Chapter 17: Going in Circles

The danger from the Bridgewater Triangle escalates. Jeremy and Thomas finally speak openly before being interrupted by an unexpected presence.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bridgewater is a production of I Heart Radio three D
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(00:23):
What what? What is it? What hear? What the hell
is that? What is it? Is it? A bear? A
bear in the swamp? I think that's in the cooler.
I told you we should have brought it inside with us.
We barely have enough room as it is. Can you

(00:46):
just what scare it off? Oh my god, Okay, okay, fine, fine, yeah, yeah,
I'm sure it's just it's just, oh my god, what
is it? That is not a berry? The surviving camper

(01:53):
does not appear to be seriously injured aside from a
large hand friend shaped group. The camper claimed they were
attacked by quote a huge, hairy bigfoot. An official from
the Department of Parks and Recreations then this is the
first very related death in the area since and would
caution visitors to always keep an eye out for wildlife

(02:14):
and camping, and to not leave smoked out they can't
attract animals. As for any big food dangerous, well, it
would see the first time when someone made that claim.
You're in tok box. Yes, Peyton Blake, you must be

(02:38):
vipping Corona. Thank you for meeting me. Yeah. Well, Jeremy
assured me he wasn't just sending the B team to
chat because he couldn't be bothered. So I assume you
know what you're talking about. Wow, Okay, that is hostile
way to introduce yourself to someone. Excuse me for being blunt,

(02:58):
but there aren't a lot of people that I trust
with discussing these matters openly, but you trust Jeremy here.
Your first meeting was a bit of a I understand
Jeremy's stake in all of this. He's connected to the
other side, whether he likes it or not. You I
don't know or the nature of your interest in this.

(03:20):
I'm getting my PhD in mythology and I've just discovered
that magic and monsters are real? Is that a good
enough reason? So? Academic curiosity is why you wanted to
talk to me. The truth is why I wanted to
talk to you. Why did you want to talk to
Jeremy to get him to accept the truth that Thomas
needs to go back into the what did you call it?

(03:43):
The liminal? That Jeremy is in possession of a gift
that was never meant to be given. Okay, I know
we're still not totally sold on her, but it really
seems like we'd be dead if it wasn't for Peyton. Really,
I thought you were perfectly capable of fighting big monsters. Look, look,

(04:06):
I'm sorry about the other day. Okay, I shouldn't have
been so hard on you. No, I get it. You've
been a cop your whole life, and you probably see
what I do is frivolous. It clearly isn't. Your knowledge
about this stuff might save our lives. It might save
my life. Yeah, well it didn't serve me any good
against that Howler. Well god, I mean, there have been
sightings a bigfoot for years around here, but there never

(04:28):
been a death. It's just these scattered bits of evidence
over time, what kind of evidence, like I don't know,
you know, large bipedal footprints, which obviously plenty of hoaxers
who created in the past in order to drum out
press or attention and just for the sheer joy of
pranking people. But now, but now, all of it feels
like an indicator of something much much more dangerous than
any popular conception of a sad squatch. I don't understand

(04:51):
how it could have come back so quickly from the
other side. I don't either. Maybe Peyton didn't banish it
properly or funk, I don't know. Maybe the fay Realm
is able to send it right out again. It's I
could Those ruined carvings are the only protection we have
right now. So if they barely give us any time
to breathe, and there's also no reason to think that
there's only one of these monsters. Is that supposed to

(05:11):
be comforting? If if, if, if we can't spend all
of our time waiting for the worst thing to happen.
The worst has happened. Jeremy, someone is dead. Listen. I'm
just saying, we have to look at what's right in
front of us, Okay, we have to gather as much
information as we can right now. Vippen is talking to Peyton,

(05:31):
Anna and Olivia are Is Vippen talking to Peyton? What?
What do you mean that she's trying to get more
specifics from her on what the gathering might know. I
think she told us everything that she knows. He shouldn't
have bothered with her. Well, she actually reached out to me.
She wanted to talk to me for some reason. What why,
I don't know. I don't know. So I told her
that she could say whatever it was to Vippen and
he wanted to meet her anywhere. Are you okay? What's

