Welcome to Undertow, Realm's podcast of The Weird and the Wicked.

I'm your host and producer Fred Greenhalge as we enter the second episode of our new season, Familiar

Haunts. Today's story is penned by Chris Bernier, a familiar voice here on Undertoe. He's the lead writer of our season 8, Narcosis, as well as the writer of the novella Dead Man's

Suit you heard in season 11.

His story today is about a mysterious woman, well, two of them actually, set on the main

island of Vinylhaven.

Vinylhaven is a real place, and in life is as it is in the story, an island of juxtapositions, a place where locals are wary of newcomers, but once they warm up to you, they protect you like family. They also don't ask too many questions about your past. This makes it a perfect place for Molly Malone to start her new life and to forget the person she used to be and the

deeds she's done. But even when you're far off the coast of Maine, your past has a habit of

catching up with you, as we'll soon learn. We're breaking this episode up into two parts, so here

we go with part one of The Woman Inviolet.

We're sitting and having violent.

We're sitting and having lunch at the clamshell lodge when the boat horns start blowing.

Frog's rolling in, Eric says.

It's about to get thick around here.

Seagulls circle against the high noon sun as we work our way through scallop and fry baskets at a plastic table close to the pierre's edge. The water is calm

in perfect blue. It's beautiful out, I say. Why are you going to wish the sunshine away with talk of fog?

Sometimes you act like you're new here, Molly. I'm kind of new to the island, still.

Three years? Eric asks, like he doesn't remember. Four. Almost four. Four in August. That's right, Eric says. I always visit in July and

fall in love with the island, and then those that move usually move in August, like you did.

Except I didn't visit before I moved. I remind him.

Yeah, I always thought that was a little strange.

I poke at the dwindling pool of ketchup with a fry.

...