The Hidden People (part two)

Second half of this audio-serial commission (though I've since had more episodes ordered). Where we left off, the police had interviewed all four of the principle characters, including sort-of-protagonist Mackenna Thorne and her brother Thomas, but the murder-by-spear-and-shadowwolves of their parents. The actual culprit, a demonic mirror clone of Mackenna who is also a werewolf puca alien abductee, has meanwhile just killed some punks in a nearby city.

Part Four: "A Game of Thornes"​

That episode title has me dreading an even cringier torrent of memes and shoehorned pop cultural references than before. Well, at least the intro song is as nice as ever.

Start with Mackenna getting a voice message from Thomas about funeral and obituary details. He sounds casual, but you can tell he really does want someone else's support with these plans. It's mostly minor, unimportant details, but still, I can see how hard it would be emotionally to make all these decisions by himself.

Also, this is an old school answering machine, rather than your more generation-appropriate voice message. Odd, considering how obsessed with being millennial this show is.

Next, we have Thomas checking his own messages. No new messages, but he relistens to an old one from their mother. Presumably, it's the last time he heard her voice prior to her death. She just blabs about their father's hobbies and getting a promotion at work. Thomas subsequently deletes the message, and whispers the words "oh shit." Like he just realized something. Or perhaps like he deleted it by accident, but it normally asks you if you're sure before it lets you do that, so I don't think so. Thomas puts his phone down and curses his sister for being so distant. Voltaire makes fun of him for not understanding her and clinging to comforting illusions about the world around himself.

Voltaire hasn't gotten any less annoying. He's like some edgy teenager trying to impress you with how deep and nihilistic he is, and the story does not seem to be self aware about this. The voice acting and the writing are equally at fault for this.

Cut to Mackenna, coming home from work and asking if anyone's home, before remembering that her parents are dead and her brother is out doing funeral prep things. She also gets startled when she hears something approaching her, and only after it enters the room does she remember that her parents owned a dog. She has no rapport with it whatsoever, and isn't sure when the last time it got fed was. Well, it's annoying her now, so she feeds it, while complementing it on how quiet and ignorable it is, which she supposes makes it her ideal companion.

I'm starting to have trouble not imagining Mackenna as Shiki. And...oh god, she even has the eccentric, hypocritical boss and the insufferable male coworker.

Mackenna decides to watch something, and the thing she decides to watch is - surprisingly - a video her late father recorded of him and his wife meeting their first baby at the hospital. The nurse keeps repeating that they have a "very special baby" in a weirdly ominous way...and also that she "will need to feed soon" and "is likely to have quite a large appetite." Also, the mother quickly notices that Mackenna was born with strangely dark eyes, rather than the usual baby blue.

Mrs. Thorne says that this should feel like a much more magical experience than it is. Her husband responds that magic is scary and evil, so they're lucky. End video.

I wonder if the creepy nurse is the one who switched the Thornes' actual baby with a changeling or something. If so, I suspect that Voltaire is one of her blood relatives. And the female entity interrogating him at the beginning was the werewolf whose been systematically infecting his descendants.

Meanwhile, Thomas sends her another voice message. No response. Mackenna just keeps watching home videos.

Mackenna watches a pretty mundane video of Thomas' sixteenth birthday, him just doing some snarky bonding with their parents. Mackenna didn't show up for the party at all, who even knows where she was.

Another message from Thomas. He's starting to get worried about his sister. She's just ignoring her phone and watching more of their late father's amateur cinematography.

Next video. Mackenna and Thomas are prepubescents, and the family is at an amusement park. Eleven-ish Mackenna is just complaining about everything, while nine-ish Thomas tries to get her to go on a ride with him. He starts teasing her about being scared, but she doesn't sound scared; just legitimately uninterested. In fact, she agrees to ride with him almost immediately when it becomes clear that that's the most expedient way to shut him up.

Thomas tells people that Mackenna is too afraid of responsibility, commitment, etc to do anything. I'm pretty sure the implication is that he's been rationalizing everything off about her as being a product of fear since they were children, and that he's been wrong from day one.

