Episode 44: "Some Haunted Hour" – The Sheridan Tapes
CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of depersonalization, unreality, existential dread, paranoia, and familial separation, deep rumbling sound effects.
11052019b: With her investigation in Agate Shore turning up nothing but dead ends, Kate Sheridan begins to question why she came to Nevada at all… and the terrifying events that made her leave home in the first place.
Starring Airen Neeley Chaconas as Anna Sheridan, Virginia Spotts as Kate Sheridan, Trevor Van Winkle as Sam Bailey, and Amitola Lomas as Maria Sol, with original music by Jesse Haugen. Written by Virginia Spotts and produced by Trevor Van Winkle and Virginia Spotts, and made possible by our supporters at Patreon.com/homesteadcorner and ko-fi.com/homesteadcorner
For more information, additional content, and episode transcript, visit thesheridantapes.com
Script
Transcript
CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of depersonalization, unreality, existential dread, paranoia, and familial separation, deep rumbling sound effects.
Cold Open
[Just outside the ruins of Agate Shore, Kate sits alone in her car]
[The sounds of crickets outside]
[Kate shifts in her van, pulling out the recorder]
[She starts her recorder]
KATE SHERIDAN
Kate Sheridan – world-class CPA, detective school dropout. Recording at 7:05pm, Sunday, November 3rd. First full day in Agate Shore.
I explored what I could today in town, but… So much of it is water-damaged and flooded that it was too dangerous to investigate. And there’s an… uh… an odd quality to the plants around here. The green in their leaves seems just… A little too vibrant, and I swear, there were a few times I turned around and plants looked like they’d grown when I wasn’t looking. And even if they didn’t… There’s just a lot of them. And most of them don’t look like they should be growing in the desert at all. I’ve taken some pictures just to be sure, but… It definitely doesn’t look like the rest of Nevada, that’s for sure.
Bill called me again last night. Very late last night. I didn’t pick up – the last thing I need is him giving me more excuses.
I also missed a call from Peter. Service is spotty out here, and it just went straight to voicemail.
[Heavy sigh]
God, I miss his voice. I miss him.
[Kate sniffles]
[Click]
[Silence]
[Click]
[Kate starts the recorder again. The sound of rain and wind outside]
KATE SHERIDAN
Good ol’Kate again. Monday, November 4th. 8:37pm.
[Frustrated sigh]
Another useless day in Agate Shore. All of the houses that are still standing are obviously abandoned. I looked closer at a few of the ones that still seemed to be in good shape, but they all gave off a weird vibe – either dangerously desolate or like they were a little too well taken care of. I avoided those ones completely. Only really got to poke around in one, but I couldn’t find anything to do with Sam Bailey.
What’s the point of being out here if he’s dead anyways? It’s like I might as well…
[Thunder rumbling]
Why did you send me out here, Anna? You told me to find Maria, find Bailey, but Sam is dead and Maria doesn’t want anything to do with me. I swear to God Anna, if you dragged me out here as some kind of joke, I –
[Frustrated groan, a pause]
It can’t be pointless. It can’t be. I’ve given up so very much to be here.
[a pause]
I’m not ready to go home yet. I just need to figure out my next move.
Bill sent me another text today. “Call me,” it said. I still need a few more days to process what happened before I can even think about doing that.
I hope I can sleep tonight. I didn’t really get much rest last night. This place reminds me too much of…
[A moment’s pause, then she yawns and stops the recording]
[Click]
[Silence]
[Later… Near midnight. Quietly, we hear…]
KATE SHERIDAN
[whispering in her sleep]
…Find Maria… Find Bailey… Find Bailey…
[A quiet noise somewhere between laughter and groaning]
[The Click of the recorder coming to life]
“They hail me as one living… But don’t they know… That I have died of late years… Untombed although?”
[Cassette noises]
[Click]
Main Theme
Recording Begins
[Cassette noises]
[Static fades away]
KATE SHERIDAN
I need to explain what happened. What really made me leave everyone and everything in Iowa behind and come out here. If I just keep pushing, keep investigating, keep trying to move and move and move without letting this come out – I’m going to lose it. Right here in my car on the side of the highway next to an abandoned vacation town in the middle of fucking Nevada. I am going to lose it.
