night our
• 1:41:48
  world was opened up to the world of dreams. It
• 1:41:51
  lasted for only a mere instant, and in that moment
• 1:41:56
  we have been viewed with approval.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 3: A ripple moved the crowd, his hands opened, as if
• 1:42:02
  presenting a blueprint before the sun.
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 5: For seven years before that night, I walked in the
• 1:42:07
  city of dreams only in my sleep. Its streets ran
• 1:42:11
  beneath my eyelids, its towers rose, and the pulses behind
• 1:42:15
  my eyes. I wandered there, wore my body lay still.
• 1:42:18
  In this world. I saw patterns that no ruler could measure,
• 1:42:23
  lines that knew where they must go before any hand
• 1:42:25
  could guide them. From that city, I learned proportion beyond reason,
• 1:42:30
  and from its grid I drew the life blood that
• 1:42:32
  gave this place its existence. Every war you touch, every
• 1:42:39
  stair you climb, speaks in the language of dreams.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 3: He paused. The lamp surged a glow, deepening to a
• 1:42:47
  vivid gold.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 5: But I did not work alone. As you know, A
• 1:42:53
  hand guided me, not a hand of flesh, a hand
• 1:42:58
  of sovereignty, an brew that knows how to rule a
• 1:43:01
  city without speaking. It placed its hand upon me and
• 1:43:04
  move my tools until they obeyed its rhythm. It taught
• 1:43:08
  me to build as the hot built, to threat the
• 1:43:12
  house with nerves of copper and iron, until it could
• 1:43:15
  remember the dream from which it came. And this is
• 1:43:18
  not sorcery.
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: This is older.
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 5: The loft pattern brought the completion. I call this man
• 1:43:26
  of the aperture which touched the land of my dreams.
• 1:43:30
  I once more bestow this manner with the same name
• 1:43:33
  I see written on the walls behind my eyelids.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 3: A tend Oh, my God. The curtain to his back
• 1:43:45
  rose without rope or pulley. Behind it, a pillar stood,
• 1:43:49
  revealed taller than two men and wider than a carriageway,
• 1:43:54
  span forged of brass and panes of dark glass with
• 1:43:57
  the depth of water. A lentil carried hall letters that
• 1:44:01
  seemed to move while standing still. I read the word
• 1:44:05
  inscribed upon it twice before my mind accepted it. Pandemonium.
• 1:44:10
  Oh oh.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 7: Oh, oh oh.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 5: Oh.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: It's sick. It's very sick. It's really good, so good,
• 1:44:27
  so good.
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 3: Pandemonium the name of the city of the devils from
• 1:44:35
  Paradise Lost, and when the devil brought the demons to Hell,
• 1:44:39
  he named it Pandemonium. All chaos chaos.
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: Rules in Latin Oh.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 3: He was in his dreams. He was a famous architect
• 1:44:49
  who had influence and power. So the devils or the
• 1:44:53
  spirits reached out to him and showed him visions of
• 1:44:55
  things he couldn't understand, but they were too beautiful to
• 1:44:57
  turn away from. In his sleep, he was shown curves
• 1:45:01
  and architecture and order. And because of that, he used
• 1:45:04
  all of his power to build a house that was
• 1:45:07
  a ouiji board, a giant summoning stone to bring these
• 1:45:10
  things in the world, and he tries to give them shape,
• 1:45:13
  and that shape is these giant brass statues without faces.
• 1:45:16
  It's the effigy for these demons that brought him this place.
• 1:45:20
  And now he has performed their goal and used his
• 1:45:24
  house as a ritual, used his power to create circuitry
• 1:45:28
  that has life forms that they can speak through, ways
• 1:45:31
  for them to interact with the world. He's effectively turned
• 1:45:35
  his house and this imaginary city around him into a
• 1:45:38
  poltergeist for these things. He has brought pandemonium from hell
• 1:45:42
  to earth, and he thinks it's in the name of power,
• 1:45:46
  in the name of greatness, things to rule empires, not
• 1:45:49
  realizing that maybe the things that rules empires and guides
• 1:45:52
  man's hand is evil. Oh okay, so so mother horse
• 1:46:05
  Eyes is like, Still, it just did so much right,
• 1:46:08
  and it took its time and weave it together. Still
• 1:46:10
  think it's my favorite. But if this pulls this off
• 1:46:14
  at the end, this might be my second. H Oh,
• 1:46:19
  it's the name is Pandemonia. Oh okay, ah, all right.
