town

town

Published	23 November 2010
Episode Number	1
Narrator	Dennis Smith
Duration	53m 55s
Transcript Availability	Vol. 1

"town" is the first episode of Knifepoint Horror. The episode was released on November 23, 2010 and is narrated by Dennis Smith.

Synopsis

An unwitting videographer is drawn into a mysterious researcher's day-long journey through a small place on the brink of total possession.

Characters

Narrator

William Roydon

Other Characters

• Forsch Cording (Video/project contractor)
• Trent (Friend of a friend of Roydon's, attempted to make a low-budget horror film in Robin Song ten months prior to the events of "town")
• William Roydon's Grandfather (Unnamed)
• Steen (Psychiatrist who went missing during a trip to Washington D.C fifteen years prior to the events of "town".)
• Irwin Settle (One of Steen's patients; murderer)
• Mr Coaklin
• Mr Coaklin's son (A man slumped against a bench on Lord Street)
• Steve (Roydon's childhood friend)
• Daniel Katrell (Missing child)

Date and Locations

Date

October 2005

Location

Robin Song, Virginia

• Brian Lane (Location of Roydon's Grandfather's house)
• Schuykill Road
• Allen Street
• Rosanda Road (Location of a strip mall with a parking lot attached. The strip mall includes a used bookstore, a laundromat and a local hardware shop which was the first business to set up shop in Robin Song)
• Mabry Road
• Dovetail Lane
• Cotton Branch Trail (Bike/footpath leading to the nearby town of Goldmond)
• Rachel's Arm (creek)
• Beloit River
• Mount Halcyon Cemetery ("one of the biggest cemeteries in southern Virginia")
• Ridge Road
• Bowler Avenue
• Cedar Road (Location of Cotton Elementary School)
• Lords Street
• Glendyn (A lower-income residential neighbourhood in Robin Song. Also the location of the home of Mr Coaklin)
• Rudwick Road
• Cheltenbrook (A Robin Song neighbourhood, also the location of the home of one of Roydon's childhood friends, Steve)
• St Martins Church (site of the rumor concerning a baby's death during Roydon's elementary school days)
• Marquette Street
• Cottler Road (Location of Irwin Settle's small house)
• The Sam and Mam Diner

Other Locations

• Annapolis, Maryland (Roydon's current city of residence)
• Hasham, Virginia (Trent's former town of residence)
• Goldmond, Virginia (Neighbouring town, approximately eight miles away)
• Tessa, Virginia (the town just north of Robin Song)

Story Notes and Observations

Gretchen Plauser

• Gretchen Plauser, whose death caused the terrible events occurring in Robin Song, appears to be the sister of Fiona Plauser, who appears in "elements".
• It is stated that Gretchen Plauser lived in Robin Song around twenty-five years ago, around 1990.

Forsch Cording

• Forsch Cording is stated to have been a professor in the "ancient studies" department of the University of Toronto at some point in the last five years. His name also appears to be connected to something named the "Projet du Méridional", which is stated as having something to do with the study of anthropology. This "Projet du Méridional" is also considered to be an "urban legend among fringe academics", which was apparently privately funded by a group of five men, one of whom was supposedly Cording.
• Cording is stated to have some connection to a supposed curse involving an Irish family, but details are sparse.
• Cording approaches a grave in Mount Halycon Cemetery. The grave is marked with the legend "Sarah, December 7, 1985". Cording states he had been to this grave twice before, and each time he had experienced a feeling that he could not explain.
• Cording performs an "attraction" ritual, which is also how the ritual performed by Aramis Churchton in "house" is described. There are similarities in both rituals.
• After 3pm in the afternoon, Cording appears to Roydon to have had his eyes taped shut - covered over with pieces of cardboard and strips of black tape. Roydon is attacked shortly after he experiences this.

"Attraction"

• The attraction ritual involves Cording placing the shroud that once hung around Mr Coaklin's son's neck into a muddy stream beside a self-storage rental facility. The shround is pushed into the mud and water of the stream and then kept there for a full minute. When fully black with mud, the shroud is then carried back to Mount Halcyon cemetery. Cording then folds the muddy shroud into a perfect square and places it upon the infant's - Sarah's - grave. Cording and Roydon then wait a few hundred feet away for around half an hour, before retreiving the shroud. The shroud is then taken in a grove of bushes and unfolded.
• When unfolded, twelve-inch high letters are revealed to have been "written" on the shroud. The words were "Gyora El". The shroud is then collected and discarded in a nearby rubbish bin.

