Shownotes
Goodbye has been a Route 66 town plagued by supernatural events. Here to catalog them is Bram Heathcliff of the Paranormal Hunters Society.
Tonight’s story is the second and final part of “Goodbye, New Mexico” by Domus Vocis, who spends his free time listening to vaporwave music & celebrating Halloween with an ongoing Monster Smut Month, on his Patreon, where you can also find other stories such as his ongoing furry dystopian story series, “Maverick Hotel.”
Last time, Bram and his co-investigator Laurie braved a dust storm to interview some Goodbye residents in a bar. Will they find the stories they came for? If so, will they wish they hadn't?
Read for you by Rob MacWolf — werewolf hitchhiker.
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https://thevoice.dog/episode/goodbye-new-mexico-by-domus-vocis-part-2-of-2
Transcripts
You’re listening to the Ghost of Dog on The Voice of Dog.
Speaker:This is Rob MacWolf,
Speaker:your fellow traveler,
Speaker:and Tonight’s story is the second
Speaker:and final part of
Speaker:“Goodbye, New Mexico”
Speaker:by Domus Vocis,
Speaker:who spends his free time listening to vaporwave music & celebrating
Speaker:Halloween with an ongoing Monster Smut Month, on his Patreon, where you can also find other stories such as his ongoing furry dystopian story series,
Speaker:“Maverick Hotel.” Bram Heathcliff,
Speaker:Paranormal investigator:
Speaker:a role that many would dismiss as unserious.
Speaker:But every society
Speaker:has different names for the roles it requires
Speaker:people to play. In ancient Greece they might fear him like the Sibyl of Delphi and disbelieve him like the Sibyl of Troy. On the Siberian steppe they might class him with the shamans who journey into the world of spirits and
Speaker:return with answers.
Speaker:Last time, Bram and his co-investigator Laurie braved a dust storm to
Speaker:interview some Goodbye residents in a bar,
Speaker:but whether he will return from the town of Goodbye New Mexico with any answers,
Speaker:whether those answers are to be feared
Speaker:or disbelieved, remains to be seen.
Speaker:Please enjoy “Goodbye,
Speaker:New Mexico” by Domus Vocis, Part 2 of 2 A twenty-dollar bill and forty minutes later, Jim Barnston and Kent Stiglitz
Speaker:told us about their encounters with the supernatural
Speaker:(on the condition that we a)
Speaker:blur out their faces during editing and b)
Speaker:we give the former
Speaker:our business cards),
Speaker:while the remaining bargoers sometimes chimed in to add context.
Speaker:For Jim Barnston, the grizzly bear had been operating the El Dorado Lounge long after the infamous Lost Weekend, but he’d given alcohol to those who witnessed it themselves.
Speaker:He described the sheer confusion and repressed trauma of those courageous enough, or at the very least drunk enough,
Speaker:to tell him how it felt to lose two whole days of your own life in a single nap.
Speaker:We didn’t just brave a dust storm for the Lost Weekend though.
Speaker:We came for the ghost stories, which
Speaker:Jim and Kent happily provided,
Speaker:as if they’d told them a hundred times and would
Speaker:gladly do so again.
Speaker:However, of all the stories that stood out, it had to be Kent’s.
Speaker:“Live in this cursed- town all your life an’ ya start to notice things.
Speaker:But this one takes the cake,”
Speaker:the wolf mentioned, then finished taking another swig of his bottle.
Speaker:“Every Halloween, strange things do happen ‘round here. If it’s not
Speaker:hearing things at night, it’s seeing things.”
Speaker:“What kinds of things?” I asked.
Speaker:“Things in the dark.
Speaker:Things in your room, in the mirror...
Speaker:mirror...sometimes things moments after ya wake up.
Speaker:The thing I saw was eleven or so years back, when the other hardware store on Maple didn’t close down yet.
Speaker:I used to be the manager there, and I’d
Speaker:wound the store down for the night
Speaker:—I used to to do a lot of things for that store, back before
Speaker:Pete Davidson decided to pack up for California, the rotten
Speaker:bastard.” He grumbled something, then drank the rest of his bottle.
Speaker:Jim happily provided another.
Speaker:“Anyway,” Kent continued,
Speaker:“I’d started walking down the street for home. It’s Halloween, but you wouldn’t find any trick-or-treaters around here if ya
Speaker:tried, so most of us are either asleep or at the bars.
