Camp Monsters - Mini Monster: Basilisk

Episode Date: July 8, 2020

This month we are traveling to Europe, to tell the story of a creature that has haunted that continent for centuries.  Nowadays it is the stuff of legend, the kind of thing you see on old coats-of-arms or hear about in the colorful tales of local folklore.  But the further you go into the more remote, forgotten corners of the European countryside, the darker and more forceful the folklore gets. The harsher the stories, the starker the warnings.  Until the history of this most deadly of creatures begins to seem more immediate than history should be.  And you begin to wonder whether there is some fatal truth to the old tales… some hidden secret, surviving from times long past.Sources:Smithsonian MagazineFandomWikipedia 

This is an REI Co-op Studios production. Welcome back to our mini-monster series. We here at Camp Monsters know that mysterious creatures are a year-round interest, so we're making sure that you have a new monster in your feed every month until our full season launches this September. This month we're traveling to Europe to tell the story of a creature that has terrorized that continent for centuries. Nowadays it's the stuff of legend, the kind of thing you see on old coats of arms or hear about in the colorful tales of local folklore

but the further you get into the more remote forgotten corners of the European countryside the darker and more forceful the folklore gets, the harsher the stories, the starker the warnings, until the history of this most deadly of creatures begins to seem more immediate than history should be, and you begin to wonder whether there's some fatal truth to the old tales, some hidden secret surviving from times long past.

This is the Camp very urban one. The countryside is that thing you see flashing past as you take the train from one grand ancient town to the next. It's a matter of time. There's so much to see in Europe that when you visit, you feel you have to go, go, go until the museums and market squares, castles and cathedrals all blend into a blurred but beautiful memory. And then you're on the plane back home. It doesn't have to be that way, though. And our story today comes to us from someone who delights in seeking out and spending time in the forgotten old corners of the continent. Places so sleepy they're just a short step away from dreaming.

As we're about to be reminded, not all dreams are pleasant. It started out nice enough, in a quaint cottage that Tracy, that was her name, had discovered online. Tucked out in the country in one of the quietest counties in England. A lovely old couple ran the place, and she was the only guest they had at the time. It was the perfect base for Tracy's rambles through the surrounding countryside. That whole area is a trip back in time. Rolling green hills and walking paths, sheep and sunsets and little villages that seemed to spring out of the ground as you round a bend in the path and it disappeared

just as quickly behind you. It was while wandering a narrow lane in one of these villages that Tracy found herself drawn to a little hole-in-the-wall antique shop. You know the kind. The window display, hopelessly cluttered like some grandmother's closet, chintzy old things crammed in at random and forgotten. The painted wooden sign hanging on rusty chains outside the place was faded almost to illegibility,

but it promised antiquities, curios, treasures, all things that Tracy loved. Later, Tracy remembered finding the thing in the darkest corner of the crowded shop, in a little box filled with old knickknacks. She still can't explain why she was drawn to it. It was just a leather ball made from some kind of animal skin. Snake? Alligator? It was about the size of a baseball, but without any visible seams. How'd the thing been put together? It was just a sort of pointless

conversation starter that Tracy liked. It didn't have a price on it but she was prepared to pay more than the

ridiculously low price the ancient shopkeeper wheezed down when she took it up to the counter. He said he had no idea what it was

or where it came from but she thought there was an odd light in his old eyes and an eagerness to his fumbling fingers as he wrapped the ball in brown paper and gave it to her. In any case, she was never able to find the old shop again when she returned to look for it. Back at her cottage, Tracy gave a nod to the elderly hosts and went to her room, intending to spend the afternoon reading. But first she unwrapped her little impulse purchase.

It was an odd sort of object to be drawn to, nothing glamorous about it. Just that rough little greenish leather ball, strangely warm now in her hand. She laughed that she'd spent any money on such an object, set it on the windowsill, and went on with her day. The next morning, the ball was gone. She looked all over the room for it, assuming that a breeze from the open window had blown it off the sill, but it was nowhere to be found. Perhaps the family's cat, which she'd seen pestering toads in the nearby pond, had made off with it. Sighing, she closed the window, chastised herself for not being more careful with her things.

But in that week after the ball disappeared, strange things began to happen. Not terribly odd things at first, not apparently connected until she looked back on them later. First, the rooster that the old couple kept disappeared. Tracy would hardly have noticed if she hadn't heard them talking about it. They blamed a local fox at first. But then there was the smell. Not everywhere, not all the time. It came in wafts here and there,

"'around the yard or in the house, unexpectedly. "'It was odd and unpleasant, "'and one morning after a night "'when the smell had been particularly strong, "'Tracy found the old landlord "'rooting around in the bushes of the garden, "'looking for whatever the foxes had left of our poor Ned. "'That was the rooster's name.