I… I need to imagine you’re here with me, Anna. Because I need someone to say this to, and I don’t know anyone else I could say this to. I need the You that I saw after we dealt with that… Monster in my home. The You that was strong and patient and… Just all there for me. Could you do that?
Okay. Okay, so…
[She breathes out]
Mind quiet.
[A few slow breaths in and out]
You’re sitting here, in the passenger seat. You’re wearing some loose, faded jeans you probably bought secondhand, a ratty old sweatshirt for some band I don’t recognize – a day off look for you, I suppose. I guess I need you to be relaxed for this… To not have anything else you need to run off and do. I just need you to listen, because if your mind wanders, if your focus drifts off for even a second…
[She swallows]
Anyway – I’m looking at you. You’re looking at me. You ask me –
[Anna’s voice echoing distantly]
What’s wrong?
I tell you that this… This might be hard to believe, even for you. But that I’d appreciate it if you tried. You laugh –
[Anna laughs, distantly]
– and say –
[Anna’s voice echoing distantly]
– You can tell me Kate. I’m listening.
I’m self-conscious. I tell you that… I’m sorry for never believing your stories. For doubting you. You look back at me with genuine kindness, and say –
[Anna’s voice echoing distantly]
It’s never too late to start believing, Kate.
Isn’t that poetic.
ANNA SHERIDAN
[Distant, echoing]
Isn’t it just?
KATE SHERIDAN
Here we go, then.
[Kate sits for a moment in silence as she collects her thoughts, then begins]
It’s funny, just how much you can ignore if you really, really want to. If you treat it like just another part of the day-to-day shifts and changes of your life, like a part of the ordinary world you live in. And most of the time, you have to live like that. If you treat every strange or unexplained thing in your life like some kind of seismic shift, you won’t be able to function. And so those hundreds and thousands of little iterations of a “normal day” stack up, changing so slowly you barely notice the difference. Most of the time, it feels like they shift one way, then the other, then back again, changing from one day to the next but staying mostly the same, until one day, when your work has become monotonous and your homelife hits a peaceful stretch, you look up and notice that all those little changes have added up to something you no longer recognize.
[A pause]
I didn’t notice it for the longest time. It was too close to my normal for me to see it – just right in the middle of my blind spot.
[Somehow, as Kate tells the tale, we hear little noises from her old world]
Every day, I came in to work a little earlier than I needed to. I’d take the same path to my office each time – saying hi to Karen at the front desk , rounding the corner to the cubicles, making my way past the break room , rounding another corner and just narrowly avoiding a collision with Jordan, then stepping into my office . The one with the view of downtown and the good chair I still haven’t had the heart to replace [wind outside blows].
See, the thing about Jordan is, um, he’s always darting back and forth between his cubicle and his boss’s office. I don’t know what generation he’s supposed to be a part of… Defying all logic, he’s a 24 year old who hates using email and IM to communicate even the most basic of information, instead choosing to constantly run back and forth through the office at all hours of the day. Around the only blind corner in the entire building. Where he invariably runs into me. It’s really just… So frustrating.
[She sighs]
[In the background during this section, we hear: a door closing, a phone ringing, muffled footsteps, office door closing – repeated in each sequence]
Every day. Come in early. Say hi to Karen. Round the corner. Pass break room. Second corner. Avoid Jordon. Office.
And again: Come in early. Karen. Corner. Kitchen. Corner. Jordan. Office.
Again: Early. Delayed reply from Karen. Corner. Kitchen. Corner. Barely miss Jordan. Office. Breathe. That’s fine – a little different than normal, but not unusual. Get to work.
Again: Early. Karen doesn’t reply at all. Corner. Kitchen. Corner. Distracted. Collide with Jordan [a whoosh as the collision occurs], knocking a stack of papers out of his hands. Apologize. Office. Breathe. Breathe.
