Episode 95: The Second Death

If you love old gods of Appalachia, I want to help us keep the home fires burning, but maybe

“aren't comfortable with the monthly commitment, well, you can still support us.”

Be of the A-Cast supporter feature. No gift too large, no gift too small. Just click on the link in the show description and YouTube can toss your tithe in the collection plate. Feel free to go ahead and do that.

Not about now. Old gods of Appalachia is a horror anthology podcast, and therefore, make contain material not suitable for all audiences.

All listener discretion is advanced.

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged every man according to their works.

“Death and hell were cast into the lake fire.”

This is the second. Revelations, chapter 20, verses 13 through 40. She had seen ghosts before, grown up in the cup of your mother's contact with spirits hadn't been uncommon, so when the dead of wood havens Sanatorium came calling, she was not afraid.

She knew both from their lessons and her own experiences that most ghosts met no harm. Usually the very worst of them were simply confused or frustrated with their current state of being. From time to time, she had encountered ghosts that got tangled up or turned it on themselves so that they grew into something more dangerous.

Once in a blue moon, she'd run across one of the dearly departed that had been snared

“by the dark, and that was a whole other situation entirely.”

Tonight, she sent none of those things. The three hazy figures that emerged from the darkness for a chamber seemed more curious and timid than anything else. For the moment, they were merely shifting vaguely people shaped shadows drifting into visibility. She didn't know that was the best manifestation they could manage, so she cleared

her throat and spoke warmly and gently to the entities hovering by the foot of her bed. Hail spirits, I see you, and thank you kindly for allowing me to share your space. I mean you know harm, I have come only seeking shelter and rest, and I am sorry for any disturbance my presence may have caused you. I am happy to speak with you, if you wish, so long as you speak peaceful and true.

That fluttering sorceress came again, and she caught the faint scent of iron, as the three figures came more clearly into focus. An older man and a middle-aged woman stood at the bottom corners of her narrow bed. The man was Natalie attired in a suit, and his plump gregarious face was framed by bushy sideburns.

The hair on his face apparently compensating for its complete absence atop his head. The woman stood straight back in a black-themed-array gown, her hands clasped in front of her, a gesture that struck Dr. Dooley as a bit nervous. The lines on her face spoke of years of hard work and responsibility. She had the air as somebody who probably raised a whole packet of children while working

two jobs intended a garden massage. She called to mind every eldest daughter the red-haired witch had ever known.

The third spirit between the other two took a moment to materialize, eventually resolving

into the shape of a young man of perhaps 20 years. His face was stubbly and his head was top of the thick, unruly mop of dark brown hair. His clothing resembled something like fancy silk pyjamas, given the look of a bachelor on holiday. The letter H had been monogrammed onto a single pocket over his heart. The spectre placed a hand over that embroidery and a client is head politely.

"Uh, hey witch, I mean if you are a witch, I mean no offense but the people mismarriage retooks away behind the laundry room or usually something like that. I'm terribly sorry if I misboken." Dr. Dooley smiled to herself almost impressed, and goes with manners was a pleasant change. Who speak true spirit, a witch I am.

Was it you that came rats on them poking about when Ms. Phyllis brought me my water?

wanting to be on the bandside of truth be told.

“She's got away with the locks of us that didn't, and it's always pleasant."”

The other goes shifted nervously at his mention of the elderly nurse whose gifts had sent them scurrying on their previous visit to room 16. "On any other day, we'd simply be curious about a new face on the private wing. There are urgent matters of thought that require us to seek your help." The spirits scratched absolutely at a stubbly chin gathering his thoughts, then wenced

in mild embarrassment. "Oh, where are my manners?

Here I am running off at the mouth like a schoolboy and I haven't even introduced myself.

My name is William Harrison-Havis, but my friends call me Billy. This radiant beauty to my rise is Ms. Regina Fletcher, she's only just joined our ranks. And this noble gentleman is Marcelus Moss of the mosses of Green Breyer County. We are, but three of the many dead that walked the grounds here at Woodhamen. And you, daughter Dooley, regarded the trio carefully.

He can with ghost whatness tricky is dealing with heights or other sorts of spirits, little on beings of the inner door. But it wasn't wise to go around giving out one's whole name, Willie Nilly.

