[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro]

NARRATOR

Humans are social creatures. That is both our greatest asset, and the source of many of our shortcomings. The most important drive for any social being is to fit in, to conform, to belong, because to fail to do so risks well-being, even survival. This need to be woven into the communal fabric can lead to cooperation, to sharing, to mutual achievement and improvement, but it can also lead to all manner of socialized cruelty, oppression, and violence. It is that very need to be a part of something, to find safety in numbers, which every despot, tyrant, and mass murderer of both past and present has fed upon, and warped into the drive to punish anyone who threatens the sense of security that comes with belonging. It is from this need which the vaguer and less readily recognizable tyranny of the majority derives. And the corrupted form of this instinct exists in circles of every size, from a family or friend group, to globe-spanning empires and international organizations.

It haunts communities both within and beyond these darker pastures.

[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro - Continues]

NARRATOR

Episode Five: Festive.

(Sounds of crows cawing)

NARRATOR

The sunlight tumbles through the leaves of the great elm tree, dances with the shadows cast thereby upon the little lawn. Sam sits upon the open porch, watching. A glass of iced tea sweats in her hand, all but forgotten.

A little girl rides down the street on a red bicycle, with sparkling tassels streaming from the handlebars.

Sam thinks of New York and Los Angeles, Denver and Austin; she thinks of Malmo and London and Beijing. She had never known them, not truly, never been more than a tourist, but she had loved the feeling of discovery when she entered each new city, at once familiar and thoroughly foreign. But the longer she stayed in one place, the more that feeling of unease, of yearning to be elsewhere, would grow within her like an itch on the inside of her skin.

This is the first time she hasn’t felt that sensation, not in the slightest.

She wonders if this feeling of ease, of peace, will last. It was something she had never expected to find here, of all places: in Hansard, Iowa, a tiny community that, even now, she can’t help but think of as a hick backwater. The town in which she was born and raised was much the same, and when she was young, she never thought so poorly of these little rural towns. Then came the stormy teenage years, the self-discovery, the bullying and ostracization. The anonymity of the city, the presence of so many people, diverse and as desperate for acceptance and connection as she was, had been her only escape from the feeling of constant judgment, of stares that feel only a hair’s breadth from curses, fists, maybe worse.

But here, in this town where her dearly departed Aunt Coral spent nearly the entirety of her adult years, no one knows her secret or her past. On the rare occasion she has had to tell anyone that she is Coral’s niece, they say only in mild surprise that they never knew she had a niece too. Once, when Sam had also given her name to the older couple who lives across the street, the man had frowned slightly, first in confusion and then in suspicion, but he thankfully hadn’t pressed further.

It's only a matter of time, she tells herself. Someday, they will learn, and that hated familiar feeling will creep back into her life.

But as she takes another sip of tea and looks around the sleepy, sun-drenched neighborhood, that day feels faraway and unimportant.

[Brief pause]

NARRATOR

Her commute home from work takes almost forty minutes, and she is tired when she pulls into the drive and shuffles toward the house. She likes her job at the little computer store in the larger town twenty miles east of Hansard, even if she is overqualified and the work is sometimes a bit dull, likes the two brothers that co-own the business and have always treated her well. One of them, she’s pretty sure, is gay, and that they both share the discomfort of an involuntary secret that could destroy them in this corner of the world, makes her favor him a little more.

But the commute—that she hates. Listening to podcasts in the car softens the edge somewhat, but losing almost an hour and a half every day irks her to no end.

The weather has turned rather suddenly toward autumn, the day overcast and with a subtle chill. So all Sam wants to do is get inside, plop down on the sofa in the comfortably warm house, and maybe stream a TV show. But as she crosses the lawn, she notices something in the yard next door that wasn’t there the day before, that she doesn’t remember seeing when she left in the early morning gloom: rows of neatly ordered headstones. She stops in midstride, staring in momentary confusion before she decides they must be early Halloween decorations.

Oh, great, she thinks, one of those people. The overenthusiastic decorator next door.

