transcript
Speaker 1:
[00:00] This week's episode is brought to you by Well Go USA's new creature feature horror, The Yeti, only in AMC Theaters April 4th and 8th, and on digital April 10th. When an oil tycoon and a famous adventurer disappear into the frozen wilderness of Northern Alaska, a hand-picked rescue team ventures in to bring them home. But they're not alone. They've crossed into the Yeti's territory, and the brutal elements are the least of their worries. Packed with blood-splattered suspense, a towering beast and gruesome practical effects, the Yeti is a throwback to the glory days of monster movies. Starring Brittany Allen, Eric Nelson, Jim Cummings, William Sadler and Corbin Bernstein, don't miss it. The Yeti. Only in AMC Theaters April 4th and 8th, and on digital April 10th.
Speaker 2:
[00:48] For an ad-free experience, visit theobsidiancovenant.com.
Speaker 3:
[00:58] Hello, yes, go ahead and close the door behind you, all the way if you don't mind. I would be remiss if I did not equate you with this new consignment that came in today. With your name on it, nonetheless. A recovered uniform fragment, issued, we believe, to operators of what was once a mobile vendor service. A cap, white canvas, structured front, slightly yellowing along the seams. There's a stitched emblem on the front. Mr. Frosty. There are patterns associated with this lot. Repeated observations, consistent timing, and always music. You'll recognize, most people do. That, unfortunately, appears to be part of the mechanism. Settle in for a tasty treat called, if you see an ice cream truck in your neighborhood, go inside and lock your doors. Before we begin, I want to point out some of the customers whose names have been etched in brass on this beautiful plaque I had made above the front desk. These are some of the members of the inner circle of the Antiquarium. We go by the Obsidian Covenant. Recent initiates include, Megan Lin, Carl Ram, Hot Cakes, Shrub, Dan, Lucas Callian, and definitely not a stick figure and not her daughter Gertrude either. We are ever appreciative of your devotion to the Order. Go to theobsidiancovenant.com to receive the sacrament. Sounds harmless enough, right? Welcome to The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings and our outgoings on.
Speaker 4:
[03:49] If you see an ice cream truck in your neighborhood, go inside and lock your doors. I don't know how many of them are infected, so you need to listen closely. This is life or death. Mid-afternoon is when they come. There are boxy white trucks trawling the neighborhood streets. That familiar ice cream truck jingle pepping out from roof-mounted loudspeakers and beckoning the neighborhood kids. If you hear that song, the one everyone knows, plug your ears until you get inside. Once inside, shutter your blinds, press yourself small in the darkest corner of your house, and wait until the storm passes. And whatever you do, don't let your children near the truck. I don't know how it started, or if it will end. I don't think it will. But all that matters is that you follow the rules. It's an incomplete list. I don't know everything, and I don't want to. But I know enough to make a survival guide that might spare others the ruin that's torn my family to shreds. So if you want to stay alive, pay attention. One, plug your ears if you hear the jingle. Make sure your kids do, too. If they can hear it, the truck will draw them like a magnet. If that happens, it's already too late. Two, if your child steps up to the truck, turn and run. They're as good as gone. There's no use trying to save them. It's a cowardly thing, but save yourself. Three, previous rule holds more importance if you have other family. If you're gone too, they'll come looking, and the truck will be waiting. The thing that comes home later that night is not them.
Speaker 5:
[06:58] Ignore it.
Speaker 4:
[07:00] It will go away. I learned this the hard way.
Speaker 2:
[07:08] Pfft.
Speaker 4:
[07:09] I guess I sound crazy. I wish I was. I wish it were all some fucked up fever dream that I could sweat out in a scalding shower and forget. I get it. My word carries no credence.
Speaker 6:
[07:32] Maybe.
Speaker 4:
[07:35] Maybe if I tell you what happened, you'll actually listen. It was a Friday, and it was the end of a perfect summer. The whole world seemed captured in amber. My daughter and wife were off doing a girls' day, and my son and I were doing a boys' one. The kids were both eight. Twins, if you're wondering. And still in that phase where hanging out with mom and dad was fun. We were strolling back from the park when a familiar jingle pealed out through the neighborhood. The ice cream man had found his way to our little slice of suburbia. My son Kyle's blue eyes went wide, a little tug of blonde hair shifting over them as he looked up at me. He didn't even need to ask.
