Homogene

In the heart of the country, a traveling couple find themselves encountering a persistent shadow of the past – one that just might follow them home.

***Content Warning: This episode touches upon the history of American eugenics, and contains frank depictions of racism and sexual horror. Listener discretion is strongly advised.***

Transcript

[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro]

NARRATOR

Episode Forty-One: Homogene.

(Sounds of windmill turning)

NARRATOR

The sun shines down stark and pale on the long black highway. Deke stifles a yawn, tries to ignore the headache gathering behind his strained eyes. Glancing over at Cherie asleep in the passenger seat, he feels a momentary surge of resentment – he’s been driving for almost six hours and has almost as many ahead of him.

She stirs in her sleep, and he turns his eyes back to the road, a little ashamed of the feeling. He wonders if he is turning into his father, who always simmered with bitter anger at the world, and vented it on those closest to him, those most undeserving. The thought is one that terrifies him sometimes, during sleepless hours on long nights.

Another yawn cracks his jaw, and he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. The cabin of the 2016 Camry is now too warm and too tight, and he starts to look for a rest stop or a gas station exit, feeling intensely the need to stretch his legs.

Softly and groggily, Cherie asks where they are.

Somewhere in Kansas, Deke replies, unable to be more specific. The names of the towns they have passed have washed out of his mind in the endless flow of the sundrenched blacktop. She reaches over and rubs affectionately at his shoulder, and he smiles at her.

Yes, he reminds himself, it was a good week off. The thought of meeting her family, let alone spending the Fourth of July with them, had filled him with anticipatory dread, feeling sure that he would somehow make an ass of himself. A white boy from Nebraska, he’d felt sure he’d say something ignorant or insensitive in front of her Black Texan family, yet they had gone out of their way to show him generous hospitality – if also occasionally poking good-natured fun at him.

Still, he is ready for home, for sleeping in his own bed, for the quiet of their shared apartment. No matter how warm the Mason family home had been, it was never exactly quiet, and Deke longs for tranquility.

As if echoing his own thoughts, Cherie stretches and says that they can’t get home soon enough. She worries aloud about her old tortoiseshell cat, Nibbles, about whether her friend and pet sitter has been giving him enough food and attention. Deke says that he’s sure they have, to no avail.

When he turns his eyes back to the road, he sees with horror that he is barreling toward the back of a slowing semitrailer, and stomps a little too hard on the brakes, eliciting a wordless cry of surprise from Cherie.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, he growls, as the tires screech and the car rumbles to a tenuous stop beneath them.

Then they sit there in stunned silence, both feeling a little jolted. More vehicles gather behind them, while the line ahead of them stalls. Finally, Deke asks ill-temperedly what the hell the holdup could be.

Cherie doesn’t answer, staring ahead at the traffic outside with a schooled expression that tells him he has made her uncomfortable. Once again, he wonders if that ugly thing that lives in his father, whatever it might be, has also found a home in him, and a darkly acidic feeling coils in his guts. For a moment, he considers apologizing.

Instead, he turns on the blinker and pulls over into the right lane, eyeing the exit about a quarter of a mile ahead of the congestion. Cherie turns now and asks where he is going, and Deke says they need gas, though they have about a third of a tank left.

Crawling torturously to the turnoff, Deke feels again that pressure building behind his eyes. He is tired and sore from the car seat, ready to be done with this endless road and the hot sun magnified through the windshield. When, finally, he reaches the exit, he accelerates a little too rapidly away from the interstate, notices Cherie’s tightening grip on the armrest beside her and unconsciously begins to grind his molars.

They drive for a time in silence along a crumbling one-lane blacktop, until the worn asphalt gives way to pale grey earth. Though she says nothing, Deke can feel Cherie’s unspoken question hanging upon the air, demanding an answer he does not possess.

