Strangers

Two strangers approach a small town we have visited once before, and something follows close behind them.

***Content warning: This episode touches upon themes of misogyny, bigotry, unwanted sexual contact and the threat of sexual violence. Listener discretion is strongly advised.***

Transcript

(Soft, melancholic piano music)

NARRATOR

Episode Twenty-Four: Strangers.

(Sounds of wintry wind)

NARRATOR

Ted takes his foot off the gas, begins to bring the red Kenworth W900 to a slow stop. The two figures standing at the roadside, blanched by the merciless headlights of the truck, stare impassively up at him. It has long been illegal to hitchhike here, but with the frigid wind and the looming threat of copious snowfall, there are few drivers upon it tonight.

Ted pulls over to the side of the road and waits. When the two youngish women – or at least, Ted thinks they’re women – climb into his cab, he offers them a broad smile and remarks what an awful night it is to be out.

One of the hitchhikers climbs into the back, where Ted occasionally sleeps poorly, and the other takes the passenger seat. The latter gives Ted a nod of acknowledgement, but makes no other reply to his comment and offers none themself.

Shifting behind the wheel, Ted says they’re lucky he came by, that they would probably not have gotten any ride at all tonight, otherwise.

Once more, a silent, curt nod.

Scratching at his stubble, Ted asks where they are going, and the one in front, apparently the more communicative of the two, says tersely that they will go wherever the Spirit moves them.

Ted laughs a little at that, until he realizes that he alone is laughing or even smiling. Coughing awkwardly, he asks if they are good Christian girls then.

They do not answer.

Ted shifts the truck back onto the road, and drives on.

For a few more minutes, Ted tries to make further small talk, but his passengers continue to reply as little as possible, often not at all.

Ted begins to grind his teeth in mingled discomfort and frustration.

How’s that for gratitude, he thinks. Then he glances sidelong at the one beside him, trying to study the face, but the features are blurred by shadow. He decides that maybe their English just isn’t so good, and that makes him feel a little better.

It is only about ten miles outside the humble, but prosperous enough, town of Umber that he finally summons up the question that has been rattling around inside his skull for miles. He asks what two good Christian girls would be doing out on a night like this, catching rides from strangers.

Once again, neither of them offers a single word.

Checking in his mirrors to make sure they are still alone on the road, he slows and pulls off onto a narrow and little-used side road he knows, unpaved and swept with wispy fingers of dry snowfall.

Putting the truck into park, Ted says that he knew exactly what kind of girls they were the moment he saw them, then leans across the cab and runs a pudgy hand roughly over the passenger’s thigh. Then he freezes, his eyes going wide, seemingly not liking what he feels beneath the worn and nondescript jeans.

Sliding hurriedly back behind the steering wheel, Ted says stiffly that it’s time for them to get out, and adds that there’s no room in his truck for freaks.

The talkative one says that they have come far enough anyway, and pops open the door.

Ted tries not to look at them as they exit, but once, out of his peripheral vision, he catches sight of something that alarms him on a primal, pre-conscious level. When he looks at them directly, though, what he saw is not there at all, and they are only the two slight, androgynous, ethnically ambiguous strangers he picked up on the roadside again.

The one who has not yet spoken offers a solemn thanks, and then the door slams shut and they are walking through the freezing, flurry-starred wind toward town.

It’s only as he’s pulling back onto the highway that Ted finally processes that fleeting sideward glance enough to realize what he thought he saw that so disturbed him.

It seemed for an instant like the quiet one had far, far too many eyes.


(Foreboding, atonal piano music)

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Chief Deputy Kaspar of the county sheriff’s department sits just off the main highway into town, bored by a fruitless night of monitoring the road for speeders or drunk drivers. He is praying silently for a call – a crash, a drunk and disorderly, even the unknown volatility of a domestic dispute – anything to get him moving and take his mind off the mindlessness of waiting and give him an excuse to run the heater at full blast.

He is about to turn the engine over and move on to other roads, when he sees the strangers walking along the shoulder of the road, insufficiently dressed against the bitter cold, and a brief smile plays upon his lips. Almost unconsciously, he lightly, tenderly strokes the holster upon his hip with his left forefinger – a different kind of silent prayer, unique to him and his brethren.

He turns on the lights atop his pickup and drives toward them. They stop and watch silently as he draws near, as he stops and rolls down his window.