(05:53):
going on? I'm fine? Are you sure? You seem it's
just look, I don't want us running around in circles,
that's all. I just feel like we're going in circles.
I actually think the problem is we haven't found any circles. Oh,
you think you're funny to look. It was a long
shot anyways, but it shouldn't have been right. Like, we
know for a fact that Alden got lost somewhere around here,

(06:15):
and there's no way he could have wandered all the
way to Freetown. And Thomas said that Alden remembers walking
into a forest. So it's not like we combed through
every bush. Rehoba State Forest is like half a square mile. Okay.
We searched the whole thing, like I know, it was
eighty years ago, but I was hoping for something, a
circle of mushrooms, a weird path of flowers, out of
place tree, doorway to another world. What if it wasn't

(06:38):
even about the mushroom circle. Mushrooms grow in weird formations
all the time, and just because it's stuck out in
Alden's mind doesn't mean that's the way he got taken
in What if it was something even more innocuous, then
we might have walked right past the evidence and not
even known it exactly. I just I want to know

(06:59):
where the tracks are, because then I won't fall in Honny.
I don't think it's a straightforward as that live. You know,
you have to be willing, or you're supposed to be willing,
and you know well enough not to go following strange
voices in the woods. Yeah, except that's all we're actually doing.
I was starting to think maybe there was some kind
of Ragi Hoskins family curse. But maybe it's just the

(07:22):
way we are, like something in our blood that makes
us want to walk right into places we shouldn't. I
don't think that's just a Bradshaw Hoskins straight Plenty of
folks would say the exact same thing about me. Yeah,
so we've got a doubly bad first Thomas and Jeremy,
then Ethan. I mean, who's next. Jeremy didn't get taken,
but you don't think he's just wandered off to you. No,

(07:47):
the messed up thing is part of me wants to
see it, see what the other side. Oh live, Let mean,
come on, are you curious us? It's like Narnia, Evil Narnia.
I mean Narnia was kind of evil Narnia during the
whole Eternal Winter bit Live Live. I'm not saying I'm

(08:11):
gonna go doing a weird sacrificial ritual to try and
walk through the wardrobe or anything. I'm just saying that
impulse is there. Maybe that's why our family has been
so easy to lure, because there's something in us that
already wants to go. But people don't even get to

(08:31):
the other side. They get stuck in between. And I
think we both know that that's not an enviable fate. Now,
people don't get to the other side as far as
we know. But it's not like you can send it
text back and say hey, I'm in fairy Lamb. They
got great food here, never coming back, so we would
never know text. It was a joke. No, no, I know,
but it made me think there's a question we haven't

(08:55):
been asking. All right, fine, you've got questions, ask them.
How does the Gathering know about the Fayrell, about the Deal,
about any of it. It's the whole reason the Gathering exists.
What the Gathering is just the most current iteration of

(09:19):
a community that's been an operation in one form or
another for centuries, stewards of the gate between worlds. You're
telling me there's an exclusive club that's been around for
hundreds of years that controls mystical forces. You know how
that sounds, right? I do. And it's not like that.
There's no controlling this thing. There's just knowledge. Oh and

(09:44):
human sacrifice to some kind of other worldly force that
has to be appeased for the last time. It is
not human sacrifice. Oh, so the Gathering is the one
group in the entire world who knows about magic, and
it's entirely up to them to keep the tenuous veil
from ripping open and unleashing some kind of fairy chaos.