They pass an old farmstead, the buildings dilapidated and peeling white paint, yet still intact enough that Deke is unsure whether it is abandoned or not. A single ‘71 Chevy pickup, red and white where the finish has not surrendered to spreading rust, crouches unevenly on its rotting wheels in the narrow driveway, sheltered by a spreading dogwood.

Passing that, they see nothing but road, fields of wheat and corn occasionally broken by dark stands of hackberry, black walnut, and wild plum, and a line of low rolling hills in the north. Aside from the neatness of the planted rows of crops and trees, there is no clear sign of human presence in view. Deke begins to slow, ready at last to admit he has made a mistake, when a sign looms from the side of the road, promising gas. The image is disfigured by corrosion and over a half dozen bullet holes, but clear enough to make out definitively.

Seeing it, Deke steps down once more on the accelerator, and the silence within the car stretches.

After another mile, the little gas station, an absolute relic that looks like it has not changed since the seventies, rears from amidst a stand of wildly growing red cedars. The small building is so dilapidated, and the single antique gas pump so corroded, that for a moment Deke’s heart sinks at the thought that he has so foolishly wasted gas and irritated Cherie for nothing, but then he sees the silhouette of a lean man in the gas station doorway, lazily smoking a cigarette. With a feeling of wordless triumph, Deke pulls in next to the pump and kills the engine.

Cherie says brusquely that she needs to pee, and Deke tells her to go on ahead, stops just short of ribbingly asking if she needs help as he belatedly realizes the reason for her tense posture and muted voice. He forgets, sometimes, how people from small towns look at her and talk to her, like she is some rare and dangerous animal – and how sometimes this is more sordidly insidious in the North than the South, since the ugliness is hidden behind a false smile, like a sharp knife in a sleeve.

Now fully ashamed of his bullheadedness, he says contritely that he will go in with her before he fills up.

The attendant watches them sullenly as they approach the station building, acknowledging the request for the bathroom with only four grunted words – outside, to the left – and handing over the grungy key forcefully. Deke accompanies her until she is inside the ill-kept and cramped-looking single restroom, and then turns back to the Camry to fill up. As he does so, another vehicle pulls in from the road, a black ’69 Charger, its engine grumbling fitfully. It pulls on the other side of the pump and idles for a while, as Deke ruefully realizes that there is no way the old analog pump will take his credit card. Knowing it’s likely futile, he opens the gas cap and tries pumping, and is shocked to find that the pump responds, not requiring prepayment as every pump in the country has for so many years.

The Charger beside him goes silent then, and a man emerges, a lean man whose stubbled, sharp face is so like the station attendant’s that Deke wonders if they are brothers. The man says nothing, but leans against his car and folds his arms, idly watching Deke as he waits for the tank to fill.

Just as Deke is putting the nozzle back in place, the watcher finally speaks, saying: They really are everywhere, aren’t they?

Deke looks up at him, confused, then follows his gaze back to where Cherie is emerging from the station, having braved returning the key to the attendant alone.

Deke feels a surge of protective anger, and looks hard at the man, saying flatly that she is his girlfriend.

The man smiles slowly, spits again, and says that he totally gets it.

If you can’t beat ‘em, might as well breed ‘em, the man winks at him knowingly.

Deke feels a chill of rage running down the back of his spine. Surely, he thinks, he must have misheard, must simply be misunderstanding the situation. Then the man laughs, and tells him that he better save up some for his own kind too.

Deke’s vision momentarily swirls as the blood-rush of wild anger floods his brain, and he takes a ponderous step toward the man, fists balling at his sides. The man tenses, and Deke can feel his own muscles coiling in preparation for violence when Cherie calls for him: Let’s go, babe.

Deke’s hand slips into his right pocket, fingers the walnut-handled folding knife there. He looks hard at the stranger, almost unable to deny the bloodlust that wells within him, but then he turns and gets into the car, forcing himself not to look back at the other man. Cherie climbs in beside him, and puts a gentle hand on his forearm, which grips the steering wheel like it is the lip of a ledge he has fallen over.

