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Episode zero: The Man Who Fell From the Sky
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The year is 189X. Podunk, a small town in Eagleland.
It was about as still a night as a night could possibly get around these parts. Nothing happened in Podunk, and precisely nothing was happening even more than it usually did. A perfect time for some folks, who weren’t already in bed sawing logs after spending the day, well, sawing logs, to sit on their porches, maybe with a small glass of whiskey in hand with a single cube out of the icebox, and gaze up at the reliably clear night sky and all the dazzling constellations it had to offer.
Yep, another quiet night out here in Podunk. Nothing of note to report. Most days people left their houses with their doors unlocked, seeing as how most people already knew most people, and no one had business more pressing than their own business that would lead them to trespass into mischief. Most days, you visit the sheriff’s office and the deputies all got their feet up on their desks, heck, on some days even the sheriff too!
Why, the only real spot of trouble anyone in the town ever noted was… what, two years ago, was it? That was when poor George and Maria Moley disappeared. No one would have ever guessed it, the perfect picture of domestic tranquility, the Moley house. No one knew if foul play was involved, and it was hard to say which one the good people of Podunk preferred. For if not, then what on earth could have possessed them to leave their poor children behind? And if so, well… oh dear, it’s just too terrible to imagine. Good thing the Moley kids had their aunts and uncles to look after them in the meantime. And two years, was it? Gosh, it seems like ages ago.
Other than that, though… nothing happens in Podunk. That’s right, nothing at all.
At least, that’s what Wilford Mayhew, a young man known for enjoying his drink on a Saturday night at the local Podunk saloon and licensed premises, would have said to anyone who asked, before the night when he saw with his own two eyes a man fall out of the sky.
He was walking alone, back to his bungalow about a quarter mile past the town square, when all of a sudden a flash of brilliant white overtook his vision. He could have sworn he only knocked back a couple brews that night, and even if he had a little more then by rights he should have been seeing all black anyway, but when the light cleared he saw before him a man, tumbling down from above and landing like a cat in a graceful kneeling position.
The man was the strangest he had ever seen. Despite his scraggly long brown hair and unkempt beard, he wore a sleek sliver one-piece jumpsuit, unlike any the other man recognized on planet earth. The stranger noticed the town layabout ambling toward him and ran toward him, and it was then that Mayhew found that he knew this strange man indeed.
—…George? George Moley? My God, is that really you? But where you been all this time? And…
—What year is it?
—But… but George, now listen-
The strange man grabbed Mayhew by the collar and shook him with all his might.
—The year, man!
The astonished man told him, and the stranger, apparently George Moley, since twice now he failed to deny it, relented his madman grip on the poor Mayhew and took a frantic look around. It was the same Podunk town square, almost exactly as he remembered leaving it.
—Two exactly… to the day.
—Well, come on now, let’s get you back home, your little girls miss you. And… what about Maria, where’d she…
—Maria… she, I… I couldn’t get her to come with me.
George stopped suddenly and looked behind himself. Mayhew could feel a strange energy in the air, as if every hair on his body was standing on edge.
—Get down.
—…for God’s sake, George, what are you…
—NOW!
Another brilliant flash erupted before Mayhew, and even in spite of George’s warning he fell to the ground anyway. When he dared to look up, he saw something even more astonishing.
Two other figures faced George, and while they technically looked human, with arms and legs and a head, they were anything but. Like George, they seemed to wear full-body suits, but unlike the other man it appeared to be an extension of their very bodies. Their “suits” shined a liquid silvery sheen, their “arms” and “legs” slithered like viscous tentacles toward the man, and their heads, which seemed little more than big fishbowl-shaped domes with a jet-black rectangular visor to “see,” nonetheless presented an expression of pure malice and ill-intent.
Worst of all was their voices. As one of them spoke to the other man, the scratchy, garbled voice echoed in directly into Mayhew’s head. No one was actually speaking but it was as loud as if someone was right beside him, and as horrible as someone scratching a black slate board with their fingernails.
Stop where you are, human. Surrender now, and return what you stole from us. Any further resistance from you is a declaration of war against your entire-
George answered not with words, but a gesture. With the speed of a lighting-fast quick-draw gunman, he swung his hand out, fingers splayed wide open, and the next thing Mayhew knew a huge lightning bolt blast shot out and disintegrated the first strange being. When he had the courage to look, there was nothing left but a smoking torso propped up by two legs, which impotently toppled to the ground.
This provoked a hostile reaction from the second weird being. It raised a tentacle arm and formed some kind of clear-yellow barrier, blocking George’s second lighting bolt attack. George in kind raised a hand and put up his own clear shield as his enemy fired blasts of its own from its fishbowl-head. They were at a stalemate for a while until George used some kind of strange power to levitate various objects, sign posts, garbage cans, and the like, and launch them at his foe, he waving his hands around like a symphony conductor. It failed to knock the thing back, but it did break its concentration a little in keeping up the shield.
Taking a big risk, George let down his own shield, put his hands together, and fired the biggest blast he could, which breached the weird thing’s own barrier and blew it up to dust in seconds.
Mayhew slowly raised himself to his feet, and George, seeing the coast was clear for now, went to him and pulled him up. He reached into a pocket on the strange silver suit and produced a tattered leather bound journal, which he shoved into Mayhew’s hands.
—Give this to my girls. Tell them they’ll be safer without me, and… and that I love them, with all my heart. And Maria… she loved them too. I’m going way out west, all the way up the mountain.
—The mountain… But George, you don’t mean…
—I don’t have a choice. If I don’t hide from them they’ll keep sending more and more after me. Tell them I’m dead, you hear? Tell them you saw some aliens fall from the sky and blast me to hell if you want, but tell them I’m dead! I… after what I seen, I should be dead.
And then, as if he hadn’t seen enough sights that night to positively stupefy him, Mayhew watched George Moley turn sharply away, look up to the night sky, and lift off the ground in an instant and fly away, like a speeding firework, or a hummingbird. The speck on the horizon that was once George Moley right in front of him headed west, as he said. West, and up the mountain.
He knew what George meant when he said “the mountain.” Technically, if you opened an atlas you’d find it was called Mount Itoi, which in the language of the first tribe who lived there meant something like “black cloud,” mostly likely for the perpetual storm clouds that hovered over its peak like a dark halo. No one ever went up that mountain, for certain death indeed at the hands of all kinds of outlandish horrors lied in wait for any foolish enough to try and scale that cursed summit: Wild beasts, ghosts of restless murdered men, cackling mad witches, metallic demons ascended from hell itself to roam the cursed land. But since that fateful night, when George Moley fell from the sky and flew away after two years vanished, people from all over called it one name and one name only…
The Holy Moley Mountain.
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You’ve been listening to "The Podcast Against Giygas!" The Podcast Against Giygas is an audiobook written and performed by me, Garrett McMahon, based on Mother, the 1989 video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System directed by Shigesato Itoi, with production by William Pawlowski, and thumbnail design and art direction by David Peters.
This podcast is a guaranteed masterpiece! It is also a fan-made project affiliated in no way whatsoever with the Nintendo Corporation or Mr. Itoi. This podcast is free to listen to, ad-free, and always will be. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode, and I’ll see you back next time, but no crying till the ending!