Speaker:So here it is, the street’s all
Speaker:empty, and I’m walking down Route 66, when halfway down, I start to hear something, awfully like someone’s walking behind me.
Speaker:At first, I thought it was my imagination,
Speaker:but then I hear breathing,
Speaker:and no matter how many times I look behind me, it doesn’t stop.
Speaker:Whoever’s breathing down my neck, it just gets louder.
Speaker:Too loud for it to be my mind playing any tired tricks on me,
Speaker:so I run until finally
Speaker:I get to my trailer and lock that son-of-a-gun shut.
Speaker:I think I’m safe
Speaker:until I look out the window…and
Speaker:see it.” “What did you see?”
Speaker:Laurie asked, eyes wide as she leaned in her seat.
Speaker:I couldn’t blame her, as I was
Speaker:very captivated myself, listening to his tale.
Speaker:Kent glared down at his bottle, then to each of us in the bar.
Speaker:He blinked rapidly,
Speaker:and I’d seen that look a few times. Mostly in old documentaries,
Speaker:when someone is remembering something they really don’t want to be remembering
Speaker:—they always get that look,
Speaker:like being taken back to that moment is the worst thing that could be done to them.
Speaker:“I don’t know,” Kent uttered in a shaken breath.
Speaker:“It looked like a mammal my age, but it…it wasn’t. It...
Speaker:It...well, that’s the best
Speaker:way I can call it, but it stood on my porch,
Speaker:looking right into the window,
Speaker:dressed in a bloodied leather jacket.
Speaker:Oh god, his eyes…they were
Speaker:just as red as the blood spatter on him…just as
Speaker:fuckin’ red. He then told
Speaker:me…said to me, ‘This town is cursed and so are you’. G-God…it didn’t sound like
Speaker:any speech I’d ever heard in my life, and I don’t want to hear it again.
Speaker:Just heavy, guttural, and sopping. And the wailing sounds I heard after shutting the blinds, I couldn’t even think to call the sheriff. I just
Speaker:ran into my closet and shut myself up.
Speaker:I didn’t dare peek out until I saw dawn’s ass crack.”
Speaker:The wolf guzzled down the bottle in a single swig as Jim explained further,
Speaker:“And that’s why Kent’s made it a yearly tradition to get drunk as fuck in my fine establishment. If I were you two though, I’d get back to Desert Star before this storm gets worse.”
Speaker:“What he just said,”
Speaker:Samantha muttered into me and Laurie’s earpieces,
Speaker:having listened and recorded our interviews.
Speaker:“I think we’ve got more than enough as it is.”
Speaker:“Roger that, Command. Over and out!” I jokingly replied to the concerned squirrel.
Speaker:With a folded ear and a sympathetic smile given to Kent, I informed the drunken wolf,
Speaker:“I’m sorry to cut this all short, but our friends at the motel want us back.”
Speaker:“Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us,” Laurie shook paws with Jim across the counter and I did too.
Speaker:“And I’m sorry you went through that, Mr. Stiglitz.
Speaker:Stiglitz.” Kent hiccupped, “Don’t be. I’m slowly, heh…erasing those m…mummeries!”
Speaker:“Memories, ya mean,”
Speaker:Jim corrected. “Pfff…whatever!”
Speaker:He waved it aside.
Speaker:“I think that’s enough for you tonight, Ken.”
Speaker:Jim rolled his eyes as he handed another patron a gin and tonic.
Speaker:Me and my puma companion finished zipping up our hoodies again,
Speaker:waving to the bartender as
Speaker:we started to walk out the front entrance.
Speaker:“You two take care now, ya hear!
Speaker:And send me a link on MuzzleScroll!”
Speaker:Over howling, arid wind, I loudly replied,
Speaker:“We shall, thanks again!”
Speaker:“Happy Halloween, everyone!”
Speaker:Laurie chuckled with a waving paw.
Speaker:Behind us, a few patrons cheered or raised their glasses, only for any more voices to
Speaker:be lost like an echo.
Speaker:The dust storm turned everything from puke-orange yellow into
Speaker:dark honey brown.
Speaker:Whatever sunlight scraped across the twilight sky started to disappear,
Speaker:and we pulled our flashlights out to scour the rest of the dying town.
Speaker:Everything had grown darker,
Speaker:to the point I could barely spot the unnatural neon glow of some building signs.