As Mackenna watches the amusement park video, she hears someone struggling with the front door, and starts panicking. On one hand, her parents were just brutally murdered, and despite the insistence that she doesn't feel unsafe at home in the wake of that, well. On the other, she seems to have totally forgotten that her brother is staying with her for now. She doesn't even think to call his name until he gets the door open and she sees him. He's unamused at her having disregarded his presence to the point of not answering his calls OR expecting him to come home, but somewhat pleasantly surprised to see her watching the home videos. She hits play again, and the two watch as the amusement park episode continues.

Little Thomas comes back from the ride with his sister, having just befriended some random person who was sitting in the roller coaster car besides them. Mr. Thorne jokes about how Thomas could charm anyone and everyone, and that by the time he grows up he'll be befriending serial killers and turning them into law-abiding citizens as long as they're in his presence. That's definitely not ironic foreshadowing or anything. Mackenna somehow disappeared from her brother's side in the time between them getting off the ride and him returning to their parents. The amusement park visit turns into a "find Mackenna" quest. The mother irritably remarks that it seems like she does this every time they take the kids anywhere.

Back in the present, they finish the video and realize that, with the exception of Mackenna's baby videos, she isn't in any of them. Whenever something worth filming happened, she wasn't around (well, I assume her subsequent birthdays were exceptions to that. Their dad seems like the kind of guy who'd insist on throwing parties and filming them, even for a daughter who didn't want it). The two talk about their younger selves first coming to terms with the concept of death (well, Thomas does. Mackenna just reacts to him). When the topic turns to the murders, they muse once again on how safe they are, on who might have had a grudge against their parents, and Mackenna's suspicion that Sam suspects her. Thomas says that she must be mistaken, Sam would never suspect her. Hmm. He's probably just trying to calm his sister down, but maybe he has an ulterior motive for lying about this.

Also, it's established that they've both been having nightmares about dogs recently. That explains Mackenna's jumpiness around the family dog. I wonder if their dreams are just being influenced by the news of how their father went down, or if there's some psychic fuckery going on.

Thomas eventually leaves, with their goodbye being the healthiest sounding sibling interaction thus far.

Jump ahead to the funeral, presumably a few days later. Thomas, Nissa, Alfie, and Sam are all there on time. Mackenna is not. Everyone who knows her knows that she's constitutionally incapable of being on time for things, but this is her parents' funeral, and she's later than she usually is for work. There's some hand-wringing over this, and Sam continues putting out feelers to learn more about Mackenna's oddities. She's more subtle about it this time, and Thomas doesn't call her on it. Eventually, they get tired of waiting, and the funerary ceremony begins without Mackenna. Thomas is already quickly befriending her coworkers, and his dialogue here makes his alleged charisma much more believable than it was previously. Voltaire rhapsodizes about the mystery of where Mackenna could be, and giggles about how there are more murders yet to come. End episode.


This is the first episode to have Anna Adami credited as writer, and the difference in quality between it and the previous installments is pretty significant. These characters are all more convincing, less annoying, and far closer to living up to the traits that we've been told they're supposed to have. Pop culture references have happened, but they've happened *organically.* It feels like people in the mid 2010's just talking to each other, not like a writer trying to shove a bunch of memes in your face. The episode title notwithstanding.

It probably sounds like I'm damning Adami with faint praise, but trust me, she's not just better than the other writers, she's actually really, really good at writing dialogue.

The actual subject matter of this part is...well, I'm not sure if I'm in a really good place to comment on it right now, or a really bad one. Between KnK and Serial Experiments Lain, I feel like I've seen this concept before too many times in quick succession. Still, the more external perspective on Multiple Personality Demon Girl that this story usually takes does open some new doors for analysis, and appreciation. Mackenna isn't really the protagonist of this story, so much as the puzzle that the protagonists (at this point, Sam and Thomas are the main POV characters I think) need to solve. Which means that the story is less about sorting out one's own identity, and more about the creeping realization that someone in your family has always had something terribly wrong with them without you noticing.

Voltaire is still annoying though.

Next episode!

Part Five: "Helvegen"​

Unfamiliar word. Sounds Norse. And yup, according to google it's "the journey to Hel." A term used for both the literally route taken by souls to the afterlife in Norse mythology, and for the funerary ritual. So, Viking Funeral. Did the Thornes really put it in their will that they wanted the flaming longship treatment? God, I hope so.