• 1:46:23
  You know it's funny because in the beginning you were
• 1:46:25
  making the jokes about me with the drawing and stuff
• 1:46:28
  like that, and it was like kind of he he
• 1:46:29
  haha then but now it's just now it's not even
• 1:46:31
  a joke.
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: I know you have full ropes and spider webs in
• 1:46:34
  your pants, for sure. Motherfucker's got the whole entire novel
• 1:46:38
  of Charlotte's Web right there in his pants.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 4: Right now.
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: I get it. I fully hit it.
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 3: Okay with that word, the heat rose at once, cloth
• 1:46:49
  stuck at the small of my back, air drew toward
• 1:46:52
  the pillar and took the air from my lungs. The
• 1:46:54
  lamps brighten until they sang. I turned to take in
• 1:46:58
  the room as a whole. The audience had changed while
• 1:47:01
  I had attended the speech. Faces I once considered handsome
• 1:47:05
  now drew tight, mouths had been pulled back. Teeth showed
• 1:47:10
  like exposed hardware. A footman near the aisle buckled backwards
• 1:47:14
  at the knees, yet kept standing. Meanwhile, a maid next
• 1:47:17
  to him had her skin begin blistering in bubbles across
• 1:47:20
  her cheeks. No one screamed, though several mouths open and
• 1:47:24
  did not close. The sound that came out of them
• 1:47:27
  was from a parched choir, a gathering of throats without water.
• 1:47:32
  Fingernails blackened before me, Vapor climbed from skin. The steward
• 1:47:37
  who had seated me went to both knees. He slithered
• 1:47:40
  on the ground with a grace that would have pleased
• 1:47:42
  a dancer. A seam along his collar had parted. An
• 1:47:46
  exposed ribbon of copper laid against his throat. It flickered
• 1:47:50
  under the light like a small fish beating against a net.
• 1:47:53
  He pressed the seam closed with his palm and kept
• 1:47:56
  to his dance.
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 5: Do not be afraid step through and be made step through,
• 1:48:02
  and be made equal to yourselves.
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 3: His hand could a narrow path in the air.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: But you mistake for torment is only the shedding of variance.
• 1:48:12
  What you call death is only a species of waste.
• 1:48:16
  The city allows for nothing to be wasted. Three years
• 1:48:20
  ago you were shown the first light. Tonight you will
• 1:48:25
  walk within.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 3: It, step through, and be made equal to yourself. So
• 1:48:29
  it's like the human distinctions. Differences between people is condensed
• 1:48:34
  down to like code. Right, you all become one flesh,
• 1:48:37
  you return to the collective. Right, you all become exactly
• 1:48:41
  the same, as tools for this machine, a vehicle for consciousness.
• 1:48:45
  It's also the note of the guys slithering away at
• 1:48:49
  the end of Paradise Lost. All the demons in Pandemonium
• 1:48:51
  are turned into snakes as punishment from God. They're all
• 1:48:54
  made to slither across the ground. So now this is
• 1:48:56
  almost like they're reckoning, right. They see it as a gift,
• 1:48:59
  but this is their torment. It finally the thing that
• 1:49:01
  they've asked for being made to be. Glass in the
• 1:49:06
  high window gave way with a cough. Shards and soot
• 1:49:09
  fell over the ranks. The architects smiled along the line
• 1:49:14
  where gum met tooth were in a deep char the
• 1:49:16
  color of coal. People of the work. The gate is open,
• 1:49:22
  people of the work. Oh well, what a cool word.
• 1:49:30
  What a cool word for the people that have built
• 1:49:32
  hell on earth. That's so cool. A woman by the
• 1:49:38
  aisle turned her face. The skin at her neck parted
• 1:49:41
  like pain on a hot pipe. She did not falter.
• 1:49:44
  She moved for the pillar. Her joints were answering a lesson,
• 1:49:47
  rehearse for another stage and another body.
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: If I am I is this not?
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 3: Bro like? Just just like I need you to nerd
• 1:50:00
  out with me a little bit.
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 2: I mean it's good. I'm just it's very it's very hard.
• 1:50:04
  It's like it's a coming competition. You have an entire
• 1:50:07
  I mean caked pants. I mean it's it is, it's awesome.
