Subject: Coelacanth This! Recap

Open on Derek, Jason, and Chloe are in the truck, driving down some sort of back road at night. Chloe reports that it is “4:30 AM.” Jason and Derek argue over whether or not they missed their exit. Chloe expositions that they are on their way home from Tennessee, where they were looking for Bigfoot, but didn’t find anything. Derek says that they got six hours of footage of what Jason calls, “a drunken hillbilly.” Chloe thinks she has Lyme disease. Jason doesn’t think it was a tick. Chloe says that a tick is what Lan gets when she thinks Derek is ignoring her. Derek’s like, “Huh?” Chloe says, “She likes you.”  Jason just drives. Derek tells Chloe to “stop!” Jason stops the truck, but not because of what Derek said. There’s another vehicle overturned in the road ahead. Derek and Jason get out and Chloe tries to call 911, but can’t get any service on her cell phone. Derek keeps yelling, “Is anyone there? Is anyone hurt?” as they shine their flashlights around. Jason’s flashlight shows large amounts of blood on the ground. There’s actually a trail of blood that leads into the woods. Derek stops short when he realizes that the trail has disappeared, and the three of them shine their flashlights around and argue about whether it disappeared.Suddenly, a half-naked girl, bloody and battered, is standing behind them, screaming, “He’s gone!” Derek asks who’s gone, and the girl says that it’s her boyfriend, Brandon. Derek asks where he went. The girl says that “it took him.” Derek asks, “It? What’s it?” and the girl cries, “I don’t know!”

Cut to a slightly battered Derek is sitting at his computer, in a wifebeater, narrating the story. Derek says that the girl’s name was Cassie, and she told them that something had attacked the car and taken her boyfriend, Brandon. So, while Chloe tried to calm Cassie down, Jason and Derek searched the woods to no avail, and when the sun came up, they took Cassie to get some help.

Cut to their  truck as it drives by a sign which reads Owensmouth, Georgia. Derek parks the truck and runs into a local diner, proclaiming, “There’s been an accident!” The locals just look at him. Derek narrates that the locals were “a little slow on the uptake,” but the town itself was bothering Chloe more. Chloe asks about the name of the town again, and says it seems familiar. Cassie’s father comes in, followed by the town sheriff. The father thanks the Freakylinks gang for saving Cassie. Derek quietly asks the sheriff about Brandon, and the sheriff says they found him, “not far from the vehicle.” Derek asks if Brandon is okay, since Cassie thought something got him, and the sheriff chuckles, “Yeah, a bottle of Jim Beam.” Derek isn’t quite satisfied with that explanation, and the sheriff allows that they have “a bit of a bear problem.” Cassie hears this and yells, “It wasn’t a bear!” Her father gently leads her out. As soon as Cassie is out of earshot, Derek is questioning the sheriff again, but the sheriff is still sticking to the bear story, saying that Cassie was in shock. The sheriff wants to know what they were doing in the woods, and Derek explains that they got lost. The sheriff gives them directions back to the interstate, and tells them to “have a safe trip.”

As they walk out to the truck, Derek and Chloe figure that they’re being run out of town. Jason reminds them that they didn’t even want to be there in the first place. Chloe says that she wants to know more about “the threatened and somewhat suspicious small-town sheriff.” Chloe sees a sign that says, “Owensmouth Mill” and has some sort of brainstorm. She pulls out the cell phone and calls Derek’s place. Chloe is looking for Lan, who she’s sure is at Derek’s, “probably sleeping in [his] bed.”