With a lopsided and wolfish grin, he asks if it’s not a little too cold out for a walk.

The strangers offer no response.

Deputy Kaspar turns off the pulsing strobe overhead and studies them more thoroughly in the uncertain backwash of his headlights. His grin falters – there is something about the two which deeply unsettle him, though he cannot clearly formulate an understanding of exactly what it is.

Loudly, he asks if they are men or girls.

They do not answer.

Men, he says again, more forcefully and with a hint of sarcasm, or women.

We are light beneath the clay, one answers.

Kaspar scratches at his moustache irritably, says that isn’t much of an answer. When they offer up nothing further, he asks sharply if they are LGBTQ, spacing out the letters mockingly.

The strangers only stare back at him.

Opening his door with practiced and deliberate menace, he steps out and saunters toward them, hands pointedly on his hips. The freezing wind bites right through his uniform and his jacket, but he stoically refuses to betray his discomfort.

I am the wolf of God, he tells himself. He’s not a believer, not really, but the phrase makes him feel powerful, like someone worthy of both fear and admiration.

Yet, when he stands before them, he feels inconsequential. He feels like their eyes have stripped him naked and exposed every ugly, secret thing about him, body and soul. It is a feeling he is no longer used to, has all but forgotten in the years since he was small, and his father inflicted it often him. Now it comes rushing back, making his stomach flutter sickly and his heart skip. And the fear turns almost at once into vengeful rage.

He asks, again, if they are men or women, then adds threateningly that they had best not make him find out for himself.

We are neither, the one who answered him last answers again.

Kaspar snorts dismissively, asks which one they were born as, then.

We were made perfect, the other says at last, voice strange and faraway.

The deputy narrows his eyes suspiciously, then asks if they have taken anything tonight, any drugs or alcohol. As one, they shake their heads, only briefly, only so long as to offer a clear response.

Grunting his disbelief, Kaspar tells them to get into the back of his truck.

Without a word, they comply. Mildly surprised by this cooperative gesture, Kaspar shuts the door behind them, then gets back in behind the wheel and turns the engine, grateful for the heater’s warmth that that awful, razoring wind.

After checking in with the dispatcher, the deputy says grimly to his passengers that they have until they reach town limits to tell him the truth, about who they are, what they’re up to, and what they’re on.

The more garrulous one insists flatly that they have already told him.

Pulling out onto the road, Kaspar growls that their time is running out.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

The pickup slows as the lights of Umber blossom ahead out of the swirling snow and darkness.

Last chance, the deputy says.

Silence reigns in the backseat.

Rage flashes across the deputy’s face, but only for a moment – then, his face becomes a frozen mask again.

Reaching the edge of Umber, he pulls into the empty, graveled parking lot of the bean processing plant. He glances across the window of the plant office, double-checking that there is no light within. Then he turns back toward the passenger and says that they are all out of chances, and that now they have come to an ugly choice.

Before he can elaborate, though, there is chatter on the radio, something about an accident with a red semi-truck farther down the highway.

Kaspar swears loudly, hesitates only a second before responding. Then he turns toward the strangers and says that it’s their lucky night, they have gotten one final chance after all. He lets them out, and before driving away, tells them to stay out of trouble, warns that even the slightest hint of them getting up to anything strange while they’re in his town will lead to the direst of consequences.

Then he is gone, lights flashing and siren wailing as he drives toward whatever accident has befallen the unfortunate truck driver.

The two out-of-towners watch him go indifferently. The snowfall grows heavier and wetter, dense white flakes that fall like so much ash from a burning sky.

[Long pause]

NARRATOR

As they pass through the streets, the newcomers interlock hands, glancing neither left nor right, speaking not a word. It is as though they are driven by a single will, mere hands of the same mind.

A man stumbles out of a tiny, dimly lit bar, fumbles in his coat pocket for his car keys before he notices them passing. Frowning through the snow and his beery haze, he shouts at them, slurring as he call them an ugly name, then telling them if they want something to warm them up, he has it for them.

They pay him no mind, continue on their way.

The man begins to run after them, slips on the slick snow and ice of the sidewalk. By the time he regains his feet, bruised and sore beneath the stupor, they are out of sight.

Grumbling, he turns back toward his car and struggles into the dark, cold, empty cab.

After this brief encounter, the strangers encounter no one along their path. The intensifying snowfall mutes the sounds of their passage and obscures their surroundings in a sea of pale static, backlit in orange by the scant streetlights.