• 1:50:09
  I'm enjoying it in my own way.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: I'm just not like, I'm not I need you.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 3: I need I need you to freak out a little bit,
• 1:50:16
  just just like the way her body is moving. Thank you.
• 1:50:19
  There you go. That's what I want. That's that's what
• 1:50:24
  I want.
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 7: You thanking god.
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, so oh fucking I can't stop.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 3: Ohr TROLLI horse.
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 7: Oh oh oh, I'll have what she's happen.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 3: Well. The thank you.
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 3: Several others fell in behind her, their open mouths bobbing
• 1:51:30
  with each step. Sir, I said to the steward at
• 1:51:34
  my side, those pupils clouded ash we must leave. His
• 1:51:40
  mouth widened and held at the base of his ears.
• 1:51:43
  Set a wheel no wider than a coin, turned one
• 1:51:45
  notch and stopped with a click. And that tick I
• 1:51:48
  met with the truth that I refused to name. They
• 1:51:51
  were not servants in the old sense. They were living machines,
• 1:51:55
  kept repaired, set to functions. The house had gifted them
• 1:51:59
  afore been taking its payment in their pain. Their autonomy
• 1:52:02
  had been bargained away a long ago.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: Sir, how long have you been like this?
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 3: He parted his lips. No word came, only a hiss
• 1:52:13
  of air through a crack, which flash. He raised his
• 1:52:17
  palm as if to call me. Yet his palm shook
• 1:52:20
  from a trimmer that did not belong to fear, but
• 1:52:22
  to strain without relief. Pillar drew air again. House answered it.
• 1:52:28
  Its circuit spoke in rapid code beneath the floor, like
• 1:52:31
  fluid driven through jets. Each pulse matched the heats of scent,
• 1:52:35
  until all measured beats became one drum. I fled the
• 1:52:40
  corridor that held the salon bent into a duplicate of itself.
• 1:52:43
  I saw a sunburst above the ladder of the two halls,
• 1:52:46
  and followed under it. Paint blistered and fish scale patches,
• 1:52:50
  light pulled, rust red on the floor, and turned tacky
• 1:52:53
  under my souls. I crossed the gallery and found one
• 1:52:56
  statue had stolen a half step it did not own yesterday.
• 1:53:01
  Its brass knees split open, each crevice widening with a
• 1:53:04
  low grown. Heat poured out of the fractures, like breath
• 1:53:08
  from a furnace. Beneath the riven metal, something living turned
• 1:53:12
  its surface slick as ink. A round, colorless eye opened
• 1:53:17
  under the plating and fixed through the shell, as if
• 1:53:20
  trapped there for centuries, and now walking to its hatred.
• 1:53:24
  The other statues followed. Cracks raced through the figures, light
• 1:53:29
  bled from their openings and through the brakes. I saw
• 1:53:32
  glimpses of the same eye, repeated again and again, each
• 1:53:35
  glancing in a different direction. The figures moaned in confinement,
• 1:53:40
  brass screamed when they flexed. I spared them no more
• 1:53:45
  of my time. I ran into the nearest passage, stumbling
• 1:53:48
  across uneven stone beams overhead shook with a low vibration.
• 1:53:53
  The cart stood ahead of me in the service lane.
• 1:53:56
  A porter braced upon it with both arms. Tar melted
• 1:53:59
  from the wheel's rim. He turned toward me. Stress lines
• 1:54:03
  scored beneath his eyes.
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 8: You should be seated, sir, Orders are orders?
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: What are you speaking of the word?
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 5: We must jeep to the word.
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 3: His cheeks cracked at the edges and did not bleed.
• 1:54:20
  A faint whirr came from the hinge of his elbow shivered.
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 8: Ring, once of your own or anything?
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 3: He repeated the phrase of broken repetition, ring, once.
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: Are you in pain?
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 3: He pressed his forearm to the cart. Metal knocked together.
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 8: We remain in service.
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 3: His forward, his words fought against him as a vow
• 1:54:45
  he could not break. I pushed past him at the
• 1:54:49
  been to the corridor. I looked toward the window to
• 1:54:50
  gain my bearings. What weighted beyond the glass stopped me.
• 1:54:55
  The man are no longer sat in its clearing, stood
• 1:54:58
  upon a wall at the edge of an endless city.
• 1:55:02
  Towers rose without tops, tier upon tier, while smaller buildings
• 1:55:07
  slanted among themselves and folded like knives. Streets ran in
• 1:55:11
  every direction, perfect in their geometry, endless in their descent.
