Hello from the Hallowoods · William A. Wellman

Episode 187 - Ashes

April 16, 2025·45 min·4 clips

A cosmic narrator asks where your guardian angel was during your darkest moments, as trees scream hello from the hollow woods.

The real world burns. The cold open takes a childhood meeting with an angel and strips the shine off it. If grace was real, where was it during discipline, dark and deadly doors, a raised knife, and blood? The answer is not comforting. Angels and devils both come under suspicion, and the narrator stays in the heat of a night where violence has not burned itself out yet. The trees scream, which makes the Stumps feel less like a backdrop and more like a city in pain. Valerie turns to paper. With fire outside the window and Clementine's open letter nearby, she tries to write something Tara might be able to bear. Her first attempt lands wrong. The letter starts blunt, breaks, and becomes a careful condolence for Heather, full of apology, shared grief, and a promise of vengeance. Even the kindness has a crack in it. Valerie says she is always there, but she knows the letter is standing in for the visit she has not made to the Scout City Infirmary. She seals it anyway. The great tree seal of Scout City makes the private grief feel official, tying Valerie's sorrow to the city and to duties she cannot quite put down. Then the house goes wrong. Valerie steps into the hallway and finds the front door open. Roger and Kieran are gone from sight. No one answers when she calls. A rustle and thump below the stairs pull the scene out of mourning and into immediate danger. She grabs a dented aluminum bat from the umbrella stand, partly because it reminds her of one tied to Riot. It is a weirdly plain object for such a nasty moment, which makes the threat land harder. After the Patreon, transcripts, music, and social details, the farewell keeps the show's dark grin: cigarettes, underbrush, wildfire prone parks, Yellowstone, and the wrath of wolves.

As heard by us

A grief heavy chapter that turns a burning city into intimate dread.

Ashes follows a city under fire and keeps its focus on grief, faith, and the small acts people make while everything falls apart. The angel that once offered protection, the mother’s rod, the raised knife, and Scout City in flames all push the same question: what does safety…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play for a house under fire, a sealed letter, and a figure in the hall.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Hello from the Hallowoods