Pod Insights Spooked Old Gods of Appalachia - Part 1 About this episode In the early decades of the 20th century, unions are on the rise in coal country. Those who toil beneath the dark earth balk under the yoke of the Barrow family’s rule, and something must be done.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Glynn Washington? There's a place with a road. On the road walks the man. In his hand, there's a knife as he strides through the land. Past the farm, past the town, past the fool, past the dam. Don't wonder, don't cry, don't argue, don't try. There is no stopping this man with this blade in his hand.
0:30 Glynn Washington? You've crossed over to a very special episode of Spooked. Stay tuned.
0:40 Speaker 01 Why have so many crop circles appeared around Britain? How did thousands of people demonstrate powers of telepathy? Can the dead suck the life from the living? Join me, Tim Harford, for a trip into the paranormal throughout Halloween month on Cautionary Tales. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:12 Glynn Washington? Spooksters, there's a place I visited recently where at first, things seemed like everywhere else. Mostly nice people, good people doing the best they can. But still, in this place, things, they seem to twinkle, to hum, sometimes even growl. In a lot of other places, they try to forget, but this place, this place seems to remember, recall events that were supposed to be long forgotten. For whatever reason, they can't stay buried here. A place where stories are not just stories and monsters are not about bedtime.
1:55 Glynn Washington? And this place, it's too delicious. It's too magical, too born of shadow for me to keep it to myself. So today, I'm opening the door, inviting you to cross through with me into old gods of Appalachia.
2:16 Glynn Washington? Now these mountains, you may think you know. The hills and hollers some of us remember from childhood, but look closer. The towns, they might have other names, or no names at all. What happened in the 1900s might happen tomorrow, or may not have happened yet, and yes, there are monsters. Get ready. Part one, Old Gods of Appalachia, starts now.
2:53 Speaker 02 Old Gods of Appalachia is a horror anthology podcast, and therefore may contain material not suitable for all audiences. So listener discretion is advised.
3:19 Speaker 02 The Barrow clan began digging deep in the mountains of Appalachia, and selling what they found there long before this country was even the radical dream of a few folks looking to dodge some taxmen from across the ocean. By the 1800s, their influence in the mountains of Pennsylvania had become such an accepted fact of life that the little mountain township of Pine Grove was renamed Barrow to honor the family and the company they had founded. There is power in a name family, and in this case, a great, dark power. The rechristen of the town brought with it a great festival
4:02 Speaker 02 celebrating the glorious history of coal, the bituminous, and the anthracite, the soft and the hard, the graves both deep and shallow.
4:12 Speaker 02 The local holiday culminated in a ceremony atop Coal Hill, the high point and center of town, atop which crouched the Barrow Mining Company's newly-built home office. A grand and sprawling affair of limestone and white columns topped with a shining copper dome that shamed the local churches and the county courthouse with its stateliness. Well, after a marching band played and paychecks were handed out early, the patriarch of the Barrow family, one Elias Pontius Barrow, known to most folks as simply EP, flanked by his adult children, delivered a speech on the front steps of that grand new building
4:50 Speaker 02 wherein he unveiled the new town sign, which featured the family name and the date carved deep into its stone face. It also bore a line of strange symbols upon it, words etched in a tongue that no human mouth should have ever been able to speak, but EP Barrow did just that. His mouth contorting to produce sounds that pierced the ear and clouded the mind, and with those words came a great shaking and breaking of the earth, and the hill cracked, and a great crevice opened in the ground, beginning at the front of Coal Hill and snaking
5:30 Speaker 02 right up to the foundations of the home office, and from it issued a cloud of sooty darkness that swept into the air like sentient ash. Women and children screamed and ran for cover, but the working men of Barrow, most still in their uniforms, stood rooted to the spot, unable to flee. As the townfolk of the newly-baptized Barrow, Pennsylvania breathed in the black dust that blew forth from that breach that had opened beneath their feet, EP Barrow walked calmly up the steps of his new office, stepped inside and proceeded down to the cellar, where the shiny new marble floor had split wide.
6:13 Speaker 02 His two eldest sons Conrad and Benuel followed in his wake. And without another word, E.P. took off his coat and his hat and lay down, still breathing, in a coffin carved from a cold ebony wood. The box was etched inside and out in the alien script that adorned the new town sign. The same fell tongue that had cracked the earth was still groaned and trembled beneath the foundations, and with a nod to his boys, E.P. was sealed up and lowered into the widening crack of the breach as the ground tripped and shook.
6:53 Speaker 02 And when the chains lowering the coffin were pulled taut, and he could be lowered no further, and it seemed like the whole damn hill was gonna fold into itself, Conrad turned to Benuel, and without so much as a hurried breath, slashed his younger sibling's throat with a hunting knife. Conrad tossed his bleeding brother after their father's casket into the roaring darkness, and silence fell across the town. In the gathering dusk on Coal Hill, the employees of the Barrow Mining Company were still gathered, rooted in the place where they had listened to E.P.'s address.
