The Preacher Has A House Over In Cedar Creek

0:00I'm caught up in the game. My attention is on every play and every whistle. But what I'm missing is a signal coming from my kidneys. That signal isn't like a ref's whistle. It's more of a silent SOS, which could be warning me of an increased risk for events like heart attack or stroke. And a way I can catch that signal? A simple urine test called UACR. If you have type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure, talk to your doctor about the UACR test. Detect the SOS. Visit detect the SOS.com to learn more. Hi, this is Alex Cantrowicz. I'm the host of Big Technology podcast, a long time reporter and an on air contributor to CNBC. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it. Asking where this is all going, they come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties,

1:01listen to Big Technology podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Wilkins, stories all the time. The loud you are here. Let's get into it. The gas station grew from the mist as I pushed, the lights blooming in the fog as it materialized. The opening cords quaint somebody to love floated from the radio and I turned it off. I left the nozzle and the tank and walked into the ammonia soapbox that made up the main building. The clerk was reading a magazine behind a desk. He didn't look up at the ringing of the bell mounted in the door or even at my picking up two kick-cats. It wasn't until I laid them on the counter that his dark lazy gaze swept up to me. Is that it? He asked. Yeah, I paid for the gas at the pump. He nodded and won the bars up. 3.89. I laid a five on the counter. Most of the paint was gone for money sliding back and forth. The man settled back on his drill as he handed me my change. Where you headed, fella? He asked it casually, but I felt he probably knew the answer.

2:01New river. He nodded slowly. Not much about way anymore. Visiting someone? No undying a study. On the preacher house. It wasn't a question, but I know. He looked at the window, his jaw moving like he was chewing on his wards. The rain beat down gentle on the aluminum roof, undercutting the pop music with the gentle tapping noise. Yeah. What about it? I'd wait till the rain let up if I was you. I coughed my head. Why? His jaw made that same movement again, and I wondered what battle was going on in his head as he slid his hands into his hoodie pocket. I just would. He looked me up and down. People up there won't be happy to see you. You were type. I gested my glasses, knowing the answer before I asked. My type. He chewed the words, you know what I mean. I do. I'm doing a thesis project in the house. He shuffled his feet. You are going to think I'm stupid man, but take some advice. Don't go up there. I've heard this story is.

3:01I reassured him. He looked at me, and his face changed from apprehension to something resembling pity. I extended my hand over the counter. My name's Josh. He shook it with a hand much more callous than mine. Renaud. What an interesting name. It's nice to meet you, Renaud. He nodded. Everything about the man could be described as quiet. All of his movements were small and slow. His t-shirt and jeans were earthy summer colors. Even his eyes were a muted shade of green. If you really need to, tell them you talk to me, but only if you really, and I mean really need to. Like if someone starts giving you trouble or something, a whole mess of trouble if people find out I'm talking to you. I hesitated for a moment. Will they? Give me trouble, I mean. Probably not. Nobody ever goes up there, especially not in the rain. Down here though. Well, why not the rain? I asked. Instead of answering, he glanced up the ring on my finger. I wondered if I was going to have to go through this song and dance yet again. She's dead.

4:01I said flatly. After a moment, he answered. I expected as much. I cocked my head questioningly. Have a nice day, he said, picking up his magazine again. Back in the car, I pulled my tape recorder from my bag and flipped in the record switch. It wasn't for serious notes, but more for general themes and feelings. The professor had recommended it to help us keep track of our feelings and ideas as we collected the materials for our thesis. Met a man in the gas station on the edge of. I looked around, trying to figure out what to call it. The general area. He asked where I was going and tried to dissuade me from it. He gave me his name as Renard and said to use it if anyone gives me any trouble. He also told me that they wouldn't be happy to see my type. I flicked a recorder off. Then after a moment back on. It's hard to imagine this place ever being sunny. Since it's October, said the professor, I decided we'd focus on some of the darker aspects of folklore. I know you've all been surely enjoying learning all about quilting, but we'll take a break from that wonderful subject to do a little. Well, something a bit more spooky.

