The King of Charleston

This episode is brought to you by the West Virginia Board of Tourism. 

Transcript

*You got rid of what you could and kept only what you had to. Your best friend had been there to help every step of the way when you were fixing up your house, so there was only so much you could do. You could paint the walls a different color, and swap out the furniture. But the plumbing was still there, and you weren’t about to tear out floors that were only a year old. You got rid of all the visible reminders, but the house had been built quite literally with your friendship and that couldn't be changed. You mostly thought of him when you had to fix something, and how you missed just being able to call on him. Then your fond memories would dissolve into just the one bad one, and you tried to train yourself to stop thinking about him altogether. You got better at that over the years, until you hit a decade and you knew that your time free of him was coming to an end. You thought of him around certain dates then, impending parole hearings filling your days with dread as his sentence was in flux. You started to feel unsafe, certain that he’d soon come back to collect what he was owed, what you hadn’t been able to replace. When he was finally free you bought a gun, but you still didn’t sleep well. When the doorbell finally rings in the middle of the night, you’re almost relieved. You put on some pants, grab your gun, and walk down the stairs that he’d helped you fix. Then you take a deep breath and open the door, ready to let in The Podcast Inside Your House. 

Music by Hex System

Luke was never happy with normal hobbies, and I suppose that’s why we got along so well. We’d met in an Urban Exploration group back in college, where we’d spent our days off going on road trips to explore old and forgotten places. When we graduated and had jobs to worry about, we switched to ghost hunting, which was often just a legal version of what we were doing before; exploring abandoned buildings, learning about the history, and venturing to parts of the midwest we’d never otherwise think to visit. When we started to age out of that, finding it too hard to stay up all night, and getting downright grumpy around all the teenagers and college kids, me and Luke started looking for something else to transition to. We ended up taking up what seemed to be the default path for men in their thirties; podcasting. 

Just like every other show, ours was different and new and fresh. It was an offbeat history podcast, but our angle was that we would actually visit the places we were writing about so we could describe what they looked like today. That limited us to the Midwest and Appalachia, but there was no shortage of fascinating history there.

Now, when we visited Detroit we passed up the rustbelt-era factories for libraries and Revolutionary War landmarks. A trip to Cleveland took us through what used to be Kingsbury Run, the area where the infamous mad butcher had held his reign of terror, and though we looked longingly at the abandoned factories along Carnegie Street, we were getting too old for all that. Or at least, I was. Every now and then Luke would still try to drag me out to explore or ghost hunt and I’d give in and go if it was safe or short. But any trespassing that involved security I firmly said no to. Likewise with the intense ghost expeditions. I didn’t want to wait in the dark, in some cold asylum for hours on end. But that’s what Luke loved. He loved the possibility of danger, the chance that something could go wrong, and the time spent in anticipation of the unknown. I always told him that if he kept looking for trouble, that sooner or later it would find him.  

When we went down to Charleston Luke made us dress up. He liked to get mistaken for being a real reporter, and I’ll admit, driving down there in a damn tie really did make me feel important too. it was fun! 

The last half hour or so before we got there though gave me the sense of awe and danger that I had come to expect on my trips with Luke. 

We’d been in the foothills for most of the drive, but when we crossed the state border, it was like we’d stepped back in time. There was nothing but forest as far as the eye could see. There were more vines down here, more flowers in the trees, and it looked older than the woods we had farther north. 

Every once in awhile we’d pass a gas station, or a few restaurants clinging to the side of the road. They looked so small compared to the rolling green hills, new and insignificant compared to the backdrop that had been here for so long, and would be here long after those buildings went to ruin. 

As our ETA dropped lower and lower I kept waiting for the city to start, but it didn’t. Twenty minutes out it was still just green. I could see on the GPS more gas stations, restaurants, and roads off to the side sporadically appearing nearby. But out the windows there was nothing. All of the buildings here were hidden in the hills. Ten minutes out and we could have been in the middle of nowhere. Finally, just five minutes from the damn capital building itself we hit the on-ramp to go downtown. 