Again: Early. Karen doesn’t even hear me this time. Corner. Kitchen. Corner. Jordan – [heavy footsteps] Jordan and and I cross paths, but I don’t run into him. It’s as if I just passed right through him. I stand there, frozen in confusion. Worry that I might have just had a mini-stroke and blacked out for a minute. I don’t think it’s possible – I’m not old enough to be having those, but how else would I explain…
[Frightened sigh]
Again: Early. Dead silence from Karen. No one looks at me as I walk into the office. Corner. Kitchen. Corner. Jordan, flying around the corner with a 20 pound box of printer paper in his arms. Not enough time to get out of his way. Instead… [mysterious rumbling] I pass, body and mind, straight through him. Like I’m not even there. And this time, I can’t ignore it.
I’m not sure when this happened, or how long it had been going on before I noticed the change. But I stood there for a long time, ignoring my office door and the pile of work I knew was waiting for me. Eventually, I slumped against the wall, mostly to get a hold of something solid and real and just breathe for a moment. It was some comfort… at least, until… I noticed that my arm had sunk up to the elbow into the drywall.
I jumped away from the wall, my arm pulling loose like it was stuck in wet mud or quicksand. [Squelching noise] I think I must have screamed, but when I looked around, no one had noticed. Oddly enough, that actually made me feel more calm about the whole situation [an office door closing]. As far as everyone else was concerned, things were just… Business as usual.
Whatever was going on with me… It would probably be better if I sat down at my desk, took a few deep breaths, then tried to start my day.
[Her office door closing]
[Footsteps, chair being pulled out, sitting down]
I did feel better once I sat down. I’ve had that office chair for nearly ten years now, and the leather is worn to a comfortable, familiar smoothness by age. After a few minutes, I got to work, opening up the report I’d been writing the night before [keyboard taps]. It was comforting. Familiar. Numbing. Despite everything that had just happened, life seemed to go back to normal… For about thirty seconds. And then I saw my hands.
I saw two distinctly different realities laid on top of one another: one where my hands flew over the keyboard as usual, and another, just beneath it, where my hands reached into the plastic and wiring of the keyboard itself. The second grew sharper and clearer the longer I looked at it, and as I watched, my skin began to fuse with the wires [electronic distortion] and circuits beneath them into some kind of macabre… Something. I sat frozen for a long moment, and by the time I was able to jerk my hands away, I knew it was too late. I fell backwards through the chair, my body sinking halfway through the floor beneath it before I was able to catch myself and stop sinking.
I stood up as best I could, willing myself not to sink through the ground. I ran out of my office just in time to see Jordan returning to his desk, a fresh manilla envelope in his hands. But when I reached out to try and tap him on the shoulder, [heavy rumbling] I felt my hand pass through his shirt, skin, muscle, and bone before he passed out of my reach completely. He shrugged the shoulder as if he’d felt an itch, then vanished back into his cubicle.
I screamed. For a long time, I’m pretty sure. It certainly felt like it. When I looked around to see if anyone had heard, or even noticed I was there, I saw a dozen sets of eyes still locked on their monitors [noises of office work]. People I’d worked with for more than a decade walked right past me as if I wasn’t there. I got in their faces, screamed right into their ears like a banshee – and they just kept working. I tried to push over some photos, ruffle a paper or two, even shake a window… But no one seemed to notice. While my reality was breaking down around me, it was just another strange and unexplained thing for them to add to their pile of “normal days.”
Then I got the idea to mess with the electrical currents in someone’s computer, because… Well, it seemed to work with my own computer, and maybe it would finally get someone’s attention. [The familiar front desk phone ringing, increasing in volume as she approaches] I went over to Karen’s desk and reached through the back of her PC, rummaging around until I found something that felt important and pulled it loose [heavy rumbling]. It seemed to work… At first. She was on the phone with IT when I suddenly felt myself losing my grip on whatever I’d mangled, and my hands slipped out of the case like they were made of water. I tried to reach back in, but it seemed like even that ability to touch the real world had been taken from me [noise of office work]. Karen ended her call with the technician and went back to work [keyboard taps].