It's okay, she murmurs, rubbing his arm soothingly as she repeats it. At last, his grip loosens slightly, his breathing and heartrate slowing, and he turns the key in the ignition and begins to pull slowly out of the little gas station lot.

Deke’s jaw clenches as he notices the Charger guy waving exaggeratedly after them, a mocking grin spread wide over his weasel-like features.

They have only gone about a hundred yards when an unpainted wooden sign looms along the roadside, sheltered among the encroaching cedars so that it was barely visible from the other direction. The words upon it are barely visible, and he slows down to try to make them out: Wellborn, Established 1914. A Pure Home for Fine Families. Next Left!

What the fuck? Deke grates through his teeth.

Cherie follows his gaze, but makes no comment on the sign, only asking that they get back to the interstate and on their way home again. Deke nods absently, his mind smoldering darkly. After only a few more seconds, he comments, with poorly feigned nonchalance, that he is feeling hungry, asking if Cherie is as well.

With a small intake of breath, she says she just wants to go home. Deke says it’ll only take a few minutes, and then they’ll be on their way. She starts to say something, but bites it back, turning away from him and staring silently out the window as he makes the leftward turn, passing over a small, terraced hill and down into the sycamore-shaded hamlet on the other side. Something subtle shifts in the silence of the cab – a sense of disbelief has fallen over both occupants as they roll slowly down the unpaved streets of Wellborn. It is not large – Deke guesses there could be no more than two hundred souls in the whole community – but not a single building in sight looks like it could have been built later than 1960, and many look more than a century old. About a third of the buildings are dilapidated to the point of uninhabitability, but the rest are surprisingly well-preserved, and he cannot help but feel like he is driving through some massive museum exhibit.

Past the tiny brick post office, a small diner of the old lunch car style rears from the street corner, large and tired-looking scarlet neon letters over the entrance marking it as Gene’s.

Perfect, Deke says, and pulls into the small gravel parking lot. Killing the engine, he looks over at Cherie, and asks her if she’s coming in.

She doesn’t answer at once, looking out at the strange little village with her hands folded primly in her lap. When she turns back to him at last, the expression on her face is not at all what he expects, but one of deep and resigned sorrow. She says that she wants no part of whatever he has come here for, and then she looks away again, and says nothing more.

Taking a gentler tone, he pleads with her to come in with him, saying that she’ll wish she’d eaten something before they get home. Cherie just shakes her head slightly without turning. Feeling suddenly small and foolish, Deke gets out and walks toward the diner. He resolves to get something for Cherie, no matter what she says, but it makes him feel no better.

Stepping through the door, he is again struck by the sense that he has slipped into a pristinely preserved survival of the past. The black and white checked tile floor, the red-seated booths and lunch counter stools, even the middle-aged waitress in an old-fashioned dress and apron, are totally unfamiliar to him except from movies and photographs, and the sense of anachronism is deepened by the Jerry Lee Lewis song playing loudly on the antiquated jukebox.

Yet, far more unsettling still, is the sudden lull in conversation as the eyes of the gathered diners turn as one toward the new arrival, and the appalling similarity he sees in all of those eyes. It is not only that they all convey a sense of profound unwelcome – all of them are the same shade of icy blue, set in similarly thin and sharp faces, some stubbly and some framed by long, blondish hair.

Trying to suppress his urge to turn and flee back to the vehicle, Deke walks slowly toward the counter, trying and largely failing to convince himself that there is some reasonable explanation for the uncanny similarity in the dozen or so faces turned toward him. The teenager behind the counter stares at him sullenly, and mutters something as Deke draws near, something that sounds very much like the word impure. But when Deke asks him to repeat it, the boy dons a wooden smile and asks what he’d like.

His eyes flick over the yellowish letterboard menu behind the server, not absorbing any of the meaning behind the changeable red letters. After a few uncomfortable moments, Deke abandons his pretext for entering, having lost his appetite entirely, and asks the boy: What is the deal with this town?