Dooley is my family name.

You may call me Ms. Dooley.

“What is it you would have for me on this night, Mr. William Harrison?”

Havis, she in tone the spirit's full name with a tingling sharpness meant to relay in the most polite way possible. That she had the upper hand in this interaction. William my friends call me Billy Havis merely inclined his head, acknowledging the question while sparing the back of his proverbial neck.

"He knew he was at her mercy, but he didn't seem to mind," interesting. The late Mr. Havis turned to his two companions for confirmation, and that each nodded in turn, Marcelus Moss with a fatherly jerk of his chin, and Regina Fletcher with a quick somewhat impatient Bob of her head, charmed to make your acquaintance, Miss Dooley. To get right to the point, we need your help stay in, though pardon the expression, "alive."

“See, it seems that the doors swung wide as fill us more made her way into the room, bearing”

a tray laden with a steaming bowl, a vegetable beef soup, a stack of salt teens, and a small dish of chow-chow. She came to an abrupt halt when she saw the ghost gathered around the foot of her patient's head, soup slopped over the edge of the bowl, spattering the crackers, and the dish of chow-chow rattled against the metal tray.

"What the world's going on in here? What did I tell y'all? This woman is a patient in our care, not some satcho for y'all to come and go get. I said it before, I'll say it again." Villas raised her stamp and foot. Her eyes, a lot, with all the fury of a disappointed school-marm. Villas, wait! "I told y'all, get!" the nurse's heels smacked the floor, and there was a small burst of power that made daughter duly flinch and squeeze her eyes shut, and

when she opened them again, the two of them were alone in the room. "I'm sorry to hear. The dead of her had to hear have no manners. They have a perfectly good graveyard they could be rest of me, and I don't know why they're in here bothering you. They weren't bothering me, Villas. I wish she hadn't done that. The older woman chatted on as if she had noticed her patient had even spoken. So don't do we let the

matter drop. The soup smelled delicious. A bright orange tomato-y brothel of onion, celery, carrots, macaroni, and bits of ground beef, her stomach growl. And for a moment the plot of the three apparitions fled from her mind, replaced by sudden hunger. It had been a long time since she'd had a proper supper. "Don't you worry about them dear. I heard you talk and figured she might want to buy tea for you not to back out?"

"Oh, now that you mentioned it, I could eat." "When the fire nurse down, in the woods go quiet, and you thank you, told every tale you're known. No flame, but to reshape the darkness, so you lock your eyes on the trampling low. The faces you found are so familiar, they could almost speak. The stories fall with a light orange, but you can feed the fire to curse the darkness when the

With a full belly, a fluff pillow and freshly turned linens, daughter doily fell back into

“a deep sleep, and once again, the dreams came. She was in bad surely stinking shack out”

near Goshen Valley. The shell of an old woman was seated as ever in her ancient rock and chair. A rickety contraption covered with runes and sigils that occasionally pulsed with a dull orange light, depending on its occupant's mood. The sour face fluffy giant glared at her from her tutors' lap while its equally foul tempered litter mates watched from the shadows. She wondered again if it was the voice of this battle-scored main

coon in its sibling she heard rather than that of the old woman. "There's power in the dead girl, not just in death, but in the dead and sails. Out of that down, you're a little bird there. Imagine you've seen the ghost of

“two in your time. Where you scared? I bet you are. Bet you merely pissed your pedicult. It”

will think like you. Lucky the master's brought you into the foward and it's your. What

I wouldn't give to seeing your face first time, some sad old shaggy drifted up to the floor

when you'd have to find his bloody mounds or some such. Dr. Dooley scribbled furiously in her journal, doing her best to ignore the predatory eyes that filled the old shagged dark corners and block out the rank smell of the place. There were 12 cats in bad Shirley's quarters at all times. The orange beast held the place of honor on the old crown's lap. While the other eleven perched on shelves or stacks of old books or lurk beneath the filthy old pallet that

passed for bad Shirley's bed, occasionally springing into the dim light of the lantern to swat at her when the mood struck, or when Shirley thought she wouldn't listen. It would be easy for a simple to such as you'd overlook what there is to be taken from those who have shed her boreal forms. There's power for magic to be found in the mountains of the day of honey, both in the hard compact tissue on outside and in the deletious mirror with