7:33 Speaker 02 Their mouths hummed slack, and their eyes stretched wide, cast skyward, alight the color of rotten plums blossoming in those dilated black portals. The dust, or soot, or whatever it was that had issued from the breach swept through the unresistant crowd like a swarm of locusts, moving through each body in turn to consume blood and soft tissue, and carve out the living soul that resided in each, creating empty vessels for the Barrow family to work its will upon the world, and leaving them as
8:17 Speaker 02 hollow, as hollow can be. And with its capital thus established, the Barrow Mining Company set its sights on expansion.
8:49 Speaker 02 These old hills call For the blood of my body. I pound the flesh for a ton of coal. So down I go Into a dark hell waiting Where longs turn black and hordes grow cold. And I'll take to the hills, running from the devil To the dying sun. Something way my way comes And treads off my friend
9:33 Speaker 02 To these shadows where the old ones roam. Where in these hills we die Alone.
10:12 Speaker 02 Throughout the eighteen hundreds, barrow operations spread throughout the hills and hollers of Appalachia like a blight. Absorbing smaller mines and acquiring adjacent land from the people who'd settled there by whatever means proved necessary, and for some families, it didn't take much truth to tell. Frontier life was hard. Breaking the backs and hearts of a goodly number of folks who pushed west in search of a place they could put down roots and call their own. Flash a little coin their way, enough say to let them, uh, return to the more established cities back east, and they were more than happy to cede their claim to a land that had never wanted them here in the first place.
10:56 Speaker 02 Others though, others had managed to carve out a home for themselves in this unforgiving land, settling into the mountains like a hand into a glove, and those would require a different approach. The approaching question often involved a visit from a special representative of the Barrow Mining Company, someone with the requisite skills to clarify for the more intransigent residents why accepting the Barrows' offer was in fact, in the best interest of them, their families, and quite possibly everyone they knew. If the landowners proved more resistant than usual, a member of the Barrow family might
11:39 Speaker 02 need to pay a personal call. Now for decades, this duty fell to E.P.'s younger son, Benuel, a visit from a dead man making quite the impression on most folks who suddenly found they might be willing to reconsider the Barrows' generous offer after all. Over the years, however, Benuel started to be more of a problem, becoming less predictable, harder to control. He might be sent to a tiny coal camp as a misbegotten holler in West Virginia, tasked with ridding the Barrows of a meddlesome tax assessor, and end up laying waste to the entire town. It's a common thing with haints who have overstayed their welcome on this mortal plane,
12:24 Speaker 02 you see, clinging to a life that has long since ceased to be theirs to claim. Their behavior becomes more erratic and dangerous. While E.P. had no concern for the collateral damage his younger boy might do to the communities where he was sent, Benuel's disobedience was becoming a problem. Replacing a town's entire labor force was costly and inefficient.
12:54 Speaker 02 Benuel was fast becoming a liability in the field and Conrad had the whole of the Barrow Clean's business interests to attend to on his father's behalf, and thus EP turned his eye to the concept of producing another heir.
13:10 Speaker 02 The process of expanding the Barrow family was lengthy and was delicate work. See, Conrad and Benuel were not EP's only progeny, no.
13:21 Speaker 02 They were simply his only children fit to represent the public face of Barrow Mining Company, the only ones who could pass relatively unnoticed amongst its human workforce. Yet, something had to be done, and so EP instructed his sons to add more links to the great iron chain that suspended the black box that had been prepared for him.
13:47 Speaker 02 And they lowered him even further into the earth, deep beneath the grand home office he had constructed. Conrad barred the door that led to the building so that none might disturb him and dismissed the staff for several months so none could carry the tales of the sounds that echoed up from beneath the family's headquarters. The foundations trembled. The air inside that place grew unaccountably cold, far colder than the snow that fell on the mountains around Coal Hill. Dread voices echoed up from the places below in a language that even Conrad and Benuel could not understand, and EP's sons quaked with fear.
14:27 Speaker 02 And then, on a bleak night in the heart of winter, beneath a moonless, empty sky, the heavy chains rattled and clanked again as EP's box emerged from the depths.
14:47 Speaker 02 And unto him was born a daughter.