Long teaser this time, for a longer than average episode. The funeral services is conducted. Thomas comes up with a debilitating, non-serious, and nondescript disease to tell everyone Mackenna is suffering from. Voltaire then brings us to a library, where he shares a surprisingly relatable sentiment about books and coffee having a kind of magic when they share space together, despite them ruining each other on contact. That's the first actually really clever and creative tangent of his so far. I think the writers might be starting to figure out how to hit the balance with Voltaire, though the voice actor hasn't yet gotten the memo. Speaking of ruining everything you touch, Voltaire irritably informs us, Mackenna is here at the library. In the children's section for some reason. She's been hiding here for over an hour from the funeral. A twenty-seven year old woman in a half-deflated bean bag chair, reading some young adult book.

Voltaire actually seems like he's annoyed at Mackenna here, rather than gloating at the audience about what a trainwreck she is. He muses what it would take to make her actually care about anything. Cue intro song. It really does sound Silent Hill-ish.

The funeral ends, and no one's heard anything from Mackenna. She's not answering anyone's calls or texts. It's gotten to the point where everyone - especially Thomas - is seriously worried. Thomas sends Nissa and Alfie to see if she's at home (they have a spare key), but she isn't. They begin to organize a search. Sam makes a missing person report to the department, and gets the cops looking. Hopefully for Mackenna, and not another impaled and dog-torn corpse. Nissa tries to see if she can hack into Mackenna's phone and see if there's a helpful GPS position. I suspect she's had a history of doing this, if she even has something to start working with.

Alfie makes a stupid Inspector Gadget reference, and it actually stands out from the other characters as a distinctly Alfie thing. Nice!

At the book store/library, Mackenna is suddenly approached by an elderly Scottish woman who she addresses as Nanny Karen. She was Mackenna's baby-sitter as a kid, and has come back to town for the funeral. Voltaire tells us that Karen is the only adult who has ever favored Mackenna over Thomas, and possibly the only person who Mackenna trusts, and also that he can't stand listening to her. Hmm. She also, it seems, noticed Mackenna's absence from the funeral, and came straight here to the children's library where she knew she'd find her. Also, Nanny Karen speaks in riddles, talks like a character out of a creepy Scottish fairy tail, and keeps saying ambiguous things about herself and Mackenna that could easily be interpreted as meaning that neither of them are human.

Okay, so. Nanny Karen was also the nurse in the maternity ward, and is Mackenna's mother. She had a messy divorce with Voltaire that he's still pissed about after learning about his werewolf problem, and tried to stick around as Mackenna's babysitter to protect her, but when she was busy fighting off the new Puca (who is also the real Mackenna, grown up in faerieland and armed with unholy powers of vengeance, here undercover as "Shaylee") that moved into the neighborhood via churchbell the werewolf got in, bit Mackenna and infected her with a murderous wolf-herding alternate personality that killed her human surrogate parents, and then the aliens swooped in to investigate all this chaos.

Mackenna confesses to Karen that the reason she's hiding from the funeral is because she doesn't want anyone to know that she doesn't care. And, really, she doesn't want to have to be confronted by her own total apathy for her late parents, as she's been trying to keep herself deluded into thinking that she's a normal person. Mackenna expresses some genuine-sounding anxiety about being a "shitty daughter" for not even being able to pretend to mourn her parents' deaths, which is the most genuine she's seemed so far aside from her occasional moments of fear when startled. Mackenna also says that she's been having what sounds like dysphoria symptoms; not recognizing her own face, etc. I'd take a queer reading of this, but I'm pretty sure it's a species issue rather than a gender one in Mackenna's case.

Cut to Sam and her dumbass police sidekick. They've talked to the friends and family (AGAIN), and Sam is more suspicious than ever of Mackenna. Disappearing while being the lead suspect in a murder case is not a good look. It's either that, she thinks, or Mackenna has become another victim. Meanwhile, Alfie and Nissa have gotten her GPS, and found that she was moving back and forth in a straight line along the same street until her phone died. Nissa is taking the situation damned seriously, and wants to protect Mackenna from both prospective wolf-marauders and what she believes to be overzealous police. I wouldn't describe Sam as overzealous, but okay. Alfie is just being his usual memeing dumbass self, though I think he's at least *trying* to take the situation seriously. Nissa has a weird leap of insight that tells her that this is connected to a big puzzle of Mackenna's life, which seems like WAAAAY too big a jump from what they know or even suspect thus far. I think you might have skipped a minor plot beat there, writers.

