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.

Subject: Three Thirteen Recap

Open on a guy sitting at home at a computer, he is searching the web and up pops the Freakylinks website. He hears a loud noise and yells out, “Honey?” and runs into the bedroom. He opens the door to reveal his extremely pregnant wife sitting on the edge of the bed. The guy, clearly her husband asks if he can get her something as he puts the alarm clock back on the bedside table — there is a close-up on the clock, which reads 3:13. She asks for a drink, and he goes to get it, but she grabs her stomach and gasps, but it was just the baby kicking. He gets her some tap water. A wind starts blowing in the wife’s bedroom, and she turns to walk out and runs straight into her husband, returning with her drink. She drinks the water and says she’s going back to sleep. He kisses her good-night and says he’s “just surfing” and will come to bed soon. The alarm clock still says 3:13. He sits back down at the computer, and the bedroom door slams shut behind him. He runs into the bedroom, where the clock is now blinking 3:13. He checks the bedroom windows which are all padlocked shut. He hears a noise and runs to the door, which has about ten locks on it, all of which require a key. He runs out of the apartment building and to some sort of garage, where the wife is preparing to pour gasoline all over herself. She pours the gasoline, and the scene ends.

Derek walks down a spiral staircase and into the Freakylinks offices. He’s wearing a robe and rubbing his eyes, and he picks up a piece of pizza out of a box and eats it. Lan comes in and ribs Derek about sleeping until 2:30. She asks him what he did last night and he tells her that him and Jason were playing games. He asks what he did and she informs him that he disabled the extensions. He asks how he did that and she replies that she dosen’t now but that he did it. After some conversation about the back up files Lan reminds Derek that he still owes her for “the firewall software.” He says he’ll pay her back after they “sell some t-shirts and collect on some banners.” Derek looks out the window and sees some girl standing there, with her back towards him. There’s a knock at the door. It’s the husband and his wife. The husband says that “a demon or something wants to either kill [his] wife or take [their] child,” and they need his help.

Jason and Lan discuss the husband and wife. Jason feels that they are “one can short of a six-pack.” Jason wonders how people find them, since they don’t put their address on the website. Derek is talking to the husband and wife sitting at some outdoor patio, still wearing his robe. Derek asks if they found out about him from “Buddy,” a surfer who travels a lot, and apparently Derek is house-sitting for him. The wife says they found him through the website, and she felt like she knew him or knew something about the house. The husband asks if Derek can help them. Derek says he’s “not a ghost buster.” The husband insits that they must have connections. The wife gets Derek’s name wrong, and says that she’s really scared, and Ted (the husband) believes in Derek. Basically, she says that Derek has to help them because they have a baby on the way. Cut to Jason-cam documenting Ted and his wife’s house. Derek keeps looking into the camera and cracking up. While Ted explains things that have happened. The wife tells Derek that she hums sometimes and doesn’t know that she’s doing it. Jason whispers to Derek that they should leave. The wife shows off an entire closet of CDs that she ordered online, all classical, which she never listened to before. Jason says, “The demon makes you shop or something?” Derek asks if they have ever thought about returning the CDs, but Ted says that when he tried, his wife stabbed him with a steak knife. She claims she doesn’t remember doing it. The tour continues, stopping off in the baby’s room. Ted and wife debate over whether it will be a boy or a girl. Jason is caught up in the pictures on the walls, as the wife starts to hum. Jason focuses on some blocks. Ted tells his wife to stop humming, and she looks surprised. Ted takes them out of the nursery, but the wife stays. We switch to a shot of the wife stareing into the crib holding a bear as a black oil-like substance starts to ooze into the crib. The wife drops the teddy bear she was holding into the oil. Suddenly a hand reaches up out of the oil, and she screams. Ted rushes into the room to find his wife catatonic in the corner. The crib is perfectly clean. Derek looks confused.

Cut to a beach. Chloe is sitting in a chair, when her cell phone rings. It’s Derek. He asks if she’s busy, and she says she’s “putting together [her] paper for New York,” where there is a “psych conference.” Derek wants help, but she’s too busy. Derek tells her about the wife and the demon. Derek says he thinks they might both be “mentally ill” and he doesn’t know “who else to call” because he’s “worried they’re going to hurt the baby.” Cut to Chloe, talking to the wife at her apartment. In the background, Ted asks Derek if Chloe is a “psychic or something.” Derek hesitates, but finally reveals that Chloe is “a shrink.” Ted gets upset and says that they’re not crazy, and his “mother died in a mental home.” Jason informs Ted that they are “the good guys,” and Chloe is there “to calm things down.” Ted says that Derek and Jason have to stay there all night and record what happens to see that they are not crazy. Cut to a new scene of Derek and Chloe walking out. Chloe is saying that “expectant mothers are a hormone factory,” and sometimes their “maternal instinct gets mutated.” Derek asks about Ted, and Chloe says that it could be a “shared delusion.” She’s going to call Social Services, but it might take them a while to intervene. She suggests that Derek and Jason stay with them. Chloe says Ted and his wife might “try to prove their delusion by doing something dangerous,” and she makes Derek promise to call the professionals if things start “going south.”

Day turns to night. Ted, Jason, and Derek watch an old movie on TV, I think its the blob. Ted asks how Derek got into this line of work. In the background, there’s a commercial for “Duppy’s Gas-n-Go.” Derek says his brother died, and he picked up where his brother left off. Ted asks about Jason, who says that he’s “just in this for the health-care benefits.” Piano music starts up in the background, and Ted says, “Oh my God!” and gets up. Derek and Jason follow. The clock reads 3:13. Jason-cam follows Ted to “the rec/pool room,” where they find the wife furiously playing piano.

