Welcome to the Nightmare Magazine Story Podcast.

Enter freely and of your own free will.

I am your humble host, Terence Taylor, one very much at home with the children of the night. Stay close as my muse,

the medieval demon goblin, guides us down into beautiful darkness. In this episode, before our

full-length story, we have short-shot, finishing touches, written by Adam Troy Castro,

and narrated by Stefan Rudnicki.

But first, a word from our sponsors.

And now, Stefan Rudnicki.

Finishing Touches by Adam Troy Castro.

When I proposed to Caroline, I told her that as long as we lived, I would deny her nothing.

But I had one request for myself that we fulfill my own lifelong dream, and build a haunted mansion for us.

Caroline was amenable to this. She had never known wealth on my scale, had joined my company as an

entry-level position before catching my eye, and she understood that this one eccentricity was

a small price for joining the 0.01%.

She could afford to save her natural assertiveness for other things. She only asked what my

whimsy would entail. I explained that what I really wanted was the haunted mansion as enshrined in popular culture,

a sprawling estate on the edge of a dark forest,

with a central structure that gave the impression of storied antiquity,

even though it would of course be brand new and equipped with all possible modern conveniences,

all out of sight where they would not disturb the illusion.

The exterior would feature a well-kept hedge maze, and the interior would include secret passages behind bookcases.

In all places open to guests, the walls would be galleries of supposed ancestry in the fashions of prior generations,

...