5:02He bounced on the word spooky. Dr. James had a weight of lecturing where he would often put his hands behind his back and lean or bend in time with his lectures, occasionally bouncing up a little to punctuate the end of sentences here and there. He was in rare form that day. Rather than focus on the largest examples that you all know and have surely heard about a thousand times, I thought it would be interesting to give you some less well-known examples of spooky folklore. The preacher house was the third after a haunted bridge somewhere in a higher one, a good man somewhere in Tennessee. The third was also in Tennessee, and the PowerPoint showed a yellow photograph picturing the brick foundation of a home, with three walls still partially stounding and the chimney still jotting into the air. Now, the preacher house is a little known ruin set up in the hills. It's not too south from here, actually. The problem is, while he smiled and swiveled to face the class, very pleased with himself. Well, we know very little about it. The first mention of it was recorded from the Fook Studies Department at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, but there was no mention of how all the original building was or what exactly it was supposed to be wrong with the place. Tourists were worn away from it, but as it's close to highway 116, it's been difficult to keep people away from the place.

6:06He changed a slide and there was a general shuffling as every person in a lecture hall shifted in their chair to lean forward. The new slide pictured a large underground structure with murals painted on the walls. For the photos was so grainy and yellow with age that it was hard to see what exactly the murals were supposed to be depicting. Ah, now you see the interesting part. When a group of students from the university went to investigate it some 20 years ago, they found a hatch leading beneath the old house and a large cave cut into the hillside with these murals painted on them. They had planned to do more testing, but, and this was when I, myself, was still in middle school, mind you. Supposedly, they were contacted by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and told that it was some type of crime scene that needed to be investigated and that they needed to stop. All of that, naturally, has combined together to leave us with a very spooky, he bounced on the word again, mystery. Surrounding these old ruins that, at least according to locals, no one is supposed to have a go near. Cedar Creek didn't materialize out of the mist like the gas station, but instead spread out below when I crested a hill like roofed up to a fove in a sea of lazy mist. The preacher house was on the other side of town, and as I drove through the wet, quiet streets I looked at the decaying town.

7:11If broken, boarded up windows had been invoked, then Cedar Creek would have been the pinnacle of fashion. But as it were, a quiet, proud desperation slunk between the buildings and crossed the crack streets, somehow more tangible, even than the mist or the rain. I stopped at a red light beside a diner that probably had dirt in a grud that was older than me and tried to ignore all the pale sunken faces in the windows watching my car. I still felt their eyes boring into me long after I had left the town again and ascended once more into the hills. The preacher house sat alone in a meadow half a mile down a dirt road, back sharply by steep rise up to the mountains. Then, was speed grass had grown waste high around the fragments of wall, with only a single tree in what might be considered the house's yard. When scent ripples through the grass, always moving from the edges inward toward the house. Everything was a little grier than the pictures, but I hardly noticed it at first. Since my eye was drawn to something so out of place that it might have been comical if it didn't give off such a threatening feeling. In front of the house, some ten feet from a closest fragment of wall, someone had sat in the old sand pay for the kind painted blue on the sides.

8:11I walked toward it slowly, with that familiar feeling of wondering if I might be the butt of someone's strange jerk. Still, no camera crews jumped out of the bushes or anything as I reached it, and I picked up the phone only to hear silence. Of course, I'd expected silence, but I felt strange sense of disappointment at it. I hung it back up on the receiver then, as an experiment pushed the thing slightly. The thing was so top heavy that, with only the slight push, it toppled over into the grass with a wet metallic client noise. I looked around, still waiting for some kind of punch line, but all that came was a cold gust of wind. I pulled the recorder from my pocket and clicked the record button. Someone seems to have put, and I'm not joking here, I hold down payphone up here. It's not connected to anything, and it doesn't work, but I can't imagine a reason for it being here. Even as a prank, it seems weird. I might ask around town about it. Hold down payphone. Like why? I stepped over the phone and walked up the small. We choked past to the remainder of the brick house that had once stood there, now no more than three pieces of wall and a chimney. I stepped through what had once been the door and wandered to the other side, where I knew the ancients laid to the more ingesting part of the place.