Cut to some guy from the university watching the video on Derek’s computer in the Freakylinks offices. He asks if the wife has ever played before, and Derek says, “Husband says the only thing she knows how to play is the kazoo.” University Guy says that they had a woman at the university who could play by ear. Lan asks if the wife is actually playing something. University Guy says that it’s “a pastiche,” or “bits and pieces of almost every piece of classical music written in the past three hundred years.” He focuses on one part of the song that doesn’t really fit. Then University Guy notices that she is playing a song written to be played by four hands, and she’s playing all of the parts, but with two hands. Lan tells Derek he needs to look at something on her computer. Cut to Chloe sitting in front of Lan’s computer, and isn’t taking Derek seriously. Derek keeps making her watch the video of the nursery, and she doesn’t get it. Finally Derek explains that the blocks were rearranged, and it was impossible for any of them to touch them. Chloe asks what it means, and Derek reads the rearranged blocks, “Delaney Park.” Chloe asks if the humming demon wants a picnic. Lan hands Chloe a printout from the Missing Persons Registry and says, “Delaney Park is a person.” Derek adds that he thinks Delaney is a ghost who is haunting Ted and his wife. Chloe protests that yesterday he thought they were mentally ill, but Derek says that the block thing changed his mind, and that Chloe needs to see “the recital.” Chloe worries that Derek is “fueling their delusions.” Derek asks Chloe to “keep an eye on them” while he and Jason work it out. At first she is hesitant but persuasion from Derek makes her agree.

Jason-cam shows us Derek talking to some sort of police officer who keeps repeating that he would “rather not say” anything about the Delaney Park case. Finally, the officer reveals that the prime suspect was “the boyfriend, Max D’Angelo,” but until they find Delaney’s body, it’s a moot point. Now Jason-cam is filming Derek talking to “Claudia,” a street musician who was friends with Delaney. Claudia also suspects Max, because she thinks that Delaney would have told her if she was running away. Also, Max was trouble. Max worked at a “convenience store on Cooper Road,” and Delaney was always out there. Jason-cam films Max D’Angelo on his boat. He agrees to talk with them on-camera to try to get some “publicity for Delaney” and reveals that he was the last one to see her. He declines to talk about their “personal stuff” but does say that Delaney is “not dead” because her “spirit lives on.” Also, he didn’t get along with Delaney’s mom.

Jason and Derek are now at Delaney’s mother’s house. Pan over a piano covered with photos of Delaney. Mrs. Park tells them about the efforts to find Delaney when she first went missing, but they never found her. Mrs. Park tells them that Delaney was supposed to go to Julliard. Mrs. Park breaks down, and Derek and Jason offer to leave.

Cut to the wife going into the nursery and stares at the crib, and then she turns to see Derek, who apologizes for scaring her. Derek, Jason, and Chloe show the wife the printout of Delaney from the Missing Person Registry. At first, she says she doesn’t know Delaney, but then she starts getting flashbacks and starts crying. We see flashbacks of Delaney standing in the road, and the wife driving, and she keeps saying, “I think I hurt her.” A younger and not pregnant wife is driving a truck down the street and rocking out to a song by Econoline Crush. The wife is singing, and she sees a girl standing by the road hitchhiking. It’s Delaney Park. She pulls over, and Delaney runs up the truck. Cut to present day, and we see that The wife has been hypnotized by Chloe, and is revealing this information to the gang as we see it. She reveals that she doesn’t normally pick up hitchhikers, but she’s mad at Ted and wants someone to talk to. In flashback, Delaney tells the wife she wants to leave town with her boyfriend, but he won’t go. Wife asks if she wants to “relax and kill some brain cells” and says that “the lighter is in the glove compartment.” Delaney says she can’t, and wife says, “What are you, pregnant or something?” Delaney is, of course, pregnant, and she’s supposed to “take care of it.” The wife asks how she feels about it, and Delaney thinks she should have the baby. They discuss men for a while and laugh. The wife drops Delaney off at her house and tells her to call if she needs anything. Delaney, who really is a very pleasant person, thanks her for the ride. The wife pulls away and sees in her rearview mirror that Delaney is joined on the street by another person, Max. Back at her house, the wife cries, and Chloe reassures her. Ted asks why this is happening to her, and Derek says they “made a bond,” and Delaney is “calling long distance” and “the messages are getting garbled.” Chloe points out that Delaney’s “getting better at it — she gave us her name.”

Suddenly, the wife goes into a seizure, and oil starts coming out of her mouth, and she yells, “Stop her, she’s killing me.” Cut to the wife at the hospital, being rushed down a hallway on a gurney. Ted is worried. She is unresponsive. The clock reads 2:25. Ted comes out and tells the Freakylinks gang (minus Lan) that the doctors want to save the baby, because they don’t think the wife has a chance. A nurse comes out and tells Ted he needs to sign some consent forms. Derek tells the others that Delaney is close, and they need to find her. A commercial for a gas station comes on the television, and it has a familiar tune, it’s the song that the wife was playing on the piano earlier. The gang starts looking in a phone book for the nearest location, and Jason and Chloe know there is one not listed in the book, but can’t remember the name. Derek remembers Claudia, the street musician, telling them that Max worked at a place on Cooper Road, and Chloe and Jason say that’s the place. Derek and Jason rush off to the store, which was leveled by a hurricane about six months ago. Cut back to The wife flailing about and screaming in the operating room.

Back at the convenience store, Derek and Jason sift through the rubble. Finally, Jason finds a lid, and he and Derek lift it up. There are a series of rungs going down into some sort of tunnel. Derek is going down there to see what’s up. As Derek descends, one of the rungs breaks off and he falls down into the tunnel. Jason yells down to confirm that Derek is okay, and Derek says he is. Jason tells Derek that he’s in “a sludge pit” and throws down his flashlight for Derek. Shining it around, Derek sees “scratch marks” near the opening, and concludes that someone was trying to get out.Jason sends the camera down into the pit as well. Derek shines his flashlight around as he walks towards one end of the pit. His flashlight falls on the desiccated corpse of Delaney Park. Sitting on the body is the teddy bear that the wife dropped into the ooze in the crib early on in the episode.

Cut to the coroner who removes the body, as Derek and Jason sit and watch. Cut to Mrs. Park, standing in the doorway of her house, crying as cops tell her the news. Cut to Chloe, watching the proceedings on television while sitting in the hospital waiting room. Max D’Angelo is being led away in cuffs. Jason and Derek enter the waiting room, and Derek and Chloe hug. Chloe reports that the wife is still not doing well, and they don’t know what’s wrong. Jason asks about the baby, and Chloe reports that it’s fine, and it was born at 3:13 AM. Jason doesn’t understand why the wife isn’t getting better, since they did everything they were supposed to do. Chloe wonders if maybe they were just too late. Derek tells Chloe that Delaney had been alive when she was put into the pit.