• 1:55:16
  Bronze arches spanned avenues choked in smoke. Buildings glowed from
• 1:55:20
  within with light the color of molten ore. The sky
• 1:55:25
  turned in slow spirals, clouds thick with embers that felt
• 1:55:29
  like snow. In the far distance, beyond the outer spires,
• 1:55:33
  a shape moved. It was vast enough to make the
• 1:55:36
  tallest towers seem no higher than undriven nails. Its gargantuane
• 1:55:41
  body lay half buried in the ashy haze. But I
• 1:55:44
  saw its terrible heads through the clouds, all three of them,
• 1:55:50
  each bending and lifting in turn, each mouth gnashing upon
• 1:55:54
  the other's teeth met teeth in endless hunger.
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: Bro Bro, Bro, I know, I knew you're going to
• 1:56:00
  shoot a fucking fast.
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: After that, I was like, oh God, I can smell
• 1:56:03
  it too, Do I smell fucking pumpkin seeds and fucking
• 1:56:06
  peanut butter.
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 7: It is horrible.
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: I'm telling it is a gnarl gnarled, thick omerglue that
• 1:56:11
  is just dripping out of your screen.
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 3: Bro Bro, Dude, He's hell is a city of right
• 1:56:24
  angles and circuitry, because that's what they used to communicate,
• 1:56:28
  and now that he's in hell beyond it, he sees
• 1:56:31
  Lucifer from Dante's Inferno, half buried under the earth, like
• 1:56:36
  he is in that story, with the mouths gnashing on
• 1:56:39
  each other continuously. Pandemonium is a city of angles, built
• 1:56:45
  to be given to a prophet and Antichrist to bring
• 1:56:47
  it forward to the earth. And this is his judgment day,
• 1:56:50
  this is his rapture. Oh gosh, oh, it's done like
• 1:56:57
  a nineteen twenties Great Gatsby house. Like Gatsby is the
• 1:57:00
  prophet of Lucifer to bring Pandemonium to the earth stuff
• 1:57:03
  and the mention of the bronze statues, it says he
• 1:57:06
  saw countless eyes. It's it's like the depiction of the
• 1:57:09
  biblically accurate angels, right, the eyes, the open him, the
• 1:57:12
  wheels within wheels, it's that, But it's the fallen angels.
• 1:57:15
  It's the ones that need a new form because they're
• 1:57:17
  not wholly in divinity with God anymore.
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 5: So.
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 3: The demons are forced inside of these rest things and
• 1:57:23
  are only now given the power to move, but they're
• 1:57:25
  trying to burst out of it their infinite form in
• 1:57:27
  the shape Oh ah, okay, I'm I'm dude, I'm I'm
• 1:57:42
  about it. I'm fired up right now. I don't know
• 1:57:44
  what I'm gonna do with this energy, but I gotta
• 1:57:46
  do something.
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: Woo.
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 3: The sounds of its motion reached through the window, a
• 1:57:53
  deep grinding that set the glasses to tremble. The sight
• 1:57:57
  and sound alone pressed hard enough to nearly my knees.
• 1:58:01
  I knew then what had placed its hand upon the architect,
• 1:58:05
  and it was nothing of God.
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: You better keep your hands in fucking screen, because you
• 1:58:11
  are you. You better hold your hands up for the
• 1:58:13
  rest of the fucking episode.
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 3: Okay, this is bro Is this not just like you
• 1:58:21
  get it though?
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: Right for me?
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 3: For me, like I'm having it's fucking awesome. It's it's
• 1:58:25
  super sick. I mean specifically with like everything I like,
• 1:58:29
  I mean, this is this is literally right up your alley. Okay, yeah,
• 1:58:33
  all right. I tore myself from the window. The walls
• 1:58:36
  sweated more thickly, now, plasters split in thin cracks that
• 1:58:40
  widened as I passed. The gramophones began speaking again in
• 1:58:44
  every hall. Each uttered a fragment of the architect's tenor.
• 1:58:48
  All out of order, said one said, another hissed a third,
• 1:58:57
  their vocal cords twitched like nerves along the floor. I
• 1:59:00
  set my palm to the wall to steady myself, and
• 1:59:02
  felt the house drawn release against the meat of my hand.
• 1:59:06
  At the corner, a maid came forward with a basin.
• 1:59:08
  The sloshy water wore a skin of muck and dull colors.