Speaker 7:
[08:31] Sure, bud, I said with a grin.
Speaker 4:
[08:34] He bounced with excitement, pounded off down the sidewalk as the boxy white Mr. Frosty's ice cream truck turned the corner, and it trundled up our quiet suburban tract. It crunched to a stop aside my son maybe 25 feet from me. I watched as Kyle took his place beneath the little awning, his wide eyes scanning the menu. I couldn't see the driver. The window was tinted, but there must have been someone inside because the serving window scraped open. I shouldn't have been able to hear it from where I was, but I could. The awful sound of abused metal screeching on rusty rollers. The inside of the truck was drenched in shadow, like the slant of afternoon sunlight didn't match that deep, inky darkness in battle. I should have sensed something was wrong. It felt off. It felt cold all of a sudden, like that truck had sent a chilly wind biting up the street. Up until then, I had been taking my time joining my boy, leisurely motoring up the sidewalk without a care in the world. Then that chill nibbled through my bones. It triggered something visceral. An air raid siren went howling through my head, every fiber of my being screaming at me that something was off. I don't know why I did it, but I fell into a spirit. A full-tilted blind bottle rushed down the sidewalk. My chest squeezed tight. My swollen thundering heart fought my lungs for space in a ribcage that was too tiny and full of drying cement. The houses, the upper-middle-class family homes with white trim and manicured lawns, shifted into a colorful blur as I bombed down the sidewalk. My legs scissored beneath me. My arms pumped. My cold-breath whip cracked through my shrinking lungs. Kyle might have heard the slap thought of my sneakers hammering the sidewalk, but I don't think he heard that either. He sensed something was wrong. He sensed it with that preternatural ability afforded only to children, the one that tells them when mom and dad are fighting, even when they can't hear it from across the house. He turned, his blonde hair whipping in the wind. He looked at me with those piercing blue eyes, and his eyes blew like two little oceans cooling off a face of sunshine. And then the ice cream man took him. The mass of spider legs exploded out of the darkness and sucked my son through the window like shrink wrap through a vacuum cleaner. He snapped back like a ragdoll in the seething tangle of hairy, jointed feelers. And now I did scream. Wailed my son's name. He didn't have time to scream. I heard the whoosh of air from his mouth as the spider legs torn back by the stomach. He blipped through the window. His head smacked the top of the frame and cracked forward. And lolled like a dead thing on his neck as he disappeared into the truck. I ran harder. The world tilted and swayed underfoot like I was barreling up the deck of a ship in stormy waters. My vision blurred, doubled, snapped together and shot into focus as I lurched up to the ice cream truck. Then I froze. My lungs snapped like rubber bands and a thin whistle of air escaped my nostrils. My whole body crawled. My heart was galloping through my ribcage like a mile-wide herd of bison. The inside of the truck was impossible. It was too big. It was a dystopian nightmare. Like the truck was a portal to the killing floor of a massive slaughterhouse. The rotten husks of cattle shoots and blood-stained linoleum textured a sprawling plant like the fossils of a forgotten industry. But it wasn't redone. It was dark, soaked in shadow. But I could see their pale, fragile shapes limping along for slaughter. Faces slack, eyes glazed like broken, violated dolls. The livestock was children, hundreds of them, caked in their own filth, shuffling along chutes while hulking figures in blood-stained aprons. And USGI cold-weather masks butchered them alive. There were no screams. That was the worst part. It was deadly silent. Just the weak shuffle of feet, the wet tear of curved knives opening throats, the syrupy slap of blood hitting the floor. The dead were hoisted ankle-up on a conveyor system, like it had dry cleaners, which zipped them off through a darkened portal into the unknown, a hot trail of blood still spraying from their severed necks. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't blink. I felt my stomach churning with nausea. A hot rush of vomit threatening its way up. Then something grabbed at me. I jumped back and screamed as the pale little hand reached for his daddy.
Speaker 8:
[15:01] It was Kyle.