Speaker:They flickered in and out of view,
Speaker:disappearing and reappearing
Speaker:like the yellow glow of my flashlight.
Speaker:Even Samantha’s electronic voice warped
Speaker:incomprehensibly in my earpiece.
Speaker:I only heard Dean say, “
Speaker:—et back h—arely see
Speaker:—tronger than usu
Speaker:—get back now!” “Did you hear that, Laurie?”
Speaker:I hollered, squeezing my gloved fingers around my puma partner’s paw.
Speaker:“For once, I agree with Dean.
Speaker:We better get going back to the motel!”
Speaker:Whether Laurie didn’t say anything, or the
Speaker:dust storm drowned her reply, the only sign of confirmation came from her squeezing my paw.
Speaker:With a firm nod, I guided us southward across the empty Route 66,
Speaker:doing our best to stand steady.
Speaker:Thankfully, the wind wasn’t strong enough to carry either of us away like a hurricane, but one particularly strong gust
Speaker:did cause my paw to slip from Laurie’s
Speaker:grasp. Quickly though, I reached back to snatch it.
Speaker:“Almost lost ya there, Laurie!”
Speaker:I laughed. “We gotta keep going!”
Speaker:Twenty or thirty seconds too late,
Speaker:it occurred to me.
Speaker:I’d been too focused on stepping over Route 66’s uneven pavement,
Speaker:resisting the gale forces and however much sand caked my
Speaker:lower jaw to notice only one beam of light.
Speaker:When I did, it made me stop.
Speaker:“Uh…Laurie?” I asked loudly, hunching against the incoming wind.
Speaker:For a split second, I heard her say something. “Wha
Speaker:-What happened to your flashlight?
Speaker:Did it die…out?” As I turned around, my fingers clenched around empty air.
Speaker:The beautiful mountain lioness I called my friend and co
Speaker:-investigator was nowhere to be found. Not even the beam of her
Speaker:flashlight could be seen as I whirled around,
Speaker:feet fidgeting and heart racing.
Speaker:By instinct, or rather to cope, I shakily recited a line from one of my favorite horror films, The Haunting.
Speaker:“Whose hand was I
Speaker:holding?” *** Being alone in near-complete darkness and stranger lands wasn’t an unfamiliar thing for me.
Speaker:In fact, one could argue it’d been a regular experience since my preteen years.
Speaker:Dark shadows, nonvisible figures,
Speaker:winds akin to hushed chanting, they didn’t scare me
Speaker:compared to what I’d seen in my dreams. Obvious figments of my waking imagination were bullshit compared to what the mind made up when I was asleep.
Speaker:I was not asleep
Speaker:though. I was in the middle of a dying New Mexican town during a severe dust storm,
Speaker:trying to find my way along the road.
Speaker:No bars, no signal,
Speaker:no voice in my earpiece;
Speaker:my feet stumbled along ancient pavement as I tried blocking the sand from getting into my nose and mouth.
Speaker:The entire time, I tried peering through the goggles for any sign of refuge.
Speaker:When I did, it appeared down the road adjacent to the empty highway:
Speaker:an old bus stop shelter!
Speaker:Without much thought, I kicked against the ground and went for my sanctuary— HONK! HONK! HONK!
Speaker:A vehicle suddenly sped in front of me.
Speaker:Either a truck or a van, I couldn’t tell.
Speaker:The headlights stabbed through the sandy darkness like a spotlight almost too late.
Speaker:Just as fast as it appeared,
Speaker:it sped off down the street.
Speaker:Just another foot and I would’ve been hit.
Speaker:The thought of why a random truck would be speeding near Route 66 during a storm didn’t hit me yet.
Speaker:“Holy shit, holy shit!”
Speaker:I hyperventilated. “Just
Speaker:get inside, get inside…”
Speaker:This time, I eyed both ways before crossing the street. No phantom cars yet.
Speaker:I sprinted to the structure,
Speaker:almost slamming into a glass pane,
Speaker:then drifted around its corner into the entrance.
Speaker:Within seconds of gathering my breath, I collapsed onto the interior bench
Speaker:with an audible creak. I didn’t even care if it felt as comfortable as it looked,
Speaker:at least it was positioned
Speaker:to shield me from Mother nature’s arid wrath.
Speaker:My thumb peeled the goggles onto my forehead.
Speaker:Setting the flashlight next to me on the bench seat, the light reflected from the glass of the bus stop,
Speaker:detailing each grain of sand sticking to or scraping against the barrier.