Cut to Lan, at Derek’s place, sleeping on the couch. At least, I don’t think that’s his bed. The answering machine picks up. Chloe tells Lan to pick up, because she needs help. Lan looks at her watch and picks up. Chloe says, “Glad you’re there!” and Jason nudges Derek and smirks. Chloe asks Lan to find a particular psychology book, and look up the entry for Owensmouth, Georgia. As Lan finds the entry and reads it, Chloe holds the phone out so that Derek and Jason can hear it too. Lan reads about some guy who had “fear-induced catatonia” in 1973. When they finally got him to talk, he mentioned a “forest god” and “some kind of ancient evil.” Lan closes the book and asks what they’re doing. Chloe says it’s “just a little detour” and asks if Lan wants to say hi to anybody, while looking at Derek. Lan says quickly, “No!” and hangs up, and then sighs. Then she pulls out her diary and writes, “Lan Barnes. Mrs. Lan Barnes. Derek and Lan Barnes.”  Chloe says, “She’s smitten. You’ve noticed her new perfume, haven’t you?” and then mentions that Derek’s pillows will smell nice. Derek tells Chloe to “quit it,” as they all get back into the truck.

Derek asks what they should do. Jason wants to go home. Chloe explains why she wants to stay. Something to do with the sheriff and the small town. Derek wants to try to salvage something for the website, since the Bigfoot thing was a bust. Chloe says it’s two against one, and majority rules. Jason asks if she’s “an official member of the Freakylinks gang now.” Chloe claims she’s “just along for the ride.”

Cut to Derek interviewing the locals. They ask a little girl if she ever goes in the woods with her bike. The little girl tells them that the woods are haunted. Some waitress, wearing a pig-nose paper hat, tells them that she knows Cassie and Brandon. A guy gassing up his motorcycle says that Brandon is “a jerk with a drinking problem.” The waitress gets excited over the video camera, since they “don’t get many of those in a small town.” A guy taking a break from welding tells them that when the deer population goes up, the bear population goes up, and you get cubs, and thus very “protective mama bears.” He mentions some trouble “twenty, twenty-five years ago” where “some hunters got torn up” and there were “pieces of them everywhere.” The motorcycle guy says that he thinks the whole haunted woods thing is a hoax. The little girl is now wearing a cape, a mask, and a tiara, and says that the woods are definitely haunted. When Jason asks if she honestly believes that, she says, “it’s happened.” The welding guy says that he thinks it’s the bears. The waitress makes the connection between the Freakylinks gang, and the people who “pulled Cassie from the woods.” This makes her very excited. The little girl now has the cape draped over her head as she says, “You’re gonna find it. It’ll find you.”

Back at his computer still in the wifebeater, Derek continues, “Ghosts? Bears? Some kind of ancient evil? A lot of different people and a lot of different theories.” Derek announces that they finally found “something real,” meaning Brandon Dunhill. Well, he adds, “sort of.”

Cut to a videotape of Cassie, holding a drink, and wearing a formal gown and a big crown. When prompted to “say something brilliant,” Cassie raises her glass and says, “Happy Homecoming! Woohoo!” and then pulls down her dress to flash her bra at the camera. The camera turns to Brandon, a handsome young gentleman in a tuxedo and crown, also consuming many alcoholic beverages. The filmmaker comments on Brandon’s watch, which Cassie says she gave to him. There’s a bunch of kids standing around a bonfire, drinking.

Cut to present day, where it turns out the waitress was the filmmaker. They’re all standing in an alley somewhere. Derek asks if she’s seen Brandon that day, or if his parents are around. She hasn’t, but she knows his parents are “upstate” at his sister’s swim meet. She says that maybe Brandon is “hung over, sleeping it off,” since she heard that the sheriff found him and Brandon is probably worried his father will find out. The waitress says that she has “a lot of little movies at home,” and maybe he would want to come over and watch them. Derek’s like, “Yeah!” as Chloe smiles and Jason nudges him to get him back on track. Derek asks what happened after the party, and the waitress says that everyone left except Brandon and Cassie, who were camping out there, since Brandon was “hoping to get some.” The witress says that she would never stay up there that late. Chloe asks why, and she says that “things happen, people die.” Jason mentions the bear problem. The waitress says it doesn’t happen that often, but “once is enough when it’s your guts getting eaten out.” Derek asks if she can show them where the campsite was, and she agrees, but she has to get back to work. So, she draws them a map. On the back of her pig hat.

