The Hidden People (part one)

This is going to be a first for me. "The Hidden People" is a fantasy/horror serial published in podcast format by the Dayton Writers' Movement. It won some podcast awards in 2019, and is still ongoing, with thirty-three out of a prospective forty-four episodes recorded and uploaded as of this writing.

@Katsuragi commissioned the first six of these episodes. Each of which seems to be about half an hour long. We'll see how much time it takes me to get through them, but it can't possibly be slower than "Sinner's Bounty."

This show also has half a dozen writers, making it more like a TV show than a novel in terms of creative process. Each episode has a specific writer attributed to it, which well...like I said, it's like a TV show. I don't know anything about the story itself, except for its genre and length, so I'm going in blind.

Part One: "Something Happened"
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How I love this sort of hyperspecific title.

First 45 seconds is a show intro, including an extremely perky woman gushing about how OMGAWESOME U GUYS this show is going to be, and a guy doing a "creepy" voice that sounds like a badVoltaireimpression delivering unhelpfully nonspecific content warnings. Okay, these guys aren't doing much to sell this to me, but I'll let the actual story speak for itself.

There's a nicely creepy and moody Silent Hill-esque original musical intro. The overuse of the cliched "nothing's as it seems" in both the preface and the song is grating, but still, nice sound.

The chapter opens with two echoey-voiced entities arguing with each other over how much information to disclose. I think it's the same two voice actors from the preface. In the background, there's a metallic tapping noise, and what sounds like rain or showers. One of these echoey narrators is apparently being held by "bindings" that prevent him from inflicting harm on his authoritarian counterpart. Guess one of these things is the prisoner or subordinate of the other.

Restrained Entity finally agrees to tell the whole story, from before the time of the murders, and says that he'll fill in the narration between the voice recordings they have access to. Okay, echoey Voltaire demon is going to be the non-dialogue speaker. He also tells his captor to have her "scribe" ready with plenty of ink and quills, because this might take a while. Low-tech demons, gotcha.

We're introduced to Alfred, a put-upon everyman who works at a music store. Voltaire informs us that Alfred is insufferable, and offers his decision to go by "Alfie" as proof of that. Voltaire makes a fairly convincing argument, not gonna lie. Alfie's employer is Nissa, a self-described "hacktivist" who Voltaire finds more tolerable than her underling. Nissa and Alfie have humdrum music store dialogue, and then another employee named Mackenna Thorne walks into the store slightly late. She's the most important character in this story, according to Voltaire.

Mackenna asks Nissa about the roadsign outside, which she apparently cracked to read "Suburban pothole repair gets more funding than inner city schools." I'm not sure what sort of neighborhood this music store is supposed to be in, so the effectiveness of this flavor of hacktivism is unclear. Still, it definitely gives the impression of Nissa being the sort who favors style over substance with regards to social justice activism. This is illustrated more starkly when Mackenna calls Nissa on this, and Nissa responds by making her employee clean the toilets to punish her for questioning the boss. Marx and Engels weep. The three argue with each other over who's a bigger nerd than the others, with Alfie being the most obnoxiously internet-y about it. Also, he apparently has a crush on some older woman who comes into the store to play on their piano. Okay, good for you Alfie.

After the cleaning of the toilets, Nissa asks Mackenna why she was late today. Mackenna says that she woke up feeling as if she hadn't gotten any sleep at all, with mysterious soreness and aches all over her body as if she'd been at the gym rather than in bed.

Okay. Missing time. Mysterious bone and muscle aches. A sense of having been somewhere else when you know you should have been asleep. Disorientation that seems like post-trauma after the missing period. I've got this. Mackenna is a werewolf! Which is why the aliens abducted her!

Nissa asks if Mackenna has been taking her medication, and she confirms that she has, and that these symptoms have nothing in common with her anxiety disorder experiences anyway. Werewolves don't get anxious, even while being probed by grays.

Just then, a police car pulls up in front of the store. Nissa hides in the back room and instructs her employees to tell them she's not here, but it turns out that they have Mackenna's brother Thomas with them rather than whoever owns that road sign. Thomas is a year older than Mackenna, and moved to a neighboring town some time ago; he's seen as the family overachiever, apparently. He tells Mackenna that she needs to come with him and the cops right the hell now, urgently. After obtaining Nissa's permission, Mackenna goes with him, and is informed that their parents were murdered last night.

Mackenna still lives with their parents. So, this must have happened while she was asleep in their house. She must have assumed they were still asleep when she left for work just within the last hour.

The cops are bringing her brother to talk to her, rather than arresting her as a suspect, at least.