Speaker:They produced faint tapping noises.
Speaker:“Laurie?” I called into the radio.
Speaker:“Laurie?!” Nothing. My fist connected to the bench,
Speaker:causing pain to jolt up my elbow and me to wince.
Speaker:Ignoring whatever I felt then, I remembered the camera sitting atop my head, under the hoodie.
Speaker:An unclear red glow reflected from my palm
Speaker:when I hovered it above my forehead.
Speaker:“Samantha, do you copy?”
Speaker:I called into my earpiece,
Speaker:then toyed around with the station knob on the radio.
Speaker:“Dean, Samantha, I’m not sure if you’re still looking through my camera, but I’m lost in a bus station somewhere off 66, and Laurie and I were separated. I dunno where she is.
Speaker:I repeat, Sammy or Dean, do you copy?”
Speaker:More garbled, electronic voices.
Speaker:“Fuck me, fuck me,
Speaker:fuck me,” I muttered. I rifled for my phone in my pocket, pulling it out.
Speaker:The bright screen blinded me, but I didn’t care, instead sending a text message to the Paranormal Hunters Society’s staff chat.
Speaker:For several minutes, my watering eyes watched the circular icon indicating an enroute message continue to spiral and
Speaker:spiral, never to turn into the green checkmark.
Speaker:The same one I never appreciated until that very moment.
Speaker:“Of all the times to have zero bars…fuck!”
Speaker:I snarled, then tried to call Laurie’s number,
Speaker:followed by Dean’s
Speaker:and Samantha’s. When the only sounds coming from my phone on the other end were beeps, I went so far as to call my mom and dad.
Speaker:Nothing. “Well, fuck me with a cheese grater…Happy Halloween to me.”
Speaker:Until the dust cloud settled
Speaker:or the GPS app on my smartphone
Speaker:decided to start working again,
Speaker:all I could do was wait.
Speaker:For the next hour or so, I tried my best
Speaker:to remain calm and figure out what to do.
Speaker:As I sat there in the bus shelter, all alone and
Speaker:sitting as I clutched my phone and flashlight like anchors, my mind wandered.
Speaker:I imagined myself in
Speaker:another plane of existence.
Speaker:I envisioned myself as the last survivor of an apocalyptic sandstorm which covered the entire world,
Speaker:engulfing everything until only desert lingered.
Speaker:By whatever stroke of luck, I happened to be a survivor, with the glass-and-metal box I found being the last sign of
Speaker:civilization. Returning to reality didn’t make things feel easier.
Speaker:Thanks to whatever interference caused by the dust storm, I had neither
Speaker:a signal nor a means to know if Laurie was alright.
Speaker:A part of me chided myself for assuming the worst, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t worried.
Speaker:We knew each other the longest, even before she helped me build P.H.S. from the ground up.
Speaker:Back in high school and my limited days of college,
Speaker:we confided everything with each other.
Speaker:We helped each other, whether it be
Speaker:relationship problems,
Speaker:wanting to blow off sexual steam due to a stressful week,
Speaker:or simply because we’d both been through the paranormal ringer.
Speaker:From what Laurie told me over the years, she used to have the exact same dream as a little puma cub,
Speaker:growing up in her family home. It all
Speaker:happened once a week,
Speaker:almost always in the middle of a school week. Each time she fell asleep,
Speaker:she’d wake up in front of her basement door,
Speaker:walk down the steps for a disproportionate amount of time until
Speaker:it led her to a large hole made of old brick and mortar.
Speaker:She would hear voices coming from it.
Speaker:From there, the nightmare would change differently, like the endings of a choose-your-own-adventure novel. If Laurie
Speaker:chose to stand still
Speaker:against the mouth of the pit, she would wake up without any trouble.
Speaker:If she chose to instead
Speaker:climb down inside, she would find herself entering a labyrinth of red
Speaker:brick and unnatural lighting.
Speaker:Wherever the young puma girl went, a variety of things would happen; sometimes,
Speaker:things from the real world would bleed into her dreams such as a toy or a
Speaker:new television her father bought.
Speaker:Sometimes, a lone figure would stalk her no matter how fast she sprinted down the caverns,
Speaker:which seemed to never have any dead ends or interconnecting corridors.
Speaker:Sometimes, the nightmare ended when she did find a dead end,
Speaker:but other times, it continued for what felt like eternity for Laurie.