14:54 Speaker 02 Polly Barrow was everything the Barrow patriarch could have desired in his progeny. Brilliant, beautiful, and strong. Oh, so strong. Her particular talents began to manifest at the tender age of three, when a well-meaning nanny clasped the hand of the fussy toddler who wanted to stay outside and chase lightning bugs around the family's sprawling country estate, rather than come inside for dinner. The young woman had only meant to draw the little girl alongside her into the house, but Polly responded with force. Her tiny hand morphing subtly into a huge gauntlet armored with plates of bone,
15:35 Speaker 02 and little Polly had simply crushed the bones of the nanny's hand. And then her mutant paw returned to its normal dimension, slipped free of her pulpy grasp, and returned to trailing her new glowing friends around the manicured lawn. E.P. could not have been more proud. His daughter's strength was matched only by her relentlessness in pursuit of her aims, and E.P. set about honing her into a weapon that could be used deftly in any number of situations, depending on his need. E.P. needed a tool that was versatile, adaptable, and above all, ruthless.
16:17 Speaker 02 And pretty Polly more than fit the bill. Were there palms to be greased in the halls of government? Polly's intelligence, her stature, and demeanor demanded respect, even from the human men who played at their petty politics. Must deals be struck with the wealthy and the powerful? Well, Polly was a shrewd negotiator and a charming dinner guest, the foreman at one of the smaller mining operations, taking more than his fair share from the cookie jar, thinking no one in faraway Barrow would notice. Polly was there to swing the axe and cut off the offending hand. Grubby roughnecks making a fuss about working conditions in the mine, well, sweet Polly could be counted on to make an example that made a lasting impression.
17:04 Speaker 02 The need for those examples became more and more persistent as the new century progressed and the unions began to take hold. The rabble had seized upon the troubling idea that they were owed something by those for whom they toiled beneath the dark earth, and this simply would not do. Thus it fell to Polly to collapse mine shafts and break spines and mount heads on pikes, wherever a lesson needed to be taught. It was becoming a rather annoying waste of her time, particularly as the workers grew more agitated with the hardships visited upon them by the previous year's stock market crash.
17:44 Speaker 02 It seemed, however, that her father had devised a plan to put the cattle firmly in their places once and for all. And thus, in the autumn of 1930, Polly's older brother Conrad summoned her home to hear the voice of their patriarch. The sun had just sunk beneath the hills, painting the sky an orange fire, when the sleek, black Cadillac pulled up the gently curving paved road that wound up Coal Hill to the stately limestone mansion that had come to be known as Barrow House, which had
18:25 Speaker 02 served as the family's base of operations now for more than a hundred years. And though they had allied themselves with Lock Rail some time ago to form the Barrow and Lock Mining Combine, the two families maintained a number of separate business interests and their distance, trust being in short supply among the heirs and those who served them. Two men, one a towering lanky man with a perpetual stoop, the other, compact, solidly built and elegantly dressed, stepped out of the car, and the driver turned to quickly open the door for his backseat passenger.
19:08 Speaker 02 The woman who emerged was tall and shapely, with glossy black hair pinned back in soft waves, smooth alabaster skin and amber eyes. She wore a fine gray wool suit with a narrow pleated skirt and a graceful swing coat and matching hat, and a deep red blouse printed with white lilies. Her fine leather t strap heels matched the blouse perfectly. They made a sharp clicking sound as she ascended the marble steps to a pair of wide double doors already peeling off her gloves as she walked.
20:09 Speaker 02 The doors swung open as her foot struck the top step, held wide for her by a pair of nervous-looking clerks who kept their eyes on their toes as they mumbled, "E- e- e- evening, Miss Barra." Polly Barra removed her hat and handed it to the nearest of the two, while the tall man who had driven the car stepped forward to take her coat. Coat and gloves were also deposited with the clerk.
20:35 Speaker 03 Mr. Crane, Mr. Churchman, with me, please.
20:40 Speaker 02 She proceeded with quick, purposeful strides down a dark hallway to the right of the entrance, her two subordinates trailing in her wake. Crane and Churchman had served Polly almost exclusively since the mid twenties, an honor they had earned through hard work and a willingness to get their hands dirty when the situation called for it. This was not the first time they had been called into the presence of the patriarch, and they did not hesitate. Still, she could sense their discomfort. Even among the hollow, there remained a healthy fear of those who bore the name of Barra, and that was good.
21:23 Speaker 02 A tool which had no sense of self-preservation could not be relied upon to behave appropriately in certain situations.
21:32 Speaker 02 Complications could arise. Look at Benial, Polly thought, as she descended the shallow marble stairs into the basement, a space that had become her father's office and throne room and sanctuary and temple. The sigils that adorned the black box that was E.P. Barrow's beer and throne had spread over the years, creeping up the walls and etching their way deep into the marble beneath her feet. Many of these had accompanied Polly's own conception, a powerful evocation that had further cracked the foundations of Barrow House, shattering glass up above and nearly
22:14 Speaker 02 shaking the walls apart, and thus had been present all her life. Others had appeared later, mementos of her father's will made manifest. As they stepped through the door of the sanctuary, Crane and churchmen each sank to one knee on either side of the door, bowing their heads in reverence. Across the room, Polly's brothers each held a similar position on the edge of the crevasse into which their father's coffin was sunk. A heavy crate rested on the floor between them. It was hewn from the same night-black wood as their father's coffin, carved with runes
22:58 Speaker 02 that the eye couldn't quite settle on, and curiously featured a number of holes cut into the sides along its top edges. Polly's heels echoed on the cold marble as she approached. She did not kneel as her brothers did, though she inclined her head respectfully as she greeted their father.