“the end. But you must use proper implements and methods. You do it round, you'll end up with”

a cold and rotting mess, it's neither useful nor appetizing that. Do it right, honey. You

have materials for working that are potent beyond your imagining girl. I hope it always

would get to begin in a while. We can take from the dead. Are you listening to me, girl? Are you getting us out and you stupid little monkey? Daughter, duly, flinched, as a particularly large tom, black as pitch with a nunched ear and eyes that shine like murder, bounded down from the shadows over the bookcases to knock her notes from her hand. It hissed at her. It's mismatched ears, flat against it's head. She waited for the beast to withdraw.

She had learned early on not to try a shoe in a way and recovered her journal from the filth-streamed floor. I am, ma- I am, ma- I am, ma- Please, please, go on, bones and mirror be one thing. But you know how to draw a power from the smectors themselves. I don't imagine anybody ever taught you how to transform the essence of their pathetic effort to happen in something that's useful. Back in your pardon, ma- Are you talking about

using a human soul to power work and that surely left? And the cat's around her trill mocking. Like again, a particularly nasty school children circling their prey on the playground. The human soul has no such thing. Not in a way the God-botherer would have you believe. People are made of parts. Living dead don't make no difference. Parts can be repurposed. We worked on a little last new moon, or if you forgotten you wretched

little ape. A slim tortie with one jet black foreleg, growled at her, scrolling her for her poor memory. But she had not forgotten. How could she? She had watched in horror as bad surely turned an old pile of dog bones, mingle with dark earth, tree bark and other detritus

color of dry moss. That poor thing had three eyes, two muzzles and two sets of horrible

“oversized teeth. It had run and limping circles about the clearing, growling and yelping”

before surely had withdrawn her power and allowed it to collapse back into the dirt it had been drenched from. It was one of the most unnatural things she'd ever witnessed. Our masters teach us that all things of this world are made to be torn apart and coiled up to nourish us a certain theme. It takes time to acquire the taste honey, but acquire what we do. My air base from deeper places whose whole diet consists of the succulents

better place in spirit to be at the past who had old black door. It's natural to have

our kind. We can soon, but are never filled. We destroy what was and be the new world's

had a girl's mouth. You'll learn. You follow old Shirley's lesson and you'll acquire that taste for yourself so nerf girl, I wish you will. With the whole do respect mom, I pledged

“my trough to the black stag so that I might keep this land safe and live forever. Now what”

to steal from the dead have to do with all that? She knew the words were a mistake from the moment they left her mouth. She expected violent retribution from feeling claws and teeth and braced herself for it, but instead, that Shirley just rocked in her chair, murmuring to herself as if she had not even heard the question. "Yes, I have enough girl, so me, no, there was a soft footsteps and an old floorboard creaked behind her. When she turned

to seek the source of the sound, the world faded away. And she woke in the cozy confines of room 16. Dr. Dooley pushed herself up against the headboard and looked around the room. She found the ghostly form of William Harrison Hathus waiting at the foot of her bed. "Oh good, you're awake, I hope I didn't startle you, and if I did, please don't call

“for Ms. Billus, we don't have time for that." The ghost looked warned and haggard. If”

he'd been able to switch, she thought he would be. "Mr. Hathus, are you all right? I'm sorry

for the sense you're away. That was never my intention. Especially since you'd come

to ask for my help, please call me Billy. Oh, I know you never met for Ms. Billus to do what she did, but that Delay had consequences most dire. As I was trying to explain when we were interrupted, there is something on these grounds that is, "Well, it's killing us." "I'm not sure I understand your mean answer. The lot of you are already dead. Do you mean something is forcing you to move on? To go through the old black door as folks got

it. No, nothing is forcing us to move on, man. I don't miss Billus wishes she could, but this is far worse." Out by the cemetery where most of us are entered, something has been

watching us for some time. At first, it was merely unsettling what did the dead have to

fear, right? Dark things pass through all the time. It would have been as a place of healing, but it's also a place of sickness and dying. And bad things were drawn to the scent of death and the whole countryside is ripe with the stench of it these days. And the grounds proper are protected by the war against the mismarriage family, and as to your most of them around the age of the property, it's not the strongest barrier, but any fence is better than none.

