[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro]
NARRATOR
The Plains are vast and unforgiving, scorched in the summer and frozen by winter, often going thirsty for weeks or even months on end, forever buffeted by stark winds. The Indigenous peoples lived mostly on the periphery of these lands, either settling in the fertile places near the waterways, or transiently visiting the inhospitable interior reaches during long journeys and hunting expeditions. The European settlers who displaced them showed no such wisdom, and tried to bring their vision of progress even to the harshest corners. Communities on the prairie are broken, shaped by hardship and isolation. Their scars run deep, and across generations. A culture of austere self-sufficiency and puritanical pride has stilled the tongues of sufferers, burying shameful secrets in the dark where they can fester. And that which festers too long gives birth to the vilest and most destructive abominations.
[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro - Continues]
NARRATOR
Episode Two: Black Hole Eyes.
(Sound of scissor grinder cicadas singing)
NARRATOR
It is the sort of summer day that falls lazily on the fields and pastures, gently warming rather than scorching, bringing the color to vivid life rather than bleaching the world. Little Emma sits at the edge of the yard, at the corner where it meets the road and the cornfield. Her family’s house sits on the edge of the sleepy little town, a liminal space between community and isolation.
Her sister, Isabelle, whom Emma insists on calling Izzie even though she hates that nickname, has gone inside to help their mother make lunch. Thirteen years old, Isabelle is proud and dolefully responsible, convinced she is almost an adult. It annoys Emma to no end. Unlike her sister, Emma has no interest in growing up—she has noticed how adults always seem tired and unhappy, heard how they incessantly complain about jobs, taxes, bills, and politics, how they never have enough time. It seems miserable to her.
So instead she plays in the sun-bleached grass with the detritus of the drooping catalpa, twigs and leaves and leathery brown bean pods. She pretends that some of them are people and that others are fantastical creatures, all of them caught up in a whirlwind romance of love, war, and sorrow.
Emma pauses as a shadow flits on the edge of her vision. She looks toward the road, pink gravel and pale tan dust. A man is crossing it from the direction of the fields, walking at a leisurely pace.
(Faint sounds of gravel crunching underfoot)
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She cannot see where he might have come from other than the rows of tall, drooping maize stalks.
(Unsettling music)
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There is something strange about the man. He is vague and shadowy despite the noonday sun, as though the light avoids him. He wears a shapeless, broad-brimmed hat, a worn jacket, trousers and linen shirt and leather shoes, all of antique fashion.
The man comes to the old chicken wire fence of the edge of the yard and peers over it at her. Emma cannot see his eyes no matter how she shifts; the shadow under the brim is too deep.
The man crooks a finger.
(In a hollow, watery voice)
Hey there, pretty girl, he says, in a voice like cold rain falling. Come play with me.
(Unsettling music)
[Brief Pause]
NARRATOR
Isabelle sits on the front steps, turning up the music as the voices from the house reach a crescendo. It has been this way for the past two days, ever since Emma disappeared.
Isabelle begins to cry again, tries to swallow her sobs. She knows it is her fault, that she should never have left her little sister alone outside. Now her family is destroyed, the love broken between her mother and father, between her and her parents.
She misses Emma’s gap-toothed grin, the silly voices she would make as she played. Isabelle would never have told her, but Emma was very talented at mimicking accents, a skill which Isabelle found remarkable in someone so young, so sheltered from the wider world.
They have gone searching seven times already, combing through the town and the fields and pastures around it with over twenty volunteers and police officers. Every time they go out, Isabelle has to tamp down that faint hope that flickers in her depths, and when they come home aching and spent, she feels cold and empty and wants to sleep without dreaming, without waking to the absence that fills the house like a physical presence now.
She hears her father asking how her mother could have left Emma alone and unsupervised. And then he asks, in a cold, cold voice, what kind of mother she is. Her mother makes no reply. Isabelle turns off her music, even more disturbed by the silence than by the loud argument which had preceded it. She is about to stand and creep inside when she catches in her peripheral vision movement beyond the fence.