23:20 Speaker 03 Evening Daddy.
23:23 Speaker 03 Boys.
23:24 Speaker 02 Conrad and Benuel glared at her over their shoulders. Relations between the Barra siblings had never been particularly warm, and E.P.'s obvious preference for the child he spoke of as his greatest creation had not improved matters. Duty was duty, however, and Polly's eldest brother Conrad was nothing if not an obedient soldier in E.P. Barra's service. He inclined his head to his younger sister in greeting as he spoke.
23:59 Speaker 04 Our father has an important errand which he has chosen to entrust to you.
24:09 Speaker 02 Again, Benuel grated angrily, eyeing Polly with malice. If her incorporeal brother could do her harm, Polly didn't doubt that he would. But Benuel didn't have the juice these days. He might still be driving half-starved hillfolk to madness with a whisper, but he'd long since grown too weak to affect her. His days on this plane were numbered.
24:34 Speaker 03 Of course, I am, as always, at your disposal, Daddy.
24:45 Speaker 02 E.P.'s voice echoed from the depths, harsh and resonant, as his children flinched, snapping to attention.
24:54 Speaker 03 Yes, Daddy.
24:55 Speaker 04 Yes, sir. Yes, Daddy.
25:01 Speaker 03 Yes, of course.
25:08 Speaker 03 I understand. Thy will be done, Daddy.
25:12 Speaker 02 Conrad rose to his feet, gesturing to the heavy crate that Polly had noticed when she entered the sanctuary.
25:19 Speaker 04 The weapon is here, in the box.
25:22 Speaker 02 Polly strolled over to the crate, resting a hand lightly against its surface as she examined it. The wood was cold to the touch, but seemed unremarkable otherwise.
25:34 Speaker 03 What is it?
25:36 Speaker 02 You'll see. Polly knelt down to peer inside through one of the holes carved into the black walls of the box. Her eyes widened in surprise.
25:48 Speaker 04 Just take it to the coal camps and set it loose. It will perform the task it was created for, then you just load it back into the box and move on to the next, just as Father said.
26:01 Speaker 02 Unless, of course, you, ah, can't handle it. I'd be happy to take it off your hands.
26:12 Speaker 02 Polly narrowed her eyes and shot her brothers a poisonous smile.
26:16 Speaker 03 We'll be just fine, brother dear, but I appreciate your concern. Gentlemen, in the back of the car, if you please.
26:28 Speaker 02 Crane and Churchman rose to their feet and dutifully hoisted the unwieldy crate between them. She headed for the door, footsteps echoing on the stairs, and the two hollow men followed. Polly had learned long ago what could happen if you turned your back on Benuel Barrow, and she didn't think it wise to underestimate Conrad either. It paid to be cautious. The two clerks occupying the front desk in the lobby snapped to attention as soon as they saw her, one holding her coat for her while the other held the door open for her companions. Polly put on her coat, hat, and gloves and followed the two men outside.
27:11 Speaker 02 They had already loaded the crate onto the back of the car, and Mr. Churchman was sliding behind the wheel. Mr. Crane awaited Polly, holding the back door open for her.
27:24 Speaker 02 Home, Miss Barrow? Crane asked as she slid into the plush interior.
27:31 Speaker 03 No.
27:33 Speaker 03 West Virginia, I'm afraid. We're told the Union organizers are sniffing around again.
27:42 Speaker 03 The children have forgotten their lessons. And it falls to me, once again, to play school mistress.
27:51 Speaker 02 Yes ma'am. Crane joined Churchman up front passing on Polly's instructions. The car's powerful engine roared to life, and the three sped off into the night, southbound for the Barrow Coal Fields.
28:16 Speaker 02 Night stretched across the mountains of West Virginia.
28:22 Speaker 02 The sky twinkling blanket of stardust in the years before the ubiquitous light pollution of the modern world hid most of them from our view. A long black Cadillac drove through the night, navigating its way around the treacherous switchbacks as it slipped into the heart of Coal Country. Barrow County was dotted with numerous little coal towns of varying levels of prosperity, every one of which was owned, lock, stock, and barrel, by the Barrow and Lock Mining Combine.