Even after she reaches that conclusion, though, she doesn’t immediately move away. The headstones are so very lifelike, not made from foam or plastic or even hand-painted wood, but carved from actual stone. The few that she can read from her vantage don’t offer the usual pop cultural references or puns, but names and dates that are realistically mundane.

After a while, Sam slowly turns from the sight and moves into the house. She lies on the sofa, but doesn’t touch the remote, instead staring at the ceiling and never finding that cozy relaxation to which she’s looked forward all afternoon.

She’s wondering how much it would cost to purchase actual headstones merely for decoration, or make them oneself, how much time and effort the latter would require. The calculations in her head seem incredible, and a question floats unresolved amidst them: did her neighbor steal actual headstones from a cemetery?

After about thirty minutes of these uncomfortable ruminations, she gets up and moves toward the front window, tries to angle herself so that she can see the yard without it being obvious to anyone outside that she’s looking. There the headstones are, as unlikely and real as they were less than an hour prior.

She pulls her phone out of her pocket and stares at it, questioning whether she should call someone, whom she would even call. The glassy black screen seems to mock her uncertainty.

Finally, she puts it away and goes back to the sofa, turns on the television and starts to stream the British crime show that’s lately become a minor obsession. She tries to focus on the episode, to force the neighbor’s yard out of her thoughts, but they keep looming silently in her mind’s eye, bathed in darkness rather than the afternoon sunlight she’d actually seen them in.

Sam finds herself trying to recall if she met that neighbor after she first moved into her aunt’s house, recollects a thin, middle-aged man with a face that left no particular impression, aside from blue eyes that were perhaps a shade too pale. Jim Halkin is the name that drifts up from the recesses of her memory, but she can likewise barely recall the timbre of his voice, or any specific words he spoke during their brief new-neighbor introductions.

As the credits roll, she sighs with exasperation and turns off the television and the streaming device, moves into the kitchen to pack her lunch for the next day at work. She washes the few dishes in the sink, then heads upstairs for her bedroom, closing the blinds and settling in for what she hopes will be an early night.

Instead, she lies awake, running over the same thoughts over and over again. When she dreams, it is of a thin man with no face, digging in a graveyard.

[Brief pause]

NARRATOR

Autumn waxes, the air smelling pleasantly of fallen leaves and rich earth. Sam gets a small raise at work, meets a young man named Park at a tabletop gaming meetup in the same, larger town where Sam works. He is actually from Hansard himself, and they share mild laughter when they discover they live in the same town but are only meeting now outside of it.

The D&D group doesn’t last more than two sessions, but she and Park keep seeing each other.

They make plans to spend Halloween together, with Park showing up at her house just as she gets home from work, bringing with him a dozen bottles of hard cider, two takeout meals from the only local burger joint, and a significant amount of candy.

They settle in for the evening to gorge themselves on unhealthy food, cider, and classic horror films, occasionally rising from their seats to meet trick-or-treaters at the door. Seeing the children in their costumes, some recognizable to her and many from children’s media that she is totally out of touch with, fills Sam with pleasant nostalgia from her own innocent days, before she was introduced to the ugliness of the wider world.

Once, though, when she lingers at the door while the treaters depart with full bags and buckets, she glances over at Jim’s place. The artificial graveyard seems to have grown since she first saw it, but there are no other decorations in the yard or on the house. Jim is sitting on his front step, a cooking pot filled with what she guesses is candy beside him, a can of beer in his hand. He is slouched, staring at the cement path that leads from his step to the sidewalk.

Sam notices that none of the children passing through the neighborhood approach Jim’s house, but she also notices that neither they nor their occasional adult guardians ever spare it a moment’s glance. They pass it almost as if its very existence doesn’t register.

Park calls to her from the couch, says that she’s missing the best part of the old Universal monster flick. She replies that she’ll be right there, and hesitantly pulls her gaze from Jim and his distasteful decorations, shuts the door.

By eight-thirty, the diminutive ghosts and ghouls have entirely stopped their visitations. Park and Sam fall asleep on the couch in the middle of the original Romero zombie film, their metabolisms crashing after bingeing on alcohol and junk food.