The teenager stares at him dully for a while, as if he does not understand the question – or as if the asker is unbelievably stupid, Deke suddenly thinks. Then he says slowly that it’s the same as every other town, just folks living as they see best fit to live.

A fine home, Deke says slowly, intentionally rearranging the quote, for pure families.

The teenager’s face splits with a wolfish grin, and he nods, saying softly, Exactly.

Deke takes a step back, then turns and walks back out to the Camry. Climbing back into the driver’s seat, he ignores Cherie’s quizzical look, turning the ignition over and turning back out on the main street and driving back the way they came.

Only once Wellborn has faded into the fields behind them, and the interstate lies within sight once more, does Deke turn to her and say, sheepishly, that he’s sorry. Uttering the words is like dragging gnarled old oak roots from the greedy earth, but he forces himself to apologize, to admit that she was right and he should never have dragged them there.

Cherie brushes his elbow in wordless, affectionate acknowledgement, and yet even so, a pall hangs between them, the shadow of his wrath and his pride. 

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Even after they have arrived home and settled into bed, Deke cannot stop thinking about the little town of Wellborn, about that diner with its jaunty old music and its many unfriendly eyes. Cherie lies soundly asleep beside him, seeming untroubled by the ugliness of the day, and this only bothers him more.

He has not told her about the eerie similitude he perceived in all the faces of Wellborn, and she has not indicated any sign of having noticed it.

After three hours of tossing and turning, he gently extracts himself from the covers, then moves into the apartment living room and opens his laptop on the coffee table. He types in the words wellborn kansas history and scrolls through three pages of results, disappointed with how little real information he finds. A Wikipedia search of the town yields absolutely nothing.

It is almost four in the morning when he finally stumbles across a dry, digitized book online, The Life and Work of Dr. Walter D. Wellborn. He at first only skims it, feeling certain it will be of no real use, but then his eyes settle on the phrase: settled in Kansas after the turn of the century.

He is still reading when Cherie rises late, a quarter after nine. She has to ask him three times what he’s looking at before he hears her. For a moment, he considers saying it’s nothing, not wanting to get into a discussion about it, but it feels a little too much like a lie, so reluctantly he admits that he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about the weird little town they passed through.

Leave it lie, babe, Cherie says gently.

Deke admits she’s probably right, and closes the laptop. Yet even as he moves into the kitchen to start a late breakfast for them both, he finds that the murky history of Wellborn continues to occupy his mind.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Despite himself, Deke returns to the digitized book several times over the course of the day, and by the next morning finds himself placing an overnight order for a cheap secondhand physical copy. He does not mention this to Cherie, not really knowing why, driven more by intuitive apprehension than any conscious thought.

That evening, as they sit on the couch, watching reruns of their favorite comedy series and trying to forget that they both must return to work tomorrow, Deke finds he cannot hold in the question that has been nagging at him since their return trip. He asks her if Wellborn doesn’t still bother her, if the town didn’t strike her as more than usually unpleasant.

She takes a moment before answering, and her face takes on a muted expression that Deke has not seen before and cannot read. Patiently, she says that of course it bothered her, but that she has seen a lot of unpleasantness, and has learned not to let it follow her home. There are things, she continues, that are beyond her ability to really contend with, and that the only power she can truly exercise over them is to continue to exist in spite of them, to deny them control over her choices.

Deke frowns, only partially understanding, and he is reminded how little he truly understands of her experiences, how many things still pass without his noticing. And he wonders if Wellborn is not truly exceptional at all, but just another face of a vast Hydrian horror.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

When he comes home from the warehouse, exhausted and grumpy with the July heat, he finds a little package awaiting him on his doorstep. He had all but forgotten the book he had ordered, in the dreary course of the day’s drudgery, but picking it up now, he cannot even wait to get into the air-conditioned apartment before unwrapping the old book. Tearing away the last of the bubble mailer, that pleasant old book smell hits his nostrils, and he walks through the doorway with the book open in his right hand. Cherie is napping on the living room couch, Nibbles curled up asleep on her stomach, and he moves to the armchair and begins reading.