28:58 Speaker 02 It was nearly morning by the time they reached their destination. A squat log cabin buried deep in the woods outside a thriving coal town called Kayboro. B and L had claimed the structure after its former occupant. An employee who was crushed in a mine shaft collapse left his surviving family heavily in debt to the Kayboro General Store. It had been used since then as a base of operation for visiting management. The little bungalow was situated a bit far from the rest of the coal camp to assign any of the workers to live there, but its isolation suited their needs perfectly.
29:42 Speaker 02 The caddy bumped up the narrow rutted track that led to the secluded cabin, and Mr. Churchman pulled around the back of the house to ensure that no one would detect their presence. Although anyone who'd made their way up the drive, which was mostly hidden from the road by overgrown brush and was more than casually curious, would be dealt with in a swift and final fashion. Mr. Crane hopped out of the car to open the door for Miss Barrow, while Mr. Churchman went around to the back of the car to unload the large crate they had obtained from Bear House. The dimensions of the box were somewhat awkward to manage, but it was not especially heavy,
30:24 Speaker 02 and Churchman needed no assistance maneuvering it inside the cabin, for he deposited it in the middle of the empty front room. Now despite its outward appearance, the little house was quite clean. Someone had swept the dust from the corners of the front room and wiped down the kitchen countertops recently. The double bed that had been squeezed into the cabin's single bedroom was laid with clean linens. The small lavatory wedged into an old closet behind the kitchen, a more recent addition clearly, appeared to have been scrubbed clean. Crane still gave the place a cursory sweep and wiped down the chairs at the kitchen table wouldn't do for Miss Barrow to get dust on her skirt now.
31:07 Speaker 02 But he and Mr. Churchman had visited the cabin not long ago, and they were always careful that their workspaces were scrubbed of any sign of their presence.
31:22 Speaker 02 Polly Barrow stepped inside and dropped her handbag on the kitchen counter. She hung her coat and hat on a hook by the door and took a moment to look around. The quarters were a bit cramped, and it certainly lacked the creature comfort she was accustomed to, but the cabin would more than suit their present purposes.
31:45 Speaker 02 One thing it did not afford her, however, was privacy, which was what she required at the moment, so she sent the two hollow men out to sit in the car for a while, until she'd done what was needed here.
32:00 Speaker 02 Polly kicked off her shoes and settled herself on the floor of the cabin next to the blackwood crate. She crossed her legs in front of her, making herself as comfortable as possible on the hardwood floor, and rested her hands lightly in her lap. She focused on her breathing, slow and deep, counting the seconds to balance each one in: one, two, three, four, and out: two, three, four, until soon she had no need to count.
32:44 Speaker 02 Polly's muscles relaxed. The hardwood floor drifted away, and softly she began to chant. The words were hard to pronounce, would have come impossible to any human tongue, but she had practiced them since childhood and had barely had to think about them anymore. Her daddy had taught her very well. But as she spoke the words, her voice took on a steady rhythm and cadence born of long practice, and her body began to rock along with it.
33:26 Speaker 02 Her voice rose and the words drowned out everything else. Her nerves thrummed, and then her mind opened, and the darkness poured in the side. And suddenly, she was someplace else.
33:45 Speaker 03 Daddy, I'm here.
33:48 Speaker 02 Polly called into the darkness, and her father answered.
34:00 Speaker 02 Polly had established the ability to speak with her daddy from outside the walls of Bear House early in life. And it was, as she understood it, not a talent either of her brothers shared. Polly and E.P. could even communicate privately while in the same room with Conrad and Benuel, and it was in this way that the Barrow patriarch had directed her to make contact with him for further instructions, once she arrived in West Virginia. He asked after her first. Had she made it safely to West Virginia? Was everything at the cabin in order? Did she have questions about her mission?
34:41 Speaker 02 He seemed unusually curious about her reaction to the assignment at hand.
34:49 Speaker 03 It seems an unusual choice of vessel, yes, but... I bow to your wisdom, as always.
35:02 Speaker 02 Polly didn't question her daddy. She was his most faithful disciple, his most dutiful soldier, his steadfast ally in all things. And Polly did as she was told. And she reaped the rewards of that loyalty. She had designer dresses and glittering rings to adorn her fingers. She had beautiful combs for her hair, carved from the bones of those her family had conquered and painted with gold. Was there a price to pay? Of course, power always comes at a cost. But the strong, the ruthless, are willing to pay the bill.
35:54 Speaker 02 Today, the account would be paid in pain. And that was fine with Polly. Her pain was only a small sacrifice in the face of her father's ambitions, and in any case, it was necessary in order to fulfill her mission. Her daddy needed to impart some knowledge to her, the complexity of which would boil any holy human mind in its skull like an egg. And Polly had been built close enough to human that it would cost her. But she could handle it. She could always handle it.
36:32 Speaker 03 Ah. I see. Yes. Yes. Yes daddy. I'm ready. Ah, ah!