That’s when my consciousness started to… Float, I guess. [Somehow, the noise of waves] In and out of different places and times. One moment I was trying not to sink through the office flooring, the next I was in an empty elevator shaft somewhere in town [whooshing noise of an elevator], drifting slowly upward in the dark, and the moment after that I screamed as I saw the rush of 5pm traffic [a series of honking, the noises of traffic] bearing down on me as I appeared in the middle of the road. Twenty tons of plastic and steel passed through me in a moment, and I felt nothing. The sudden terror sharpened my focus, and I managed to hold onto where and when I was and stay there. I still wasn’t solid, but at least I wasn’t being yanked back and forth across midtown anymore. I turned to see a busy park just across the street, and so I drifted into it. Mostly I stayed silent, [the noises of a quiet park, a dog barking distantly, someone running by] just watching people go about their evening walks and runs along the pathways. Sometimes I screamed. Or at least, did my best impression of a scream without lungs to drive air out of my non-existent throat. Is it really screaming if you don’t make a sound? If not… Well, I think it helped me. Felt better than wallowing in whatever was going on, at least.
I wandered. Time was still passing, but it was more… Open, than usual. It was like… looking at a road on street view, instead of actually being there. I could stay in one spot, if I wanted. If I focused, I could force time to pass at its normal, familiar pace. But when I lost focus – when I felt despair shoot needles into my heart all over again – I would find that several minutes had flashed forward in what felt like the blink of an eye. Or several hours. Or several days.
[The park noises die down]
I stayed in that park for a long time, watching the weather change with the seasons, watching people coming and going in their own patterns of normalcy, [a whooshing wind] completely unaware of my existence. But I couldn’t stay there forever.
I felt my grip on reality slip a little further every time I tried to stay in one spot for too long, and I’d start to merge [heavy rumbling] with the terrain in the same way I had at the office. So I wandered – floated, drifted aimlessly out of town and into the suburbs, and finally, before I knew it… I was standing on the front porch of my house, staring at the door.
I don’t remember how I got there. I don’t remember if I wanted to be there, or if my subconscious just dragged me there without me knowing. But once I was standing there, I pleaded with myself not to go in. I dug my heels in with whatever strength remained in the legs I was still imagining for my own sanity. I knew what going in there like this would lead to, almost like a premonition – like a wave of nausea before you learn that someone you know has died.
It didn’t work. You probably could have guessed that much. Either my will broke and I entered on my own, or my consciousness was compelled to float inside by whatever was doing this to me. I’m not sure I would have known the difference at that point.
[The environmental sound dampens as the story continues indoors. A quiet clock ticks in the background]
The living room looked the same as it ever had. The photo of Peter and I on our wedding day stood on the mantle, alongside the baby pictures of Andrew, that picture of you and I at the fourth grade talent show, and the portraits of mom and dad and Peter’s family. I floated into the dining room right as Peter walked out of the pantry. My sense of smell returned briefly, and [something sizzling, something being stirred] I noticed he was cooking: a good, classic red sauce and a pasta dinner. He cooks almost every day whenever my busy seasons start up again, which means he ends up cooking most of the time.
There are actually two busy seasons for accountants – not a lot of people know that. He was getting me through the one in the Fall… or at least, he was before I slipped out of the world. But… He’s a good cook. A really, really great cook, actually.
At that moment, Peter seemed to hear something and looked up… Looked right at me. After so long being ignored and unseen, someone making eye contact was… Well, it honestly kind of scared me. But then I realized that there was nothing in his eyes to show he’d seen me. For a moment, I tried to imagine that there was, but there was nothing – no love, no fear, not even hate. He couldn’t see me. I wasn’t there.
He called out for Andrew. That must have been what he heard before – or maybe what he didn’t hear.
[She laughs]
That’s um, that’s always more concerning, when things are quiet with Andrew in the house. Andrew yelled back from down the hall, and I heard his little feet come running towards the kitchen.
