Latest / INSPIRE STORY / I Found The Bunker Of A Prepper Family
Transcript
- 0:15Speaker 1: Welcome back to Greek Cast. Today we are going to
- 0:18be reading Christian Wallace's.
- 0:19Speaker 2: I Found the Bunker of a Prepper family who went
- 0:22missing three years.
- 0:24Speaker 1: Ago, which Isaiah tell the people who Christian Wallace is,
- 0:28even though he needs no introduction. Christian Wallace is one
- 0:34of definitely one of our most frequently covered writers, I
- 0:39would say, and for good reason. The man has put
- 0:42out some absolute bankers from my wife has taken our
- 0:47role play too far, and the counter story, my husband
- 0:50has taken our role play too far. Let me search
- 0:54those before. I Sometimes I think of an author and
- 0:57I'm like, oh, yeah, he wrote that, and I say
- 0:59it was confident, and then people later will be like, no,
- 1:02he did say that, and it's like, don't you do
- 1:03this for a living, And I'm like, well, that's fatible,
- 1:07you know. I do. I do this and I make
- 1:11money doing it. But to say I'm like professional at
- 1:14it implies a level of ownership that I'm not really,
- 1:19you know, prepared for. And he also did the only
- 1:21other astronaut this mission died six weeks ago. So those
- 1:24are one of the best stories we've covered on the channel,
- 1:27and we've covered a ton of a lot of his
- 1:28other stuff too, So we're reading another one of these
- 1:31stories today. Hunter saw this title a while back and
- 1:33has been really excited to read it ever since, so
- 1:37I'm getting out of the way he picked this one out.
- 1:39So if it's Christian Wallace's first bad story, it's Hunter's fault,
- 1:42my fault.
- 1:43Speaker 2: But se I will say, I'm a huge I've done
- 1:46videos on my channel pop a me eat for it.
- 1:48But like doomsday preppers like that kind of like end
- 1:52of the world scenario survivalist is such a I don't know,
- 1:57it's such a fascinating community of people, you know, because
- 2:01it's one of those things.
- 2:02Speaker 1: I don't know if you feel the same way, but
- 2:03it's one of those things.
- 2:04Speaker 2: Where you're just like, you can't say that they're totally
- 2:06wrong or so it's like preparing for the nevitald And
- 2:08I'm sure that some of them obviously go off the
- 2:11deep end or do and all that kind of stuff,
- 2:13But I will say there's something just like, also, you know,
- 2:16what it fucks with me is that I sometimes.
- 2:18Speaker 1: Feel like I'm like, what do they know that I don't,
- 2:21you know.
- 2:21Speaker 2: Like I feel like they have something figured out that
- 2:22I don't, and that always fucks me up to so
- 2:24I'm very curious to see what angle Christian takes with
- 2:28this kind of like subject matter.
- 2:32Speaker 1: I will say, during the flood like Hurricane Helene, when
- 2:37all the roads and like infrastructure was gone for a
- 2:40few weeks and it was kind of everyone's left for
- 2:43themselves guests who had the food, the electricity and was
- 2:47able to help everyone else? No shit? Really the preppers, Yeah,
- 2:51they had a ton of because they had food supplies
- 2:53for years they were handed them out to people, and
- 2:56they had electricity, and they had like starlink systems the
- 2:59people contact their families and let them know they were okay.
- 3:02They could coordinate with other people to tell rescue crews
- 3:05where to go and stuff like that. So, yeah, made
- 3:09the difference with a flood.
- 3:11Speaker 2: This might be a stupid question, but are the underground
- 3:15bunkers they would just flood too, right? Or are there
- 3:17some that aren't actually airtight sealed where they could flood
- 3:20and they'd be fine?
- 3:21Speaker 3: Uh?
- 3:22Speaker 1: I mean you can get ones that are sealed. It's
- 3:26so unless you right, you you would? I mean, like,
- 3:31if you get really serious about this, you can have
- 3:33a rebreather system, you know, set up. We're like you
- 3:38have an airway that like has a vent that's on
- 3:40higher ground, right or whatever, it's old where your intake is.
- 3:45But most of it wasn't like standing water, you're stuck under.
- 3:49It's like floods of water that you just need to
- 3:51keep away from the door. Right. So if you're on
- 3:53any level of elevation and not next to a river,
- 3:56any kind of bunker would have been able to endure
- 3:58it because you're not just set ain't under it. Right.
- 4:01Most of the damage was caused by the wind and
- 4:03like the the torrential rains creating these like mudslides and
- 4:07stuff like that. Interesting, Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell
- 4:11you what you know. Joke all you want. But when
- 4:13the power goes out, guess who's laughing. I guess he's
- 4:16got Yeah. It's one of those.
- 4:17Speaker 2: Uh there's just lay the cable guy bit for back
- 4:19in the day when he's like everybody makes fund a
- 4:20redneck until the car breaks down or something like that.
- 4:23It's like that kind of like it's it's that same
- 4:24kind of vibe, but.
- 4:25Speaker 1: There that the old saying, Uh, the man who sleeps
- 4:29with the machete is a fool every night. But one yeah,
- 4:33got it. It's so fucking Birtle, so cool. It's sick.
- 4:38Speaker 4: Uh.
- 4:38Speaker 2: I mean, I'm excited though Christian Wallace has I mean,
- 4:41like I would say, the h the Astronauts story is
- 4:45one of my favorites. It also calls me to talk
- 4:47about mister Floppy, which maybe mister Floppy will make it
- 4:49appearance here.
- 4:50Speaker 1: I don't know. I hope we'll see God. But yeah,
- 4:54I mean, if anything, let's get into it. You know,
- 4:57I just realized that on my news set, the way
- 5:00it's set up where you can see the cryptid tier
- 5:05chart back there, which I will finish at some point,
- 5:08but you drew the big demon headed thing saying kind
- 5:13of cringe, and that's like the largest single item in
- 5:16my background. That the biggest thing on my set is
- 5:21something you did that that is unfortunate and you should
- 5:24you should change that.
- 5:26Speaker 2: You need to commission like a sick like a sculpture
- 5:29or something of like a cryptid.
- 5:30Speaker 1: Well, what I want to do when I get so
- 5:34this this room's temporary. This is in the new house
- 5:37right and I'm just waiting for like the little studio
- 5:40to get built next to the house. When that studio
- 5:42is built, I want the inside of it to look
- 5:44like a log cabin. That's fine, like a fireplace and stuff.
- 5:48And I want to have a huge mount made like
- 5:52I have the little like the normal deer over there
- 5:54that I put the night vision on. I want to
- 5:56have like a massive there's this. What's the thing. I
- 6:01think it's when the deer get too much calcium at
- 6:03like pay hunt forms, but they won't shed old antlers,
- 6:09They'll just grow new ones. It's like it's just not
- 6:12good for the deer and stuff like that's what happens
- 6:14when you overspike their diet, but it gets these weird,
- 6:18like monstrous looking racks to come out of them. And
- 6:21I want to have like a commission art piece that
- 6:24looks like that, with like a huge like monstrous skull
- 6:28in the night, like a wind to go, you know,
- 6:30mount with the night vision, and I want to put
- 6:33that as like a mantle piece over the back of
- 6:35the room.
- 6:36Speaker 2: I mean, that would be fucking sick, especially being in
- 6:38a log cabin. You'd you would literally have your your set.
- 6:42It would look like the Lonely broadcast station.
- 6:46Speaker 1: Well, so the the way the set's gonna look is
- 6:49one wall is going to be like solid cabin walls,
- 6:53fireplace and all that, and then the other wall is
- 6:57floor to ceiling windows. That is I pushed up against
- 7:01the forest. Oh so it's like freaks out being in
- 7:06there at night. Fuck well, I mean I'm where I
- 7:09am right now. There. I keep putting more lights up
- 7:13so it's like you can walk around the property at
- 7:14night when those lights are off.
- 7:17Speaker 2: Well, we need to we need to do a night
- 7:20recording one night and really try to read one that
- 7:22we think is actually scary. And I want to see
- 7:24you fucking squirm in that new office because that way,
- 7:28I feel like, because I've done that even before, I
- 7:31I love it.
- 7:31Speaker 1: I've kept my composure.
- 7:33Speaker 2: But there's times where I'm alone at my studio and
- 7:35I'll like and I I just I'm so immersed in
- 7:38the story that I feel like I'm like seeing things,
- 7:40so I kind of like look up or look behind
- 7:42me or something casually. It's just it fucks with you
- 7:45so well. But dude, the forest right there, No, there's
- 7:48no way I would push you out so bad.
- 7:51Speaker 1: Where I'm at right now, I've got so this is.
- 7:54This room's on the second story, so there's like trees
- 7:58that hang right outside the wind and at night I'll
- 8:01open the window to let the breeze in. So there's
- 8:04been a couple of times I've been playing a scary
- 8:05game or watching something scary, and I'll glance and I'll
- 8:08see the wind like pushing the limbs towards the window,
- 8:13back and forth. It's excellent vibe, but terrifying.
- 8:16Speaker 2: Are they close? Are they close enough? Are they close
- 8:18enough that they like tap your window?
- 8:20Speaker 1: They're not close enough to tap, but they're close enough
- 8:23that they're in the peripheral kind of bowing in.
- 8:25Speaker 2: I bet you anything you start you like just you
- 8:28imagine you just hear it, and you're like, just like
- 8:30the I bet you're gonna start feeling like you hear something.
- 8:33Speaker 1: You know. It's it wasn't too perfect of an environment
- 8:36to not to have that happen. One night I came
- 8:38in here and an owl. I had the window open,
- 8:42and there's an owl that was perched on the window
- 8:46and he was facing away from me, but it was
- 8:48dark in the room and he was fat, so walking
- 8:52into the room, it looked like the back of someone's head. Right.
- 8:56But like I said, this is a second story, So
- 8:59that would be.
- 9:00Speaker 4: Like an eleven giants of the app.
- 9:05Speaker 1: Yeah, I walked through. I walk into the door and
- 9:08I freeze and I see like the silhouette and then
- 9:11it flies away, and oh my god, oh my god. Yeah,
- 9:17good times. Yeah, I'll get I'll get scared for a
- 9:19recording one night. That'll be fun. We should. Yeah.
- 9:22Speaker 2: Also, thank you to our audio listeners right now who
- 9:25are driving are usually at work from what we see.
- 9:27Thank you for listening on Spotify or Apple Podcast. It
- 9:30helps us out if you give us.
- 9:31Speaker 1: A nice rating.
- 9:32Speaker 2: And then also to our Patreon members who got a
- 9:34little exclusive story yesterday or a couple days ago.
- 9:38Speaker 1: Uh.
- 9:38Speaker 2: And we'll probably be getting me a little more frequently
- 9:41while Isaiah has his beautiful baby coming soon. So if
- 9:46you want some extra content, feel free to go there
- 9:48support the channel. If not, you get all the free
- 9:50content right here.
- 9:50Speaker 3: Baby.
- 9:52Speaker 1: Otherwise, Isaiah, do you want to jump in? Go and
- 9:55jump in. I do have one question for the people,
- 9:58because you brought up that A lot of people comment
- 10:00that they listen at work and stuff like that. What
- 10:04I feel like, there's not a ton of jobs you
- 10:08can do that, right? Well, I don't know. There has
- 10:12to be a ton of jobs. If you can't do that,
- 10:15I mean probably, but I think I don't know.
- 10:18Speaker 2: Like even whenever I did like construction or something, I
- 10:20always had like an earbud day.
- 10:23Speaker 1: Like that. Yes, if there's like if it's you doing
- 10:25a task, absolutely I get it. But if you're in
- 10:27any kind of like service position, like someone can't be
- 10:30working to check out right, well, the show.
- 10:33Speaker 2: But you know what I do see these people say
- 10:35on their lunch break, they'll put something on or I
- 10:37would say a large part of our audience I think
- 10:39while they're doing like I think that we are a
- 10:42background fodder for people cleaning their house. I believe is
- 10:45a big one too. People are like I just want
- 10:48to do my errand.
- 10:48Speaker 1: I mean that absolutely makes I do the same thing.
- 10:50I listen to YouTube videos.
- 10:52Speaker 4: Yeah it's the best background. I listened to creep cast. Yeah,
- 10:55I'll listen to myself talk for I remember that.
- 10:58Speaker 1: Yeah all right, Yeah, we can go ahead and get
- 11:02into it.
- 11:02Speaker 2: So and we will leave a link to Christians Uh.
- 11:05He has an athology book as well. We'll leave a
- 11:08link with his team description with Teth.
- 11:10Speaker 1: We also going to leave a link to his website.
- 11:12Cchwallace dot co dot uk. Even though he's from the UK,
- 11:16I forgive him. He has a link to a ton
- 11:18of his one off stories as well as his uh
- 11:21like short stories and stuff like that on there. That's
- 11:24I'm sure to check him out. He's a fantastic author.
- 11:27Speaker 2: I feel like all some of the best writers are
- 11:28from the UK that we've read, even like Neon Tempo
- 11:31with the Left Right Game that's also a UK.
- 11:33Speaker 1: Lane And uh, Dathan is no. Dathan's no, No, Dathan's
- 11:37fer He's American. Yeah, yeah, he's on the right side
- 11:39of the pawn. That's right. Yeah, all right, let's get
- 11:43into it. I found the bunker of a prepper family
- 11:49who went missing three years ago. Doctor Daniel Vance was
- 11:54a smart man, too smart for his own good. Maybe
- 11:58forty years old sure, and fluid dynamics, with a mind
- 12:02made of shapes and numbers. No one knows why. One day,
- 12:06on a whim, crunched the numbers on the apocalypse and
- 12:10came to a troubling conclusion. He didn't share exactly what
- 12:13it was he deduced, but given that he immediately quit
- 12:16his job and liquidated his many assets, it's fair to
- 12:20say it wasn't positive swep up in the wake of
- 12:23the tremendous upheaval was his wife, a twenty four year
- 12:26old PhD student who had grown infatuated with Daniels sometime before.
- 12:30She loved the strange bear of a man who could
- 12:32just as easily build a log cabin as he could
- 12:35explain the idiosyncrasies of an asteroid's orbit. Speaking to Daniel
- 12:39always left you with the profound impression he was right.
- 12:42So when he told her what he wanted to do,
- 12:45she agreed. Fifteen years and five children later, the Vances
- 12:50were living in the distant woods just beyond my hometown.
- 12:53They were enigmatic, richer than the pope, and extremely serious
- 12:57about their prepper lifestyle. But we're all so funny, easy
- 13:01going and incredibly compelling to speak to. This is like
- 13:05Ted Kazinski if he could speak to women.
- 13:10Speaker 2: Well I would, He's not. We don't know he's Ted Kaczinsky.
- 13:13Yet I will say I do.