9:16The door was like those that lead down to cellars, set at an angle descending into the ground. The wood was walked with large gaps between the boards and seemed to be held together entirely by the thick eye and bandit encircled each of the doors. Both end, the door growing together as I managed to hold a heavy thing up and past its center of gravity, where it's one back on its rusted hinges and, after a single bounce, lay still. Warm, thick air emanated from the open hole smelling of wet earth and stone. The stairs that led down would went wood or even metal, but she's old pieces of slate jand into the earth. I pulled the small flashlight from my pocket and shined it down into the awning tunnel, but there was only darkness and nothing more. As I descended, the damp of the rain gave way and the air became softer and drier. Then, without any kind of forewarning, the stairs ended, leaving me standing at the exit to the tunnel's bottom, staring into darkness that seemed thicker somehow and almost alive. I turned the flashlight up and into what people refer to as a bunker, but the light just stretched off into more darkness and I had to tread some ways before the beam reached the far wall. I experienced then one of those feelings that happens when, even though you're expecting something, it still manages to surprise you.

10:18It's rather like seeing the grand canyon. And yet, seeing it in person still leaves you a bit breathless. You're jamming near a favorite song, and while you aren't missing a beat, you could be missing a signal from your body. It's an SOS from your kidneys and it doesn't sound like music at all. It's silent. High blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and other risk factors can quietly stress the kidneys, leading to negative impacts on the heart. That's why you should ask your doctor about a simple urine test called UACR. Most miss the signal for hidden kidney disease and related heart risk. You shouldn't. Visit, detect the SOS.com today to learn more. Hey, I'm Josh Speagle, host of the podcast, Lunatic in the Newsroom. If you enjoy journalism that drifts into mild panic, wild overthinking and a guaranteed nervous breakdown, Lunatic in the Newsroom is for you. It's news like you've never heard before, the only newsroom with a panic button, your laugh, your cry and gasp and horror as the show spirals completely out of control.

11:18It's not just news, it's emotionally unstable. Lunatic in the Newsroom, listen today. The mural painted there was beautiful. That must be stated first. It wasn't some crude drawing, but a product of a hand that must have spent many, many years perfecting its craft. The painting showed a woodland scene, with a stream running through the center, with squares and full-lady ridiculously detailed for this size. The scene covered the whole 10 foot high wall, leaving the squares in the foreground standing at some 2 or 3 feet tall. As my eyes adjusted though, I saw the real reason for the preacher house's reputation. The dark, shadowy figures hiding between the trees devoid of any kind of detail to humanize them. There were simply outline voids that were vaguely human-shaped, painted great and black, like someone had blocked them out to paint but just never got a room to finish them. The ones in the background were maybe 2 feet tall, while the ones closest to the front of the painting would have stood at some 8 feet tall. I stared at one of them for a moment. I knew there were 2 other murals covering the walls to the left and right, and the realization that those murals 2 were populated with these featureless entities filled me with a sudden dread that left me with the urge to be anywhere, and I mean anywhere else.

12:22I took a deep breath and waited for the feeling to pass before taking a cursory look at the other 2 murals. An island seen in the left and a small farm at the foot of a large forest at the other. When I touched the wall, I found it didn't have the plasticism of feeling of acrylics but still felt like plain rock, as if the rock itself had been dyed to create the murals rather than painted on. I noted my first impressions on the tape recorder. Finally, I added, walking back to the forest mural. One of the most curious fix of the paintings is that, between their detail and size and the sheer darkness down here, it's almost impossible to get a true measure on them. When I look left, I see something to the right, I didn't see other. And when I look right to pay attention to that new thing, something in the left catches my eye again. It's such a strange trick of the eye. It creates this feeling of things appearing in the painting as you simply take in such a large amount of detail from so close up. The town's library was an old two-story building sandwich between and Sharon Walls with two apartments. The plaque outside told me that the building had apparently at one time been home to the town's newspaper, but didn't say much else. The librarian was an ancient-looking woman whose glasses were so thick they could have doubled as binoculars and more a perfume that smelled of welded lavender.