The Freakylinks gang find the campsite. The campsite is in shambles, to say the least. Chloe starts picking items of clothing up with a stick. Chloe comments that it “looks like they left in a hurry.” A watch alarm starts beeping. Jason says it’s not his. They follow the sound into the woods. Derek looks up in a tree to see a severed arm, on which is the watch with the beeping alarm. It happens to be the same watch we saw earlier in the homecoming video; the one that belongs to Brandon.

Back in front of his computer, Derek makes a joke about running out of time. The gang is running out of the woods as Chloe tries to make a call on the cell phone, and Jason and Derek argue about which way the car is. Derek yells, “Jason, look out!” and the camera drops to the ground. An angry man with a shotgun faces them down, picks up their cell phone off the ground, and tells them they shouldn’t be out there. Derek explains that they were on their way out. The man says they were headed the wrong way, and tells them to get in their car and go, or they’ll “end up like that boy back there.”

Cut to a coroner carring Brandon’s arm in a evidance bag over to a hearse as Derek, Jason, and Chloe watch. Chloe points out that the sheriff wants it all to go away. The sheriff walks over and says he thought they were leaving that morning. Derek says something about Brandon not really “sleeping it off.” The sheriff claims that he was “trying to protect Cassie,” and that they have “a nature situation.” Derek demands that the sheriff “tell [them] what’s going on.” The sheriff says, “What’s going on is I got a dead boy, and a town full of bored beer-drinkers who’ve decided that hunting down a killer bear is their sole purpose in life.” Derek asks how the arm got in the tree, and the sheriff says it was probably a cougar. Derek gets even more suspicious, and asks if they have a cougar problem now, too. The sheriff says coolly, “And deer. It’s called the food chain. You ever hear of it?”  Derek questions him about man with the shotgun. The sheriff reveals that his name is  “Joe Lockhart,” and claims he’s a good man. Derek continues to push his luck and asks about “ancient evil” in the woods. The sheriff asks them to do him a favor by getting out of his town, or he’ll have to “arrest [them] just for pissing [him] off.” Chloe says that it’s “a free country.”  The sheriff walks away, and the gang laughs at the sheriff. Chloe says she wants a library. Derek says he wants to get a look at what’s left of Brandon. Jason says Derek is “a sick and disgusting man” for wanting to put pictures of “that chewed-up arm” on the website.

Back at his computer, Derek wonders how to go to “the local bone yard” and “get the goods and get out.” Also, they can’t arouse suspicion or wind up in jail, so he needed “two Oscar-caliber performances.”

Cut to a funeral home. Derek and Jason are seated in big wing chairs. Jason is pretending to cry. It turns out that Jason is pretending to be one “John Shaft” who is looking to make arrangements for his recently-deceased “Grandma Tillie.” Derek asks to use the restroom. Jason fake-cries. Instead of the restroom, Derek has gone with his camera to the morgue. He finds a drawer in the cold storage area with Brandon’s name on it. He pulls out the drawer to reveal just the arm, in a bag. He can’t get a good shot through the plastic, so he pulls out the arm (using only one hand, since the other is holding the camera), and then gets a close-up shot of the arm. Just as the funeral director is talking about going to find Derek, he shows up and tells “John” that they have to leave immediately, because he won’t allow Grandma Tillie to be buried by a place that doesn’t have toilet-seat covers. They leave.

Cut to Lan talking Derek through the transmission of the severed-arm picture via laptop and cell phone. Turns out he didn’t have the cell phone on. The picture shows up on Lan’s computer, and she asks what she’s supposed to do with it. Derek tells her to take the picture to the animal guy at the zoo, and ask him if it looks like a bear bite. If not, get his best guess as to what might have done it. Before they hang up, Lan warns Derek to be careful.