The city was stunning. Compared to where we lived, it really felt like more of a town. The houses were spaced apart and the trees had been allowed to regrow and fill in the gaps in the hills. Down in the valley and by the river it got more crowded, but the city still wound along the river making space for parks and clearings and trees. 

The capital was our first stop and it did not disappoint. It was impossible to miss, with the spiked dome of the main building covered in an ornate gold pattern. The archive center was just next door, and no less impressive. The mystery we were researching had happened farther south, but visiting the archive center itself would let us look through articles for the entire state rather than calling each library to see what collection they had. See the idea behind the state archive centers was that they would consolidate all of the newspaper microfilm from every single paper in the state, gathering the entire written history, at least as far as the papers went, into one room. Sometimes states will put the archive library in the capital building itself, or in a university library or museum, each one is unique. 

This state archive center felt older than most. This place was built with Roman-inspired architecture and the gold-crowned dome next door added to the ancient look. But the rolling hills in the background, the green space between the buildings, and the massive trees dotting the property made it feel like the capital had been built with an even older history in mind. Like the rest of the city, it felt like it had been built to leave space for the past, recognizing that the printed history contained within, vast as it may be, was still a relatively new intrusion on such an old place. 

The plan was to spend two days in Charleston, giving us all of tomorrow if needed, then go down farther south to record whatever audio we needed, and visit the scene of the crime, literally. We’d taken the whole week off work, so any extra time we ended up with we were going to spend hiking and exploring the nearby forests.

We didn’t always make so much time for our research trips, but I could tell Luke had been antsy lately. He’d been going on melancholy tangents about not knowing what he wanted to do with his life, how he wasn’t living up to his potential. So I thought a little adventure would do him some good. 

When we walked into the archive center we were greeted with a patterned gold ceiling and quilts all over the tall walls. The library itself was like all of the others, full of books that looked like they might fall apart if you opened them, books that were as old as the city itself. That always made me curious, but we were here on a mission. We let the librarians, or historians, whatever their titles were show us how to work the microfilm machines, and they gave us a quick tour of the cabinets. Daily papers, the big ones that had the longest run times were all in one place, everything else in another. We could probably find everything we needed in the Dailys. Hell, we probably didn’t even need to be down here, there was more than enough info online, but I wanted to get Luke out of the house. He’d been scaring me lately with some of the things he said. 

We picked a microfilm machine out in the main library and took turns scrolling through the film or gazing out the window. We sat there for hours, screenshotting articles and saving them, while we listened to the archive workers chat quietly about weekend plans and genealogy.

Sitting there, going through rolls and rolls of front-page news, we found ourselves clicking away from so many other potential stories as headlines of the strange and gruesome appeared alongside the articles we actually needed. I always pictured myself in a movie during this part. I imagined myself connecting the dots on some grand mystery or conspiracy, each new strange headline bringing some glorious realization. But the truth was there weren’t dots to connect, the world was just full of strange things if you looked at any part of it through a microscope. All of these mysterious places you hear about like Headless Valley, Hell Town, The Bermuda Triangle, and well, all of the other triangles, aren’t actually all that special. They are the places where one strange or weird event has brought all of the others to the surface, but those other events were already there, they were just waiting to be unearthed and remembered in the modern world. If you dig, and I mean really dig into the history of any city or town or village you can find enough secret history to make any place seem mysterious. Every city has missing people, every town has cryptid sightings, and every place on earth has murders either gruesome or strange enough to be immortalized in history. That doesn’t stop you from feeling like you’ve discovered something forbidden when you find it though. 

I knew that Charleston logically was no more mysterious than any other city, but I couldn’t help but be a bit unnerved by the sheer number of missing people there. 

After a few hours, we’d gotten everything from the papers that we’d had our eyes on, and called it a day. The archivists bid us farewell, and we went back to our Airbnb to shower. 