Speaker:One nightmare that stuck with her for ages was
Speaker:before we started having sex, about a month before high school graduation.
Speaker:It began with her walking down the endless steps and stepping down into the pit.
Speaker:As always, curiosity won
Speaker:out, and Laurie jumped into the pit. Except
Speaker:she didn’t go down any of the four tunnels.
Speaker:Not the one to her left, her right, behind or in front of her. For once,
Speaker:she didn’t make a choice
Speaker:after stepping from the staircase.
Speaker:Laurie described an uneasy feeling
Speaker:hit her gut the minute she stood still.
Speaker:Unlike the other times before, when she stood on the ledge waiting for the nightmare to conclude, it lingered.
Speaker:Not only that, but it went to places darker and more heinous than expected.
Speaker:Instead of her coming across monsters within the labyrinth,
Speaker:the labyrinth’s own monsters came across her.
Speaker:Before she could
Speaker:get into what happened next, Laurie broke down in front of me.
Speaker:I never asked for the details afterward,
Speaker:but I did know she immediately moved out
Speaker:of that house the
Speaker:instant she turned eighteen and made me promise
Speaker:to never bring the topic up with her folks anytime I went to visit.
Speaker:As far as I know, the nightmares ended on the first night Laurie slept in her apartment.
Speaker:As for me? I grew up with severe sleep paralysis.
Speaker:A chemical imbalance and repressed childhood emotions caused me to lose muscle control before,
Speaker:during, and after REM sleep, as well
Speaker:as hallucinate terrifying imagery during these periods.
Speaker:I encountered top-hatted silhouettes and demonic shadow people
Speaker:invading my personal space. Each night
Speaker:turned into a psychological battle where I needed to remind myself none of it was real.
Speaker:To make a long story short, I discovered two temporary solutions to the episodes:
Speaker:alcohol and sex, both of which caused me to
Speaker:not have any dreams at all.
Speaker:So, from high school going into university, to relied on them both to keep me sane when the medication didn’t work.
Speaker:Alcoholism combined with being a hypersexual,
Speaker:pansexual jackrabbit
Speaker:caused me to spiral out of control.
Speaker:Within a few semesters, I went on a self-destructive path that led to me ending a relationship with the man I loved, as well as having a mental breakdown.
Speaker:To make a longer story even shorter, my parents got me help.
Speaker:They supported me as
Speaker:I no longer used sexual hookups and had me go to AA meetings to stay sober.
Speaker:And now, I was stuck in a bus shelter in the middle of a rundown town on the edge of New Mexico, with no idea
Speaker:where my co-lead investigator happened to be,
Speaker:or any way to get back to the motel.
Speaker:Something tapped loudly against the glass pane,
Speaker:stirring me from my thoughts.
Speaker:“Huh?” I straightened up.
Speaker:Suddenly, it happened again.
Speaker:Only, it was too hard for it to be sand.
Speaker:“Who’s there?” I gripped my flashlight in the direction it came from.
Speaker:“Hello?” Paranormal investigations required a balance between plausibility and skepticism.
Speaker:As much as I teased Dean for being Mr. Skeptic, I didn’t throw away rational thought when figuring out if something happened to be
Speaker:supernatural. If I did, I’d be thinking every perfectly arranged stack of books had some sort of supernatural paw behind it, instead of someone
Speaker:living who could do just
Speaker:that. That said...
Speaker:said...maybe it was just some large grains of sand that got caught up in the wind?
Speaker:Another loud tap
Speaker:struck the glass pane.
Speaker:It belonged to a stray piece of
Speaker:candy, somehow caught by the weather.
Speaker:“Hello?” I screamed, turning around to find another mammal standing in the entrance of the bus shelter.
Speaker:Shining the light at him, I discovered he was an otter in some kind of jacket.
Speaker:“Woah, hey!” he said, startled.
Speaker:He held both paws up defensively.
Speaker:“Sorry I scared you there.”
Speaker:“Who are you?” My dry voice strained with my grip on the flashlight.
Speaker:I began listing off questions,
Speaker:“How did you get through this storm?
Speaker:Are you a resident? How did you—”
Speaker:“Easy there, easy,” he chuckled while wiping some sand from his brows and shaking his headfur.
Speaker:“I was just passing through here when I found this place.
Speaker:Thought I’d take a break from all this shit, ya know?”