[Soft cry]
I… [small feet padding down a hallway] I can’t possibly put what I saw next into words. But…
[Deep breath, shaky]
The child who entered the room was a complete stranger. When I heard his voice before, he sounded like my son. But as he stepped into the kitchen, his face, his posture, his entire bone structure just… Shifted. Like I was looking at him through a kaleidoscope. Ever since he was born, he’s had dad’s brow, my nose, your ears, but… [heavy rumbling] They were all gone. My baby was a stranger. And no matter how loudly I –
[Kate cuts off with a strangled cry. After a moment, she forces herself to continue]
I got out of there as fast as I could. I didn’t think I could throw up without a physical body, but it felt like I was about to. I nearly made it out before my gaze flicked over to the pictures on the mantle. All of them had changed. I saw Peter with his family. I saw an unfamiliar, wrinkly newborn staring back at me from another photo. [Heavy rumbling increases] And that was it.
I don’t remember much after that. My consciousness fell completely out of focus, and the scene vanished too quickly for words. [Rumbling stops] I suppose that was a small mercy, in its own way. I know that I must have wailed for hours out of time, wandering the neighborhood and trying to find some place or moment or memory that could bring me comfort. Nothing did. I even tried praying, but after a while… I gave up on that too. When you find yourself in a place where no one sees or hears you no matter what you say – Well. Praying didn’t help. If anything, it made the loneliness even worse.
I can’t possibly begin to guess how much time passed in that state. [ethereal whooshing] I know I saw the sun rise and fall over and over again, fast enough that it seemed to blur out into a single arc of white. I saw rainstorms and sunny days and felt the weather shift and grow colder around me. And I saw… a lot of things I still don’t know how to explain. [a deep, echoing noise from an unknown massive creature] I’ve tried to find the words, but… I don’t think they exist. Not in any language I know, at least. And some little voice in the back of my mind seemed to warn me that trying to describe them might actually be enough to finally undo me completely. These spirits that I guess are always there, but common grace keeps us from seeing them. I tried to look away, but I no longer had eyes to shut or ears to cover… Not in that eternal moment when the veil fell away around me. The living are not meant to understand these things – these entities I wish I could forget, that now live forever in my dreams.
[She sighs]
When I came back to myself, I was floating in downtown, late one rainy night. [Falling rain, occasional cars passing] I wasn’t cold… I was no longer capable of being cold or warm or feeling hunger or thirst or need for sleep. But eventually – well, this sounds kind of silly, but I suddenly just wanted to be back in my old office chair. It was the closest thing to a physical craving I’d felt since that horrifying first day.
I found my way back to the office, now emptied for the night except for one or two offices where my old co-workers were burning the midnight oil.
[Environmental noises quiet down, back inside an office, but with not much activity inside]
I’m sure if I was still capable of it, I’d be doing the same. I wandered along my normal path: past Karen’s empty desk. Round the corner. Past the break room. Around the second corner, where Jordan had passed through me all those weeks or months or years ago. Into my office to find the walls stripped bare and all of the furniture removed. [Rain hitting the office window] All of it, that is, except my old leather chair, still worn smooth with age and time… A reminder that I did exist, that I was here – that I left a mark on this world.
I floated into it, carefully holding my body above it in the same way I would if I were actually capable of sitting down. I looked out the window to where the moon hit the tops of the building below and turned them silver-plated in the rain. The trees glistened with moonlight as though covered with tinsel and snow. And for the first time in a long time, it was enough to make me smile. [Thunder rumbles outside, a local storm brewing] My eyes began to feel heavy, and after weeks of wandering without needing food or water or any rest at all – I fell asleep so quickly I didn’t even realize it had happened.
[Kate pauses, taking another deep breath]
When I woke up the next morning, Karen was gently nudging me on the shoulder, worried that I’d worked myself to exhaustion and fallen asleep at my desk. She was met with a horrified, blood-curdling cry from a panicked and only semi-conscious version of me, predictably enough. A wail, really.
[She laughs darkly]
I’ve run out of names for the sounds that came out of me during that time.
Karen was pretty badly startled. Not that I blame her – Imagine walking in on one of your oldest work friends and seeing she’d apparently slept in her office, only to nearly crap your good suit pants when you try to wake them up.