It is Emma, walking down the unpaved road toward the house. Isabelle stands and stares in disbelief, not daring to let the rush of giddy relief take grip until she is certain she is not mistaken, not imagining the vision before her.
But it is Emma, without a doubt. She walks calmly and directly toward the house. Leaping down from the steps, Isabelle runs toward her, laughing aloud in surprised delight. But as she reaches the yard gate, her steps slow involuntarily.
There is something odd about Emma’s movement, her posture. It is not quite dazed, but there is an absence, a vacancy there, that sours Isabelle’s joy.
She calls to her little sister, asking if she is okay.
Emma looks up at her, stops in the roadway, and smiles.
Her eyes are too large, too dark. Isabelle feels very cold, despite the late summer day, feels like burying her whole body in blankets and never looking out again. Her legs twitch, her body aches to flee back into the safety of the house.
Isabelle suppresses her screaming instincts, undoes the gate latch, and goes out to wrap her sister in a warm embrace. Emma accepts this wordlessly, just as she accepts Isabelle’s hand, accepts being led toward the house.
Walking through the front door and into the living room, where their parents stand dumbfounded at the sight, Isabelle thinks that this should be a triumphant moment, that she should feel like she is glowing, as gold as the sun. But there is something else there, in that room with them, something that swallows the light.
(Unsettling music ends)
[Brief Pause]
NARRATOR
Matt cannot concentrate on his work. His grader blade keeps edging off the road, cutting into the ditch. He pulls off into an old, abandoned farm and sits, staring over the fields, trying to gather his fragmented mind.
He should be happy, he tells himself. His youngest daughter is back, apparently unharmed. But she will not speak, will not tell them where she has been, says not one word about what has happened to her in the meantime.
They have taken her to a child psychiatrist, a woman with short hair and an open, ageless face. Matt did not like her. She had told them afterward that she had learned very little, but that that was not unusual in these cases – that they took time, and that she suspected something serious had happened, something that required further processing.
Processing was the word she had used, and Matt disliked that too. It sounded like something from another reality, not his ordered, sensible one: something that a touchy-feely liberal would say, some New-Agey urbanite, all the people far away whom Matt can never understand.
But Matt didn’t argue, thought that unwise. He knows there is something wrong, and it is also something from outside his reality, something he does not have the means to grapple with, to understand or to remedy.
He takes a few deep breaths, decides he might as well take his lunch break now and kills the engine of the motor grader. Opening the small cooler beside his seat, he unwraps a lunchmeat sandwich, cracks open a fizzing can of cola. He eats and drinks mechanically, not savoring or really even tasting what was in his mouth.
A crow perches on the cooling hood of the grader, looks at him with small black eyes. Matt’s stomach begins to roil acerbically, and he only barely manages to open the door and lean out before spilling the fresh contents of his stomach. He watches it spatter among the weeds of the ditch.
The crow caws, flutters down to pick at the undigested refuse. Disgusted, Matt takes the aluminum can in his hand and hurls it at the bird, pale brown foam spewing as the can tumbles through the air. The crow nimbly avoids its arc, flutters up to perch on a powerline on the other side of the road. It gazes down at him, waiting patiently for him to leave it to its meal.
With a ragged, muttered curse, Matt closes his door, starts the engine, rolls down the road. For a time, his anger helps him to focus, and he manages to get three miles of road cut clean and even. But as the afternoon wears, his mind begins to wander again, and he leaves the roads worse than he finds them. When his shift ends, the thought of returning home makes his mind feel viscous and dark, like it is clogged with spent engine oil.
[Brief Pause]
NARRATOR
Cynthia turns from the sink, where she is washing the day’s dishes. She is alarmed by Isabelle’s wan, wavering call, and still more so by the fact that Isabelle called her momma, a term of address she has not used since she was eight years old.