Speaker 4:
[15:04] His head pitched at a wrong angle on his broken neck. His eyes were dead, but there was still a little piece of him buried somewhere in there. Because he said a single word in a voice I would never hear again.
Speaker 9:
[15:22] Run.
Speaker 4:
[15:24] Then he slammed closed the serving window. As it cracked shut, I saw the mass of spider legs encircle him from behind like interlacing fingers. The hairy legs covered his mouth, his eyes tore him backwards and sent him into the slaughter line. Then the truck was driving off. The ice cream jingle crackling cheerfully from its roof-mounted speaker.
Speaker 3:
[16:39] Before we continue, a brief matter of bookkeeping. You see, even here, in a place such as this, things have a way of accumulating. Small charges. Items one does not remember agreeing to, unattended they grow.
Speaker 5:
[16:58] Quietly.
Speaker 3:
[17:00] Restlessly. Subscriptions in particular. One concerning funerary textiles in Eastern Europe, another, a quarterly on liturgical anomalies. Useful at times, but not always necessary to maintain. And that is precisely why I have taken to using Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. It allows me to see everything in one place, particularly those recurring charges that might otherwise go unnoticed. And when something is no longer required, it can be handled within the app in just a few taps. No need to go searching for where to begin. It also organizes transactions automatically, clear categories, patterns, and full accounting of where things are going. There is a certain comfort in that. In knowing nothing is slipping through. If you've been meaning to bring your own accounts into order, I would recommend it. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocketmoney.com/sinister. That's rocketmoney.com/sinister. rocketmoney.com/sinister. Descend into the unexplained and unimaginable.
Speaker 2:
[18:40] Mom said to them, what are you here for?
Speaker 10:
[18:42] What do you want?
Speaker 8:
[18:42] That's not human!
Speaker 4:
[18:43] That's not human!
Speaker 3:
[18:45] True accounts of crimes and anomalies so strange, they defy reasoning.
Speaker 8:
[18:50] It was extreme violence.
Speaker 10:
[18:52] I've never seen anything like it.
Speaker 2:
[18:53] She was forced to eat human flesh and survive the unthinkable.
Speaker 3:
[18:57] Welcome to the Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings and documented atrocities.
Speaker 10:
[19:03] And at that moment, the feeling to survive kicked in almost like an animal instinct. I told her to run.
Speaker 11:
[19:09] I knew that minute something terrible had happened.
Speaker 4:
[19:12] Why would somebody do this to him?
Speaker 7:
[19:14] Why would they try to hurt my baby?
Speaker 2:
[19:27] Search The Antiquarium of Documented Atrocities on Apple, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 10:
[19:32] A presentation of Bloody FM.
Speaker 3:
[19:38] Your patience protects more than you think. Now then, let's return to him. He's just about to understand, shall we?
Speaker 4:
[19:51] The hairy legs covered his mouth, his eyes, tore him backwards and sent him into the slaughter line. Then the truck was driving off. The ice cream jingle crackling cheerfully from its roof-mounted speaker. I growled up the street, turned and disappeared from view, carrying off my only son for good. I'll never forget the way my wife screamed when she came home. When I told her what happened among the mess of hellish police lights and detectives in cheap suits, her face crumpled. She dropped to her knees and howled for her son. I hugged my daughter and cried into her blonde curls. The first 24 hours are the most important in abduction cases. But I knew that didn't matter. Knew what I'd seen. Knew my boy was gone for good. Which as it turns out wasn't entirely the case, but I knew it just the same on the afternoon that Kyle stopped for ice cream. I didn't tell the detectives what I had seen. How could I? They would have thought I was spinning tall tales to disabuse my guilty conscience of the fact that I had hurt my only boy, and they would have slammed me into an interrogation cell as a lead suspect. So I lied. I told them a Mr. Frosty's ice cream truck had taken him. They put out a state-wide APB. They found nothing. Me and my wife Jessica didn't sleep that night. Her face was puffy, eyes red with tears. Maya understood what was happening. Of course she did. Despite being eight, she was smart as hell and quick to catch on. She also knew that mom and dad needed to be alone, so she put herself to bed without much fuss. I was numb. My whole body was cold. It was a sick lie, giving my wife any hope. I knew deep down, deep in the furthest pits of my stomach, that our son was dead. All of those children were dead. I blindly shuffled up the murder chute to those massive things and bloody aprons with their gore-drenched knives and their horrific USGI cold weather masks. My wife had said something. I looked up at her.
