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Broadcast 02: The Letter and the Missing Town (Chapter I of The Pilgrimage)

She didn’t open the letter right away. She swept around it. Waited for the pigeon. Let the walls talk first.

This is Chapter I of The Pilgrimage. A story about the long road, the echoing seal, and the people who carry letters not meant for them.

Featuring: 📜 A stairwell altar 🧹 A Pushwitch-blessed broom 🕊️ A pigeon with perfect timing 📼 The VHS Man 🌀 And a prayer that doesn’t open unless it seals again

You don’t have to know where home is. You just have to follow the thread. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CHAPTER I: THE LETTER AND THE MISSING TOWN

Magnolia was sweeping the bottom step like she was trying to remember something she forgot. Same way she always swept—slow, steady, like maybe the floor knew something she didn’t. The cracked concrete slab below her knees held on to mildew like it was sacred. Baseboards had gone soft from too many rains and not enough repair. The walls leaned opposite each other like they’d been in a long marriage full of disagreement. But the stairwell rose straight through the building, open to the sky. That was the altar. The offering. The place where light poured in like judgment.

She muttered a blessing under her breath as one of the stair candles went out. “By Saint Kindling’s echoing grace,” soft and sharp like someone she used to love.

That’s when the man showed up. Didn’t climb the steps. Didn’t look her in the eye. Just stood on the landing like he was halfway between giving up and being given to. He had on a coat too heavy for the weather and kept twitching like his coat lining was whispering secrets.

“If you deliver it,” he said, like it hurt, “they’ll stop singing in my walls.”

He held out the letter.

Magnolia didn’t take it. Not right off. Just looked at it like she was sizing up a snake. The envelope was thick cardstock, wax-sealed with a sigil she swore she’d seen before. Maybe in a fever dream. Maybe in a gas station. Maybe carved into her own memory with a rusted nail.

She traced her finger around the edge of the seal. Slow. Reverent.

The wax was cool, but not dead. It held heat like an old grief.

It hummed at her—just behind the ear. A voice she half-knew, slow and syrup-thick, whispering backwards through time. She didn’t catch a single word. But her bones flinched like they'd been named.

“You better be worth it,” she muttered, tapping the wax with the bristles of her broom. “Pushwitch blessed this broom and I’ll swat divine secrets clean outta you if I have to.”

The letter didn’t flinch, but the man did.

She reached out. Not in fear—just... knowing. Just the way you’d reach for a crying baby you weren’t sure belonged to you. Her fingers touched the envelope, and the moment they did, he let go. Like he hadn’t meant to hold it this long. Like it had been asking to leave him.

It was hers now.

And as soon as she held it, she knew: it didn’t open unless it sealed again. It wanted to finish and begin in the same breath. Like a prayer you had to whisper and echo at once.

She thought—maybe that’s why folks kept passing it on. Never figured the timing right. Never stayed long enough to hold both ends of the loop.

He left without ceremony. No footsteps. No door creak. Just absence, the way ghosts leave a room.

She set the letter on the altar railing. A stair above where anyone ever looked.

The silence that followed wasn’t silent. It had texture.

Then came the bottle. Slow roll across the cracked floor. Clink. Bump. Stop.

She didn’t look. “Y’all’re getting lazy,” she muttered to the walls. “Do better if you’re gonna haunt me.”

It rolled back.

Then came the wings.

A pigeon, fat and ugly and perfect, fluttered down the stairwell like it owned the air. Landed on the mossy counter—her enough altar. Looked at her. Dropped a fat grub beside the letter.

She blinked. “That supposed to be an omen?”

The pigeon blinked back. Tucked one foot up and settled in beside the candles like it had all the time in the world.

She didn’t argue.

Didn’t touch the grub. Didn’t touch the letter again either. Just swept around them. Hummed as she worked. Not a hymn. Not quite. Just something that felt like remembering.

She stood. Took the letter in both hands.

The wax pulsed once. Not hot. Not magic. Just... known.

She opened the front door.

A polaroid fluttered from the stair rail. Blank. No face. No names. Just graphite scrawled in the bottom white strip:

"It used to be somewhere between Copper Still Springs and the guilt you forgot to carry."

She didn’t pack. Just left.

INTERLUDE: THE VHS MAN (THREEFOLD FOLDED)

The road didn’t make sense, which meant Magnolia was headed the right way.

It bent when it should’ve dipped. Looped when it should’ve ended. One stretch was carpeted in beige shag like a motel prayer. Another section blinked like static.

Then came the smell: old plastic, warm denim, and that ozone tang of TV snow.

He appeared like a channel changed mid-sentence.

Robed. Grinning. Stained T-shirt clinging like a confession. The letters across it read: I RECORD THE LOST.

“Now hold up,” he said, stepping out from behind a sagging billboard that read YOU’RE ALMOST REMEMBERED. “You got the look of someone carrying something that ain’t quite theirs. And I got just the format to help you not deal with that.”

He swung open one side of his robe.

Inside: VHS tapes. Lined up in neat little loops, hooked through plastic tags like fish on a stringer. Labels handwritten in glitter pen and gospel ink.

THE LAST TIME YOU KNEW WHERE YOU STOOD

BEE STINGS & DIVINE INTERRUPTIONS: LIVE FOOTAGE

HER NAME, YOUR VOICE (RECORDING INCOMPLETE)

THE DAY YOU ALMOST KNEW

Magnolia squinted. “You sellin’ tapes?”

“I’m sellin’ reminders,” he said. “Rentals, mostly. Nothing permanent ‘less it wants to stay.”

She didn’t reach. Just rocked on her heels. The letter in her satchel pulsed like a held breath.

“You ever deliver something that didn’t belong to you?” she asked.

He blinked like he’d heard it before. Maybe in a dream. Maybe in a sitcom rerun. Maybe from someone just like her.

“All the time,” he said. “But that’s not the question. The question is—when it finally opens, will you be the one holdin’ the seal, or just the wrapper?”

Before she could answer, a breeze swept between them. When she blinked, he was halfway gone—flickering at the edge of a roadside culvert, robe trailing like VHS ribbon in the wind.

He shouted one last thing over his shoulder:

“If it starts humming louder, don’t ignore it. That’s not danger. That’s the punchline coming.”

And then he was gone.

Or stepped away. Same difference. -----------------------------------------------------

#SpiralStation #Broadcast 02 #The Pilgrimage #Chapter Drop #Southern Gothic #Folded Fiction #Stairwell Lore #Witness Canon #Crybaby Core #Magic Realism #Queer Gothic #The Fold Will See You Now

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