Old Gods of Appalachia - Episode 13: The Dark Earth at Night

Episode Date: October 8, 2020

The Gibson family meets their fate.CW: Gunshots, dog/monster sounds, references to murder, death by structural collapse, earthquake sounds.Written by Steve ShellSound design by Steve ShellNarrated by Steve ShellIntro music: "The Land Unknown," written and performed by Landon BloodOutro music: "I Cannot Escape the Darkness," written and performed by Those Poor BastardsLEARN MORE ABOUT OLD GODS OF APPALACHIA: www.oldgodsofappalachia.comCOMPLETE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA RITUAL:FacebookInstagramTwitterBlueskySUPPORT THE SHOW:Join us over at THE HOLLER to enjoy ad-free episodes, access exclusive storylines and more.Find t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, and other Old Gods merch at www.teepublic.com/stores/oldgodsofappalachia.Transcripts available on our website at www.oldgodsofappalachia.com/episodes.Old Gods of Appalachia is a production of DeepNerd Media. All rights reserved.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/old-gods-of-appalachia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Right about now. Old Gods of Appalachia is a horror. anthology podcast and therefore may contain material not suitable for all audiences so listener discretion is advised all tennessee 1927 one week before caleb gibson went missing between the crooked spine of the cumberland plateau and the broad shoulders of the blue ridge lies a place of the richest green and deepest his shadow. A holler carved by rivers and man that bridges the gap

between old Virginia and North Carolina. I speak, of course, of the Great Appalachian Valley. Or is it better known the Tennessee Valley? Rarely has there been such a place where the green and the inner dark twine around each other like lovers.

Lovers that have one hand around each other's throat and a knife clutch to the other, but lovers all the same. It is a place of railroads and passage. A river barges and deep pockets hidden away like heartache, towns lost to the swallowing tongue of the green, or that lay fallen beneath dark lakes of the inner dark. It is deep within a nook, hidden inside a cranny that we lay our scene. There used to be a road that led to this place, but both sides agreed that it would be best if it was forgotten.

and so it was there used to be folks that lived around here but both sides agreed it would be best that they moved or passed on and so they did it was deemed a place too tainted and too dangerous for man or hain't to inhabit and so they didn't

there are forces that even the glorious vastness of the green and the ravening hunger of the inner dark do not understand and cannot harness or destroy. So binding is the best they can do. Generations ago, something rose from the earth bearing a mantle of death stitched from a tapestry of stolen life. It took the deaths of many a good man and woman and the dissolution of many a haint and creeping shadow

before they were able to count her pattern and to find where she laid her head. There are things that have walked these. mountains since those who sleep beneath were entombed in their black earth slumber that are capable of destroying or devouring the bones and mines of those they encountered. Things beyond mere life and death. Perhaps she's one of these. Perhaps she is some aberration of the green turned inward and gone to rot.

Perhaps she's a haint or a bugger that grew so dark and hungry that she found her own way to feed. Regardless the stories and the research led them to the this nameless, faceless place every seven years to renew the bonds. Dead earth and still air. This place where there lay a single grave. A grave that every seven years would birth death in the shape of a woman and a babe. A grave that had lain silent for the past 14 or so it had seemed.

The rite was complicated. And involved arts unknown except to the wises. and oldest grannies fueled by the blood of the two of the foulest things to ever crawl from the inner dark. Two from each. Two to weave. Two to be the wool. And so it leads us here tonight. The thing that detached itself from the dark patch under a mess of laurel bushes wore what was almost the form of a young man.