- 13:15Speaker 1: Like the super smart PhD guy builds log cabin in
- 13:18the woods, if he didn't write about murdering women that
- 13:22he was afraid to go on dates with.
- 13:23Speaker 2: And yeah, that's that's what I mean. Is we have
- 13:25no he this, the doctor has no fault like that. Yet,
- 13:31if anything I do with that dynamic of like very
- 13:33scholarly MANU has wife who was like infatuated with his studies.
- 13:38Speaker 1: Now they like live remotely.
- 13:40Speaker 2: This this setup also of like I love I love
- 13:42this setup too, not to stop it too soon, but
- 13:46the idea that a learned man is doing this thing,
- 13:50it doesn't seem crazy, right, like these things, it's a
- 13:53person that is too smart for their own good and
- 13:56then doing it. You really don't think anything of it,
- 13:59but I'm curious.
- 14:00Speaker 1: To see where it takes that left turn. I'll also
- 14:03say there again not to make this about me, but
- 14:06I like making stuff about me. There is a surprising
- 14:11number of people you'll find a lot of them I
- 14:13found during the flood who are like preppers who you know,
- 14:19live off the grid, own their own generator for power use,
- 14:24you know, woodpellet stoves for heat and stuff like that,
- 14:26who will, come to find out, are incredibly accomplished doctors, researchers, inventors.
- 14:33There's this one guy who was one of the people
- 14:37bringing supplies repairing equipment for people, and it turns out
- 14:41that he had the patent on a bunch of like
- 14:43surgical technology stuff like that. Like yeah he was loaded, yeah,
- 14:48but no they'd rather just live off the grid put
- 14:51their stuff together. It's like you get to a point
- 14:54where you're like, hey, this whole like rat race societal
- 14:58thing maybe not for me. Maybe all I need is
- 15:00a fireplace and a wife, you know.
- 15:02Speaker 2: I also think that people, because of TV and stuff,
- 15:04have also made like every doomsday prepper person is like
- 15:09a religious fanatic, or like a sheltered person, or like
- 15:14like trying to get all of these like negatives attached
- 15:17to it when it could just be some people are
- 15:19just like too smart for their own good, and they're
- 15:20just like, we should probably have these backups, we should
- 15:22probably have these commodities, you know.
- 15:25Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, It's it's like, uh, well, I mean, you know,
- 15:29you never know what can go wrong. I'm so lazy.
- 15:33Speaker 2: If the world ends, I'm just I'm I'm going to
- 15:35lay on my lawn outside and I'm just gonna.
- 15:38Speaker 1: Let it take me.
- 15:42Speaker 2: I'm sure my wife hopefully and she will live or
- 15:44life with a with a man who wasn't willing to survive.
- 15:47Speaker 1: But I'm just gonna be like I just I can't.
- 15:50I just simply cannot just a mine or inconvenience. It's
- 15:55a thunderstorm all right, I'm dead. It's well played. World Yeah,
- 16:02world played made I get it. They're they're running a
- 16:09vacuum right outside of the door. Okay, if you can't
- 16:13hear it, we'll keep going. But it made me think
- 16:15of that thing I want some streamer did where there
- 16:19were housekeepers in the background and he was like embarrassed.
- 16:24Speaker 3: That's it.
- 16:24Speaker 2: Yeah, many mentions of exquc on this podcast.
- 16:36Speaker 1: We've only mentioned him twice, right, I think the many
- 16:41that is a surprising number to come up. But they
- 16:45were also funny, easy going, and incredibly compelling to speak
- 16:48to larger than live survivalists who swept into town with
- 16:52bizarre requests that thrilled local businesses. Vast quantities of cement, iron, lead,
- 16:58and steel were all shipped through the Moat mountains so
- 17:01that the Vances could build their shelter. The advanced methods
- 17:04they used to keep its secret were legendary. Daniel had
- 17:08once spent six months earning the license necessary to drive
- 17:11HGVs up to his compound so that no one else
- 17:15lay eyes on it, and on one occasion, when a
- 17:17company had refused their request for GPS track or free vehicles,
- 17:21he bought them out wholesale, so that they had no choice. Wow,
- 17:25what are HGVs, by the way, high something vehicles. It's
- 17:32like it's heavy equipment that you use to transport materials on.
- 17:37Speaker 2: Okay, So it's not just like a semi truck. It's
- 17:39something that kind of globe a mountain or something like.
- 17:40It's more terrain or heavy right, good lord, okay.
- 17:48Speaker 1: Heavy, I'm getting over the flu heavy goods vehicles, So
- 17:52any like tractor trailer eight okay, So it's just okay,
- 17:56so it's just like a semi beed or stuff like that. Yeah.
- 18:00And so when they stopped appearing in town during the pandemic,
- 18:02when requests for food and goods stopped and all contact
- 18:05was dropped, most attributed it to lockdown. They had a
- 18:09bunker and had spent their entire lives training to be
- 18:12self sufficient in the face of civilization's collapse. Even Alexander,
- 18:17the youngest to just three, was already collecting firewood as
- 18:20a chore and learning what local plants were edible. Most
- 18:23of us just assumed that if anyone could ride out
- 18:25COVID without breaking a sweat, it would be the Vanceas
- 18:29the reality turned out to be something else. When the
- 18:32worst came to light. We discovered that Daniel had used
- 18:35the pandemic as an excuse for a dry run. The
- 18:38family intended to spend six months in lockdown and essentially
- 18:42beta test their fallout bunker. Three months in and the
- 18:45sheriff received a distress call on the radio. Coordinates were
- 18:49provided by the hushed voice of a sobbing child that
- 18:51most assumed was Alexander, even though that's never been proven.
- 18:55The police arrived and found the bunkers still sealed. It
- 18:59took hours emergency responders to cut into the door, all
- 19:02the while efforts were made to contact the family within,
- 19:06to no avail. Once inside, police were left dumbfounded. There
- 19:11was no one to be rescued, no bodies, no survivors.
- 19:15There was evidence the door's locking mechanism had failed and
- 19:18trapped the vans is inside. No way out. But if so,
- 19:22where'd they gone?
- 19:23Speaker 2: Hmmm, So, let's so the that's kind of crazy. So
- 19:27a child called in the report to even let people
- 19:30know where they're at. But now it looks that the
- 19:33thing is basically it's sealed shut, no way of getting out,
- 19:36but they're gone, yes, correct, that is that's horrifying.
- 19:41Speaker 1: Just I mean like what kind of mystery it? You
- 19:44know what?
- 19:44Speaker 2: It just reminds you of something where it's like the
- 19:46kind of like the lonely broadcast station stuff of like
- 19:49the four one one missing reports where it's like, oh,
- 19:51they're gone and then all of a sudden they just reappear.
- 19:53Like there's kind of like weird phenomenon. It has that vibe,
- 19:57but also just the idea of a child escaping and
- 19:59like and calling the cops is such a horrified it's
- 20:03such a horrifying call to hear, and it's it's so
- 20:06creepy how like casually it's just brushed by, like a
- 20:10child weeping calls and we like went to work, like
- 20:12it's just it's so uh nonchalantly said.
- 20:17Speaker 1: It's probably the three year old, which how did a
- 20:19three year old know?
- 20:20Speaker 2: But you would have to assume it's older than that,
- 20:24right because they had fives.
- 20:26Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's true. It's true. It could be any
- 20:27one of them. So kid calls they were sealed inside,
- 20:33but they're gone. Yeah, So it's like, does is there
- 20:35a secret door in the bunker? Does it go deeper?
- 20:38You know, That's what I'm wondering.
- 20:39Speaker 2: Do you go into a thing where they discover that
- 20:42he was even wilder than they expected and went even
- 20:45deeper into the earth or you know, like some kind
- 20:47of weird uh cavity or something like that.
- 20:51Speaker 1: They they burrow in. I don't know. Okay, you remember
- 20:57how at the beginning it said that he was doing
- 20:59like equations and then he freaked out and that's what
- 21:01started all this. M Okay, So they go back and
- 21:04look at his equations and it's like a bunch of
- 21:06numbers and like symbols and stuff, and at the end
- 21:09it just says mold people. Yeah, it's like all these
- 21:15just like how did he do his math? They got
- 21:17to mole people?
- 21:20Speaker 2: He has he has he has a perfectly preserved mole
- 21:22skull in his room.
- 21:27Speaker 1: That someone so so that the side they're like, if
- 21:31he was afraid of mole people, why would he dig down? Yeah?
- 21:34One of the cops I was like, why would you
- 21:35dig down?
- 21:35Speaker 2: And then there's like an obvious mole person or a
- 21:37cop uniform.
- 21:39Speaker 5: That is very strange that rus propa. Just get out
- 21:44of here, Rod.
- 21:48Speaker 1: Large, I think it's a great idea. Yeah, Bob, that's
- 21:52a damn fine idea. Let's get out of here. Yeah,
- 21:54let's start with some bruckfuss, Does anyone want to go
- 21:59to the caves?
- 22:00Speaker 5: See pardnest love the hole for the holes?
- 22:05Speaker 1: Of course, beds and cots lay everywhere, with molder and
- 22:16yellow sheets, buckets close to hand, with stains all around them.
- 22:21Some doors were barred, others smashed to pieces. There was
- 22:24evidence of makeshift quarantines and in places looked like violence.
- 22:30The police, usually a fantastic source of gossip, were not
- 22:34forthcoming until the town demanded answers, and the sheriff was
- 22:37forced to offer only the bearest of outlines.
- 22:40Speaker 2: An outbreak of water borne illness has struck the Vances
- 22:43down not long after they were locked inside and unable
- 22:46to seek help. Rumors of contagion were overstated and fueled
- 22:50by unrelated rise of COVID. Whatever contaminant had killed the Vances,
- 22:55it was non organic in nature. No need to panic.
- 22:58The Dvances loved ones have been known to find. The
- 23:00bunker was going to be demolished, and we could all
- 23:03put this terrible tragedy behind us.
- 23:06Speaker 1: Don't you hate those water borne illnesses that completely vaporized
- 23:10the body and closed?
- 23:11Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it is one hundred percent just sounds
- 23:13like a cover up right. Yeah, of course, one hundred percent,
- 23:16not telling the public what is actually happening.
- 23:19Speaker 1: Just yeah, have.
- 23:22Speaker 5: Been on our brother water burn almost start.
- 23:36Speaker 1: Your whiskers.
- 23:36Speaker 5: That was so you have mud all of your whiskers.
- 23:40Speaker 1: Why is it.
- 23:44Speaker 6: That officer mole what seems to be the problem.
- 23:53Speaker 1: Yeah, that pitch was over your left shoulder and you
- 23:55swung at it. I know it was right there for
- 23:59the taking. I'm so sad.
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- 26:31Speaker 4: Now back to the episode, of course, we still had
- 26:34questions of hows and of them why hadn't the family
- 26:37called for help, had radios, computers, smartphones too, they were
- 26:42survivalist's not Amish, then where were they?
- 26:46Speaker 1: Like the implication that the office would it called for them?
- 26:50Speaker 2: We also, yeah, well, I think you trying to say
- 26:53that the Amish don't have cell phones but phones, but
- 26:56I'm pretty sure the Amish do have like a horizon plan.
- 27:00Speaker 1: So it's different to different groups depending on where you're at.
- 27:04But a lot of the homage people I know are
- 27:06like they'll say that it's okay to use technology for
- 27:12work or stuff like that, Like they'll drive vehicles for
- 27:15work and stuff like that. It's leisure typically stay away
- 27:18from so they'll they'll call you in an emergency like yeah,
- 27:22they need it's all like, well, I guess it's time
- 27:25to die here, Jedediah.
- 27:26Speaker 2: Jebediah, grab the message and send this to the hospital quick.
- 27:32Speaker 5: They can make a fucking call.
- 27:34Speaker 1: Dude, Verizon T Mobile. What are these evil spells you
- 27:38speak of? What are the what are these demons in
- 27:41your magic box? Yeah? I don't want any temptation from
- 27:45your devils away with you. That that vacuum I mentioned
- 27:49earlier is like shoved up on the door now, And
- 27:52I think it's because the Ami Shirp said, this is
- 27:55damage bag of in your house. Shame you're a dirty boy.
- 28:02Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 28:02Speaker 1: I opened the door and they're just dressed like pilgrims.
- 28:04How long can someone vacuum directly outside of the door.
- 28:09I've heard it for twenty five minutes. Twenty five I
- 28:13don't have to fucking minutes.
- 28:14Speaker 2: It's just been a person fucking vacuum in the same spot.
- 28:18Speaker 1: Go out there, Tom, it's clean. He got it, You
- 28:21got it. It's like it's a hallway too, that's like
- 28:25eighteen inches will how long is?
- 28:30Speaker 2: It's a seven hundred and eighty foot hallway, so it
- 28:32takes a while the echo.
- 28:33Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that you haven't
- 28:36visited yet. So I bought the house from House of Leaves.
- 28:39It's actually a non Euclidean hallway that has an unmappable entrance.
- 28:46Speaker 2: So I forgot to tell you I bought the Winchester
- 28:48mansion in that they're they're vacuuming the stairs that lead.
- 28:53Speaker 1: To nowhere right now.
- 28:54Speaker 4: So technically the house is the hallway.
- 28:58Speaker 1: Yeah, we are the hallway. We've got the hallway. Yeah, okay, okay,
- 29:03I think they left for now. It's like a shark
- 29:05keeps circling back. I bet you she's right.
- 29:08Speaker 2: Whoever's vacuating, they're like right by the they're right by
- 29:11the door, and as soon as you stop talking, they
- 29:13turn back on, or soon as you start talking.
- 29:15Speaker 1: They turn back on. What's awesome funny about this is
- 29:23I'm doing the YouTuber thing where I'm really unappreciative of
- 29:25people that are helping me take care of my house.
- 29:28Speaker 2: Listen, it's you can have all the appreciation of the world.
- 29:32What could possibly be near your door that they have
- 29:36not gone? What could have happened?
- 29:39Speaker 1: I don't know. It's just hardwood. It's not that it's hardwood.
- 29:44It's a rug.
- 29:45Speaker 2: They don't even vacuumting carpet.
- 29:48Speaker 1: No, there's not even a rug there. Oh my god, get.
- 29:52Speaker 5: A brooms, get a swiffer.
- 29:56Speaker 1: Why are you possibly vacuumated? This is this is going
- 30:01to go down as the most out.
- 30:02Speaker 5: Of touch coast wheels. It's plastic wheels in hardwood.
- 30:08Speaker 1: Oh my god. Okay, all right. Anyway, they were a survivalists,
- 30:13not amish. And where were they? What had happened to
- 30:16their bodies? Why didn't they simply left? We shouted these
- 30:21and more at the town meeting, but the police simply
- 30:23refused to comment. For most of us, the excitement lasted
- 30:27another week or two until we realized we weren't getting
- 30:30answers anytime soon. Besides, the pandemic was in full swing
- 30:34and most of us had other things to worry about.
