Lost

October 1, 2024·27 min·2 clips

Malcolm Foy commands his acolytes to drink a mysterious substance, promising power and control over their domain.

The episode begins with a cold open from a recorded session: Malcolm Foy addresses his cult, the Divine Acolytes, instructing them to drink something and promising restored power. He singles out Chris, noting that Chris's father abandoned him to Malcolm's care. Malcolm then presses an unseen entity about when it will fulfill the other side of their bargain before the first lunar cycle concludes. The entity pushes back and Malcolm holds firm, promising everything will be provided as agreed. The tape cuts to Malcolm addressing Jeremy the host directly, noting it has been two weeks since their last contact. He taunts Jeremy about recording people without consent, deflects credit from Jeremy's past heroics onto Brianne, and methodically attacks Jeremy's identity as a good husband — invoking the moment Jeremy carved Malcolm's chest with a knife and questioning whether Jeremy's wife would feel safe knowing who her husband really is. Malcolm also implies Jeremy is responsible for getting Chris kidnapped. After the tape ends, Jeremy breaks down. He swears on air, catches himself, and then refuses to apologize — saying his son has been taken and he has every right to be angry. He describes two weeks of daily calls to Detective Anderson and a contact named Ron that have yielded nothing. Brianne's psychic efforts have stalled, Joseph Foy is unreachable, and Fourth Trumpet and Gerald Hubert are dead ends. Jeremy returns to a stash of unhoused magnetic tapes he found in the storage papers, working through them slowly with an old cassette player. Most sessions are useless, he says, either Malcolm's ravings or something that used to make Jeremy feel sympathy — but no longer. Jeremy plays another tape. In it, Malcolm speaks abstractly about roses: beautiful but mostly thorns, forgiven for the harm they cause, Shakespeare writing of their scent rather than their violence. He extends the metaphor to gardening as a symbol of hope — even from dirt and mire, a seed can become something desirable. He pivots to a memory of a boy inside the Hydra program he names Christopher. Hydra had been running experiments on the boy, who kept to himself. During a paired experiment involving lights that appeared and disappeared, when Malcolm smiled at Christopher, the boy's face went white and reality seemed to dissolve — replaced by a presence Malcolm calls the something else, invisible and terrifying, whispering just out of sight. Malcolm identifies the trigger as Christopher's fear and nightmares, and later imagines roses growing from the boy's flesh to drive away the presence so he could sleep. He concludes by reflecting that Hydra makes monsters of everyone it touches and expresses regret that there is no other path for children raised in such systems. Jeremy cuts the tape off, unable to continue after realizing Malcolm referred to the boy as Chris.

As heard by us

A monologue-driven horror episode where ritual language and a missing child drive the dread.

The episode works best when its ritual language does the heavy lifting. The drink, the church, the promises of restored power, and the talk of an agreement keep tightening the pressure around Chris and the speaker's unraveling state.

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Why you'd press play

A church ritual curdles into a bargain, a taken boy, and a private collapse.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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