Born in 1876 to a Massachusetts country doctor, Walter Wellborn proceeded to study biology and medicine at Harvard, meeting both Charles Davenport and the early geneticist William E. Castle during his time there. Like those two men, he became involved in the popular eugenics movement of the time, and by 1907 was deeply enmeshed with many of the leading minds of this dubious cause. Working for a time under Harry Laughlin at the Eugenics Record Office, a rift began to grow between Wellborn and his colleagues, apparently widened by his growing obsession with the merits of line breeding, and his rabid insistence that “good stock” should never be diluted to even the slightest degree. His views on this matter were apparently so extreme that even the virulently racist Laughlin found them utterly repellent. Eventually this disagreement became so bitter that Wellborn left his work on the East Coast and moved to Kansas, starting his own medical practice there and using the wealth inherited from his industrialist uncle to fund his own research, as well as sponsoring the infamous “Fitter Families” contests at the state fair in Topeka. In 1914, he married Annabelle Goodwine, a much younger woman and the daughter of a leading Topeka businessman and railroad investor. Thereafter he and his wife largely disappeared from the public eye, and the biography alludes to the doctor’s increasingly singular interest in pursuing his independent research. The village, never formally incorporated and at that time consisting of little more than a combined general and feed store, a small post office, and about a half dozen households, adopted the name of Wellborn only two months after the doctor’s marriage. According to the author, this was by popular choice, with the doctor being well-liked and increasingly influential in the community.

Deke is interrupted in his reading there by Cherie’s stirring from her long nap and asking him sleepily what they should do about dinner. He suggests their favorite Chinese restaurant, since between the heat and lingering exhaustion from their trip, neither of them feels much like cooking, and she is happy enough with the suggestion. As they make to leave, Deke hesitates, then takes the book with him.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

After a pleasant dinner and the return drive home, the two of them sit to watch the next episode of their comedy, but within the first twelve minutes Deke finds himself bored with the show and reading once more. Cherie pauses the streaming service and turns to him, asking him about the book, and he shrugs off the question, saying it’s just a biography that caught his interest. She only hesitates a moment before turning back to the show, and though Deke finds the noise distracting, he makes no complaint, feeling slightly guilty for not taking part in this shared ritual but unable to deny his dark curiosity.

At this point, the biographer becomes coy, dancing around the subject’s latter life. Walter apparently became so reclusive that he never again left the vicinity of his private practice, forcing his patients to come to him in an era where automobiles were still not universal, and no longer accompanying his wife during her increasingly rare family visits to Topeka. The couple had many children, thirteen who survived to reach adulthood and five that did not, and the biographer insists that Walter was a devoted parent, taking as keen an interest in his children’s development as in his research.

Forty minutes later, he is gazing at a blurry reproduction of the only known family photograph, showing seven daughters and five sons surrounding their thin father, clearly in the latter half of middle age, and their mother, who despite the two decades in age difference looks scarcely any younger than her husband as she cradles their youngest in her arms, a mere babe. Deke is fascinated and horrified by how similar they all look, and how they all look so like those faces he saw mere days ago in that dreadful little village.

He only realizes that the television set has gone black and silent when Cherie leans over to nuzzle at his neck, then to nibble gently at his ear. This is almost enough to drive the book and its contents from his mind, and he turns to kiss her. She takes his hand and stands, suggesting meaningfully that she’s ready for bed, and gently extricating his fingers from hers, he says that he’ll join her shortly. She moves away from him, glancing backward with an expression of mild annoyance that he does not notice, already staring again at the undated Wellborn family photograph.