- 30:36The tragic story eventually faded until it was just one
- 30:39of those awful things in the town's history that we
- 30:41didn't talk about. I was as guilty as anyone else
- 30:44of just forgetting about it. I certainly never expected to
- 30:47find the bunker out there in the woods, faded police
- 30:50tape still on the open door that hung wide open,
- 30:53scorch marks around the lock, and stood out in the
- 30:56woods like someone had cut a hole right in the
- 30:58fabric of reality. The darkness so deep and black it
- 31:02almost ached to look at the side of it, made
- 31:04my heart drop into my stomach radiated pain. Does that
- 31:08make sense? I think some part of my lizard brain
- 31:11picked out details that wouldn't become apparent to me until
- 31:14I got closer, like the bloody fingerstreaks that stained the
- 31:18handle from where someone had scrabbled furiously at the lock
- 31:21without success, and the tiny viewing window had been smashed
- 31:25with a hammer that still lay nearby, and he did
- 31:28only a glimpse it to imagine the family taking turns
- 31:30to stand there and scream into the woods, desperate for rescue.
- 31:35Good God. Under any other circumstances, I would have run,
- 31:39but I've gone there looking for my dog. My light
- 31:42revealed a few wet pop prints, making their way down
- 31:45the dusty concrete tunnel.
- 31:46Speaker 2: Oh god fuck, oh good? No, what I'd abandoned the dog.
- 31:52There's no way. No, come on, I can't, I can't.
- 31:58Speaker 1: Can you Okay? Go ahead? No, go ahead? Good? No,
- 32:01you go for it. Have you ever abandoned? Have you
- 32:06ever like like what's urban exploration? Is a lame way
- 32:14to say it, but have you ever been in the
- 32:15woods and like checked out abandoned structures and stuff? No?
- 32:19Speaker 2: No, because I'll tell you, and I'll tell you why
- 32:22it is, Because well, one, I've seen too many movies.
- 32:25And then two I don't want to I'm big, I'm
- 32:28a fat man, so I don't want to fall through
- 32:30any floors. And then three I just imagine there's like
- 32:34squatters or something there that is going to hurt me
- 32:38so now. And then also an active crime scene where
- 32:41there's bloody fingerprints where people have died and they haven't
- 32:44found the bodies. And then of course my amazing little
- 32:47fucking pupper had to just.
- 32:48Speaker 1: Well, why don't I go down there? No?
- 32:51Speaker 2: I'm good the story on here about like checking out
- 32:57the abandoned penitentiary.
- 32:59Speaker 1: I think stuff like that, But I love walking through
- 33:01abandoned buildings and stuff like that. Uh, there was. This
- 33:06is weirdly reminiscent of there's some game I played where
- 33:12you're a man in the woods and there's an old
- 33:14bunker and your dog goes into it. What that's a
- 33:18game that has that has to be no story, right?
- 33:22It was the blair Witch video game. Interesting. This came
- 33:28out a while back and it was Seid in the
- 33:29universe of the blair Witch, and you played as a
- 33:33guy who I think was a veteran who was coming
- 33:36home because there was a missing person out in the woods,
- 33:39so him and his dog went out there to look
- 33:41for it. And most of the game is you walking
- 33:44through the woods as like the blair Witch gives you
- 33:46visions and the dog is like your only companion out there.
- 33:51And there's one segment where he starts to hallucinate memories
- 33:57of like Afghanistan overlaid, So it's like these barracks in
- 34:01the middle of the woods and the dog goes down
- 34:03into them and you follow. That's right, that's what it was.
- 34:07The game actually went kind of hard. I don't know
- 34:10what the public reactions to, but there's a segment at
- 34:13the end of the game where the dog's injured, and
- 34:16you walk with the dog for a long time, and
- 34:18the message starts showing up saying leave him. So you
- 34:23think the only way you can get out is to
- 34:25lay the dog down and like leave him in the woods.
- 34:30But I think I did something different or went backwards
- 34:34or something, and it fixed it. So you can't get
- 34:36out with the dog. But I remember like walking around
- 34:39for a while not knowing what to do, and then
- 34:40seeing the message leave him, and I like my stomach drop,
- 34:44like I can't leave the dog hundred wood hunter wood leaves.
- 34:47Speaker 2: I would look at that pixelated dog and I would
- 34:48immediately turn around for a bone down into the dark
- 34:51dellegant and I just go the opposite direction immediately without
- 34:56a hesitation.
- 34:57Speaker 1: It's good, buddy. I'm happy to hear that my light
- 35:00revealed a few wet paw prints making their way down
- 35:02the dusky concrete tunnel. Half Bernice and half Collie. Ripley
- 35:07is the sort of dog who trembles in my arms
- 35:09when a storm buffets the windows, and these his paws
- 35:12held when we brush him. I love him. I do
- 35:15not have much of a family, or a wife, or
- 35:17even many friends, but I have Ripley. I can know
- 35:21more if turned around and gone home to an empty
- 35:23apartment where but I have to saw my grief away.
- 35:25Then I could flap my arms and fly. It was
- 35:28my dog, and I'd raised him since he was a puppy.
- 35:31I wasn't gonna leave him out of those woods. I
- 35:34went in after him. I didn't know what to Okay,
- 35:38hold on, what about your wife? What if your wife
- 35:39went down those stairs? Yes, I mean even the ripley
- 35:42things made the dogs sound very cute. Now I feel bad.
- 35:45I would probably go in after the dog if it
- 35:47was one of my dogs.
- 35:48Speaker 2: If it was Tugboat, no way, that selfish son of
- 35:53a bitch. I'd be like, you know what fucking live here?
- 35:55Did Oh? I would go for Crawdad.
- 36:00Speaker 4: I'd go for Crawdad and on, yeah, Crawdad's down there,
- 36:03Like yeah, I would feel.
- 36:05Speaker 1: Very sad for Crawdad. I'd be like, she's probably.
- 36:07Speaker 2: Afraid tug about them, like that selfish son of a bitch.
- 36:09Probably just like I love your nough whatever that makes
- 36:15you feeling better. I also would not go in for
- 36:17tug Boat. All of that is a consensus, and people
- 36:21online are like, oh, you're so cute blah, blah. I'm like,
- 36:23you have no idea the selfish hatred this dog has
- 36:26for all of mankind.
- 36:28Speaker 1: Tugboat likes to wait until I stay. I'm like by
- 36:30myself in the kitchen, like drinking coffee or whatever, and
- 36:33then get right behind me and scream as loud as
- 36:36you can. It's uh just unfortunate, a genetic abomination. I
- 36:45didn't know what to expect, but I knew it wouldn't
- 36:48be good. Whatever the police had found and not only
- 36:51kept most of the morbid details to themselves and also lied.
- 36:56The bunker was not demolished or even sealed off. Fat
- 37:00Looking at the occasional blue latex glove tossed aside and
- 37:04one or two broken police issue flashlights, it seemed like
- 37:07the last people inside had been in a hurry to
- 37:09get out. Given this was where seven people had presumably died,
- 37:14I assumed it was someone's job to clean it all up.
- 37:18But the corridor looked largely untouched. Just a few meters in,
- 37:21and manic writing started to cover the walls, the desperate
- 37:25scrawls of a lone survivor left there to be rediscovered.
- 37:28Like cave paintings, most were deliberations on how to get out. Diagrams,
- 37:34blue prints, equations, and formula, all focused on the door
- 37:39and the circuits responsible for its faulty lock. I instinctively
- 37:44assumed they belonged to Daniel, that he'd been the last
- 37:47to die, but a god awful fate for a man
- 37:50to outlive his children. And yet it got worse slowly,
- 37:54the writing change from equations and plans to a desperate scrawl,
- 38:00the same few phrases repeated over and over. Five doors five,
- 38:07not six? Six? Did it make it? Didn't make it?
- 38:12Six doors six?
- 38:16Speaker 3: God dude.
- 38:20Speaker 2: Also, I just want to say, I just want to
- 38:22say I was I was already spooked by the idea of.
- 38:25Speaker 6: Like the flashlights ripley doesn't seem so cute now the
- 38:35idea too.
- 38:36Speaker 2: That's like the police are like, oh yeah, I know
- 38:38whether things like basically broken, you shouldn't have to go
- 38:40up there. It's like they probably went up there it's
- 38:41all something and just left it completely untouched like that.
- 38:47Speaker 1: We're not going back. No, no, no. Also, the k
- 38:50painting aspect thing too, is insane, and watching it like
- 38:52a person slowly mentally go insane. Is did I tell
- 38:59you about my house? What happened? No, So the house
- 39:06we got previously, a guy had lived here with his
- 39:10wife since like they got married back in the seventies
- 39:13or whatever, and then she died early two thousands, and
- 39:16then he didn't die till like twenty twenty, so for
- 39:19eighteen years about he was living in the house by himself.
- 39:23So in the basement, he just started writing messages to himself.
- 39:27And some of them are like notes like need to
- 39:31take out the trash, need to talk to so and
- 39:33so about an engine part, blah blah blah. But as
- 39:36time goes on, they start to get more like remember
- 39:42to look at the dog today, like remember to blah
- 39:46blah blah, all this stuff. And then he started to,
- 39:50I think, take notes about things that made him happy,
- 39:53Like he wrote like flowers bloom today and wrote the
- 39:55date and stuff like that, and above all of them, above,
- 39:59like all the writing he wrote on the wall. Sometime
- 40:01in twenty fourteen, baby owls flew so like he was
- 40:05watching a nest of baby owls, and then they took
- 40:07off that day and he wrote it down, so all
- 40:09like his like near two decades of writing talking to
- 40:12himself is on the wall, and we were leaving that
- 40:15up we're going to leave that there.
- 40:17Speaker 2: But wow, you know it probably is just a nice
- 40:21thing of like little moments and you get like little
- 40:23pieces of a person's life, but out of context and
- 40:26like not knowing anything about this that's horrifying. Like you
- 40:30have got to try to make that into a story
- 40:32or something. You should write that.
- 40:33Speaker 1: Well, I want to, So I thought about either making
- 40:36a YouTube video or making a story called The Man
- 40:39who Lived in My House because between that and like
- 40:44walking through the house, I see other stuff he's done,
- 40:47Like I see stuff I'm like, that's like, for example,
- 40:50in the garage, there were all these like pieces of
- 40:54wood that were like drilled into the wall, and I'm like,
- 40:58why did he do that there? That's so random Until
- 41:00I started using the cabinets and with the garage shore
- 41:04open updraft would come in and shut all the cabinets shut.
- 41:07But where he has the wood drilled is just the
- 41:10right place that you can rotate the wood and use
- 41:12it as like a stopper to keep the doors stuck
- 41:15open and stuff like that. So walking through the house,
- 41:17I've seen stuff that he's learned from living in it
- 41:20that now I'm relearning seeing where he's put implements and
- 41:23things like that.
- 41:24Speaker 2: Morphing into a man in this property, like morphing into
- 41:27that other man would be so crazy, you know what
- 41:30I mean, like a like a thing of like when
- 41:33you buy someone else's home, you become the last tenant.
- 41:35Speaker 1: That lives there.
- 41:37Speaker 2: Yeah, something something weird like that. That'd be like an
- 41:40interesting take on like almost immortality or something like I'm
- 41:43some kind of.
- 41:44Speaker 1: Person that's is that kind of what you got from
- 41:47the ending of the Shining As you don't know any
- 41:52of the shop is fucking weird. Well, the inding where
- 41:55it's like, you know, like, oh, you're the keeper, you know,
- 41:57you've always been here, and then the picture where it's
- 41:59him from the thirties so that he is like whoever
- 42:01keeps the hotel because it's like he's almost reinvigorated through
- 42:05the hotel again. And again Yeah, I'm not sure.
- 42:09Speaker 2: I mean, like possibly it's just weird too he gave
- 42:11birth to or he like his son is the guy
- 42:14that has has this power in the Shine Ti, so
- 42:16it just it makes him feel very paranormal in nature.
- 42:18Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, but no, it's a similar idea I
- 42:22think of like becoming the same person over and over again.
- 42:26But I've thought about, yeah, the man who lived in
- 42:28my house, because some of those messages are kind of like.
- 42:31What was the one that bothered me a bit? It
- 42:34was something like I've got to quit talking about it,
- 42:37something really vague like that.
- 42:39Speaker 2: Well, yeah, well the things that are that are vague
- 42:41and you have no context for you're going to dissect
- 42:44that how, you.
- 42:45Speaker 3: Know what I mean?
- 42:45Speaker 2: It could you could totally miss misinterpret it, but it's
- 42:48just it takes on its own meeting to you in
- 42:51a weird way.
- 42:53Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm also I don't want because he's still got
- 42:56family around, so I don't want to dox his name,
- 43:00but I'll text you what his name was because it
- 43:02adds to the thing that was his legal name. Wow. Really,
- 43:11I just texted it to you on Yeah. Yeah, And
- 43:13I'm just I'm looking at it.
- 43:14Speaker 2: I'm saying it's like a Star Wars character or something. Anyway,
- 43:23you had a full on bounty hunter, like a Jedi
- 43:25living in your house.
- 43:27Speaker 1: It's kind of crazy. He was just walking around in
- 43:29a Mandalorian Yeah, stop talking about it. God, it seemed
- 43:39like the kind of thing you'd find in an asylum.
- 43:42Psychotic rambling punctuated only by six paragraphs right at the end.
- 43:47Each letter was impeccably neat, and each small paragraph was
- 43:50topped with a beautifully drawn Christian Cross.
- 43:53Speaker 2: Elliot advanced, age fifteen, A gifted guitarist. He liked boys,
- 43:57even though he thought I didn't know. I loved him
- 44:01with everything I had. He would have made a great man.
- 44:05Alicia Vanz, aged fourteen. She liked to paint and shoot.
- 44:09She had her mother's mean streak. Would have served her
- 44:13well in the future. Elijah Vans, age eight, the smartest
- 44:18of us.
- 44:18Speaker 1: All These were Daniel's memorials to his family. Seeing the
- 44:22words let up on my torch was haunting inside into
- 44:25the overwhelming despair he'd endured. Must have realized he wouldn't
- 44:30get the chance to speak at his family's funerals or
- 44:33to write their obituaries. This was his last desperate way
- 44:37of making sure the world might one day know them
- 44:39as he did. It's real people. The words mark the
- 44:42end of the tunnel, standing adjacent to a trapdoor in
- 44:45the ground. It was not open, but the tunnel came
- 44:48to a dead end immediately afterwards, and Ripley's prints disappeared
- 44:52at the hatch. I feared he might be in danger. Still,
- 44:56I stopped and looked at the bunker door twenty meters
- 44:58behind me. The once gloomy forests looked so bright even
- 45:02on this cloudy day. The air dotted with rain. Part
- 45:06of me felt like I was leaving the whole world behind.