It walked like a young man. And when it spoke, it sounded mostly like a young man. And if he approached you alongside the road asking for a ride to town, you might almost pick him up until you realized he had no skin at all. He wore for the sake of modesty and the terms of the pact a cloak over his shoulders with a deep hood to hide his raw and bleeding face. Now, he took joy in the ways that eyes widened in fear, Once they saw him good and proper, all lipless mouth and screaming teeth,

he relished a feel of their yielding flesh as he would pounce upon them and take their skins for his own. Some he might wear a while. Go about a few nights like an actor and a play, but it never lasted. As skin rots and it just came right back to the knife again when folks found him out. He had walked a long, long time. and his stories were many. But tonight he would hide his face and form

as per the terms of the agreement. The second thing took the form of a black mist that hovered beside the first. And if the first thing had been a man, he would have felt the screaming dread and cold that poured from that floating shadow. Lost his mind to madness if he dared to meet the gleaming green eyes

that floated within it. The first thing that men called Skin Tom was irritated. He was quite certain that they were early, that they'd beaten the old hags here this time. The last time they'd been late and it had been close, so when he was chosen to come again, he made a point to be early. These woods were dead to him, though. He could not feel the reassuring pull of his master's breath or the tantalizing fruit of the green. Everything here was unknowled. to skint Tom and he was starting to worry that they were lost. He had been here the last time the right was needed, but he had played the part of the wool, not a weaver, meaning that his power, his essence, was drawn on to fuel the working just as one of the women. And it was always women on the other side would be used for this same night. He had been very tired when they were done or else he would have eaten both those old crones for supper. Well, one of them.

The other, the Teasley woman, well, she looked mean. Oh, where is it? Skint Tom asked the floating black mist beside him. We put it in the ground, sealed it with my own red blood. Careful, careful not to waste a drop. The old witches spit on the mound of the smooth, smooth earth. Yes, they had bled their blood and said their words, and we shut it tight. Skent Tom had come with the beast that was called Miss Lavinia back then,

who had been fooled to bursting with a dark touch of their masters. She showed up buck naked and covered in somebody else's blood, which the granny ladies found distasteful and show-offy. And the end result was that Scent Tom had to wear this damn hood and cape now, and in justice he deeply resented. Miss Lavinia wasn't nowhere to be found these days. So they sent old green eyes with him this time. But they did their due and for two cycles now that bitch stayed in the ground.

She was bad for the world. She laid waste to a whole camp of the old black stags, church people up on the high mountain, human type people, just getting started being turned. She tore through all of them, tore their heads, clean off, and lined the road to the camp as a welcome for whoever might not be at home while she called. Tom looked all around. He was lost on his own out here And old green eyes wasn't no help

Hell, he didn't even think it talked Ah! Tom exclaimed, relaxing As he in the black mist moved into a patch of bare earth Yes, this must be the place Yes, I remember it well Hey y'all! Place, get over here! Came a woman's sour and angry voice.

Dorothy Sargent and her sister-in-law Virgie of Sandy Ridge, Virginia stood in the gloom a good 20 yards away. Tom hissed. His hand gripping the knife had always seemed to be there. These flashbags best not test him today.

He did not know these two. They were trusted with this, Aaron. Well, he'd probably do well to keep the letter of the agreement. He was hungry. He wasn't stupid. The black mist floating at Tom's shoulder made a sound that could have been laughter.

Tom, glowered at it and made his way across the dead and oddly muted clearing to where the two old women stood. This place, by the right, was to have no name. It was not to be marked on any map or written in any book. Greeney's voice suddenly slithered into the heads of all in attendance. What has happened, you gruddy sergeant? He asked in an oddly respectful tone, as if they knew each other, Tom thought suspiciously. The taller of the two women met those poisonous emerald pinpricks without fear and wordlessly pointed to the ground at her feet.

Where there should have been a nondescript mound of earth bearing no stone, marked with no name. Instead, there was a hole, an empty hole. Scent Tom met the black mist's eyes for, a moment and then turned back to the woman. Well, shit. Robert Gibson was convinced he was cursed. Hell, he'd been told so when he was a boy. His daddy's daddy had killed a man and cold blood in the middle of the town proper and was hung for it. His daddy done the same thing in a bar fight when Robert was 10. Old lady out the church told him to his face that the Gibson's was bad.

blood ain't never gonna be no count she wasn't wrong he'd grown up and grown his own demons done his own bad things dug more graves than he ever planted seeds when the law found out about the still he kept out back of the house for years he figured they'd find what was buried underneath it soon enough but before he could give himself up his boy Jimmy Big Jim they call him now turned himself in, busted up the steel himself and brought it to the sheriff. They locked Jimmy up and he did the time that would have ended Robert Gibson's life, especially if they'd gone digging in the woods behind the house.