13:28The library itself had only front windows, and the only light inside the place was the librarian's desk lamp illuminating some old ledger that she looked up from to glare at me. Can I help you? She asked. Yes. Hi. I'm looking for, well, anything you have on the preacher house. I didn't know until that moment that an empty library could grow somehow more silent, and yet, it did. The rain even seemed to slacken, like it decided it would take a stroll down the street and come back after all this unpleasantness was over. Well, which preacher? Preacher Hancock's place, preacher Campbell, or we got preacher Gamble's house over on. No, no, I said holding up a hand and cutting her off. I mean a preacher house. She'd well know what I meant the first time, and we both knew that. Though no the place, she said, turning her attention back to the ledger. You have a nice day. I'm just looking for any records about when it was built or who its owners might have been or anything like that. Her only answer was to continue staring pointedly at the ledger. Please, I'm not looking to cause trouble or anything. I promise. She still didn't look up.

14:30I sighed in town to leave, but I'd only got a step before I remembered something. It wasn't exactly an emergency or anything, and it seemed a long shot, but I didn't really have much to lose at this point. I turned back to the desk. Renard told me it was okay. She didn't move for a moment, but her jaw worked furiously as she grand her teeth. When she did look up, it was an angry acceptance rather than any kind of helpfulness. She pushed back from the table with alarming agility for someone so old and marched off into the gloom, muttering something that sounded angry. The sound of it moved through the shelves and up the old spiral staircase at the back of the place, then over my head before making its way back. In her hand, she held a battered old folio with a tight label that said, preach her family records. You stay right here with it, she said pointedly. You can sit at that table over there. A part of me wanted to joke that she wouldn't be able to stop me if I wanted to take it with me, but something told me not only would she not find it funny, but it very well might be entirely wrong. I sat down at one of the lawn tables close to the windows and flicked in the desk lamp, then opened the folio. It took me some time to sort through the stack of documents.

15:32Most were yellowed and thin with age, and carried a smell of dust and mold. Some were so frail I was afraid to handle them with anything other than my fender tips, less the crumble. The documents traced the births and deaths of the preacher clan for just over a hundred years, but detailed little else besides. The last record I found was a deed given to one Jedi die preacher, dated 1890, in a general area of the preacher house. There was absolutely nothing regarding what led to its current state. I took the folio back up to the librarian and thanked her. She didn't even look up. I rented a motel room at a lawn one-story hotel wrapped around a parking lot, this one situated at a small dark bend and the road leading from town surrounded by old grove cedar trees. I walked in and turned in the lamp, only to find the television didn't work and the heat only had one setting. I pulled my chair into the door and sat there, moving it backward or forward when I got hot or cold. I sat and listened to the rain powder off the aluminum roof and the bed of crushed cedar needles. I stared into the dark woods, spinning my wedding ring on my finger and waiting. After my usual two Ios of sleep, I worked with no idea what I was going to do next for my thesis,

16:33which is why I was more excited than disturbed when I found that someone had slipped a note under my door that reads simply, Cedar of Cedar Creek vs. Alton Brandsbury. After a coffee, I made my way through the chile, sprawling hallways at the courthouse until I found the records department and us for the case. The archivist, a small old man with wire-in spectacles much too large for his face, frowned heavily when I asked him, but nevertheless led me down to the archivist's reading room at the end of a lawn yellowed hallway that smelled of ammonia and bust with the sound of failing for recent lights. The room itself was small and carpeted, with only an old steel table and chair inside. He brought me to Folio and left silently. The case concerned when Alton Brandsbury, a local shop clerk who, at least according to the records burned a preacher house to its current state in November 1912. From the records, it seemed that the trial was less to determine whether or not Brandsbury was guilty or not, since he'd been fan-standing beside the charred ruins with a can of gasoline and cinch marks on his clothes, but more to determine whether he was mentally competent enough to actually be tried by the court. The state doctor that examined Brandsbury ultimately wrote in a letter to the court that,