Back to the kiddy section of the bookstore. Karen seems to be trying to convince Mackenna to give up on her few human connections and skip town. Implying implications about how the police might try to frame her, her friends don't actually care about her, etc, without being too blatant. Hmm. The obvious connection here is Shaylee. No family. Mystery money. Roaming around for no good reason. I suspect that doing whatever Nanny Karen is trying to get her to do would also come with a fear of churchbells. Again, in the unlikely event that Shaylee isn't Mackenna's original human self back for revenge amid werewolf vs alien battles.

Karen vanishes, after telling Mackenna that she "will always be there to counsel her, in all the ways in which she is permitted." Mackenna doesn't ask what that means before Karen leaves. Either she's too confused to, or she already knows more than she's said out loud and thus has no reason to ask. Immediately afterward Nissa and Alfie enter the bookstore and find Mackenna, who has been hiding there for nearly twelve hours. I'm impressed the store is even open that long, lol. They are not happy with her, to say the least. Also, they found her here because they ran into Shaylee outside of a nearby restaurant, who said that she saw Mackenna in here earlier that day. Hmm. Could be coincidence, could not be.

A barista from the bookstore coffee shop comes in to ask if anyone wants anything, particularly the girl who's been sitting here all day. Nissa responds by viciously insulting him for being a mindless slave of the capitalist empire. Oh wow, a business owner projecting her woke guilt onto a hapless minimum wage worker, lovely. I get that Nissa isn't in the best headspace right now, but...well, there's definitely a reason that her only meatspace friends are an obnoxious manchild and a zombie who she has financial power over both of.

Voltaire contemptuously says that he will miss Nissa's snark. So she's going to die next, then? Well, she's definitely working hard to give herself Asshole Victim status in this scene, in that case. Even if her preceding determination to find her missing friend was admirable.

So, they get an Uber and bring Mackenna home. Thomas is waiting for her there, and shows no anger at what she did, only relief that she's okay. Mackenna barely reacts, and coldly shrugs off his obvious emotional pain. And she just shrugs and says her phone died when he asks about his calls. And when he says how much it hurt him to have the only close family he has left be so completely contemptuous of him, she just deflects. When she tells him that she was hanging out with their old babysitter (who once left Thomas alone on a hiking trail to go build some glyphs out of sticks and rocks with Mackenna) and Thomas isn't pleased about that, Mackenna getsvenomous. She tells Thomas that he's just mad that there was one adult in their entire childhood lives who actually liked her better than him, and that Karen is the only person who's ever been kind to her, so Thomas just deserves whatever he's feeling right now. When he calls Karen crazy, Mackenna sounds like she's about to physically attack him.

Finally, he tells her that the way she's going, one day Mackenna really will be completely alone. She tells him that she's glad he finally, finally, finally gets that that's what she wants. The episode ends with Voltaire assuring us that Mackenna will be getting what she wants, needs, and deserves soon enough.


Not quite as tightly written as the preceding chapter, but maybe it has more to do with Nissa and Alfie's greater presence here. They're just...annoying. I'm not going to say that people like them don't exist at all in real life, but the way they're written just feels charicaturistic.

Thomas has really grown into the protagonist role. Mackenna...at this point, she feels like a villain at least as much as she does a victim. Perhaps her nature gives her no choice but to act the way she does, but that just makes her an antagonistic force of nature rather than a personal adversary. Her fairy grandmother is also going to cause some serious problems down the line, I'm pretty sure.

Voltaire's sympathies seem to be sliding around. He initially seemed to be taking the fairies/ghosts/whatevers' side over the humans, but in this chapter and (to a lesser extent) the last one he seems to have flipped. I suspect there are at least three parties in this conflict, possibly more.