Mackenna's reactions are understated. She attributes this to shock, but Voltaire informs us that this is actually because she feels no bond with or real fondness for her parents. In fact, he gleefully tells us, she never did.

So, she was a changeling all along. Then, last night, a werewolf broke into her house, killed her parents, and infected her, which attracted the attention of the aliens who abducted and experimented on her. This plot is way too predictable.

It strikes Mackenzy as odd that her brother who lives further away was informed before she was. Probably because they were still considering her as a suspect at the time, even if they apparently aren't anymore.

After a brief intermission, the two of them are brought to an interrogation room. Okay, looks like Mackenna might still be a suspect after all, though her brother being brought here with her is odd. They are met by a Detective Samantha Mulligan, old high school acquaintance of the siblings', which seems awfully young to be a detective but I guess she was really good at police-ing. Voltaire doesn't like her. Rural cops are much more of a toss-up than city cops with regards to bastardry (it helps a lot if the population you're policing knows where you live), so he may or may not be right to. She informs them of the details she didn't disclose to Thomas on the phone. Specifically, that both of their bodies were found outside, their mother stabbed and their father apparently mauled to death by an animal.

I told you. This plot is way too predictable.

And, it turns out they were in "the village" when they were killed. Which Mackenna somehow knew without being told. Though, she quickly explains that she knew they were going out to a late night show there, which also explains why she thought nothing of them sleeping in the next morning. Still, Detective Mulligan is obviously suspicious.

She interviews both of the siblings in the search for leads. One incriminating detail is that Thomas refers to their parents in the present tense, while Mackenna has already shifted to past tense. Yeah, I'm starting to think she invited the werewolf over and then participated in the murders herself. The two are informed that their parents weren't robbed, except of their driver's licenses and some family photos their father carried with him, indicating a personal motive rather than a mugger with a pet bear.

The siblings are released, for now. Thomas is going to be staying at the house with Mackenna, and the cops will have someone guarding it. Another musical intermission. Then the siblings drive home. I get the impression that Mackenna doesn't have a close connection with any of her family, or possibly anyone at all. The way they interact is more like distant friends than siblings, especially ones who have just suffered a loss like this.

Cut to Detective Mulligan, taking a voice recording as she reexamines the crime scene. The amount of blood surrounding the bodies indicates that they were left at the murder site itself. The father looks like he went down fighting the animal(s) at the entrance of the parking lot. The mother seems to have been fumbling for her car keys beside the vehicle when she was cut down, seemingly by a very strong person with a very long weapon, more akin to a spear than a knife. There's a very unfunny joke with the detective making a note to check the records for any crimes involving a D&D cosplayer.

Back to the siblings. As they drive home, Mackenna's reflection smiles at her in the car window. She, herself, is not smiling. That explains the difference in murder methods, if her reflection is an independent actor. She killed her father in wolf form, while her reflection chased her mother down with a spear. She freaks out for a moment, but then decides she imagined it.

They get home, and Thomas convinces Mackenna to invite her friends over while he contacts their extended family. He's really insistent that she do this. Weird. Despite her reluctance, she agrees to invite her friends over mostly just to get Thomas to shut up, while he handles informing the relatives. Mackenna's only two friends are apparently her hypocritical boss and her annoying coworker, which somehow doesn't surprise me. They come over and try to console a Mackenna who does not seem to want or need consoling. Also, everyone makes nerdy pop culture references constantly. Not just Alfie, who you'd expect it from, all of them. Which, after the detective's ill-placed gag, is getting to be pretty damned intrusive. Distinctly an authorial quirk rather than a character one, and kind of an obnoxious quirk to have. Nissa, Alfie, and Mackenna are cringey at each other for a while, and then Mackenna excuses herself to the bathroom, where her reflection adresses her in an echoey voice and informs her that it will be subsuming her and killing the rest of her family in the near future. Mackenna freaks out, and stumbles out of the bathroom to the consternation of her guests.

Maybe it's just her reflection that's the werewolf. While Mackenna, independently, is a changeling. How this symbiosis was achieved remains a mystery, which explains the aliens' curiosity.

Flash back to the night before, with Mr. and Mrs. Thorne walking back to their car, heedless of the pack of large black dogs stealthily following them. The parents' are uniformly snarky with the rest of the characters, but at least there's no millennial pop culture references. They finally notice the unusually large dogs, seconds before they maul Mr. Thorne. Mrs. Thorne runs to the car, fumbles for her keys, and is then cornered by Mackenna's reflection, which sardonically says "hi mom" in its echoey voice and impales her.

End of episode one.


