Subject: Fearsum Recap

As the show opens, we see Derek Barnes working at a computer as he tells us via voice over that his brother had a web site called occultresearch.com, and that said brother hired Derek as his lead investigator. As we close in, we learn that he is recording this speech into his computer. Derek says that his job is simple: “To get out into the world, and gather the truth behind these strange, bizarre stories, and post them on the site.” Derek didn’t really care about the stories, but it was fun and a chance to work with his brother, until “the night [he] walked into that roadside bar. “The roadside bar in question has a neon sign of a scantily clad women, and as Dereks voice over tells us that “nothing in [his] life would ever be the same again,” cut to a shot of a plume of flame that shoots out of the sign’s right breast.

Inside the bar, men are drinking and women are dancing on a stage. Derek is telling a waitress that she doesn’t understand, and she says, “If I had a dollar every time I herd that!” Derek continues to pester the poor waitress (while checking out her ass), saying that he’s heard rumors about “dancers who burned up on stage” and “went up in flames in the middle of a lap dance.” The waitress then asks, “Why do you want to know?” and Derek gives her a business card with the website’s URL on it. She asks if Derek is a “computer geek,” and Derek says that his brother is the geek. He’s “just a surfer trying to keep corn flakes on the table.” Derek’s cell phone rings, and he answers it, “This had better be life and death.” It’s Adam, he says he needs Dereks help Derek tries to get off the phone so that he can hook up with the waitress. Eventually, Derek pretends that the call is breaking up and he shuts off the phone, reassuring himself that his brother will understand. Derek checks himself out in the mirror, but then something weird happens, it looks like Derek turns into a mummy or a dead person for a second. This freaks Derek out. He calms down and goes off with the waitress, as the camera zooms in on a painting of a house in the background. A voice is heard, “Well, it’s his destiny to be the…you know” The painting turns into a real house, Adam’s house and there is lots of thunder and lightning.

Cut to Derek as he pulls up, and we see his Florida license plate, which reads “Surf WWW.” Derek runs up to the house, and when Adam doesn’t answer the door or respond to his yells, Derek yells that he is going to use the spare key and for Adam to not shoot him. All is dark inside, and when Derek flips the light switch, nothing happens. He flicks a lighter, commenting that “this place smells nasty” and starts up the stairs. But wait! There’s water coming down the stairs. There’s water in the upstairs hallway. There’s water everywhere! Derek pushes open the door to the bathroom, which has candles burning all over the place. The shower curtain is drawn so we can’t see what’s in the tub. Derek sloshes through the water on the floor and jerks back the curtain to reveal Adam’s body at the bottom of the bloody water filled tub. Derek reaches into the water and pulls out his brother’s dead body, while sobbing, “Oh my God! I’m so sorry!”

Derek continues to speak into the computer, saying that it’s now three years later, and he probably should have shut down the web site after Adam’s death, but it felt unfinished and unresolved. He changed the name of the site to “Freakylinks” and took on a partner. Derek’s partner (whose name we have yet to learn) clearly always messes things up. We see the two of them preparing to enter some barn, and the partner gets all the details of the plan wrong. Partner takes the camera to shoot the “opening crawl,” where Derek tells us that he and his partner Jason are there to investigate “the black market purchase” of an occult icon, “the severed head of the great Seminole war chief, Osceola.” Derek and Jason exit their car to enter a barn where the purchase is supposed to go down. Derek pauses to give us the mission of the Freakylinks team: “To uncover the truth behind the strange and unusual, to answer the questions that have no answers, and take you with us.” Derek enters the barn and spies on someone he informs us is “Gunter Mahlburg, the vertically challenged Donald Trump of occult collecting.” We see a really short guy counting off bills as Derek zooms in on the severed head in some sort of jar. Suddenly, one of the head’s eyes opens, and Derek yells, “Whoa!” which causes the people in the barn to notice him. He takes off and we are treated to a shaky camera perspective of him running out and dropping the camera on the ground.