We walked to a pub for dinner and talked about what we wanted to do for the rest of the trip. I talked about where I wanted to hike if we got done early, and what kind of food we should get. I talked about how this would be a big episode for us, and if we did a good enough job maybe we’d finally start making some money. 

Luke talked about all of the things that we’d have to watch out for, the things that could go wrong. Luke talked about getting stranded on the side of the road. He talked about getting lost in the woods. He talked about how we should follow one of the tips we’d gotten from a psychic on Reddit telling us that he had the answer to the old unsolved mystery we were looking into, that he knew where the bodies were. Luke pondered what we’d actually do if we managed to discover the corpses, nearly a century old at this point. All of these things, these potential disasters, he talked about longingly. 

After dinner, we went for a walk, and though it was a Friday night, it felt like we had the city to ourselves. Charleston had seen a steep decline in population in the same way that so many of the cities we’d haunted in our urbex days had. When coal mining was largely outsourced overseas, the bulk of the jobs fled with it. But the city had been half abandoned in a different way than the ones further north in the Rust Belt. Apartments sat at half capacity, and businesses were slow but not dead. It was quiet, eerily quiet for a city its size, but it was nice. You really only felt the lack of people in the silence rather than the infrastructure. There were no rusted-out factories, no decayed houses that smelled like chemicals. Rather than a city that was dying like so many others we’d seen it felt like a city that was simply taking a peaceful nap, keeping its skyscrapers well preserved for whenever its inhabitants came back. It felt like a city that was waiting for something. 

As we explored, we’d pass by a shop or bar that had a bit of a crowd, but the crowds all seemed to congregate together. Other spots were completely empty. The city's inhabitants knew what places would have people, and which places were in limbo. We’d walk down one street that felt like a city should, but then turn a corner and be the only life in sight. It was eerie and exciting, as if we were getting a glimpse into a place we weren’t supposed to be in. It felt like we’d entered into another realm, and the city would swallow us up forever if we weren’t careful. 

In a way, I guess it did. Things changed in just a matter of seconds. 

We didn't see the car until it was already on us. The lone engine had stood out less than the quiet before it had, and we were both a little tipsy. 

As the van pulled up to us, sounds rather than sights presided over our fateful encounter. First, there was the screeching of brakes. Then there was the van door sliding open. Next was a thunder inside my head as my skull hit the pavement. Then silence for just a few seconds as I lay stunned on the ground. Then my eyes cleared and I saw two men dragging Luke into the van. The one closest to me had strange eyes, and I got lost in them, confused. They stood out against the black of his ski mask as completely white; no pupil, no iris. 

Then the world of sound came back on as I recovered from my blow to the head. The van door slid shut, and as the van drove off I heard the sounds of Luke screaming. 

When I called the police they sounded concerned but in a rehearsed way. This was just another day for them, and it didn’t matter that my friend was in danger, my world falling apart. This was just their nine to five and while I understood that logically, emotionally it infuriated me. So while the police looked, I conducted my own investigation, one to be carried out with the passion it deserved.

Extending my stay at the Airbnb was no problem, it’s not like anyone else was trying to book it.  It was some old apartment that I don’t think anyone even lived in, there being more than enough empty units in the city. Once the weekend passed I had practically the whole building to myself. Venturing outside, especially at night, especially during the week it sometimes felt like I had the whole city to myself too. I prowled the streets in my car rather than on foot, afraid of meeting the same fate as Luke, and I watched for white vans driving slower than I was. My sleep schedule got worse and worse as the week wore on until I was fully nocturnal and I started to notice something strange on my drives. 

At first, I thought they were homeless people walking the streets at night, but the more I observed them the more I realized that something truly strange was afoot. They only moved through the city only when its inhabitants had gone to bed. They were never on the street corners begging for money, never walking up to the people soaking up the summer nights out on bar patios. They stuck to the empty and mostly empty streets, and when sparse travelers walked past them, they hid. 