Good production values. Decent story. Voice acting is a very mixed bag. It's unfortunate that the demonic narrator is the one with the most speaking lines, because he's by far the worst. Alfie and Mackenna were probably the bests; the former perfectly nails the nerdy manchild vibe, while the latter does a very good job of capturing the sort of understated apathy that makes the listener unsure if this lady is just really repressed, or a psychopath. The music is dark and moody in just the right way for the kind of vibe they seem to be shooting for.

The character writing has room for improvement. Quite a lot of it. The uniform sarcasm and performative nonchalance diminishes their individuality, as do the stupid fandom references. Each episode has its own writing credits, so hopefully this issue won't be as bad when it isn't Chris Burnside doing the bulk of the writing. That said, Chris Burnside is the showrunner, so I doubt he'll ever be gone for long.

So far, I'd say this is...okay? This kind of story really needs its audience to be invested in the characters, so unless their writing markedly improves it'll have trouble holding my interest for long. Still, as of this point, it's a decent product.

Next episode.

Part Two: "The Ant Farm"
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Same preface and opening song as last time. The introducer is Mackenna's VA, which I missed before, which means she's definitely good at what she does; the character sounds totally different from her. Voltaire is just...well, I guess either he delivers the nonspecific content warnings in-character, or he actually sounds like a tryhard haunted house voice in real life.

Open with Detective Mulligan (I'll just call her Sam from now on. It's what the characters usually call her) checking for similar crimes logged by neighboring departments. There apparently was a very similar incident - a family torn apart by large predatory animals - in a neighboring town. However, it occurred fifty years ago. The sheer bizarreness of the case is probably the only reason they were able to dig it up on short notice after all this time.

Hmm. Evil lookalikes connected to some more continuous evil force. Decades-long intervals between incidents. Smalltown setting. Talking reflections. This story is definitely wearing its influences on its sleeve.

Next we go to the siblings. Thomas is trying to plan the funeral. Mackenna is completely disinterested in it. Thomas tells her he's sick of her just running away and hiding from everything, but I'm not at all sure that that's really what's going on with her even before getting into reflection-demon related stuff. Mackenna leaves him alone and goes to meet her coworkers at a cafe. A big deal is made out of what drinks they all order.

Okay, yeah, DEFINITELY wearing its influences on its sleeve.

Mackenna goes to the bathroom, and walks in on some other woman who left the stall door unlocked. Meanwhile, back at her table, Alfie and Nissa are making more pop culture references. Alfie's side of this involves speculating on what genre of murder mystery Mackenna is the protagonist of. Oh man, it's always a sign that the writers are super smart when they do this, isn't it? The three possibilities are action story (which means there'll be a car chase at some point), horror (which means a magical entity did the killing), or psychological thriller (Mackenna herself did it; Nissa gets understandably pissed off when he raises this last possibility). Well, the latter two were already confirmed in chapter one, depending on to what degree the reflection demon is actually "part" of Mackenna, but now I know there'll be a car chase too, and also that the writers want me to know how smart they think they are. This is interrupted when bathroom girl shows up and brings Alfie the hat he dropped while coming in. Nissa informs us that this hat is "Pikachu yellow," which...god, just stop, PLEASE just stop. Again, if it was just Alfie doing this it would work, but it's fucking EVERYONE.

Bathroom girl names herself as Shaylee, and Nissa invites her to sit with them while they wait for Mackenna to come back. Shaylee just moved to town, for something work related. Mackenna comes back and joins them, and - when asked by Shaylee about her hobby - tells her about her ant farm. Smalltalk continues. Voltaire complains about how little of actual importance these miserable humans are communicating to one another. I get the impression that Shaylee is kinda into Mackenna, or has some kind of strange curiosity about her at least. They hang out at the coffee shop until evening, and then walk Shaylee home. Shaylee starts getting nervous when none of the buildings they're walking her past look familiar.

Creepy. Are the three of them plotting something?

As they walk, they ask Shaylee what she does for a living. She says she does odd jobs, which makes her moving here sort of eyebrow-raising. She also mentions that her parents are dead and that she's living partly off of inheritance. That's...not sustainable, you know. Alfie comments on how "awesome" this is, seemingly not realizing the emotional ramifications of the whole "orphan" thing. Nissa rebukes him for this. Mackenna is nonchalant about it, and more strangely so is Shaylee.

Shaylee is Mackenna's reflection, I'll bet. Makes perfect sense. Explains everything.

A churchbell rings from a nearby house of worship, and Shaylee flies into a panic, gasping that it's too loud and she needs to get away. She hurriedly tells them that she'll find her way home on her own, and dashes.

