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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

Derek is awakened by Chloe, who tells him it’s time to go to Cassadaga. Chloe picks up the book on Derek’s lap, and notes that it’s The Harbingers, and that Adam loved that book. Derek says groggily that he just had a dream about Adam, and Chloe says that she dreams about him all the time. Chloe asks to borrow the book, and Derek asks her to “please, get it out of [his] face.” Just then, the salsa music starts back up as Lan walks in. Derek almost goes to kiss her, like in his dream, but she shoves a bag at him and says “two days’ worth of clothes, and a toothbrush.” Derek wonders why she packed his bag for him, and she doesn’t understand it herself, and goes to leave. Derek runs after her, saying “thank you so much!” Lan looks embarrassed, yet flattered, and says, “Shut up!” before leaving, just as Jason walks in the door. He makes a joke about Lan being in love. Derek asks if Jason is okay, since he seems a bit less upbeat than usual. Jason says he just hasn’t “had [his] breakfast burrito yet,” and walks out. Derek stares at the picture of Adam and him on the desk, and then picks up the phone, but there’s only a dial tone. We focus in on the phone, as we hear Derek walk out of the house. After the door slams, the phone starts ringing a weird ring, like one long, continuous ring.

Chloe voice over reading from The Harbingers about the town of “Valley Vista,” also known as Cassadaga. Apparently, it’s some sort of retreat town for “mystics.” We see the town sign, which says, “When the spirit moves you, you move here!” Chloe reads about a creepy town as we see a man walking down a creepy street. Then a little alien-looking thing bloodily attacks him. And the bricklayers’ union files an anti-defamation suit. Cut to present-day Jason cam, as Chloe laughingly shuts the book, saying that it’s no wonder that it’s out of print. Jason claims Ashcroft writes like “a bricklayer.” Derek protests that Ashcroft is “local color.” Jason is sick of talking to “scam artists” who claim to communicate with the dead. Chloe suggests talking to “a real dead guy,” Ashcroft. They are right outside the café where Ashcroft used to take his “tea time.” Turns out it wasn’t tea he was drinking, there’s a beer named after Ashcroft, according to the menu. Derek reads the description of the ale: “In honor of the late and not so great horror novelist, who spent the last eight years of his life standing on a curb in the center of town, handing out free Xeroxes of The Harbingers, his one and only book.” The gang gets a good laugh out of that. Cut to a table at the café. Jason asks what a harbinger is, exactly. Chloe explains that they are “invisible creatures” that dig their fingers into your mind. Jason asks if it was Adam’s favorite book. Derek says Adam had bad taste in food, not women! This leads to Derek and Chloe having an Adam moment, while Jason looks uncomfortable and bored.

Cut to Derek cam showing some other guy walking down the street with a camera, who Derek recognizes as “Stu.” It seems that Stu used to work for Mahlberg, but now he’s on his own. Derek thinks he saw the information on the Freakylinks website. Derek and Stu exchange insults, and then Stu hits on Chloe, revealing that he works for a site called “CreepyClicks.com.” Chloe walks away. Jason and Stu intimidate each other. Stu calls them all amateurs. Jason notices some chick watching them through a shop window. The chick walks out of her shop, and up to Derek, calling him Mr. Barnes. She slaps Derek in the face, saying that “he trusted you and you lied to him,” and then walks back into her shop. Derek’s shocked, and Chloe thinks that the shop girl thought Derek was Adam. Derek figures out that Adam must have been in Cassadaga. Chloe says she never heard of Adam coming there. Derek explains about his dream. Derek takes out his cell phone, saying that he wants to know if Adam came there, and when. Chloe says that she would rather know why.

Cut to Lan up on a stack of books, looking for something among some shelves. She’s on the phone with Derek. Suddenly, she screams, she found the head in a jar from the first episode. Derek asks if she’s okay. Derek explains that she’s looking for some record that Adam was in Cassadaga, like “a notebook or a file.” Lan finds “a videotape labeled ‘Cassadaga,’” and says that she’ll bring it to them. Shop Girl walks around her shop, which appears to be a bookstore, and hears a noise. The door opens, which startles her, but it’s the Freakylinks gang. Shop Girl threatens to call the police. Derek explains about the twin thing, and shows her a picture, while Chloe explains that they need to know why he was there, and they can’t ask him because he’s dead. Shop Girl starts crying at the news that Adam is dead, which bugs Chloe a bit. Cut to Shop Girl explaining to the gang that Adam interviewed Ashcroft, and that both she and Adam loved the book. Chloe asks, “What do you mean?” and Shop Girl says that she and Adam were “kindred spirits,” and asks if Chloe knew Adam. Chloe says, “Pretty well.” Derek breaks the tension by asking what’s upstairs.

Cut to a tour of the upstairs, Ashcroft’s former apartment. Shop Girl explains that the people of the town took care of Ashcroft, letting him make free copies, stay rent-free, and such. Derek wants to know about the face-slapping and accusations of lying that happened earlier. Shop Girl says that Adam promised to get The Harbingers published again. Chloe’s surprised to hear that Adam promised that, and Shop Girl says that she heard it from Ashcroft, not Adam, and that Ashcroft died a few days later, “in his sleep.” Shop Girl says that it happened “three years ago, a week before Halloween.” Derek gives Chloe a sharp look, and says that means it was “a week before Adam died.” Chloe asks about Ashcroft’s book, and Shop Girl says that everyone threw their copies away. Jason finds a busted-up video camera in a garbage can. Derek investigates and says that camera belonged to Adam. Just then, Derek’s cell phone rings. It’s Lan she has arrived in town. Derek asks her to get online and access all of Adam’s bank accounts, looking for any activity in Cassadaga. Derek also tells her that they have the VCR, and they’ll be there soon, before he hangs up. Derek takes the garbage can containing the camera and walks out. Stu walks down a darkened street which looks a lot like the street we saw from Chloe’s narration of The Harbingers earlier. Suddenly, he screams and something attacks him.

While arriving at their bed and breakfast, the gang discusses the fact that it seems Adam promised to get Ashcroft’s book republished, and left his camera there as “some form of collateral.” Derek opens the door, and Stu rushes at him with an axe. Derek gets the door closed just in time. Derek realizes that Lan is in there, and goes charging in. The axe is lying on the floor, and Stu is nowhere to be found. The gang searches the room frantically. Lan runs in from some other room, and Derek gives her way more than a friendly hug. Derek asks if Lan is okay, and Lan continues to look confused, and yet happy, that Derek is holding her and kissing her on the forehead. Chloe tells Jason that “something very strange [is] going on.”