Speaker:I warily looked the otter over.
Speaker:His jacket did little to hide a strong pair of muscles beneath a plaid shirt, and his
Speaker:square jaw and soft
Speaker:smile somehow made my worries disappear. My stiff posture started to relax.
Speaker:“Yeah, I guess I do,” I shrugged as casually as I could.
Speaker:“I’m not local, no. I’m here to
Speaker:catalog some of the spooky stuff going down tonight, but me and my partner,
Speaker:Laurie got separated in the storm.
Speaker:Hopefully, it’ll end soon,
Speaker:and I can go find her…”
Speaker:“I’m pretty sure she’s fine.
Speaker:The storm isn’t really that bad, at least
Speaker:compared to the ones I’ve been in.”
Speaker:The otter stepped closer,
Speaker:away from the entrance and sat down next to me on the bench. “So,
Speaker:is she a girlfriend of yours?” “Nah,
Speaker:not really.” I shook my snout.
Speaker:“What about you? You got a
Speaker:girlfriend out there trying to find you in the desert blizzard?”
Speaker:He chuckled, “Desert blizzard.
Speaker:I like that.” It was then I felt a warm
Speaker:paw reach up behind me,
Speaker:caressing my back.
Speaker:An electric spark tickled the base of my wiggling cotton-like tail,
Speaker:as my eyes locked with the otter’s emeralds.
Speaker:He grinned at me,
Speaker:and I grinned back. A nagging feeling clawed somewhere at the back of my mind, but I ignored it in favor of a local Adonis suddenly beginning to flirt with me.
Speaker:The more lecherous part of my brain suggested
Speaker:returning the favor.
Speaker:Hey, I happened to have a thing for men with square jaws.
Speaker:“No, I don’t,” he answered my previous question.
Speaker:“I’m not into girls.”
Speaker:His fingers lowered to
Speaker:the base of my tail, pulling me closer. “Hmm,”
Speaker:I bashfully snickered like a virgin.
Speaker:“Do you…do you always flirt with the first stranger ya meet in a bus shelter?”
Speaker:“They always know how to make adorable noises,”
Speaker:the otter’s tail tapped against the bench’s metal frame. “Now,
Speaker:here I find you: a handsome bunny rabbit, all alone
Speaker:out here, just looking for a good time.
Speaker:Who knows how long we can be out here, really?”
Speaker:The thought of correcting him of my species didn’t cross my mind.
Speaker:Instead, lust almost won out as
Speaker:I reached my arm to wrap it around his flank…only to
Speaker:freeze. I felt something warm,
Speaker:and wet. Liquid too thick to be water,
Speaker:and way too sticky or slick to be sweat.
Speaker:What’s more was that I also started to hear
Speaker:voices too, outside of the shelter. They were ranged in pitch but rising high like my heartbeat and
Speaker:each hair on my arm.
Speaker:The otter’s face hardly changed.
Speaker:He didn’t blink at the voices.
Speaker:Not when I slowly grabbed the flashlight between us,
Speaker:then looked down
Speaker:at the blood coating my fingers, and back at the man.
Speaker:He didn’t just wear
Speaker:a regular jacket. It was leather,
Speaker:and all along the back,
Speaker:I found sharp tears that belonged
Speaker:to a crash victim’s body.
Speaker:For a split second, we looked at each other yet again.
Speaker:For a split second, I witnessed his dark eyes turn a much
Speaker:darker shade of crimson,
Speaker:flickering between life and death as he
Speaker:smiled down at me.
Speaker:His open mouth held more pointed teeth than any other should actually have.
Speaker:He whispered in a gravely, sopping voice,
Speaker:“You are cursed, and so is this town.”
Speaker:My flashlight struck the ground,
Speaker:and I fucking ran back out into the dust storm.
Speaker:Any screams I tried to emit were immediately shut by the airborne dirt I immediately spat back out.
Speaker:Whatever I just tried flirting with
Speaker:didn’t come after me, but I still ran. Be it a trick of my adrenaline-spiked mind or actual,
Speaker:factual specters, I could suddenly see glimpses of shadows between the layered grains of desert sand,
Speaker:standing and staring at me like mannequins.
Speaker:Sometimes, they seemed as real as a mirage, but other times, they shifted.
Speaker:They stumbled effortlessly against the wind, walking towards me.
Speaker:One eventually knocked me over my side.
