Haumea

## Synopsis

After their brushes with danger, Matthew Heawood and Kennedy Fisher begin their investigations proper. Kennedy meets an old friend who helps her unearth her family's secrets, while Matt tries to put some confusing pieces together.

## Plot

The episode opens with Matthew Heawood replaying the audio tape of Dr. Jonathan Willett and Charles Dexter Ward that he played at the start of the previous episode. In particular, he focuses in on the static that breaks up the recording. After cleaning the sound up, he found it to be a match to the static heard on Henry Akeley's wi-fi doorbell and on the Babalon Broadcast in *The Whisperer in Darkness*. He calls Slide about it, who repeats the same process he and Kennedy Fisher did to the doorbell recording in Episode Six of *The Whisperer in Darkness* and gets the numbers 51483 and 34952. Slide interprets the numbers as coordinates to Haumea, a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt. Matt is sceptical of this claim, but confesses to the audience that he would be proven wrong.

Kennedy runs back to The Gilman House Hotel and finds the door locked. After she hammers on the door, Casey lets her in, apologising for forgetting she was still outside. She asks if anyone was following her, but Casey looks outside and sees no one. He relocks the door and offers to get her some tea, but Kennedy politely declines and decides to go to bed.

After the events at the café, 'Jasper' sends Matt back to his hotel, while he stays behind to asks questions. Despite knowing that the woman he saw at the café could not have been Kennedy, Matt is disturbed by her physical similarity to her. He video calls Kennedy, waking her from her sleep, and demands to see her and her surroundings. Annoyed, she shows him the room as way of proof, including a book that at first appears to a Bible, but upon inspection is revealed as an Arabic book published by The Esoteric Order of Dagon. Matt tells Kennedy that he saw an image of Dagon in Mosul, which confuses them both. Kennedy asks Matt why he wants to know where she is, but Matt refuses to elaborate and says he'll call the next day. Matt then phones Dr. Eleanor Peck and asks her about The Esoteric Order of Dagon. Peck tells Matt that The Esoteric Order of Dagon was a now extinct death cult that supposedly worshiped the Mesopotamian sea deity Dagon. However, theologians suspected that The Esoteric Order of Dagon believed that Dagon was one of Nyarlathotep's disguises and worked to empower him. Eleanor advises Matt to stay away from them, as they were known to be highly dangerous people, but Matt asks her to look into any recent reports of them in Iraq or the United States, which she agrees to do. Matt then texts 'Jasper' about the order, warning him of the apparent danger.

Kennedy wakes up the next day and heads to the town hall. Unexpectedly, she finds Alice there. After reintroducing herself, Alice explains that she listened to the podcast after Kennedy met her in Providence, Rhode Island and, although she denies it, implies that she is a fan of the show. She got interested in the Niagara Falls accident and ended up looking at Innsmouth too. She has taken some time off work and wants to help Kennedy's investigations. Kennedy is wary of her sudden appearance and Alice apologises and starts to leave, but Kennedy agrees to let her help. Alice explains that she's found all of the records here and taken copies, and invites Kennedy to talk about it with her over food by the docks.

Kennedy and Alice sit down to eat at a restaurant by the docks. Kennedy notices that the Innsmouth locals all have the same features as the bus driver, which Alice calls 'The Innsmouth Look' and says is the result of inbreeding. Kennedy relaxes as Alice explains more about her love of records. Alice tells Kennedy that Abigail Fisher, the last Fisher to live in Innsmouth, left the town in 1928 when the government raided it, supposedly based on accusations of illegal alcohol smuggling. However, the raid was based on the account of a Robert Olmstead who visited the town in the previous year and claimed to have found cults and other strange things in the town, which the police interpreted as a smuggling ring. In his account, Olmstead mentions occult jewellery, and Alice shows Kennedy a picture of a medallion belonging to Charles Dexter Ward depicting a disturbing humanoid creature with the head of a fish. Alice has discovered that other merpeople themed jewellery pieces were in the possession of George Pickingill, Edward Landsdale, and Rudolf von Sebottendorf, and that all of this jewellery was made in Innsmouth by The Marsh Refining Company, of which the Tillinghast family were shareholders. The Marshes were Innsmouth's founding family, and still own the town to this day. Alice also suspects that the refinery owner's wife, Annabelle Marsh, was injured in the Niagara Falls accident, and that the Mrs. Emily Fisher in the accident was from Innsmouth, not Providence as the article claimed, suggesting a collusion between the three families.

After waiting an hour for 'Jasper' to return and seeing no sign of him, Matt decides to head back to the café to try and find him. He asks Slide to ping 'Jasper's' phone for him, but Slide cannot get a signal from it, which he explains as possibly because the phone is underground. However, he does learn that the café was its last known location. Matt sneaks around the back of café and climbs in through an open window. Searching for a way down he finds a cellar with a trapdoor and climbs down it. He follows the subsequent tunnel away from the café and notes that the tunnel walls are covered in old Arabic carvings. He comes into a chamber in which he hears, and sees, people chanting around a fire. Shortly after that, he is discovered by one of the cultists, and he runs. A woman helps him escape back up the tunnel and evade his pursuers through the Mosul streets. When they are sure no one is following them, they stop and the woman tells him that, if was in the tunnels, 'Jasper' is likely dead. She introduces herself as Melody Cartwright.

## Cast, Characters, Crew

* Barnaby Kay as Matthew Heawood
* Jana Carpenter as Kennedy Fisher
* Nicola Walker as Dr. Eleanor Peck
* Kyle Soller as Casey
* Karla Crome as Melody Cartwright
* Jennifer Armour as Alice
* Ferdinand Kingsley as 'Slide'
* Mark Bazeley as Dr. Jonathan Willett (archive audio)
* Samuel Barnett as Charles Dexter Ward (archive audio)

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

## Notes and Trivia

* Alice misspeaks in this episode when talking about Annabelle Marsh. She says the newspaper article about the coaching accident is from September 1865. It's actually 1869.
* This episode marks the first appearance of Karla Crome in the Pleasant Green Universe.
* Robert Olmstead's account is a reference to H. P. Lovecraft's original 1936 novella *The Shadow over Innsmouth*, in which Olmstead retrospectively narrates his time in Innsmouth in 1927. It is therefore possible that Olmstead's account in the Pleasant Green Universe was written in 1936.
* There is a slight continuity error regarding the Niagara Falls accident in this episode. Alice claims that Annabelle Marsh was an unnamed fourth woman in the carriage with the Mr. Tillinghast described by the article. However, when Matthew Heawood reads the article in Episode Five of *The Whisperer in Darkness* he lists four women by name: Mahala Smith, Mary Ann Ballou, Emily Fisher and a Mrs. Tillinghast. The carriage driver is the only person who is not named, so it's likely that Annabelle Marsh was meant to be the driver.