Cut to Chloe in the library, reading a story about a boy who was missing in the woods. The boy was named Ezekiel Lockhart. The next story says that a bear attack is suspected, and the next one says that the boy’s remains were finally found, and the father grieved. Derek and Jason are walking down the street, discussing the footage they have. Chloe comes out of the library and makes a joke about the library before telling them that Owensmouth has a history of violence in the woods every thirty years or so, and it dates back to when the town was founded. Derek doesn’t think the “every thirty years” part goes along with the “bears protecting their young” part. Chloe tells them about the last attacks, in 1973, when Joe Lockhart’s son was killed “in the deepest, darkest part of the forest.” She also has Joe Lockhart’s address, and it turns out that he lives in “the woods. The deepest, darkest part.”

Cut to Lan meeting up with the animal guy at the zoo. Lan starts to explain about the picture. The animal guy says, “You look great,” and compliments her and checks her out. Lan gets uncomfortable. The gnimal guy tries to ask her out but gets nowhere, so he says he’ll call her as soon as he can. She starts to leave, but he walks after her, emphasizing that he has “a real job.” Lan gets all defensive and says that “running a website is a real job.”  The animal guy apologizes. Lan walks away and he totally checks out her ass, and then looks at the pictures.

Cut to Derek, Jason, and Chloe hiding out at Joe Lockhart’s place. Lockhart pulls up and Derek calls out to him, asking if he’ll talk to them. He tells them to stay down, and we immediately find out this is because there is a giant bear behind them. Cut to Derek talking into the computer, saying that you’re supposed to stay calm when something like this happens, and not run. Cut back to the Freakylinks gang running, not calmly, closely followed by a bear. They dive into the back of Lockhart’s truck as he shoots the bear with his shotgun. Cut to after the chase, Derek narrates into the computer about how scary it is when a dog chases you, and how being chased by the bear was a thousand times scarier.

Cut to the three plus Lockhart in a barn, and the gang are all examining small glasses of liquid. Cut back to Derek narrating that he drinks “whisky, not turpentine or whatever that crap was.” Cut back to Derek, in the barn, putting his glass down. Chloe drains hers. Derek asks if that was the bear that killed Brandon. Jason says that they know about his son, and Derek says, “it wasn’t a bear back then either.” Lockhart just looks at them and walks away. Chloe calls their attention to a large quantity of dynamite sitting nearby. Lockhart calls them over, angrily. The gang look at one another warily and then go over. Lockhart orders them to “pull that tarp off” to find “the answer [they've] been looking for.” Underneath is a totem pole. Chloe says that it’s “Thunderbird, a Native American legend.” Apparently flapping its wings caused thunder, and lightning came from its eyes. Chloe further explains that it was supposed to be a myth until people saw it carrying off animals. Lockhart adds, “And children.” Chloe says that some people think it migrates, and Derek adds, “Every thirty years.” Derek asks why the sheriff doesn’t believe it, and Lockhart says that the sheriff believes what he must “to keep from going crazy.” Derek offers to help Lockhart find the Thunderbird, but Lockhart says it’s his kill. Derek doesn’t want to kill it, and Lockhart says he’d be a fool not to, because “that thing’s been sleeping for a long time,” and “it’s gonna want to eat,” and Lockhart intends “to give it indigestion.”

Lan calls on the cell phone. Lan tells Derek that there were no teeth marks on the severed arm, meaning it was “a single, narrow, crushing bite.” She compares it to what fish look like after being bitten in half by pelicans. Derek argues about various types of birds, but Lan continues to forward the pelican theory. Derek’s eyes widen, as he asks Lan to send him a picture. Cut to Derek narrating into the computer that he “knew what this thing was, and you do too if you’re a true freaker. We’ve all seen the picture.”

Cut to the gang, looking at a picture on their laptop. Lan and Derek have a discussion of the coelacanth, that prehistoric fish that should be extinct but isn’t. Jason and Chloe look at the picture of some Civil War type guys standing by a pteranodon, which is like a pterodactyl, but bigger. Jason says that the picture might be a hoax. Lan points out that the math works out, in terms of the thirty-year cycle. Derek advances the theory that the whole Thunderbird myth was based on this pictured animal that hibernates for thirty years, and they could prove it by getting it on tape. Lan says that she’ll check into the identities of the men in the picture, and will call back if she finds anything. Derek and Jason are psyched that they have a story. Chloe asks what they’re going to do now. Derek says they are “going shopping for deli meat,” and then they are “going bird hunting.”