A girl who looks to be around Derek’s age is watching the video footage on a computer, and she turns and says, “You’ve gotta be kidding me!” and then asks Derek and Jason what happened next. Derek says, “They caught us and they killed us.” The girl looks at Derek for a second and then says it’s not easy always being the one left behind. Derek reveals that the girl’s name is “Lan” (pronounced “Lahn”) and says they can’t waste her brain out in the field, and she keeps the whole operation going to which she replies, “Really?” and he says, “Absitively!” He asks Lan to figure out what made the severed head’s eyes move. After she walks off, Derek looks perplexed. Jason asks what’s up, and Derek says that they needed the severed head because their “new subscribers are down 37%” and that’s the third time this month that Mahlburg scooped them. Jason throws a dart into a poster of Mahlburg on the wall, and asks if business is really that bad. Derek says that if they were a horse, they’d have been shot by now. Jason looks at the image of the severed head on Derek’s computer monitor, and shakes his head. This is important later.

Derek walks over to the fridge and looks at a picture of himself and Adam. See, they’re twins. But Adam’s hair is slicked back. Jason reaches into frame and grabs the last can of soda before Derek can get it. Then there’s a really weird scene where Jason talks about some chick named “Sissy Bargo” who has gotten fat, but still turns him on, and it disturbs him. Derek logs onto his computer and is told he has eighty-seven new messages. This causes him to comment to Lan that “the wack pack has been busy.” As his email messages load, Derek looks at a picture of Adam and some girl and says that maybe he should have left the web site the way Adam left it. Lan comments that it was a “dry, academic wasteland of occult novelties” and that even the name sucked. Derek sees one email with no subject from a “Lazarus,” so he opens it. A Quick Time video launches wherein a woman with braided hair walks by and then someone who looks remarkably like Adam follows her. Derek calls Lan over, and she accuses him of “stalking women at the ATM.” Derek says it’s not him because he doesn’t own a bank card and he’s never been that place in his life. Lan asks if it’s a video of Adam before he died, but Derek points out that “the time code” says that the “footage was taken the day before yesterday.” Lan asks if Derek is sure that isn’t him in the video, and Derek points out a scar above Adam’s eye, caused by Derek pushing him off his bike when they were six. Lan says that this video is the result of some serious video effects, “Hollywood level stuff” and that she needs to “figure out the password” so they can get into “this protected web site.”

As Lan brings up the “web site”, she is prompted for a password. Derek reaches over and types something into the keyboard. Lan asks what it was, and Derek says it was “a made-up name Adam and [he] used to call each other — twin speak.” Derek says that he and AAdam always used to know what the other was thinking, show up at the same restaurants, finish each other’s sentences, and sometimes Derek would pick up the phone before it even rang, and Adam would be on the other end. Derek has guessed the correct password, and the screen goes black, and then the word “Croatoan” is written on it. Lan asks what it is. Back to Derek, recording his monologue on a computer. He says he had no idea what it meant. Just then, Jason walks in and interrupts, and asks if he can sit there for a moment, and that he’ll be quiet. Derek starts up again, but of course Jason interrupts him. Derek says that the whole thing made him decide to get in touch with “the one person who loved Adam as much as [he] did.”

Cut to a boxing ring. Blue Sweatshirt is beating on Gray Sweatshirt, and finally knocks him out. Blue sweatshirt takes off headgear to reveal that she is a girl. Derek (who has been watching the whole time) advises her to pick on someone her own size. Blue sweatshirt says, “Derek?” Cut to a locker room where Derek asks about the boxing thing, and the girl says that it’s “great for relieving the body of stress.” She asks if he is still “chasing things that go bump in the night.” Derek says he “makes a living at that circus” and the girl points out that “Adam never saw a dime when his name was on it.” Derek says that Adam wasn’t about the money. The girl looks at him for a while, and Derek’s all, “What?” and she’s all, “I forgot how much you two look alike.” Derek asks “Chloe” if she’s ever heard the word “Croatoan.” Chloe grabs her stuff and starts leave, visibly upset. Chloe tells him to “stay away” and Derek says that he knows it’s hard for her, but that he wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t important. At Chloe’s apartment, Derek shows her a printout of the video of Adam, and says that he had Lan run “video scans” and the video hasn’t been tampered with. Chloe thinks it’s a hoax and the “Internet freaks” are screwing with his head. Derek reveals that the night Adam died, Derek “had a vision” that he can’t explain.