Later, when they wake up, Park kisses her. Sam pokes a good-natured jibe at his sleepy, sugar-fouled breath, and then invites him to stay. He smiles and says he will.

Then, hesitantly, she divulges her secret to him: that her birth name wasn’t Samantha, but Samuel. There is a pause that makes the nape of her neck prickle, and then he says that she’s just Sam to him, kisses her lightly on the cheek.

She smiles, her eyes watering for the briefest instant before she blinks it away, and they go upstairs, hand in hand.

[Brief pause]

NARRATOR

A week after Halloween, the headstones are still up. Sam looks out of her bedroom window every morning to see if Jim has begun to take them down, but after a few days, she realizes that she never sees him outside of his house: not getting into or getting out of the aged burgundy Oldsmobile that rusts in his driveway, not taking out the trash, not picking up mail.

When Park comes over that weekend, she asks him tactfully if he finds the decorations, or even more so, the fact that they’re still up, odd. He looks out the window a moment, shrugs mildly, says it’s perhaps a little strange, then begins to tell her about a new tabletop gaming group he’s started with a couple of high school friends, one that he thinks will fare better than the last.

Sam doesn’t have to feign her excitement about this, but it’s soured somewhat by the ease with which Park dismissed this thing that has been nagging at her for almost a month now. Later in the evening, she tries to bring it up again, and he says, again very casually, that it’s no big deal, that everyone has their little quirks.

Sam then asks him why the headstones look so real, if that isn’t inappropriate for a time of year when children wander the neighborhood, if it doesn’t seem the least bit unhealthy and unwholesome. Park frowns, and says that she’s sounding a little judgmental, that he wouldn’t expect that from her, of all people.

That turns into an argument, which turns into Park leaving earlier than planned, and Sam going to bed and crying hot, angry, fearful tears into her pillow.

The next day, Park calls and apologizes for overreacting, for saying something so crappy to her. When they get together again, there is a brief moment of awkward mutual apology, and then things are as good as they were before, perhaps better.

But still, each morning and night, Sam looks out of her bedroom window at the headstones under the now-bare maple tree in Jim’s yard.

[Brief pause]

NARRATOR

The false cemetery remains there even into December, and looking at the stone markers lightly coated with snow makes Sam feel even colder than the winter’s chill. Her dreams have become very strange of late, filled with that faceless man in a graveyard that seems both darker and wider every night.

She waits for a long time before bringing it up with Park. When she does, it’s when they are sitting around the table with his friends, in the middle of a D&D campaign which they are all thoroughly enjoying.

Each face at the table looks at her blankly a moment, shrugs, and, in one way or another, brushes it off. Then they go back to the session, and it is as if Sam alone remembers the topic every being broached.

When spring comes and the snow retreats, the headstones, emerging from a wintery slumber, seem almost to mock her.

[Brief pause]

NARRATOR

Over the summer, Sam’s secret somehow comes out. She suspects Colton, one of Park’s old friends, who has always given her a look that made her feel like she was being eyed under a microscope, but she knows she can never be certain.

Once, a pastor from a local evangelical church comes to her door, tells her with fury and contempt that is thinly masked as kindness, that she must look into herself and see the vileness there. At one point, he accuses her of misleading and abusing children, and that is when she tells him to leave her property before she calls the police and tells them he is trespassing, and shuts the door in his face just as he begins to reply. She locks the door, waits until she hears his footsteps retreat from the porch, hears the engine of his sleek new pickup fire up and then recede into the distance.

Then she slides down the door, crying a little, and wonders if she’ll have to move.

When she sees that pastor’s face in the newspaper the next month, reads about what he’s done to at least three of the girls in his youth group Bible study, she almost feels vindicated beneath the disgust. But then she sees the photos of the girls’ faces, smiling and innocent, and the horror of the story is all that remains in her.

Park remains with her all through it, though, opening and disposing of the occasional bit of anonymous hate mail, driving away the odd person that comes to her door and declares that Sam should give their family and their children a wide berth.

When she weeps at night, he holds her, tells her that he has family in California who would be happy to help them, that maybe they should leave town together, start fresh somewhere where they’ll just be faces in a crowd.