Then, not too far distant, a church bell tolls: once, twice, thrice.

After the final toll, the strangers stop and stand, unshivering in the chill night, as though waiting for something. Yet for a long while, there is only the wind and the snow and the orange streetlights.

Then, there are stirrings in the town.

Some come alone, others with partners and family. Some walk, well-bundled against the weather, while others drive with varying degrees of competence upon the increasingly treacherous streets. The oldest are in their nineties, and the youngest is a little girl of four.

All of them seem to carry some sort of weapon, be it firearm, knife, crowbar, or hammer. One man even has a pitchfork propped in the passenger seat of his rusting ’99 Chevy Silverado, its pronged head poking crazily out the window like that of an air-starved drunkard.

The strangers watch them expressionlessly, marking that all seem to be moving toward a common destination.

After the sudden, strange tide of humanity ebbs, the outsiders begin to move again, tracing their collective path through the quickly obliterating snow. Though they do not move with great haste, they catch up to the hindmost of the walkers, a family of four, with the tiny four-year-old.

The little girl, holding her big leather-sheathed Buck knife as though it were a scepter, looks up at them and says, uncertainly and yet not without malice, that she doesn’t think they should be here.

So young, the quiet stranger breathes, after a moment of silence.

The other one looks toward the mother and father, both armed with hunting rifles, and tells them coldly that, for the sake of their children, they shoulder reconsider their path tonight, that the way ahead is fraught with unseen peril.

The father begins an angry retort, but his wife lays a hand on his arm and, wide-eyed, whispers into his ear. His words dying on the frigid wind, the man stares at them both in mounting discomfort.

After a few more moments, the family turns and moves back the way they have come. The newcomers do not even pare a moment to watch them depart, but continue resolutely upon their way.

The church is awash in golden light, which, like the singing by those gathered within, spills through the windows and the open doors into the night, reflects off the deepening snow. At a casual glance, it is a beautiful and welcoming sight. Yet the music is strange and harsh, the words not those of comfort and joy, but of emergent cruelty and bubbling bloodshed.

The singing draws to a close, and then the voice, loud and grating and lacking all warmth, rises within.

The eyes of all those who have passed through the church’s door were blind to it, but the strangers plainly see the fat, pale, well-fed thing that crouches upon the church rooftop, and its many ripening offspring surrounding it like maggots on a corpse.

They spare these horrors but the briefest glance before they, too, pass through the church’s open doors, which they draw firmly shut behind them.

The congregants do not at first notice the newcomers, so enrapt are they by the man at the pulpit – again they cannot see plainly, and whom the strangers alone perceive as no longer a man at all, but a vile thing mockingly puppeteering the wreckage of one.

Then the preacher pauses mid-utterance, eyes flashing fiery gold as they alight upon the strangers.

Pointing a pale finger over the heads of his flock, the fallen pastor roars balefully that these are the ones of whom he speaks, the cancerous blasphemers against divinely ordained natural order of man and woman, of master and servant, of dominion and childbearing.

Eyes flashing brighter still, the thing in the guise of a minister smiles sharply and says that perhaps these two might still be saved through an awakening baptism of pain and terror. He says that they need only show the newcomers the proper use of their bodies, the form and functions God intended.

As he speaks, a few of the younger men in the crowd begin to circle the newcomers, blocking their retreat through the vestibule. And yet the strangers show no sign of flight, or even of fear.

Cast your stones, the more friendly one says, if you are so certain of your righteousness.

The crowd falters only an instant, but that is enough for the two outsiders to slip closer to the dais at the front. Now the preacher frowns, scrutinizing them as though only now truly seeing them.

Who are you? he asks.

With the slightest of smiles, the quiet one replies, we are the Wolves of God.

The false preacher’s face pales further, they eyes becoming a colorless grey.

Stop them, he hisses to his flock.

The throngs begin to close around the strangers.

Love the stranger as you own, says the talkative one loudly, for you were once strangers in a strange land.

Still, the mob presses closer. Their false prophet’s eyes have regained some of their hellish light, a pale yellow glow.

Then the talkative one looms tall, far taller than anyone present. A bright light seems to radiate from them, so that the multitude recedes and shields their eyes. Only the thing posing as the man it has consumed does not look away, its eyes outshone by the one who now approaches it.