Cut to later that evening, where Chloe is showing Derek some research Adam did about the Roanoke colony, a group of settlers brought over from Europe by John White in 1587. John White sailed back to England for supplies and left the settlers at Roanoke, departing only a few days after his granddaughter, Virginia Dare, was born. Throughout this explanation, we see a re-enactment of the proceedings. When John White returned four years later, the camp was deserted, and one hundred fifteen people had vanished without a trace. There was no evidence that the colonists were absorbed into local Indian tribes. Chloe says that the fate of the Roanoke colony is “the Holy Grail of urban legends.” Derek asks about the word “Croatoan,” and Chloe replies that it’s an island near the settlement, and White found the word carved into a tree, so he thought maybe the settlers fled there, but “he never had a chance to go there.”

In the re-enactment, we see John White looking at the word “Croatoan” carved into a tree and then some weird looking glyphs carved into the tree as well. Chloe explains that Adam believed John White’s journal was incomplete, and that White really found something so horrifying that it was expunged from public record. Re-enactment John White reaches into a crevice in the base of the carved tree and pulls out a strip of burlap. He unwraps it to reveal a chain with a round charm on it, which is covered in glyphs similar to those on the tree. As he looks at it, we hear what the captioning calls “ghostly laughter.” John White turns to see a little girl in a hooded robe standing behind him, but when he grabs his torch to get a better view, the little girl is gone. He sees her walking further away, and calls out, “Virginia?” and drops the necklace to walk closer. The little girl starts running, and John White gives chase. Virginia stops in a clearing and turns to look at him, and her face is covered in green makeup. We see something rushing at John White as he screams in terror. Cut to Derek looking at some pictures of “Virginia Dare” as Chloe tells him that some local tribes had legends about her being a “shape shifter,” and that Adam became obsessed with one particular passage he believed came from John White’s diary. It read, “But dreadfully, in the stead of my granddaughter, there awaited for me something born not of man, something fearsome.”

Derek pages through some of Adam’s notes, which contain lots of drawings of glyphs similar to those carved into the tree in the re-enactment. Derek asks if the name “V. Elsing” means anything to Chloe, and she says no. Derek plans to find out who is “playing games with [his] mind” by starting “at the beginning.” Derek and Chloe enter Adam’s house, Derek hands Chloe a camera and tells her to “keep the tape running.” From Chloe’s camera perspective, we see Derek going through pictures and bookshelves. She asks why he never cleared out Adam’s things. Derek says he didn’t want to accept “the truth about what happened.” Chloe goes into the bedroom and has a voice over flashback of her and Adam together. Derek asks if she’s okay, and she snaps out of it and volunteers to check the bathroom. Derek says he will, and gently takes the camera from her.

Derek goes in and pulls back the closed shower curtain to reveal that there’s nothing there, but he films the walls and ceiling anyway. As Derek closes the medicine cabinet and sees himself in the mirror, he has a vision of Adam looking at himself in the same mirror. Adam drops his cell phone on the floor and looks sad and frightened. We get quick flashes of Adam and Derek as kids, and then the Lady that Adam was following in the Quick Time video. Adam picks up a razor blade and fingers it. Outside the house, something is growling. Adam sinks into the bloody water as the something outside rushes in the door, and up the stairs — and Derek breaks out of his vision and stares into the cracked mirror.