Derek walks into the room after talking to the cops. He says that Stu reserved a room in a nearby motel, but never checked in, so now no one knows where he is, and they’re all going to sleep together tonight. Jason’s all, “All right!” and Lan’s all, “You wish.” After a weird cut, where Derek is walking into the room with the tape, they get ready to watch it. Lan tells Jason quietly that she thinks they should let Derek and Chloe watch the tape alone because “it’s personal.” Chloe overhears and says that they can stay. Lan says she’s going downstairs. After she leaves, Jason says he’ll go with her, and shakes his head. Something weird is going on with Jason. Derek and Chloe pop in the tape. On the tape, Adam gives some background on the Ashcroft situation, while we see the author handing out copies of his book to largely uninterested passersby. Cut to Adam greeting Shop Girl (whose name is Tamara). Chloe looks uncomfortable. Adam starts to interview Ashcroft, who doesn’t want to discuss “the booze or the ex-wife.” Ashcroft is angry. Adam asks, “Why haven’t they stopped you?” Ashcroft looks shocked and tells Adam to turn the camera off. Cut to Adam saying that Ashcroft confirmed everything, then says, “Note to self: do not forget to get Tamara’s number. She’s a cutie. Derek, you’re going to love her. She’s just your type. And remember to get Chloe’s ring. Be sure the inscription’s right.” Chloe and Derek look relieved.

Lan and Jason are downstairs. Jason seems bothered. Lan tells him that they can watch the video later on, and asks what’s going on. Jason reveals that his dad wants him to “go back to Boston and work for the firm.” Lan reads a letter which reveals that Jason is being offered over $100,000 a year, full benefits, and a new car, and then guesses that Jason isn’t taking it. Jason says it would be “like living in the past.” They joke about what kind of car he would get.

Everyone is sleeping Lan and Chloe in the bed, Derek on the window seat, and Jason on the floor. Derek asks Chloe if she thinks Adam is dead. Chloe says that they buried him, and that Adam gave her a ring when he got back from Cassadaga. The inscription is in French, and translates to “You and no other.” Chloe thinks that if Adam was still alive, he would be with her, so he’s gone and never coming back, “except maybe in [their] dreams.” Chloe and Derek are both crying. Derek says that he and Adam were a team. Cut to Jason, not at all sleeping on the floor.

Adam is standing over Derek, who wakes up. Derek is alone in the room. He walks out the door to find Tamara standing there. She says the gang is having breakfast downstairs, and shows Derek Ashcroft’s appointment book, where he had an appointment with a “Mr. Arker re: AB” which obviously means Adam. Tamara reveals that Arker is a psychic, and gives Derek the address. Derek storms out of the bed and breakfast, past the rest of the gang eating breakfast on the porch. Chloe’s all, “Derek?” as Derek gets in the truck without a word to anyone. Jason looks pissed. Derek arrives at Arker’s house. A lady greets him, saying that she’s a little weirded out, having just finished her consultation. Derek asks if Arker is there. She says that she wears her beret to “protect [her] fontanelle.” That’s the soft spot on a baby’s head, which some cultures believe allows entry and exit of the spirit. She says that Arker probably already knows Derek is there because “Ooblabadu.” Derek looks puzzled. She leaves. Derek turns and Arker is standing right there. He looks a lot like Vince. He says, “I was wondering when you were going to show up,” and punches Derek in the face.

Derek’s dream world again. Derek wakes up on a playground, and everything is hand-colored. Like it’s all black and white, but then spots of color. A kid walks up to Derek and hands him a copy of The Harbingers, saying that Derek dropped it. He sits down next to Derek and says, “Discovery is a painful and arduous thing.” When Derek says, “What?” the kid replies, “I said it’s my birthday and I want you to sing.” Derek turns away, and when he turns back, he’s sitting next to Arker/Vince, who says he had to hit Derek so that they would have “the proper protection” because “they stay away from children.” Vince gets up and says Derek is looking for what Adam found. Adam figured it all out, and Derek needs to do the same thing, and finish what Adam started. Derek’s still confused. Vince says, in Adam’s voice, “Discovery is a painful and arduous thing.” Derek says that Adam used that phrase on the website, and wants to know what Ashcroft told Adam. Vince says that Derek needs to find it on his own if Vince tells him, Derek will be dead by midnight. Derek wants to know why him, and Vince says Derek is all he has left. Vince grabs The Harbingers and says that they should have made a movie out of it, because “it would have saved a lot of people a lot of trouble.” He hits Derek in the face with the book.

Derek wakes up alone on the playground. Back at the bed and breakfast, Lan tells the gang that Adam didn’t make any purchases in the weeks before he died, but Ashcroft did buy a “powerful server and a scanner” while Adam was there. Chloe points out Ashcroft’s lack of funds. Lan says that Ashcroft planned to use the scanner to make copies. Derek says that he could have just bought a copier. Jason wants to know why Derek ran off without them. Derek doesn’t want to get into it right now. Chloe wants to know what Arker had to say. Derek says it wasn’t Arker, it was Vince. Chloe wants to know what Vince said. Derek brushes her off, saying it was just riddles. Jason, who has been looking at Adam’s camera, says that Adam “tricked it out” to use night vision. Derek realizes that Adam was looking in the dark, and races out, telling everyone to come with him. The rest of the gang look at each other, and then follow.

Derek walks across the town square, where psychics are set up at card tables. He hands coffee to Jason and Chloe, who are working in the back of the truck. Jason says that the equipment needs to be calibrated online. Derek looks at Lan, who is dressed up like a fortune teller and seated at a table. Derek stares a little too long. Jason says they’ll be ready “as soon as the sun sets.” A waiter walks up to Lan and drops off a drink. She says she didn’t order it, and he tells her she will. He asks who the lucky guy is, and she says there isn’t one. He tells her that her aura is giving her away. Lan is dismissive, saying she didn’t come there for a palm reading. The guy busts out with some Spanish. Lan replies, also in Spanish, and the guy reveals that he knows she’s Puerto Rican. This inspires Lan to trust him, and she asks if he can figure out which guy is “the one.” The waiter says that one of them has a job offer. Lan says it’s Jason, and asks what kind of shot she has with the other one, Derek. The waiter asks what kind of shot she wants, and Lan remains silent. The waiter says, “I heard that!” and chuckles knowingly.

