The Case of Charles Dexter Ward Episode 10

## Synopsis

The horrifying conclusion to H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

## Plot

Matthew Heawood sees a horribly disfigured, and blind, Dr. Jonathan Willett in Broadmoor Hospital. Sir Godfrey Tillinghast claims that he tipped boiling water on himself, but Willett implies that Godfrey or his agents were responsible. Matt asks Willett where Charles Dexter Ward is, and he claims Charles has 'vanished into dust'. Godfrey takes Matt away and explains that he brought him here to show that Willett is insane, and the story Matt's been telling has either been made up or the result of bad information. He denies all of Matt's allegations and threatens him with legal action if he continues, but Matt insists he's telling the truth and will continue to broadcast so as not be accused of censoring him. Matt leaves the room dramatically but leaves his recorder behind and records the Warden speaking in an occult language to Godfrey, which Matt notes can be heard on Willett's various recordings. Exhausted, Matt sleeps for 10 hours, and when he returns to the studio, Kennedy Fisher and Ezra Weeden are there.

In the conversation that follows they compare notes and confirm that the cult funded them to find the next host of Ipqu-Aya. Through the podcast the cult learnt about Amelia Fenner, and has now discovered she had a child. When Matt tries to get Kennedy to slow down and explain what's happened to her, she tells him to talk to Ezra, who in turn asks to speak alone to Matt and without recording it. Matt, not trusting Ezra, feigns turning the recorder off. Ezra explains that Kennedy's phone came back on so he tracked it to a motel, and entered when he heard her screaming. Dr. Allen came at him with a knife, and he shot Allen dead, then tended to Kennedy while Barbara Sayers escaped. Ezra found Kennedy catatonic and suspected a ritual had taken place there. Matt suspects that Ezra wanted this conversation off the record is because Allen likely didn't have a knife and Ezra shot him anyway, which Matt forgives because he saved Kennedy's life.

Back in the studio, they work out that Amelia's child was Destiny, a baby abandoned in Winchester a year after the New Forest coven broke up. Destiny married a man named Gibson, and later had a child, Melody, with someone named Cartwright. They head to University College London, where Melody is a student, to find her, but learn from a friend of hers that she's left to work with a podcast called *The Mystery Machine*. Realising the cult have her, Kennedy takes Matt back to the studio to tell him about what she saw under the trailer park. Kennedy claims that she does not have the language to describe what she saw, but would describe the creature in the pit as something like God. She went mad upon seeing it and only remembers waking up in hospital, but now believes that reality is an illusion. When Barbara and Allen performed the ritual she saw an old city full of the creatures and a massive, hateful entity, which she now thinks is the real world. Matt suggests that Kennedy should talk to a psychiatrist about this, but she refuses, citing what happened to Charles and Willett, and decides to go to bed. With no more leads, Matt decides to ask Willett about what happened to Charles, and uses his recording of Godfrey and the Warden to gain access.

Willett explains that Charles had sent him a letter, and he spoke to him on the phone, but when he found him Charles had been taken over by Ipqu-Aya. When Matt tells him about Dr. Allen's death he disagrees, claiming that Allen is still alive. Willett continues that he incarcerated Ipqu-Aya in the hospital in Providence and when he realised what had happened, in part because he saw the experiments under the trailer park, Willett stabbed him and Ipqu-Aya turned to dust, giving the impression that he had vanished, the same as Lucy Hawthorne. Matt counters that Lucy's body had a post mortem, but Willett laughs it off, and claims that everything is an illusion to stop us seeing what's really there because, if we knew, we'd go insane. This revelation causes Matt to vomit outside, but instinctively he feels it fits with what Kennedy had told him, and what the Soldiers of Ipqu-Aya believed. The next day he visits Kennedy, but finds that neither she, nor Ezra, are at her flat, and she wasn't answering her calls. Unsure of what to do now, or what happens to the podcast, he broadcasts this, the final episode of the series, and waits to see what happens.

In an epilogue, Kennedy leaves a message on *The Mystery Machine's* answerphone. She says that she and Ezra have tracked Melody to Baghdad, and have seen her with Barbara and an unknown man covered in bandages. The three of them have left for the ruins of Nineveh, near Mosul, and Kennedy intends to follow, but she wants Matt to send recording equipment out to her. She hands the phone over to Ezra and then leaves to meet their guide. The message ends with Ezra saying: "Mr. Heawood? It's Ezra Weeden. Delete this message. You lost. Ogthrod ai'fgeb'l-ee'h Yog-Sothoth'ngah'ng ai'yzhro."

## Cast, Characters, Crew

* Barnaby Kay as Matthew Heawood
* Jana Carpenter as Kennedy Fisher
* Alun Armstrong as Ezra Weeden
* Mark Bazeley as Dr. Jonathan Willett
* Richard Cordery as Sir Godfrey Tillinghast
* Cherrelle Skeete as Akuma
* Ben Crowe as Warden

* Writer & Director: Julian Simpson
* Production Coordinator: Sarah Tombling
* Sound Engineer: David Thomas
* Composer: Tim Elsenburg
* Producer: Karen Rose