Cut to Derek ringing Mrs. Park’s doorbell. Mrs. Park gives him a big hug and thanks him. Derek brought a tape of the wife playing piano, since Mrs. Park said that she missed Delaney’s music. Mrs. Park invites Derek in and takes him up to Delaney’s room. Derek looks at the many trophies on a shelf. He asks about one, and Mrs. Park tells him it was for a regional competition. Derek looks closer and sees that the date on the trophy is March 13th. Also, the corner of the trophy is a little battered. Suddenly, Derek has a vision of Delaney standing there, saying, “Stop her.” He remembers the wife saying, “She’s killing me!” and sees Delaney fall to the floor, with the bloodied trophy next to her. He looks at Mrs. Park and says, “It wasn’t Max. You did it.” Derek continues, “You killed your own daughter.” Mrs. Park says that Delaney didn’t want to use her talent, and she didn’t care about her music. Derek informs her that Delaney was alive when she was placed underground, and that she tried to get out. Mrs. Park screams and cries.

Cue montage of photographs of Mrs. Park and Delaney. Derek leads Mrs. Park down the stairs. Mrs. Park asks how he knew, and Derek says he “made a connection.” Mrs. Park has a vision of Delaney playing Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” This somehow inspires her to jump from the second floor to the marble floor below. Derek yells, “No!”. Our last shot of Mrs. Park is of her face and then blood spreading out from under it.

Ted and wife are featured in a video where they explain that the wife and her baby are both doing fine, and they thank Derek. The whole Freakylinks gang is watching the video on a monitor. Derek switches to Delaney’s Missing Persons Registry page. Derek says he can’t post this on the website, because it’s…Chloe fills in, “Too personal.” Derek says that Delaney deserves some privacy now. Lan offers to buy everyone pizza and beer, and all leave ahead of Derek. He says goodbye to Delaney and then leaves.

Subject: Edith Keeler Must Die Recap

The episode opens with a clip of a stereotypical blonde television reporter messing up her line, and then saying repeatedly, “I’m Julie Marish.” The camera pulls back to reveal that Derek is watching this clip on his monitor as he talks on the phone with Chloe. Chloe’s at a conference in New York City, and Derek is trying to convince her to help him out with a story while she is there. Chloe wants “to be a grownup this week” and she has to give a speech at the conference, so she’s doesn’t want to help. Derek tries to convince Chloe to “ask [the reporter] a few questions about what she saw.” Chloe is checking out her expensive room service order while Derek peers into his nearly empty refrigerator. There’s a slice of pizza sitting in the refrigerator.

Derek finally takes no for an answer and hangs up the phone, just as Jason and Lan arrive with a pizza. Derek is psyched that they got anchovies, and says, “Everything is right with the world.” The lights go out. Turns out Derek spent the money for the electric bill on “something else.” Jason asks why the computer is still running, and Lan says it’s running on backup power. Jason asks about the video clip Derek was watching, and Derek says it’s their “next freakylink.” He plays the clip to reveal Julie Marish doing her closing, and in the background some guy gets pulled into a sewer grate and starts yelling. Julie and the cameraman run over as the guy is disappearing under the grate. Derek stops the clip, and Lan asks what happened. Derek asks if anyone is up for a road trip.

Chloe is walking out of some ballroom at the conference as “Für Elise” plays. Some guy comes up behind her and says, “Is there a psychologist in the house?” Chloe hugs him, and reveals that that his name is Wayne. He asks if she got his phone calls two weeks ago, and Chloe says that she was “in the woods” and that it’s “a long story.” She asks if he is “still counseling the men in blue.” Wayne is, which means he is “licensed to pack heat,” although he prefers “a Prozac dispenser.” Wayne feels he needs to apologize for something because “Adam was a friend of [his]” and he “mistook sympathy from [Chloe] for something else.” There’s an awkward moment, and then Chloe says it’s fine. Wayne asks about the paper she’s presenting, and Chloe says that the topic is “Internet addiction and its connection to deviant public behavior.”

Just then, Derek enters the hotel lobby, yelling, “Yeah, baby!” Chloe is shocked to see him, and Wayne asks if it’s Adam’s brother. Derek walks up and gives her a hug. Lan and Jason are right behind him. Chloe introduces Derek to Wayne, and Derek remembers him since Wayne was friends with Adam. Wayne offers his sympathy. Chloe asks why he’s in New York City, and Derek says he’s “chasing that story.” Wayne thinks Derek’s a reporter, but Chloe calls him “an Internet entrepreneur.” Derek hands a Freakylinks buisness card to Wayne, telling him to check out the site. Wayne asks if “Freakylinks” is an Internet sausage company. Derek laughs sarcastically and explains what the site is about. Wayne notes that “business seem to be going well” for them, as he takes note of Derek’s attire. Derek says, “Ask Chloe.” Chloe says that she consults, and asks Wayne if she could hook up with him later. Wayne says they’ll meet at some cocktail party, and leaves. Derek comments on Wayne’s strong cologne, and Chloe shoots him a look.

Derek shows Chloe the video clip of the guy falling down the sewer drain. Jason and Lan dump their bags on the floor of Chloe’s suite, as she tells them they can’t stay there. Derek thinks they have “documented proof that one of the most famous urban legends isn’t a legend.” Chloe guesses that he means “alligators in the sewers,” but she still doesn’t want them to stay in her room. Derek says it’ll just be a base of operations until they get what they came for, and she won’t even know they are there.

Cut to a shot of the Statue of Liberty. The camera pans over a sleeping Lan, a sleeping Jason, a sleeping Derek, and then a wide-awake Chloe in her bed.

The alarm clock goes off at 7 AM, and Chloe finds a note from Derek telling her to watch the morning news at 8 AM. Cut to Julie, the reporter from the clip, doing the weather. She’s in front of a live crowd, many of whom are holding signs. Julie walks over to talk to some of the people in the crowd. Someone yells, “Hey, Julie!” Jason, Lan, and Derek hold up signs that, when read together, say, “What happened to the man in the sewer” Julie reads them out loud. Chloe, watching in her hotel room, says, “Oh, God.”