- 45:08As I began to climb the ladder down, I entered
- 45:11a large, circular living space that was packed with furniture
- 45:14and little nooks and crannies. The walls were covered with
- 45:18folding beds and tables, and every inch was multifunctional. A
- 45:22dining space could become a sitting space, which in turn
- 45:25might be where someone slept or even exercised. It all
- 45:29dependent on what particular bit of furniture you unfolded or
- 45:31unclipped or unfurled. Seven people in close quarters, nowhere near
- 45:36enough privacy made sense. They went with this cluttered, overlapping
- 45:40use of space. But it was still a large room,
- 45:43bigger than most studio apartments, and there were a few
- 45:47corridors that led deeper into the earth, telling me the
- 45:49bunker had unseen depths. I looked for some sign of
- 45:53my dog and soon found his trail. But this far
- 45:57from the rainy cops Ripley's prints were starting to face.
- 46:01After barely a few meters, they petered out vaguely in
- 46:03the direction of a nearby door. I wanted to follow,
- 46:07but stopped myself from rushing onwards. It was unlikely Ripley
- 46:11was getting out any other way, and I do us
- 46:14and no good getting hurt myself. I decided to take
- 46:17a look around and quickly spotted at dinner table. If
- 46:20I needed proof the police had not bothered with a cleanup,
- 46:23this was that the plates were still out, food brotten
- 46:27to a strange, blackened husk. A child's hat lay across
- 46:31one place, setting, the once creamy fleece turned a sickly
- 46:34green and yellow. The chairs had their bricks reinforced with
- 46:38wooden beams fitted with long grooves so that something the
- 46:42width of a nail could slide into them, and on
- 46:45each of the cushions were foul smelling stains and looked
- 46:47oddly like an as print. I touched one with gloved
- 46:51hands and the material cracked audibly. Whatever it was. Similar
- 46:55stains were on the cutlery and plates, and there were
- 46:58even handprints of a place firmly on the tablecloth. At
- 47:02first I thought it was blood that wasn't quite right.
- 47:05It was too contained to be leading. Blood on the
- 47:08back of one of the chairs, sustained tapered exactly where
- 47:11a woman's waist would be, like a near perfect silhouette.
- 47:15I shivered as I remember that Marianda Vance had always
- 47:18been a slim woman, wondered how she left her imprint
- 47:20on the gray fabric. So is it implied that there
- 47:23was like a rot on them? That's what I'm thinking. Okay,
- 47:27it feels like some kind of decay, is what I'm thinking.
- 47:30Speaker 2: Because it's not blood, because yeah, because at first I
- 47:32was like, oh fuck, is it dried blood? Now I'm
- 47:34thinking it's some kind of roder decay. But it also
- 47:36almost seems like, you know, like the atomic bomb, like those.
- 47:39Speaker 1: Shadows, the shadows of Hiroshima. Yeah, yeah, like that.
- 47:43Speaker 2: It kind of makes me think if something like that too,
- 47:45Maybe not the shadows, but just in that way that's
- 47:47leaving silhouettes. But it does feel like a rot or,
- 47:49like a mold or something.
- 47:52Speaker 1: They were at the dinner table and the little eight
- 47:55year old's Mommy, look what I made it just open
- 48:00chaps of uranium to thirty eight Wait where'd yeah? Look, mom,
- 48:09the power.
- 48:10Speaker 2: Of God if I had to say, though, I mean,
- 48:13I'm probably it almost seems like a fungus or like
- 48:15a mold, like I'm thinking mold.
- 48:19Speaker 1: Yeah, I left the k or something I think of mold.
- 48:22He was walked into a resident Evil seven mansion, Yeah,
- 48:26like oh yeah, the Baker's house. Yeah.
- 48:28Speaker 2: It definitely puts a different kind of vibe into the story.
- 48:31The bunkers are now I'm picturing it like that, like
- 48:33swamp house kind of thing.
- 48:36Speaker 1: Down in Dubay. You down. And also I didn't even
- 48:39think of this. How did the dog go down the ladder?
- 48:42Speaker 4: I don't It wasn't a ladder though, it's a stairs
- 48:44I thought, I said he went down a ladder.
- 48:46Speaker 1: No, I think it's a staircase that goes down to
- 48:48the earth. Using my torch, British, using my torch, I
- 48:53saw that these stains repeated in the oddest of places. Yes,
- 48:57there were some on beds and blankets and even patches
- 48:59of playing floor, exactly like you might expect in a
- 49:02room full of sick people. Why did one stain on
- 49:05the floor bear such a strong resemblance to a child
- 49:07huddled in a fetal position? And why was the same
- 49:11stuff all over the TV remote and on books, on
- 49:14shelves and board games. Two. Everything from sofa cushions to
- 49:18TV boxes to piles of dirty laundry were covered in
- 49:22the same dried brownish material that gave off a bowel
- 49:25coppery miasthma found the jigsaw particularly baffling. Someone had set
- 49:31up another table with four chairs, all modified with the
- 49:34same back support as those by the dinner table, and
- 49:37a jigsaw had been laid out with four separate piles,
- 49:41but only one was depleted. The rest looked largely untouched,
- 49:45almost like someone had portioned out pieces for three other
- 49:48people who had absolutely no interest in going along with it.
- 49:52Maybe Daniel had tried to keep up morale while the
- 49:54family were sick. God help me if that were true.
- 49:58I couldn't help but imagine the or man sat there
- 50:01with his loved ones close to death, desperately trying to
- 50:04encourage them to click their own pieces into place while
- 50:06they faded in and out of consciousness. Okay, uh so
- 50:09here's my theory off of that line. His family was
- 50:13dead pretty early on, and he was like playing house,
- 50:19like setting them up right decayane in their chairs and
- 50:22moving them over to play jicksaw and stuff like that.
- 50:24Speaker 2: So, so are you saying that there was like are
- 50:28you saying that you think that the guy killed him
- 50:30and he was like messing with their bodies.
- 50:32Speaker 1: Or on accident they did.
- 50:34Speaker 2: So you're not sure yet if you're like you think
- 50:38that the doctor had any ill intent or anything yet
- 50:42you think it's just like you think you maybe just
- 50:45went crazy then or something. I mean, I'm just I'm
- 50:47trying to see, like because I like that that idea
- 50:50of a guy like basically playing house and like positioning stuff,
- 50:53and he's just like going about this like twisting.
- 50:55Speaker 1: And the stains are like the rotting corpse, right corpse exactly. Yeah.
- 50:59I think either he went crazy and took him down
- 51:03there and killed them or bringing them down there got
- 51:07them killed somehow. I feel like maybe the police were
- 51:11right it was a water borne illness. Just they died,
- 51:14But then everything that happened afterwards is like him acting
- 51:19like they're okay with the bodies for like a year.
- 51:22I feel like they.
- 51:22Speaker 2: Got sick or something and like they were existing with
- 51:25this illness that was like making them fucking ooze or do.
- 51:28Speaker 1: Something that could be that something about that room emanated madness.
- 51:33The longer I stayed down there, flicking the bright disks
- 51:36of light off my torch from one detail to another,
- 51:39the more I wanted to leave. One door had wooden
- 51:42beams nailed across it, one sofa had been partially disassembled,
- 51:46multiple beds had been burned, and all the light bulbs
- 51:50had been removed and put in a box on the
- 51:52kitchen countertop. Looking up with the ceiling, I finally had
- 51:55some insight into why the police were so confident the
- 51:58vans has had not survived despite finding their bodies. So
- 52:02when A jammed to human finger into one of the
- 52:04empty sockets, almost like they expected it to glow with
- 52:07the flick of a switch. What was it about this
- 52:10place that had caused the police to leave and never return,
- 52:14not to even take that finger and test it for
- 52:16signs of illness, or even just to confirm who it
- 52:18belonged to. I decided it was time to hurry up
- 52:22and find my dog. People had died in that place.
- 52:26While I'm not superstitious, can't be the only skeptic who
- 52:29has done the calculations in his head and realized it
- 52:32cost nothing to be respectful of ghosts. That's a funny
- 52:36line that bunker was cramped, terrifying, and the air stinks
- 52:40so bad. I started to worry I'd get sick myself,
- 52:44serve no one any good to linger. I'd be damned
- 52:47if I'd just walk away and leave Ripley to rot
- 52:49down there. It's not like you could climb a ladder
- 52:52and get out of in his zone, even if I
- 52:55wasn't entirely sure how I'd gotten down there in the
- 52:57first place. Oh so you were right, I thought it
- 52:59was a staircase. No, yeah, so it.
- 53:01Speaker 2: Almost seems like it's If it's pawprints are down there,
- 53:03then oh my, it kind of seems like something grabbed
- 53:05him and took them down.
- 53:07Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Here's here's an even worse idea. Here's an
- 53:10even more terrible idea. Something has either his dog's legs
- 53:15or something that looks like dog legs, and like is
- 53:18making little stamps on the ground. Oh yeah, that he
- 53:21thinks is his dog. Yeah yeah. I also like how
- 53:29you're trying to gaslight me out of the ladder thing
- 53:31and it worked.
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- 54:46Speaker 1: So many what little bravery I had left, I called
- 54:48out and broke the silence, something which felt like a
- 54:51terrible taboo in that caught awful place look screaming in
- 54:54a graveyard ribly. I waited and hoped to hell i'd
- 54:59hear the pitter pat of his paws, But for the
- 55:01longest of moments, it's only the kind of silence that
- 55:04makes you wonder if something or someone in the darkness
- 55:08is holding its breath, trying to look like just another
- 55:11patch of nothing, biding its time until you finally turn
- 55:15around and show it your back. The TV came on
- 55:19with a blurt of white noise that was so loud
- 55:21and so sudden, I cried, threw my arms up. He
- 55:24nearly fell backwards onto a rolled out sleeping bag and
- 55:27looked like it it's been a week in the sewer.
- 55:29By the time I realized what had caused the noise,
- 55:32I could already hear a tiny rendition Daniel Vance's voice.
- 55:36Speaker 3: I realized the issue here.
- 55:39Speaker 7: I need to emphasize just how a little I understand
- 55:41anything that's.
- 55:43Speaker 1: I frowned at the screen as I approached, showed a
- 55:46greenish infrared view of the bunker, with Daniel up front
- 55:50and the dinner table behind him. It was granny and
- 55:54hard to see that. I could clearly tell that his
- 55:56family were sitting in those chairs.
- 56:00Speaker 7: Forced to follow at looking back, and it makes perfect sense.
- 56:04Miranda often went into stores to fetch food for cooking.
- 56:07We found it behind one of the refrigerators.
- 56:09Speaker 3: So that's shit.
- 56:12Speaker 1: One of the figures in the background slumped onto the
- 56:14table with a loud clank. It's in a plate spinning
- 56:17off onto the ground.
- 56:18Speaker 3: Shit, shit, shit, you know.
- 56:20Speaker 1: Muttered as he got up and grabbed the woman by
- 56:22the shoulder and set her upright.
- 56:24Speaker 3: Maranda never did like my cooking.
- 56:27Speaker 1: Snorted to laugh as he fussed with something at the
- 56:29back of the chair.
- 56:31Speaker 3: The rots are much better than tape. All those hours
- 56:34spent taping them upright to the chairs never worked. But rods, if.
- 56:38Speaker 7: You're right into the spine, with a little with a
- 56:41little modification, I could just slot them into the chairs.
- 56:45Everyone's able to enjoy, join in for dinner. I'm working
- 56:48on something Simla for family game night.
- 56:51Speaker 1: Great bear drop did.
- 56:56Speaker 3: Trap.
- 56:58Speaker 1: So a reluctant bear trap, I will say, because that's provetal.
- 57:04Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean shoving the rods into their spine is
- 57:07insane and your family spine like, ah, there's still a
- 57:11she never liked my clicking. Also, he's coexisting with something
- 57:15because he's like Miranda would go down and fetch food,
- 57:17so she saw the thing first, right, So.
- 57:19Speaker 1: Yeah, he's he's aware, he's aware of it. Should also
- 57:22be like a mold or some growth or something back, Yeah,
- 57:26that caused it. But what what's weird is he yells
- 57:30out ripley and then the TV just turns on, right, Yeah,
- 57:35and it's a recording of Daniel in this room doing it.
- 57:39So there's something there's something going on there right by
- 57:42the way, it's probably apparent at this point, but this
- 57:45rules so far. Christian Wallsman this story, oh my god.
- 57:50I mean even like he's he is one of the goats,
- 57:53but even amongst his works, this is one of my
- 57:55just just setting the stuff. This is one of my
- 57:57favorite setups so far, So I can like, I can
- 58:02see it so plainly in my head, all the details moment.
- 58:06I don't know if I don't know if you feel
- 58:07the same.
- 58:07Speaker 2: I feel like I'm just picturing the the bunker is
- 58:10the same from Cloverfield Lane.
- 58:12Speaker 1: Or what I was thinking about that earlier Cloverfield Lane. Yeah,
- 58:15I'm thinking of the room as more like a concrete openly.
- 58:21Don't I have in my mind of it? Yeah? I
- 58:24have this, you know, it's weird. I think it's the
- 58:27same image in my mind that came when I first
- 58:30read the Road and it talks about the father and
- 58:32son finding the supplies in the bunker. But I don't
- 58:36know where I got that original image from. Could have
- 58:39been weird, Yeah's probably because you know, the way my
- 58:43mind works is it builds off of stuff I've seen
- 58:45in real life, right sure, or like in visual storytelling.
- 58:49So I feel like it had to come from somewhere,
- 58:53but I can't remember where it came from originally. Yeah,
- 58:55I'm curious. Maybe it is maybe my Cloverfield Lane and
- 58:59I'm forgetting.
- 59:00Speaker 2: But mine is just when I hear like, oh, bunker,
- 59:03it just whatever. The first time that pops up, I
- 59:05feel like it just sticks. And to me, as soon
- 59:06as you said bunker, I was even picturing the doctor
- 59:08kind of looks like John Goodman. It's like just like
- 59:11kind of like it's building that kind of visual in
- 59:14my head.
- 59:15Speaker 1: That's not saying, it's just close. Yeah, this is pretty
- 59:18close to what I was thinking of. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 59:20Daniel wandered over to the camera and with a grin,
- 59:22he lifted it from the tripod and scanned the dinner table.