Speaker:I screamed in fright and confusion
Speaker:until I felt a solid paw
Speaker:grasp my wrist,
Speaker:pulling me back to my feet.
Speaker:A glance down at my paw had me realize the blood was long gone. “Holy—Bram, it’s you!”
Speaker:Laurie's relieved smile infected mine.
Speaker:“C’mon, let’s get the hell back to dodge!” “Fuck,
Speaker:yes!” I agreed at the top of my lungs.
Speaker:“Where did ya go?!”
Speaker:“This way!” Laurie held my wrist in a vice grip, and I followed her. “I dunno where you went either, but I’d been wandering around, trying to find ya when I started hearing these voices. Then I see ya speeding out of a bus stop at top speed, and here we are!” “Wait,
Speaker:you hear them too?!” I gripped the front of my hoodie when it almost flew back.
Speaker:“I do!” She shouted back,
Speaker:“Wait, wait, I see the motel!
Speaker:Keep goin’, Bram!” “I see it!” I cackled in utter relief. “I see it, Laurie!”
Speaker:The archway and the motel’s sign shone through the shrouded darkness.
Speaker:I could make out the ‘no vacancy’ sign against the wind and dust, but the closer we got to the unlocked entrance,
Speaker:the more I noticed the voices become
Speaker:louder. They transformed into humming chants and
Speaker:wailing cries.
Speaker:In the corner of a teary eye and through the misty goggles, I swore I spotted more of the shadows, but I dared not to look back.
Speaker:Laurie yanked the front door open, and I plunged inside with her. It crashed shut, but the voices hardly ceased outside.
Speaker:If anything, they screeched louder
Speaker:and louder, ringing in our eardrums and drowning out my thoughts. All me or Laurie could do was tumble down the corridor and slam our fists on Room 16,
Speaker:before I remembered possessing a key. Nothing provided sanctuary though. No sooner did me and Laurie slam the door shut,
Speaker:than we discovered
Speaker:Dean and Samantha huddled on the floor.
Speaker:The laptop computer lay abandoned on the bed, showing my feed’s perspective.
Speaker:Both squirrel and Mexican wolf covered their ears,
Speaker:as did Laurie the minute she dropped her hoodie.
Speaker:“Make it stop!”
Speaker:I barked, grabbing my ears and folding them down once I shed my jacket and tossed the camera to the
Speaker:floor. “By fuckin’ God, make it stop! Make it stop!” The walls vibrated
Speaker:and the noise refused to cease, no matter how much we begged.
Speaker:Stomach nauseous and throat feeling queasy,
Speaker:I hunched against one of the empty
Speaker:beds, with Laurie kneeling beside Samantha and me trying to bury my head into a pillow.
Speaker:The ringing in my ears impacted like nails on a chalk board,
Speaker:rising and ascending higher
Speaker:and higher until finally…
Speaker:…I passed out. *** “Bram!
Speaker:Bram, wake up!” Hearing Dean’s voice, I jumped up from the floor feeling like a ton of
Speaker:bricks conked me in the back of my head.
Speaker:No hangover compared to kneeling on the floor, feeling hot needles pierce my cranium from every side imaginable.
Speaker:“Ow, ow, ow!” I winced
Speaker:while rubbing the dried crust from my eyes. “Ugh,
Speaker:wha…?” “How are you feeling, conejo?”
Speaker:Dean asked me, genuine concern etched on his tan muzzle.
Speaker:“Whatever happened last night, it knocked us all out…for
Speaker:two days.” My eyes bulged out and I jerked up to my feet,
Speaker:only to groan when I spotted the quavering grin on Laurie’s lips.
Speaker:“Bitches, that’s not
Speaker:funny!” I chided when she and Dean started laughing.
Speaker:“What the fuck happened last night, where’s Samantha?”
Speaker:“Already packing up her things in the next room,”
Speaker:Laurie’s smile faltered after gathering herself.
Speaker:“In all seriousness, we’ve
Speaker:been asleep for twelve hours.
Speaker:Last night was…” “Twelve?”
Speaker:I cocked my head, groaning as I rubbed it with my palm. “Got any aspirin in your bathroom bag, Dean? Laurie?
Speaker:I sure as fuck didn’t bring any…ugh.”
Speaker:“I’ll go check,”
Speaker:Laurie went for the bedroom door. “Be right back.”