17:33while Brandsbury doesn't carry the demeanor of a paranoid or have many of the telltale signs of a novice disorder, I still must declare him mentally incompetent due in large part to his strange delusions of shadow men and the disturbing reason he gave for his actions. Those disturbing reasons were recorded later in the judge's written opinion after the verdict. Due to Brandsbury's firm belief that the preacher family homestead was inhabited by some kind of evil spirits, I must concur with the opinions of both the defendant's private doctor and the one supplied by the court, with that opinion being that Mr. Brandsbury is not competent to stand trial or face punishment for his actions at this time. While one could be forgiven from a seeking Mr. Brandsbury's capacity for a lucidity from his easy manner and good speech, his accounts of what led him to ultimately set the fatal fire that killed the preacher family point and questionably toward an adult mind. Those accounts referenced in shadow we figure standing outside his house that spoke to him with the voice of his recently deceased son. When he followed these figures, he ended up at the home of the preachers. This happened according to him for some months and led him to his ultimate pronouncement that this place was in his words cursed. Whether his condition is a result of the death of his son, some deficiency brought on by age, or a weak constitution,

18:36or some other cause, I truly believe that it would be a mistake to condemn a man so clearly divorced from the reality of his actions. There remains, but the possibility of a post-cure trial, but I imagine he will remain a ward of the state for the rest of his days. Signed, honorable judge John Oppenheimer while Mr. Brandsbury's own statement was also included in the follow, I've elected to not include it here due to its shall we say, opaque nature. The handwriting changes multiple times throughout the document, becoming nigh unreadable at times. And there are breaks between paragraphs that leave one with the feeling of having skipped several pages in a book that also changed language as well you weren't looking. I'm there in that small little reading room at the back of a cold, climbing courthouse, was the first time I saw it. Perhaps it was niche on the back of my neck, or something just barely caught through the corner of my eye, but I got this sense that there something was parade. I looked up to see a dark figure standing just through the window set in the door. It didn't disappear, but stood there as I watched. I knew, as I still know, that even though the figure had no features and no eyes to speak of that it was, nonetheless watching me, I knew that it could see me just as well as I could see it.

19:38And we sat like that, me at the little desk in the little room is standing in the doorway, watching each other in a silence so thick it might have been water and drowned us both. Strangely, that first time I was necessarily scared. No, it was more like my body was waiting for me to give it some cue. After some moments, the figure turned slowly and walked back down the long hallway before entering the shadows by the stairs and disappearing from sight. When it was gone, I took a deep breath and flicked in the recorder. Unsure of what to do next, I drove back to the gas station I'd encountered when I first drove in. Though the fog wasn't quite so bad as the day before, at the station still seemed to materialize from it the second before I passed a turn off. Not a soul was there but the clerk, the same one I'd before, reading a withered old paperback while Hank Williams played on the speakers. He looked up when I walked in. I, doing alright, Renard? I asked. He shrugged in and looked at me flatly. Better than you, by the looks of it. The frankness of a reply caught me like a slap. I looked that bad, huh? You don't look good. I frowned at him. There was something about the clerk that looked intensely.

20:39Well, maybe not old. War might be a better word for it. It was something in the eyes that gave them the impression of light shining out from a deep cave. I, I wanted to ask you some questions if that's okay. I asked. Why me? Well, if I'm honest, nobody else here really seems to want anything to do with me. I told you they wouldn't. I know, but why? I found out some about the house. I read the court-brecker's about the Brandsbury guy burning it down. I haven't found anything about the bunker underneath or even any mention of it so far. I was wondering if you could tell me what the locals say about it. He didn't seem at all surprised by the fact I'd read the court case and I had suspicion that it was him who had slipped the piece of paper beneath my hotel door. I don't go up there, he said. That's what we say about it. We tell other people not to go up there. But why? Has anything happened to people that go up there? I mean, someone has to go up there. Someone hold a whole damn piffon up there. We nods at his book on the counter and smoothed out the cover. He looked up at me and the expression of sheer hopelessness that covered his face almost caused me to recoil.