Dr. Dudley nodded thoughtfully. She could sense the faint hum of the words that surrounded the property, though as the ghost had noted they weren't particularly strong. She could feel the presence of additional protections around the private wing, however, and these were more solid. To her gift it was like the difference between a freshly painted and carefully maintained fence to one that had been neglected. The outer wards had loose boards and sagging posts,

and even a couple of spots where loudly horses had kicked it down altogether. You can feel it, can't you? The protection is strong in the rooms off this little hallway. The folks who passed through here sometimes feed the wards before they go, by way of thanking this marjorie and her husband. Moundry around the house is a little weaker, and they were set on the outer grounds or weaker steel. What are the cemetery? Ah, they're in lies the rub. The place they buried us is a very

nice plot of well kept land with lovely greenery and neat tombstones that sits a good 60 feet outside the perimeter. I imagine they didn't think the dead needed such protection, but it has come abundantly clear that we do, because something is kill at us, ma'am.

but if we try to visit our grave or if Miss Phyllis banishes us out there, then we're fair again.

This thing you say has been eaten ghosts? What does it look like? I haven't seen it myself, ma'am. No, but I've heard the screams, and I know which of us have gone missing. There's a difference in how it feels to the rest of us when somebody moves on compared to the absence of those who've been taken. The former feels much how it feels when someone passes from life to death, it's sad, but natural. The ladders more like a whole corn in the fabric of the veil where that person used

to be. It's cold and it's awful. The young ghost in the silk pajamas had begun to pace in

“agitation. When Miss Phyllis joined her number the other night, I believe she saw it. She said when”

she woken the cemetery, still on this side of the veil she heard terrible growls and a child screaming. To hear her tell it, she came across some sort of demon tearing a young boy apart. I'll teeth the claws, a beast with a vast gap in my all-fill with endless void. She said at first she thought she'd woken up in hell, but then she recognized the grounds and she fled to the house on the instinct for it could get her to poor woman. That was little Timothy. She saw, by the way, he was here

when I was poor land. Family from New York made their fortune on meal towns out in the Piedmont.

They sent him here and he never got any better. They just left him here to be buried by strangers.

He's young as to sin, so I suppose they considered in the run of the litter. At least my mom and daddy came to see me be putting the ground. Mom is superstitious though. She thought the sickness might follow me home if they buried me in the family plot back in Lewiston. She had three others, strong, healthy son, so wouldn't like I'd be missed. The red headed woman in the bed, furrowed her brown, don't talk like that, boy. I'm sure your mom misses you very much. Your

daddy too, Billy, have us snorted a bitter laugh. You don't come from money, do you miss, do you? The first son inherits, and the second son works under his elder brother, learning the family business just in case something happens to the oldest, an heir and a spare,

“that's what's wanted. If the parents are unlucky they have to produce the third son he'll be expected”

to marry well. In a more boys beyond that are just extra mouths to feed and God forbid their big daughters. A daughter is an extra mouth to feed with the added trouble of providing a dowry and finding somebody to marry him off to. My case daddy was pushing for the seminary or the military. Let's trouble and try to find me a rich wife. The handsome spirit ran his hand through his hair inside. I'm sorry, man. I don't mean to burden you with my trials and tribulations, but back to the matter

in hand. Do you think you can help us? Doctor Dooley looked at the earnest young dead man and tried her best to be honest without depriving him of hope. I'll be straight with him, Mr. Havis. Please calm me, Billy. I'll be straight with you, William. I've been very ill of late. I do not know how much help I can be. I sleep the way I do because my body and my gifts have been pushed beyond their limits and I'm desperately trying to recover. Have you tried to let anyone

else here know what's going on? The ghost shook his head. Mr. Marjorie didn't have any sense of us.

“Believe me, we've tried. I think Doc Robinson knows we're here, but he can't see us or talk to us.”