When Cynthia asks her what is wrong, Isabelle bites her lip hesitantly. The mother reflects on what a beautiful girl her daughter is, even at this young age, and feels a stinging in her chest. The world is not kind to beautiful girls, perhaps no kinder than to those it deems less than lovely; the cruelty just sometimes takes a different form.
And in this moment, her older daughter looks so vulnerable, so uncertain. Cynthia resists the urge to cradle her, to wrap her in her arms and try to protect her forever – something every good parent longs to do, but knows is ultimately impossible.
When Isabelle finally finds her words, she can only utter that Emma said something very upsetting. Cynthia almost smiles, believing it is only a typical sibling disagreement, but that amusement fades instantly. Isabelle is trembling, far more troubled than such a fight would leave her.
Trying to sound calm and soothing, Cynthia asks what Emma said. Isabelle looks away, picks at the hem of her robin’s egg-blue summer dress. She repeats that Emma said she went to play with a man, a man with eyes like dancing shadows.
(Threatening music)
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Cynthia goes still, her spine rigid and her eyes unseeing. Her mind has fallen into a dim place, wrapped in a deeply buried memory that has resurfaced, called but unwelcome. She remembers a shadow looming tally over her, eyes that are nothing but swirling pools of ravening void.
Once more, Isabelle addresses her as momma, and Cynthia absently says they will speak more of it when Matt comes home.
She turns back toward the dishes, picks up a plate. As she scrubs it clean, her grip steadily and unconsciously tightening, it shatters in her hand, cutting her index finger badly. She looks down at the reddening suds, her mind stuck on a vision of boundless dark, on a sensation of falling endlessly.
(Threatening music ends)
[Brief Pause]
NARRATOR
Emma and Isabelle sit on the floor of the older girl’s bedroom, Emma’s dolls and stuffed animals spread around them, untouched. Isabelle had fetched them, a few at a time, hoping the right one or the right combination might spark Emma’s interest, bring back the light of vivid personality that Isabelle had not previously been aware she’d cherished so deeply, and that she now regrets having resented and felt annoyance toward.
But Emma only sits, staring blankly at her with those eyes that seem all pupil. An expression that is almost like a faint smile rests statically upon her features, but it is without life or warmth, and Isabelle is ashamed that she cannot look for more than a few seconds at her sister’s face.
Their parents have left the house, saying it was necessary but carefully avoiding any specifics. Isabelle rocks back and forth as she sits, restless, yearning every moment to hear the sound of their voices, and steps on the narrow concrete path through the yard, to hear the latch of the front door shifting.
She realizes that she is afraid of her sister now, that she cannot look into Emma’s eyes because it sends a chill down her back and through her limbs, sets her heart pounding. And, having become aware of this, she tries to overcome this fear, and forces herself to look into Emma’s face, into the pupils that are like holes in the universe.
Emma sits still, smiling blandly back, and Isabelle’s vision reels. There are no irises, the entire cornea is black, and the longer Isabelle looks, the more certain she grows that the borders of the overdilated pupils are convex, that there are actual holes in her little sister’s eyes.
(Threatening music)
NARRATOR
Once more, Isabelle asks her little sister what happened to her. Emma only smiles.
Isabelle asks again, asks what is wrong with her eyes. Emma’s smile widens.
Finally, drawing a ragged breath, Isabelle asks if she can touch Emma’s eyes. Emma offers no answer. Hesitantly, every infinitesimal movement of her muscles and tendons torturous, Isabelle leans forward, stretches forth the tip of her left forefinger. It disappears into the non-existent cornea, then the whole finger, then the whole hand.
A freezing pain, like ice made fire, shoots up Isabelle’s arm, and she tries to pull back, screaming. Emma grabs her elbow and holds Isabelle in place with an impossible strength.
Then she says…
(distorted childlike voice)
Now it’s my turn to play with you.