36:48 Speaker 02 Darkness poured into Polly Barrow's mind, in a language she could not yet read, though she recognized some of the symbols as those adorning Barrow's town sign, and knew it must be the same that her daddy had used long before her birth to crack the skin of the world and establish his borough deep beneath Barrow House. Her brain was flooded with the strange symbols, barbs and swirls of some alien geometry that did not quite square with physics, and she felt her mind might shatter from the terrible beauty of them.
37:29 Speaker 02 She clutched her hands to her head as if she could physically help hold it inside her skull, and her body began to tremble and jerk, and she found herself on the floor, her heels beating against the floorboards, until finally, she let loose a scream.
37:44 Speaker 03 Ah!
37:45 Speaker 02 And then all at once, the pain stopped.
37:53 Speaker 02 There was only blessed darkness in her head,
37:58 Speaker 02 and the reassuring clarity of purpose.
38:04 Speaker 02 The native tongue of the inner dark filled her lungs, entrancing her with its chaotic intricacies, and she took a moment to revel in it before she began to collect herself.
38:19 Speaker 02 She pushed herself back up into a seated position, one hand held gingerly against her aching head, the other reaching to swipe at a trickle of blood that seeped from her nose.
38:36 Speaker 03 Yes.
38:39 Speaker 03 Yes Daddy.
38:42 Speaker 03 I have it now.
38:45 Speaker 02 It wasn't long before she heard a hesitant tap at the cabin door. Crane and Churchman roused from their exile to the car by her screen, no doubt. They were typically the most obedient of servants and would not otherwise have disturbed her, but the sound of potential trouble was enough to motivate them to stretch protocol a little bit.
39:09 Speaker 02 Polly decided she would allow it just this once, caught her breath and called for them to enter. She waved off their questions but allowed Mr. Crane to help her to her feet. Then she retired to the lavatory for a moment of privacy.
39:26 Speaker 02 She washed her hands, splashed water on her face and smoothed her hair. She straightened her suit and feeling more herself, rejoined the Hollow Men in the front room. Now that Polly had the knowledge she would need to control their unusual weapon, it was time to have a look at it.
39:48 Speaker 02 Churchman fetched a hammer from the toolbox in the trunk of the Cadillac and pried the nails from one side of the crate. He and Crane carefully lowered that side of the box and Polly knelt on the ground again, peering into the darkness within.
40:06 Speaker 03 Come on.
40:07 Speaker 02 Polly called into the shadows of the crate.
40:11 Speaker 03 Come here, little one. Come on. That's it. Good boy.
40:17 Speaker 02 And slowly, in response to her coaxing, a toe-headed infant toddled out of the box. He appeared to Polly's untrained eye to be a bit past a year old, maybe fourteen months or so. With bright eyes, and he was dressed in a white shirt and a neat little checkered pant with suspenders. From beneath his collar peeked the spiky, swirly characters that had flooded Polly's mind only minutes ago. She could see that they reached down his hands and around his tiny fingers and crawled up the curves of his ears, and two perfect little sigils adorned his face,
41:03 Speaker 02 one on each rosy cheek. Unsteady on his feet, he nearly toppled over, but Polly scooped him up, bouncing him on her knee. It's... it's a... a baby, Miss Barrow? Crane stammered, somewhat shocked.
41:21 Speaker 03 Yes, he's a good little weapon, isn't he? Yes, he is.
41:28 Speaker 02 A... a... a new brother, ma'am?
41:30 Speaker 03 Certainly not. What Barrow have you ever known to have green eyes, Mr. Crane? This little one is...
41:41 Speaker 03 is a loner, shall we say.
41:44 Speaker 02 I... I see. Wha... what do we do with him, Miss Barrow?
41:49 Speaker 03 We don't have to do much at all, Mr. Crane. That's the beauty of it. We simply set him loose at an appropriate location. Our little friend here will do what he does. And we scoop him back up in the morning. It's rather genius.
42:13 Speaker 03 But I will need to repaint these.
42:16 Speaker 02 Polly gestured toward the careful markings on the baby's face. Crane nodded.
42:22 Speaker 03 And that will require some rather specialized ingredients. Nothing that you and Mr. Churchman should have any trouble finding nearby. I'll make a list.
42:34 Speaker 02 Y-yes ma'am. We'll see to it.
43:07 Speaker 02 The following evening, as the sun began to sink below the gentle curves of the Allegheny Mountains, Polly Barrow's shiny black car wound its way down the mountain into the small but thriving community of Cabo. It was a bit before supper time, when children had not been called in to wash up just yet and their soot-smeared daddies had not begun to stagger home, exhausted from the day's labor at Pasco Number Three Mine. Home to three hundred and ninety-seven souls and counting, Cabo boasted a rail station, a small but well-appointed family-run hotel, a two-story general store, and three churches.