That was beginning to smell so. Tracy commiserated with him, but to herself, she doubted the smell was decay. No, no, it was unpleasant, but alive. An animal smell. She found herself beginning to lay awake for a while each night, listening for things behind the walls. The old man thought he'd solved the mystery a few days later, while he was digging out the rose bush under Tracy's window

that had withered and died so suddenly. Under the bush, the old man found what he was convinced was a weasel's den. Weasels have a strong scent, and the smell as the old man dug became so powerful that Tracy abandoned her room for a trip to the local village, not returning until rather late that night. When she returned, the house was completely dark. That was to be expected, so late at night.

The old couple would have been in bed long since. But they usually left the porch light on. Tonight they must have forgotten. And maybe it was the darkness, but something felt off about the place. Something felt strange. And the smell was just as strong as when she left.

Stronger, perhaps. Tracy used the flashlight on her cell phone to find her way to the front door up to her room. It seemed more polite than turning on the lights at the risk of waking the old folks up. But the shadows and the way they jumped around the old house as she passed through it didn't do anything for her nerves. As she stepped into the hall which led to her room, she caught sight of something lying in the dark on the floor just in front of her bedroom door. It startled her, though it turned out just to be a piece of paper held down by an old book.

It wasn't until she began to read the note that she remembered that the old couple's car hadn't been in the driveway. The note said that a very urgent matter had forced them to leave unexpectedly, and that they'd made arrangements for her to move into another little inn not far away, which they urged her to do immediately, tonight. Tonight was underlined. It was a strange end to a strange note, and Tracy took it with her into her room to think things over.

She switched on the light, then switched it off, and on and off and on again. There was no light. Hmm. A blown fuse or something. She stood there, in a room, in the dark, with the note in one hand and her luminous cell phone in the other, feeling tired and baffled, frustrated and uneasy. She decided to call it uneasy because she knew there was nothing to be scared of. There was nothing to be scared of and she wasn't going to be scared. She wasn't going to pack up all her things here in the dark. So she decided to look for the fuse box.

Tracy turned to the bedroom door she'd just closed, and as she put her hand on the knob, she felt an overwhelming instinct not to open it. To keep it shut. To lock it. To curl up and hide there in a darkness that was at least familiar. To shake off that childish fear, she threw the door open wide, and without taking time to shine her flashlight around and scare herself with shadows, she stepped boldly into the hall,

and onto something large and firm, but with give to it, like a living body, slick and leathery. Her foot rolled and she heard something hiss across the wooden floor. She cried out and fell and dropped her cell phone. She scrambled after it and her hand touched something thick and cool and smooth, and she cried out again, diving for the light and rolling to shine it back on that thing in the hallway, which turned out to be the thick leather book that had held the note down in embarrassment at her own ridiculous panic. She grabbed for the book, intending to find some shelf to put it on, and it pulled open at a page marked with an old leather bookmark. There were dark lines on the page, text underlined in thick black ink.

Tracy sat on the floor and read. The first known record of the basilisk, the king of snakes, was recorded by Pliny the Elder in 79 AD, and the monster has been sighted ever since in the darkest corners of the world. Some stories claim it is as small as a common garden snake, while others recorded it longer than 50 feet. The creature is said to be born from an egg hatched beneath a toad, and it's known enemies are weasels and the cry of a rooster. Some claim if it sees its own reflection, it will perish. If you are unlucky enough to meet the basilisk, beware of its eyes. One look into them and you will be among the dead.

Beside this entry, a shaky, elderly hand had written in ballpoint pen the word GARDEN? And beneath that, in all caps, was written, SELLER. Tracy put the book down and stayed sitting on the floor in the dark hallway, listening to her own breathing and fighting back the feeling that she was a character in a scary movie. Where was the fuse box bound to be? In the cellar. If this were a scary movie, where was the one place that she surely shouldn't go?