• 1:59:12
  Steam rose from her wrists in little threads. Heat a
• 1:59:15
  light beneath the skin. She set the basin down, lifted
• 1:59:19
  both arms as if for inspection, then spoke in the
• 1:59:23
  tone used shop counters in street cars.
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 8: Sir, the limbs to your liking.
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: You're burning, We keep the shine.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 3: She answered. The words trembled her mouth, tried to smile
• 1:59:36
  and forgot the motion. A brass staple held her lips
• 1:59:39
  apart on one side.
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 8: Please be seated when requested, she.
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 3: Added, as if reciting a rule from a handbook.
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: Was it the architect of this thing? And there were
• 1:59:48
  those things outside?
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 3: She turned, showing the back of her neck. There a
• 1:59:53
  gage lay beneath the skin, like a coin under parchment.
• 1:59:56
  It ticked, stopped, then ticked agains. She lifted the basin
• 2:00:01
  and went toward the glow behind me, leaving prints that
• 2:00:04
  smoked on the stone. I lurched toward the vestibule. Ahead
• 2:00:09
  the front door stood ajar. Beyond it waited another set
• 2:00:13
  deeper into the wall, a door that had not existed before.
• 2:00:17
  Between the two doors lay a great pushed out hot
• 2:00:20
  air with the smell of iron oil, animal pins that
• 2:00:23
  charred me. It was from the lungs of something far
• 2:00:26
  larger than the house itself. Dude, there it is. There's
• 2:00:29
  the final prayer. There's a thing beneath the house that
• 2:00:32
  breathes the living contraption.
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: It's my favorite.
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 2: I will I have a stiffy as well anytime a
• 2:00:39
  little fire, final prayer, Borderlands kind of thing happens.
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 3: Oh boy, the beast beneath love it?
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: The pagan god kind of thing. I didn't fucking love it.
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 5: M hm.
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 3: Behind me came the sound of breaking metal. I turned.
• 2:00:52
  The entire staff stood, attentive souls and uniforms that no
• 2:00:55
  longer fit their bodies, patient before a gate they at
• 2:00:58
  tended to for years. Near them, a statue stepped from
• 2:01:01
  its plinth and set one terrible foot on the marble.
• 2:01:04
  Brass cracked open along the chest, and within the tear,
• 2:01:07
  a heart of brilliant fire turned like a spindle, a
• 2:01:12
  room lit as a furnace. The room blazed, curtains went
• 2:01:17
  to ash. A Steward walked forward as if conjured by duty.
• 2:01:22
  He steadied himself as the floor shook under our feet.
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: Sir, this is the hour we would not offer you
• 2:01:29
  among us. You are in pain. Why would I want this?
• 2:01:34
  Pain is a word for those who have not experienced suffering.
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 3: He said, and he lowered his regard. And what the
• 2:01:41
  smallest confessions?
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: Do not leave your words out?
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 5: Does remember who we were?
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 3: Stewart's mouth moved as if he tried to recall a name.
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 7: You can you can leave with me?
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 4: Oh a feet answer.
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 3: To the word smulgear turned under the skin at the
• 2:02:01
  base of his ear fell ta mesh skipped, caught.
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 8: Again, ring once if you require anything.
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 3: Pray's return tripped to reflex ring. Watson toward himself, as
• 2:02:14
  if hunting the peace that kept his mind from reaching mouth.
• 2:02:17
  Flesh and mechanism left him and found a heap on
• 2:02:19
  the floor. The statue turned to face him. I took
• 2:02:23
  that moment to kneel beside the pedestal where the first
• 2:02:26
  gramophone had stood. I set my notebook there. Each page
• 2:02:29
  filled every line of stake driven down with warning. If
• 2:02:34
  anyone finds this, you must retreat. This is not a spectacle.
• 2:02:39
  The conqueror that eats all pageants has paid this manner
• 2:02:42
  of visit and will not be satisfied with one appearance.
• 2:02:46
  I am going through the second door now because there
• 2:02:49
  is no other honest choice. My hope is simple that
• 2:02:53
  it opens not upon that infernal city, but back into
• 2:02:55
  the living world, into whatever grace that still waits for men.
• 2:03:00
  If the city takes me, let this record be the
• 2:03:02
  warning you need to to part.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: Peak peak peak, peak peak. End of story.