Anyway, what this chapter did very effectively was make Mackenna scary, in the same way that the other characters of her archetype I mentioned would be if we saw them through the lens of the normal humans around them. A sibling you grew up with having been a cleverbot (and possibly a cleverbot with something much worse hiding behind it) that you just projected human characteristics onto all along? That's disturbing.

"Helvegen." The road to hell, paved with intentions good or otherwise? There's the literal funeral that happened in this chapter, of course, but sadly there didn't seem to be any flair of the pre-christian Scandinavia persuasion. Pity. The choice of a Norse word in particular makes me wonder if I should be thinking more about that region's mythology when trying to piece this plot's supernatural side together.

Good chapter. Not as good as the last one, but good. One more to go!

Part Six: "Sneaky Things"​

We have our first recurring writer credit. Stephen Kallenberg, the same guy who did part three (and also the guy who voices Thomas, incidentally). That one was better than parts 1-2, but not as good as 4 and 5 (especially 4). So, we'll see how this goes. Hopefully the show itself is just finding its stride, rather than it being a die roll of which writer is behind the wheel this week.


No teaser this time, just the usual intro credits and 420spooky840me content warnings. We open on Mackenna waiting for her friends at a coffee shop, hoping that all the people she invited to meet her here cancel. Shaylee is the first to not cancel, arriving with the same cheer and pep as last time we met her. Has she even met Mackenna more than that one time, by this point? And Mackenna already invited her to a difficult friends-only meeting? Hmm. I thought everyone thinking Shaylee was OMGAWESOME apropos of pretty much nothing in chapter 2 was just bad writing, but I'm starting to more seriously suspect that she has a charm power now. Also, apparently Nissa is the own who related Mackenna's invitation to Shaylee; not sure if that's an important detail or not, but they establish it. Mackenna says it's too early for coffee, for herself. Shaylee replies that she just woke up herself.

Voltaire informs us that someone is lying in that last exchange, but he doesn't hint at which of the two it is. If not both of them. I'm thinking probably just Shaylee, personally. Whatever Mackenna is, she does seem to get tired and need sleep. We haven't seen Shaylee do that, and her fear of churchbells hints at a less humanlike sort of existence.

Mackenna gets a text from Nissa, just then, telling her that she and Alfie will have to cancel due to car trouble. Cut over to Nissa and Alfie, who are pearl clutching over the morality of lying to their friend like that as Nissa hacks into the local PD's computer system. Did they have to do that right this second? I guess they did. Anyway, it looks like the police have no real leads. Sam's suspicions about Mackenna, so far, are just that. Alright then. Back to the cafe. Mackenna and Shaylee make smalltalk, and Mackenna seems to speak more easily with her than she has with anyone else besides her fairy godmother. Relationships (neither of them have any), pets (Mackenna has an ant farm and just inherited a dog, Shaylee travels too much to have anything), work (Shaylee is a "personal trainer," but avoids saying what she actually teaches people to do), etc. Then Shaylee makes some ominous and creepy comments about her own love of people-watching. Eventually though, the conversation just stalls out as even Shaylee is unable to keep Mackenna's interest for long. The pause continues until Nissa texts Mackenna a bunch of personality quizzes that she strongly reccomends and invites Mackenna and Shaylee to take while they're waiting.

"Waiting." That implies that Nissa really is planning to come, just a bit later. So she's doing something very time sensitive with that police data, then.

Cut back to Nissa and Alfie, who don'tseemto be doing anything particularly time sensitive, but maybe she's afraid of it getting too noticeable if she hacks the PD repeatedly, idk. Alfie tries to look up anything involving escaped mental patients, arbitrary killings, etc using (with her very grudging permission) her second and/or third monitor. Nissa, meanwhile, looks for any place within driving distance that trains attack dogs, which she says is an angle the police are less likely to have already approached. Um...really, Nissa? Anyway, she finds the most obvious fucking lead ever in a matter of minutes; there was a guy in town who ran a kennel for training service dogs of various kinds, and whose business shut down after repeated complaints of very aggressive dogs getting loose and causing trouble. The last complaint made to the department before the shutdown happened came from the Thornes.

...

