The Green Monster

(dramatic rumbling music) (electricity buzzing)

(ominous instrumental music) (foliage rustling)

Not this year, dear friend.

This year, I write your final chapter.

Not tonight.

(paper rustling)

No.

No.

I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry.

No! No!

God!

He's done it again.

Come on, show yourself.

Come on. (Door thudding)

How nice of you to turn up with a guest at my house,

only,

I've run out of honey.

Tea and Jaffa cakes?

Yeah, I was right wasn't I?

Yeah. (Green Monster moaning)

I researched and combed the village for years

and questioned everyone I knew,

the postman, the baker man,

the milkman, the village neighbor,

the policeman, finally tracked this down to a pawnbroker.

This belonged to your mother, didn't it?

Everything I'd ever written these years wasn't fiction.

The only thing that can thaw

a monster's heart is a mother's love.

Go.

This ends tonight.

Go!

This ends tonight.

Go.

(crickets chirping)

The spell is broken.

The power's gone. (Arthur smirking)

No need for that anymore.

I kept my promise.

I kept my promise, Margaret.

Even a green demon like that once had a mother

and a father,

long dead in these cold woods.

Bless them both.

(cicadas screeching)

Rest, Margaret.

Rest, you poor woman.

Margaret, my love.

Margaret.

We shall never know

the pact that boy made with those dark forces.

We shall never know.

I'll write my thoughts.

Tomorrow.

You just keep coming back, don't you?

(Arthur exclaiming)

(nails slitting)

Welcome back to Dead Words

where we exhume the weirdest graves in the literary world.

And tell you all the juicy bits

your English teacher never would.

Today marked the year since Arthur Green's unusual death.

He was the author of "Her Heart's Last Beat",

a literary sensation and a bestseller,

and a mystery no one's been able to discover.

Arthur Green, the one book wonder,

part poet, part recluse, part

- Monster Hunter. - Allegedly.

Everything about him was alleged.

He didn't do interviews.

He lived in a restored mill in the country for decades,

walking these woods.

And telling a select few locals

that he was tracking something big, something dangerous.

The Green Monster.

For new listeners,

the Green Monster is our area's own cryptid.

Seven feet tall,

glowing yellow eyes,

smells like rottening pine,

sent to hunt hearts, literally.

Which brings us onto Arthur Green's,

"Her Heart's Last Beat".

On the surface,

a tragic romance about the mysterious death

of his wife 20 years before.

Underneath, a breadcrumb trail.

But a breadcrumb trail to what?

The Green Monster and his wife,

the first victim.

Check out the opening poem to the novel.

A boy did wait by hearth's dim light

for a father lost in winter's night.

The winds did wail.

The drifts did rise.

No lantern's glow met frozen skies.

The village slept while all alone.

The boy grew cold to skin and bone.

His father lost,

lay still a stone.

The woods took both to claim their own.

Yet, in the night a heartbeat came.

"Not human now and not the same."

Brilliant start, hey?

Some heavy stuff, Ash.

What did he mean? (Ashlee sighing)

A woodcutter went out on Christmas Eve

and had an accident in the woods

and froze to death before the boy could get

the villagers interested in the search party.

The legend has it the boy's heart froze that night

and then he sold his soul to the devil to get revenge,