Sam is touched by his devotion, but she demurs. She cannot bear the taste of being driven from her aunt’s home by a few small-minded people, from the town that still holds pleasant memories of childhood summer visits.

By the beginning of autumn, the harassment has mostly ceased. Many of her neighbors still greet her with a friendly smile and small talk, either not caring about her transition or too polite to make an issue of it. There are still some dirty looks and poorly muted mutterings when she goes to the little gas station and the grocery mart, but she can just about ignore them.

Then, at the beginning of October, the brothers tell her apologetically that their little computer shop is in the red, that they have no choice but to close its doors. The older one, the one she has always liked best, actually tears up while he is speaking, and offers her a warm hug and kindly wishes for her future.

Sam takes it as best she can, but when she gets into the car at the end of the day, she has to let out a scream that soon gives way to heaving sobs. She has enough in her bank account to keep her afloat for a few months, but the taxes on the house will take a real bite out of her savings, and she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to find another job that pays so well.

She is seriously reconsidering Park’s offer when she pulls into her driveway, is about ready to call him and tell him she’s ready to sell Coral’s house and move.

Then she gives Jim’s yard the now almost ritual glance, and does a doubletake.

The headstones have definitely multiplied, and there is something else now, too: freshly dug holes beneath the newer markers.

She mumbles a foul-mouthed question, ignores the indignant gasp of a passing elderly dogwalker.

Taking a few steps closer toward Jim’s place, she cranes her neck to peer down into the holes. They are too deep for her to see the bottom from that angle, though—as deep, she thinks, as a real grave.

She now turns toward the heavy, middle-aged woman who is bending to bag the little Yorkie’s sidewalk gift, and asks her why there are graves in Jim’s yard.

The woman finishes her task, stands with a grunt, and looks briefly in the direction Sam is indicating. Her gaze lingers only an instant, and then she shrugs and says it’s none of her business, that a man can do whatever he likes on his own property.

Sam feels like screaming again. The woman, giving her a final unpleasant look, continues on her way down the block and out of sight.

[Brief pause]

NARRATOR

Every morning, there are more holes. Sam, no longer having a job to go to, spends what she knows is far too much time looking surreptitiously out of her bedroom window, watching for any change, for any sign of life from within Jim’s house.

Somehow, though, she never sees him. It is only when she finally gives in to sleep that the fresh holes appear in his lawn.

It’s on the ides of October that the first coffin appears. Sam finds it in the grey and misty morning, and stares out of the window for a moment, disbelieving her eyes. Then she throws on a robe and slip-on shoes and hurries down the stairs and out of the house, across the lawn to the place where the coffin lies, open and empty. It was closed when first she saw it.

A man down the street yells something about her being indecently dressed, even though he is standing on the lawn in only his boxers. Sam shrugs him off and moves toward Jim’s door, feeling that things have finally gone too far, that she must have an answer.

Three times she knocks on the door, harder each time, but no answer ever comes. The Oldsmobile is parked in the usual place, but there are no lights on inside, and when she presses her face close to the window, shading her sight with both hands, she can see no hint of movement from within.

She utters an ill-tempered curse, resolves to stand there on Jim’s porch until he appears. A cold rain begins to fall, though, and her resolve evaporates quickly. She runs back to her house, pulls off her sodden robe, and takes a hot shower. Standing in the steam, she laughs suddenly at herself, at Jim, at the whole situation. It is too absurd, she thinks, to be real.

When she emerges, warm and pink and clean, she has decided that Park was right, that none of it matters and it’s time to let it all go.

When evening comes, she realizes she has nothing to eat, and decides to make a quick run to the grocery mart. As she steps out onto her front porch, she notices that Jim is out of the house. This is the first time she has seen the actual man himself since last Halloween, almost a year prior, and she stops in the middle of shutting her front door and stares.

He is walking, calmly and unhurriedly, across the lawn toward one of the open coffins. When he reaches it, he shifts it carefully and lowers it slowly down into the open hole beside it. Then he, too, disappears down into the mock grave. Sam waits several minutes for any further movement, but nothing happens.