21:42What's the point? You're not going to listen and if you listen you won't believe it and if you believe it you'll think it would happen to you. Same thing all of you do when you come here. He wrote his forehead with the tips of his fingers pressing so hard it left red splotches on the skin just go home for once just. He sighed. Just listen. I gave him a moment before I asked again what happens to people at the preacher house. His fingers still pressed into his forehead his face was entirely covered from view when he answered. They just don't come back. So they just vanish. He nodded. For a bit there was only the sound of Hank Williams floating above us and the hum of the soda refrigerator. When he finally spoke it was in a low voice like he was afraid to let the words out into the world. When I was little they told us stores were ever someone died. We were always told to ignore the voices in the woods. They gather all the kids up and tell us. Then they'd tell us again. Then they'd make us repeat it to them. Then repeat it again. And it happened every time someone died. The same message. Don't talk to them. Don't do what they say.

22:43What did they say? I asked him. Did you ever hear them? He looked out the gas stations windows towards the thick woods across the road barely more than a dog's watch through the mist. I don't hear them. Sometimes they're out there though. He pointed toward the road. I thought of the black figure I'd seen standing inside the courthouse. They attract people. He said his voice growing even quieter so I had to lean in to make out the words. I don't know how. People find out about the place though. Always when they're at their worst and they come looking. He looked down and I followed his gaze to my wedding ring. He looked back up and the silent implication was clear. A large truck pulled into the station, belching black smoke from its tailpipe. You need to leave. People can't think I'm talking to you. But you told me to tell people I talked to you. I said only if you really really needed to. I'd rather not have my ties last if I could help it. Thanks. Please go. The panic in his face told me that he was being serious. So I quickly laid a doll around the counter and walked out with a bag of chips and a coke. Two men in the truck watched me sell only.

23:43I waved at them and one of them spit out the window. Hi, I'm Alicia. And I'm Stacey. And we make trashy divorces. Everybody's favorite good podcast about bad relationships. Looking for something true crimey without the gore or the body count? We've been shurning out funny, feisty feminist episodes since 2019. So if you're looking to put some scandalous stories told well into your ears this summer, check out trashy divorces. Wherever you listen to podcasts, trust us. We've covered someone you love or someone you love to hate. Later that night, I finally they called my mom. Since the phones inside the rooms also didn't work, I used the pay from beside the office. She was glad to hear from me and if I'm honest, I felt guilty for not calling her sooner. I could almost hear her nose wrinkling through the phone as she went. What on earth are you doing all the way down there? I'm writing my thesis on a house down here. It's a neat little place. Oh, it wouldn't put a pass then to shoot you. You know how people are. You know down there.

24:43Yeah, mom. Have you decided what you're going to do with this master's degree now that you're about to have it? And just like that, the conversation traveled down a path once with by so many comings and goings. I looked out into the rainy parking lot. The single street lamp in the middle barely stretched to the woods all around us, turning everything a slight shade of orange. Not yet, mom. She sighed. I know, mom. I'm not going to start. I know better. You'll do what you'll do and I've already made my feelings about this very clear. I waited for the beat of silence that, but always followed before she continued. But I do wish you'd just come home and... She kept on, but her voice trailed off for me as I continued to look out at the parking lot and started to notice the dog-ship standing at the edges of the light like outlines of tall people that hadn't been filled in. None of them moved and I wasn't sure if they'd been standing at the whole time or had simply materialized from the dog-miss-like the gas station. Are you even listening to me? She snapped. Sororied, mom. Someone was telling me they needed to use the phone. There was an impatient half.

25:43There's not even more than one phone at the hotel. What kind of holiday and are you at? I got to go, mom. He needs to use the phone. Well, just call me tomorrow. If you can I miss you and your dog misses you. Josh, genus, parents, ask about you. I will lie hung up the phone before the conversation could reach the point where she started. Where she started with the algorithms I walked to the edge of the cuffed oning that ran the length of the little model and looked at the dark figures downing there I took my front from my pocket and slowly waved. They didn't wave back. I walked back to my room. Inside, I took my tape recorder from my pocket and clicked record. But instead of speaking into it, I laid it on the little table beside the bed and did my best to sleep. I spent the next day with the Serbicald woman pouring over the library's collections, which consisted almost entirely of old journals, diaries and handwritten store ledgers. While the ledgers were of little interest, even in a single day, I found perhaps a dozen references recorded in various diaries, all following the patent Renault described. A death followed by the voices. One woman recorded how glad she was that she didn't have kids after her husband's death because his voice outside her bedroom windows was almost too much for her.