43:48 Speaker 02 Pasco Number Three and the rail station were, of course, properties of Barrow and Locke, an employed put near every able body in Cabo. One would think the rabble would be grateful, who provided the roofs over their heads, the food to feed their innumerable broods of children. Why, Barrow and Locke, of course.
44:10 Speaker 02 Polly's father had even approved construction of a baseball field, of all things, to provide even an entertainment for the citizens of K-Borough in the warmer months. And still, they received reports of agitation from their loyal men on the ground in K-Borough. Rumors of unionization meetings held in secret and impending strikes abounded. And the populace was on edge. Crane and Churchman had recently paid a visit to K-Borough Hotel and spent some time in its saloon, chatting with a local miner known to have a taste for gin, after which a bottle was purchased and the cheerful party retired to the very cabin they had established
44:51 Speaker 02 as their current base of operations. And at that point, the conversation had taken a less friendly, but more fruitful turn. And in good time, Mr. Crane had persuaded the man to provide the name of a coworker he had seen leaving coded messages in other folks' dinner pails around Pasco Number Three. Romeo Capriati was the name this loyal company man had supplied Mr. Crane. Along with an address and everything he knew about the Capriati clan, the Capriatis were a large family of the Catholic persuasion, and attended Mass at St. Barbara's every Sunday without fail.
45:35 Speaker 02 Romeo's older sister had taken her vows with the Sisters of St. Joseph and served at an orphanage up in Charleston. Their mama was known to make the best pepperoni rolls in Barrow County, which she made for every church potluck and picnic and sold out of a little cart at every county fair every summer. Romeo, his three brothers, two remaining sisters and mother, lived in a sprawling old farmhouse out on the edge of K-Borough with their granddaddy. Romeo's daddy had passed a few years back with the black lung that the Capriati boys had followed him into the mines. And they brought in enough to keep the family afloat, Mrs. Capriati and the girls, working the farm.
46:14 Speaker 02 Family was well-liked and well-respected in the community. They had influence. They would have to go.
46:24 Speaker 02 Mr. Churchman eased the Cadillac off the road into the high weeds just down the road from the Capriati's ramblin' old house. It was an ideal location from which they could monitor their bouncing baby bombshell while remaining unseen by the house's occupants. Mr. Crane waited until the sun had fully set, and shadows spilled long across the valley, poling at the base of the tree line and bathing the Capriati's yard in shadow. Then he stepped quietly from the passenger seat, picked up a small bundle wrapped in
47:05 Speaker 02 blankets, and moved silently through the tall grass to the edge of the road. As Polly and Churchman watched from the car, he slipped between the weeds, and just like that he was gone, folding the shadows around him so that none could mark his passage or so much as even hear his footsteps. He approached the house across the road. A few minutes later, his sleeping package deposited silently on the family's front porch, Mr. Crane returned to the car, lowered his muscular bulk into the passenger seat, and quietly closed the door behind him.
47:48 Speaker 02 He was just in time. Not five minutes later, they heard the sound of footsteps, accompanied by the murmuring of several voices coming down the road from the direction of the mine. A moment later, the porch light across the street snapped on, bathing the Capriati's front yard in a soft golden glow, and suddenly, an infant's cry split the evening calm.
48:16 Speaker 02 And there was suddenly much ado on the porch across the street as the four Capriati brothers ran the rest of the way home in response to the sound, Mrs. Capriati opening the door and stepping into view, and there were a few minutes of heated discussion, punctuated with gesticulating, but in the end, Mama Capriati scooped the squalling bundle up and began gently bouncing the infant on her hip. His cries soon turned to giggles with her tender ministrations. "Where do you think he come from, Mama?" one of the men could be heard to ask. "I don't rightly know, but a lot of folks got a hard rut of hoe these days. Some poor thing, down on her luck probably, just trying to find her boy a good home," she answered sadly. "I'll take him over to Father Murphy at the church in the morning, and he'll know what
49:01 Speaker 02 to do, but for now, let's get this little one cleaned up. He's got something on his face, see?" Polly Barrow smiled. A while later, lanterns were extinguished in the house across the street, and the moon rose above the trees and the crickets began to sing. And for a long while, all was quiet and peaceful in Cabura. And then softly, so, so softly, through the open window came the sound of a little child
49:39 Speaker 02 beginning to fuss in the night, followed by something else. A straining sound, like fabric tearing. A noise heard more as an echo deep in the skull than anything captured by the ear. The air filled with the smell of ozone. And the hairs rose on the back of Polly's neck, and the crickets ceased their endless song, and for a moment, the whole world fell still, as if some great predator moved among them. And then the screaming began.