Stu walks up to a cop car and sees a rifle sitting unattended inside. It’s night. Derek watches a night-vision image on the laptop screen. Derek keeps seeing “hot” images — and they really should decide if this is night vision, or infrared vision, because they’re not the same thing. Derek shoots two guys arguing. One of the guys is walking around talking to himself, and on the screen, there’s a glowing thing on the guy’s back. Derek says importantly, “Guys? They’re real!” and points to his copy of The Harbingers. Derek has brought Tamara down to show her the images. Derek thinks that Ashcroft created the harbingers, and was spreading them by giving out the book. Adam was there to stop Ashcroft. Tamara doesn’t believe it, thinking that Adam was there to help Ashcroft. She walks off, and Lan and Chloe follow her. Jason makes a comment to Derek, and Derek tells him to cut it out. Derek thinks that the harbingers got to Tamara, and tries to get the camera from Jason, who isn’t giving it up. Derek tells Jason he’s “sick and tired of having every decision [he] makes second-guessed by [Jason].” In the background, we see Tamara throw up her hands and walk away. Derek and Jason continue to argue. Jason again refuses to give up the camera to Derek, saying it was probably an “electronic glitch” and that the whole thing is in Derek’s head. Derek threateningly says, “Are you saying Adam was wrong?” Jason says that Adam wasn’t thinking clearly, and neither is Derek, and that Derek has something that Adam never had the gang.

The girls have walked back, and are standing there listening, now. Jason tells Derek that they can’t help him unless he stops “living in the past.” More arguing. Adam killed himself. Derek needs to accept that. Jason is done there. Derek agrees. Jason walks away. Chloe goes after him. Derek walks off alone with the camera. Vince is sitting in a bush, and tells Derek that he’s “lost again,” and that he had better turn around. Cut to Derek, Lan, and Chloe at Tamara’s bookshop. Derek says that he was wrong about Ashcroft, but he’s there and Adam was there, so that means something. Before Tamara can reply, Stu busts down the door calling Derek’s name, and carrying a shotgun. Stu gets off a couple of wild shots before Derek rushes him and tosses him onto the floor. Stu lands on a copy of The Harbingers and has a seizure, and a puff of smoke emanates from his head. Derek yells to Lan to get the camera. Stu won’t wake up. Derek tells everyone to stick together because “there’s something in here.” He also reminds Lan not to stop rolling. Derek lifts up a tablecloth, and sees a glowing blob under the table. No one else can see anything. Lan sees it through the camera, and says that it’s fading. Finally, the blob fades out. Derek talks into the camera, introducing Stu as “the first documented victim of a harbinger.” Stu wakes up and apologizes groggily. Lan is filming with the special camera, and calls Derek over. The copy of The Harbingers sitting on Stu’s chest is glowing. Derek figures out that the book saved Stu. Chloe says that in the book, the town is a “psychic nexus” that allows the harbingers to spring forth. Derek explains that the book stops the harbingers. Lan thinks people would have to read the book, but Chloe explains that it’s like the Bible or Koran the book alone has power. Derek realizes that is why Ashcroft was passing them out, but when Ashcroft died, everyone threw out their copies. Chloe realizes that Adam was really trying to help Ashcroft get the book back in print. Lan and Derek figure out that they were going to publish it on the web. Derek figures out that the server must be in Ashcroft’s office. Jason’s got a headache. Tamara voice-overs that she’ll stay with Stu.

A bunch of random people appear to be gathering outside. Jason storms into the room and packs up his things, including his father’s offer letter. The drapes blow, as Jason begins battling some invisible creature, presumably a harbinger. You can see a hand underneath the skin on Jason’s skull. Derek and Chloe look for the server in Ashcroft’s office. Lan and Tamara note the people gathering outside. Tamara says they “need a bigger book.” She walks out, and we see the door swinging back and forth. Derek and Chloe find the server in a closet. Chloe leaves to get Lan, but when Derek follows her, she has disappeared. He sets down the server, and walks out of the room, where he finds Chloe lying on the floor in the hallway. Just then, Jason attacks him with an axe! Lan hears the struggle, and tells Tamara to stay with Stu, and not to let go of the book. Jason and Derek fight. Jason starts attacking the server with an axe. Chloe and Lan run in. Derek tells them to take the server and get it online. They carry it out as Derek and Jason fight some more. The girls get the server set up. The group gathered across the street starts approaching the house. Jason chokes Derek.

Cuts between shots of Lan setting up the server, the crowd clamoring outside, and Jason choking Derek. Lan dials up and starts transferring the book. Tamara films using Adam’s special camera and the server starts glowing white like the book did. The crowd outside stops clamoring. Derek sees the harbinger leave Jason’s head, and they both collapse on the floor. Chloe and Lan giggle. The crowd outside which includes Lan’s psychic waiter friend from earlier disperses. Jason and Derek breathe heavily. Lan reveals to Tamara that “Adam programmed the server to constantly send chapters over the net.” So that lots of people are downloading the book, and the free world is safe from harbingers. Derek walks in and Tamara thanks him. Derek tells her to thank Lan. He finds Chloe looking sad, and reminds her that they did it. Chloe wishes Adam was there to see it. Derek says maybe he is. They hug. Stu walks in with his camera. Derek pushes him away and tells him that “there’s no story here.” Derek shoves Stu out the door.

Jason walks in while Derek is packing things up. Jason asks what they should do with the axe he used to attack Derek. Derek suggests that they save it. Jason apologizes. Derek says there’s no need, and that they are a team. Derek walks out, and Jason throws his father’s offer letter into the garbage before following him. Salsa music again. Jason and Lan dance. Chloe snuggles with Adam. Vince comes up and serves Derek a drink. Lan pulls Chloe away from Adam. Derek and Adam lock eyes and Adam smiles at Derek. Cut to sleeping Derek, holding a copy of The Harbingers, and smiling in his sleep.

Cut to Chloe entering the Freakylinks offices, where Lan greets her. After ascertaining that Derek isn’t around, Chloe asks how “it” went, and Lan says that nothing happened Derek took off for Miami before they had a chance to discuss their relationship. Lan claims she wants to “forget about the whole thing,” but her face says differently. Chloe tries to pursue it, but Lan says she doesn’t care, so Chloe asks why Derek went to Miami. Lan replies, “A freaky-I’d-rather-not-deal-with-Lan’s-feelings-so-I’m-going-to-split-town-link.” Chloe checks out a tabloid cover story about XT, and recent sightings of said “dead” rapper. Lan shows Chloe a piece of video captured by Jamie Hollowell, “XT’s best friend and video director.” The footage was shot on the set of XT’s last video, and it shows XT and his wife Joy getting into an argument over the small amount of time XT spends at home. Joy wants XT home more. In the heat of the moment, XT picks up a gun and aims it at himself, claiming that life with Joy is like having a loaded gun pressed to his chest. Joy tries to take the gun away, and it goes off, killing XT.

Derek and Jason are sitting on some steps in the mausoleum. Jason tries to convince Derek that he needs to talk to Lan about her feelings. Derek insists that Lan doesn’t have a crush on him, and that they have a “fun, friendly, slightly flirtatious working relationship.” Jason says that Lan feels differently, and Derek should be straight with her about how he feels. Derek doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. Their conversation continues as the camera swings back to the hallway they just exited. Two young men sneak into the hallway with duffel bags. The first one tries to pry open XT’s bureial tomb made of marble, which is part of a large wall with others like it. Apparently, the seal on the final resting place is tighter than they thought. The second guy busts out a hammer and easily shatters the front panel of the final resting place.

