The final tumble is turned. Behind the wall, the unmistakable send for real to real cassette player starting.

I told you! Want to give you half-screened? I tried to warn you of the horrors that await behind these walls.

Sudapod Episode 764 July 2nd 2021. This week's story, The Hollow Tree, by Jordan Carella.

Hey everyone, welcome to Sudapod, the weekly horror podcast. I'm Alistair, your host, and this week's story comes to us from Jordan Carella.

Jordan is a queer and disabled author who has lived all over the world, including both Cairo and Chicago, and their work can be found in apex, glittering ashes and stranger horizons.

Your reader for this week is the equally superb severative arm.

Severative arm is a writer, voice actress, singer, songwriter, political messaging strategist and hooligan, who works with the political action committee Mad Dog Pack, helping to annoy corrupt politicians with snarky billboards.

Hell yes!

Sever is a grits, a girl raised in the south who grew up in Atlanta, and she's never been to England before, but she wants you all to know that she really worked hard to research and practice this accent.

She's hoping to get a proper studio demo recorded of her song Agnostic Gospel done this year, and she's beginning to feel the itch to process some personal demons into a very heavily depression mode influenced album of new songs.

An album of new songs life for one, a way to very eagerly indeed.

One last thing, the severative arm has asked us to shout out the fantastic Dan at Ground Crew Studios in Charlotte, North Carolina,

because Dan has helped us out twice on two previous episodes now, and does really fantastic work.

So with all that being said, I have a story for you, and we all promise you it's true.

The Hollow Tree, by Jordan Carella, read by Sever Tivitum, there are two kinds of secrets, those we keep from others, and those we keep from ourselves.

My mother told me this after one of her two silent nights with my father.

She told me that the worst ones, the ones too terrible to believe, are the second kind.

She told me she hoped I'd never have one of these kinds of secrets, as she leaned over and kissed my forehead.

Only then did she go to her bed.

Three days after that, my second sister came out of her, unbreathing.

That time, she did not cry.

She told me, Pira, you won't cry either.

...