Swamp Season Séance, Ep. 3: “The Mildew Medium” as told by Dale T. Doll Listen, I’m no stranger to the supernatural. I was almost posses...
Swamp Season Séance, Ep. 3: “The Mildew Medium”
as told by Dale T. Doll
Listen, I’m no stranger to the supernatural. I was almost possessed by a legless warlock with a flamethrower beard, I once got hexed by a woman who ran a haunted Tupperware party, and I live in Florida, which is basically a liminal space held together by humidity and regret.
But even I draw the line at moldy ghosts who flirt through mildew.
It started innocently enough—Barry was in the kitchen threatening a cucumber with a mandoline slicer, and I was minding my own business in the living room, watching a blank TV screen and pondering if Not My Cat had joined a local ghost cult. You know. Normal Tuesday stuff.
That’s when I heard it.
Not from the TV exactly—but through it. The kind of voice that rides the static between channels. A sound like someone whispering from inside a damp envelope. And I kid you not, it said:
"Master D… the house is thirsty.
It weeps for what was promised, for what was lost.
The locket—it was mine once, I think. Or maybe it was hers?
The years blur in the water. You’ll find it. You have to. It’s waiting,
just past the door you pretend not to notice.
You see the stains, don’t you? They draw the way.
But be careful… things left too long in the dark learn to whisper back."
Needless to say, I did what any brave, plastic-based investigator would do—I screamed, fell off the ottoman, and blamed it on the cat.
Barry came in carrying half a cucumber and a suspicious amount of mayonnaise. “Why are you shouting at the Weather Channel again?”
“I wasn’t! The TV is off! And it just called me Master D, which sounds like I’ve started a ghost-based hip-hop career and no one told me!”
Barry sighed. “Dale, mildew doesn’t talk.”
“Tell that to Lucinda.”
That got his attention. Turns out, this wasn’t my first time hearing her, and not by a long shot. The peeling wallpaper behind the couch has been oozing dark patches that look suspiciously like floorplans. Water drips from nowhere. Silverware tarnishes the moment it touches the table. And don’t even get me started on the guest bathroom, which now smells like the inside of a drowned diary.
Barry thinks I’m overreacting. “It’s just the Florida damp,” he says.
But I know better. Lucinda is real. She’s been trapped behind the walls, waiting for someone who can hear her. Someone who can find the locket… or the door… or maybe her.
And unfortunately for me?
That someone is Master D.
Coming Soon in Episode 4: "The Weeping Wall"
Where we try not to open a door that’s been wallpapered over since 1928 and keeps bleeding old perfume.
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