Derek, Lan, and Jason are talking to Julie in a diner. She complanes about being the “weather chick” in a major market. Derek asks about the clip, and why she never aired it. Julie says that it happened very quickly, and her news director thought she “faked it to get noticed.” Julie says that she still things about it every time she steps over a sewer grate. She gives Derek the address where the accident happened, and says that she gave a copy of the tape to the police. Julie talks about how New York is such a hard city.

Montage of people being interviewed about the existence of alligators in the sewers. Some believe it, some don’t. One guy is wearing a sweatshirt that says, “Edith Keeler Must Die,”. The guy wearing the sweatshirt claims that the only thing living in the sewers are “mole people,” the mental patients that were tossed out of institutions in the 1980s.

Lan, Jason, and Derek watch a cheesy movie about alligators in the sewers and eat junk food. Chloe comes in and asks if they should be doing research. They are all giggling. Chloe goes off to take a shower, and Jason cracks that she must have a hot date.

Cut to Chloe in the bathroom, videotaping herself in the mirror. She says she’s going to show us something “truly scary,” and shows Derek and Jason goofing around, and Lan looking on. Chloe points the camera back at the mirror, and Derek yells out, “Chloe, I gotta pee!” Chloe sighs and the scene ends.

Cut to Lan, Jason, and Derek lifting up a sewer grate. Lan thinks that she should be allowed to go down into the sewer with the boys, but Derek doesn’t think she should because she’s “a girl.” Derek finally gives his assent as he’s standing halfway in the sewer. Derek hears something, and the others listen close. Then he pretends that something is dragging him down into the sewer as Lan and Jason freak out.

Cut to Wayne and Chloe walking down the street. Wayne talks about some cop that he had to talk down from a building. Wayne asks how Chloe is doing these days, obviously trying to find out if she’s seeing anyone. She says she’s not, and he is “glad to hear it,” and hopes that “the fortress isn’t too impenetrable.” Chloe says that there are “some barbarians at the gate.”

Wayne does a “my heart is breaking” gesture, because Chloe might go out with someone else, and she laughs.

Back in the sewers, a rat is running by. Lan hears what the captioning calls “rhythmic tapping.” There’s a shot of the light coming in through a grate while the three shine their flashlights around. Derek tapes himself saying that they just passed tunnel fourteen, but they haven’t seen anything yet. Jason yells out, “Derek, look out.” We see Derek’s camera fall to the floor, and someone raising a pipe over their head, intending to hit Derek with it.

Cut to Derek and Jason are getting beat up, while Lan stands there. Lan finally helps Derek out. The two thugs ask if the Freakylinks gang have any money, and then says they’re going to “help [themselves] to this sweet thing,” meaning Lan. Derek tries to shield Lan, who says she can take care of herself. While they argue, the thugs grab the fallen camera and run off. The Freakylinks gang chase the thugs, yelling at them to give back the camera, and one of the thugs goes, “Finders keepers, suckers!” Derek tackles the thug and takes the camera back, and they realize they have entered some sort of underground lair, or home, or something. There are lots of candles and other people in there. Derek asks what it is, and Thug #2 says, “This…this is home. By the way, you’re trespassing.” Also, someone else is roasting a rat on a stick over a fire in a garbage can. Thug #1 reports that the gang came down via tunnel fourteen. Derek asks if that was the thugs doing the tapping earlier. The thugs look nervous and don’t answer.

Cut to Jason-cam recording Derek taking a big bite of roasted rat, which Jason claims is “hella nasty.” Thug #1 wants to hold the camera, and Jason doesn’t want to give it up. Thug #1 says, “Like I need another camera,” and gestures to a whole pile of Intel PC Cameras. Thug #1, whose name is apparently Bink, posses for the camera. Thug #2 tells Derek that if they want something, they “just reach up and take it.” Derek asks if they ever “reach up and take people.” Thug #2 says that’s “not [their] style.” Derek keeps asking what’s in tunnel fourteen. There’s some sort of tapping noise, and the Freakylinks gang looks freaked out. The rest of the people in the area start leaving. We hear, “Freeze, police!” and one of the cops grabs Jason’s camera.

Cut to Derek and Jason in a holding cell, sitting in between two very large men and looking uncomfortable. Derek says that the investigation isn’t over. Jason retorts that Lan is stuck somewhere “with the cast of Caged Heat” and they’re “facing a misdemeanor theft charge.” Derek asks where Bink is, and Jason says he ran away with one of the cameras. Derek gets up and asks Thug #2 what his name is. It’s Eli. Derek asks about the tapping sound, and Eli says it was cops. Derek says that cops don’t use Morse code, and Eli walks away. Derek follows him and asks about tunnel fourteen. Eli says it’s the “end of the line.” Someone comes and tells Derek and Jason they made bail.

Walking out, Derek thanks Chloe for getting them out, and Chloe tells him to thank Wayne. Wayne goes to get the car. Chloe asks if Derek ever thinks about how what he does affects other people. Derek says he thought Chloe was part of the team. Chloe criticizes Derek’s lack of discipline and planning. Chloe says Derek does everything “like a surfer,”. Derek says he was following a story. Chloe says, “A story? Alligators under the sewers? Derek, come on.” Chloe walks away.

Derek follows her and says, “Chloe. Wait. Chloe. Hold on.” Derek tells her that he thought once they got to New York City, Chloe would help, but since she’s not, they’re going. Then he nods and does a wierd thing with his eyebrows. Derek says they’re going to stay and finish up the story, but they’ll sleep in the car. Chloe protests, and Derek tells her to do what she has to do, “be with Wayne,” and they’ll be around. They’re all carrying their bags. Chloe says, “Great!” and walks away.

Derek and Jason are trying to convince Lan that sleeping in the car will be okay. Lan keeps saying it’s impossible. Finally they ask her why, and she says, “Because it’s Thursday,” and gestures to a sign that reads, “No Parking on Thursday. Street Cleaning. Violators Will Be Towed Away.”