Evening is quickly giving way to night. She keeps thinking that she should just get in her car and drive away, or just go inside and shut herself in for the night, that she shouldn’t do what that curious, hungry voice inside her is telling her to do. And she also knows that she will, ultimately, give in to its relentless demand.

So, after a few more seconds of hesitation, she steps down from the porch and crosses the boundary between her property and Jim’s, moves toward the shaded hole into which he slipped less than a quarter hour ago. The coffin lies at the bottom, closed and motionless.

(Dreadful music)

NARRATOR

She whispers the word hello into the false grave—or the grave that she desperately hopes is false. No answer comes. Casting a quick glance around the neighborhood, she finds that she is alone outside. Reluctantly, she lowers herself down into the hole, and, with heavy breath and racing heartbeat, grips the lid and pulls it open.

Jim lies there, perfectly still, hands folded on his chest and his eyes gently closed. She believes his chest still rises and falls, but in the near darkness she cannot be sure.

She croaks his name. Slowly, his eyes drift open, but he does not make any other move. He just lies there and stares up at her serenely.

Not taking her eyes from him, she backs away, pulls herself back onto the grass of the lawn. Only then does she turn and run, back into her own yard and toward her car. Fumbling for the keys in her pocket, she unlocks it and fires up the engine, pulls out of her driveway too quickly.

She drives toward Park’s house, trying to bring her breathing back under control.

[Brief pause]

NARRATOR

Park is very understanding, and lets her spend the night in his little, poorly decorated apartment. He does nothing but hold her, kiss her forehead softly, murmur soothing words, until she drifts at last into sleep. In the morning, she feels more grounded, although a little foolish for having been so thoroughly stricken by the sight.

In the light of day, what she witnessed seems less threatening, if still very strange.

While they sit to a breakfast of coffee and breakfast burritos scrounged from Park’s freezer, she asks him what she should do. It’s clear that the man isn’t well mentally, that he needs some kind of help, but she doesn’t know how she can appropriately intervene.

Park shrugs, says he doesn’t know that it’s really their place. That if anyone should make that decision, it should be Jim’s family. Sam asks, then, who his closest relative is, how she can get in touch with them. Park’s eyes change then, seem almost misted over, fogged from within. He says dreamily that he doesn’t know.

Sam frowns, says that there are less than a thousand people in town, that Park has always seemed to know the community well.

Park nods, and says, again in that somnambulant tone, that he just doesn’t know.

Sam finds that she can’t finish the second half of the burrito. Something feels like it’s crawling around inside her, just under the skin, and she rises from the little kitchen table with its mismatched chairs and paces.

Park continues eating without looking at her, staring instead at the wall as though he has forgotten there is anyone else in the room.

Sam says she thinks she’s going home. Park nods. Then she says, a little sharply, that she doesn’t want to be alone, if he cares. That snaps him from whatever he’s fallen into, and his eyes focus once more on her.

He says that of course he cares, that he’ll stay over at hers until she feels safe there again. Then he adds, with a little smile, that it’s almost Halloween, and he was hoping they might spend it together again.

Despite her agitation, Sam cannot help but share in his smile, and says that she would love that.

[Brief pause]

NARRATOR

It is more than a week before Sam feels comfortable enough in Coral’s house for Park to spend an evening back in his own home. During that time, nothing on the lawn next door changes, and she does not see Jim again. She does notice, though, that the coffin she found him in remains in the hole, and is closed once more.

The dreams get worse during that time, though. The graveyard of her nightmares now stretches endlessly between the horizons, so crowded with headstones and mausolea and crypt entrances that it seems like a silent, motionless city. Everything is overgrown and weathered, as though from decades of neglect, and the trees scattered among the graves seem themselves like bony hands reaching hopelessly toward the sky.

And though he is faceless, she knows that the man in her dreams is watching her, smiling at her. Sometimes, he beckons to her, then points to the open grave that he has just finished digging in what is clearly an invitation.

That is always when she wakes. And while Park stayed there, he too would wake then and hold her, comfort her. But tonight he is gone, and she cannot settle back into bed, so she rises and moves toward the window.