When he finally does make it to bed, Cherie is fast asleep. The fan’s breath over his bare torso and legs feels unusually cold as he settles into bed beside her. As his thoughts slowly dissipate into the loose weave of dreaming, the stark monochrome image of the Wellborn faces lingers in his mind’s eye.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Cherie is uncommunicative the next day, speaking only briefly when necessary, and with little emotion inflected into her voice. Were he not so preoccupied with ruminations on Wellborn, both the town and its namesake, Deke would be troubled by this, but as it is, he hardly notices.

The remainder of The Life and Work of Dr. Walter D. Wellborn proves disappointing, the University of Kansas biographer either unwilling or unable to shed much light on the doctor’s twilight years. Apparently, his research continued until his health utterly failed, with his final decline and death occurring during the winter of 1963. The book closes with a maddeningly cryptic reference to the family’s dedication to continuing his research, and Deke is so frustrated by this unsatisfying conclusion that he hurls the book across the room, startling Nibbles. He is grateful that Cherie is not there to see this outburst, having tersely excused herself as going out to spend the evening with her friends.

As he sits there, still digesting the biography and its murky, half-formed implications, a feeling of intense unease settles over him. Deke cannot shake the intuition that he has missed something vitally important, something right under his nose, and after a few minutes he rises from his armchair and moves to pick up the book again, apologizing soothingly to Nibbles as he does so. The cat’s eyes gleam from his hiding place under the couch, and he shows no sign of emerging.

He is still poring through the book for any hint of information he missed when Cherie returns, laughing and clearly slightly tipsy. She takes the book from his hands and sits in his lap, saying he has spent enough time on the damned thing lately, and not enough with her.

This, he thinks suddenly, as he returns her kisses, this is what I have overlooked.

Afterward, as they lie in the tangled bedsheets and he struggles to join her in peaceful sleep, his mind returns once more to the book. And he remembers that phrase mentioned early in the biography, line breeding, and that it means controlled inbreeding in livestock, and he thinks too of Dr. Wellborn’s supposed equal devotion to his family and his research, and that awful sameness in the faces from the aged photograph and from Deke’s own memory.

Sleep does not come to meet him.

[Long pause]

NARRATOR

Taking another day off so soon after the July Fourth vacation puts Deke a little on edge, but not as much as lying to Cherie about going to visit his sister, whom he has not seen or heard from for so long.

As he drives away from Omaha Friday morning, it seems that Cherie’s farewell kiss still tingles on his lips, and he tells himself that he is the worst kind of idiot. The book which he has pored over so frequently, which has offered such vague and tantalizing threads of a larger story left unwritten, rests on the passenger seat beside him. And in the glove box rests his loaded Ruger P95, with two filled spare clips.

He can’t help but think of the Lovecraft stories he so loved as a surly and jaded teenager, can’t help but feel like one of the characters drawn inevitably onward by intellectual curiosity toward a doom they cannot fully comprehend. And he wonders what he will do when he reaches Wellborn, having formed no more concrete plan than to simply see it once more, and try to peer a little deeper beneath its anachronistic surface.

The July sunlight paints the land pale and stark, burning his left arm that rests on the open driver window. As long as the drive home had seemed, the drive back to Wellborn seems brief, eaten away perhaps by the audiobook he streams on the history of American eugenics. It offers no extra illumination, as he’d hoped, and by the time he is turning off of the interstate along those lonely, poorly maintained roads he passed down only a week prior, a dampening feeling of cold reality is flooding over him. He has no plan, no real idea of what he intends to do or how to accomplish it, and really, he knows very little about Wellborn itself beyond what he has guessed, perhaps even merely imagined, about its strange and insular history.

Then he sees the gas station, and the weasel-faced attendant standing in the lot, smoking a cigarette. Slowing unconsciously, Deke hesitates for a few seconds, then pulls up beside the pump. He waves to the attendant, a gesture which the other man does not return, instead only staring at him dully through a cloud of exhaled smoke. If there is any recognition there, the man gives no sign of it.