I sort of apologized, but I wasn’t completely there yet. I noticed I was wearing the same clothes I’d been wearing at the start of all this – they just looked a little slept in. Everything was back in my office, just like I’d left it. I checked the date as soon as Karen left, and it had only been a day since I vanished, not weeks or months. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out my phone. Forty missed calls from Peter, and twice as many texts. As I started to read them, another incoming call started to ring. I hesitated longer than I should have, but – I picked it up.
Peter was worried, of course. I hadn’t come home last night, and when he called the office, Karen said I hadn’t been in for the last few days. She’d assumed I was working from home. I pulled myself together enough to tell him that I was okay – I must have just overworked myself and passed out at my desk. I promised I’d come home right away, then hung up.
I tried to avoid people on the way out, only stopping by Karen’s desk to let her know I would be taking a few sick days. She was worried, of course, but I lied and said it was nothing. Then, just as I’d managed to convince myself that the whole thing was the kind of bad dream I used to have when I was in my first trimester with Andrew… IT showed up at Karen’s desk to check in on the glitch she’d called them about yesterday.
I was doing twenty over the speed limit the whole way home. Andrew – god, Andrew – he kept trying to get my attention when I walked in the door, but I had to avoid him as gently and firmly as I could. I wanted to hold him, but… I just wasn’t ready for that yet. I was horrified and shaking and trying so, so hard not to show it. Peter’s face turned ashen when he saw me. I just wrapped my arms around him for a long time, trying to assure myself that he was real, that this was real – that I was real. [Thunder rolls in the background] He didn’t know what to say, but he could tell something was very, very wrong.
I finally let him go after a full minute had passed, summoned all my courage, and turned to Andrew, taking his face in my hands and physically forcing myself to look at him. [She chokes up] I broke down crying the moment I did. It was definitely him. My baby boy. Dad’s brow. My nose. Your ears.
[A laugh, harsh and heartbroken]
He’s getting so lanky already.
[A soft cry]
Uh… Andrew was scared, which, uh.. Honestly, shouldn’t have been a surprise. He’s a tough kid, but… He wasn’t ready to see his mother break down in tears in front of him. He went and hid in Peter’s lap as soon as I let him go. Peter told him to go and play with his Legos in the other room while we talked, and Andrew was out of there like a flash. As soon as I heard his door close down the hall, Peter asked me what was wrong, and what I needed.
I told him, Anna… Not about what happened, uh… but what I needed to do. That I needed to go looking for you. I said that – I didn’t know how long I’d be gone. That I didn’t know what would happen with my job. That I didn’t even know what I hoped to find, but… I was filled with this inescapable feeling that if you were still alive and trapped somewhere even half as bad as where I’d been… Then I couldn’t just leave you there to face it alone.
I’m going to find you, Anna. No matter what stands in my way. I have never been more serious, and you know how seriously I take everything. I will find you. I will bring you back.
Peter tried to get me to call the doctor a few times. I just… I couldn’t explain what had actually happened. Not without him thinking I’d had a complete psychotic break. I had to leave. I told him I’d stay in touch, and I…
[A pause, she speaks softer and contrite]
God, please – with whatever faith I still have, I am begging you – help me show up for every one of those calls. For Peter. For Andrew. For my own sake, just…
[She sighs]
Peter was hurt. Of course he was. I tried to encourage him, told him that he and Andrew would be fine on their own, that I’d seen them – I couldn’t finish that sentence. God, I hope he can forgive me someday. I hope that I can be brave enough to tell him what happened. And that he understands. If not…
[She sighs, pauses]
And so I started looking for you, Anna. At your old house. In Oslow. And now in Agate Shore. Each time getting further and further away from home, from what I thought was normal. I don’t know if Bill has anything else he can tell me. I know he’s holding something back, but… He’s dealing with his own problems right now. I want to trust him, but Ned… There’s something wrong with him. I hope Bill can figure that out sooner than later. He has to.
I’ve hit a dead end, Anna. And I don’t know how to get out of it.