(10:05):
Do you want me to tell you what I know?
Or do you just wanted to ride my work and
get out whatever frustration that's pent up? Okay, you have
to understand that this is all a bit well, I mean,
you weren't born knowing the stuff, right, At some point
you have to be told. That's true, but I was

(10:25):
told so young that it feels like I basically was
born with this knowledge. My father was the Virginia chapter
leader before me. I've been going to gathering meetings my
whole life. Saw a snally gaster for the first time
when I was twelve, learned about the deal. When I
was sixteen, you saw a snally caster, a real snally Custer,

(10:49):
like the reptile bird thing with the tentacles and all, Yeah,
what did you? I mean, how how did you kill it?
My dad did? The veil there gets really weak at
random times and places. It's even more fickle than here,
or at least it had been. So it wasn't like
there was something wrong with the liminal. No, our rituals

(11:12):
have moved like clockwork for at least the last century.
But that's not the only way stuff slips through. Too
much occult or pagan activity, everything from wickens doing their
normal practice and not realizing it's having side effects, to
a group of people on a ghost tour that are
buying into the stories a little too much. It can
all leave the door. Ajar, Wait, so are you saying

(11:36):
that the gate is opened by belief and closed by
belief as well. Why do you think there were so
many reports of the supernatural in the past. It was
more accepted, more people actually believed, so more stuff bled through.
Chicken and egg, round and round. What It's just, it's ridiculous,

(12:01):
like clap if you believe in fairies and they'll stay alive,
that's true. I mean, Peter Pan got everything else wrong.
But all stories have a grain of truth in them, right,
even if it's a really tiny grain of truth. I
I wanted to believe before, before I knew any of

(12:25):
it was real. I really wanted to believe, to experience
something that defied explanation, and then to be the one
to find the explanation. You didn't break the gates wide open.
Don't worry. One person can't do all that much except
close the gate by giving themselves over to the liminal. Yeah,

(12:49):
except that, I don't get it if the gathering knows
all of this wide and Celeste just tell us, and
how did she get the ritual wrong? Secrets are order
to keep the more people you tell only gathering leadership
is told the truth by the outgoing leaders, and chapters
don't communicate as much with each other as we should.

(13:10):
But Celeste was a leader. Something something went wrong here, Yeah,
no kidding. From what I understand, things sort of fractured
here in the seventies. Yeah, there was an offshoot, the
Children of Titchiba. They were more on the side of

(13:30):
propping the door open for good. That happens, that happens
bad leaders have been chosen. Sometimes someone finds out about
the other world and kind of loses it, And that's
what you think the Children of Tichibo was. I think
after the children, everything here broke down. No one knew

(13:54):
how things were supposed to go. So when it came
time to keep the fay Realm happy, no one knew how. Okay,
But how does that work? If all it takes is
one person to not pass down the information for everything
to go hey wire, then how are we not constantly
on the verge of collapse? Who says we aren't think

(14:16):
about it? There are still sightings and encounters all over
the world all the time. People see Bigfoot, they think
they've been abducted by aliens. Boats disappear at sea, kids
go missing. Most of the time those things are the
result of human behavior or cruelty, but sometimes sometimes it's

(14:40):
the other side. Bleeding through. And how many of these
gates are in the world? Does every state have them?
Every country? I have no idea. I know I seem
like I'm an expert, but I'm not. I'm an expert
in my area, and I'm tapped in just enough to
know that something was really wrong up here. But there

(15:02):
is so much of the picture that I don't see right.
But what about your dad. I'm assuming he's retired now,
but he must have learned a lot when he was
a leader. He's not retired, he's gone. Oh, I'm so sorry.
We knew it was coming. He was sick. No, he left.

(15:27):
That's how it works in Virginia. Becoming leader of the
gathering means eventually stepping into the liminal. What so he
was the volunteer. Yeah, it's cleaner that way. The secret
gets kept and no one ends up in a place

(15:47):
they don't want to. The leader gets to prepare their
successor before they go, and they know they'll eventually be
replaced in the liminal. Replaced What does that mean? It's
a temporary center and they move on, move on where
that I definitely don't know. Maybe just death, whatever that is.