Speaker 6:
[22:49] What?
Speaker 4:
[22:51] She blew snot into a tissue, crumpled it up.
Speaker 11:
[22:54] I think Kyle's out there. We should be looking for him, trying to find that truck.
Speaker 4:
[23:00] She cut me in accusing glare. She blamed me. I knew she did, which wasn't her fault. The police said we'd... I staw my sentence. My daughter's pale shape, gowned in her PJ onesie, clutching her pink blanket, had appeared in the doorway. Honey, I rose and swept my up. She looked at me, her eyes wide, wide with fear.
Speaker 5:
[23:29] Of me?
Speaker 8:
[23:31] No, no.
Speaker 4:
[23:33] I knew that, that instant, what she was afraid of.
Speaker 11:
[23:40] He's home, daddy.
Speaker 8:
[23:44] Kyle's home.
Speaker 4:
[23:48] The thing at the back door wasn't our son. It looked like Kyle. It walked like him. It wasn't him. It was hail, drenched in mud, its eyes cold and dead. Not the warm ocean puddles that had been before, but two icy marbles that could freeze with a look. My wife sobbed, wrapped Kyle in an embrace. He didn't hug back. The two cold eyes were pinned on me, a knowing smile breaking his face. Why did you do it, dad? He said as we led him into the living room, I could feel Maya's body tense up against mine, I knew something bad was about to happen.
Speaker 8:
[24:42] What?
Speaker 4:
[24:43] My wife asked her son, Why did you try to kill me?
Speaker 11:
[24:46] Try to kill me?
Speaker 9:
[24:47] Huh, dad?
Speaker 1:
[24:48] Mom, I thought you loved me.
Speaker 4:
[24:51] His head reared back impossibly far on his neck, and his mouth curved into a dark O. He made a throaty gurgling sound. His eyes rolled back into their sockets, showing only the whites. Jessica looked at me, eyes wide, then at Kyle. I don't think she realized that she had started backing up. I don't think I did either. We backed into the living room, Kyle bearing down on us, forcing us back. Maya had started to sob into my shirt, her tears warm and salty were warming my chest. The O of Kyle's mouth continued to expand, drawing further and further as he spoke again. Only this time, his lips didn't move, and the voice, deeper, warped, like the words of a demon from the mouth of the possessed, came hissing out of his throat.
Speaker 6:
[25:45] Why, Dad? Why'd you fucking do it?
Speaker 3:
[25:48] You're not killing little kids, Dad!
Speaker 6:
[25:50] Wanna kill Maya? Wanna see her pigtails roughed in BRAIN?
Speaker 4:
[25:59] The thing chuckled as Kyle's mouth continued pulling back. His lips were coated in bile, his teeth were brown and jacked. Jessica's head was on a swivel between our son and me. Her legs hit the couch, and gravity planted her ass on the cushion. The corners of my son's mouth tore. Revolutes of blood sletted down his throat. His mouth continued to pull back, like his head was splitting up on a hinge.
Speaker 9:
[26:39] Make him stop, dad!
Speaker 4:
[26:41] I couldn't speak. My voice was lost. I fished for it. My atom's apple bobbing, but it wouldn't come out. Kyle's mouth split wider. Wider bone and tendon snapping and crackling. His lower face soaked in blood.
Speaker 6:
[26:59] You will never be a butcher, dad. Feel the warm rush of blood over your hands. Feel your knife scrape bone as they train.