But this wasn't a movie. This was real life. Giant serpent kings don't exist. So she forced herself up on her shaking legs and set off down the hall, shining her cell phone light in front of her. Tracy hadn't even known the house had a basement. Not the kind of place you wander as a guest. But after searching the rest of the house and coming up empty, Tracy stood at the head of the dark stairs, shining her light down them. Now there was

absolutely no reason to go down there. All the lights in the house were out, so it wasn't a blown fuse. She should just leave, like the notes said, immediately. Just take a few things and check in at the other place. Come back tomorrow to pick up the rest. Tomorrow. In the daylight. But Tracy was made of sterner stuff That's what she told herself This was real life

And there was nothing to be frightened of And she was going to prove it So she started down the old wooden stairs Into the blackness below The basement was dusty into the blackness below. The basement was dusty, dark, cobwebbed, crowded with old things on old shelves that ranged along the sagging brick walls.

The floor was brick as well, rough and uneven with some of the bricks loose and shifting under her feet. That might have been what tripped her. Anyway, she tripped on something. Not enough to fall, just enough to stumble, and when she shone her light back across the floor, she didn't see anything there to trip over.

She did think she saw something move, though. Like the tail end of something slipping quickly under a shelf. She shivered, shined her light around, then quickened her pace toward a likely-looking cabinet hanging on the wall just under one of the small, high windows that opened onto the garden. What do antique English fuse boxes look like, anyway? As Tracy approached the little cabinet, she felt a sudden breeze on her face, a breath of cool night air that would have been fresh if it hadn't carried even more of the smell

that had already permeated the place. She noticed that the pane in the high window over the cabinet was broken. No wonder there were animals down here. She fumbled along the edge of the little metal box until she was able to pull it open, and for an instant she was disappointed. It wasn't a fuse box, just an old bathroom medicine cabinet with a cracked and spotted mirror on the inside of its door and shelves filled with rusty old tools and tape, a spool of wire and some cans of cleaners and weed killers.

But Trace was only disappointed for an instant, because in the next instant she was terrified. Just on the edge of her vision, just at the edge of the light from her cell phone, just above her, something was moving into the basement through the broken window. Something long, moving its head in odd descending spirals. She flashed her light up and was both relieved and disgusted when it revealed not some fictional basilisk, some king of snakes, but the long neck and flashing eyes

and fierce pointed head of a weasel waving from the windowsill, obviously measuring a leap into the cellar with her. A leap that would take it over, or beside, or onto Tracy's head. Time slowed down as Tracy's body began to recoil away from the crouching rodent, her shoulders hunching and her stomach pulling back and in. As she moved, the light in her hand moved

and reflected off the mirror in the little open cabinet door. For a moment, in the mirror, she could clearly see the space just behind her. And she could clearly see the figure that filled that space. In the eternity that can exist between one terrified heartbeat and the next, Tracy's mind tried to place the shape of the reflection she could see just behind her, tried to make sense of it, tried to fit what she now saw into the catalogue of things she'd seen before. But it wouldn't fit.

Not until that reflection suddenly hissed its pink, slimy mouth open, and the sight of a long fang snapped Tracy's mind back to a picture she'd once seen of the face of a hooded, spitting cobra. But this thing behind her was larger than a man. Its reflection filled the mirror and its eyes... Its eyes were the last thing Tracy saw. As she began her collapse into bottomless darkness, she felt the little claws of the weasel catch in her hair as it sprang across her.

But by then she was falling too fast to care. She awoke with the light of the morning streaming through the little windows above her. The basement was a wreck, covered in broken bits and pieces of the shelves and the things that had been on them, like something huge had flailed and thrashed the place to pieces. Tracy started up, scrambling, struggling over all the shattered things in her path. It wasn't until she gained the top of the stairs and stood there, with her back against the closed basement door that she realized how fresh the morning air smelled to her. Dew and green, morning sunlight, and the smell of last night was completely gone. Within ten minutes, Tracy was completely gone. From that little cottage as well.

And she hasn't seen that lovely part of the English countryside since. But she doesn't feel like she's missing much. Not much that she'd be likely to miss, anyway. If you like these many monster episodes, you'll like our full-length shows even more.

Season 1 is available now, and Season 2 is coming in September of 2020. Please subscribe, if you haven't already, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts. It is your support that keeps these spooky stories on air. Our mini-monster series is written and produced by Chelsea Davis. These sounds are engineered by the very talented Nick Patry from Cloud Studios. Our executive producers are Paolo Motola and Joe Crosby. We got our Mini Monster facts this month from Smithsonian Magazine, Fandom, and Wikipedia.

Links to the sources will be in our show notes if you want to learn more about the ancient snake king that might still roam the earth. I'm Weston Davis. Thank you for listening and see you next month.