Shaylee is a Puca, and has been attached to Mackenna as her reflection ever since she was deposited in the human world as an infant changeling. Being bitten by a werewolf has made their connection unstable, and while the aliens were experimenting on Mackenna Shaylee broke free and killed her parents in a directionless rage.

Musical intermission, accompanied by churchbells. Then Voltaire philosophizes at us and cuts to a bar, where Thomas happens to run into Sam. They reminisce about high school memories, including some positive interactions that teenaged Sam had with the late Mr. Thorne. The topic turned to how Thomas and Sam were almost a thing in high school, but it just didn't work out. It's not clear if they're both still single now, but it seems like if they are I think things might move forward based on their chemistry. The topic turns back to the murders, and Thomas mentions that he's worried about Mackenna; she's just taking this way, way too coldly.

Cut back to Mackenna, Alfie, and Nissa, who I think are either at Mackenna's house now or on their way to it. They all talk about how cool Shaylee is, which is weird because she never said anything all that impressive, and her parting was weird enough that you'd think it would supersede all else in their immediate memories. Even Mackenna says that she seems cool, which is high praise coming from Mackenna. It's only long after the fact that they realize that Shaylee was wearing all her clothes inside out. Ooh, the glamour is starting to wear off. In a few more minutes I'll bet they'll all realize that she also had her internal organs on the outside. Mackenna takes a rare opportunity to tell her friends that she really does appreciate them. Is she sincere? Hard to tell.

Back to Thomas and Sam. These cuts are really confusing, because Voltaire isn't highlighting them, and there isn't even a pause or anything, so it always takes me a minute to realize we've switched to the other group. Sam uses Thomas' still-extant crush on her to try and pry into any motives he might have had for killing his parents, but she's super obvious about it and he storms out of the bar. Meanwhile, Mackenna sends her friends home and retires.

Sam's audiolog. She kicks herself for screwing up her investigation of Thomas. She did a pretty shit job of it, but then, she works in a tiny suburban village and this is probably her first murder investigation. She wonders to herself why anyone would have killed the Thornes. Revenge? Covering up another crime? Pure, abject hatred? At her mention of hatred, Voltaire cuts in to imply implications about what's going on in Mackenna's head, and then we move to the nearby city where a couple of drunk idiots decide to film themselves sexually harassing a random woman.

Oh come on, are we really going to do that cliched "mugging/harassing the monster" scene? We are.

Echoey-voiced mirror demon Mackenna rushes them with a bladed weapon, screaming about how she "will not be imprisoned again." She kills one, but seemingly allows the other to escape. Guess she didn't have her doges on hand this time. And...well, I'm pretty sure she and Shaylee have *something* to do with each other, but they're not one and the same.

Hmm. Maybe Shaylee is someone else's mirror demon, who succeeded at killing everyone she needed to kill and broke free into the physical world, whereas Mackenna's is still trying? Maybe something like that.

Mirror-Mackenna (Annekcam? I'll just call her Anne) repeats what sounds like a lesson to herself. "If you must kill, lay low for a while afterward." So someone is coaching mirror demons on how to operate, it seems. She flees the scene, but I suspect she'll have left the guy's cell phone camera running at the scene of the crime and thus implicate Mackenna Prime. End episode.


Thematic significance of the ant farm to the chapter unclear. Well, except maybe one detail that I skipped over at the time. Mackenna mentioned that "queeny" was building a new nest. That isn't how ants work, but ignoring that entomological blunder I wonder if it's supposed to parallel some sort of breeding invasion of the mirror people. A queen moves into the area, starts creating a nest, eventually breeds workers and soldiers? Maybe.

My assessment of the production as a whole is unchanged. Good concept. Good production values. Meh (at best) character writing and overreliance on cliches bring it down considerably. Well, let's get through half of the six episodes commissioned and then call it a post.

Part Three: "Official Statements"
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More Sam logs. Three days after the Thornes' murder, and the coroner is still working on them. In the meantime, she has some suspects to interview. Voltaire would like us to know that policing is a futile business, justice never existed, and that the anarchic horror of existence cannot be reigned in. Thank you, Voltaire, your insights are appreciated as always. Sam's partner, Ronald, has brought four suspects in and is holding them in different rooms. They only have two interrogation chambers, so they had to make do with some side rooms for the other two. The suspects are Mackenna, Thomas, and - for some reason - Alphie and Nissa. I assume we'll learn the rationale behind suspecting those two shortly.

Sam and Ronald are very convincingly a pair of suburban police who have never had to deal with anything serious and are totally in over their heads. They're convincingly incompetent and bedeviled in the circumstances, and their interaction before the interviews start is probably the most convincing dialogue so far.