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 2: Dare I say, I mean, one of the finest things
• 2:03:15
  we've read, perfect pacing. It's interesting. It's like the whole
• 2:03:18
  story is literally it's a three day march. How many
• 2:03:22
  stories we read where it's been like multiple days of
• 2:03:24
  a guy like like basically uncovering a mystery, you know.
• 2:03:28
  But then it just it feels like, I mean to
• 2:03:30
  think about like Deep Woods all the kind of like
• 2:03:32
  Woods episodes is usually that, or like camps all these
• 2:03:35
  other kind of things.
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 3: This being fire in the Woods was kind of like that,
• 2:03:38
  with them trying to figure out the legend and things.
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 2: Sure, I mean, I just think, yeah, I don't know.
• 2:03:43
  This is a just so well paced, such a well
• 2:03:47
  I mean, I don't know. It just it reveals itself
• 2:03:49
  in such a great weight, doesn't linger. It kind of
• 2:03:51
  gives you what you want to hear, and then just
• 2:03:52
  like Fox right off, it's it's just a also just
• 2:03:55
  a nice two parter two part of that had actually
• 2:03:58
  some meat on it, some meat on its bones.
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: It was just too short. It just it felt really
• 2:04:01
  really great.
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 2: I really think it's one of the it's one of
• 2:04:04
  the best stories we've read, which granted we still are
• 2:04:07
  a bit we're sobering up from Happy Appy and you know,
• 2:04:10
  all the other stuff that we've been reading lately, but
• 2:04:12
  still I think that this is just really such a treat.
• 2:04:14
  I mean, strange accounts, Travis is just it's just such
• 2:04:17
  a great job.
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 3: My gosh, dude, I can't even what's funny is I'm
• 2:04:24
  reading through the replies right now because it's posting our
• 2:04:25
  slash creep cast and someone said not to glaze you
• 2:04:28
  anymore than Windowgoon already has they Edgeloord dark rape. You
• 2:04:32
  haven't seen anything yet. You don't know how much I
• 2:04:36
  can glaze this guy, bro. Just I mean, I said
• 2:04:40
  most of it during the episode, but not only hitting
• 2:04:43
  so many cool themes and the payoffs are cool in
• 2:04:47
  ways I don't expect them, and sure there are things
• 2:04:49
  I like, but they're also like so well woven together
• 2:04:52
  that by the end it makes sense to incorporate you know,
• 2:04:55
  demons and the devil and like circuitry being a form
• 2:04:59
  of possess and like multidimensional houses, like you get the
• 2:05:04
  clues in an order that it makes sense. But also
• 2:05:08
  to do that, like you said, at such good pacing,
• 2:05:11
  to where we figure out pieces of the mystery one
• 2:05:13
  at a time and it never lets off the gas.
• 2:05:16
  It just keeps like escalating one point at another. I
• 2:05:20
  just like how you get to that huge ending.
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: I just love how it triggered I was by just
• 2:05:23
  continuously unraveling this home, like it really doesn't like, yeah,
• 2:05:27
  it doesn't have all these giant visual thrills. I guess
• 2:05:31
  it's just it's just slowly unraveling. And you know what,
• 2:05:34
  I and I hate doing this, but like with a
• 2:05:36
  new Resident Evil game that's just on my mind, is
• 2:05:38
  on but it does feel like just like a Resident
• 2:05:40
  Evil kind of like lurking through the house Resident Evil
• 2:05:42
  to kind of lurking through the house.
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the story almost has a what's what's the word
• 2:05:47
  everyone's said, like the Castle Vania a style where it's
• 2:05:51
  like you have a building that's like continuously expounded upon
• 2:05:55
  and you learn more and more about the space, Like
• 2:05:57
  it's the space stays the same size, but it gets
• 2:05:59
  deep or as you learn more about it, right metro Vania.
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, uh no, All in all, this is a really
• 2:06:05
  really good story. I think, I do think, uh, and
• 2:06:10
  and not to mention how well.
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 3: Like certain sentences are written, how the great control of
• 2:06:14
  grammar and English.
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: He has traskills all the time with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 3: It's even like little phrases that are there, like the
• 2:06:21
  thing about worms, like moving with appetite. Like it's these
• 2:06:24
  cool little moments of poetry in the midst of such
• 2:06:26
  a well paid story that incorporates so many cool ideas
• 2:06:28
  and has a satisfying payoff. He is such a good writer, dude.