- 59:26I saw it nearly made me drop my torch. His
- 59:30family were long dead, gaunt faces, miss he noses, lips
- 59:35that had receded to reveal awful grins. These were corpses
- 59:40plain a day. Even when viewed through such a low
- 59:43resolution image. The only thing that made them seem remotely
- 59:46alive was the way their eyes still reflected the infrared
- 59:49back so that they glowed in the dark. Yeah, Daniels
- 59:53seemed oblivious to it all, tossled Elliott's hairsed his wife
- 59:58on the cheek, across one young girl's shoulder, even picked
- 1:00:03the young Alexander up from his high chair, and I
- 1:00:05assume he called him. I don't know for sure, because
- 1:00:08I looked away. I'm willing to see the poor boy
- 1:00:11up close. Eyes averted from the screen. I couldn't help
- 1:00:15pan my torch across the same dinner table and shiver
- 1:00:18as I finally realized what all those stains were. Not
- 1:00:21quite blood, a close liquefying flesh left alone for months.
- 1:00:28Daniel had not put his family's bodies to rest. Instead,
- 1:00:31he had moved them around from place to place, puppeted
- 1:00:34them living life as if nothing had really changed. Looking
- 1:00:38at where those stains had settled, I saw a clear
- 1:00:40pattern emerge. He had put them to bed, he had
- 1:00:44set them dinner, it propped them up to watch TV,
- 1:00:47or gave them their favorite books. They even set there
- 1:00:50a lifeless husks while Daniel waited for them to complete
- 1:00:53a jigsaw. The idea horrified me to my core work.
- 1:00:58Speaker 7: It's obviously not a part of the orige. No designs,
- 1:01:01no room on the other side, none of the blueprints.
- 1:01:05Elliot didn't believe me, and why wouldn't he, and why
- 1:01:07would he? I have made every intro this place, but
- 1:01:10I had not install that door in the storage on
- 1:01:12the bottom level. I checked the cameras and some of
- 1:01:15the photos I took during the build, and the walls
- 1:01:17is just blank. But the door is there now and
- 1:01:20it must lead somewhere. I don't know when or why
- 1:01:23it opens, but it does, and the next time I'll
- 1:01:28be ready because I have to know what's on the
- 1:01:31other side, and why it did this to us alone
- 1:01:34down here, often ill asleep at once.
- 1:01:38Speaker 3: Anything could have slit our throats and been done with it,
- 1:01:41but it didn't. It took its time.
- 1:01:44Speaker 7: I have to know why it took our radios and
- 1:01:47computers and phones one by one, none of us noticing
- 1:01:51until it was far too late. I kept telling the
- 1:01:54kids they need to take better care of their things,
- 1:01:56and even as they complained, I just assumed the phones
- 1:01:59were lying behind some shelf. Where else could they go
- 1:02:04in a locked bunker. But it wasn't the children at all.
- 1:02:08Looking back, there are so many signs. Who kept taking
- 1:02:12away the lights, okayt draining the batteries and our torches.
- 1:02:15How long did we live there before we finally realized
- 1:02:17we weren't alone. Was it here every step of the way,
- 1:02:21the door out of nothing that leads to nowhere, at
- 1:02:24least most of the time, because I know for a
- 1:02:26fact it does not always open onto a blank wall.
- 1:02:30Speaker 3: There is something behind it.
- 1:02:31Speaker 7: I can hear it shoveling around there with breath rattling
- 1:02:36in its lungs.
- 1:02:37Speaker 3: Horri will sound. I hear roaming these halls when it thinks.
- 1:02:41Speaker 1: I'm asleep so hard in the bunker. But it's weird.
- 1:02:49Speaker 2: It's weird because I don't know if I can trust him,
- 1:02:51you know, like I really don't know if I believe Daniel.
- 1:02:54Speaker 1: In this, in this deal.
- 1:02:55Speaker 2: Because also we have to consider too he brought his
- 1:02:57family down and locked them in this bunker. Mm hmmm,
- 1:03:00what like they they kind of like, you know, you
- 1:03:02know what I mean? So I don't I don't know.
- 1:03:05Speaker 1: Maybe there was an end of the world coming, but
- 1:03:08like it was prevented somehow because of this. I'm not sure.
- 1:03:11Speaker 2: I mean, there is all the calculations and stuff, but
- 1:03:13now it seems like it is like this kind of
- 1:03:15house of leaves, Like how did this get here? Like
- 1:03:18I did not put this here? And I'm wondering if
- 1:03:20that's also some of what his uh some of what
- 1:03:24his research on the walls, like the.
- 1:03:26Speaker 1: Cave pain that that does read kind of house of leaves,
- 1:03:28doesn't it the whole?
- 1:03:29Speaker 7: Uh?
- 1:03:31Speaker 1: What's the fast notion of like what does the door do? Yeah? Yeah,
- 1:03:35well this one, this one is much more obvious. But yeah,
- 1:03:38will Navidson didn't go in. I mean, he was obsessed
- 1:03:42with the door, but he didn't go insane because of
- 1:03:45it like this one did. Maybe he's not insane per se.
- 1:03:49Maybe he thinks his family still alive. Maybe he's no.
- 1:03:52Speaker 2: I think I think he believes they're dead. I mean,
- 1:03:54that's why he's also like, that's why they came in
- 1:03:56and did what they did to us. I think that
- 1:03:58he knows that this thing is there. I think he's
- 1:04:00just like.
- 1:04:00Speaker 1: He's aware of that family's dead, but he's still playing
- 1:04:03puppet with them exactly. I could see that who kept
- 1:04:06taking away the lights, who kept draining the batteries. So
- 1:04:10that's the idea of being in a bunker and there's
- 1:04:12like a shadow, there, an extra thing in there with you.
- 1:04:15That makes the writing from earlier makes sense too. Five
- 1:04:17doors not six not six doors? Mm hmm, what was
- 1:04:21the other thing he said In the midst of that,
- 1:04:22he was like, five doors, not six, and then he said,
- 1:04:25didn't make it, didn't make it.
- 1:04:27Speaker 2: M yeah, which just hamley he said. Here, He's like,
- 1:04:30I definitely did not put that in. Oh I didn't
- 1:04:32make the sixth door. Yeah, yeah, gotcha, Okay.
- 1:04:35Speaker 1: I listened to Daniel, fascinated by this strangely compelling rant
- 1:04:40movement caught my eye and for red camera running in
- 1:04:43the dark, it's image, a rolling mess of form noise.
- 1:04:48What was it? I'd seen? Pause the tape and rewound. Squinting,
- 1:04:54I saw two pinpricks of light in the darkness, just
- 1:04:56over Daniel's shoulder. Slowly image resolved itself in my mind.
- 1:05:01I knew what I was seeing, and it turned my
- 1:05:04blood to ice. Randa dvance it turned her head and
- 1:05:08her lifeless eyes closed as she fixed them on the
- 1:05:11back of Daniel's head.
- 1:05:13Speaker 2: Oh my god, not at this stage.
- 1:05:19Speaker 7: I'm no doctor, but that door is giving off enough
- 1:05:22radiation to well to kill a family of seven.
- 1:05:26Speaker 3: If none of us had touched it.
- 1:05:27Speaker 7: Being in the same room as risky but not lethal,
- 1:05:30But given how sick would become, it's pretty obvious.
- 1:05:33Speaker 3: Our curiosity got.
- 1:05:34Speaker 7: The better of us one by one and we all.
- 1:05:37Speaker 3: Got too close.
- 1:05:39Speaker 7: Maybe not remember that thing on the other side came
- 1:05:42through and did this.
- 1:05:43Speaker 1: I don't even.
- 1:05:46Speaker 3: What was.
- 1:05:48Speaker 1: Daniel turned the camera stopped recording. The image of Frozen
- 1:05:52was of a lone man right as a star in
- 1:05:55the camera's lens, facing off against unknowable darkness, broken only
- 1:06:00by six pairs of white glowing eyes. Good god, bro Uh,
- 1:06:07that's so good. So, by the way, implication that his
- 1:06:10family's possessed by something or they're still alive in the
- 1:06:13rotting bodies, I'm not sure.
- 1:06:14Speaker 2: I mean, like it could be a thing of radiation
- 1:06:16poisoning or something like something radioactive is getting them. But
- 1:06:20one hundred percent, one million percent, the family is going
- 1:06:24to crawl out of that six fucking door like that.
- 1:06:26They took the dog and they're going to get our
- 1:06:29our protagonist. Yeah, well, by Ripley. You know you were
- 1:06:34a good dog.
- 1:06:35Speaker 1: You know. I'll miss you dearly. Nice to meet you. Yeah,
- 1:06:39I'm glad I got to know you when I did.
- 1:06:41But you're you're the.
- 1:06:42Speaker 2: Also, it makes it instan why the cops aren't going
- 1:06:45back is because it's a fucking radio.
- 1:06:47Speaker 1: It's a radioactive mess. The police were like, no, no, no, no, no,
- 1:06:52that's okay. Nope. I became painfully aware of my position
- 1:06:56relative to the table, and I had the painful premonition
- 1:06:59that if I turn, those chairs would not be empty.
- 1:07:02I would see the vances, all of them, Daniel as well,
- 1:07:06waiting for me. Head's turned, bodies left to rod for
- 1:07:10years in the dark. Behind me, something shifted. It breathed
- 1:07:16loud quick. I knew what it was. I knew came
- 1:07:21at me so fast that when I felt something hot
- 1:07:23and wet touched my hand, I screamed, only for the
- 1:07:26presence to suddenly recoil, but then, without hesitation, it leapt
- 1:07:31at me and bore me to the ground. I wept
- 1:07:33as Ripley looked at my face. He was shivering and,
- 1:07:36worst of all, silent, which was not normal. He was
- 1:07:40not a quiet dog, not when greeting me, and not
- 1:07:42when excited like he was now. But whatever he'd seen
- 1:07:46down here, he clung to me and Doug's paws into
- 1:07:48my shoulders like he wanted to be cradled over the shoulder,
- 1:07:52something he had been too big to do for years.
- 1:07:55Fucking idiot I cooed in a soft whisper, and even
- 1:07:58in the dark, I could feel his tail joking aside.
- 1:08:02Felt nothing but relief it finding him.
- 1:08:04Speaker 3: Let's get the hell out of here.
- 1:08:06Speaker 1: I picked him up, straining a little under the weight,
- 1:08:08but refusing to give into tired muscles made for the ladder.
- 1:08:12It wasn't easy climbing the three or four rungs to
- 1:08:14the hatch, but I managed it and gave the hatch
- 1:08:17a shove, first one hand, then two, again and again
- 1:08:21with everything I had. Still, the hatch refused to budge shit.
- 1:08:27I cried while pounding at it with my fist, but
- 1:08:29all I achieved was a sore wrist. The hatch had
- 1:08:32jammed when somehow the handle had been snapped clean off.
- 1:08:36Now I'd need a pair of plyers or something to
- 1:08:39cut through the metal bar locking it shut. My fingers
- 1:08:43couldn't move it, nor could I brute force the hatch open.
- 1:08:46Metal bar was an inch thick, and at the very
- 1:08:48least I need some tools to get at it from
- 1:08:51the side. At least it's fixable, I thought. As I
- 1:08:53climbed back down and caught my breath on one wall,
- 1:08:57I noticed a simple diagram of the bunker made in chalk.
- 1:09:00It had three floors. The bottom was storage, and you'll
- 1:09:03mention that before. And I noticed that he had drawn
- 1:09:06through it with a large red X. And the top
- 1:09:09floor was labeled quarters where I stood now, but the
- 1:09:12middle floor was labeled workshops. And it was there I
- 1:09:15realized that I'd find what I needed. There was one
- 1:09:18door that opened onto a concrete stairwell, and standing at
- 1:09:22the top, I shone my light down the spiraling guard rails.
- 1:09:25Unsure of what it was I hoped to see, there
- 1:09:28were only harsh shadows and the sense of something foul
- 1:09:31rising up on the air, a smell that tickled my
- 1:09:34throat and burned a little in my lungs. Had the
- 1:09:37police even gone down this far? They seen what I
- 1:09:41had seen on the TV and just left Somehow, I
- 1:09:43thought it was unlikely that had been enough to send
- 1:09:46the entire Sheriff's department running. So was it something else
- 1:09:50that had done it, Something that had been enough to
- 1:09:52terrify dozens of armed men, something that was almost definitely
- 1:09:57down there? Door went down quietly. At first I considered
- 1:10:03leaving Ripley behind, but after losing him the first time,
- 1:10:05I decided I'd rather risk it just to know he
- 1:10:08was right next to me. Besides, he was being quieter
- 1:10:11than I was, and I didn't feel much like going
- 1:10:13down those stairs on my own. He accompanied me with
- 1:10:16only the quiet click clack of his paws on concrete,
- 1:10:20sound I found deeply comforting. So I barely managed to
- 1:10:23keep my torch from shaking to my hand and my
- 1:10:25breathing steady. Down one floor and I found the workshop
- 1:10:28exactly as you might expect, a large space filled with
- 1:10:31generators and fuel and water tanks and boilers and heaters
- 1:10:35and pretty much anything and everything that you need to
- 1:10:37survive which you couldn't put outside due to fallout. Wires, pipes,
- 1:10:43and tubes ran from one end of the room to
- 1:10:45the other, and even years later, most of the machinery
- 1:10:48still hummed in the pitch black emptiness, an idea I
- 1:10:51found deeply unsettling. Taking one look at the strange tangle
- 1:10:55of harsh shapes and industrial figures looming out of the
- 1:10:58walls and floor, I shivered and looked around, quickly, finding
- 1:11:02a small area Daniel according off for his own use,
- 1:11:06but the fifth of the total floor space. There was
- 1:11:08a large work bench and some seriously high end machining equipment,
- 1:11:12all very well used lathes, buzzsaws, drills, belt sanders, welding torches,
- 1:11:18everything a man needed to do it himself. Daniel had
- 1:11:22been busy. I'm not sure exactly what it was he'd
- 1:11:26been working, but there was an arm on the bench.
- 1:11:30It's a I know it's like a scary visual, but
- 1:11:39the reading of all the equipment, I thought he had
- 1:11:41been building contraptions, like creatures or something, and it's like
- 1:11:46my prized work on arm.
- 1:11:50Speaker 2: I wonder do you think it's Do you think it's
- 1:11:52a Daniel's arm?
- 1:11:54Speaker 1: It could be good chance, very good chance. It set
- 1:11:57atop a pile of papers that had slowly turned brown
- 1:11:59over the years until the whole thing looked like it
- 1:12:01had been soaked in tobacco spit. On the whiteboard was
- 1:12:04a faded but still a visible diagram of what looked
- 1:12:07to me like a ball and socket joint. I thought
- 1:12:10of the tape, Daniel's little mechanism to keep his family upright,
- 1:12:13and then looked at the arm and suppressed a momentary
- 1:12:16gag reflex. I don't know if Dan had been working
- 1:12:19on posable limbs or just a way to put the
- 1:12:21decomposing remains back together after they started to fall apart,
- 1:12:25but the size of the arm suggested a preteen child.