Deke reaches toward the glove box, angling his body to hide what he extracts from it. He clips the rudimentary holster onto his belt, having to shift awkwardly in his seat to do so without being obvious, then pulling his loose button up shirt to conceal it from the most casual inspection.

Getting out of the car, he walks toward the attendant, who has not moved or changed expression at all, aside from the almost mechanical motions of smoking. The cigarette has burnt down almost to the filter.

Forcing what he hopes is an easy smile, Deke offers a greeting, and then begins to explain that he passed through a while ago. The man has no response at all to this, either. Deke continues, saying that the little town of Wellborn stuck in his mind for some reason, and he found he just had to come back and visit again.

At last, the attendant does offer an expression, a sort of sly smile that sets Deke’s teeth on edge. The man throws down the stub of his cigarette on the parking lot dirt and stamps it out, then says that not many people come to visit Wellborn, once or twice.

Yeah, Deke nods, not knowing what else to say. A moment of heavy, uneasy silence passes between them, then Deke, trying again to adopt an easy and friendly demeanor, asks if the man has any travel information for sale, specifically anything related to local history.

The attendant shakes his head, says there’s nothing like that for sale anywhere in town, far as he knows.

Deke bemoans this, saying he and his girlfriend were just so fascinated by the town, and had so wanted to learn more about it. He even adds an embellishment that they were talking about moving to a place like this, somewhere with a slower pace: a clean, quiet place, good for families.

The man’s earlier smile returns, a little wider now.

A good place for a family, he repeats, nodding. But not just any family.

Deke, suddenly feeling far too hot, far too exposed, outside the confines of his Camry, tries to ignore this last comment and asks if the man knows anyone he might talk to about Wellborn, just to learn a little more about it. There is so little information online, Deke observes offhandedly.

The man chuckles, and then says that there might be someone. He asks Deke to wait for just a moment, and then runs inside the little shop. Deke begins to edge back toward his car uncomfortably, feeling that he has made a mistake, that it was foolish to ever come back here.

The door opens, heralding the man’s return. He holds a scrap of paper in one hand, and offers it to Deke as he approaches: on it is a handwritten address and a few simple directions.

These folks, the man says, should be able to help you.

Deke takes it, thanking the man. The man only nods and pulls out another cigarette. Turning back toward the car, Deke climbs in and starts the engine once more. Only then does he look down and study the notes in detail. The script is blocky and oversized, like a small child’s, but he can make it out plainly enough. Above the address are written two simple names, which nevertheless make his blood run cold: Walt and Annie.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

The house is simple enough to find, taking him only five minutes to reach, even negotiating streets he doesn’t know. It is a large and old house, clearly expanded several times over the years but having since fallen into mild neglect, densely shaded by oaks and hickories and silver maple. As he traverses the cracked walkway toward the front door, he can feel the cooler darkness under the trees, and a sense of moisture in the air, slightly clingy. The house exudes a smell of age, a kind of sweet must, not unpleasant.

He knocks at the white, chipped door, and waits for a long while. After receiving no answer for over half a minute, he knocks again, more insistently. Still no hint of life within. After a third knock goes unheeded, he turns with mingled disappointment and relief, and begins to walk back toward his car. Stepping out into the direct sunlight, despite its harsh heat, feels cleansing, and he is leaning toward relief when he is back behind the wheel and reaching to turn the ignition.

Then the dark shape looms in his rearview mirror, and he feels a heavy impact on the back of his skull. Popping lights swirl across his vision, and then he is falling, falling into infinite darkness.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

When he wakes, there is an awful, metallic taste in his mouth, and his tongue feels swollen. It takes him several moments to realize that he is no longer in his car, but in a poorly lit room, with only the single bare bulb above him nearly blinding him, and rendering the surrounding darkness only more impenetrable. He notices then, too, that he cannot move anything beyond his head, and that he is naked. As he tries to look around, he can feel a stickiness on the back of his head, and recognizes it as coagulating blood.