Speaker:The events of the previous night flooded back to me in gradual torrents.
Speaker:As I went to relieve myself in the bathroom and wash back some color into my cheek fur,
Speaker:I heard Dean’s voice talk to me
Speaker:through the wooden door. He explained how, not long before Laurie woke me up
Speaker:minutes ago, Samantha and Dean had risen from unconsciousness.
Speaker:While Dean tried and failed to find Mrs. Bloch in the motel lobby,
Speaker:Samantha surveyed all the gathered footage.
Speaker:“What did she see?””
Speaker:I perked my ears up high.
Speaker:“Dean, tell me we got actual, factual
Speaker:footage of a ghost tornado—”
Speaker:“Nothing,” he interrupted.
Speaker:I blinked hard once,
Speaker:twice, and thrice.
Speaker:“What did you just say?”
Speaker:“Nothing,” he repeated matter-of-factly.
Speaker:“We got fuckin’ nothing,
Speaker:besides the interviews.”
Speaker:“Huh?” I gripped the porcelain sink as I glared at my bloodshot eyes in the mirror.
Speaker:Then, I turned to look at the door. “I’m sorry,
Speaker:but how the unliving
Speaker:fuck did we get nothing?”
Speaker:“Files were corrupted somehow,
Speaker:Bram. The audio got fucked somehow and Samantha’s trying to recover it, but for now,
Speaker:it’s all jack shit.”
Speaker:He snarled angrily, not at me,
Speaker:but our luck. “I try not to believe in supernatural shit too often, but last night…that wild hunt, it felt too real to be anything.
Speaker:And now we’ve got no shred of evidence that it happened!”
Speaker:My optimism began to fade until a thought came to mind.
Speaker:“What about Mrs. Bloch?”
Speaker:“We can’t find her,”
Speaker:he repeated. “She’s not at the desk
Speaker:and won’t answer my calls.”
Speaker:“Shit,” my voice cracked.
Speaker:Minutes later, I emerged from the bathroom and packed my suitcase. Laurie returned with two tablets, which I happily thanked her for, and she handed some to Dean as well. We both thanked her immensely.
Speaker:Samantha came out of the other motel room too, handing me some of the electrical equipment.
Speaker:Together, we grabbed our luggage.
Speaker:For the moment, all any of us wanted to do was get out.
Speaker:The second Samantha got the remaining B-roll footage she needed of other neighborhoods in Goodbye, we would speed off onto the closest exit
Speaker:connecting us to the I-40 Highway.
Speaker:The Desert Star parking lot and what we could see of Goodbye hardly changed since the night before.
Speaker:Granted, almost an inch of sand covered everything in sight, but otherwise, nothing appeared out of the ordinary.
Speaker:Goodbye stayed the mysterious, rundown center of supernatural phenomena.
Speaker:Dean volunteered to drive the P.H.S. van.
Speaker:I buckled up in the front passenger seat while Samantha quietly held her video recorder in the back seat and
Speaker:Laurie sat beside her.
Speaker:While pulling out of the parking lot, I could’ve sworn a middle-aged fox appeared from the door.
Speaker:Rather than speaking up, pointing out her presence and asking Dean to turn around so we could confirm she
Speaker:heard the voices from last night too,
Speaker:I looked away. I stared straight ahead as the Mexican wolf at the wheel steered us onto Route 66,
Speaker:towards a row of buildings Samantha wanted to shoot from her window.
Speaker:“Last night, when I got lost during the dust storm,”
Speaker:I spoke up, “I think I flirted with a demon.”
Speaker:Everyone sat in deathly silence.
Speaker:Then, Laurie laughed.
Speaker:“Only you, Bram.” Dean tried and failed to suppress his disbelieving chuckles.
Speaker:“Yeah, only you…” Samantha herself couldn’t repress a few giggles.
Speaker:“Only you, heh.” Rolling my eyes, I relaxed back into my car seat.
Speaker:My ears rested against the headboard,
Speaker:and sighing deeply, I watched swirls of dust dance in front of the slow-moving van and made a decision.
Speaker:“We are so coming back to this town again, you guys.”
Speaker:This was the second and final part of
Speaker:“Goodbye, New Mexico”
Speaker:by Domus Vocis, read for you by Rob MacWolf,
Speaker:werewolf hitchhiker.
Speaker:As always, you can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,
Speaker:or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker:Thank you for listening to The Ghost of Dog.