- 1:12:29He left it out on the surface like it was
- 1:12:31a disassembled clock. It was also a missing a finger.
- 1:12:36Just how crazy was he? I wondered, as I pinched
- 1:12:38my nose with one hand and began overturning boxes looking
- 1:12:41for a hefty pair of plyers or maybe a hacksaw.
- 1:12:45Really backed away from the noise, but once I made
- 1:12:47sure he wasn't going anywhere, I carried on, grabbing and
- 1:12:50pulling a box after box, hoping i'd find what I
- 1:12:53was looking for, anything to break that metal bar. In
- 1:12:58the end, I managed to get a pair of bolt cutters,
- 1:13:01a crowbar, and a heavy duty pair of plyers. One
- 1:13:04went in my pocket, one went down the back of
- 1:13:07my jeans, and the other was clutched in my fist,
- 1:13:10too large to be tucked away in my clothes. The
- 1:13:12bolt cutters felt hefty in my hand, which was a
- 1:13:15bit of comfort. The feeling didn't last long. Something moved
- 1:13:19in the darkness out there, in the twisted jungle of
- 1:13:22shadows cast by all those pipes and wires that ran
- 1:13:25from one machine to the next. A figure moved then,
- 1:13:29but unmistakably human in its outline. I couldn't help but
- 1:13:33remember what I'd seen on that tape. Surely it couldn't
- 1:13:37have been real. Maybe Daniel would rigged something up, some
- 1:13:41fishing wire and a motor. Maybe the idea that those
- 1:13:44bodies had been moving on their own couldn't be sure
- 1:13:47of that, could I? It was a frightening idea on
- 1:13:51my mind had lashed onto a a sheer panic, that
- 1:13:54was all. Then I saw them. A pair of white
- 1:13:59pin pricks were selecting back at me from the depths
- 1:14:01of that cluttered room. Ripley already behind me, head nuzzled
- 1:14:05into my leg, pushed even closer against me, and let
- 1:14:08out a barely audible wine under his breath, The behavior
- 1:14:11of a dog who was terrified, close to pissing himself
- 1:14:13with fear. Just just a bit of metal, I told myself,
- 1:14:17as the light shook so violently in my hand I
- 1:14:19struggled to see straight. Just two shiny bits of metal.
- 1:14:23They blinked and began to come towards God. If I
- 1:14:28had any doubts left, they were dispersed by the side
- 1:14:30of a pale, white hand emerging into the light, I
- 1:14:34ran straight to the stairs and went to climb them.
- 1:14:36But only one or two steps in and I saw
- 1:14:38something gripping the handrail on the top floor, moldy clump
- 1:14:42of flesh only just recognizable as a fist. The flesh
- 1:14:46withered until the fingers were basically bone. Without meaning to,
- 1:14:50I brought my light up out of habit and saw
- 1:14:52the bloated face of a hairless corpse glaring down at me.
- 1:14:57I couldn't even tell you if it had been a
- 1:14:58teenage scroll or a sixty year old Daniel. Either way,
- 1:15:01I instinctively turned and found another body shambling towards me.
- 1:15:05Out of the workshop, I was trapped, nowhere to go.
- 1:15:09By the feel of warm fluid on the back of
- 1:15:11my leg, I could tell ripley it finally pissed himself.
- 1:15:14An adult dog tailed between his legs, shivering like a
- 1:15:17puppy and desperate to be picked up. God, I needed
- 1:15:20him to just stay together for a little longer. I
- 1:15:23couldn't take him in my arms, but I couldn't leave
- 1:15:25him behind either. With nowhere to go, I ran down
- 1:15:29and entered storage. There was a temptation to stop once
- 1:15:32I hit the bottom. Down here, the air was thicker
- 1:15:36and the sounds of my breathing were muted somehow distant.
- 1:15:40But I only had to look back up to see
- 1:15:41three pairs of eyes glaring down at me. So without
- 1:15:45giving any of it much further thought, I barreled down
- 1:15:47the corridor and stumbled onto a door at random. Opening it,
- 1:15:53I saw what looked like your standard Sworde room, only
- 1:15:55most of the shelves had been overturned and the food
- 1:15:57left or rod on the floor. Or two shelving units
- 1:16:01were still upright, though, and their shelves were covered in
- 1:16:04tall opake boxes that made them a fantastic hiding spot
- 1:16:08that I decided would have to be. Where I crouched
- 1:16:11down and turned off my light. I was already inside
- 1:16:15when I realized that wasn't all that was in there.
- 1:16:19The door almost looked normal. I said, what a menacing sentence.
- 1:16:26Speaker 4: I I, oh, gosh, this is excellent.
- 1:16:33Speaker 1: This story is excellent because it's in my head. I'm like,
- 1:16:35there's no way he would ever go further down, but
- 1:16:38then you put a threat that makes him go further down,
- 1:16:41which lets us see the rest of the layout and stuff,
- 1:16:43and also the presentation where we had a map of it,
- 1:16:46so we know what's coming while he's in the workshop.
- 1:16:49Like it's all it's all very well done. This is
- 1:16:51an excellent story. I could see why Daniel must have
- 1:16:54been confused by it, because it looked a little bit
- 1:16:56like all the other doors down there. But it was
- 1:16:59different too. It was too tall and too wide, about
- 1:17:04a foot and a half off the ground, and the
- 1:17:06metal rested in its entirety like it had aged out
- 1:17:09of sink with everything else down there. All around the
- 1:17:12jamb was a profusion of wet, soppy moss, like the
- 1:17:15kind you find hanging off trees in a swamp, and
- 1:17:17every few seconds the door would leaks something strange and oily,
- 1:17:21like the kind of thing you find in a parking
- 1:17:24lot on a rainy day. Of course, that wasn't too
- 1:17:26strange in itself, but the leak was horizontal to find gravity,
- 1:17:31so that every few seconds, large glob of the stuff
- 1:17:33would whip across the room and slap into the wall opposite,
- 1:17:36riding a puddle about the size of a man that
- 1:17:38to fight all reason interesting, So it's like gravity's thrown
- 1:17:43down there. Remembering Daniel's words about radiation, I instinctively inched
- 1:17:47away from this puddle and the door on the opposite wall,
- 1:17:50backing myself into the darkest, quietest corner I could. I
- 1:17:54pulled Ripley behind me and hoped to hell he wouldn't
- 1:17:56give me away. Once I was in there, I turned
- 1:17:58off my light and waited. Must have taken longer than
- 1:18:01I thought to hide in the spot, because it was
- 1:18:03barely two seconds later when a few figures entered the room.
- 1:18:07It was pitch black after I turned off my torch,
- 1:18:10but they made enough noise to let me know that
- 1:18:12at least two of them had stumbled in after me.
- 1:18:15I stayed there, unable to see anything, not sure if
- 1:18:18they were heading straight for me or just getting ready
- 1:18:21to leave, forced to hold out and let luck deside
- 1:18:24my fate. When I finally heard something scrape against the
- 1:18:27wall barely two feet from where I stood, he gave
- 1:18:30up and switched my light on, desperate to know what
- 1:18:32was coming for me. Sound had been terribly misleading. Daniel
- 1:18:37Vance was no more than six inches from my face. Oh,
- 1:18:46he hissed from a toothless and cracked mouth, a living corpse,
- 1:18:50just like the others. Somehow, a flash of intelligence were
- 1:18:52made in those wide, terrified eyes. And then I heard
- 1:18:56it creaking of a door. Without even thank you, I
- 1:19:00turned the light and saw it on the wall. I
- 1:19:02saw it open. Behind the strange still, there was more
- 1:19:06than just plain old concrete, much more. I saw a
- 1:19:10raging gullet of flesh, a ring tube of pulsing muscle,
- 1:19:15lined with teeth the size of hands, a spiraling to
- 1:19:18send into madness. Hot floated air washed into the room,
- 1:19:22buffeting me and the rotting corpses, all of us paralyzed
- 1:19:26by what we were seeing, even if for most of
- 1:19:28the figures, besides Daniel and myself, they didn't have eyes
- 1:19:31to see with.
- 1:19:32Speaker 3: What the fuck?
- 1:19:34Speaker 1: I muttered, unable to take my eyes from the flesh
- 1:19:36to beyond the doorway. Daniel whispered as he grabbed me
- 1:19:43with one fist and hurled me out of the room.
- 1:19:46I hit the floor and skidded along a slick fluid
- 1:19:48left by Vance's footprints, the smell of which turned my stomach.
- 1:19:53Perhaps the worst detail was that it was cold. I
- 1:19:55don't know why. I just expected whatever oozed off of
- 1:19:58them to be feverishly hot. It wasn't soaked my shirt
- 1:20:02like I'd fallen into a muddy puddle.
- 1:20:04Speaker 3: It's coming.
- 1:20:05Speaker 1: His voice wasn't Daniel's. I couldn't say for sure, but
- 1:20:08it sounded like a child's whisper. One by one, the
- 1:20:11body shuffled over to the open door and knelt before it.
- 1:20:15I don't know why, but I got the impression. The
- 1:20:16others had lost pretty much everything left of their minds,
- 1:20:19but Daniel remained aware. He looked back at me once
- 1:20:22more and spoke before he pressed his head to the
- 1:20:24floor in supplication. With the others, the only thing we
- 1:20:28did wrong was big here for it, the torture.
- 1:20:33Speaker 3: It didn't need a reason, just an opportunity. It won't
- 1:20:40let us go. It won't even let us die. And
- 1:20:45if he catches you, it won't let you go either.
- 1:20:49Speaker 1: His forehead kissed the dirt, and something reached through the
- 1:20:53door and gripped his head in its palm, the way
- 1:20:56you or I might pick up an apple. In full panic,
- 1:21:00ran over and grabbed my dog in bolt cutters, and
- 1:21:02I ran like my legs were pistons machines who signals
- 1:21:05of exhaustion and fatigue could not slow me down or
- 1:21:08caused me to fall. I had to move, I had
- 1:21:11to leave a hand that had grabbed Daniel. The side
- 1:21:14of it flushed my mind clean like some kind of enema.
- 1:21:17It hurt to see the image for playing my mind.
- 1:21:20There was nothing else in my head echoing around except
- 1:21:22the side of fingers with one too many knuckles and
- 1:21:25nails as large as a smartphone. I reached the top floor,
- 1:21:29nearly collapsed from breathlessness, but I wouldn't let myself stay
- 1:21:33down for long. I crawled over to the ladder and
- 1:21:35climbed up and immediately went to work trying to cut
- 1:21:37the metal lock. It was hell with just one hand,
- 1:21:41the other clinging to the torch that I kept frantically
- 1:21:43pointing at the door behind me. And it wasn't long
- 1:21:45before I fumbled one too many times and dropped my
- 1:21:48only source of light. No no, no, no no, I mewed.
- 1:21:52There was no time to look for it. I had
- 1:21:54to get out, and I had to get out fast.
- 1:21:56I couldn't see, but I was sure I could hear
- 1:21:58something climbing up those stairs. Not the steady thump thump
- 1:22:01of human feet. Now this was different. This was a
- 1:22:04rapid pitter patter of a spider, maybe something with hundreds
- 1:22:07of feet or hands or God knows. What skittering along
- 1:22:10the floor and walls and ceiling, pulling itself along with
- 1:22:12the body whose merre shape would offend God. Using all
- 1:22:16my strength, I leaned hard on the bolt cutters, and
- 1:22:18at last the bolt gave I threw the hatch open.
- 1:22:22It got just enough ambient light to see Ripley hovering
- 1:22:24at the bottom of the ladder, growling ineffectually at the doorway.
- 1:22:29Crouched down, scooped him up, and fled up the ladder
- 1:22:31so quickly that my muscles turned to jelly at the
- 1:22:34top and I fell over onto my hands and knees.
- 1:22:36But still I was out. The long corridor covered in
- 1:22:40riding was ahead of me, and at the very end
- 1:22:43a doorway, capped now by the tired blue light of
- 1:22:46him in the full moon. Ripley needed no encouragement. He
- 1:22:50whipped down the corridor with canine's feet, and I followed
- 1:22:52it a broken and stumbling crawl, eventually shouldering past the
- 1:22:55open door and collapsing onto the forest floor. For a
- 1:22:59few seconds I drifted in and out of consciousness, But
- 1:23:02when I looked up and saw the canopy overhead moving
- 1:23:05the branch, just back lit by a full moon, I
- 1:23:08snapped awake and glared down at something gripping my ankle.
- 1:23:11Oh shit. The hand reached out of the dark and
- 1:23:15seized me and was slowly dragging me back into the
- 1:23:17earth below. Whatever it was, most of its body lurked
- 1:23:21out of sight in the shadows beyond the doorway. But
- 1:23:24the hand that crushed my leg was the size of
- 1:23:26my torso, an arm that looked like it belonged to
- 1:23:29a mole rat.
- 1:23:34Speaker 8: God damn it, officer, right, all right, now, that that's
- 1:23:46my bear trap.
- 1:23:50Speaker 1: That's a bear trap. I've hit two heavy ones this episode.
- 1:23:55That one was like a that was like a prophetic pull.
- 1:23:59Oh my gosh. Oh, I know it's a blying like
- 1:24:04under dwellers and stuff like that. But just the fact
- 1:24:06that that prought up, Oh his equation did in fact
- 1:24:12say mole people. I struck it with my own fist.
- 1:24:15I dug my nails in. I cried and kicked and screamed,
- 1:24:18but nothing could stop it. From behind the door, something
- 1:24:21like a face grinned and leered at me with joy.
- 1:24:24It was taking its time, sure enough, pulling me in
- 1:24:26so slowly that it gave my mind all the time
- 1:24:29in the world to appreciate the nightmare that awaited me.
- 1:24:32I think, if in that moment you're giving me a gun,
- 1:24:35I would have shot myself. Because God helped me. I
- 1:24:37couldn't escape the look in Daniel's eyes. Now he knelt
- 1:24:40to worship this thing like a man who knew that
- 1:24:42hope or pride, or joy, or anything with even a
- 1:24:44hint of goodness to it was so far out of
- 1:24:47reach for him it might as well be a dream.
- 1:24:49How long was this thing going to keep them down there?