(16:15):
My dad always thought it meant going over to the
other side completely, living in the Kingdom. I think he
liked the idea of being in a magical world, monsters
and all. I'm kind of hoping for disappearing entirely. I
don't know that I'm on board for eternal life in

(16:35):
some other place. You you're the replacement. So the story goes, what,
why in the world would you agree to that. I
get to live a full life before then, have a
family if I want, mentor someone protect the world, and

(17:00):
I'm going to die anyway, so this is just adding
a pit stop. Thomas said it didn't feel like forty years.
It felt shorter. It's unclear. I think he couldn't tell.
I think sometimes it felt endless with that because he
didn't age. It also felt like no time at all.
But I'm sure it's different for every person. Well, he's

(17:23):
the only one who's ever come out after going in,
so he's probably the best source of intel I'm going
to get. Look, I know you want him to go back.
I don't want anything except for the deal to be
honored and the gate to be shut. Someone else wants
to go in, they are more than welcome to. But

(17:44):
what kind of life could he have now, Really, he's
been declared dead for decades. He can't undeclare himself without
becoming some sort of government pincushion. And people steal identities,
you know, sure, But then what he watches his son
most likely die before him. He loses his wife before

(18:06):
he's even fifty. They never actually got married, and and Thomas,
I mean, that's not my point. And they seem pretty
till death do us part regardless, and one of their
deaths is going to come a lot sooner than the others.
But he barely got to live the first time. He

(18:28):
has a daughter and a grandson. He has never met
a son who's grown up without him, and that will
never not be a tragedy. But he can't get it back.
Even if he had the whole happy family unit in place,
he would never get that time back. So I was

(19:12):
thinking maybe tonight you and I could go out, grab
a beer, get a burger somewhere. Uh. I have thought
that you would want to go back to Anne and
and and share what we found. And I think we
can take one night off without the world ending. Well
that's a very different tune from what you were singing earlier. Look,
I just I don't know how much time I have that. Please,

(19:32):
please don't talk like that. No matter what happens, I
want to make sure to spend time with my son.
Maybe we can even make it a new tradition. Pick
a place, go there every week, just the two of us.
That does sound good, That sounds great. It'll take a
while for me to catch up on all that I've missed.
I want to hear about California and Oxford and and
she's everything. Really, Uh god, I don't know where to start.

(19:57):
I mean, honestly, there's not a lot to tell. I'm
afraid I spent most of my time in California and
Oxford in class. Well, I want to hear all about it.
Maybe I could even come out to one of your lectures. Yeah,
that might have to wait. My students this semester are
are well aware enough of who you are that I'm
not sure that they'd be fooled with your updated haircut. Fine, Nick, semester. Then,

(20:19):
and in the meantime, you can tell me what you
do outside of teaching, you mean, like now present day? Yeah,
we still have about a half a mile. Uh Yeah.
I go to conferences sometimes I meet with other academics
swap research. Um, I don't know. There's usually some kind

(20:40):
of faculty gathering once a semester um, but you know,
school and uh, I've been working on the book. So
these things to keep me pretty busy. How about friends? Uh?
Not a girlfriend? Huh? Oh yeah, I've never been much

(21:00):
of a I don't know. I guess I'm not a
super social person. And and dating it just always have
felt like it's too I don't know, it's more trouble
in his worth. Dating must have changed. You never wanted
to get married have a family. I just never. I

(21:24):
haven't met anyone that I had interest in sharing my
whole life with. And I don't think I would honestly
make a very good father. Uh what about you? What
I mean, God, you must be dying for human interaction
after having spent forty years with a kid. I've always
loved kids before. You were my favorite person to spend

(21:47):
time with. M I was a baby, I was, I
was a toddler. I mean it's not not not famously
good demo for conversations. You were wonderful, curious, You're funny,
always loving, You were so open, so giving kids off
an arm. But it was like nothing scared you, kind

(22:10):
of like nothing could hurt you. I have this like
memory of of just a feeling so safe when I
was with you, And now, um, I'm not sure what
you mean. Did I then what happened? Um? You're not

(22:35):
that open and trusting boy anymore. I mean, from what
you just said, you've kept yourself guarded alone. It feels
like that's because I left. Well first of all, that
you didn't leave. But it's still my fault. Isn't it

(22:57):
that you don't have a full life, that you're unhappy?
WHOA who said I'm not happy. My life is plentiful.
Just because it doesn't look the same as yours or
what you may be expected for me doesn't mean that
I'm not fulfilled. So you are fulfilled. You're not lonely
or wanting. Yeah, I mean, of course there are things

(23:18):
that I want or or ways that things could be better.
But you didn't condemn me to some life of misery
because you don't because you because you went missing. Plenty
of people grow up without two parents and they turn
out just fine. I know I was one of them,
but that's not It wasn't just about me going away.