(Threatening music ends)
[Brief Pause]
NARRATOR
Matt is silent as they leave the psychiatrist’s office. He has been the silent throughout the consultation, and Cynthia believes she can feel anger radiating from him like infrared light.
She murmurs his name softly, but he does not answer. Her own temper flares momentarily, but she tamps it down, reminding herself that this is the father of her darling girls, the man she once could not wait to marry. But in this moment, he is a stranger to her. He is like a frustrated child, full of uncertainty and helpless, misdirected rage.
There are parts of him that are forever closed to her, and parts of herself she realizes now she can never share with him. And suddenly she feels exhausted, hollow.
They drive back home in silence. The afternoon sky is grey rather than blue, the harsh, hot sun blanching it and the landscape of all vibrancy and vitality.
When they arrive home, Emma is standing in the road, looking eastward toward the center of the little town. She does not respond as they approach, as they park, or even when they call to her. Matt emerges and stands uncertainly beside the car. Cynthia walks toward her youngest, kneels beside her.
She asks, gently, what Emma is looking at.
Emma says nothing, does not shift her gaze. Cynthia looks away from the girl’s eyes, which seem so black and so cold to her. It pains her to see that emptiness in her little girl, that hole that someone gouged in her once vivacious soul.
Cynthia turns and tries to follow the girl’s gaze. At the corner where the road turns sharply left stands the unmaintained playground of the shuttered grade school, the one Cynthia herself had attended two decades prior, before the school districts were consolidated. There are two small children, near Emma’s age, playing on the old metal monkey bars painted white and green.
She asks Emma if she wants to play with them, and Emma nods.
Then Cynthia asks if she’s maybe a little nervous, if she wants her mother to go with her to meet the other children.
Emma shakes her head, and with that, Cynthia smiles and encourages her to go and play.
She watches as Emma walks, slowly, almost somnambulantly, toward the playground. Cynthia moves a few paces into the yard and stands under the catalpa. Matt still stands beside the car, his expression flat in a way that tells her he is trying very hard not to let whatever is simmering inside of him come boiling out. In this, he seems to fail, and he says, in a low, clipped voice, that they shouldn’t leave her alone.
As patiently as she can manage, Cynthia nods, says that she knows that, and that she’s going to stay outside and keep an eye on Emma.
Matt offers a single, curt nod, and retreats into the house. Cynthia moves deeper into the shade of the tree and continues watching the children on the playground, trying to stay out of sight without actively hiding.
Emma’s back is toward her, so that Cynthia cannot see the little girl’s expression. The other children have descended from the monkey bars and stand as motionless as children of that age ever can, apparently listening as Emma speaks. The three of them leave the monkey bars and walk across the playground, farther from Cynthia’s vantage, toward the little collection of brightly painted old farm implement tires that has stood on the playground for over thirty years now. Cynthia remembers playing on and in those tires herself, remembers the way the unpainted insides would leave her hands blackened and smelling of aged, sunbeaten rubber.
The three children disappear into the mass of colorful tires. Cynthia feels a strange sensation in her stomach, like something heavy is settling down through her innards and pushing ever earthward.
A cool breeze shifts the broad leaves overhead. A ripe bean pod falls, thudding softly in the short green grass. Cynthia rubs at her eyebrows, feeling at once bone-weary and restless. She looks toward the western horizon, expecting subconsciously to see a bank of thunderheads gathering there, but the sky is clear and almost cloudless.
Still, she cannot shake the sense that something is building, something dark and powerful is bearing down on her, her family, and her town.
(Unsettling music)
NARRATOR
The children do not emerge from the tires. There is no sound from within: no speech, no cries, no laughter. Cynthia thinks that’s unnatural somehow, in children of that age, that they cannot help but be loud in play.
She stands another minute, five, ten. Still no sound, no movement, from that hideously garish pile that only children would ever find appealing. Craning over the fence, she abandons her attempt at unobtrusive observation, but she can see nothing. With slow steps, she leaves the yard, begins to walk down the road toward the playground.