- 1:24:52How long did it intend to keep me? I wept
- 1:24:55like a child, feeling like my mind was slowly crackling,
- 1:24:58as I tried everything to stop from pulling me into
- 1:25:01the shadows. I kicked at the earth. I dug into it,
- 1:25:04using my hands, looking for a root or a pipe
- 1:25:06or anything to hold on to. Nothing nothing I did
- 1:25:10would slow it down. I was no more than a
- 1:25:13foot from the doorway when Ripley appeared. A dog afraid
- 1:25:16of hoovers and plastic bags and doors that move on
- 1:25:19their own, dog who once got stared down by a
- 1:25:23particularly feisty rabbit, who stopped midchase and turned around, baffling
- 1:25:27the predator on his tail. Dog you couldn't even watch
- 1:25:30scary movies around and he launched at the arm like
- 1:25:34he was a wolf, hey, you know, like he'd always
- 1:25:37been one had a boy ripley. While he didn't quite
- 1:25:41break the skin, the pressure was enough to make the
- 1:25:43things grip weaken, and I slid my leg out. Unable
- 1:25:47to stand, I knelt and grabbed the dog, pulled as
- 1:25:50hard as I could, and now that thing bled at last,
- 1:25:53as the pressure of the jaws and the sliding teeth
- 1:25:55ripped into its flesh together last ripley, and I let go, said,
- 1:26:01rolling backwards, head over heels. I wasted no time waiting
- 1:26:05or looking processing. I heaved the dog to my chest
- 1:26:09and crawled until I passed out, making it maybe half
- 1:26:12a kilometer away. Only when I could no longer see
- 1:26:16the door did I let myself fall to the ground,
- 1:26:18face first, give up consciousness. The doctor said I had pneumonia,
- 1:26:23which I suppose made some kind of sense. I might
- 1:26:26have even believed them were it not for the sheriff's visit,
- 1:26:29asking strange questions of me as I lay in bed
- 1:26:32about what I may or may not have seen. I
- 1:26:36dismissed them to the best of my ability. I wasn't
- 1:26:39interested in chasing that particular nightmare down figuring out if
- 1:26:43it had been real or not, at least not while
- 1:26:45I lay there half drowned in my own infection. To
- 1:26:49be fair, I had at least some sympathy for why
- 1:26:52the police had done so little to seal that place off.
- 1:26:55I have, on occasion thought about going and doing the
- 1:26:58job myself, But to say, I still have nightmares about
- 1:27:01being pulled into the dark beyond that door, not just
- 1:27:04the bunker door, the one I narrowly avoided at the end,
- 1:27:08with the one below. What I saw was a kind
- 1:27:11of madness, I'm sure of it, and often think of
- 1:27:15Daniel's words.
- 1:27:17Speaker 3: It didn't need a reason, just an opportunity.
- 1:27:20Speaker 1: Somehow, the vances were that opportunity. Maybe they've built their
- 1:27:24bunker on the lay line, or a weak spot between dimensions,
- 1:27:28or the side of former Satanic rituals. Not sure if
- 1:27:32it even matters. They went into the dark thinking it'd
- 1:27:35be a safe place to wait out the world's troubles.
- 1:27:38But something had been down there waiting for them, waiting
- 1:27:41for a chance to get out, A family of seven
- 1:27:43people to lock them in and deprive them of escape
- 1:27:46and slowly take from them everything it could. I've moved
- 1:27:50since then, couldn't help it. It wasn't just the memories,
- 1:27:54you see. It was a short wave radio I kept
- 1:27:56in my basement, something my father passed on to me
- 1:28:00when I was just a boy. God, I'd forgotten about it,
- 1:28:03at least until I woke up one day to the
- 1:28:05sound of a blaring white noise down in the dark.
- 1:28:09Buried in that sound was the faint whispering of a man,
- 1:28:12his voice fairly recognizable, but unmistakeably is. And that is
- 1:28:27the end. Did you read? Did you read the Let
- 1:28:30Them Go? Yeah? I did? Okay, Wow? Uh my god.
- 1:28:40Speaker 2: One thing I love about Chrishian Wallace's work is the pacing.
- 1:28:44But not only that, but the way that he does
- 1:28:46exposition and the build up to where like he spends
- 1:28:49It seems like he spends a lot of the very
- 1:28:51beginning of the stories instead of just being like I'm
- 1:28:53going down to this deal, and then you get a
- 1:28:55lot of the exposition of like oh yeah, like when
- 1:28:57you're down there, you get the exposition. It's like I
- 1:29:00like that you get a lot of this like a
- 1:29:02little bit of backstory, exposition of what's happening, and then
- 1:29:05it just seems like also my dog, and I think
- 1:29:08it just takes it takes a turn. It's like my
- 1:29:10dog went missing and he's down in that very bunker.
- 1:29:14That's a fun way to present that.
- 1:29:16Speaker 1: Yeah, all the little because sometimes story writers have trouble
- 1:29:20with their connectors. It's like I want the character to
- 1:29:23do this, and I want them to see this thing,
- 1:29:26and they need to go here, and it needs to
- 1:29:27be this, but it needs to be believable, and sometimes
- 1:29:30the things that will push the character to those different
- 1:29:33points doesn't work as well. But Christian Wallace doesn't have
- 1:29:37that problem because it's like, okay, well he loves this dog.
- 1:29:40He establishes how much he loves the dog, so he
- 1:29:42goes into the first layer. Well, now he's trapped. He
- 1:29:45has to go the second to get supplies, and now
- 1:29:47he has to go the third because there's something on
- 1:29:49the second. So it's everything flows very well and you
- 1:29:53get to see all the set pieces and it feels
- 1:29:55natural and it keeps attention up. There's never a point
- 1:29:57where you're like, well, I don't know about that, because
- 1:29:59a lesser story teller would be like I was in
- 1:30:03the first floor, but I had to know what happened
- 1:30:04to the family. So I go down to the second
- 1:30:06where it's like, sure, we the reader wants to know
- 1:30:08what happened to the family, but no way this guy would, right,
- 1:30:13So everything feels very reasonable. Well why do you think that?
- 1:30:16Why do you think the TV just turned on randomly? There?
- 1:30:21I feel like I almost feel like I missed a
- 1:30:22line or like I'm forgetting a line about.
- 1:30:24Speaker 2: Like yeah, I feel like I'm maybe I didn't read
- 1:30:26it right. I wonder if in the shadow of the
- 1:30:28guy turned it on or something, or what it seems
- 1:30:31like knowing that Daniel is down there, he's still which
- 1:30:34also I just want to say, how God, how like
- 1:30:39daunting and horrifying is that of like your family? Your
- 1:30:43family are husk Like they're basically just zombies that just
- 1:30:46won't die, right, and you are rotting with them and
- 1:30:51you're but you're still conscious and you're still able to
- 1:30:53understand all of this shit. And I love that Daniel's
- 1:30:57character was not used as a vessel to like kill.
- 1:31:01He was used as a vessel to be like, get
- 1:31:03the fuck out of here, don't end up like us,
- 1:31:05which is which is kind of interesting too, because the
- 1:31:09parallel of like Daniel and his family were doomsday preppers.
- 1:31:13They went and they went into the dark to hide
- 1:31:15for the troubles of the world, right, but they found
- 1:31:17a bunch of evil or whatever. It almost seems it's
- 1:31:20just it's like a it's like a fun way for
- 1:31:22that character who did that to go out and just
- 1:31:25be like, don't live your life like this and like
- 1:31:27basically like get out of here, which I think still
- 1:31:30to me translates to.
- 1:31:31Speaker 1: Something of like don't live in fear and get out
- 1:31:33of get out of yea, this place, you know what
- 1:31:36I mean? What was the there was a picture of
- 1:31:45what am I trying to think of? It was why
- 1:31:52am I stupid? I was about to say something and
- 1:31:54then I completely I hate it when that happens. Yeh oh. Yeah.
- 1:31:57The door opened up and it was like a throat, right,
- 1:32:01it was like this thing of twists that reminded me
- 1:32:05of Dianea House a lot. Yeah, Diania House.
- 1:32:09Speaker 3: I know that.
- 1:32:09Speaker 2: I say this probably every other fucking podcast, but the
- 1:32:12Final Prayer or something where it's like an entity living
- 1:32:15in the hills, living in the ground or something.
- 1:32:18Speaker 1: And there's an arm or something comes out of it
- 1:32:20and it's like it's like keeping them in a purgatory.
- 1:32:23I like that thing that Daniel says. It didn't need
- 1:32:26a reason, just an opportunity. It's just something that causes
- 1:32:29you know, it's just eve death, misery, decay. Yeah, it's
- 1:32:31a pure it's a pure wickedness, which goes off of
- 1:32:34what you were saying. How it's like the family was
- 1:32:37paranoid of the world, something going wrong with it, but
- 1:32:39then they found the essence of wrong down in their
- 1:32:42hiding hole, right, yeah, well in the hiding hole.
- 1:32:46Speaker 2: I think that it's interesting that the creature the sixth
- 1:32:49Door is like an appendage. It almost seems like of
- 1:32:52this thing. Yeah, that just appears, so it's like uncanny.
- 1:32:55It's like luring people in. But it's like you are
- 1:32:57trying to hide from the unknowns, from like an unknown precedent,
- 1:33:01like an unknown accident that would happen, right, You're trying
- 1:33:04to prepare yourself for something that could happen, and then
- 1:33:06of course the thing they go down there for they're
- 1:33:07completely unprepared for.
- 1:33:09Speaker 1: I think it's just kind of an interesting I also
- 1:33:12like the uh which this is. This is gonna sound
- 1:33:16really rude. People aren't gonna be happy with this. My
- 1:33:19one critique is I think the dog should have died.
- 1:33:25I knew it. I knew. I knew you would, you would,
- 1:33:27you would fall in line.
- 1:33:28Speaker 2: I know what's the weird it is because I I
- 1:33:30am so happy the dog didn't die.
- 1:33:33Speaker 1: My heartuse Here's why, because here's why. Here's why. Because
- 1:33:37there is a cautionary aura to the family, right, Like
- 1:33:45they feared the world, so they hid from the world,
- 1:33:48and they found something beneath the world, right, And we
- 1:33:52see Daniel who is being punished for that and is
- 1:33:58witnessing the punishment of his family, right. Because it's almost
- 1:34:02a curse, or it is a curse that he keeps
- 1:34:05his consciousness right, Like if he has made it to
- 1:34:07some mindless zomnie puppet thing, that'd probably be better than
- 1:34:10the alternative where he's completely aware of what's going on,
- 1:34:13that his family's down there. Even in the final moments
- 1:34:15of the story when he's listening to a shortwave radio
- 1:34:19and he can hear Daniel saying let them go, let
- 1:34:21them go, he has to watch his family be kept
- 1:34:24in this puppet state, which is like a hell of
- 1:34:27it's literally a hell of his own making, right, and
- 1:34:31then there is a weird connection established between Daniel and
- 1:34:37our author because similarly, the author went into this bunker
- 1:34:43for something he loves, right the dog. So we have
- 1:34:48Daniel goes down there to preserve something he loves, and
- 1:34:51we have the author that goes down there to preserve
- 1:34:53something he loves. But in both cases going down there
- 1:34:56is a narratively moral wrong right, do not go into
- 1:35:02the bunker, do not go away. Maybe for author it
- 1:35:05wasn't necessarily to escape the world, but he is going
- 1:35:07into something he knows he shouldn't go into, right, even
- 1:35:11if it's for good reasons, to help what he wants.
- 1:35:13So that scene where Daniel's speaking to the author and
- 1:35:16he's like, get out of here, that is like Daniel
- 1:35:20getting the author to do what he could not to leave.
- 1:35:22But nevertheless our author goes in. So I feel like
- 1:35:26if in that final moment where the dog came over
- 1:35:28and bit the hand, and then if then the dog
- 1:35:30was dragged down and maybe our author passes out or
- 1:35:34gets away or whatever and the police find him, it's like, yeah,
- 1:35:39because he wanted to go down there something he loved
- 1:35:43paid the price. I feel like that would be the
- 1:35:44final bow tie between him and Daniel, I feel like
- 1:35:47it work better. I feel like it's a bit too
- 1:35:48easy for him to go down there and there'd be
- 1:35:50no consequences, right, Oh sure, No.
- 1:35:52Speaker 2: I mean I you know, I think going on top
- 1:35:54of that too, like I think like and this is
- 1:35:57all hindsight whatever, just subjective, but like sure, sure Daniel
- 1:36:02being more of like maybe not like less of us,
- 1:36:06Like picturing him up too is like he was just
- 1:36:09like you know, like basically like not a mentally unwell man,
- 1:36:13but just something where it's like expecting the worst. Always
- 1:36:16he believed that it was going to go. It was
- 1:36:17more of a detriment, right Uh. And then that way
- 1:36:21later when he's sitting there with his dead family, it
- 1:36:24almost feels like you infect and you burden your family
- 1:36:27with that kind of mentality, or you change them, you
- 1:36:30zombified them into that state of belief or something, right,
- 1:36:33the same way that with our protagonist, it would have
- 1:36:37been something funny if it were not funny, but it
- 1:36:39would have been something entertaining if he was a conspiratorial
- 1:36:43guy as well, except maybe like doomsday, he was just like,
- 1:36:46they're not telling us these things. It's another case that
- 1:36:48they're just covering up or whatever some type of conspiratorial
- 1:36:52thing to where he goes down into the bunker, which
- 1:36:55is similar to Daniel going down for his own reasons,
- 1:36:58and then he has to like have that kind of price,
- 1:37:01basically having some kind of motive to where our protagonist
- 1:37:04could learn where Daniel could not, like the ying and Yang,
- 1:37:07I think, need to have the opposites right there. It
- 1:37:11would have probably felt a bit more satisfying or something
- 1:37:14where it's just like, don't go digging for things that.
- 1:37:16Speaker 1: Are going to get you in trouble or YadA YadA YadA.
- 1:37:19Speaker 2: Which I'm paraphrasing and it probably sounds stupid, but I dude,
- 1:37:21I agree, is what I'm saying with you. I think
- 1:37:23like it is a bit too convenient of like I'm
- 1:37:25going down here. I do wish that they had a
- 1:37:27bit more motive of being like this is there's just
- 1:37:30something weird, or like these fucking cops are covering something up,
- 1:37:34something that is more about like something larger than himself
- 1:37:37is putting others in risk, the same way that like
- 1:37:40a doomsday thing of like an Adam baumb dropping or
- 1:37:43something and fending for yourself or helping your family.
- 1:37:46Speaker 1: I feel like it's also a bit like the dog
- 1:37:51bides it and then it bleeds and it lets go.
- 1:37:53It's like, okay, so this is a creature that you
- 1:37:55can hurt and you can make a bled in stuff.
- 1:37:57I think it makes more sense if the dog biting
- 1:38:00it was more of a sacrifice. It would have sacrifice.
- 1:38:06It would be heavier if the dog it's not like
- 1:38:08the thing bleeds. The dogs just like, oh okay, I'll
- 1:38:10take this instead, So it'd be like the dog's sacrifice
- 1:38:14in itself to say, but which it kind of does, well,
- 1:38:16put myself on the line to bite him.