Cut to Freakylinks gang on a subway. Lan has a subway map, and is telling them where they have to go in order to get their car. Jason points out that the “impound yard only takes cash,” and the “closest thing [Derek] has to a dead President is Millard Fillmore’s finger in a jar back home.” Lan pipes up that “it’s Warren G. Harding, and it’s not his finger.” Lan says she’ll pay for the car, and pulls out a thick rubber-banded wad of bills. Jason asks where she got the money, and Lan says, “I consult.”

As they get off the subway, Jason spots Bink, and they chase after him. They lose him as a train passes, but then Derek runs down to the tracks and yells at the others to follow. They are still carrying all of their bags.

Down in the tunnels, they have lost Bink. Derek yells out, “We just want our camera back.” Derek says he’ll take one tunnel while Lan and Jason take the other. Derek tells them to meet back at the starting point in two minutes. Lan says, “Derek!”. Derek takes off. Lan gasps, and the camera pans down to reveal a bloody rat on the ground. Lan is upset about this. Lan and Jason hear tapping, and they are walking through some fairly deep water. Derek suddenly jumps out in front of them, saying that his “flashlight crapped out.” As they walk off, we see a not-at-all-human hand reach up and tap on the wall.

Cut to Derek as he looks down and finds the camera that Bink took on the ground. The light from Jason’s camera goes out, so Derek tries to get his flashlight to work. Lan suggests they get out of there. They take a few steps, and Lan gasps at the sight of Bink’s bloodied and very dead body. The tapping starts up again. Derek asks what it’s called when dolphins use sound to communicate, and Lan replies, “Echolocation, why?” Derek explains, as his flashlight continues to cut out, that he thinks whatever killed Bink is using the tapping to communicate. Jason asks, “Communicate what?” Lan responds, “Dinner is served,” just as Derek’s flashlight goes out for good.

Derek asks if anyone has another flashlight, and Lan lights a Zippo. Derek brings the lighter over and illuminates someone in a Halloween mask. The Freakylinks gang scream and run.

Cut to Chloe as she puts retainers in her mouth and lies down in her bed, turning off the light. There’s a knock at her hotel room door. She answers it to find the Freakylinks gang there. They give her the rundown on Bink. Derek explains that the camera died, so they’re going to use her room to recharge it, and then go back down and get it on tape. Chloe says that they should take the police, and Jason points out that they just got arrested. Chloe says that it was murder, and Jason points out that the cops will blame the murder on them. Derek adds, “Unless we find one that won’t,” and looks at Chloe.

The Freakylinks gang plus Wayne and Chloe descend into the tunnels. They find that the camera and Bink’s body are gone. Wayne says, “Chloe, let’s go.” Derek protests, and Wayne asks if Derek was “the source material for [Chloe's] paper.” Then Wayne says that he’ll wait for her outside and walks away. Chloe says she “can’t do this anymore.” Derek asks what she’s “not doing besides not believing us.” Chloe says “real life” is going on. Derek says that her life used to include the website, and Chloe says that “the website used to be different.” Derek tells Jason to turn off the camera which he does, and then tells Chloe that her problem isn’t that he runs the site like a surfer, but that he doesn’t run things like Adam did. Chloe says that’s not it, and Derek guesses that Wayne is the problem. Derek asks if Wayne is “the same guy who couldn’t even wait until Adam was cold before he started sniffing around where he wasn’t welcome.” Derek adds that she’s “not the only one that misses [Adam].” The Freakylinks gang leave Chloe behind. Derek says that he needs to talk to Eli, even though the others point out that Eli is still in jail. Chloe calls Derek back and says that the police will let Eli talk to a psychologist.

Chloe talks to Eli. Chloe asks him questions about the tunnels, and he tries to hit on her. After some more banter, Chloe asks about Bink, and if Eli is going to miss him. Eli says, “Why would I?” Chloe explains that Bink is dead, and asks if Eli can tell her what it was that killed him. Eli angrily shoves his chair.

Cut to Freakylinks gang plus Chloe doing research at the library. Chloe explains about a “pneumatic train” that was built by the city in the 1870s, and then suddenly shut down without explanation. They look at an article about attacks occurring in tunnel fourteen. Chloe continues to explain about a movement called “The Hollow Earthers,” and Jason uncovers a book about it. Chloe reads that the leader of the movement believed that there were underground dwellers with “tough, white skin” and extraordinary hearing. Chloe also reads that these beings were “ferocious” and “cannibalistic.” Turns out the leader of the movement is the one who built the station, which is why he knows so much about it. Some creature attacked the leader, and there are drawings of the creature in the book that match what the kids saw. The city shut down the station and sealed it off. Lan points out that it’s probably still there.

Research montage. Chloe finds some maps. Derek thanks her, not for the maps, but for the help in general. Lan is telling Chloe about how Derek’s power got shut off. Lan says that Derek “makes it up as he goes.” Chloe agrees, but clearly she thinks it’s a negative thing. Lan says defensively, “I think it’s a gift,”. Chloe raises an eyebrow at her. Lan says it’s “not like that,” and continues to protest, but obviously she likes him.

They gather up their research and prepare to go to tunnel fourteen. Chloe remembers that she has a paper to present in fifteen minutes. Derek tells her to go do that and meet them later, and Lan offers to go with Chloe, as long as the boys don’t “go under until [the girls] get there.”

Jason and Derek pry off a grate and get ready. They have some sort of radio headset which screeches as they fiddle witht he volume. Derek shows that he has an air horn, because the creatures have sensitive hearing. Jason starts to climb down the ladder, and tells Derek there’s something down there. Derek thinks he’s joking and suddenly Jason disappears. Derek grabs the camera and follows, leaving the rest of the gear behind including the air horn.

Chloe gives her presentation in about ten seconds as Lan rolls her eyes and looks at her watch. When no one has any questions, Chloe and Lan run out the door. They arrive at the grate opening to find Jason and Derek gone. Chloe hears Derek’s voice via the radio sitting on the ground. Derek reveals that “they’ve got Jason and Jason’s got the map.” Lan pulls out her map, but Derek keeps getting feedback. Chloe tells Derek to go left, and he does. We hear Jason screaming, and see him being dragged along the ground.