26:44An adult to bear and she couldn't imagine a child being able to sit all night through such a thing. Another account from when Mrs. Lanesbury recorded that after the death of her newborn, she and her husband would cover her heads with pillows and blankets each night for weeks to smother the sound of crying coming from the woods. Perhaps the most chilling account I read a coat from a man whose wife and two children perished in a fire that consumed his farmhouse. While he stayed with his neighbors, the man and his host would hear the voices of his wife and children, not outside the house, but above them in the house's attic. I recorded as many of them as I could in that day, under the disproving glances of that ancient crown, until my back and neck hurt from bending over and my fingers cramped from writing. I stayed until she tapped me on the shoulder, with a slimy smile pushed on her face like a bat. I'm afraid you'll have to leave, she said, with all the sorrow of a lottery winner. Don't you know the library closes at seven? I blinked at her. If only there was someone that worked here who could have informed me. The vat that made up his smile ruffled it twings a bit as her eyes fell on my engagement ring. I'm sure your wife must have the patience of a saint to tolerate your charming conversation every night.

27:45Everyone's patient when they're dead. There's a sick joy in seeing people back to the door when they realise they've just spoken ill of the dead. It's a distinct kind of shame that cows even a prickly personality and sends most people into a stammering fit. I could see, even as I said it, that the old woman was most people though, and I got the distinct impression as she stood this miling at me that she had lost the capacity for shame long before I was even born. Whether she had lost it amidst the cut-foot business of small town Galsoth and intrigue, or it had simply been slowly pressed from her by the weight of the years, I couldn't say. But she didn't waver a second before she replied, lucky her. For dinner, I stopped at small rains or dine a close to the edge of town with those old fashioned red stools at the bar. The place smelled of must, and old fatime was unbearably warm despite the old windows. It was tinged slightly yellow from years of soaking up nicotine. If you could call an unlet's-a-guar in his mouth that he swiveled from one side to the other like a pendulum. He didn't glare at me a scale, but simply watched me out of the corner of his eye turning between me and the old television in corner, like he couldn't figure out which might be more entertaining. I plucked headphones into my tape recorder to listen to the recording of the night before,

28:48but the only noise was my own snoring. The longer I listen, the more of that feeling I felt. It was the saying that I'd felt when I picked up the phone outside the preacher house, a sort of nervous apprehension mixed with something like cope. Again, though, there was nothing, and the old cook gently sat the burger down at my table with a sound no louder than the rain pattering down outside. I dipped a frying ketchup and looked out the window, knowing already what I'd see. The parking lot was a cracked old thing with part holes that could swallow a child. The only light was a flood-out bolted to the front of the building and at the edge of its reach. I saw them there again. Come on, I thought. Say something. Let me hear it. I turned to find a cook watching me intently with the same blank expression on his face, and I realised I'd been muttering the words I was thinking. I looked at him, looked pointedly at the figure standing in the rain, and then back at him. He raised a thick callus finger in front of his lips, then slowly shook his head. That night, I genced out the tape recorder beside my bed. The rain had slowed to a thin misting, but the air was so heavy and wet that the cold night soaked into my bones and I couldn't get warm even in the heat of the room.