First suspect is Mackenna. She's prickly, unpleasant, and impatient to get out of the precinct and go back to staring at the wall in her bedroom. And...oh, I see, this is why Alphie and Nissa are suspects, they were (briefly) over at Mackenna's earlier that evening. That was mentioned before, right, derp. Mackenna repeats what she told Sam the last time; her basement bedroom has its own entrance, so she doesn't normally see her parents in the mornings before she leaves for work, especially when they've been out late. She also reaffirms the time of the evening when Alphie and Nissa left. No inconsistencies, but lots of hostility.

Sam leaves to talk to the coworkers next, but keeps Mackenna locked in the room for now. In the hall, she meets up with Ronald, and tells him she'd like his help with this next couple, which excites him. For now, Sam says that they don't have any evidence of Mackenna having left the house before the time when the murders were committed a ways away, or of her having access to attack dogs, but her nonchalance about all this is creepy as hell. And...looks like she was lying to Mackenna about talking to her guests next. Instead, Thomas is up next.

Thomas tells them that he had dinner with his parents once every two weeks, and that Mackenna never joined them. He's still referring to his parents in the present tense, and having to correct himself. The cops ask him if he thinks Mackenna resented him for being able to move out and live on his own as an independent adult, and he tells them that that would surprise him because she never tried to move out herself, or showed any interest in doing so. She never really showed any interest in doinganything, really. He also says that Mackenna is much smarter than she lets on, and he thinks that her hostility to the investigation might be due to her fear of responsibility; having a case hinge on her testimony is a lot of responsibility.

They leave him now, and Sam is convinced that Thomas is innocent. There's zero indication that he could have made it to the crime scene and then back to his home in another town an hour away with no one noticing (let alone with attack dogs packed into his car), and he's willing to disclose personal information - including stuff about Mackenna - that could potentially lead to them getting more out of her if they push the right buttons. So, it doesn't seem like he's covering for her, and if he's trying to throw them off of himself he's not doing a very good job of it. Time for the coworkers next.

They interview Alphie next. Alphie is insufferable. They immediately decide he's too stupid to have done it.

Nissa's turn. Nothing incriminating, though she's paranoid about them trying to use her as a fallgirl. Alphie let slip that she's a hacker, which briefly got their attention, but it's clearly unrelated. Nissa does say that Mrs. Thorne was sort of a Karen, and might have potentially pissed some people off, but not seriously enough for murder. When they push her to get more dirt on the Thornes, she simply demands a lawyer, and finally threatens a lawsuit while namedropping her rich father to threaten them. She has a rich father. Of course.

After they leave Nissa, Sam and Ronald muse on what they've heard. For one thing, Mackenna said she can't hear anything from the house above in her basement bedroom, while Alphie and Nissa both said that you could, albeit slightly muffled. Not immediately relevant to the case, since the murders took place elsewhere, but a strange thing for her to have lied about. It also seems like her friends and family are always making excuses for her. She's fragile, she's afraid of things, etc. Sam decides to talk to Mackenna again now, and to take a different approach, while sending Ron (who was distinctly unhelpful in the interviews) to review the evidence again.

Final exchange. Sam asks Mackenna how she's doing, and if she's afraid for her own life. Mackenna says that her parents weren't killed in the house, so there's no reason to think she would be either. Sam offers to have someone escort her to and from work, and Mackenna refuses. Nothing further to say. The four are released. It turns out Nissa's rich father is entirely fictional, she made him up to scare the cops. Okay, I just gained a lot more respect for Nissa.

Ronald meets up with Sam again after the four are released. Ronald actually noticed something new in the evidence photos! Mrs. Thorne's coat has blood all over it, but there's one patch that's oddly clean. They quickly pull the coat out of the evidence locker and inspect it, and they find that there's one splatter-free patch of coat that's distinctly foot-shaped. If the spear got stuck in the body, the killer would have had to brace themselves against the corpse to pull it out again. The foot they used shielded the coat underneath from getting splashed when the blade emerged.

I'm guessing reflection-Mackenna has the same shoe size as Mackenna Prime. That, plus the phone footage that will probably be found in the nearby city, is going to make things bad for Mackenna. End episode.


This was definitely the strongest of the three thus far. The cops feel much more distinct than the other characters that have been introduced, and them being the focus of the ep helped a lot. Really, the weakest part of this one was Voltaire's pointless intrusions that he made every few minutes.


So, that's the first half of this project. The three remaining episodes should be up early next week. Happy New Year.