Well, I knew Sam wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed even with her comically inept sidekick to make her seem smarter. But...really? This is the kind of lead you could only miss by beingapatheticabout the case, which Sam clearly isn't. Nissa says that all she did to find this information was go through the existing police files for the conjunction of "Thorne" and "dog," and then google the names of the kennel business and owner. The only ways Sam could have missed this would be if she either a) didn't bother going through the files at all, or b) somehow failed to think oftracking the murder weapon.

She doesn't seem smart, but she doesn't seem THAT stupid either. Maybe she tried searching for "Thorne" and "spear," and the lack of results discouraged her before she could try the other weapon used in the murders.

Or maybe the kennel guy was just white or something.

...

So, Alfie annoys Nissa with a bunch of terrible dog puns, and Nissa tells him to get in the car with her. They're either going to meet up with Mackenna and Shaylee as they promised, or they're blowing them off for longer by deciding to go harass the dog trainer right this minute.

The focus that Mackenna's parents' dog has been getting, together with this, makes me wonder if werewolf-puca-mirror-Mackenna somehow created those wolf monsters as a reflection of changeling-Mackenna's parents' retriever. Or something like that.

They drive to wherever the guy lives, out in the country. They make a pit stop to buy food and for Alfie to get a bunch of random crap that he insists will be useful, and then they get lost due to Alfie's "help" navigating, but they get there eventually. It's really hard to avoid the conclusion that Nissa just drags Alfie around with her so that she'll have someone on hand to feel superior to, at this point. Anyway, there are four "beware of dog" signs, but no car in the parking lot. Are they seriously going to break into this dude's house? When they know he trains attack dogs, and has had legal problems due to his failure to safely contain/restrain them? Yes. Yes they are. Even after the dogs start barking, they keep trying to break into a locked window.

Nissa apparently listens to an apocalypse survival podcast that she learned lockpicking from. Nissa really is the hero we all deserve, isn't she.

Inside the guy's home office, Nissa finds something incriminating in the form of a recent receipt for extra-long tent spikes. It's possible that the guy just lost the spikes for his tent and needed new ones, but given the spearlike weapon used in one of the murders it's rather incriminating. Alfie, meanwhile, pokes around at the guy's dusty old book collection and gets his handprints all over them despite Nissa's instructions (he's wearing gloves, but still, it's a giveaway that someone broke in). This dog-tamer fellow has some rather surprising literary tastes. Some of Carl Jung's more esoteric/mystical leaning books. Some more obscure books about the evolution of human consciousness. Collections of early modern mystical texts. Something written in Nordic runes. Etc.

Dogs and Vikings are two recurring motifs here. We doing something with Garmr, perhaps? Maybe Fenrir? Skol and Hati Hroovitnisson? There were quite a number of dog or wolflike demons in Norse mythology.

Alfie drops some heavy stuff on a piano, making a racket. If there ARE any dogs anywhere inside the house, they're going to be inbound now. Well...no dogs attack, so I guess the guy learned his lesson and has been keeping them carefully penned up when he's not around. Then, Nissa does the absolute most baffling thing that any character in this story has done so far. She says they need to split up to search the house faster, and gives Alfie a floor of his own.

-_-

I'm starting to wonder if maybeAlfieis the one with charm powers that force everyone to keep liking and trusting him. None of the suspicious behavior surrounding Shaylee comes anywhere close to this.

So. Nissa takes top floor, Alfie takes ground floor. Surprisingly, Alfie ends up subverting my expectations with his next discovery, and it looks like the stuff he bought at the truck stop actually came in handy after aahahaha I'm joking, Alfie spills his stupid M&M's out the window that he opened for not good reason into the dogs' yard, and then feels bad about leaving chocolate where dogs could eat it, leans over to pick them up again, and then there's a loud thud and a gasp of pain and panic.

...

You want to know what this scene is reminding me of? Here, I'll show you.

Why would you bring someone who can't be trusted with a fork if there's an electrical socket anywhere nearby to investigate a dangerous, isolated location full of unknowns?

...

Okay. Well. Cut back to the cafe.