Derek comes to another fork. Chloe and Lan spread the map out to get a good look at it, and Chloe says there might be a shortcut, but then a biker comes along and rips it apart. Derek tries to find Jason via the sound of his voice. Derek tells himself he needs a shortcut, and he conveniently comes upon a covered manhole. He lifts up the lid and tells the girls he’s going further down and doesn’t know if the radios will take it. Derek drops down and finds a room, containing a bloodied Jason, who is still alive and able to get up. Jason videotapes a bunch of the creatures gathering, and Derek guesses that it “must be feeding time.” Derek tells him to run, but Jason stays behind for some reason. The creatures advance on Jason, and Derek turns up the volume on his headset so that massive feedback comes squealing out, crippling the creatures. Derek and Jason get the heck out of there. A creature wearing Bink’s jacket is chasing them. Jason gets up and out of the sewer safely. As Derek is climbing out, the creature grabs his foot, but Derek kicks out and climbs to safety as well. Derek rewinds the tape and reveals that he did get footage of the creature. The gang, including Chloe, all celebrate.

Derek is sitting on the sidewalk, finishing up a message for the website. He concludes, “And we’re posted.” Wayne takes a look at the video and asks for a copy, which Derek hands him. Jason pulls up in his truck, and Lan says that getting it out “cost her a mint.” Derek says he’ll pay her back, and she tells him to “just pay the electric bill and [they]‘ll call it even.”

Chloe asks Wayne if he believes Derek, and Wayne says that Chloe does. Chloe thinks the video is good evidence, but Wayne isn’t buying it. Derek comes up and hugs Chloe goodbye, and then Derek, Jason, and Lan pile their stuff into the truck. Chloe tells Wayne that if Derek says he saw something, he did. Wayne says he’ll “see what [he] can do,” but it’s “nothing [he] can stake his reputation on.” Wayne offers to take her to lunch and then the airport. Chloe says she thinks she’s “up for a road trip,” and kisses Wayne goodbye on the cheek.

Cut to Derek-cam, filming the conversation. Lan squeals, “Ooh, she just kissed him!” Chloe comes over to the truck and asks if they have room for one more. She gets in, and they take off.

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.

Subject: Desert Squid Recap

The show opens with an RV parked in the middle of some desert, and text appears onscreen telling us this occurred “somewhere in East Texas…two days ago.” Inside the RV, Derek and a little dog are looking at a television screen filled with static. Derek hits the side of the TV, yelling at it, “Come on! Work!” Chloe tells Derek he “can’t avoid this.” Some guy tells Derek to take it easy on the VCR. Jason asks to try it and Derek snaps at him. Chloe wants to know why Derek thought he could keep them out of the loop. Derek protests, but Jason says that Derek is always going off by himself. The guy wants to know if this is how the gang normally works. Suddenly, there is a loud noise from on top of the RV, and the dog starts barking. The guy grabs a shotgun and cocks it. Chloe falls into Derek’s arms, and they look at each other, and separate quickly. The RV continues shaking, and Derek picks up his camera. The guy doesn’t want to be photographed. Derek talks into the camera, saying that there is “definitely something up on the roof.” The RV shakes again, and Derek drops the camera. Something reaches in through the skylight in the roof and grabs Chloe, pulling her up to the ceiling. Everyone tries to pull her down. Chaos ensues.

Cut to Freakylinks office in present day. Derek is narrating the story into the computer, telling us that the RV belonged to someone named Falcon. The video clip on the computer is paused on a shot of Chloe being dragged up to the ceiling. Jason interrupts and tells Derek not to start with Chloe being attacked, because people will be confused. Jason says he’s worried that “the people in the black Suburban” followed them home. The door slams, and Lan walks in and drops some suitcases. She sarcastically thanks them for picking her up at the airport, and asks about the dog; the same one from the RV. Derek ignores her question and asks her to dig out “the stuff underneath the static” on a videotape he has. Lan asks about the label on the tape, which says “De Santo” but Derek ignores her questions yet again. Lan asks about Chloe and Derek and Jason exchange a look, but still don’t answer her question. Lan finally asks what’s going on, and Derek reminds her about an email they got last week.

Flashback to earlier in the week, where Lan asks Derek to pick her up at the airport. She calls him over to check out an email. It contains pictures of cattle mutilations, and there are strange marks on the dead cow. The email also contains “a v-mail” and Lan works at unzipping the file while Derek watches. Chloe and Jason walk in, just as Lan says, “unzipping it” and Derek is standing over her with his back to the door. Jokes are made about it. Derek explains about the cows and Jason guesses “aliens,” while Chloe guesses, “Chupacabra.” The “v-mail” turns out to be a video clip of some guy in shadow saying that aliens or chupacabras did not cause the cattle mutilations, but that if the Freakylinks gang want to know the truth, they should come to Spano, Texas. The guy gives the address as 3450 Sex Road, and gives them a date and time to meet. Lan says she’s off to Chicago, and Derek says he’s off to Texas. Chloe decides to go to Texas too, because “what the hell else [does she] have to do?”

Cut to Derek, Jason, and Chloe driving through Texas and hooting and hollering. They pass a sign that says, “Welcome to Spano, Texas” and some guy is spray-painting it. Jason says it must be “an East Texas tagger.” Cut back to the sign, where we see that the guy has painted, “Home of the Desert Squid.” Derek is interviewing an old cowpoke type about the mutilations. He says they “ought to be looking for the Desert Squid.” Cut to an interview with a girl selling grapefruits at the roadside. The girl says that she has seen the Desert Squid, and shows them what looks like a piece of a tentacle in some liquid inside a jar. The girl asks if they want to buy it, as Derek opens the jar and then nearly drops it. The girl tells them that it’s “only fifty bucks” and that it’s “one of a kind.” Chloe sneaks around behind the girl, and opens a cooler to reveal four or five other jars like the one the girl was trying to sell them. Back to the cowboy, who tells them that there were “circular marks” on the cows, and gives them directions to where the creature was last seen.