[Silence for a moment – then suddenly, muffled voices and approaching footsteps from outside]
MARIA SOL
Kate?
SAM BAILEY
Wait, wait, you’re saying that’s Anna’s sister?
KATE SHERIDAN
Who is –?
[Kate opens the door and steps out of the van]
[A steady rain is falling now, soaking the dry earth]
MARIA SOL
Kate? What are you doing here?
KATE SHERIDAN
Oh my God, Maria!
Uh… God, I’m sorry, you two caught me at a… A really weird moment. I’m, uh – Hi, I’m Kate Sheridan.
[She extends her hand to Sam]
SAM BAILEY
Uh… Hi. Sam Bailey.
KATE SHERIDAN
Sam… You’re not dead, then?
SAM BAILEY
Well its, uh… No?
[Clears his throat]
It’s complicated.
KATE SHERIDAN
Sorry, it’s just – Bill told me that you…
[She suddenly hugs him]
SAM BAILEY
Uh… It’s, uh… It’s okay?
KATE SHERIDAN
Thank you for what you did with the Echo. Thank you.
[She pulls back]
Thank you.
Wow – you’re completely soaked, aren’t you?
SAM BAILEY
I guess so, it’s just –
KATE SHERIDAN
Oh Maria – come here.
[She hugs Maria before she can respond]
MARIA SOL
Whoa – hi. Uh… Alright, alright. Hi Kate. It’s… Good to see you.
[Kate pulls back]
KATE SHERIDAN
I’ve been trying to call you.
MARIA SOL
I know. I’m sorry. I wasn’t…
[Maria trails off, not sure what to say]
KATE SHERIDAN
It’s okay – I think I get it.
Listen, I know Anna and I weren’t always on the best –
SAM BAILEY
Kate, I think we all need to get out of town. We can talk then, and… Well, then I don’t know, but we can’t stay in Agate Shore.
KATE SHERIDAN
Why not?
MARIA SOL
Kate, I… It might be best for you to go home.
KATE SHERIDAN
Excuse me?
SAM BAILEY
Maria?
MARIA SOL
Listen Kate – I know what it’s like to want to do right by Anna now that she’s gone, but… It doesn’t help. Obsessing over
this stuff. And now there’s another threat we need to deal with, and we have no idea how to stop it, so for now… I think you should go home.
[Kate laughs, small & awkward]
KATE SHERIDAN
I’m not going home.
MARIA SOL
Kate–
KATE SHERIDAN
I can’t go home. Not now. Anna told me to find you and Bailey, and now… Well, here you are! I can’t turn back now.
SAM BAILEY
Wait… You heard from Anna? How?
MARIA SOL
Sam, it’s probably just –
KATE SHERIDAN
I’m still not sure how, but whatever’s going on with my sister, it’s – big. A lot bigger than just the Echo. God, how do I explain this…
When you were investigating Anna’s disappearance, you assumed she was killed, right? You were looking for physical evidence, clues about who she met with, that kind of thing. But what if whatever happened to her didn’t leave any kind of trace in the physical world? What if –
MARIA SOL
Kate, please, just –
KATE SHERIDAN
Just listen for a second, please. I know you didn’t believe me when we talked, and if you asked me six weeks ago, I wouldn’t have believed it either. But I’ve had some experiences that –
SAM BAILEY
I… I believe you, Kate.
KATE SHERIDAN
You do?
MARIA SOL
[Groaning]
Look, let’s just get out of here and unpack this later. That is… If you’re going to come with us, Kate?
[Kate laughs, uneasy]
KATE SHERIDAN
Of course I am. You heard what I just said, right? I’m –
SAM BAILEY
You’re serious. You want to help us deal with what’s happening in Oslow?
KATE SHERIDAN
Serious as a heart attack. Anna told me to find you two, and here you are. I have to believe that means I’m going the right way.
MARIA SOL
Oh god…
SAM BAILEY
Okay. We’re going to go get Maria’s van – meet us at the on-ramp and follow us south. Not too closely, though. And you’re probably gonna want to turn your cell phone off.
[Clack]
Homestead on the Corner 