And then, Emma climbs out of the tires, alone. She stands a moment, she and Cynthia gazing at each other, and for some reason, Cynthia feels a chill pin-prickle spider its way down from her scalp over her spine, feels her pores open in a sudden cold sweat.
Emma walks toward her, somehow quickly closing the gap despite her unhurried gait. Cynthia feels like everything is draining out of her, thought and color and feeling and awareness. She feels like she might collapse there on the road.
Emma stops before her and looks up at her.
Her words sounding hollow and distant, spoken by someone else in a dream, Cynthia asks if she’s ready to go home, and Emma nods.
Cynthia asks if the other children were nice.
Emma nods again and smiles. That awful centipede-leg sensation flows through Cynthia’s nerves again, and she feels breathless. Trying to force these unpleasant feelings away, telling herself that she’s overreacting to nothing at all, she takes her daughter’s hand and leads her back toward the house.
She cannot help but notice, though, that Emma’s hand is lifeless as a corpse’s within her grasp.
When they get inside, Matt is sitting at the dining room table, staring into blank space. He looks up when they draw close, stares at Emma, and asks where her sister is.
Emma points wordlessly toward the stairs that lead up to the three bedrooms in the house.
Cynthia asks if Isabelle is feeling alright, but Emma only looks at her. Cynthia begins to move toward the stairs, but Matt stops her with a shake of his head, and tells her to let Isabelle rest, that maybe she just needs some time alone after everything that has happened.
Cynthia frowns, considers arguing, but instead sits at the table. The exhaustion has finally caught up to her, and she finds she doesn’t want to move again, can’t even bring herself to think about making dinner.
She asks Emma and Matt what they’d say to ordering pizza for supper. Matt only shrugs and Emma remains silent.
Pizza it is, Cynthia decides glumly, feeling very alone surrounded by her family in her home.
[Brief Pause]
NARRATOR
Sitting alone at the breakfast table, Matt rubs his temples. His head is pounding, and his sinus feels like it’s about to burst with internal pressure. He still wears the white undershirt and blue striped boxers he slept in the night before.
It’s Saturday, and that’s the sole thing for which he is grateful. He hasn’t slept well for days, since Emma first went missing, and it’s starting to catch up with him.
He slowly opens his eyes and surveys the dining room dimly. Emma’s bowl of cereal sits on the other side of the table, untouched. Emma didn’t take a single bite of the pizza Cynthia picked up the prior evening, either, he reflects.
Reaching across the table, he drags the bowl toward him carefully, chews a few soggy mouthfuls unenthusiastically. The cold cereal seems even more insipid than usual, and he gives up in despair after the fourth spoonful.
He wonders once more if he should have gone with Cynthia and Emma, imagines listening again to that damned woman talk about trauma and processing and active listening and knows it is better he did not go.
Besides, he has decided he will never leave one of his daughters alone, not until they are grown, maybe not even then.
But there has been no sign of life from Isabelle’s room for almost twelve hours. He decides it is time to check on her, and with a groan, he rises, stiffly works his way up the stairs.
Isabelle does not answer when he knocks at the bedroom door, nor when he calls to her. He presses an ear to the smooth finished wood, hears no sound at all from within.
Gripping the doorknob, he turns it, opens the door slowly so that he won’t surprise her in the middle of putting on makeup, or trying on new clothes, or whatever it is that girls that age do – Matt doesn’t really know.
Then he stares at the bed, a strangled sound burbling and dying in his throat. Starbursts pop in his vision, and his body feels too light, unreal, ready to dissipate at the slightest breath of air.
(Doomful music)
[Long Pause]
NARRATOR
Cynthia sits patiently outside the psychiatrist’s office, her right leg jumping in a nervous habit that she had successfully suppressed since her mid-teens, but which has now fully returned.
She looks once more at the clock on the wall. It has been over forty minutes, and she does not know if that is long or not.