Speaker 4:
[27:23] I saw his throat distended and undulated like It was a knot of fingers trying to claw their way out. Then Kyle's head tore back, his cheeks ripping, his mouth forced open in an awful, hellish grin, and the mass of hairy spider legs exploded from his throat. My wife started to scream, and one of the spider legs spattered her across the face. Her head snapped around, crackled, and she pitched forward with about as much life in her bones as a sack of grain. That galvanized me into motion. I tossed my daughter under the couch and lurched for the rack of fireplace tools. The spider legs crackled and snapped, flickering around like a net of tendrils for my son's broken mouth. Maya was shrieking. Her face crumpled in terror. The spider legs lunged for her, shot forward for her delicate little form. I tore the poker free of the fire rack and whipped around, using my forward momentum to bring the instrument down with as much force as I could muster. Only I missed. God, how I missed. Maya had lunged, had lunged away from the spider thing trying to kill her. She had lunged right into the arc of my swing. The barbed end of the poker hit the center of her skull and went burrowing into her brain. I felt bones snap like glass. I felt the poker ease into the spongy folds of her mind. She fell like she was a puppet and I had cut her strings. A little sob escaped as she glinted face down with a sickening thud. Her hand made a tiny fist and she died. The Kyle thing began to roar with laughter. It turned on me, the spider legs flickering and pulsing, snapping in all directions like ten of those dealership tomb men. Kyle let out a surprised gasp. The spider legs snapped erect like soldiers at attention as the animation drained from my son's face. The end of the poker, which I had wrenched free from Maya's broken mind, was now jutting from my son's left eye. His ocean blue eyeball had deflated. A thin run of pus ran down one cheek. Then the tendrils sucked back into his mouth with a throaty gurgle, and my son pitched forward as dead as the rest of my family. I stood there, misted in my children's blood and started to cry. I can hear the sirens getting closer. I write this as a warning, a pleading cry for others to listen. I'm not looking for absolution. I'm broken, a man ruined by the ice cream truck that rode in on a hot summer day. I'm sure you'll all see my name bolded in the paper, conjoined to some variation of the term family annihilator. But it wasn't me. I bear blame.
Speaker 6:
[31:21] God, how I do.
Speaker 4:
[31:24] But it wasn't all me. Please don't make the same mistake I did. And if your kids ask for ice cream, buy them a tub of the store-bought stuff. It's just as good.
Speaker 3:
[32:22] Thank you for your patronage. Hope you enjoyed your new relic as much as I've enjoyed passing along its sordid history. It does come with our usual warning, however. Absolutely no refunds, no exchanges, and we won't be held liable for anything that may or may not occur while the object is in your possession. If you've got an artifact with mysterious properties, perhaps it's accompanied by a history of bizarre and disturbing circumstances. Maybe you'd be interested in dropping it and its story by the shop to share with other customers. Please reach out to antiquariumshop.gmail.com. A member of our team will be in touch. Till next time, we'll be waiting for you whenever you close your eyes in the space between sleep and dream.
Speaker 2:
[33:48] The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings, Lot 120. If you see an ice cream truck in your neighborhood, go inside and lock your doors. Consigned by The Crooked Boy, starring Conan Freeman, Everett Shand, Jade Shand, and Romy Evans, featuring Stephen Knowles as the antique dealer. Engineering production and sound design by Trevor Shand and Lauren Shand. Theme music by The Newton Brothers. Additional music by Co.Ag, Vivek Abhishek, Clement Panchout, Nicholas Redding, and Conan Freeman. The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings is created and curated by Trevor and Lauren Shand. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at AntiquariumPod. Call The Antiquarium at 646-481-7197.
Speaker 7:
[34:51] Imagine a city, unlike any other, simmering 300 years in a raucous gumbo of debauchery versus devotion, Catholicism.
Speaker 8:
[35:01] Confession is anonymous.
Speaker 7:
[35:03] Versus voodoo.
Speaker 8:
[35:04] I think I done made a deal with the devil.
Speaker 7:
[35:09] What you call life.
Speaker 6:
[35:11] And what I called death.
Speaker 7:
[35:15] It's a mysterious crossroads where the denizens of this world. And others.
Speaker 9:
[35:20] He is a trickster, and I'm sure whatever he brought back from the world of the dead was a one-way trip.
Speaker 7:
[35:26] Collide Daily. And for Detective Frank Dupreeh, I will see you in there. And Nicky Goodluck. This will be a dark ride. Welcome to New Orleans, babies.
Speaker 5:
[35:42] Listen to Something Wicked on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you enjoy listening.