They wore ragged but not falling apart clothing, and they always had their faces obscured by baggy hoodies or medical masks or scarves, despite the heat. I tried to drive closer to them, but when they heard my car they moved away from the road, just far enough that I couldn’t try to see the whites of their eyes, and more importantly, if that was all their eyes contained. 

I tried several times unsuccessfully to follow them, but they were fast and seemed to have hiding spots all over the city. I’d get close to one, then lose it around a corner and it would be gone even though there was nowhere to go. But finally, on Thursday night, with my week of reconnaissance almost up I spotted one that was walking slowly, limping along as if it was hurt. 

This time I stayed far back, but the thing was distracted enough that it didn’t even seem to notice me. I followed it for an hour, crawling along at just a few miles an hour, stopping and taking false turns when needed, until finally, the creature reached its destination. It was just an old parking garage, one that wasn’t branded for any specific business or venue. The creature walked inside with a quickness and familiarity that told me that I might finally be getting somewhere. 

It was the middle of the night, and I knew I’d be spotted going in either way so I decided not to leave the protection of my car. I drove through the entrance and slowly scanned the first level with my headlights. The beast was nowhere in sight, so I kept going up, studying each level as I went.

Though I’d lost the creature, the roof of the garage held a different prize. At the very top, parked in a corner was a nondescript, beat-up white van. I felt my heart kickstart. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the one that had taken Luke. I memorized the license plate and started driving down. 

This police call was met with the same formality, the same professionalism, and the same frustration on my end that they did not match my level of urgency. I drove out Friday night and watched the garage from sunset to sunrise, and didn’t see the police even drive up to it. Saturday I went back up to the top and saw the van, still parked in the same spot. 

By Sunday I was feeling desperate. I called off work ahead for Monday, claiming car trouble. I wanted to have just one more night to look. I knew that after I went back home, after I went back to work and life got in the way I would never be this focused on finding Luke again. 

I decided to do what Luke would do for me if the tables were turned and fate had taken me instead. I decided to do something reckless. 

I’d spotted the door on my first drive-through of the parking garage. I clocked it in the casual way I still found myself looking for trespassing spots, even though we’d retired from that years ago. It was on the ground floor and said Do not open. Alarm will sound. But the sign was old enough that I didn’t believe it. And the door wasn’t placed right to really connect to any nearby buildings, it looked like it instead went underground. It looked like it went into the undercity, a coveted place back in our Urbex days.

The undercity was somewhat of a myth in most places. Every city did have a literal underbelly of some kind, but normally, it was made up of small dead ends that never connected. You could get into a storm drain system or maybe find a few buildings that had linked together during prohibition but that was that. It was only the huge cities where you could really do serious exploring, where the undercity felt like a true forgotten realm, with endless tunnels and basements and forbidden rooms to explore. This was not that kind of city, or at least, it shouldn’t have been. 

I parked my car in that desolate garage and I stepped out, for the first time braving the city at night on foot. I’d managed to borrow a gun from a friend of a friend Luke had down here. They’d told me not to accidentally shoot myself with it, and to do whatever it took to find Luke. That helped me feel safer. It made me feel like maybe all those times I’d pictured myself as the hero of the story weren’t all inaccurate. It made me feel like maybe I could save Luke. 

One of the detectives looking for Luke had given me his number and I sent him a text telling him where I was going. I expected that if I went missing too he’d get around to it in five to seven business days. Maybe. 

When I opened the door the promised alarm never came. The dark staircase on the other side only went down, and I followed it. As I started to hear strange sounds, I gave myself strength by picturing Luke in this scenario. He wouldn't hesitate to dive headfirst into danger. He wouldn’t hesitate to be the hero. Led by the light of a flashlight that was never bright enough, I descended.

The concrete walls around me went from new to old and worn after the first few flights of steps, and the quiet noises grew loud enough to attempt to identify them. There was the general metallic shifting and groaning that came with being below the infrastructure of any city. The sounds of the metal and cement and earth settling as they propped up the bones of the buildings above. There were also what sounded like faint voices, alongside animal chatter. There was something alive down here, something that hid beneath our feet. 