(Tense music)

NARRATOR

Her neighbors are in the streets, walking unhurriedly but certainly toward Jim’s yard. Two of them, an old man and the girl Sam sees often on her bike, are settling themselves into coffins. Somewhere in the back of her brain, unconscious mental calculations conclude that there are just enough graves for everyone she says, maybe even a couple to spare.

She falls back from the window, ready to run, ready to dial Park. But somehow, she never does. That feeling of confused, disbelieving panic is the last thing she recalls.

In the morning, she wakes up on the floor, and cannot tell whether it was a vivid dream, or if she actually saw something so inexplicable and horrible to her that her body and mind simply shut down.

She calls Park, and when he answers, the first thing that he says is how excited he is for tomorrow. This confuses her until, after several moments, she realizes that tomorrow is Halloween.

She tells him about what she saw, and he says that it was definitely a dream, and that it’s no surprise since she’s been so fixated on Jim’s yard. He tells her not to worry, that he’ll be over just as soon as he gets off work, and they’ll distract themselves getting ready for the trick-or-treaters.

Sam says she isn’t sure if she’s up to Halloween this year, asks if maybe they can just spend the evening at his place, but Park says that he thinks it would be a mistake to let this fear change their plans, that acting like everything is okay is the best way to break the hold this thing has over her.

Sam frowns, feeling a little patronized, but also feeling that he might be right. So, with some misgivings, she relents and says she can’t wait for him to get there.

He cheerily says that he’s excited too, then says he has to leave for work. Before he hangs up, he tells her that he loves her, and the words are so unexpected that Sam mirrors them before they have really sunk in.

Afterward, she sits on the bed and pointedly avoids looking out the window. Underneath all of the unsettlement and misgivings, she thinks she is happy.

[Brief pause]

NARRATOR

They spend Halloween almost exactly as they did the year before, passing out candy to the occasional trick-or-treater and overindulging in sweets, cider, and horror movies. They add a few slightly more recent films to the latter, some John Carpenter and Hammer Horror flicks. As Sam gradually drifts off on the sofa, the screen flickering like dying flames and Park’s arms warm and gentle around her, a feeling of well-being that she has almost forgotten washes over her.

Sometime later in the night, she wakes to a darkened living room. Park has turned off the television set, and she thinks it was movement on his part that woke her, because he is no longer beside her on the sofa. She rolls over so that she can see more of the room as her eyes adjust, but there is no sign of him.

That is exactly the moment when she hears the doorlatch clicking gently shut.

She feels slightly queasy as she rises. Moving carefully through the room, she makes her way toward the window and looks out. Faintly, she can see Park moving outside, down her front steps and across the lawn.

Without believing it, she knows where he is headed. The sick feeling swells in her belly as she watches him move toward Jim’s yard, toward one of the few coffins that remains open to the night.

She swears, saying to herself that this can’t be happening, repeating it in a frenzied, desperate whisper over and over. It has become a mindless mantra by the time she steels herself enough to open the door and follow Park outside. She stops at her steps, and yells at his retreating form to stop, to come back, not to do this.

Park keeps moving, as if he hasn’t heard her—or as if her words held no more meaning than the rustling of the elm and maple leaves in the night breeze.

She yells for him to come back, that she loves him, that he can’t be a part of this like everyone else. Still, he keeps moving away from her, his steps slow and clumsy but unwavering.

Sam descends the last few steps and sinks slowly to her knees in the cold, dewy grass. Tears stream down her cheeks, both from helpless terror and from total loss, as she screams her last few words at Park’s resolute back.

She begs him not to leave her, not to leave her all alone.

Park stops beside the unadorned pine casket, half turns toward her, then instead lowers it into the hole and follows it down.

Sam weeps and wails in the chill October night, as jack-o’-lanterns burn and die on porches and sidewalks around her. The only other voice in the night is the soft wind, and the distant yowl of a stray cat.

Finally, she stands, gets in her car, and drives toward the highway, leaving everything in the dark behind her.

(Sorrowful 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 happy and safe Halloween!

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro - Continues]