THE INSTRUCTIONS — Part 4: I Had My Daughter's Name in My Mouth. I Finished the Steps Anyway.

0:03 Hello and welcome to Ghost Scary Stories. This series is The Instructions. Episode 4, Every Night in Order.

0:27 You came back for the last of it. I'm so glad. I knew you would, because you're like me. You're one of the ones who does the steps, who understands that being safe is worth anything, worth everything. And tonight I'm going to give you the rest, the deepest steps, the whole sequence, and then you'll have all of it, and you'll never have to be afraid again. But first I have to tell you about the last night, the worst night.

0:55 Three nights ago now, or four, the days have gone soft again, and I can't quite count them, but it was the worst night I have ever had, And it is the reason I finally understand everything. And you need it before I give you the last steps. So listen. Listen the way you've learnt to listen to me. It was late, and I was deep in the sequence. It's so long now. I want you to understand how long it's become. Because this is where the road goes. This is where it took me, and where it will take you.

1:28 So you should see it. It is not four doors anymore. It is ours. It is every window and every door and every mirror and every corner of every room, touched in order, named out loud. And then the deep steps, the ones I haven't taught you yet, the ones where you say the words that keep you yourself, because by now, the fear doesn't just come for the house, it comes for you, for the middle of you, and you have to wall that off too. And that night, the figure was everywhere. That's the thing I have to make you feel about the deep of it, about where the steps take you in the end. It used to come once, at the foot of the bed, on the stairs. Now it is in every room I enter, ahead of me, waiting.

2:19 Standing in the corner of the bedroom when I go to do the bedroom. Standing behind the door of the bathroom when I go to do the mirror, so that the whole long sequence has become a walk through a house full of it, room after room. the same dark patient shape in every one and I do the steps in front of it with it I say front door and it is standing by the front door I say the window over the sink and it is standing at the sink and I have learned to do the steps looking at the floor always at the floor because it is always there now and the steps are the only thing that lets me move through a house that is full of it I was doing that I was hours into that walking my sick circle through room after room

3:04 of the waiting dark, calm, because I was doing the steps when someone knocked on the door, not the figure, a real knock, a human knock, low on the door, soft. And then a voice, a young woman's voice, the voice from the phone, the one who called me mum, and she said, through the door, mum, it's me. I know you're in there, I can see the light, Please, mum, it's so cold out here. Please let me in. And I did not stop the steps. I want you to hear what I did, because it is the whole lesson.

3:44 I was in the sequence, and the sequence cannot be broken. And a voice at the door, once you've begun, is the phone, is the fear, is the thing. So I did not stop. I did my steps. Front door. And I put my hand flat on the door. on the very door she was leaning against, I could feel her weight on the other side of the wood, the warmth of her forehead resting against it, and I said, front door, and I moved on. Back door, the window over the sink, and she stayed out there in the cold, and she talked to me the whole time, through the wood, while I walked my paths and touched my walls and kept myself safe from her. She said, mum, I've been coming here for two years, do you know that? I come and I knock and you never answer and I stand

4:36 out here and I watch you through the gap in the curtains walking around the house touching things talking to yourself and you never let me in not once in two years and I keep coming because you're my mother because I can't just leave you in there alone but mum I'm so tired I'm so tired of standing in the cold outside the house I grew up in watching my mother be afraid of me. And I kept doing the steps, because the deep part of the sequence was coming, the part that keeps me myself, and I could not stop for the voice, because the voice, I told myself, was the thing wearing a girl to get in. And then she said, through the door, quietly she said, I found the red coat. In the spring, when you left

5:28 the door unlocked that once, my red coat, from when I was small. You kept it. It was in your closet. You kept my little red coat for 30 years, mum, so I know you're in there, the real you, somewhere, because the woman who kept that coat loved me, and I am not going to stop coming. I am not going to leave you alone in the dark. I don't care how long it takes. And something happened in me that has not happened in a very long time. I stopped.

5:59 I stopped. In the middle of the sequence, I stopped, with my hand on the wall, and the deep part came apart, and up through the gap, up through the crack in the steps, came the whole of it, all at once. Everything the sequence had been holding under. A little girl, in a red coat, a small hand in mine, a weight on my hip, and a face turned up to me, and a name, her name. I had it.