Cracked walls gave way to the large white bricks one would find in a basement, and still, the stairs had no end in sight. There were doors on occasion, but I didn’t go through any of them. I felt like whatever I was looking for was farther down. 

I wanted to go back up, desperately. But if I did, the search for Luke would be stalled, perhaps indefinitely. Maybe a month from now someone would go through these tunnels, or maybe they wouldn’t even bother because it was all based on a hunch. I thought about going up, coming back later after I’d better thought things through. But I knew that if I left now I’d never find the nerve again. I had to push through while my grief and worry for Luke was still fresh enough to force me beyond reason, to make me brave enough to be as dumb as he was. If I left now, Luke would become a mystery forever. 

The bricks shrank and turned red as I entered an even more ancient part of the underground. The talking and chattering were close now. I reached the end of the stairs and before me was an old wooden door. It had a stained glass window but I couldn’t see inside. Someone had taken the time to label the door though, in gold letters below the window were the words The Palace. 

“Fuck it.” I said, and I twisted the old iron handle. 

They were waiting for me when I opened the door, two creatures poised just far enough to let the door swing. They lunged but I was faster and shot them both. Though I couldn’t say exactly where my shots had landed I knew I’d hit them, I fucking knew it, but they didn’t even slow down. 

They grabbed me with inhuman strength and wrenched the gun from my hand. Then they started dragging me down a long arched hallway as if I weighed no more than a doll. 

I looked up at both of them, studying their eyes. One had completely white eyes, the other had just a speck of pupil still left in the center. Both had grey skin. They were still bundled up in their surface attire so I could not examine them anymore beyond that. But a look behind me showed me that neither of them was bleeding. 

The tunnel they took me down smelled of minerals and old water, and the chattering and talking was much louder now. It sounded like a whole crowd of people and animals were waiting for me at the end of this catacomb. Then the smell of decay, of death hit me, and I started to sweat even more than I already was. 

When we finally rounded a bend I realized that the sounds I’d thought were animal chatter were actually the sounds of chewing, of biting, and of cutlery on bone. And what had been speaking in human voices were creatures that were decidedly not. 

The creatures had taken me into what I can only assume was the throne room of The Palace. The scene before me reminded me of a medieval tapestry or painting, but one occupied by sounds and sights straight from the depths of hell. I wondered then if that was where I was, that perhaps it truly had been right beneath our feet this whole time. 

There was a huge table, big enough for dozens of people to feast, and feast they did. Though I guess they weren’t people. Even if some of them looked as if they had been at one time. 

They were in various stages of dress, some bundled or partially bundled in clothes that would let them venture outside. They were also in various states of transformation, some looked like skinny, albeit concerningly skinny people, others were just grey skin wrapped tightly around skeletons. The more grey and unbearably skinny they were, the taller they were too, like they’d been stretched. 

The cavernous room was lit not by candlelight, or hellfire, which would seemed appropriate down here, but by harsh blue halogen lights. It felt wrong, like what they were doing should only be conducted in darkness.

But no, they ate unashamedly in the blue glow, and there was no mistaking what was scattered along the vast table. It was hard to tell how many there were, with how they’d been ripped apart, but it looked like there were the remains of at least three people being devoured by the creatures. I counted three heads at least, hair matted with blood. The smell was even worse than the sight, and the sounds, now that I knew what they were, further roiled my stomach.  

Presiding over it all, was what I can only presume was the beast in charge of this subterranean nightmare. One of the creatures, the tallest and thinnest of them all sat on a throne behind the table. The throne was made not of stone or wood or metal, but of bones, and it was built so tall that the creature’s feet rested above the table. 

The beast, the king, whatever it was smiled at me, showing bloody red teeth. “Welcome.” It said in a voice that sounded mummified. It sounded both impossibly ancient but youthfully playful at the same time “Isn’t this a lovely surprise?” He asked. “Two guests in one night, it’s a blessed day.” He picked up a bone lying loose on top of one of his ivory armrests and clacked it against the others. The room fell silent “My children, it’s time for the main course!” 