It snarls and says that they belong to it, that all the world will belong to it and its kindred. The bright stranger’s only answer is to lay their hands upon the pastor’s body, and murmur, For the sake of your better half, and for who you once were.

The light becomes blinding, like the heart of a sun, and the air is filled with an unearthly shrieking, and the sharp, unpleasant smells of burnt sulfur and hot copper.

After the light dims once more, the Pastor Marvin lies upon the floor, looking both more himself and far feebler than a few moments before.

Thank you, he breathes, looking up at the stranger. Then he exhales protractedly, and is still, eyes staring glassily skyward.

The is a collective wrathful howling from the rooftop, and the sounds of many soft, inhuman limbs shifting above, skittering down the walls, and at the same time, many of the men in the church begin to shout and raise their weapons, as do some of the women and children.

The bright one unfurls their many wings, and their draconic eyes shine brighter than any star. The other likewise unmasks themself, and swell like the darkest thundercloud, flashing with many eyes rather than coursing lightning.

They speak as one, their voices deeper than the oceans, more limitless than the heavens.

We came to you as the least among you, and we asked nothing. Yet you met us with disdain and cruelty. Your hearts are given to wickedness, and to false idols.

We are God’s chosen! a man roars, a farmer holding aloft a pump shotgun.

The eyes looking down upon the multitude burn still brighter, and none can bear to look upon them. Many winds begin to swirl within the church, both hold and cold, and the angry howling from without turns to shrieks of panic.

The bright one and the dark one swirl and swell until they fill the room, and the rising screams of the congregants are drowned out by the cataclysmic rending of wood and steel and concrete, by the ripping of the earth beneath.


(Bleak music)

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

It’s almost the end of Deputy Kaspar’s shift when he gets the urgent call on his dispatch radio. For a moment, he’s stunned almost to paralysis, and has to ask dispatch to confirm what he’s heard.

The snow has grown deep enough to make the highway almost impassable, especially on the open stretches between bare fields, where the drifts are blowing higher and wider. It takes him almost forty minutes to make the fifteen-mile drive back toward the Umber town limits, and he knows he wouldn’t have made it at all in a smaller vehicle.

When he reaches the church lot, he has to double-check his surroundings, to make sure he's in the right place. Sure enough, there is the empty house across the street, and the sheriff's truck parked just a few yards away.

But the church is wholly gone, blasted to nothing but splinters and fragments. And after he gets out, and picks carefully through the rubble with the sheriff, it is clear that the people inside fared no better.

The sheriff, clearly shaken, still has enough presence of mind to remark that it was awfully late for a church gathering.

It was the Christmas Eve service, Casper replies numbly. They'd had to cancel it on the actual holiday, due to the blizzard that had blown through.

The sheriff gives him a sidelong look, says he didn't realize Casper was a member.

Sometimes, Casper says.

As the emergency responders arrive, as they continue to comb through the devastation for any sign of life, or at least of positive identification, Casper chances to glance back across the street toward the abandoned house.

He freezes. Standing at the broken second story window are the two strangers. Through the dark and the snow, he shouldn't be able to pick them out at all, let alone so clearly. But it seems as though the air around them is suffused with a faint glow.

The one who had spoken raises their right hand, raises their right hand in a strange, unfamiliar gesture, and yet Casper thinks he takes the meaning: that they will be watching.

Then he's staring at an empty, dark window of an empty, dark house. From several yards away, the sheriff asks if he's all right.

Casper lies and says he is, and knows that the sheriff sees through it. Nevertheless, the man doesn't press him on it, only shares his musings on a possible cause for the disaster.

Maybe it was some kind of gas leak, or a rare winter tornado, he says uncertainly.

No gas lines, Casper replies hollowly.

Definitely a tornado then, even a bomb cyclone. That, the sheriff swallows thickly, or maybe a terror attack.

Casper swallows his response that no one would bother bombing a church in rural Nebraska, instead looks once more toward the dark dead window in the distance, toward the dark dead window in the distance, and only breathes, Yeah, maybe.

Despite his thick, fur-lined coat, the deputy shivers uncontrollably, and doesn't stop for many hours, even after he has gone home and climbed into his warm bed.

(Soft, melancholic piano music)

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro]

NARRATOR

Story, narration, and arrangement by Lars Mollevand. If you enjoyed today’s story, please rate, review, and share. Thank you for listening. We’ll meet again… in darker pastures. And please, have a safe and happy holiday season!

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro - Continues]