Ms. Villas can see us. She's got some axe to grind with the dead. Maybe she's just had a bad experience with some troubled spirits in the past. I don't know, but I don't think she sees us as proper people anymore. Talks to us like we're house cats that ought to know better than to get up on the table or something. There's no reason with her and if we rile her up then we end up right back out in the deep water. It occurred to the red-haired woman that while this shade had returned

to speak to her again, there had been three of them when she last spoke with him. What had become of the other two ghosts? Wait, where are your friends tonight? Mr. Marjorie and Mr. Marjorie really paused for a moment. Frowning, how best to explain this up? We don't all rise at the same time after Ms. Villas sends us to our graves, nor do we haunt the same places. I usually run into Marcellus in the parlor at least twice a week. He likes to sit in the chair where he died and recite dirty

lyrics in the general direction of the nurses. I'll have it style hard, I suppose. I'm his Fletcher's brand new. She hadn't really settled yet, so I have no idea where to find her unless she

finds me and we're not always active. You might say at the same time. We're ghosts who happen to have

died in the same place, Mr. Lily, not old friends. There used to be a fair number of us moaning around

thing is, it's already done for them. There was a shuffling in the hallway, and both the ghost

“and the witch cast their eyes toward the door. I think Ms. Villas is coming to check on you,”

so I best be on my way. If there's any way you can help us, Mr. Lily, please do. You might be our only hope. Dr. Dooley nodded in agreement, and before she could open her mouth to speak. She was alone once again. The shuffling in the hall grew louder and closer, so she snuggled down into her blankets, meaning defamed sleep. But within minutes, there was no reason for her to pretend.

Without even trying, she slid beneath the waves of solmnoons and for the first time since

she arrived at Woodhaven's Anatorian. She did not dream. In the deep blue hours of the morning, Dr. David Robinson hiked up the shallow rise on the eastern side of the grounds to the neatly tended collection of graves that housed the dead of Woodhaven. When he and his wife had opened the place, they knew they would have need of a graveyard, so they reserved this plot of land for that purpose. They imagined they would have an odd burial here and there for folks who didn't have family or

“perhaps the occasional charity case they'd taken from the county for folks who had no money for”

a proper burial. They hadn't anticipated that so many people rich fun, especially. Wouldn't want to bring their loved ones back home after they died.

There was a good amount of superstition around tuberculosis, or the white plague as the

papers had taken to call an imp, but any medical professional knew it was bullshit. Nonetheless, family from New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Maryland, points further west, had sent their ale in and died loved ones here, and once those loved ones had passed, had asked them to lay their people to rest beneath the fertile soil of western North Carolina. They chipped in headstones or small monuments, and some come to attend services, or sent

representative to see to it that the deceased's wishes were carried out. And that was that. As a result, what David Robinson and his wife, Marjorie, had envisioned as a

“discrete little potter's field of sorts tucked into a clearing on the eastern edge of the property.”

Had blossomed into a proper cemetery. Populated with grave markers ranging from simple plaques to the marble angel that the moss family had hauled in to mark their patriarch's final wrist in place. And there was a little rod iron fence that wrapped around the space with an iron gate that he kept oiled and well maintained. They did new that were ghosts walking his property. He couldn't see him or communicate with him as those were not his gifts.

He came from a long line of healers. Man who could blow the heat off a burn or talk it cut into not bleeding, he'd been raised in the church, and he and his daddy and his daddy before him were all respected men of God. But he also knew it wasn't as simple as him being chosen by the Almighty to lay hands on the sick. His mama had kept a garden in medicinal herbs. While his daddy had taught him the doctrine of the church, she had taught him the ways of the

green. It was his mama who had insisted that David's study medicine and become a healer, not just walking the path of granny medicine, but that of science and scholarship. Neither of which had anything to do with what he'd come out to do with this ungodly hour. Phyllis Moore, bless her, had been bended in Marjorie's ear for the past couple of days complaining about medicine's spirits troubling the patients. David had built the cold spots,

and the occasional rise of the hair on the back of his neck once patients had begun to pass

it would have been decades ago. He would have never called those experiences nor the entities

behind them, troubling her medicine. Nonetheless, Phyllis's gifts lay in the matters of the dead, and she had declared that she was tired of having to shoot them off the private wing this week. She'd asked Marjorie to ask him to do something about it. When David had asked a woman while she didn't just go out to the Eastfield and have a chat with the dead herself, she'd quoted first Timothy chapter three at him and stormed off in the

past of aggressive yet gentle way that only a woman with several grandchildren can do. They'd lost so many staff to the new state hospital, and he didn't dare run the risk of one of their best and long-standing employees to side and it was time to retire. Hell, they were pushing the boundaries of their state license, running the skeleton crew they had on the payroll at this point. So, here he was, howling his meaty frame up the side of the hill to perform a working

that his granddaddy had shown him years ago. There were ways to encourage the dead to move on, nothing uglier this rough to just something to give him a little push, a plot you don't have to go home but you can't stay here for the disincarnate.

as he placed it on the ground facing the cemetery gate.