Jason and Derek hear the shattering marble and head back to investigate, but not before Derek can make fun of Jason’s belief that XT is alive. Back at the final resting place, the two guys slide out the coffin and pry it open. They exchange “Dude!”s and high-fives over the contents, to which we are not yet privy. The first guy claims that the contents will solve the XT mystery, and the other tells him to “get the camera,”. Derek and Jason head back to investigate the noise, just as the first guy snaps a Polaroid picture. Something happens when the flash goes off, and both teens fall backwards, screaming. Derek and Jason hear the screams and start running. As they arrive on the scene, Derek-cam zooms in on the empty coffin. The first guy yells out that “he got up and he looked at us, and he walked.” Derek listens, and then focuses on something off-camera. He looks at something on the ground, and then we see the Polaroid taken moments ago. It’s very blurry, but looks like XT getting up out of the coffin. Derek smiles.

Back at Freakylinks HQ, Derek tries to convince Chloe that the picture is of XT. Chloe wants to talk about Lan, saying that Derek is a “big-hearted guy” and that Lan might be confused about his feelings for her. Derek says that he’s “a hugger.” Chloe doesn’t want Derek to hurt Lan’s feelings. Derek, as usual, doesn’t want to talk about it, and changes the subject to their investigation. Chloe allows that XT’s coffin is empty, so it could be that he was never in it at all, or it could be that he is a zombie. Lan and Jason arrive, as Lan offers up that it could have been “grave robbers,” and that the whole thing is a publicity stunt to hype XT’s latest CD. Chloe sums up, “Not dead, stolen dead, walking dead, take your pick.” Derek chooses “walking,” Lan chooses “dead,” and Jason chooses “not.” Chloe says she’s still gathering information. Derek brings up a party that Alejandro Wexler, “the president of XT’s record label,” is throwing tonight. Lan “hacked the guest list” and now “Ice Pick plus three” appears on it. Jason claims that they will be “big pimpin’” and Derek “dances.”

Pan up on some big mansion. The gang pulls up as Derek reminds them to split up and look for information. Derek starts filming himself explaining why they are there for the website, including a little peek at how “hot” Chloe looks. Lan’s checking out some guy dressed all in white, descending the stairs. Jason explains that the all-in-white guy is “Boomer Truman,” who has become the label’s bestseller since XT died. Boomer checks Lan out and smiles, and Lan starts following him down the hall.

After an overhead shot of a bunch of extras dancing, we see Chloe down a glass of champagne. Derek spots Alejandro Wexler across the room and hands the camera to Chloe so that he can interview Wexler. He runs up and introduces himself to Wexler. Derek keeps bugging him about the status of XT’s body, and Wexler jacks him up, saying that XT was like his son, and he offers to introduce Derek to “Mr. Death and Mr. Dismemberment,” his bodyguards. Then he lets Derek go and tells him to get a drink. Lan asks Jason-cam if Boomer is still looking at her. Jason pans over to reveal Boomer totally checking out Lan’s ass. Just then, Joy (XT’s wife) shows up looking for Wexler. She confronts Wexler, claiming that he stole XT’s body for publicity. Wexler replies, “At least I didn’t kill him.” Boomer tries to get Joy to calm down, but she stalks off and he follows. Derek takes the opportunity to ask Wexler another question on camera. The bodyguards remove Derek from the party. Derek exits the party, and the rest of the gang follows. Tons of press are there, taking pictures. Lan, all upset, brushes past Derek, but Derek doesn’t understand why she’s upset. Jason says that Lan “didn’t get to dance with the prince.” Lan wants to know what they do now, and Derek says he wants to discuss why Wexler helped XT fake his own death. Lan wonders when Derek became so ruthless and uncaring, but Derek ignores her when he spots someone standing in the bushes, and yells out, “That’s XT!” None of the others saw anything, and can’t figure out what Derek is running after.

Cut to Derek-cam running across a lawn after the person he thought was XT, until two Dobermans stop him. Derek runs from the dogs. Just as Derek reaches the others, Boomer comes out and calls off the dogs. Derek starts to explain what he was doing, but Jason interrupts and apologizes. As Chloe and Jason rush Derek off, Boomer approaches Lan and does the old “phone number on the hand” thing. Boomer tells Lan to call him, and Lan walks off.

Derek The next morning, Jason sits outside and watches the XT video footage on the laptop. Derek, eating cereal next to him, asks if he thinks Lan will call Boomer, and Jason thinks she’ll be “too mortified” after Derek’s behavior. Derek walks back inside, ribbing Jason all the while about his “unhealthy interest” in the video. Derek stops short when he sees Joy standing in his office. She tells him to stay out of the way. Jason comes in to show Derek something in the video, and when Derek looks back, Joy has disappeared. Jason has spotted a wire or something attached to XT’s leg in the video, and he tells Derek to get dressed so they can go check it out.

Jason and Derek arrive at the warehouse where the video was filmed and XT was killed. Jason says that the wire was probably attached to a battery, and that XT was “squibbed”, they attached “blood bags” to him and then set them off when the gun went off, thus giving the appearance of being shot. Jason thinks that Joy confronted Wexler at the party “to keep up the charade.” Derek laughs at Jason. Jason says they need to go to “the source.”

Cut to a scene of a music video being shot. Hollowell, XT’s friend, is directing the video. Hollowell calls for a lunch break as Derek and Jason show up. Jason asks him about XT’s death, and points out that XT was squibbed. Hollowell says he’s going to call security. As the three of them walk away, an unidentified male walks up and knocks the lever off a water cooler, so that water starts spilling all over the floor. Shots of Derek and Jason interrogating Hollowell are intercut with shots of the water spreading across the floor. Derek asks Hollowell what he’s afraid of. Derek thinks Hollowell is “scared of the truth.” Hollowell claims that “he has some unfinished business, and he’s going to finish it.” Hollowell starts to walk off, right into the giant puddle of water. Some electrical equipment starts sparking and Hollowell is electrocuted. Derek spots someone standing in the shadows, but Jason misses it. Derek thinks it was XT.