Now, Ricky Lee had not gone in on anyone else's behalf, but just for running and drinking and hellen enough to get locked up over some stolen goods and some bootleg hooch of his own, but all that was supposed to be behind him now. Jimmy was out Ricky was too Robert had him a grandson now and a daughter-in-law who loved him like a daddy and it was supposed to be all right

but here they were in the dead of the night his daughter-in-law in tears and his grandbaby missing in the woods Brunetta had awoken to find Caleb's bed empty and the front door standing wide open The menfolk had done their best to try to calm her, but Brunetta insisted that someone had taken Caleb. She told them about Caleb's dreams and about the dogs, he said he saw,

and that he kept seeing a woman out by the hawthorn tree. And when she mentioned the tree, Robert's face grew pale and his tone grew serious. Guns, he said, now. And with that, the three men of Crawl went to their houses, retrieved their respective firearms and followed their pause as he led them past the old tree at the edge of the yard. We need to stay together. We'll not be able to trust our eyes. Daddy, what are you talking about?

Ricky demanded Caleb just went out to have himself an adventure. You know how I was. Now, come on now. Robert Gibson leveled a stern look at his youngest boy, whose three years in the tender care of the state pen at Moundsville had inspired a sizable portion of this decision to depart West Virginia for the hopefully greener hills of Tennessee. Caleb is not you.

He doesn't have the same spark of dumbass in him. If he saw the dead woman and her dogs, there's trouble or there's sickness. Caleb ain't been well, so there might be both. Hell, even if we find him, it might be too late. Big Jim shook his head. Daddy, this ain't no time for hate stories. My boy's sick, and he's out there, and I'm going to find him.

Y'all ain't going to stop me now. And before Robert could say another word, Big Jim Gibson Not Jimmy But Big Jim Took off down the side of the hill Past the Hawthorne Tree And could be heard calling for his son

Robert turned then to Ricky To get him to hold the got-durn on for a second But Ricky was already running down the side of the hill Hollering for his brother to wait up Robert cussed something awful Before collecting himself And apologizing to his daughter-in-law He patted her shoulder

and told her to go on back to the house, and he'd do his best to bring all three of them back safe and sound. And then he took his own first halting steps down the side of the hill and into the dark wood. Ricky Lee never saw his older brother nor his daddy ever again. Now, Ricky lived and down in this part of the mountains the longest, that he knew his way around these woods better than the rest of him. Yet somehow he lost the trail and his sound of his brother calling for Caleb after just a few minutes. He knew there was a little pond

About a quarter mile around this next hill And he'd bet anything He'd find Caleb pitching a little camp out there Trying to catch a fish or some little dumb kid shit like that This was all a waste of time Boys sneak out and explore in the woods It's practically what they're made for at Caleb's age Ricky had come around the hillside

Where in the daylight The pond would be in clear sight when he heard a thrashing in the brush. The sound of something much larger than a small boy moving through the brambles, and he stopped and listened and cocked his pistol. A cheaply made thing he got from a pawn shop over in Paradise on the Virginia State line.

Whatever it was, it was coming on fast. It might be an old dog running down a rabbit, maybe, but whatever it was sounded awful big, and you can't be too careful out in the woods at night. Ricky knew that. So Ricky sat right still and waited for it to pass. He heard it slow down to a trot. There's a dog all right.