He had just been over to extract the kindling he'd carried from his trunk. When he heard something move and in the tree, is at the edge of the property. Startled, David Robinson froze for a moment listening, but heard nothing else. He blew out of breath he hadn't realized he was holding and chuckled at himself or getting

“spooked at his age. He had arranged the canling according to what he could remember from his”

papiles lesson when the sound came again. This time it was closer. He closed his eyes and strained here. The years he'd spit hunting with his daddy told him it was an animal of some sort.

Didn't sound loud enough to be a bear or even a deer.

He saw a flash of movement within the cemetery and stepped closer to the gate. He heard what sounded like whimpering. Then came a low growl. The sort of sound that accompanied a hungry mouth tucking into its dinner. The whimpering stopped. Step and closer to the gate, David cut a glimpse of a wagon

tail from behind the moss monument. It was just a dog. Some stray, or perhaps somebody's

“hunting hand from down the mountain and got loose and watered up his way,”

it must have chased a rabbit or a possum to the fence and took it for supper.

Now he'd had to clean up rabbit guts as if he needed one more chore.

He left his poke and neatly arranged firewood behind and strode to the gate. Let now to friendly whistle. Here boy, it's no place for your buddy. Come on, let's get you out of there! As he drew closer, he could hear the dog panting, chewing and gulping down, whatever unfortunate critter happened across his path that night.

Sounded like he might be a big fella. David crept around the side of the marble angel. Come on, buddy, let's go, let the dog lifted its head to glance over its shoulder at the tall man. Its muzzle went with some form of viscera that he could not identify. It was unlike any dog, David Robinson had ever seen, and even if he'd seen

ever dog in the world none of them could have compared to this. Big didn't begin to describe this dog. Its muzzle was the size of a grown man's head, and the body attached it was equally a myth. As it turned a face and fear twisted his gut, there was something wrong about the thing.

The dog's coat was a sort of blanket that seemed to drink in what little lot that gray pre-dance guy provided. It was hard to see. He couldn't quite focus on the details as if his eyes were telling his brain what they saw, but his brain simply could not accept the information inside. He blackness of its coat, shapes muzzle and lie, it tilted its head, and began to grow.

Its eyes brimming with smogering red light. Its massive chest vibrated as the beast beared its teeth a wall of jagged bone, dripping a foul liquor that spattered on the grass. It did not bark. It simply opened its jaws.

And lunched. In the black I'll see another witch run in. It's a black dog that she's built come in. Oh, here comes another. Shall try for your mother.

Oh, God tell the other. But he greeted cover.

“Well, hey there, family. Oh, my, my, my, where has this trip back into 1928 taken us?”

Could be we're facing down a minute so that the folks who dwell over in the holler are already familiar with. That outro music should be a clue. For those who may not have heard that particular tale yet,

arc of season six of old gods of Appalachia, long shadows.

“We hope y'all will join us to see how that red-headed witch-handles things.”

And if I were a bit man, I bet you will.

If you've never been a resident of the holler and are wondering while your neighbors are freaking out

“about the song that's playing underneath me right now, well, there is no better time to make the move.”

Come on in. Listen to black mouth dog, along with other favorites like build my

coffin familiar in beloved grave concerns and a whole lot more.

“Head on over and cast your tithe and the collection played at old gods of Appalachia.com/TheHollard”

today. And this is your the bark is definitely not worse than the bite reminder that old gods of Appalachia is a production of deep-narne media and it's distributed by Rusty Quill. Today's story was written by Steve Schellen, edited by Cam Collins, our intro and outro music for today is by Brother Landon Blood. We'll talk to you soon, family. Talk to you real soon.