Boomer is at Freakylinks HQ with Lan, preparing tea and explaining how he came to be the next superstar for the record label. He says he would give up his fame if XT could have his life back, and that he knows now why XT was so unhappy, because there’s a lot of treachery in this business. Lan is working on the footage Jason and Derek shot at the warehouse. She thinks there is something to the markings on the floor. She places the markings on a grid to check out the pattern better. Boomer starts playing with her hair and then they make out. Derek, Chloe, and Jason walk into the house while Derek explains that he saw XT at the video shoot with Hallowell, and that he thinks XT is “a walking, murderous corpse.” Jason disagrees. They walk in on Lan and Boomer kissing, and Chloe comments to Derek that he’s “off the hook.” Lan shoots Derek a murderous look like don’t ruin this. Boomer wonders if he “stepped in something.” Lan informs Derek that she found something on the video, and then tells Boomer that they should leave. Derek smirks at them as they walk out. Chloe checks out the symbol Lan revealed on the computer screen, and proclaims it “interesting.” Derek checks out the symbol on the screen while Chloe looks it up in some books. The symbol is based on “the Ancient Wheel of Life,” except that it has some additional symbols. One of the symbols represents “a rejection of life,” and it’s right at the point on the floor where XT was killed. Chloe thinks that they need some “expert help,” and suggests a woman named Staselina.

Cut to Staselina’s house, where Chloe asks her what the symbol means. Staselina explains that it’s a “shield against negative energies,” and that she was the one who put it at the site of XT’s death. XT thought he was cursed, and she was hired to protect him. Staselina puts Derek’s business card in a bowl and then continues bundling some herbs. Chloe asks if Joy knew what was going on. Staselina says that she knew about it, but didn’t believe it. Chloe clarifies that Staselina hoped that the symbol would place the curse somewhere else, but Staselina won’t say where. Then she says, “I’m sorry about your camera,” moments before the camera explodes in Jason’s hands. Jason, Chloe, and Derek look a bit stunned.

Back in the Freakylinks truck, Derek is driveing and stops for a red light. Derek determines that none of XT’s friends and family members have died since XT “took the bullet,” and Chloe points out that “the curse died with XT.” Cut to Staselina chanting and squeezing blood onto Derek’s business card. Back in the truck, Derek points out that Hollowell’s death could mean that “the curse is back and it’s using XT’s corpse to fulfill it.” Jason points out that the light has gone green. Chloe excitedly says that she has “figured it out.” Jason keeps telling Derek that the light has turned green as other drivers honk their horns and pass them. Finally, Derek gets going as Chloe starts to explain what she knows. Staselina continues to chant and drip blood on the card. Everything goes slow motion as Derek sees an oncoming bus, and stomps on the brakes. The brakes fail. The last thing we see is Chloe, in the passenger seat, screaming as the bus approaches.

Derek walks into a hospital, carrying a flower arrangement. He enters Chloe’s room, where she lies unconscious, and starts apologizing for not seeing the bus. Derek says he can’t put Chloe in harm’s way anymore, as Chloe wakes up and reveals that she’s really not unconscious. Chloe says she needs a bedpan, but she’s just kidding. Then she starts to explain her theory as Derek’s phone rings. It’s Jason who explains that the truck’s brakes are choked with “herbs and flowers.” Derek asks if they look like the plants that Staselina was working with when they were there, and Jason says that they do. Derek tells Jason to find a car and pick him up. Derek apologizes to Chloe for leaving. As he leaves we find out that Chloe wasn’t kidding about the bedpan.

Jason gets a Gremlin for a loaner. He and Derek go to Staselina’s house where they find the bloody business card and the words “Stay away,” written in red on the ceiling. Since Staselina isn’t there, they start poking around. Derek thinks that Staselina is behind the whole curse thing, and that they need to warn XT’s remaining friends and family. Jason sees a picture on the shelf, and calls Derek’s attention to it, it’s a picture of Wexler and Staselina, and there’s a card where Wexler addresses Staselina as “Sis.” Derek decides they need to “go talk to Wexler and drop the hammer.” Derek and Jason roll up in front of Wexler’s office building. Derek reminds Jason that they are going to “confront Wexler with the truth.” Jason asks what that is, and Derek admits that he doesn’t know, but “Chloe’s in the hospital, Lan’s on a date with Snoop Dogg, and we’re sitting here in a bucket with our thumbs up our butt.” Just then, a body comes crashing down and hits the sidewalk next to them. A shoe hits the windshield. Derek and Jason look stunned, and Derek says somthing to the effect of “that was….(Jason nods) Wexler.” He gets out of the car. Derek looks up at the building and sees a broken window with XT peering out, but Jason misses it.

Derek and Jason show up at Chloe’s hospital room to tell her that they saw XT’s corpse. Chloe, who is eating hospital food, says that it wasn’t XT. Derek doesn’t have time for Chloe’s explanations, because he needs to call Lan and warn her. He starts to use his cell phone, but a hospital employee tells him that he can’t use the phone in the hospital, and he has to find a pay phone.

Lan and Boomer are poolside. Boomer asks what’s up with Lan and Derek. Lan says that Derek is just being protective. Boomer thinks Lan wishes it were more, and Lan says she’s not sure, and they start kissing. Lan’s phone rings, as Derek calls and fills her in on Chloe’s injuries. Just then XT appears and starts to choke Derek, saying, “You were warned!” Lan keeps asking, “Derek, are you there?” Derek passes out.

Cut to Derek lying on the floor of the warehouse that housed the video shoot. His phone rings as he wakes up. Jason wonders where Derek has been. Derek tells him where he is but before he can continue XT grabs him and throws him across the floor. XT tells him that he and his friends will be killed if they don’t stay away. Derek tells him that he looks “really cheesy for a dead guy.” XT just keeps repeating that Derek should stay away. Derek asks or else what? To which XT kepps repeating “Stay Away!” Derek, unafraid, says that XT is not dead. XT pauses and then frustratedly tears off his sunglasses. Derek bemoans the fact that Jason was right. Joy walks out and says that she and Staselina both warned him. Derek says something about getting hit by a bus and XT says that was just supposed to be a warning. Derek begs for “just one walking corpse story.” Staselina walks out and says that it wasn’t a walking corpse that killed her brother “it was something much worse.”

Cut to Chloe hopping around her hospital room, telling Jason and Lan that it was “an effigy, like a voodoo doll made to represent the real thing.” She explains that it’s lifesize and made to look like XT. The real XT was “symbolically killed” on top of the symbol on the floor at the video shoot, which would shift the curse off the real XT and onto the wax XT. Then, the wax XT was buried, and the curse was buried too. Until the two guys let it out of the casket, and now it’s killing again.