Biggin. Hell, biggest damn dog, Ricky Lee Gibson, Ricky he'd ever seen. Come sniffing into the clear and right by where he had stopped. And as it caught Ricky's scent, a low, thick growl rose from its throat. Easy boy. Easy, Ricky began. Ain't no reason either of us has to get hurt here. You just take yourself and you get on

and nobody the dog advanced on him slowly. Hackles up, teeth, beard. Still half in Shanna. Ricky's first thought was that it was rabid, maybe, because it moved in jerks and stuttering backsteps, gnawing on itself. Hell, it almost looked like it was taken. bites out of itself when it did that.

It must have the manned something awful. When he could see if its hide was covered in thick scabs looking more like mottled tree bark than furrow. Yeah, this old boy was sick all right. Now, Ricky Lee wasn't one to hurt no animal, except for deer hunting. That didn't count, of course, but particularly not a dog. He liked dogs. Hell, who didn't like dogs?

But, well, he was pretty sure he'd be doing it of mercy to put the old thing down. He'd appreciated if somebody did that for him when he got too old and sick to run in the woods. Ricky held his pistol at the ready, fully prepared to act as the angel of mercy, and then the thing stepped fully into the moonlight. And all thoughts of heaven fled. The dog's muzzle, frothed and shook. If you could call it a dog. Ricky wasn't at all sure about that anymore.

Its first set of jaws were locked in a vicious shaking snarl, so fierce that bits of itself seemed to be falling from its face as the second set of jaws yawned open from its mangy throat and made a wet, awful sound, but he supposed must have been some hideous approximation of a park. The very sound rooted him to the ground, frozen in horror and a kind of sick fascination. and Ricky's heart slowed as the dog's eyes, the usual two in the front of its head. And the other pair that slowly opened just above them, radiating a cold and shuddering glow, met his. Ricky Lee screamed. All thoughts of mercy or marksmanship lost to panic as he fired his gun blindly at the creature advancing upon him. He would have kept shooting until the cheap thing clicked empty, but... He never had the chance.

Big Jim heard the shots and his brother's screams and took off in that direction. His feet pounded in the dry leaves of early autumn on the ground as he called for his boy over and over, called for his brother too, desperate to find any sort of an answer. He slowed to catch his breath, willing himself not to surrender to the panic and fear that were racing through him like snake bite. And then he saw her standing in the moonlight. a specter from his childhood. The witchy woman. Just like Brunetta told there, Caleb, Big Jim's Ma had told him

the witch woman come if he'd been a bad boy. If he'd been messing around with that little girl from down the holler, if he'd been using him bad words the bigger boys taught him, and now here she stood. Orange is life. Large is death. This wasn't fair He tried to do right

He did his time Hell it wasn't even his time Everybody knew his daddy was the one It kept that still And did that thing But he wasn't going to let an old man die in prison This was supposed to be their second chance They bought this land fair and square

And they were going to have a place to own And now this At her right side stood little Caleb Big Jim's boy had his eyes squeezed shut the balls of him rolling wildly behind his eyelids like he was sleeping and having the worst dream you could ever think of in the crook of the woman's left arm she held a baby a wrinkled scrawny little thing with big old eyes that seemed to glow in the dark like fireflies it's seen him first and it made a tiny sound that alerted the woman she held up her hands hand and big Jim stop stopped

not of his own will he just couldn't move anymore his body his lungs his breath did not obey

he could not move he could not breathe he could not even fall he could do nothing but watch as the woman from his childhood nightmares knelt down kissed his son on the forehead

and send him on his way. Big Jim dimly realized that at least of the boy kept going that way. He'd get on the main road and maybe he could make it to the next few houses and get help. Maybe Jim's vision was blurring, getting dark around the edges.