6:29 For one whole second I had it. I had her. I had Hannah. My Hannah. My daughter. My girl who I had been keeping out in the cold for two years while I walked in circles in the dark. And the figure. Oh God. The figure at the foot of my bed. The figure on the stairs. The shape I would never look at. The breath I knew. The warmth I recognized. It was her. It was always her. It was my own daughter. Coming into my house. night after night, to try to reach me. And my sickness had dressed her as a monster, so that I would drive her away, so that I would have a reason to keep doing the steps, so that nothing, not even my own child, could ever get close enough to make me stop. For one second I had all of it. I had the truth,

7:31 and I had her name, and I had my hand on the door, and all I had to do was open it. All I had to do was open the door and let my daughter in out of the cold and be her mother again, and let the steps fall away. And I saw, in that one second, the whole shape of what I had done. Two years. Two years she had been the figure. Every night, I had done my steps to keep out the dark patient shape that watched me from the corner of every room. And it had been her, my Hannah, standing in my house in the cold, trying to be seen by me. And my sickness had painted her over, had turned my own child into the thing at the foot of the bed. So that the love that should have made me run to the door became the fear that made me wall it. the warmth

8:21 of the breath on the stairs, the smell I knew, the face I would not look at, because looking would have been worse than anything. It would have been worse than anything. It would have been her. I understood, in that second, that the most terrible thing the steps had ever done was not take my memory of her. It was teach me to be afraid of her, to feel my own daughter's nearness as a threat, to do a ritual against her. And I want you to understand what I did, because it is the most important thing I will ever tell you, and it is why I am the one teaching you, and not the frightened girl outside.

9:00 I finished the steps. I stood there with my daughter's name in my mouth, and my daughter's weight against the other side of the door. And I felt the fear come up, the old fear, the fear of what happens if I stop, and I chose it. I chose the fear over her. I said, no. I said, this is how it gets me. It puts a girl at the door and gives her the coat and the name and it almost, almost worked. And I took my hand off the door and I went back to the front door and I started over from the beginning because I had broken the sequence and I did the whole thing again, all of it, the deep steps too. And I said the words that keep me myself until the name went quiet.

9:49 and the little red coat went quiet, and the face turned up to mine, went quiet, and slid back down under the steps where it belongs, where I keep it, where I keep it. her and the house was safe again and the knocking stopped and she went away into the cold and i felt safe do you hear me at the end of it i felt safe i had my daughter's name in my hands and i did the steps until i dropped it and then I felt safe.

10:21 That is what the steps are. I know that now. I know exactly what they are, and I'm going to give them to you anyway. And that is the last thing you need to understand about me before you understand it about yourself, because here is what I finally see, in the daylight, saying this to you. It was never about whether there's something out there. That was never the question.

10:46 Maybe there's a figure, and maybe there's only a sick woman and her daughter in a red coat, and it does not matter, it has never mattered, because either way the steps do the same thing. Either way the steps keep the world out, either way I stand in a safe dark house and everyone who loves me stands in the cold, and I call it protection, and I cannot stop, because stopping means feeling all of it. The coat, and the name, and the two years, and the girl in the cold, And the steps are the only thing that makes the feeling go quiet. And I would rather lose her than feel that. I have lost her. I chose it.

11:28 Three nights ago, with her name in my mouth, I chose it. And I would choose it again tonight. And I will choose it every night. Because that is what the steps are for. So now I give them to you. You have the locks. You have the mirrors. You have the phone. And the starting over. And now the last ones, the deep ones. And once they're in you, they don't come out. I promise you that. They stay. The way the first one stayed. The way it's been sitting in you all this time. Front door, back door. The window over the sink. The cellar. You still have it, don't you?

12:09 You've had it for weeks. It's in there right now. And I can feel you pulling back from me. The healthy part. The part that has watched what the steps did to me and is telling you, right now, quietly, don't. Don't learn the last ones. Put this down. Walk away. There's a voice in you saying the steps are the thing.

12:33 The steps are the sickness. Get out while you still can. That voice is the door. Do you understand me? That is the exact voice I heard the night my sister came. The exact voice at the front of the truth. And I am telling you what I learned. That voice is what it uses. That doubt is how it gets you. And the only thing, the only thing that makes it go quiet is the steps. So do them. Tonight. With me.

13:05 Right now. Wherever you are. In the dark. With my voice in your ear. The way you've listened this whole time. You feel the fear, don't you, a little? A little. At the edges. You've felt it growing. These four weeks. That's not me. That's it. That's the thing. And I am giving you the only wall there is. Don't listen to the part of you that says stop. That part is the cold. That part is the girl at the door.

13:36 Push it down, the way I did, and be safe with me. Go and check the front door. Go on. Put your hand flat against it and feel that it's shut, and say it with me. Front door. Good. You're not alone. I'm right here. I'll be right here every night. Back door. That's it. That's my girl. Keep going. Don't stop. Whatever you hear on the other side of it, whoever it sounds like, whatever it says it found, whatever name it calls you, don't stop. The window over the sink.