The gang is driving their truck to the location the cowboy gave them. Derek does an intro for the camera, and Jason and Chloe laugh at him. Chloe asks if they can go eat somewhere. Derek pulls into “Last Chance Vittles.” Inside, a dog walks up to Derek, who slips him a little food. It’s the same dog from the RV. Derek and Jason harass Chloe for not eating meat. A one-armed man, who is also the diner owner, walks up and asks them if they want pie. Derek eyes the pie, which has flies buzzing around it, and turns him down. Derek asks about the address they got in the video clip, the “Sex Road” one. After some initial confusion, they realize that the address is actually 3456 Rhode Avenue. Derek wants to talk to one-armed man, but he won’t talk on camera. Derek asks about the mutilations, and the Desert Squid, but all the guy will say is that both things “might be good for tourism.” He gives them the check, and Derek excuses himself to “hit the head.” Derek enters the scary, broken-apart bathroom. There’s someone in one of the stalls, but the person’s feet are facing the wall, and not the toilet or the door. The urinal is broken off the wall, so Derek decides to use the sink. A voice tells Derek not to piss in the sink or he’ll report Derek. Derek walks over to the stall and pushes the door open, just as Elsing grabs him from behind and accuses Derek of “sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.” Elsing insists that “there is no Desert Squid.” Derek asks whether this has something to do with Adam. Elsing warns Derek to “stay away from this one” because “it’s between them and [Elsing].” Derek wants to know who “they” are, saying that he needs to know what’s going on. Elsing grabs him and throws him up against the wall, saying that “what’s going on is good and evil.” Elsing throws Derek to the floor. Derek gets up and runs outside, but Elsing is nowhere to be found. He asks Chloe and Jason whether they saw anything, but they don’t know what he’s talking about. Derek sees a black Suburban taking off, and says they have to follow it in their truck.

They didn’t catch the black Suburban, it’s 11 PM and Derek, Jason, and Chloe are at the address they got from the dinner, to meet the guy who sent them the video clip. They knock, and when no one answers, they walk in. The place looks like it has been ransacked. Chloe wants to leave. Jason takes note of a bulletin board with clippings about every conspiracy theory ever. Derek yells for “Falcon,” the name of the guy who sent the video clip. Chloe and Jason want to leave. Derek sees the bulletin board and keeps looking at clippings until Chloe and Jason persuade him to take off. Outside, Jason says that he thinks they are being set up, because if they report this on the website, tourism in the town will jump five hundred percent. Just then, an engine starts up and a vehicle starts speeding towards Derek, who jumps out of the way just in time. The Freakylinks gang jump in their truck and take off after the vehicle. While chasing the vehicle, the little dog from the diner runs out in the road. Derek tries to avoid the dog, but something splatters on the windshield. Derek stops and gets out to inspect what happened. There is a quivering tentacle laying in the road.

Cut to the Freakylinks office. Lan is still working on the video, but it’s not ready yet. Lan reviews that Derek thought he saw Elsing in the bathroom, but he didn’t tell Jason and Chloe, and that the dog sitting in the chair is the dog he didn’t hit on the road. Jason tries to think up a better name for the Desert Squid, like “Octopussy” or “Octocabra.” Lan ignores Jason and gets Derek back to telling the story.

Derek, Jason, and Chloe check into a motel. Derek is carrying a box containing the tentacle they found in the road. It keeps bumping around, arousing the suspicion of the motel manager, who won’t allow pets in the rooms. They tell him it’s some fish they caught. The manager also doesn’t allow cooking in the rooms. They tell him they’re going to eat it raw because they are observing the sabbath. They grab the room key, and split, but not before agreeing to buy a souvenir Desert Squid t-shirt. Once in their room, Derek applies menthol to his upper lip, because the tentacle smells bad. Chloe makes a fart joke. Derek opens the box to show the tentacle to the camera. Chloe offers some explanations as to how it could all still be a hoax. Derek sees headlights flash through the room. He looks out the window and sees the black Suburban outside, so he turns out the lights so the occupants of the Suburban can’t see inside. In the background, we see the tentacle climb out of the box. When they realize that the tentacle is loose, Chloe and Jason jump up on the bed while Derek looks for it. Some men in black get out of the Suburban and pull out a lock pick to attempt to get into the motel room. The gang hears the doorknob rattling, but just then, the tentacle wraps around Chloe’s leg. There’s a funny scene of Chloe hopping across the room with the tentacle on her leg. Derek finally pulls it off, and the tentacle flies across the room and sticks to the door like. Another car pulls up outside, and shotgun blasts are heard, which scare away the men in black. The door is kicked in, and Falcon is standing there with a shotgun. He tells the gang, “If you want to live, come with me.” so they do. He is the owner of the RV. As they drive away, we see the guy from the black Suburban.

Falcon and the gang are having a campfire outside Falcon’s RV. Falcon thought they were with De Santo, a multinational conglomerate. Derek asks whether De Santo wants to kill them, and why. Falcon doesn’t really answer, and Derek surmises that De Santo is behind the cattle mutilations. Falcon explains that De Santo made the Desert Squid; he knows, because he was there. Falcon used to work for De Santo when he was younger, disposing of “certain waste products in the desert.” We see a flashback of Falcon dumping a crate into a hole in the ground. Falcon narrates that one time he heard something moving in a crate, so he pried it open to check. Inside, he found a body bag that was still moving, and he assumed it was “some sort of zombie corpse.” Falcon dumped the crate, took off, quit his job, and “went underground.” Derek asks exactly what De Santo is up to, and Falcon admits that he doesn’t know exactly, but it’s “got to be something bad.” Derek asks what was in the body bag, and Falcon doesn’t really know that either. Derek asks why, if the incident happened twenty years ago, the cattle mutilations are just happening now. Falcon says he doesn’t have all the answers, but implores Derek to put his story on the website so that they can get more information.

Cut to the RV driving through the desert. Derek goes back into the diner bathroom where he saw Elsing, and yells out “Vince!” which is Elsing’s first name. There’s no one there. Inside the diner, the rest of the gang is having similar results. Falcon decides to go outside and keep watch. Derek and the rest decide to search the place. Chloe wants to know what’s going on with Derek, what he’s hoping to find. They start looking through a bunch of boxes in a meat locker. Chloe is frustrated that Derek won’t tell her what they are looking for. Jason finds something, a bomb that only has four seconds left on the timer. He throws it out of the meat locker, and they all duck and cover. Outside, Falcon goes flying as all of the windows blow out and fire billows out of the windows. Someone, probably one of the men in black, observes and then the black Suburban takes off.