(23:40):
It was the way it happened. I don't know what
you want me to say here, Dan, growing up with
people telling me that my dad was killed by occult
wasn't traumatizing. I can't say that. And it did shape
the person who I am today. But there is no
way for me to know what I would have become

(24:01):
if you had stayed around. I mean, god, if if
I had been raised by you, and and which is
what would have happened? Right? Your mother and I we
were figuring out shared custody, but yes, I mean the
plan was for you to live with us. Look, none
of this matters right now, not really. Because I grew

(24:25):
up the way I grew up. I am the person
I am now, and there's nothing that any of us
can do to change that unless we I don't know
if I figure out how to use magic to time
travel or something. But until that time, we are stuck
with what we have. And that's just fine, okay, I
just I don't want your life to be fine, Jeremy.

(24:47):
Then stay, don't listen to Peyton, don't don't try to
do something selfless. Just stay, stay and help me figure
this out. I already promised you I would, But I
also promised Alden. I would get him out right. Then
we'll figure that out too, Okay, come on, we gotta

(25:08):
keep going. And for the record, I'm not I'm not lonely. Okay,
Olivia said that Vippen is probably your closest friend. The funk.
Why are you and Olivia talking about my social life.
I'm curious about you, Jeremy. I don't want you to
be isolated. I'm not. Vippen is a good friend to me. Yeah,
we worked together, but I also like to think that

(25:30):
we get along too. I had. I had a great
catch up just now with Sophie where you talked about
the fay realm, that BLUs. There's this legend trip that
I just met. She's becoming a friend, actually, honestly, the
fastest friend I've made in years. We've got similar interests
and she's I don't know, she's easy to talk to.
She seems to understand me, which for whatever reason, it's

(25:51):
a little bit rare. And anyway, the point is, I'm
just I really don't feel lonely, all right, all right,
I just never pictured you as a I don't know,
an eternal bachelor living with just his books for company.
Oh my god, that's a bit harsh. Don't you think
I'm not trying to criticize, really, no, I'm just I'm

(26:13):
trying to understand when look, when I was your age, Dad,
You've never been my age, literally, never been my age.
You're right, I just want you to be happy. Okay,
that's all. That's the only thing any parent wants. Then
can you please just accept that my happiest life might
look different from yours. No spouse, no kids, no job
that means carrying around a badge and a gun. I

(26:37):
like my life, and I I will be happy when
we figure out how to protect you. Okay, Okay, I

(26:58):
don't know why I wasn't the first thing we asked
him about. There's a lot going on, man. I think
you can be forgiven for not taking him down the
list of unanswered questions. But now we know, we know
it really was him on the answering machine. He found
a way to communicate somehow. So if if we figured
that out, we could figure out a lot about the
liminal exactly a trapped here, I've been trapped. Things are

(27:27):
thinning out, it's opening again. I think he was trying
to warn us. And when he first came out, he
said he was hearing so less voice, So maybe there's
a way to communicate to the liminal, not just from it.
Has he mentioned anything about that, No, he hasn't, but
like you said, there's been a lot to focus on.
So sure. But if he knows something about how all
this works and isn't telling us, well, I just we

(27:50):
should ask him. I guess. No, Thomas wouldn't knowingly keep
anything from us that would be useful, right, Yeah, no,
I know. Okay, So when he when he and Jeremy
get back from that camp site, we can play him
the message, ask him what he did to try to
get it out and what he meant by it, and
then maybe we can get word into Alden and coordinate

(28:11):
with him to try to break the deal somehow. He's seven,
well he's been seven for eighty years. I'm a feeling
he's more competent than your typical first grader. That's a
good point. Okay, So if we are able to communicate
with the in between, then and then maybe what the hell? Okay, okay,
just stay calm live. Is this what happened before? Yeah? Yeah,

(28:35):
and you're sure it's not an earthquake? Do you hear
that music? Yeah? You hear it right, it's a I
think it's coming from the other side. It has to be.
Do you mean the liminal No, the other side? All

(29:04):
right here we are, all right? Yeah, something definitely came
through here. Look how much brushes trampled. Some of that
could have been the campers. They got out of here
in a hurry. But we should look for any footprints
or fur or hair, anything that would give us an
indication of what attacked them, if it was the same
thing that almost attacked us, Not of human footprints the
regular kind. Yeah. Well, I'm no forensics expert, but those

(29:28):
look like two distinct shoe treads, and those would be
the campers. Thank God for bloody ground. Wait over here,
look at these deep punctures in the ground tent steaks. No, no, no,
look those are here. I recognize the formation from them
when I used to go camping with these five in
a row, like like whatever attacked that cow? Yeah? Did

(29:51):
the howler have five claws? Did? Did you get a
good look at it? I wasn't actually paying attention to
the fine details. And why would there be just claw prints?
There's no footprints? Well, the thing we saw standing was
on two legs so maybe it was on its toes basically,
you know, pushing its claws into the mud for leverage.
Right right, Wait here, there's two more prints with five

(30:11):
claws here too, Like it's front paws or something. Those
are much smaller than the hands we saw. God, it
might not even be the same animal. Hell, these prints
could just be from a regular old bear or something.
Every time we get to one of these crime scenes,
I just feel like I'm further away from all of it.
You're right, yeah, yeah, yeah, just the stiff bones. My

(30:32):
joints have been sold all day, shaking off the dust.
I guess, dad, what if? Wait? Maybe it's a shape shifter.
There's plenty of those in folklore, right, yeah, all kinds.
There's um did you hear that muck? Must be more campers?

(31:00):
M maybe there there, it's coming from over here. No, no,

(31:21):
it's it sounds like a woman. Yeah, there's something about it.
I can almost make around. Hello someone there? Wait you

(31:46):
contrasted son? Are you okay? Oh my god? Oh my god,
that's not possible. What's not possible? Hm? That voice? That voice?
I know that voice? What who is it? Celast? You

(32:15):
can chast? This episode of Bridgewater was written by Lauren
Shippen and directed by Brendan Patrick Hughes Assistant director Sarah Klein.

(32:36):
Sound designed by Vincent the Johnny rema Il Kayali, Josh Thane,
and Trevor Young, with music by Chad Lawson. Starring Misha
Collins as Jeremy Bradshaw, Melissa Ponzio as Anne Becker, Alan
Tutick as Thomas Bradshaw, Karen Sony as Vipen Corana, Sabra
May as Olivia Hoskins, Cheryl Umania as Officer Bautista, Will

(33:01):
Wheaton as Captain Haddock, Tricia Helfer as the Legend Tripper,
Stephen Guarino as Dr Edwards Nandamisu Demba as Peyton Blake,
Hilary Burton Morgan as Shelley Hoskins, Nicki McCauley as Celeste Then,
Victoria Grace as Katie Frank's with additional voice acting by

(33:22):
Greta Gould, Shelby Young, Adam oh Burn, Monty Markham, Charlie
Bergman and Tern Westbrook. Executive producers Aaron Manky, Misha Collins,
Lauren Shippen, Matt Frederick and Alexander Williams Supervising producers Josh
Thane and Trevor Young. Bridgewater was created by me Aaron
Mankey and is a production of Grim and Mild and

(33:44):
I Heart three D Audio. Learn more about the show
over at Grim and Mild dot com, slash Bridgewater and
find more podcasts from I Heeart Radio on the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows, and as always, thanks for listening.