In the warehouse, Derek wonders if they know who put the curse out there. They don’t. Derek wonders how they all met, and XT says that Wexler hooked them up, Staselina explains what Chloe just said. Joy points out that they could have cremated the effigy, but Staselina says that would have released the curse. Derek asks how they stop the effigy from killing again. Staselina busts out a piece of canvas with a symbol that looks like a stick person on it. Jason pushes Chloe out of the hospital in a wheelchair as she explains that they need a “doom circle,” and then proceeds to describe the thing Staselina was just brandishing. Apparently, all you need to do is hold this up to the cursed object, and the curse is neutralized. Derek tells everyone that they’re in trouble as everyone gives him the, “Dude, there’s a giant wax effigy behind you,” look. Derek doesn’t understand. Staselina runs up to the effigy with the doom circle, but it knocks her halfway across the room. Derek tells XT and Joy to run, as he starts throwing pipes and stuff at the effigy to stall it. They all run away, with the effigy close behind. The effigy starts causing things to fall from the ceiling toward XT and Joy, nearly missing them many times. Derek just keeps yelling, “Go!” Joy stumbles and her legs are pinned under a falling metal beam. XT tries to pull the beam off her. Derek tries to distract the effigy by swinging at it with a pipe, they fight. Derek knocks the effigy down and draws the symbol from the doom circle on the ground in some sort of ash that was knocked over in the fight. The effigy gets up and Derek lures it onto the symbol, which causes the effigy to go up in flames.

Derek runs over to help XT and Joy, but they are nowhere to be found. The rest of the gang pulls up in the Gremlin, but they missed the whole thing, and they didn’t see XT and Joy outside either. Derek starts excitedly explaining the whole thing. Jason and Lan look on confusedly, as Chloe excitedly listens to the story. Back at Freakylinks HQ, Lan works on the computer as Derek walks in and explains that he’s not going to post the story since he wants to let XT live in peace. Boomer arrives and Lan starts to leave, but Derek stops her and asks if they’re okay. Lan says they are, and that she knows how Derek feels and it’s okay. Then, she leaves with Boomer, who tells her she looks great. Chloe shows up and asks Derek if he wants to go get a beer. He does and they leave.

Cut to the bathroom where the mom is complaining about the long ride home ahead of them. The boy, whose name is Sam, suggests that they “call in sick tomorrow,” and the mom smiles. A shot rings out. The mother and Sam creep over to the door and the mom tries to peek out the transom to see what’s going on. They hear people screaming, plates breaking, and then another gunshot. The mother locks the bathroom door, and sends Sam away from the door as she continues to try to see what’s going on. The noise dies down, and she tells Sam to wait there while she checks things out. She steps into the now darkened restaurant and sees all of the people, dead. Sam follows her out, and stands there, taking it all in, while his shadow falls on the guy with the gun, who’s dead also. The mother tells Sam that they should leave, and we see Sam’s shadow pull away. Then another shadow seems to crawl off the gunman and follow them out.

Cut to Chloe watching a video on Derek’s computer of Sam being questioned by police. She speaks into a microphone, explaining that this took place six hours after the incident, and the subject was already displaying signs of “depression, paranoia, and nyctophobia, pathological fear of the dark.” On the screen, Sam screams at the police officers to turn on the lights. Derek walks up behind Chloe and scares her. He’s obviously just gotten up. After some banter, Chloe explains that she came over early to use Derek’s DSL connection to “download some video.” She covers the screen so that Derek can’t see it, explaining that it would be unethical to discuss it with him. Derek asks if it’s the kid from “the Full Moon Massacre.” Chloe grabs her things and leaves. After Chloe leaves, Derek notices his shadow on the wall, and makes a dog puppet.

Cut to Derek who is shooting a video of some oil stains in a guy’s driveway. Except the oil stains are in the shape of Jesus and his apostles. They really do look like the holy men, so much so that there’s no way they just appeared. The guy points out various apostles, and Derek feigns interest. The guy claims that his car never leaked oil until now, and this is what happened. The guy offers to turn on his car to show them how it happens, but Derek and Jason think it’s time for them to go. Derek and Jason sit on a curb and watch the video of the little kid that Chloe was watching earlier. Derek fills Jason in on what happened, that all those people died, and no one knows how, and the kid just keeps getting worse and no one can help him. Jason asks how Derek got the video, and Derek says that Lan “ripped it off” one of the doctor’s computers. Jason comments that Chloe will kill Derek if she finds out. On the screen, the kid yells, “Quick! It’s hungry!” Jason wonders what he’s talking about. Derek replies that no one knows.

Cut to Chloe who walks up to a big house as a dog barks at her. A woman greets Chloe at the door we find out it’s Dr. Gibson, who is treating the little kid. Chloe isn’t sure how she can help. Dr. Gibson claims at first that she needs “fresh eyes,” but Chloe says the doctor is an expert on “post-traumatic stress.” The doctor admits that she’s looking for a “less regimented perspective, something more folkloric, more mythologically based.” Sam’s mom comes down the stairs. Dr. Gibson introduces her to Chloe. Jennifer (the mom) says that Sam still won’t eat, and asks Chloe if she knows what’s going on. Chloe says she read the files and saw the news report, and mentions that it must have been awful for them to go through. Jennifer thinks the people who died had it worse. Chloe makes a face like, “Point taken.” Then there’s a crash from upstairs and all three women race up there. Sam has shut and blocked the door to his room. Jennifer pushes her way in, and finds Sam crouching on the floor, his eyes closed, rocking back and forth and murmuring, “It’s hungry. It’s hungry.” Jennifer looks back at Chloe, who is standing in the doorway, and gives her a look like, “You’re the expert! Do something.” Chloe does nothing.

Cut to Derek and Jason who are eating in a restaurant. Jason wants to know why Derek wanted to come to “Scotty’s,” the site of the “Full Moon Massacre.” Jason mentions that he’s going to order “a side of nerve gas,” and Derek points out that the police aren’t sure that it was nerve gas, because Sam and Jennifer would have died as well. Jason keeps talking, saying that there’s something more to this for Derek than a freakylink. Derek isn’t listening, he’s looking up at the ceiling above Jason’s shoulder. He finally comes back to the conversation, saying that “somebody got it on tape,” as he points to a security camera mounted on the wall.

Back at Sam’s house, Jennifer sleeps on the couch while Sam plays a video game. Chloe and Dr. Gibson sit down at the kitchen table to discuss theories. Chloe starts talking about “Jung’s shadow theories,” but Dr. Gibson doesn’t think the problem is psychological, it might be physiological, like a brain lesion. She starts detailing all of the testing they will do on Sam. Suddenly, Sam is standing right next to Chloe, staring at her. She tries to talk to him, but he just stands there and stares at her for a minute, then turns and walks away. Chloe looks defeated. It’s nighttime, and Dr. Gibson is walking Chloe out of the house. Chloe apologizes for not being able to help. Sam runs down the path and catches up with them. Chloe asks him what’s going on, and he whispers to her that he “can’t talk about it.” Chloe asks what he means, and he whispers, “The thing in the dark.” Dr. Gibson asks what he said as Sam returns to the front porch with his mother. The dog starts barking again, and we see Sam’s shadow pass in front of the dog. A weird tendril-looking thing shoots out from the shadow and almost waves at the dog. Sam and Jennifer go back into the house.