- 1:38:18Speaker 2: I think that if you have the dog get like
- 1:38:20an ounce of courage, because it's kind of a funny
- 1:38:22character growth for the doll, like you know, dog's a
- 1:38:25big whimp and then he steps up. But if it
- 1:38:27does nothing, it's still like a noble gesture. I thought
- 1:38:30that what it was going to happen is Daniel was
- 1:38:32going to pop up and like grab it or something.
- 1:38:35The dog try no, no, no, the monster, oh.
- 1:38:38Speaker 1: The monster, Like he was going to bring it down
- 1:38:39with him.
- 1:38:40Speaker 7: Yeah.
- 1:38:40Speaker 2: Yeah, something of just being like this is my burden
- 1:38:42to carry and he sits off like that kind of
- 1:38:45thing Like to me, that would have been also a
- 1:38:47fun way to like tie that together, because yeah, I agree,
- 1:38:51then it just feels like it's the thing, isn't it
- 1:38:54wasn't hurt or something, because yeah, with these like big
- 1:38:58I don't know, like mon stress, deity kind of things
- 1:39:03you almost want to see. Like to me, it's always
- 1:39:05effective when it's like man made things cannot hurt this thing,
- 1:39:07like a human being could do nothing to this source.
- 1:39:11Which is also why it feels like, of course he
- 1:39:13like bows to it because also it might be like
- 1:39:15fucking with his family or something, and of course Daniel's
- 1:39:18going to do where he can just to keep.
- 1:39:20Speaker 1: Yeah, he can't. He can't do anything other than supplicate himself.
- 1:39:24Speaker 4: There's no resistance. Yeah, I think.
- 1:39:28Speaker 1: I also want to clarify that my critiques of the
- 1:39:31story saying the dog should die, because I feel I
- 1:39:34feel bad sometimes when I read a great story and
- 1:39:35I spend most of the time talking about critique. The
- 1:39:37reason that's all I have to talk about is because
- 1:39:39everything else about the story banged. The workshop segment, the house,
- 1:39:43the living room, the like, it was excellent.
- 1:39:46Speaker 2: It was such a It's also it's also just part
- 1:39:48of the to me, that's part of the fun of
- 1:39:51reading a story. I mean, how many times you've seen
- 1:39:53the movie stuff you're talking about things and you're just like,
- 1:39:55it would have been cool if they would have done this.
- 1:39:57Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just the idea because I enjoyed it.
- 1:40:00Speaker 2: It's definitely not undermining or trying to undermine the work.
- 1:40:02It's just something of like, these are just like little
- 1:40:04subjective thoughts because also you can implement these things and
- 1:40:06they could suck, you know, like who knows, it's just
- 1:40:09fun to riff and all that kind of stuff.
- 1:40:11Speaker 1: So I definitely, uh, you know, with these things. I
- 1:40:14will say this, I am a proponent in most media
- 1:40:17that the dogs should probably die more often because dogs
- 1:40:22are like an untouchable thing for people do because they're
- 1:40:28the ultimate persona of innocence. But if the point of
- 1:40:31your story is that the personification of innocence is being injured,
- 1:40:35then it you have to kill the thing that is
- 1:40:38totally innocent. Right. The best example of that at which
- 1:40:43I didn't even realize this happened until I try to
- 1:40:44watch the movie with my wife, who hates it when
- 1:40:46dogs die in movies, and No Country for Old Men,
- 1:40:49like Three Dogs die, And it makes sense in that
- 1:40:52movie because the whole movie is about the laws of
- 1:40:55good good guy, bad guy, you know, the share of
- 1:40:58writing and to clean up the town. That doesn't work here,
- 1:41:01Like things die even if they don't deserve it. So
- 1:41:03the dogs die in their works. And I feel like
- 1:41:05there's too many horror movies that can get through with
- 1:41:08like a message like that and it be effective, but
- 1:41:10they won't kill the dog because people are going to
- 1:41:12be uncomfortable about it, because people need to feel comfortable
- 1:41:16in a genre that the root word is horrific.
- 1:41:20Speaker 2: And it drives me a lot. Yeah, I mean I
- 1:41:23see where you're coming from. I think it all just
- 1:41:25comes down to, like what is the point. It's kind
- 1:41:28of I think it's the same thing of like I
- 1:41:30don't know, having like sexually sexual assault in the movie,
- 1:41:34or like you know, child death. There's these things that
- 1:41:37are just kind of untouchable, things that are just like
- 1:41:39you shouldn't include them. It's I will say cruel, but
- 1:41:42I mean I think that it just it just comes
- 1:41:45down to the intention. Like if you just randomly kill
- 1:41:47these things, you randomly do this stuff, it feels like
- 1:41:49a fetish or it feels like you're fetishizing something and
- 1:41:51it's for it's like more for the director. I know,
- 1:41:54like a critique that my wife has with a lot
- 1:41:56of stuff that has like overly sexual assault type stuff,
- 1:42:00it feels like it's a fetish for the director or
- 1:42:01it feels like it's for men or something, which I agree.
- 1:42:04But I do think that there's elements where it is
- 1:42:07like important, it is a horrific thing that can happen,
- 1:42:10But it's the same thing with like a dog death
- 1:42:11or something. Does it Is it just like a cheap
- 1:42:13way to make you feel something?
- 1:42:15Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well I think honestly, I feel like modern
- 1:42:19movies are more liable to kill a kid than they
- 1:42:22would a dog. Yeah, And I feel like that's weird.
- 1:42:26I feel I don't like that.
- 1:42:28Speaker 2: Well, you even see it in like social media posts
- 1:42:31too about people, like you'll hear like it's something where
- 1:42:34it's like the Ruby Frankie thing where she like abused
- 1:42:36her children or whatever that was big media attention. But
- 1:42:39like sometimes I still feel like you hear about like
- 1:42:42somebody like like a dog abuser will be hung from
- 1:42:46the gallows before like a person that child.
- 1:42:48Speaker 1: Hit their kids, like a YouTuber who hits their kids
- 1:42:51or something like that, which is just clarify. They're both bad,
- 1:42:53they're both awful.
- 1:42:54Speaker 2: It's good, but it's just crazy that a human lie.
- 1:42:57It's just it's just that there's a weird.
- 1:42:58Speaker 1: There's a weird disparity between like innocence of like the
- 1:43:01young and innocence of animals. Yeah, they're both innocent, but
- 1:43:05it's weird that people are so uncomfortable by the death
- 1:43:08of an animal and not the death of a child
- 1:43:10a lot of times in horror movie senses, which I
- 1:43:12don't know, there's probably some greater conversation to be had
- 1:43:14with that. Yeah, I feel like the dog should die more.
- 1:43:16Speaker 4: I feel like not, it shouldn't be gratuitous, Like anything
- 1:43:20should be gratuitous. So I feel like, if I think
- 1:43:22the purpose of your stories is a loss of innocence,
- 1:43:24and you have to lose the innocence, you know.
- 1:43:26Speaker 2: I think yeah, And I think that the only way
- 1:43:29I think I agree with you on that because in
- 1:43:30this one, I do like that the dog stepped up,
- 1:43:32like just as like this short film went, because this
- 1:43:35was like a very punchy short story. I liked that
- 1:43:38the dog made it out. It was a nice ending,
- 1:43:40even though like him coming there and all that stuff
- 1:43:42is his fault. I think that you have him get
- 1:43:44stripped of that if if he went there for a
- 1:43:47selfish or like like some kind of reason that is,
- 1:43:51like you should plenty of signs warned that you shouldn't
- 1:43:53have went down there, which there was a couple here.
- 1:43:55But I do think like if he was a guy
- 1:43:58that was just like fuck this, I'm doing it anyways,
- 1:44:00they're hiding something blah blah blah, and you that loss
- 1:44:04has to stay with you forever. I think it feels
- 1:44:05so much more like deserve, like this is like a punishment.
- 1:44:08This is something that like you could have avoided this
- 1:44:10if you just stepped out of your own way, if
- 1:44:12you weren't so selfish, YadA YadA YadA, that kind of stuff.
- 1:44:15Speaker 1: But I mean, I don't know.
- 1:44:15Speaker 2: People might totally agree with you too, and some people
- 1:44:18I know will get comments being like, you know, it
- 1:44:20just seems gratuitous. There should never be a reason for it.
- 1:44:23But I think that that's all open for discussion. And
- 1:44:25that's the thing too, is it's all subjective, you know,
- 1:44:27like it's just your opinion and what you think and
- 1:44:29all that kind of stuff.
- 1:44:30Speaker 1: So I'll say a couple notes, Like I remember with
- 1:44:35the dog dying thing. I was writing this story one time.
- 1:44:38I was telling Cale about it and I had a
- 1:44:40dog dining in there. She's like, you can't do that,
- 1:44:42and I'm like, well, it's like a flesh thing that
- 1:44:45consumes all, like consumed the family and all the wildlife
- 1:44:48and stuff like that around the house. So you know,
- 1:44:51the family had a Dog's asked you the dog and
- 1:44:53she was like, well, you can't kill the dog. I'm like, okay,
- 1:44:55so you want it to kill everything but the dog.
- 1:44:57She's like, yeah, you have to write a reason why
- 1:44:59it didn't kill the dog. I'm like, that's stupid. But
- 1:45:04also I'm reading through the comments of the post and
- 1:45:08someone raised an interesting point. They're like, perhaps Daniel did
- 1:45:13find a way to survive the apocalypse that's about to come,
- 1:45:17like his family has immortality now, but it's not the way,
- 1:45:21which is an interesting thought.
- 1:45:24Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 1:45:25Speaker 1: Yeah, like he felt like he did find equation, like oh,
- 1:45:26if we build a bunker here, if we do this,
- 1:45:29we'll survive to come into apocalypse. And they will. It's
- 1:45:31just not in a good way. Also, I'd say all
- 1:45:36that stuff about the dog dying, and I'm like, who's
- 1:45:39this for? Why would they kill the dog?
- 1:45:41Speaker 4: And then I read I read some of these comments
- 1:45:44and then where's that one that cracked me up? It
- 1:45:47was like I was starting to do the same thing
- 1:45:50here until the paragraph about Ripley.
- 1:45:52Speaker 1: I audibly went, well, I do that. I would do
- 1:45:54the exact same thing to save my dogg oh from
- 1:45:56being stuck somewhere. Yeah, it's definitely me, you know. I mean,
- 1:46:02it's just that there, It's it's pure innocence. You know. Also,
- 1:46:08there's multiple people asking what the last part about the
- 1:46:11radio meant and if they could get some clarification about
- 1:46:14the radio, and it's like, okay, maybe you can't kill
- 1:46:16the dog. Maybe these people would get way too fired
- 1:46:19up if you killed the dog, would you know? People
- 1:46:22people fucking they get they do. It's it's it's fucking
- 1:46:25I'm not Yeah, I'm not critiquing Christian Wallace for not
- 1:46:28killing the dog because the because like people get mad
- 1:46:32about it. I'm critiquing the audiences to be like, you
- 1:46:35gotta let the dog die more. You gotta just be
- 1:46:37okay with some dog deaths. Okay, I love dogs too,
- 1:46:40but I also love people and when I read a
- 1:46:42horror story, they both got to go. That's just part
- 1:46:45of they both got to go.
- 1:46:47Speaker 2: Nobody bats an eye when a guy gets his fucking
- 1:46:49head blown off.
- 1:46:50Speaker 1: For sure. You know how many horrific mutile mutilations of
- 1:46:54men I've seen in movies, and believe it or not,
- 1:46:57all of my guy friends men. So oh, you know,
- 1:47:00maybe I don't want that to happen to him. I
- 1:47:03don't want that to happen to dogs. Show me it
- 1:47:05in a movie.
- 1:47:06Speaker 2: So I'm glad though Christian Wallace three for three, man,
- 1:47:09what I think we've.
- 1:47:10Speaker 1: Covered more than three of his I am positive we've
- 1:47:15covered more than three of his Well, if.
- 1:47:16Speaker 2: We have that, I mean it's fuck. He's a perfect
- 1:47:18hitter in my book right now, I think that there
- 1:47:20are great leaders too, at least for reading. You know,
- 1:47:23I know, I know, like a lot of people that
- 1:47:24listen to this podcast, they really want longer, big episodes.
- 1:47:27But like somebody that can can that can like give
- 1:47:30a story in such a in such a fucking lean,
- 1:47:34punchy like it just doesn't have a lot of fat.
- 1:47:37Speaker 1: It's just like right to the jugular.
- 1:47:39Speaker 2: I think it's just extremely impressive and it just makes
- 1:47:42for like a fun, casual reading like this is the great,
- 1:47:44which is also why I want to say, be sure
- 1:47:46to pick up if you are interested in more of
- 1:47:48like reading his stuff, be sure to support his uh
- 1:47:51his book. Well, like I said, we'll leave it at
- 1:47:53the description. Blow, these are going to be like just
- 1:47:55such fun like you know, you're you're at work or
- 1:47:59before bed or all that kind of stuff. He's just
- 1:48:01like real fun, easy like that, easily digestible stories that
- 1:48:04I think leave a really fun uh mystery or you know,
- 1:48:08they leave a nice thought loop in your head of
- 1:48:10just thinking about the story.
- 1:48:13Speaker 1: Yeah, the guy is like man, he punches with some stuff.
- 1:48:15He's an all the time. Oh yeah, the one about
- 1:48:17the deer meat, the daddy didn't dear meat. That was
- 1:48:19Christian Wallace.
- 1:48:20Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so she's got four. Yeah, we've you know
- 1:48:24what though, it's been a while. It's it's easily been
- 1:48:26like I feel like a year since we've read one
- 1:48:28of his things.
- 1:48:29Speaker 1: Well, the deer meat one wasn't a year ago. But
- 1:48:31other than that, oh oh sorry, yeah then whatever, but
- 1:48:35don't ignore everything you said. Yeah, I don't know.
- 1:48:38Speaker 2: I thought I thought we were talking about another story.
- 1:48:40But the Uh yeah, it's good stuff. What can I say?
- 1:48:43Thanks for listening on audio platforms, guys, We appreciate you. Also,
- 1:48:46thank you to our patrons for uh supporting the channel
- 1:48:49and getting all the bonus episodes. We appreciate that as well.
- 1:48:52Until the next time, guys, be sure to check out
- 1:48:54Christian Wallace's website. Will leave some links to his website
- 1:48:58or where you can find his book below, and uh,
- 1:49:00just support the author. You know, if it wasn't for them,
- 1:49:02we wouldn't be reading the story.
- 1:49:03Speaker 1: So until next time, guys, stay creeped. We see you
- 1:49:06the next one, stay creeped, and uh look, just gotta
- 1:49:09kill the dog. Okay, got kill the dog mores, So
- 1:49:12get on that. Thank you
- 1:50:00Speaker 4: Then then then then damask