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's one of the goes if he is
• 2:06:34
  on the Mount Rushmore right now. I mean he's continuously
• 2:06:37
  proved it also too. I love that his stories just
• 2:06:39
  keep hitting.
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: Especially you've got to read his stuff in person and
• 2:06:43
  all the fans got to interact with it. It was
• 2:06:45
  just fucking awesome. I'd love that we keep uncovering new,
• 2:06:49
  more and more shit, uh from him, and it's just
• 2:06:52
  it's awesome.
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 3: I love it. Yeah, yeah, I get again everyone. At
• 2:06:57
  the end, this is not sponsored. You can just tell
• 2:06:59
  how big a fan I am. I has just had
• 2:07:00
  a book come out that is a collection of these stories.
• 2:07:03
  I just type I have to skip through all the
• 2:07:05
  pictures that Hunters sent me to find it, but strange
• 2:07:10
  accounts from the American Frontier will have it linked in
• 2:07:12
  the description and get it on Amazon or Kendle. I'm
• 2:07:15
  gonna buy twelve of these and just give them to
• 2:07:16
  people at home depot. This really is.
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 2: This would be the perfect book just to get a
• 2:07:20
  couple and just like share to your friends as like
• 2:07:22
  an actually pass round book. When they're done with it,
• 2:07:24
  they pass it to somebody else. You did you did
• 2:07:26
  that with me with I have no mouth, must scream whatever,
• 2:07:29
  and then I passed How did you like that? By
• 2:07:31
  the way, I loved it. I passed it off to
• 2:07:34
  my cousin. Actually I have no idea if he's passed off.
• 2:07:38
  But you know, it's a really fun thing to do though.
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think I think this story is incredible, Travis,
• 2:07:44
  that there's a few. I said this with Kine, with Caine,
• 2:07:49
  pixels an honestly hundred applies to you as well, seeing
• 2:07:54
  like Kane make movies and you make like movies, shorts,
• 2:07:58
  you know, creative process. It is so satisfying to see
• 2:08:02
  someone do something that they are so good and efficient
• 2:08:06
  at that you know they were born to do it,
• 2:08:08
  that there's simply no other place they could be. And
• 2:08:12
  reading Travis writing, I feel the exact same way. This
• 2:08:16
  guy simply has to write because what else would he
• 2:08:19
  be made for? Right, He's this good at it. I'm
• 2:08:21
  glad that he's doing it, and I'm glad I get
• 2:08:23
  to live in a world where I know that Travis
• 2:08:25
  is a writer and I get to read his stuff.
• 2:08:29
  He is supposed to be doing this, and I'm glad
• 2:08:31
  he's here, and I'm glad I get to read it
• 2:08:33
  for a living. That's awesome.
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 1: This is awesome.
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 3: Life is cool.
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: Never kill yourself, strange accounts man. We should yeah, be
• 2:08:43
  sure to show the book cover and stuff too.
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 2: It's like we need to start doing that more is
• 2:08:47
  whenever we say go check it out, I actually have
• 2:08:48
  the book cover up because sometimes too, whenever you like
• 2:08:50
  look online, some people have made several copies of their
• 2:08:54
  published book.
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 3: So I don't know, yeah they're yeah, yeah, I gottapp
• 2:08:58
  hear well. I mean, normally in the final edit this
• 2:09:00
  is a great cover too. Normally in the final edit
• 2:09:02
  we show this anyway. But in some of these titles
• 2:09:06
  like Private Jonathan hartwell, like this guy writing in a
• 2:09:10
  war story would be awesome. But yeah, I get this
• 2:09:13
  like a dozen times. And of course when the episode
• 2:09:17
  goes up, patrons will have it linked in the description
• 2:09:19
  and stuff as well, but you can just search strange
• 2:09:22
  accounts from the American Frontier now.
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much to all the audio listeners that
• 2:09:26
  are listening right now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and
• 2:09:28
  giving us a nice little rating there. I appreciate you,
• 2:09:31
  and thank you to all of our wonderful, beautiful patrons
• 2:09:33
  who helped support the show and even got to hear
• 2:09:35
  this story early live. Definitely, no crash outs or anything
• 2:09:39
  edited it all out. Definitely nothing happened there, and we
• 2:09:41
  will see you next time.
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: Guys. Take care.
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 3: Thank you all so much for watching. Check out Travis.
• 2:09:47
  I need to change my pants,