Undertow: Familiar Haunts

"I'm not a ghost!" -- "All ghosts say that." Cassie is flung to a world where body modifications are routine and one daughter of a Chinese immigrant is prepared to make an unbelievable sacrifice to save her own skin. This is the world of Alyssa Wong's NATURAL SKIN, a harrowing tale of distorted ideas of beauty in a near-future dystopian Toronto, Canada. Undertow: Dark Tome is a Realm production. Listen Away. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Follow us! On Instagram @RealmMedia_ On Twitter @RealmMedia Check out our merch at: merch.realm.fm Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Everybody whose grown up in Faulkesville, well, they’ve always guessed there’s something wrong with the woods on the edge of town, the ones that border Willowhill, something people don’t like to bring up in polite company." Teenage Samantha keeps her nose in her books and her head in the clouds - in lands far beyond the borders of the small town of Faulkesville where she's grown up. It's not just boredom Samantha's escaping - Willowhill is where her parents mysteriously died two years ago, and where her Uncle Ted and buddy Hank Jedsoe are about to discover the real horrors that lurk in the haunted woods. Undertow: Dark Tome is a Realm production. Listen Away. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Follow us! On Instagram @RealmMedia_ On Twitter @RealmMedia Check out our merch at: merch.realm.fm Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gussy and Cassie learned they've "Gone sideways" - the Dark Tome has returned them to the world, but not *their* world. As Cassie struggles to understand the predicament the book has put her in, Gussy recounts the heartbreaking tale of how he got his hands on the Dark Tome, and the cost the book has caused him. Undertow: Dark Tome is a Realm production. Listen Away. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Follow us! On Instagram @RealmMedia_ On Twitter @RealmMedia Check out our merch at: merch.realm.fm Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Young Lettie can see things through her magic eye - things that might be better if she not see. Grownup's secrets. Grownup's true intentions. But when she learns of her brother's unjust arrest and sham trial, it's her seeing eye - and some conjure magic from her Mama - that may help change the fate of her big brother. We experience the flip side of folk magic in "Trial Day," by Tananarive Due. Undertow: Dark Tome is a Realm production. Listen Away. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Follow us! On Instagram @RealmMedia_ On Twitter @RealmMedia Check out our merch at: merch.realm.fm Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cassie returns from her traumatic trip to a haunted - and haunting - family reunion. As she attempts to re-align her world, Gussy stumbles out of his and into the world of Jonathan Maberry's INK. Gerald 'Monk' Addison is a skip-tracer and P.I. on Boundary Street, down the hill from where the good people go. He’s on the side of the angels, but he’s not very nice. Most of Monk’s clients are bail bondsmen and bad lawyers, but every now and then he takes a special case. He’s hired by the ghost of a murder victim to solve their untimely death and exact justice. But hiring Monk comes with a price, even for the dead. Undertow: Dark Tome is a Realm production. Listen Away. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Follow us! On Instagram @RealmMedia_ On Twitter @RealmMedia Check out our merch at: merch.realm.fm Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cassie returns home after the wondrous night at the prom and instead finds her dreams shattered. She splits, and seeks refuge in Mr. Gussy's bookshop... and the Dark Tome. This time, the book calls out for her. She finds herself outside a foggy farmhouse alongside an estranged son returning home. But the homecoming is replete with family secrets, and the demons the father sought to hide will make themselves known. Undertow: Dark Tome is a Realm production. Listen Away. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Follow us! On Instagram @RealmMedia_ On Twitter @RealmMedia Check out our merch at: merch.realm.fm Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Quick witted but unlucky in love, Jana is dragged by her friend Erin to attend an 'eye gazing party,' a new age phenomenon run by a couple of hucksters on the far edge of a small Texas town. Jana's skepticism turns to confusion when Erin - and all the girls at the party - are entranced by an unremarkable man "Thirteen." As part of "Dark Duets," mojo storyteller Joe R Lansdale paired up with his daughter, Kasey Lansdale, to pen this tale of a monster whose power is through the eyes. Featuring a special performance and selections of music by Kasey Lansdale. Undertow: Dark Tome is a Realm production. Listen Away. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Follow us! On Instagram @RealmMedia_ On Twitter @RealmMedia Check out our merch at: merch.realm.fm Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Sleep is dying, and has been for a long time now, through uncounted ticks of clocks and the flickers of thousands of too-brief candles." It's the night of the Senior Prom, and rather than show up awkwardly, Cassie has decided to stay home with the Dark Tome. But, she soon meets a mysterious stranger with an invitation to a masquerade ball wicked and mysterious, far stranger than any rites of spring. What she learns there will reshape her thoughts on dance, if she can ever make it back. Be dazzled in this adaptation of Kat Howard's short story "Murdered Sleep," which originally appeared in Apex Magazine. Undertow: Dark Tome is a Realm production. Listen Away. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Follow us! On Instagram @RealmMedia_ On Twitter @RealmMedia Check out our merch at: merch.realm.fm Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Being a miner is like playing Russian roulette every day of your life. Any morning you might wake up, and find the chamber with the bullet. Tommy - the youngest in a long proud line of West Virginia coal miners - finds out what it feels like to have your card be up when an explosion traps him and a dozen other souls two miles beneath the earth. With oxygen growing thin, their only prayer might come from an old ghost story. Undertow: Dark Tome is a Realm production. Listen Away. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Follow us! On Instagram @RealmMedia_ On Twitter @RealmMedia Check out our merch at: merch.realm.fm Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cassie knows better but can't escape the temptation to return to Mr. Gussy's bookshop. She finds the old man frustrated that he can't make the magical book work. It's take someone younger - someone for whom the walls between this world and the next are a little thinner. They catch a whiff of fresh bread, and are transported to the world of Catherynne M. Valente's fable "The Bread We Eat in Dreams," where a certain personable demon named Agnes will recount the story of her ejection from hell and the little hamlet that grew up around her. Undertow: Dark Tome is a Realm production. Listen Away. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Follow us! On Instagram @RealmMedia_ On Twitter @RealmMedia Check out our merch at: merch.realm.fm Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices