History Recap / TheMagnusArchivesSeasonFour

Barbara has a mid-life crisis when she turns forty-one, disappointed in making no career progress for the last ten years of her life. She falls into a depression as no one around her understands what she's going through until she goes to a meditation course recommended by a friend. The place has "exactly the right level of pseudo-mystical nonsense" to appeal to Barbara and the instructor, Joyce, is effective at getting Barbara to relax and get into the meditation headspace. At the beginning of every session, Joyce has everyone give each other earnest compliments, which become more personal as the group gets to know each other. Barbara is especially taken by this practice as she experienced a lot of negativity behind the scenes in her comedy career, though she later learns that it's a common cult brainwashing method known as love bombing. After going to the course for three months, Joyce announces to the group that she wants them all to attend an all-expenses-paid spiritual retreat in the States. Although Barbara later admits that she should have known better, she is excited by the idea and soon arrives at the Divine Chain compound in Arkansas where she meets its leader, Claude Vilakazi. Claude teaches that throughout history, there were ten "links" in the form of great spiritual teachers such as Buddha or Jesus who were "the manifested will of humanity to understand and better itself". Claude claims to have seen a vision of the coming of the Eleventh Link. Barbara sells her belongings and works in the Divine Chain fields, as they produce rice wine to sell to the outside world. Eventually, Joyce and some others find a sick dog in the fields, but "we couldn't help but love it" and they take it to Claude who also falls in love with it and names it 'Agape' before taking it into his private room. Barbara doesn't see Agape again, "but that was the moment when things started to get really weird". A few days later, Claude announces that he had another vision of the Eleventh and to prepare for its coming they need to "achieve a state of pure love", and so he sets a new rule that every time they encounter another person, they must say that they love them and really mean it. After a week of this, Barbara tells a woman she loves her as they pass by each other, but the woman suddenly grabs her and intensely replies "I don't believe you". Barbara is shaken and says it again, noticing that the woman's eyes have turned "yellow and sickly" before the woman leaves without another word. The rice wine starts to quickly go bad, already being rancid after the brewing. Claude dismisses it since "the Eleventh was so close". The rotten wine is never disposed of and so its odor spreads throughout the compound. Barbara notices that the other higher-ups in the Divine Chain touch each other much more than before, and when they touch her she resists the urge to shy away as they look sick. Finally, Claude tells everyone that the Eleventh has come at last, but no one seems excited. Claude wonders aloud "who was going to be the first to meet them", and as he walks among the crowd he chooses Joyce. Everyone forms a human chain with Joyce at the front, and though Barbara is too far back to see what happens when Joyce enters Claude's private room, but she feels a sensation pass down the line, "warm and slick, and seemed to flow through my body like oil and out into the ground". Barbara is sickened but everyone else looks joyful. Every day from then on, Claude chooses one person to enter his private chamber and meet the Eleventh and they perform the same human chain ritual. As more and more people enter the room and never return, people start to become nervous that they won't get a chance to meet the Eleventh. Since Barbara can't relate, she starts to wonder if she really belongs with the Divine Chain. She decides to answer her question by sneaking in to see the Eleventh. As she creeps toward Claude's private room in the cover of night, she starts to smell an odor distinct from the rottng wine, something sweet "like overripe fruit or sugar that's cooked too long". Barbara reaches the door and as she moves to open it, she hears a sound from the other side of "dozens of limbs moving and stepping and shuffling in unison, then laughter, then weeping, then movement again". She then sees a greasy liquid pooling out from under the door, from which the sweet odor emanates. Feeling sick, Barbara backs away and bumps into Claude, who looks silently at her before saying "You do not belong here. You are not worthy of its love. Leave." Hurt and frightened, Barbara runs from the compound until someone finds her and takes her to the police for help. Barbara's story gets passed to some government agencies that are watching the Divine Chain, giving them enough probable cause to raid the compound. Barbara doesn't hear about what happens there until after meeting with a cult deprogrammer.

* CallBack: [[spoiler:Trevor and Julia finally found out that Jon took out Gerard Keay's page out of his book]].

* ShaggyDogStory: The Slaughter's ritual, The Risen War, fails without any outside intervention after the ''Nemesis'' sinks. Gertrude speculates that it was meant to be bombed to complete the ritual, and notes that if they had waited a couple of more years, they could have just sailed into Nagasaki harbor and gotten it done right.

Oliver tells the comatose Jonathan that he doesn't know why he was directed to come here, citing spiders in one's head and that it's "easier to just do what she asks". He explains that Jonthan is "not quite human enough to die, but still too human to survive" and that he has a choice. Before he can say more, Georgie enters and throws him out as she doesn't like the look of him. She then sees that Oliver left a recorder and as she runs to try to catch him, Jonathan starts to breathe.

After the death of Julian's father, he gets much closer with his mother and they establish a tradition of a yearly holiday, and they always go to mountain destinations for the breathtaking views. Due to his mother's age, they pick mountains that have rides to the top, some of which are cable cars. Julian is acrophobic and as such hates riding in cable cars but for his mother's sake he hides his fears. One year they go to Untersberg in Salzburg, Austria. Julian remembers how when the last time they were there he had to sit on the cable car floor when it shook to stop himself looking out the windows at the ground far below. To his relief, the cable car system looks like it's been upgraded since their last visit. Julian sees that there's only one other person in line for the cable car, an old man with a cane which he doesn't seem to actually be using. The three of them are brought into a car, and once the driver finishes his final checks and locks the door the car starts to move up. As the car moves, Julian tries to keep himself calm as he counts the minutes. His stomach turns when they slide over the support towers and off the other side. Six minutes in, shortly before they reach the final support tower, the cable car stops and Julian panics but tries to reassure himself. Julian sees the driver look annoyed and start to speak German into the control panel phone. Clouds envelop the car, obscuring the view of the ground below and the towers, giving the impression of hanging in an endless gray void. The old man chuckles and drops his cane, then suddenly walks to the door and opens it. The driver tries to stop him but is too late as the man winks at Julian before dropping out of the car and disappearing into the mist. The driver goes back to the phone and talks more urgently, when suddenly the car starts to move without his input. The car moves on and on without reaching the next support tower, then suddenly stops again. Julian and his mother both sit in silent terror as the driver tries and fails to contact someone. The driver then moves to close the door and Julian suddenly knows that he's about to be killed. Julian hears something crawling on the cables behind them and his mother screams as she looks at something behind him. The thing lands on top of the car and a "long, gray and completely inhuman" arm reaches down and pulls the driver out, and he disappears screaming into the void. Three knocks and a laugh come from the cable car roof, then Julian sees a green light on the control panel and slowly moves toward it, refusing to look toward the open door. Finally reaching the panel, Julian presses the button beside the light and the car moves foward again and soon the final support tower emerges from the distance, causing Julian to shed tears of relief. He and his mother refuse to ride the cable car back down the mountain. They end up talking to the police and the official story is that the driver had taken his own life, with no mention of the old man. Julian's acrophobia worsens and his mother refuses to acknowledge what happened.

Jonathan is unsettled by how much Simon Fairchild enjoys the terror and death he sows, with no indication of an overarching plan between the statments he's cropped up in.

Jonathan had previously hoped that the Institute's founder was innocent and that it had fallen to the Eye's power at a later time, but he now knows that to be untrue, and mentions that the Institute was founded exactly two hundread years prior in 1818, leading him to believe that something regarding the Eye is about to happen.

Jonathan tries to cut off his finger to obtain his anchor of flesh, but it instantly heals. Melanie finds him and explains that the bullet had stayed in her leg because she wanted it and not because of any power's influence, because it made her feel that her anger was okay and right to feel. After Jonathan explains his situation, he wishes out loud that he could have the Boneturner just pluck something out of him for the anchor. Melanie then takes him into the tunnels to meet with Helen, who has the Boneturner trapped in her hallways since the Flesh's failed siege on the Institute where Melanie was unable to kill him. They plan for Jonathan to enter and bargain with him to extract a rib in return for setting him free. Once inside, Jonathan tries to compell the Boneturner to tell him why the Flesh attacked but he demands payment in the form of another rib for him to keep, and Jonathan agrees.

Even before becoming the Boneturner, Jared is intimidating to those around him. An early growth spurt that gives him a physical advatage over other kids and the only friends he has are those too afraid to leave. When Jared starts to read ''The Boneturner's Tale'', he learns from it "about bones and flesh and muscle and blood, the bits of myself I actually knew and liked". He gains power from it and tries it out on his parents, but it doesn't go well so he runs away. He wanders looking for any jobs, usually in "get[ting] rid of people". Eventually other creatures approach him to try to recruit him for the Flesh's direct servitude, but he declines since he does well enough with reality as it is. In 2016 he starts getting letters from an anonymous source, usually with just a name, place and time. He decides to start following them and finds that they lead him to "very good bones". He continues obeying the letters until one instructs him to go to the Magnus Archives and kill the Archivist. Jared gathers some allies and crawls through the pipes into the Archives. They kill some people but are annihilated by "the skinny one" with a knife, saving Jared for last. He tries to reach into her but she slices off every hand he puts forth and he retreats through a door, entering the Distortion's hallways.

Adelard tells Gertrude that he believes a fifteenth Power is emerging after meeting with Professor Bernadette Delcour, an expert in eschatology. She rushed to Paris after hearing about the discovery of a hidden apartment belonging to Garland Hillier, a man from the mid-19th century who left the group that went on to become the Seventh-day Adventist Church after its founder incorrectly predicted the return of Christ. He went on to write several disliked pieces on philosophy, religion and atheism, the last of which was an essay called ''L'Avenir'' or ''The Future'' which theorized humanities destruction by a race of beings called the Inheritors. Hillier disappeared shortly after the publication. Bernadette gained access to the apartment as well as a photocopy of a journal found there in which he rambled about his 'new revelation' and gradually became more panicked until just repeating "The door is the door". Inside, Bernadette felt like she entered "a tiny pocket of another time" devoid of change, and the sounds of the street outside disappeared. Finding nothing of interest, Bernadette started to leave when she noticed that the door, which had been damaged by the renevators that discovered it, was now undamaged and the hallway was discolored and dirty. She tried to reassure herself until she got outside and found the street littered with desiccated corpses with expressions of "understanding not just of their death, but the end of everything they knew". Bernadette then saw the Inheritors, and though Adelard can't get a clear description of them from her she says "There is nothing done in the history of humanity that deserves the things that come after us." Bernadette remembered Hilliard's ranting "The door is the door", and ran back up to his apartment, barricading herself inside until she watched the door change back. Adelard doesn't think that there will be another chance to talk to Bernadette again as he can tell she will suffer the same fate as Hilliard. He explains to Gertrude that although Bernadette's experience has seeming hallmarks of the Spiral, the Lonely and the End, he can feel that it's something different, a fear not just of death but of total elimination and replacement. The Extinction. Adelard states that he will need Gertrude's help sooner or later to stop the Extinction from becoming a fully-developed Power, but until then he will continue to learn more about it.

Peter explains to Martin why he had him read this statement. As far as Peter knows, only two entities are without a ritual to manifest themselves: the Web because it likes the world as it is, and the End because its manifestation would result in the elimination of life and fear with it. The emerging Extinction, on the other hand, would thrive on that kind of world, and could possibly introduce new species that would then fear their own destruction. Peter is developing a plan to stop the Extinction from coming to be, involving "someone touched by Beholding". Peter confirms that this isn't a trick to get Martin to help perform the Lonely's ritual since Gertrude had already put a stop to that, delaying the next attempt by centuries. Peter reminds Martin that they made a deal for Peter to protect the Institute from the other power's forces, though he can't stop the people there from doing dangerous things of their own accord such as Jonathan entering the coffin. Peter then asks Martin why he put the recorders aroudn the coffin, and Martin explains that while he thought it might help Jonathan get out, he can't explain why he thought that.

Manuela remembers how her parents were zealous Christians and harshly judged and hated anything they deemed to be "unnatural". They despise Manuela's forging into science and education as they believe that only God was meant to know such things, and so Manuela cuts ties with them until they are on their deathbeds, at which point she returns to tell them of her religion, one that posits that the universe's natural state is of darkness, as "without light there is darkness, but without darkness there is nothing." She sees life itself as proof of this, both in the suffering it brings and its relative brevity in comparison to the endlessness of the universe. Manuela's studies are primarily in dark matter and dark energy, which seem impossible to exactly chart and measure and are most visible in the effects they have on other things. Eventually Manuela meets Maxwell Rayner and finds his teachings to be a blissful truth. When she hears him speak of a ritual to kill the sun, she readily offers her knowledge of dark matter and is assigned to create a "black star" to harness dark energy and give it form. She makes plans with Rayner and he manages to get Simon Fairchild and the Lukas family to collaborate on the ''Daedalus'' space station. Manuela can tell that the two astronauts sent by the other factions don't have similar motives to her, instead being "sent up there to suffer". In addition to them, Manuela has a man trapped inside a box to be a battery of fear for her experiments. Evenually Manuela succeeds in creating the Black Star and prepares it and the other astronauts for the return journey, which is easy enough as they have both been mentally broken by their respective ordeals, enough for them to not notice her prisoner screaming loud enough to break through the box's soundproofing.

Melanie leaves Daisy with Jonathan while he records the statement, and he inadvertently compells her to reveal that she's been going to therapy. Daisy tells Jonathan that she can't bear being alone anymore and insists that "you're not babysitting me".

Alison has always been enamored by special effects in movies but especially animatronics, something that can move under her control. This love leads her to work with special effects artist Neil Lagorio, who says he is "a puppeteer at heart". They become friends on the set of a B-movie titled ''Jewel of the Amazon'', and Alison notcies that although Neil isn't cruel "there was no warmth to him", like an animatronic. Neil divides everyone he meets into two groups based on whether they are worth his time, though it's often hard to tell in which group you stand. Alison recalls Neil inviting people she thought he hated to view original cuts of his films, though she notices "they never quite looked the same afterwards". After Alison has a child, she finds that life in the film industry is quite incompatible with being a full-time parent but she keeps in touch with Neil. He starts to suffer from a disease that stop him from finishing his final film, ''Dancer''. Alison decides to step in as Neil's caretaker when his disease becomes to difficult to deal with alone. Although Neil was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, Alison knows that it's something else as Neil doesn't degrade mentally and doesn't seem to be in pain, but simply looks as though he can no longer move willingly. Neil designs a sort of exoskeleton for himself to wear and a set of ropes and pulleys that would allow Alison to move him around his home like a puppet. Alison doesn't like it but Neil insists that this is what he wants and so Alison builds the system for him, and when she moves him around in it for the first time he looks to be truly happy. For years Alison and Neil live with this system, and they get so used to it that Alison hardly notices when the exoskeleton becomes fused to Neil's body. In mid-2012, a woman comes to visit. Thinking her to be a fan, Alison starts to tell her to wait while she talks to Neil but stops shen she she sees "a mass of white thread criss-crossing all over the side of her temple". The woman tells Alison to sit and she instinctively obeys and finds herself unable to even turn her head as Neil comes on his pulley system and calls the woman "Annabelle". Annabelle sends Alison to the screening room to watch Neil's original cuts "until we're all done here". As Alison walks she sees the system causing Neil to dance as he weeps tears of joy. When Alison finally comes out after watching the films, which she later learns she had been doing for five months, she finds that Neil is dead and tangled in his strings. Annabelle orders Alison to take Neil's original cuts and deliver them to the Magnus Institute.

Wallis is drafted to fight in World War II, but fears the thought of having to kill as he holds life of all kinds in high regard. Six months into his service, Wallis is captured and taken to the North Point prison camp in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, where he and his fellow soldiers suffer brutal treatment and torture, though not so terrible as the Chinese soldiers are put through. After spending four months in the prison camp, a kind of song starts to play in the night from outside the camp, starting as a drumbeat before escalating to a trumpet-like sound. All the imprisoned soldiers rise as the music grows and crowd around the windows to see an old ship in the water nearby. Wallis feels cold looking at it as he sees it to be made completely of iron, even the sails, and he reads the ship's name: ''Nemesis''. The prison camp's staff walk away from the prison towards the ship, and when they reach the water they begin to attack each other in a brutal slaughter. When the last of them stop moving, Wallis is horrified to hear his fellow prisoners cheer with "bloodlust and cruelty". With their captors all dead, the prisoners begin to make their own way towards the ''Nemesis''. Rowboats come from the ''Nemesis'' to ferry the soldiers, and Wallis sees the crew's mismatched and tattered uniforms from a variety of times and places. Once onboard the ''Nemesis'', Wallis can see that it is heavily damaged and shouldn't possibly be above the water. The ''Nemesis'' sails into the sea and the land disappears from view. The music starts to play again and the soldiers become agitated. Leonard, a kind and gentle friend of Wallis', suddenly grabs another soldier and with an inhuman cry starts to tear him apart, continuing to do so even after he is dead. The rest of the soldiers tap their feet to the music as they watch, then one of them rushes forward and attacks Leonard, killing him. One by one the soldiers kill and are killed in turn. The crew of the ''Nemesis'' grow more eager with each kill, and start to look expectantly at the sky before growing nervous as fewer and fewer soldiers remain. Wallis notices that the ''Nemesis'' is slowly sinking, and realizes that unlike the other soliders, the music is not infecting him with the need to kill. When the water washes over the deck, Wallis boards one of the rowboats and shoves off, the forlorn crew making no attempt to stop him. The ''Nemesis'' disappears into the depths and Wallis floats about for a few days until he is rescued by a ship belonging to one of the Allied powers. Wallis tells them everything that happened and is promptly discharged.

Jonathan explains to Basira about his failed attempt at Beholding. She gives him a statmente, one from Astronomer Royale John Flamsteed, explaining that she found it while doing research into the Dark, as John Flamsteed had nicknamed his hated assistant and successor Edmund Halley "Reimer". Basira implies that Halley is the man who became Maxwell Rayner.

Basira and Daisy tells Jonathan that Elias has escaped from prison, and he deduces that it must have something to do with Peter and Martin heading into the tunnels to find the "device".

Having just killed Gertrude, Jonah decides that her replacement must be marked by each Power over time. When the time came to decide, he was thrilled to find that Jonathan was already marked by the Web (#81: A Guest for Mr. Spider). "I even held out some small hope you had been sent by the Spider as some sort of implicit blessing on the whole project, and do you know what, I think it was." He decides to wait to see how Jonathan would react to something coming for him, ensuring that he wouldn't be ready for an attack as "if you couldn't survive a single encounter, you were unlikely to make it through all fourteen". When Jane Prentiss attacked, Jonah waited and watched while being ready to release the carbon monoxide at any time, and waited until Jonathan was in the process of being infested "to make sure you felt that fear all the way to your bones", and received the mark of the Corruption. (#39: Lost and Found) Jonah was pleased to see the Not-Them getting into the Institute as Jonathan would eventually confront it and receive the Stranger's mark, (#79: Hide and Seek) though he would have gotten it anyway from the Unknowing. (#119: Stranger and Stranger) When the Distortion first contacted Sasha, (#26: A Distortion) Jonah saw an opportunity to get the Spiral's mark on Jonathan, and so found Helen Richardson and steered her to him, which ended in Michael stabbing Jonathan (#47: The New Door). Future trips through the Hallways (#78: Distant Cousin, #101: Another Twist, #131: Flesh, #143: Heart of Darkness) only strengthened the Sprial's mark. Jonah didn't account for Jurgen Leitner meeting with Jonathan and had to silence him before he told Jonathan too much (#80: The Librarian), forcing Jonathan out into hiding. "I justified it to myself, saying I was going to have to send you out into the world anyway if you were to encounter more of the Powers, but I can't honestly pretend it wasn't a rather rash move." Jonah requested the police to have Daisy in charge of the murder investigation to eventually have her, a Hunter, confront him and give him the mark of the Hunt. (#91: The Coming Storm) Using the statements he sent to Jonathan, he was able to get him to meet with "avatars I thought were likely to harm you but probably would stop short of actually killing you", getting Jonathan the mark of the Desolation from Jude Perry (#89: Twice as Bright) and the mark of the Vast from Michael Crew (#91: The Coming Storm). Jonah made sure to employ Melanie at the Institute (#84: Possessive) when he recognized that she was marked by the Slaughter (#76: The Smell of Blood, #117: Testament), so that she would eventually pass that mark on to Jonathan. (#125: Civilian Casualties) Though Jonah was unthreatened by the Unknowing now that he knew it couldn't succeed, he still sent Jonathan to take it down as a test of his growing power (#119: Stranger and Stranger) and it ended up causing him to confront death and receive the mark of the End at just the right time that he wouldn't actually die but wouldn't suspect anything either. (#121: Far Away) "By this point, your abilities were coming along in leaps and bounds, and I was concerned that meeting face-to-face might end up with you Knowing something you shouldn't. I had initially planned to go into hiding, but when your colleagues surprised me with the police, well. It was simple enough to cut a deal." To get Jonathan the mark of the Flesh next, Jonah sent the letters to the Boneturner that led him to victims before coercing him into attacking the Institute though to Jonah's dismay he went before Jonathan was out of the hospital, however this ended up being resolved when Jonathan voluntarily went to the Boneturner and took the mark himself. (#131: Flesh) Once the coffin was delivered to the Institute (#128: Heavy Goods), Jonah sent Basira on a wild goose chase to make sure she wouldn't be there to stop Jonathan entering the coffin to rescue Daisy, thereby taking the mark of the Buried. (#132: Entombed) After this, he tricked Basira into thinking the People's Church were preparing for the Extinguished Sun in order to get Jonathan to Ny-Ålesund and to the Dark Sun, giving him the mark of the Dark. (#143: Heart of Darkness) Peter Lukas knew what Jonah was trying to do and was only persuaded to cooperate with the bet involving Martin, but of course he too was being manipulated into "giving you all the tools you needed to escape" and so Jonathan received the mark of the Lonely.

* GeniusBonus: The name Claude gives the dog, "Agápe", is a Greek word meaning "love".

John despises his rival Edmond Halley, who he has nicknamed "Reimer" after astronomer Nicolaus Reimer, rival to astronomer Tycho Brahe. Despite being a God-fearing man, John longs for revenge against Reimer and starts taking opportunities to stalk him when he departs from the Royal Society, though nothing eventful comes of it for almost a year before Reimer goes into a forest where he meets people with dark eyes who speak to him, and though John can't hear what they're saying "they had much impact upon Reimer, who would often stagger backwards as though struck". The people lead Reimer, and by extension John, to the darkest pool John has ever seen, underneath a forest canopy that blocks out the light of the moon and stars. John watches Reimer and the people perform what he describes as a pagan ritual, and he sees the water move as they chat. Terrified, John runs and later resolves to defeat Reimer and stop whatever scheme he is up to, and since he can't think of anyone he could go to for help he decides to do it alone. On May 2nd, 1714, John follows Reimer again and sees his opportunity to strike when Reimer proceeds to the dark pool alone. John reveals himself and calls to Reimer, listing his crimes. Reimer charges at John with an inhuman scream but John draws a sword and hits Reimer's leg. Reimer falls but still tries to attack, knocking John's sword away, and so John seizes Reimer and pushes his head into the dark pool, which is colder than anything he has felt before. John hold Reimer under the water until he drowns. Although John knows himself to be innocent of murder since it was self-defense, he still doesn't want to be found with the body and runs to hide in the trees and wait until he knows the coast is clear. The dark-eyed people soon arrive and find Reimer's body and they react more out of surprise then horror, "and the question they cast between them was that of what was to be done, for it seemed Reimer was vital to a task as yet unfinished." They carry the body away and John makes his escape, believing that to be the end of it. Months later, John is visited at his observatory by Isaac Newton, president of the Royal Society, and to John's shock and horror he is accompanied by Reimer. When Newton leaves, Reimer hangs back and takes John by the shoulders, but instead of attempting violence he expresses gratitude "for his life, for his freedom". John looks into Reimer's eyes and sees an unnatural darkness within. John writes to his colleague Abraham Sharp to warn him about Reimer.

Deborah's local community center starts to offer adult education classes, ranging from the basic things like dancing and yoga to more specialized classes like cheesemaking and even fire-eating. Deborah goes to a sculpting class where she finds that there are only three other people taking it, one of which is a nasty-looking man with a face that looks "like it was trying to escape his skull" who introduces himself as Gabriel. Deborah notices that while she and the other two people are listening to the teacher, Gabriel is fiddling with the clay and not paying attention. The things he makes with the clay are strange as well. During a class where they are meant to be making a fish, Gabriel makes something that loops back on itself. Deborah wonders why the instructor lets Gabriel get away with this when he is more insistent with the rest of them on sticking to the day's plans. Eventually, Gabriel sees Deborah watching him and carries his creation over to her, asking if she could help him with it. Deborah watches the figure in his hands start to squirm and it makes a sound "like a scream hear through water". Deborah screams and falls off her stool, and while the rest of the class comes over to help her, she sees Gabriel go back to his table and say to himself "What an excellent idea, an excellent direction indeed." Deborah stops going to the class, letting the instructor know by email that she experienced "inappropriate behavior from one of the other students", but when she goes to a salsa class the next week she finds herself entering the sculpting workshop, which had supposedly always been at that time and place. The instructor welcomes Deborah back, though she sees that Mary, one of the other students, is not there. The instructor explains that they're doing faces today, and although Deborah asks if that's too advanced for them he assures everyone that they have talent and that "all faces were twisted on the inside, and all you had to do was reach into the deepest part of yourself and put that twisted on the outside of the clay, and as soon as you can scream you'll have your own face staring back at you." Deborah is unnerved by this while Gabriel looks excited. Deborah gives it her best effort and makes something somewhat resembling a face. Looking around she sees that Bill has made Mary's face while Gabriel has made a surreal, distorted thing which he tells her is the face of a friend of his who has no name. Deborah sees Bill start to eat his sculpture. Deborah goes to the final sculpting class which has somehow taken the place of a watercolor class she had intended to go to. The room has become larger, the instructor is singing something Deborah can't make out, and Bill is now made of clay with Gabriel working away on him. Gabriel sees Deborah and grabs her hand, thanking her for being "the best assistant he could have asked for". Deborah watches Gabriel's face push further from his skull and distort, and she sees clay inside it. She feels his fingerprints swirling around on her hand, which leave permanent marks. Deborah runs away and tells herself it didn't happen as she sees Bill and the instructor again, though they don't make eye contact anymore. A week before Deborah gives her statement to the Institute, she gets a letter from Gabriel inviting her to assist him at his new job at a place called Sannikov Land, which doesn't exist. Deborah decides not to go.

* DidntSeeThatComing: Whoever hired Breekon and Hope to deliver the coffin apparently never expected the recipient to actually not open it, like the subject of "Do Not Open" managed to do. As such, B&H were forced to lug the coffin around until the Unknowing attack since it was a package without a destination.

Angie starts by explaining how her friend Greg Cox is so laid-back that he never tries to get himself out of unhealthy relationships. He gets a new client for his freelance web developer job who is full of red flags and very unclear about what they actually want. Greg goes to meet the client in person, and afterwards he tells Angie that the client was a thin woman with the side of her head stitched up, who was just as vague in person as she was in the email and had Greg drink a latte which he normally dislikes. Greg never tells Angie the clients name but always acts like he has. Greg makes the client's website from scratch in two days, which is very barebones aside from the name "Chelicerae" at the top. The URL is "a long string of numbers and letters with no pattern or reason to them". Every few weeks, Greg's client contacts him to change the domain name to another gibberish URL as well as things to be added to the code, though Greg says they don't resemble any coding language he knows. After some time he starts to get "unsettling email[s]" asking him to "make it stop". Greg tells Angie not to worry, but she looks up Chelicerae online and finds it to be an internet urban legend, with paranormal articles about it and links that no longer work. The articles say that if you make a new thread with the title being "the name of someone you want dead", then you get a reply asking for a story about "a horrible event that had happened to you, or someone that you loved", and if the story "satisfied the story-spinner" then that person would die. Greg assures Angie that it's not true and that the site has never had any visitors or posts, but he still gets lots of emails begging him to "bring them back". Greg becomes more stressed and stops cleaning his home, with more cobwebs appearing. One night when Greg and Angie are walking home from a pub, they hear a voice asking for help. Seeing the figure the voice came from, Greg approaches them and offers some change and they grab his wrist with a bony, hairy appendage. Greg leaps back and pulls the figure out into the light and Angie sees it to be something formerly human but now crawling with spiders which now pour from its eyes and mouth. Angie sees its lips forming the words "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, tell her I'm sorry". They get away from the thing and Angie wants to go to the police but Greg forbids it.
->'''Angie:''' I don't know what do think. Greg's my best friend, but I might have to stop seeing him. He's still working on that site, updating the domain name, still pasting gibberish into the code. I think he might be part of something really awful, and I don't know how to make him see that. If I had a little bit more courage I might just hang around a few message boards I know, waiting for a link to the Chelicerae, waiting to post a name that might end it. I've got a story for it, all right. But I won't. I'm just too much of a coward I suppose. So I guess I'm telling it to you instead. For all the good that'll do.

Terrance and his parter Carla on en route to investigate a break-in when they pass through the small village of Lancraig. Carla sees something and has Terrance stop the car, and they get out to see pub owner Callum [=McKenzie=] standing in a field and impaled with a pitchfork. He turns to them as they approach, holding the handle of the pitchfork and grinning. He charges at them, ignoring their shouts to stop, and so Terrance grabs onto the pitchfork to stop him. Callum tries to swipe at Terrance with shards of glass stuck in his hands, pushing himself further onto the pitchfork tines as he does so. Terrance hears something tear in Callum's body and he collapses, now gushing blood from his wounds. Terrance tries to help Callum but he still tries to attack until he finally dies. Terrance runs back to the car to radio to the police station but he only hears static and faint bagpipes. Terrance goes back to Carla and she points to a nearby cottage with blood around the door. They quietly approach, hearing only sheep. Inside they find an elderly woman in a rocking chair, stabbed through the throat, and before her are two dead men, having torn each other apart before having their throats cut. They find a woman in the kitchen with broken glass in her neck and her head burned in the oven. Carla runs outside to vomit while Terrance sees self-inflicted wounds on the dead woman's arm. Carla returns and they follow the carnage to another cottage where they find the remains of all the other villagers. Terrance calls out for any survivors but hears only the sheep and the faint bagpipes. They find the body of a woman who ran a library van, holding a blank and bloodstained book that she had torn in half. Police backup arrives as the radio problems had only been on Terrance's side. The deaths are covered up as a drunken brawl and Terrance moves to a place where he won't be hearing bagpipes.

* EverybodysDeadDave: The entire village of Lanncraig killed each other, or themselves.

Jonathan recalls Gabriel as the Worker in Clay, one of the Spiral's servents mentioned by Michael (#101: Another Twist). He recovered a notebook from Gertrude's storage unit which he had found previously (#113: Breathing Room) but forgotten about in the rush to stop the Unknowing, but even with his abilities as the Archivist he cannot understand it as it's a jumble of numbers and words that would have meant something only to Gertrude. Jonathan mentions that Melanie refuses to see him again but hopes that extracting the bullet will be beneficial to her. Jonathan then discusses the tape recorders that have been appearing around the Archives since his return, and he decides to let them record what they will as it's been useful in the past. Jonathan researched Deborah and finds that shortly after her statement, Mary's body was found in her basement and Deborah has been in prison ever since.

A tape recorder starts to record Martin doing admin work, which he notices and asks it if it really wants to listen to something so mundane and hypothesizes that it missed Jonathan. Peter Lukas materializes and confronts Martin about talking to Jonathan, explaining that while he's not angry it is imperitive that Martin isolate himself for "the sort of power" he needs for the important thing they're working on. Peter explains that he's collected some statements from Adelard Dekker from the Archives, which "should provide you with all the context you need." Martin doesn't like having to keep all these secrets from Jonathan, but Peter assures him that eventually he won't want to tell him anything and he'll be safe in the end.

The recording begins in Jon's hospital room. The only sound is the ticking of a clock before the door opens and Martin comes in. He starts to tell Jon about how things have been at the Archives in the last few months - bad - before stopping himself. He begins to plead with Jon, telling him that everyone needs him, especially Martin, and begs him to use any power at his disposal to wake up. Matrin is about to break down crying when his phone buzzing startles him, and he gets up to answer it.

Breekon and Hope start out during a plague in the Middle Ages where they go from village to village, collecting the corpses of the dead, and they are the ones who bring death. Sometime later they stow away on a military ship to Australia, and when the quartermaster discovers that they aren't on the manifest they kill him and take over the ship, ferrying prisoners from Millbank prison. Later they work on a train, though they don't like it since there are too many people looking forward to bright prospects. They find "a thrumming silk-wrapped thing of the spider" in some luggage and lure a woman to it where she is consumed by it. Later they get a car after killing the previous owners and do deliveries for an auction house, and most of the items have supernatural powers including a knife recovered from the trenches which instantly kills the person they deliver it to. After that they end up joining the Circus of the Other, where they are "among our own kind at last" and help with transportation as well as occasionally joining the act as strongmen. They witness Gregor Orsinov create the Dancer, putting the remains of Joseph Grimaldi into it before it kills him and takes his surname. When Nikola Orsinov loses the ancient gorilla pelt, Breekon and Hope leave the Circus and start to drive a lorry, aimlessly picking up hitchhikers who die in the back. They find Alfred Breekon's delivery service and take it over, but still long for purpose and end up meeting John who thinks he can control the coffin, though he ends up getting consumed by it instead. Since he hired them to transport the coffin, they still take it and become its new owners, becoming bound to it. They still have the coffin when Nikola recruits them back to the Circus for the Unknowing. When Daisy kills Hope, Breekon feeds her to the coffin to punish her to live forever inside without any prey to hunt.

Barbara has a mid-life crisis when she turns forty-one, disappointed in making no career progress for the last ten years of her life. She falls into a depression as no one around her understands what she's going through until she goes to a mediation course recommended by a friend. The place has "exactly the right level of pseudo-mystical nonsense" to appeal to Barbara and the instructor, Joyce, is effective at getting Barbara to relax and get into the mediation headspace. At the beginning of every session, Joyce has everyone give each other earnest compliments, which become more personal as the group gets to know each other. Barbara is especially taken by this practice as she experienced a lot of negativity behind the scenes in her comedy career, though she later learns that it's a common cult brainwashing method known as love bombing. After going to the course for three months, Joyce announces to the group that she wants them all to attend an all-expenses-paid spiritual retreat in the States. Although Barbara later admits that she should have known better, she is excited by the idea and soon arrives at the Divine Chain compound in Arkansas where she meets its leader, Claude Vilakazi. Claude teaches that throughout history, there were ten "links" in the form of great spiritual teachers such as Buddha or Jesus who were "the manifested will of humanity to understand and better itself". Claude claims to have seen a vision of the coming of the Eleventh Link. Barbara sells her belongings and works in the Divine Chain fields, as they produce rice wine to sell to the outside world. Eventually, Joyce and some others find a sick dog in the fields, but "we couldn't help but love it" and they take it to Claude who also falls in love with it and names it 'Agape' before taking it into his private room. Barbara doesn't see Agape again, "but that was the moment when things started to get really weird". A few days later, Claude announces that he had another vision of the Eleventh and to prepare for its coming they need to "achieve a state of pure love", and so he sets a new rule that every time they encounter another person, they must say that they love them and really mean it. After a week of this, Barbara tells a woman she loves her as they pass by each other, but the woman suddenly grabs her and intensely replies "I don't believe you". Barbara is shaken and says it again, noticing that the woman's eyes have turned "yellow and sickly" before the woman leaves without another word. The rice wine starts to quickly go bad, already being rancid after the brewing. Claude dismisses it since "the Eleventh was so close". The rotten wine is never disposed of and so its odor spreads throughout the compound. Barbara notices that the other higher-ups in the Divine Chain touch each other much more than before, and when they touch her she resists the urge to shy away as they look sick. Finally, Claude tells everyone that the Eleventh has come at last, but no one seems excited. Claude wonders aloud "who was going to be the first to meet them", and as he walks among the crowd he chooses Joyce. Everyone forms a human chain with Joyce at the front, and though Barbara is too far back to see what happens when Joyce enters Claude's private room, but she feels a sensation pass down the line, "warm and slick, and seemed to flow through my body like oil and out into the ground". Barbara is sickened but everyone else looks joyful. Every day from then on, Claude chooses one person to enter his private chamber and meet the Eleventh and they perform the same human chain ritual. As more and more people enter the room and never return, people start to become nervous that they won't get a chance to meet the Eleventh. Since Barbara can't relate, she starts to wonder if she really belongs with the Divine Chain. She decides to answer her question by sneaking in to see the Eleventh. As she creeps toward Claude's private room in the cover of night, she starts to smell an odor distinct from the rottng wine, something sweet "like overripe fruit or sugar that's cooked too long". Barbara reaches the door and as she moves to open it, she hears a sound from the other side of "dozens of limbs moving and stepping and shuffling in unison, then laughter, then weeping, then movement again". She then sees a greasy liquid pooling out from under the door, from which the sweet odor emanates. Feeling sick, Barbara backs away and bumps into Claude, who looks silently at her before saying "You do not belong here. You are not worthy of its love. Leave." Hurt and frightened, Barbara runs from the compound until someone finds her and takes her to the police for help. Barbara's story gets passed to some government agencies that are watching the Divine Chain, giving them enough probable cause to raid the compound. Barbara doesn't hear about what happens there until after meeting with a cult deprogrammer.

* DisposableVagrant: Tova's second victim is a young, fairly fit but [[TheAlcoholic alcoholic]] homeless man, whom she picks because she figures that he is in good physical shape and is drinking himself to death anyway.

* DoubleMeaningTitle: Simon is here to talk about the "big picture", ie, fighting the birth of the Extinction, but he also ends up explaining his origin story, which involves a [[IncrediblyLamePun large painting]].

* OutDamnedSpot: A variation; when the Worker in Clay shakes Deborah's hands, his spiralling, moving fingerprints leaves marks on her hands that she can't get rid of no matter how she scrubs.

* {{Troll}}: Annabelle apparently broke into the Institute (inasmuch as the Spider's avatar has to break in anywhere) ''just'' so she could steal stationary and some tapes to set up a little tableau for Jon and co. when they came to Hilltop Road. She also spends most of the beginning of her statement making fun of Jon.

* BaitAndSwitch: Given the name and who showed up ''last'' time, you'd expect the End to be involved. It's actually about Lorell's progressive delusion that certain people around her are [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie philosophical zombies]], and [[spoiler: the Stranger attacking her using it.]]