Reaching into her purse, she pulls out her phone, stares blankly at the screen. She cannot remember why she got it out, if she even had a reason.
She thinks that her mind is fraying at the edges, that ever since Emma disappeared, both her inner and outer life have been disintegrating.
After a moment, she pulls up the internet tab that she has viewed a dozen times already, scrolls through the advice. There is so much to remember, she thinks, so many forms the scars on a child’s psyche may take. Poring once more over the lines of text about parents blaming themselves, she thinks reflexively that it is her fault, that she must be the worst mother in the world.
The faint click of the office door opening cuts through her thoughts and startles her back into the present moment. Cynthia looks up to see Emma emerging from the office, the psychiatrist behind her. They move strangely, languidly and yet somehow quickly, seeming to slice through space and time.
Emma’s eyes, Cynthia thinks, look so very wrong. And when she looks into the psychiatrist’s face, she sees those same eyes drawing her mind in hungrily.
Emma grins and says that they want to play with her.
(Doomful music)
[Long Pause]
NARRATOR
Matt does not know how long he has sat there, slumped on the threshold of Isabelle’s bedroom. He has not been able to muster himself enough to approach the bed, to cradle what remains of his eldest daughter. He cannot do that, because going closer, touching her, seeing her fully, would make it all real. And if this is real, his everything is undone.
There is the low roar of an engine outside, the sounds of a vehicle pulling into the driveway. He manages to regain his feet, makes it to the hallway window on unsteady legs. There is no sign of a vehicle when he looks out though, but he sees Emma walking toward the house, disappearing soon from his line of sight.
He wonders where Cynthia has parked. He wonders how he will tell her what he has found, how he can even ask Emma what happened.
Without knowing exactly why, he moves into the bedroom he shares with his wife, goes into the closet and digs the old 20-gauge pump shotgun—the one Cynthia has always felt uncomfortable around—from its hiding place, and loads four shells.
Then he descends the stairs, steadying himself with one hand on the wall, the shotgun in the other.
When he reaches the bottom, he feels unsure of his legs, and pulls out a chair from the dining room table, sits facing the doorway. He props the shotgun against the table, out of clear line of sight from the entrance. Then he waits, and finally the door opens and Emma walks in. Her motion seems strange to him, dreamlike in some way he cannot quite articulate.
Matt asks her where her mother is.
Emma stands there, saying nothing.
(Doomful music)
NARRATOR
He asks again, more loudly, where Cynthia is.
Emma only smiles.
He screams the question, swearing, and Emma finally says, very softly, that she’s resting, and that she won’t be home today.
She walks slowly into the dining room. It is the first time since she returned from her disappearance that Matt has looked her fully in the eyes, and his gut roils at the sight. He feels like he is looking down, down, down, into an infinite abyss.
He whispers her name, and she stands there, wordless.
Matt now repeats Emma’s statement that Cynthia is resting, without intonation. Then he asks where Isabelle is. Emma says that she is resting, too.
Matt reaches for the shotgun, brings it out into plain sight.
He asks her what she did to Isabelle. His face has gone pale, mingled tears and spittle flying from his lips as he speaks.
Emma says she played with Isabelle, she played with Mommy, and now she wants to play with him, too.
Black flecks dance across his vision, and Matt feels like his skull is about to split, feels he will lose consciousness. He pulls up the shotgun, rests the muzzle against Emma’s forehead.
Breathlessly, he asks who she is, repulsed by how frail his voice sounds in his own ears. He asks her what she’s done to his daughters.
Emma grins. Matt pulls the trigger, screams as the little body flies backwards. He cannot bear to look at what he has just done. He pumps the shotgun, the ejected shell plopping softly on the carpet, turns the barrel so he can put into his mouth.
He pulls the trigger once more.
In the silence that follows the thunder, there is a sliding and a creaking sound as the dead weight shifts in the worn wooden chair.
Emma, grinning wider still, rises from the floor.
(Doomful music ends)
[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.
[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro - Continues]