The camera moves to look at Chloe, outside in the yard. She looks up at the window and sees a really creepy shot of Adam, watching her, who she thinks is just Derek. Derek exits the house and Chloe says she saw his face in the window. Derek says he wasn’t at that window. They both look up, and Derek says it was a mistake to bring her there, and tries to rush her away from the house. Chloe protests, and then finally says that Derek was not the only one Adam called the night Adam died. She continues, “Adam was changing. I begged him to shut down the web site, to walk away, but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He called me that night…and I hung up on him.” Chloe concludes, Derek isn’t the only one carrying Adam’s death around inside him.

Derek looks stunned as his cell phone rings. He finally answers, and Lan tells him she tracked down “V. Elsing”. He used to be a patient at a psychiatric hospital in Baltimore. Derek asks where he is now. Cut to the Psychiatric Unit of Loughmann Medical Center. Some guy is chained to a table in an observation room. A guard tells Derek and Chloe that Elsing was first picked up for disturbing the peace. Derek asks what happened to his face (which we haven’t seen yet) and the guard says that Elsing “went crazy last night” and attacked one of his guards, and it “took six men to bring him down.” Derek wants to talk to Elsing, but the guard is hesitant, so Derek slips him a twenty. The guard says they can have five minutes and gives Derek the money back.

Derek and Elsing sit in a room, and Elsing says “they’re not human, the ones that you’re looking for.” Derek wants to know who he’s looking for. Elsing starts telling Derek about when you hear something in your house at night and you start turning the place upside down to make sure your home is still safe. Derek says that has happened to him, and Elsing says that maybe he really did hear something, like “something else, something fearsome.” Elsing says “they feed on fear,” and the only way to stay safe is not to feel terror. Derek asks what he’s seen, and Elsing says, “More than enough.” He reaches up to scratch his nose or something, and reveals a tattoo on his wrist that looks like the ones on the Croatoan tree or in Adam’s notes, and then yells, “You only see what your mind can handle.” Derek says he doesn’t understand, and Elsing says Adam didn’t either, at first, but it doesn’t matter because “they’ll be coming soon…real soon.”

Derek and Chloe exit the hospital, and Derek tells her what Elsing said, and about his tattoos. Chloe says it “gets even crazier” because she “checked the date on Elsing’s admittance” and it was “the same night that Adam died.” Derek spots the ATM woman walking nearby. A clip of the Quick Time video plays. Derek knocks Chloe aside and follows the lady into a building. Chloe follows and Derek stops inside the doors and tells her that it was “the woman from the ATM footage.” Chloe wonders where she went, and Derek doesn’t know. The camera pans out from the two of them standing there, and reveals that there are like eight sets of doors the woman could have gone through, and a janitor mopping the hall.

Flashback to Adam’s death. The ATM woman. Virginia Dare. Younger Adam and Derek. The necklace that John White found in the tree. Derek reaching down into the tub to grab Adam’s dead body, but this time Adam emerges from the water. Derek wakes up from a nightmare and hears what the captioning calls, “floorboards creaking.” Derek grabs a baseball bat from beside his bed and starts wandering around his apartment (which is also the Freakylinks offices), but he keeps hearing creaking coming from different places. As Derek walks by the glass door (with his back to it), we see Virginia Dare hovering in the air outside. Derek turns around and goes out the door. As Derek walks down the steps, a shadowy figure passes in front of the camera. Derek walks across the lawn, where there are some sails flapping in the breeze. Through the sails, he can see Virginia Dare. Well, we know it’s Virginia Dare, but he probably doesn’t. Derek (baseball bat in hand) starts to make his way over to her, but suddenly Virginia Dare has changed into Adam. Derek’s all, “Adam?” and we hear the same snarling and growling from previous scenes, as Adam/Virginia rushes towards Derek.