A ragged, reedy voice asks if he is awake, not unkindly. A face emerges from the gloom, a male face, very aged. At first, he is certain he is looking at Dr. Walter C. Wellborn, but realizes it is impossible, unless he is so concussed that he cannot perform simple math.

The old man calls softly for Annie, and there is the creaking of cautious footsteps on an old wooden staircase, before a similarly aged face materializes before the first.

This is my sister, the first face says. I’m Walt, Walt Junior.

Oh Christ, Deke thinks.

The faces stare at him a moment longer, before Walt gently chides that it would be polite to share his own name. Instead, Deke asks what they have done to him.

Annie smiles and steps forward to lay a reassuring hand on Deke’s shoulder. She is wearing a faded yellow summer dress, and her skin is very pale. She says that they will not harm him, but that they needed his help and could not be sure he would offer it to them willingly.

Deke struggles with his thick tongue and dry mouth to ask what they want from him.

Nothing more than you can give, Walt Junior steps forward, curling an affectionate arm around his sister’s waist. We have been involved in a great work all our lives, he continues, my family and I. The same work our dear father began years before.

Fuck, Deke breathes aloud, feeling a rising nausea in his stomach, his esophagus. Annie gasps at this language, but Walt simply continues.

We have taken his ideas as far as we could, but our children and our grandchildren are suffering for it. Our father was a great man, but his ideas were those of a different age. If we are to continue his work, we must acknowledge his imperfections, and realize that line breeding has its limits.

In short, Walt says, after a brief pause, we need fresh blood to invigorate the old. We need to implement a new outbreeding program, if our dear children are to surpass us.

No, Deke says, no.

An expression of sorrow passes over the faces of the elderly siblings, and Annie says that they are very sorry, but that they will need his help, willing or unwilling. They have done all of the necessary preliminary examinations, she says, and have determined that he is a perfect fit for their needs.

Besides, she adds, you shouldn’t waste good seed on bad soil. Best to give what he has to his own kind.

Hope you’ve saved some up juice, the old man chuckles, patting Deke’s naked thigh. Winking, he adds, I remember the eagerness of youth, but you’ll have plenty of work ahead of you.

Deke strains against the leather straps that hold him down. Walt and Annie recede into the darkness, and call for their children. Weaselly faces, pallid and thin and with those haunting Wellborn eyes, float in the murk all around him now, all of them female, some twice his age and some barely more than half. Their pink, watery mouths move in what must be words, but he has no understanding of them. They drift forward, and Deke begins to laugh, laughter that flows up out of him like vomit, without his willing it.

And then, he begins to scream.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Cherie calls Deke’s cell for the twenty-third time, and just as it has each time prior, her call goes directly to voicemail. She has called the police already, and they have told her they are doing what they can, that she must be patient and not do anything rash.

Fuck that, she thinks. She has lost too many people before, and sitting and doing nothing is not an option.

Ending the call, she dials that other number, which she has only used for the first time the night before. It had taken a lot of prying, which Cherie is not proud of, into Deke’s belongings before she finally found it, and her fervent prayers that it still work were unusually answered.

Harley answers after the very first ring, and asks if there is any news.

Nothing yet, Cherie answers.

There is a long pause, broken only by the sound of a long, slow exhalation on the other end.

Do you think we’ll have to go out there? Harley asks at last.

Cherie hesitates, and then says that she won’t be able to live with it if she doesn’t.

Yeah, Harley agrees heavily.

Hesitantly, Cherie asks if Harley has access to firearms.

Yeah, Harley says. We’ll be fine.

(Somber, sinister music)

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro]

NARRATOR

If you enjoyed today’s story, please rate, review, and share. If you’re feeling particularly generous, you can support the show on our Patreon page or at darkerpastures.buzzsprout.com, and unlock special subscriber-only content. Thank you for listening. We’ll meet again… in darker pastures.

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro - Continues]