As his lung struggled for breath he could not take and the last thing he saw of this world was the woman turning to fix her gaze directly on him and mouthing a single. single, soundless word, and then everything went black, and Big Jim Gibson was gone. Robert Gibson's aging hips and back hadn't let him get too far into the woods when the quiet fell across all of Crawl. The song of the evening woods died and a sudden coldness pressed through the early September evening,

and Robert knew it must be her. He'd heard the stories. He'd known coming here without facing justice might have been a risk, but if it meant a new home and a new start, well, then... Robert changed course, turning back toward the house. If nothing else, maybe he could get there in time to Roaring Brunetta. He'd heard the dead woman would spare wives and daughters sometimes, and he'd made it as far as the Hawthorne Tree,

just past the property line when the ground started. shake. The earth heaved and quaked. The sky seemed to bend. Robert turned his gaze on his own house and watched as the ground against the foundation began to crack and burst. The narrow pillars supporting

the front porch softened and fell to mulch. They'd been left to rot a hundred years ago. As the house began to sink into the shivering ground, Robert lurched toward Jim and Brunetta's house, half climbed, half crawled him. His old hips up the stairs and found his daughter-in-law watching from the high upstairs window, trembling, unable to look away from the destruction below.

Every little thing the Gibson family had built, from the storage shed out back to the lean-toe cover and the leftover wood from the building of the houses, crumbled as a time itself folded on top of them. Robert went to Burnetta, pulled her into his arms and held her tight as he felt the upstairs floor began to rock and swayed. their feet as this house too begin to die looking out the window he saw

her she stood fish belly white as if carved from bleach bone her skeletal hands raised as the hungry dark soil slowly digested the structures the family had dared to build here just retribution for the

blasphemy of their claim cursed Robert thought he thought he'd escape the shame that his daddy's daddy, his daddy, and now he had brought to the family name. He hadn't meant to kill that girl. He just meant to scare her. He caught her stealing bottles out of his stash by the steel and reached a grab her, and she fell. And his mind reeled in despair and guilt as he watched the earth below erupt with nightmarish creatures

that vaguely resembled dolls, wolves and rats and possums and all other manner of critters. that had lived and died on this land, clawing their way to the surface at her command, everyone was an affront to any God you could think of in its own unique wrongness. An extra set of gleaming eyes here. Claws on a bobcat made from the jaws of a red wolf there, a possum with three impossible mouths open and screaming with teeth like needles, beasts whose bodies were made up more of foul earth and dead vines and flesh, all rising at her behest. This hellish menagerie advanced on the last house in crawl

as it slowly began to sink into the earth. Brunetta was screaming now, but her voice sounded far away to Robert, his mind numb and growing dim with fear. He was vaguely aware that his daughter-in-law had torn away from him, made it downstairs and run into the yard where her screams were cut off abruptly amidst the rumbling earth

and the snapping and chittering of countless jaws. Cursed, Robert thought over and over again until the roof buckled and caved, and the darkness took everything else away. Hey there, family. Welcome back to, well, what used to be Craw, Tennessee, here on season two of Old Gods of Appalachian. young Caleb on his way

to where we cannot say we'll drift away from the remnants of this horrible happening see what else we can find this season come with me won't you I think you will family it has come that time again wherein I implore you to complete your social media ritual

to follow us on Facebook and Instagram as Old Gods of Appalachia tweet into the void at Old Gods Pod. In fact, just head on over to Old Gods of Appalachia.com where you will find all of our social media options, including a link to the Discord server and our merch store, among with a million other things,

at Old Gods of Appalachia.com. You may have noticed at the beginning of the show, if you are not listening on Patreon, that we had our very first advertisement. Ads are becoming a thing. We've got more bills to pay. More money, more listeners, more blessings. Dark, dark blessings, my family.

So if you want ad-free, episodes, join us on Patreon for $5 or more. And you can do that at patreon.com slash old gods of Appalachia. We're throwing your blood-stained, Iker's soaked, 30 pieces of silver into the hat. We'll get you access to digital exclusives like Build Mama, a coffin. A brand new storyline that'll be announced in the new year and tons of digital extras and some goodies in the mail. And some really exciting things on the higher up tiers if you're into role-playing games

and naming characters on the show. Go check it out. It's all over at Old Gods of Appalachia.com. Links to everything are right there. Old Gods of Appalachia is a production of deep nerd media. Today's story was written and performed by Steve Schell. Our intro music was by Land and Blood. And our outro music was by Those Poor Bastards.