The creatures dragged me over to the table, and I knew he was talking about me. I prayed that they’d just kill me first, and not eat me alive. 

As they brought me closer to the wretched table, I realized something awful. The person at the far right was still alive. Chunks of flesh were ripped off, and they were covered in blood but they were still breathing. They were most certainly unconscious though and that was a small mercy. 

“We’d like to invite you to dine with us.” The creature on the throne said. “But you can choose how. Join us and we can show you things that no human could even dream of, we can expand your mind.” As he talked he gestured with hands that were freshly red. “I can see into your heart, and I know it’s a curious one. We’ve been here long before this city was built, and we’ll be here long after. You can live to see the future with us, to watch the world change.” He spoke as if he’d given this speech hundreds of times. It was well rehearsed, but he was still passionate, still having the time of his life. “We can offer you so much more than you see here.” 

The creatures parted the long hair of the person on the table, exposing their bloodied chest. “You know what they say, it’s eat or be eaten.” The creatures released my arms, and one of them handed me a knife. A lot of good that would do me with escape though, with so many of them surrounding me. “Eat his heart, and join us.” The king concluded “Or, you take his place as our dinner.” I hadn’t been able to tell if the person in front of me was a man or a woman, but when the creature said “his” and I looked at the long black hair, I connected the dots. It was impossible to tell for sure, but the hair was about the right length. Was it Luke I was looking at? 

I threw up then, the stench saving me for just a moment from the worse one of decomposing flesh. 

I made the decision in the same way I’d decided to come down here. I used all my passion and rage and grief and blocked out my fear as best as I could. I was going to be brave one last time for Luke, and I was not going to become one of these wretched things. I’d always hoped for a good afterlife, but no afterlife at all would still be better than an eternity in this hell. 

“I’m not doing that.” I said, my voice shaky “You’ll have to kill me.” Luke would have been proud if he could have seen me. 

“Very well.” The King said. “It’s a shame, you would have done so well here.” The he spoke to the creatures. “Let us feast!”

They killed the man on the table then, swarming him. I stabbed three of them before they got me down, but they still won, it was inevitable. They didn’t even bleed where I’d stabbed them.

As the beasts surrounded me, lifting me up, I took some small measure of comfort in knowing that, had that been Luke on the table before me I’d put him out of his misery. And also in the fact that when the end came, I hadn’t let myself become a monster, in all senses of the word. I’d surprised even myself with that. I felt strangely peaceful as they set me on the table, maybe it was just shock, but I accepted my fate in a way. A good death was a rarity in this world, for any creature, especially us. I’d spent the last several years reading about mass disasters and catastrophic failures. I’d immersed myself in wars, about how bleak the world was when you just looked a bit closer. There were so many different ways to meet a gruesome end. At least I got to go out a hero in some small way. At least I didn’t eat the heart of my best friend. 

But that comfort was stripped away from me when one of the creatures, one of the more human ones I hadn’t noticed before stepped into view. The beast still had irises, though they were faint, and it still had pupils to match. It still had pink to its skin, and when it pulled down its hood it revealed shaggy black hair. Then it took off its mask, and I realized that it had not been Luke on the table after all. 

No, he was alive and well, in whatever sense of the word these things lived. I begged him to help me, to let me out, certain he’d reason with the creatures now that he was one of them. But he just smiled, looking the happiest I’d seen him in years. Maybe even the happiest he’d ever been. He looked like he’d finally found his purpose. Trouble had finally caught him, but it hadn't killed him as I’d always feared. It simply changed him, and he was ecstatic. He grabbed my hand as if to kiss it. The other creatures all got closer, but they waited, patiently. They let Luke take the first bite.

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the podcast inside your house! To hear every tale of terror as they are released, subscribe to our show on your podcast app or on Youtube or follow us on Facebook and X. Until next time; Make sure you’re getting out of the house enough and staying in touch with other people this winter, it’s never a bad time to have an old friend for dinner.