50:31 Speaker 02 In the wee hours before dawn, before anyone could be expected to pass by the farmhouse or come looking for Romeo Capriati and his brothers when they didn't show up for their shifts at Pasco Number Three, Polly Barrow and the two hollow men stepped from the Cadillac and walked across the road to collect their charge. Nobody locked their doors back then, not that it would have saved Romeo Capriati and his family, so Mr. Churchman simply opened the front door, ducking to avoid bumping his head on the jam. The house was a shambles.
51:10 Speaker 02 Furniture was reduced to splinters, the floors were soaked in blood, and the walls imprinted with wide red stripes and swirls, almost as if a painter had attempted to render some great stylized sea creature in a mural. Bodies or parts of them lay scattered in corners. The bottom half of a leg from about halfway down the calf had become wedged between the two rails on the staircase. A gooey black substance dripped from the ceiling, and a strange dark fungus was climbing its way up the walls.
51:50 Speaker 02 Polly Barrow stepped gingerly over the devastation mindful of her shoes and gently scooped up the fair-haired child that Mr. Crane had left on the doorstep last evening. The little tyke Plum worn himself out playing with his new friends and didn't even wake on the ride back to the cabin in the woods, so it was no trouble for Polly to strip the boy down to his nappy and carry out the ritual required to repaint the sigils that the unwitting woman had washed from his skin. And when her task was done, Polly dropped exhausted onto the double bed and fell into the fathomless, dreamless sleep that was all she had ever known.
52:36 Speaker 02 In the weeks that followed, Polly, Crane, and Churchman would repeat this procedure in various coal towns scattered around the region, dropping off their special delivery where he might be discovered by either the unfortunate folks on their list of reported union agitators, or by those closest to them. A childless woman discovered the precocious babe playing alone by the creek behind her house as she was hanging clothes out on the line, and rushed him inside. A surprise, and perhaps a prayer answered at last, for her husband when he returned home from a hard day in the mines. A pastor who was said to be offering up his church as a safe space for union organizers discovered the boy on the church doorstep when he came to open its doors for one such
53:21 Speaker 02 meeting, under the guise of men's evening fellowship, and so on and so forth. Folks in Bauer County were becoming decidedly unsettled. What happened to the Capriatis had shocked the local community, no doubt about it, but it was generally assumed that the family had been murdered by some drifter passing through on the rails. Nobody they knew would be capable of anything like that, surely. And at first, no one thought about Romeo Capriati's union dog. Ravelrousers had been known to turn up dead, sure enough, but not entire families.
54:00 Speaker 02 But as the rash of incidents continued, and the bodies piled up, the people of Bauer County began to connect the dots, and no one knew for sure what was going on. What on earth could even do that kind of thing to a human body? But everybody knew it must have something to do with the unions, and suddenly, nobody wanted any part of that business.
54:26 Speaker 02 As the stars winked out and the sky began to fade from velvety black to deep blue to gray, Mr. Crane collected the boy from what remained of a boarding house catering to miners in a small coal camp called Nettleburg. He passed the drowsy child to Polly, who settled him in next to her on the backseat. "Where to next, Miss Barrow?"
54:52 Speaker 02 Polly Barrow was ready to return home to report another successful mission to her daddy, to accept his praise and bask in his love. What might her reward be this time? A new car? A train ride up to New York for a shopping day? Perhaps a trip abroad? A cruise might be nice this time of year, but first, there was one last name on her list. A man who, according to their local informant, seemed undeterred by recent events.
55:27 Speaker 03 Hmm. Oak Mountain.
55:31 Speaker 03 Our source there tells us a fellow worker is attempting to organize a union rally. A man by the name of... Underwood.
55:43 Glynn Washington? Oh Polly, pretty Polly, go along with me. Polly, pretty Polly, go along with me. Oh, before we get married, we'll pleasure to see. Over the hill, valleys are so deep.
56:03 Speaker 02 Well, hey there, family. Thank y'all for joining us here on the backroads of West Virginia with this Polly Barrow and her best friends Crane and churchmen up to nefarious acts of no good, but it looks like they're about to meet some real interesting folks. Think y'all need to come back and check that out next time around, don't you? I thought so.
56:40 Glynn Washington? Oh spooksters, it is not over. No, we are just getting started. On the next episode, Spook returns to the holler to continue where we left off. And if you like what you're hearing, listen to the complete Old Gods of Appalachia podcast, currently in its sixth season, on whatever you listen to your favorite podcast app. Old Gods of Appalachia, a production of Deep Nerd Media, written and produced by Cam Collins and Steve Schell, narrated by Steve Schell.
57:11 Glynn Washington? The voice of Polly Barrow was Tracy Johnston Crum. To learn more about this show, visit oldgodsofappalachia.com and wherever you're running to, wherever you're running from, never, ever, ever, never turn out the lights.
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