29:48I laid in the dark, shivering, until I heard the gentle knocks. There were three of them at a time, not faster slow, not harder gentle. They were just there. I threw the covers from my shivering legs and padded across to the door. I had the dead bolt engaged and the chain locked in its place. I placed my ear to the cold wood. Gina, I asked. The knocking ceased in the middle of a sequence. Again, that strange feeling of a dreadful kind of hope flooded my mind, and again there was no reply. The only noise at all, besides the splat of rain dripping from the awning, was a kind of static noise that swelled and pulls like a television in a power surge. I unlocked the dead bolt, thinking I might peek through the crack in the door allowed by the chain lock. I turned the knob, ready to crack the door open, when something stayed my hand. It was old for you, like the Cedar trees were old growth. It was a feeling of facing something beyond my can in every way, shape and form, like a caveman watching an eclipse. It made my heart start to race, even as a made-each be painful. Instead of opening the door, I placed my palms against the wood and held it fast,

30:48bracing against a push that never came. The knocking never resumed, and when I finally gathered the courage to peek through the window, there was once again nothing. I walked outside, but there was no voice or gusty laughter. There was nothing but the rain and the hum of the street lamp. There were no marks on the ground and no people about. Even the figure is that the edge of the woods were gone. That was when I felt something went on my cheek and found that, to my surprise, I was crying. The next morning, I woke to find another note this one taped to my hotel door. It read, Mr. Hollens, we're afraid that due to complaints from other guests, we are unable to accommodate you any longer. Please fake it by the usual check-out time. We're sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. In other words, since you can't leave shit alone, get out. I was already planning on leaving the day, but it never feels good to be kicked out of somewhere. The lady at the front desk wouldn't even look at me while she checked me out. Hell, she didn't even speak. She just meekly reached for my key and gave me a receipt. Then again, maybe I'm being paranoid. Maybe she just had some really interesting shoes.

31:49While I loaded my bags back into the car, I noticed something that sent a different kind of shiver down my spine. I just slammed the trunk and turned around to stretch my back. When I noticed that, out of about 11 rooms in a hotel, six of them had people in the windows. Actually people with actual human features. All watching me. They didn't look particularly angry or scared. But they had it back the way you came look. It wasn't exactly angry. But it's the look you get when you get lost on a country road and have to stop and ask for directions. Whereas in to say 10, back the way you came. Where can I find a payphone? Back the way you came. I drove away from the old hotel. The clouds were finally beginning to break and a morning sky was peeking out blue from between them. It was only late morning, but was already warm enough for me to roll the windows damp one of the last warm days of autumn. It amazed me how different the place looked in the sunshine. The houses were still old with peeling paint and dark windows, but in the sun, they did have a lazy, comfortable kind of charm to them. That charm provided the whole town as I drove through.

32:49Old brick always looks warm in the sunlight, and despite boarded up windows and the uneven streets, I found myself driving slow to save the trip through the town. As I ascended into the mountains once again, I was unsure whether everything I'd experienced might have been some frame or maybe some weird mental break. Then again, though, monsters are always easy to laugh at in the sunshine. When I emerged from the little cops of trees that separated the preacher house from the road, I saw the someone or something had stood the payphone upright once again. There was still much coating one side of it where I'd pushed it over. In the boatson and the crisp rustling of dying leaves, I stood in front of it for a long moment trying to decide just how much to indulge in a fantasy that a new deep in my heart wouldn't help me. Then I picked up the phone. Gina? Nothing. I hung it back up and walked over to the stairs leading down to the so-called bunker. The door was still resting open on its hinges. The light didn't reach far down the steep stairs, but it reached far enough to just barely eliminate the dark figures standing inside. They watched me, and I watched them, and a silent invitation was exchanged. They knew what I wanted, and I knew what they wanted.

33:50They were smart enough to know that for others, the voice was the bait. They were smart enough to know that for me, it was the prize. I didn't take my eyes off them, as I pulled the door closed, dropping it into place with the sound of rusted hinges and a loud bang. I walked back to the car, the birds and still filling the quiet little clearing, and sat in my car for a long, long time, just crying. The final drive through town was slow and I stocked for coffee at a little shop. The girl behind the counter asked if I was okay and had told her hours. The gas station didn't materialize this time, but rolled up as I crested the hill. I waved out the windows I passed. I don't know if an art saw. He was probably reading his book. He probably didn't even look up. I like to think he did, and he saw I listen to him. But then again, I've always been prone to flights of fancy. And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see you in the next one. .