After a bunch of car-crash and autopsy photos flash on the screen, we see a monitor displaying a website called “Sick & Disgusted.com”. Derek and Jason enter a room where the owner of the site is sitting. Jason looks at a gross photo on the desk, and the site owner explains that it’s a woman whose husband ran over her head with a car. Site Owner says that “death is a part of life,” and Jason replies, “So is the sewer, but it doesn’t mean you have to wallow in it.” Site Owner appears to be rubbing his nipple or something. Derek gets down to business and asks if Site Owner has the “Scotty’s footage.” He does, and he’s going to charge $6.75 per download, starting next week. Derek wants to see it, but the Site Owner wants a trade. He wants some pictures Derek has. Derek groans. Site Owner’s mom yells from downstairs that he needs to come fix the television. He screams back at her, and then resumes the conversation as if nothing happened. Jason wants to know what pictures they are talking about. Site Owner calls Derek’s website “Freaky Stinks.” Derek promises to e-mail Site Owner the pics tomorrow if he can see the video tonight. Site Owner buys it after Derek pinky swears. Jason decides to leave instead of watching the video. Site Owner and Derek watch the same scene we saw at the opening of the show, albeit in black-and-white and from a different angle. After the gunman pulls out the gun, the camera pans over to Derek and Site Owner, but we hear him yell a foreign phrase and then, as Site Owner delicately puts it, “blow his brains out all over the apple pie.” Derek wants to see it again to try to figure out the phrase. Site Owner claims that it’s gibberish, but plays it back.

Cut to Chloe standing outside Sam’s house, dictating her thoughts into her tape recorder. She disagrees with Dr. Gibson about Sam’s problems having a physical cause. Just then, Sam runs out of his house and around to the back. Chloe follows. Sam squeezes through a loose slat of the fence, and Chloe is unable to follow him. Sam stands facing the doghouse. The dog, Lady, comes out and barks at him. Sam’s shadow stretches out before him, and then those weird tendrilly things start growing out of it. Sam yells at the dog to run away. The dog runs into her doghouse and the tendrils follow. The light on the front of the doghouse goes out and the dog whimpers, and then runs out. The tendrils retract back into Sam’s shadow. Chloe runs up and asks Sam if he’s okay, but Sam runs away. Chloe sighs.

The next day, Sam is playing with his skateboard on the porch. Jennifer makes sure he’s okay, and then tells him that she’ll be inside with the door open if he needs her. Jennifer walks inside where Chloe is sleeping on the couch. Chloe wakes up, and Jennifer brings her coffee. Jennifer mentions that Sam is outside, which Chloe thinks is “a step,” but Jennifer says he won’t leave the shade, even though he couldn’t have enough lights on the night before. Jennifer asks Chloe about the tests Dr. Gibson wants to do, and Chloe reassures her. Chloe asks about the dog, and Jennifer says that it still hasn’t come back, and she wonders what Sam did to the dog. Chloe doesn’t know. Sam plays with his skateboard in the driveway. It gets away from him, and rolls out into the sunlight, towards the street. Derek walks up and stops it. Derek introduces himself as a friend of Chloe’s. Sam wonders if he’s another doctor. Derek says, “Do I look like a doctor?” They both agree that doctors suck, although Derek thinks that “Chloe’s all right.” Derek asks to do a few tricks on the skateboard, and Sam lets him. Then Derek tells Sam what he does when he’s scared, first he runs around screaming, which he demonstrates. Derek says after he’s done running around, he talks about it with someone, sometimes on the web. Sam says that “it” won’t let him talk about it. Derek is about to ask him about it, but Jennifer shows up and asks, “Who are you?” Chloe shows up a moment later, and suggests that Sam and Jennifer go inside. She yells at Derek for finding her and trying to get involved, because it’s against her “professional code of ethics” and she could lose her license. She tells Derek that it’s not something for the web site, but Derek says that’s not why he’s there. Chloe’s not buying it so she tells him to “stay out of it,” and goes back in the house.

Jason walks into Freakylinks HQ, where Lan is on the phone with Derek. Lan asks Derek whether he found Chloe, but he presses her to tell him what she found out about the foreign phrase the gunman yelled before killing himself. Lan says she thinks it’s Tagalog, but she’s still working on an interpretation. But she did hack into the county coroner’s office and got the autopsy report on the victims of the Full Moon Massacre. Turns out that none of them had any wounds, and the coroner ruled out pharmacological substances and nerve gas. Derek asks about the gunman, and Lan tells him that his name was Torres, he didn’t have a criminal record, and he was an import/export guy who specialized in “knickknacks” from the islands. Lan also found out that the warehouse for Torres’ business is only two blocks from where the massacre took place. Derek and Jason plan to go check out the warehouse. Derek hangs up the phone and pulls away from the curb. Just as Dr. Gibson pulls into his spot. Dr. Gibson runs into the house and starts scolding Chloe about her “extracurricular activities,” and says that Sam doesn’t need to become “a web page” on Freakylinks. Chloe apologizes, but protests that she didn’t bring Derek into it, he found out on his own. Dr. Gibson thinks that Chloe should leave. Jennifer apologizes, but Dr. Gibson says that she was right to be concerned, and again tells Chloe to leave. Chloe hightails it out of there. Sam watches sadly from upstairs.

Jason and Derek pull up to the warehouse, discussing how Chloe is going to kill Derek. They reach the door of the warehouse, where the lock has been removed. Derek still wants to go in. Jason-cam films Derek walking around the dark warehouse with a flashlight. They hear voices coming from nearby. There’s a closed door with light shining from beneath it. They sneak up to it, but then Jason calls out, “Hello?” They go into the room, where a tape is playing on the television. As they look around, someone jumps them from behind, brandishing a crowbar. Jason slams the guy to the ground with his hand on the attacker’s throat. Derek looks impressed. The guy explains that he used to work there, and he was helping himself to a few things. Derek introduces himself, offering his business card. Derek and Jason interrogate the guy about his boss. Seems Torres started acting weird after he returned from a trip to the Philippines. At first, he wanted all the lights on in the place, and then he got really sad, and then he smashed all the lights out because he preferred the darkness. Derek asks if there are any records of what Torres bought on his last trip, or whom he met with. The guy says that the tape that was playing is the record, so Derek snags it.