Back at the Freakylinks office Lan learns that diving in the meat locker saved them. Except that it wasn’t a meat locker, it was an elevator, which led to the underground lab. We see Chloe, Jason, and Derek plunging into the underground lab. Chloe worries that there’s no way out. Derek thinks that the Desert Squid thing might be real. They film lots of lab equipment, and bottles filled with murky substances. Derek finds the videotape with the De Santo label, and pockets it. Chloe finds file folders that say De Santo as well, and they’re all twenty years old. Jason wonders why, if this lab was abandoned twenty years ago, all the lights are still on. They come upon what looks like a bedroom. Chloe finds a fuse box hooked up to a bunch of car batteries, which explains the lights. There are a bunch of tubes and chains hanging from the ceiling, and we see Derek-cam and Jason-cam searching the room. There is a rustling noise and every once in a while, a tentacle swings down behind one of the gang, but none of them see it. They wonder if the tentacle followed them from the hotel. While looking around, they find the little dog, which scares them half to death. Jason deduces that the one-armed man was squatting down there. They realize that the dog probably knows the way out, and follow it up through a vent of some sort, ending up outside.

The gang sees the smoking wreck that used to be the diner, along with Falcon’s RV. They run over and nearly get shot by Falcon himself. They tell him about the underground lab, and how it was abandoned twenty years ago. Derek produces the videotape. Cut to them watching the tape in Falcon’s RV. Though it’s very snowy, you can make out a man giving a report from a lab meant for De Santo bigwigs. The man is Vince Elsing, who reports that his team of scientists has nearly achieved, “complete biological…” and then the tape cuts out. Jason deduces that this “has something to do with Adam” and Chloe is angry with Derek for knowing that Elsing was involved and not telling them. Outside, one of the men in black is watching the people in the RV with night-vision binoculars. Standing behind him is another man, in shadow. The guy says he’s “had about enough of this.”

Back inside the RV, Chloe and Jason are yelling at Derek. It’s the opening scene, but now we know the context. Derek hits the side of the TV, exhorting it to, “Come on! Work!” Chloe tells Derek he “can’t avoid this.” Falcon tells Derek to take it easy on the VCR. Jason asks to give it a try and Derek yells at him. Chloe wants to know why Derek thought he could keep them out of the loop. Derek protests, but Jason says Derek is always going off by himself. Falcon wants to know if this is how the gang normally works. Suddenly, there is a loud noise from on top of the RV, and the dog starts barking. Falcon grabs a shotgun and cocks it. Chloe falls into Derek’s arms, and they look at each other, and separate quickly. The RV continues shaking, and Derek picks up his camera. Falcon doesn’t want to be photographed. Derek talks into the camera, saying that there is “definitely something up on the roof.” The RV shakes again, and Derek drops the camera. A tentacle reaches in through the skylight in the roof and grabs Chloe, pulling her up to the ceiling. Everyone tries to pull her down. Chaos ensues.

Falcon pulls out a knife and starts sawing through the tentacle. The tentacle finally releases Chloe, who crashes to the ground, breathing raggedly since the tentacle had been wrapped around her neck. Derek wants to grab his camera and film it. Jason tries to talk some sense into Derek, since Chloe is obviously hurt. Derek finally realizes his lack of priorities, and comforts Chloe. Jason says that he and Chloe are done, and that they have plenty of stories for the site. They can always come back, because “that thing” isn’t going anywhere.

Cut back to Lan asking where Chloe is. Derek says she’s upstairs resting. Lan can’t believe they left without any proof of the Desert Squid. Derek says their proof will be the video, which Lan promises is almost ready. Outside, we see a tentacle crawling up the window. Chloe comes downstairs with a huge red mark on her neck. Everyone comforts her, especially Derek. Chloe has been doing some research on De Santo. Apparently, twenty years ago De Santo applied for a bunch of patents in the area of “cell regeneration” and “Wall Street thought they were onto something big,” but then suddenly De Santo just dropped what they were doing. The computer beeps to indicate that the video is ready, and they all gather around to watch it. Elsing talks about “Test Subject 148″ whom Derek identifies as the one-armed man from the diner. Before the gang can figure out what they are seeing in the video, the power goes out. Chloe thinks it might be the storm, Jason thinks it’s something else, and Lan notes that it “took out the backup power too.” Derek volunteers to go start up the generator.

Once Derek is alone, Elsing shows up to tell him that he “screwed around with the forces of nature” and went too far, but now he can’t get back, and neither can Derek. Derek hears glass breaking and turns away, and when he looks back, Elsing is gone. The glass broke when the men in black broke into the house. They say they are going to take “the hard drives and all the tapes.” Derek tells them that everything has already been posted to the website, but head man in black says he knows that’s not true. Other men in black takes out a gun, which causes the gang to put their hands in the air. Just then, a tentacle busts in the door and takes out the guy with the gun. Jason punches the head man in black, but not very well. Just as the head man in black is fixing up his gun, he is also grabbed by a tentacle and dragged away. After ascertaining that Jason is okay, the gang look outside to try to figure out what’s going on. A door opens and a tentacle waves in, followed by the one-armed man, who turns out to be the Desert Squid. The tentacle is attached to him. He gives the Freakylinks gang a speech about how he was dumped in the desert twenty years ago and woke up to find the tentacle attached. Now, just when he gets his diner going, the Freakylinks gang shows up and his diner gets “blown to hell.” It turns out that all he wants is his dog “pepper” back. Derek can’t believe he came all the way there for his dog, and Chloe points out that he almost killed her. He apologizes, he thought she was his dog. The one-armed man asks them to write the Desert Squid story on the website because he’ll need the publicity for his new diner. He admits to being responsible for the cattle mutilations, and using the cattle for hamburgers for his diner. He takes the De Santo videotape and leaves, taking the men in black with him. Lan asks what he’s going to do with the men. Cut to someone eating a steak or something. A patron gets a bill, it’s Elsing. He puts out his cigarette and leaves a $1000 tip. As Elsing leaves, we see a shot of the window of the “Desert Squid Diner.”

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