Shaylee and Mackenna finish one of the personality quizzes, this one being "which white male fictional character are you?" Okay, I got a chuckle out of that. Shaylee gets Gandalf, interestingly enough. Mysterious stranger who rolls into town, I can see that. Maybe she'll turn out to be here on behalf of Eru after all. Mackenna, meanwhile, gets Dr. Jekyl. Real subtle, writers, real subtle. The topic turns to Nissa, her hacking into Mackenna's phone yesterday, and Mackenna being nonchalant about this. They exchange some very nonspecific "information" about what they were both doing that day. Then Shaylee gets called away by the White Council for a vital mission, and Mackenna nonchalantly lets her go.

Meanwhile, Thomas and Sam are having a lunch date at the Thorne house. Sam is pretending to be into him so she can snoop around without a warrant. He's buying it, despite knowing that she's not on the market. Well, he's hardly the first person in the world to have not let that discourage him, I suppose. Sam manages to do some snooping around in Mackenna's room, and confirms that her shoe size matches the print on the corpse, but none of the shoes here are the same style. Well, I'd say that would be grounds for making Mackenna the official prime suspect...if the evidence had been gathered legally.

Would it have really been that hard to get a warrant first? It's the fucking victims' house. Hell, she probably could have obtained Mackenna's permission just by badgering her a bit.

Also, Thomas catches her snooping around but is easily convinced she just got lost on the way to the bathroom. Even though they already had that incident at the bar where he got mad at her for trying to get info about Mackenna from him. Thomas is a man of many skills, but pattern recognition is apparently not one of them.

Back to the creepy dog place. Alfie has fallen out the window, and the dogs are running toward him. He whimpers in fear, and tries to talk them down using whispered doge memes. Oh god, I hope he dies. His last words being the fucking doge meme would just be the perfect sendoff for Alfie's character. Unfortunately, it turns out that these dogs - while large - are not of the guard or attack variety. They end up being friendly, and Alfie spends more effort protecting them from the M&M's than himself from them. But, not all hope is lost! Just then, a car pulls up in the driveway and the owner gets out. Please have a shotgun please have a shotgun please have a shotgun please have a shotgun.

Sigh. This is not my lucky day, it seems. Neither the kennel guy nor his wife are packing heat. And, when Alfie claims to be a door-to-door missionary for St. Xavier's Church of the Hidden Gift, an overgrown boy scout selling cookies, and confused Jedi all at once, they just shrug and tell him to get lost. He manages to buy enough time for Nissa to do likewise.

God, this story was thaaaaat close to ridding itself of at least one - possibly two - of its most irritating and poorly written characters.

As they drive away, they muse on how the lack of aggression in the dogs, combined with the trainer having only one hand, eliminates him as a suspect. Um...what about his wife? Did she only have one hand too? Eh, whatever, at this point I doubt they're connected to local changeling, werewolf, vampire, or alien activity, the occult book collection was probably just a red herring. The worst thing you can say about this couple is that they didn't inflict any grievous bodily harm on Alfie.

Finally, Sam and Thomas finish their "date." It's evening now. After Sam leaves to go figure out how to make the evidence appear on her desk from a legal-looking source, Thomas goes to the graveyard to see the fresh graves again. Alone. In the evening, after sunset. I guess he's frazzled from various and sundry, but...dude, really? Voltaire takes the opportunity to give us one of his cringiest soliloquys yet about the futility of mourning, and then Shadow Vampire Mirror Puca Mackenna and her hellhounds emerge from the darkness and follow him into the cemetary. End episode with Thomas tragically about to be torn apart by dogs when it so nearly could have been Alfie.


This one was just plain bad. Every single character was written as a total moron, and in most cases it doesn't feel intentional. Nissa and Alfie are supposed to be morons, of course, but they got written like a pair of fucking cartoon characters in this episode. Alfie is especially infuriating. At this point, his dogged idiocy goes beyond exaggeration and all the way into charicature, and other characters' (even the not-too-bright-herself Nissa) continual fondness for and trust in him is practically Mary Sue territory.

At this point...eh, if I didn't just have the next six episodes of this commissioned earlier today, I doubt I'd continue listening. The mystery is a good (if not too groundbreaking for its genre) one, and the personal horror elements are pretty effective. But, if the character writing can't bat a higher average than this, it's not enough.