Cut to Chloe in a library somewhere, looking at a picture in a book that resembles the tentacle-shadow thing. Her phone rings. It’s Derek, explaining about what happened to Torres. Chloe doesn’t want to talk to him, and hangs up. Jason asks what they do now, and Derek says, “I got to do what I got to do!” Cut to Sam’s house, where Sam, Jennifer, and Dr. Gibson appear ready to go out somewhere. Chloe knocks on the door and begs for a chance to give her explanation. Dr. Gibson doesn’t want to hear it, but Jennifer gives Chloe thirty seconds. Chloe launches into an explanation of the “mythical precedent” for Sam’s problems, cultures that believed that a “light-stealer” lives in their shadows. Dr. Gibson has heard enough, and claims she’ll be filing charges against Chloe with the board in the morning. Meanwhile, she’s taking Sam to the hospital for the tests. Dr. Gibson drags Sam out to the car. Chloe follows, begging Dr. Gibson to listen to her. Sam yells out for Chloe, and explains that “it” is going to get “her (the doctor).” Derek’s truck pulls up, and the shadow-tendrils start to climb up Dr. Gibson’s body. She appears to be choking, and no one can get into the locked car. Derek busts the passenger window with his elbow. The shadow-tendrils recede, leaving Dr. Gibson foaming at the mouth. Derek grabs Sam from the car, and we see the shadow-tendrils crawl back into Sam’s shadow. Derek yells Sam’s name about a hundred times, but Sam is unresponsive.

Cut to a guy and a girl approaching a desk in a hospital, where the girl asks for help for her boyfriend, who has had too much to drink. An impassive nurse says that this is pediatrics, and directs them to admissions. The man leans forward and vomits all over the desk. As he vomits, Chloe walks hurriedly past. She meets up with Derek outside a hospital room. They look in on Sam and Jennifer, both asleep. Chloe says that the doctors think Dr. Gibson had a “bad seizure” and the next twelve hours are critical. Chloe apologizes to Derek for not understanding that this is more than a freakylink to him, but she wonders why it is. Derek says that he believed Sam when he was scared, because Derek was scared of the dark too, and by the time anyone believed him it was too late. Chloe asks, “Too late for what?” Derek responds, “To turn on the light.”

Cut to Lan and Jason talking at Freakylinks HQ when Derek and Chloe rush in. Derek asks if Chloe got a translation on Torres’ last words, and Chloe says it translates as, “It is hungry.” Cut to the tape of Sam saying the same thing in the interrogation room. They all wonder how Sam knew what Torres was saying, and offer up various explanations, but none of them fit. Derek says that Torres must have brought something back from the Philippines. Lan says, “What, like malaria?” Derek replies, “No, something with an appetite.” Derek decides that they need to look at that inventory tape from Torres’ warehouse. The gang watches the inventory tape. Torres sits in front of the camera and opens a box that Derek and Jason saw in the warehouse. Derek has Chloe rewind it. Torres opens the box with some effort. He gets up to answer the room service call at the door. Shadow-tendrils creep out of the box, and turn off the camera. Lan whispers, “What was that?”

Cut to the gang at the warehouse looking at the box we saw in the inventory tape. Lan is on the phone with someone, translating the Tagalog etched into the side. She says, “The Aswang rides the dark of night, reborn again on each full moon. It grows within our human darkness, devouring the souls of those in shadow. Beware this vault, for it holds true evil. Beware this evil, for its power holds certain death.” Lan hangs up the phone, saying that her translator friend is scared. Chloe explains that the Aswang is a Filipino vampire myth with many forms, but one is that it lives inside your shadow, like a parasite, until the full moon when it can kill. Derek realizes that the Aswang is in Sam’s shadow, using him the way that it used Torres. Derek continues to explain that the Aswang hurt the dog and Dr. Gibson because they were threats. Derek busts out the laptop and looks at the surveillance video from the massacre. They spot a shadow-tendril coming out of Torres’ shadow. Derek asks when the next full moon is, and Jason responds that it’s that night, he adds that there’s also a good chance of rain and that he had read the weather report. The gang takes off to try to stop the Aswang from killing again. Derek takes the box, reasoning that the Aswang got trapped in there once, and maybe they can do it again.

The gang rushes into the hospital, and finds Sam’s room. Sam’s not in his bed. Chloe wakes up Jennifer and asks where Sam is, but she didn’t know he was gone. Derek looks out the window and murmurs, “We’re out of time.” We follow his gaze out the window to see the full moon. Cut to a formal dance filled with high school kids. They’re all dancing and laughing. Sam is standing in the middle of the floor, in his pajamas no one notices. Sam looks like he’s trying to hold something in. We see the shadow-tendrils start to flow out of his shadow, one at first, and then many.

Cut to Chloe and Derek who run up to the desk and ask the impassive nurse about Sam. She doesn’t believe that he’s missing at first. Chloe orders her to call the police and security, and tell them that Sam has left the hospital. If they find him, they should call her instead of picking him up. Chloe claims to be his doctor. Chloe and Derek run out of the hospital. Derek explains that they need to find an enclosed space with lots of people, what the Aswang would consider “one stop shopping.” Cut back to the nurse on the phone. Jason runs by and she points him in the direction of Derek and Chloe. Jason catches up to Derek and Chloe, now outside the hospital. He brought the box. Derek asks about Lan, and Jason says she stayed behind with Jennifer. We hear music in the background which Derek notices. The guy from earlier walks out with his girlfriend. Derek asks them if there’s a dance around somewhere.

Cut to people dancing, same as before. Derek, Jason, and Chloe run in. Sam is nowhere to be seen. Derek says that they have to get everyone out. Jason pulls the fire alarm. The alarm goes off. Everyone stands around. The gang starts yelling “Fire! Get out!” and finally the people start running out. Derek scales a nearby scaffolding. As all the people exit the dance floor, they finally see Sam standing in the middle with the Aswang tendrils rising out of his shadow. As they watch, the Aswang leaves his shadow entirely and then starts circling back around towards him. Chloe realizes that it’s going to kill him and starts running towards him. Jason follows her, tossing the box aside, and the box falls open. Chloe grabs Sam and hands him to Jason, but the Aswang starts crawling up her leg. Derek yells at Chloe to get out of there. The shadows crawl up Chloe for a while before Derek notices a spotlight beside him and turns it on. The Aswang leaves Chloe as the light shines on her. Derek yells at her to get up as the Aswang creeps along the floor just outside of the circle of the spotlight. Derek runs out after her, and the Aswang starts coming after him. He jumps up and hangs from a rope while yelling at Jason to turn all of the lights on. Jason does. The Aswang retreats, and Derek drops back to the floor. The Aswang ends up creeping back into the box. Derek dives over and closes the box, and then laughs. Chloe gets up and calls for Sam, who runs over and hugs her. Everyone smiles.

Sam skateboards in front of his house, and Jennifer gives him a hug. Sam skates off into the sunlight. At Freakylinks HQ, the gang packs the box containing the Aswang into a crate, and then fills it with concrete. They put the top on it, and then throw a bandanna and lamp on top. The show ends with all of them hugging and grinning.