Suddenly, Lan is there, saying that she has “insomnia” and “thought [she]‘d get some work done on the Osceola screen grabs.” Derek looks back at the now empty spot where he last saw Adam and says that he has a better idea. Lan and Derek are at a computer, and Lan asks what they’re looking for, exactly. Derek isn’t sure, and Lan rolls her eyes at him, and asks how Chloe is. Lan says it must be strange to see Chloe, since she almost married Adam. Derek doesn’t take the bait, and tells Lan to zoom in closer on one spot. Lan says, “She’s pretty.” Derek sees something on the wall behind the tub, and Lan takes a closer look. It looks like the wallpaper is peeling away to reveal something awfully similar to the glyphs from Adam’s notebook (and Elsing’s tattoo, and on the Croatoan tree). Lan is amazed, and turns to talk to Derek, but he’s gone.

Derek and Chloe are back at Adam’s house, and they head upstairs to the bathroom. Derek walks over to the spot revealed in the video, and starts tearing the wallpaper off. The walls are covered with those glyphs. Chloe asks what it is, and Derek says it’s a “message from Adam.” Montage shots of Derek and Chloe ripping up wallpaper. Chloe says, “Oh, my God!” as the camera pans out to reveal all of the walls and floors and ceilings covered in these glyphs, and one wall says, “Croatoan.” Derek films it while he says that “every opening to the outside world is covered with these things” and it’s like Adam was trying to protect something. Suddenly, there is a bang, and Chloe screams, but it was just the wind from an open window knocking something over. Chloe closes the window, and then says that there is “someone down in the yard.” Derek looks, and it’s Virginia Dare, and her face is green. She starts walking towards the house, and changes into Adam. Chloe gasps.

Derek says they should get out of there, and they turn to go but the ATM woman suddenly appears She tosses Chloe out of the way, and then tosses Derek across the room. Derek yells, “I know who you really are!” and she drags him by the hair back to the center of the room, and then uses Derek’s hand to punch through the wood floor. Just as Derek breaks through, Elsing comes from out of nowhere and pulls the woman off Derek. Derek grabs a box that was beneath the floorboards. Elsing continues to get beat up, but yells, “It’s inside!” to Derek, who opens the box and pulls out the necklace we saw previously when John White pulled it out of a tree, with the circle charm on it. Elsing tells the woman that she’s lost and “the power belongs to him now.” Derek holds the charm up to the woman and says, “Go to hell, Virginia.” Suddenly the window smashes outwards and we see Derek comforting Chloe. Elsing, Derek and Chloe walk outside. Chloe rests on the steps as Derek demands that Elsing tell him what’s going on. Elsing says, “It’s you. It’s the web site. You’re stirring them up, making them nervous. You’re going to end up just like Adam.” Derek says, “You mean, dead.” Elsing replies that there are worse things than being dead.

Derek makes a weird face and then runs back and gets the necklace from Chloe. He asks Elsing what the necklace has to do with his brother’s death, but suddenly Elsing is gone. Next day, Derek walks into the Freakylinks offices where Lan asks what happened to his hand. He hugs her and says she wouldn’t believe him, and then says he doesn’t want to talk about it. Lan shows him a story she found on the web that says that the severed Indian head was cursed, and that Mahlburg was in a gas explosion. Jason walks in and says that he tracked Mahlburg down and…he pulls the severed head from his backpack. Lan and Derek chuckle.

Back to Derek who continues his monologue into the computer, by saying that he’s kept Adam’s death buried inside him for almost three years, but now he needs answers. Derek realizes that Adam was terrified by something that drove him over the edge of sanity. Adam was his twin brother, and there hasn’t been a moment that Derek didn’t think about him, or feel as if he failed Adam. Derek vows to “post everything on the web site,” and use Freakylinks to help other people solve their mysteries. Derek hits stop and looks at the picture of Adam on his monitor. Then, he has a strange feeling and looks at the phone. He hesitates and then picks it up and says, “Hello?” a bunch of times. It seems like someone is on the line but no one answers. Cut to a pay phone with receiver dangling.