Cut to Chloe driving while Derek and Jason throw bologna and hot dogs out the car windows. Derek accuses Jason of farting, but Jason claims the smell is from the hot dogs. In a long shot of the car, we see what might be a wing flapping. Inside the car, everything starts shaking and Derek and Jason yell at Chloe to drive. She does.

Cut to the Freakylinks gang as they hop out of their truck and run up to the sheriff, yelling that it’s not a bear, it attacked them, and Joe Lockhart knows what it is. The sheriff asks if they’ve been drinking. Then, he tells them to drive out to the main road and keep going. Derek says that there is “something amazing out there, something incredible.” The sheriff yells back, “No, there is not!” Derek tells him that he can pretend it doesn’t exist, but it will be back in thirty years. The sheriff replies that in thirty years it’ll be somebody else’s problem, and gets back in his car and drives off.

Lan calls on the cell phone. She says that the Civil War soldiers were real. The sheriff approaches Joe Lockhart, who says he still hasn’t found “the thing that took [his] Zeke.” The sheriff asks if he really believes it. Lockhart says, “Yeah. How many people have to die, Sheriff, before you believe it too?” The sheriff says he feels like he’s in “a hole down in the dark somewhere.” Lockhart starts to respond but then abruptly cuts off.

Cut to Derek narrating that Lockhart immediately knew where the thing was that had killed his son… right under his feet. But he wasn’t going to let the Sheriff go with him. Lockhart fakes being ill, and when the sheriff comes over to check on him, strikes the sheriff with the butt of his rifle. Lan’s on the phone, explaining about some letters she found in the Library of Congress. They were from a Civil War soldier and describe an encounter his regiment had with an “enormous creature” that was “within a shallow ravine in the northern heart of the forest” and that it’s “underground.” Derek realizes that the ravine in question must be near Cassie and Brandon’s campsite, since their pig hat map included a ravine.

When they get to the campsite, Derek does a quick inventory of the location and then takes off running in one direction. Jason and Chloe aren’t quite sure where he went. Derek approaches the mouth to a cave. Cut to Derek narrating that he should have waited for Jason and Chloe, but he had to see it. Cut to Derek, entering the cave. Of course, his flashlight goes out. The light from his camera illuminates many bones and such on the ground. We see the silhouette of Joe Lockhart, kneeling on the ground up ahead. Derek approaches him. Lockhart turns around and he has some enormous claw marks on his head, and is bleeding profusely. He says, “Best be getting out of here, boy. She’s in a bad, bad mood today.” Derek tries to prevent Lockhart from lighting the stick of dynamite, but then Derek is attacked by something. Derek is dragged backwards, and then knocked unconscious. The sheriff comes in and revives him. As they exit, the animal comes after them and the sheriff fires shots at it, igniting the giant pile of explosives. Derek and the sheriff escape.

Chloe and Jason see the giant fireball and run towards it. Derek thanks the sheriff for saving his life, and then remembers that Lockhart was still in the cave. The sheriff says Lockhart was dead before the sheriff got to Derek. Chloe and Jason arrive. Derek asks the sheriff whether he saw the creature. The sheriff says he saw something, maybe a bear. Derek says he knows. The sheriff says that whatever it was, “it looked like it was overdue for extinction.”

Cut to Derek talking into the laptop while walking through his apartment. He says it might have been “a flying reptile,” but we’ll have to decide for ourselves. Derek says life will go on in Owensmouth, but sadly without Joe Lockhart, since “determined to destroy the thing that had defined his life for the last twenty-seven years, he destroyed himself.” Derek arrives at the couch/bed and says that it’s a lesson that “every once in a while you have to stop, hang up the obsession, smell the roses. You never know if you’ll see them bloom again.” Derek picks up his pillow and smells it. Then he smiles.