Episode 1.5: The Alison Recording

## Information

*Episode 1.5: The Alison Recording* is the 1.5 episode of the second season of the Limetown podcast.

## Synopsis

+11 days 1 hr since Lia Haddock’s abduction.

## Transcription by /u/secret-x-stars

[nonsense audio of random annoying sounds]

Interrogator: Where is it?!

Charley: What?

Interrogator: Where is it?!

Charley: [drolly] I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over my music.

[tape – and nonsense audio – stops]

Interrogator: I’ve now listened to everything – *everything* – and there’s nothing on your meeting with Alison Haddock.

Charley: What time is it?

Interrogator: Stop.

Charley: You really lose a sense of time in here.

[sound of something slamming]

Interrogator: Did you talk to her?! Answer me!

Charley: Yes.

Interrogator: Did you record it?! …Why are you *smiling*?! Where is it?!

Charley: There wasn’t much of a conversation. I just needed the next piece and she gave it to me.

Interrogator: Then why can I not find it?

Charley: Because I didn’t record it on a tape. It was a mistake on my part – [chuckles] embarrassing, actually. You have my phone, right? [00:01:07]

Interrogator: It’s retina locked.

Charley: All you had to do was ask.

[The interrogator rifles through things, takes a few steps; then, the sound of a phone being unlocked]

Charley: It’s in the voice memos. You… know what voice memos are, right?

Interrogator: *Yes*, I know what voice memos are.

Charley: It’s the most recent one. The others are mostly grocery lists or anything else I don’t care about losing or being compromised. I didn’t realize I wasn’t recording until well after we’d started, but that was mostly me convincing her to talk to me.

Interrogator: Did you hurt her?

Charley: No. Alison wanted to talk. It took a little bit of *scene work*, on my part, but once she felt like I was someone who could *actually* help, she was relieved. I mean, [chuckles] she left her house in the middle of the night to go to some bar nearby. She wore sunglasses, I guess to try to hide who she was. She just sat at the bar and drank cranberry juice. [snickers] It was kind of sad.

Interrogator: She was grieving. Her daughter is missing!

Charley: She strikes me as someone who’s used to being in grief.

[voice memo begins playing; music in bar in the background]

Alison: – that was the deal. That was the deal and I broke it. There *was*something I never told Lia. I promised I’d tell her everything, but that wasn’t true. And now she’s gone.

Charley: What do you mean? What didn’t you tell her?

Alison: I did see Emile again two years after Limetown.

Charley: Why didn’t you tell her?

Alison: Because it wasn’t… he wasn’t *Emile* anymore.

Charley: What happened?

Alison: I was looking for Emile out in St. George in Utah.

Charley: Why there? [00:03:11]

Alison: One night, forever ago, we saw a movie together that took place on Mars – the movie was silly, but Emile said it looked like this place in Utah he went once, a little town at the bottom of a deep red mountain. When I was looking for him, I must have seen it in a magazine, or… but I saw it and I knew. St George. So I went. When I got there, I saw in the police blotter there were these break-ins, little stuff from people’s homes – food and camping gear, like someone was scavenging. And I thought, “maybe…” So, I’d take these long drives through the desert, endlessly driving, driving. One night, I saw a little fire in the distance. I got close and there he was. I was so happy… but just for a minute, because as I got closer… his clothes were torn, his hair was long and thin, his skin was gray. I said, “Emile, it’s me, it’s Alison!” He didn’t move. So I grabbed his face to look at me; his eyes were… dead. He looked like an animal, emaciated, panicked. I told him, “It’s time to go home. I have been searching so long.” He shook his head, started to cry. I asked him, “What happened? What the hell *happened*?” And all he said was, “Glass Joe made them swim. Glass Joe made them swim.” Over and over, just like that. I asked him who Glass Joe was. He just – he wasn’t making sense. I knew I’d lost him. So I turned around, I was going to go home, it was over. But then, it was like the lights came back on for a second, like he was Emile again. He told me something happened after Limetown and he was so sorry and so scared. And then he got very serious and said there was someone else like me out there, a girl, someone he needs to keep safe from Glass Joe. Then the lights went out again.

Charley: What do you mean, ‘a girl like you’?

Alison: She made him feel normal. [00:06:24]

Charley: What does that mean? Who was the girl?

Alison: Her name is Sylvia. She was 7.

Charley: Sylvia… Winona’s daughter?

Alison: I almost fell out of my chair when Lenore brought her up on Lia’s show. That poor girl.

Charley: Do you know where Sylvia is?

Alison: Not a clue.

Charley: Do you think *she* would know anything about ‘the bridge’?

Alison: I don’t *know* anything, okay? You think I’m not racking my brain for any possible detail that would get Lia back to me, that I haven’t played back *every* single conversation I’ve ever had just to get some breadcrumb that I know isn’t there?! I spent *two years*looking for Emile after Limetown. I lost my husband, I lost my daughter. I kept telling myself it was the right thing to do, what I *had* to do. All I learned was that I wasn’t special and that Emile was lost. Just like everyone else. That’s all I have.

[voice memo stops playing]

Interrogator: So that’s how you knew to go to Sylvia next?

Charley: And the first time I heard about Glass Joe. Sylvia seemed a less bullshit path to follow.

Interrogator: Thank you for your cooperation.

Charley: Hey! What does drowning feel like?

Interrogator: I’m gonna find what hurts you. [00:08:10]

[tape of nonsense audio plays]

[door slams]