Steen and Irwin Settle

• Approximately fifteen years prior to the events of "town", a group of children discovered a mannequin's arm sticking out of the creek, Rachel's Arm. The mannequin was revealed to have been deliberately painted to resemble a real person. Real human hair has been fastened to the mannequin, and a wallet found there was determined to have been owned by a psychaitrist named Steen who had gone missing during a trip to see relatives in Washington, D.C.
• The home of Irwin Settle was revealed to be around 500 yards from the location of the discovery of the mannequin made to resemble Steen. During a police search, the body of Steen was discovered, having been beaten so badly to be "squashed almost flat" by Settle. Furthe investigation revealed that Settle had produced a number of mannequins to resemble Steen, and had utilised various methods to "kill them". It is also stated that Settle had used Steen's blood to paint the front of his house.
• During a therapy session, Settle admits to a history of necrophilia.
• Settle was executed in 1997. He stated in court that he "wished he had been different, but the town had made him sick".
• Roydon states that Settle murdered Steen in 1991.

Robin Song

• In a thatch of trees on the Cotton Branch Trail, Roydon's recording picks up "the voice of an old woman", singing "a sad folk song, in a thick African dialect".
• On a Sunday in December 1999, the local airfield received a distress signal from a Cessna 182. The plane crashed around 200 yards from the elementary school. An unnamed eight-year-old boy was the first at the crash site, who claimed to have seen "something enormous" slithering out from the plane's cockpit. The boy also states that the entity looked like "a gigantic crocodile, except its skin was perfect white, its head was quite small, and it seemed to have dozens of small legs on each side of its body, legs that grasped the side of the plane and held tight as it moved." The entity disappeared into the woods. The passengers inside the cockpit had had their arms, legs and heads ripped from their bodies. Cording states that he was eventually allowed to look into the archives of the passengers, and discovered that they had married in 1987 and had lived mostly in Egypt. Cording states that he believes the couple had been travelling to the town to confront someone or something, but "she got them first".
• Cording confronts a person named Mr Coaklin about his son, who Cording and Roydon had seen "holding the sheet [Mr Coaklin] had wrapped him in". Cording stated that Mr Coaklin should either "let the boy rest or Cording would take permanent action".
• Cording leads Roydon on a route from Bowler Avenue that matches exactly the route Roydon used to take to his grandfather's house as a child, including through a bisected tree-trunk on the edge of a property owned by a family called the Vheatys.
• Roydon states that he believes he was knocked over by something with the weight of a light human body, and he feels the graze of long hair and the scent of perfume as this happens.
• An annual autumn festival is taking place in Robin Song during the events of the story.
• Roydon suggests cutting a path from Rosanda to Marquette through a thin line of trees, but both he and Cording find themselves in a wood "bigger than [Roydon] thought". They both continue straight through the woods for around forty-five minutes before finding themselves in front of Irwin Settle's small white house. A missing child poster is found on the side of Settle's house depicting nine-year-old Daniel Katrell. The photograph is the same as that found on the stick in Roydon's grandfather's stable. Inside what appears as Settle's house is another missing person flyer, with information relating to Forsch Cording himself, including a still image from the videotape that Roydon had been using that same day. The "last seen on" date was October 9, 2005 is the same day on which the story takes place. Cording and Roydon continue walking and eventually find themselves on Marquette, as originally planned.

Trent

• Roydon notices Trent during the autumn festival, who states that he and his family eventually relocated to Robin Song after his wife has bee "convinced by the town's charm".
• Trent mentions a problem with his eight-year-old son who had developed a severe case of agoraphobia; being outside the house made him feel afraid and sick. Roydon admits to himself that the same problem occured in his life when he was ten years old.

William Roydon

• Roydon states that the experiences he had at age ten included being woken in the night by something striking his windowpane again and again. Afterwards, he became very afraid of being outside, and was especially disturbed by seeing the eyes of animals. Roydon also believes that, during that time, every woman and girl he saw apparently had straight black hair. He relates a story of being in a neighbour's car with a woman with straight black hair which he found highly upsetting. He makes mention of potentially knowing a secret about the woman with black hair sitting in the car. He states that one day, things returned to normal.

Steve

• Steve is stated to have "gotten a bad scare" in Robin Song when he and Roydon were eighteen. He had been thinking about a murder which had taken place in Robin Song a few moths prior. The murder involved the abduction and murder of a blind girl from a local pharmacy. Her killers did not believe she was blind, so they had taped up her eyes before she was killed. This in turn caused people to say that when anything was broken or damaged in town, it was the girl's ghost "blundering around sightless". Steve also confirms that he had used the internet to look for an image of the girl when she was discovered.
• Steve, when asked by Roydon if Robin Song is a place where strange things often happened, replies "Oh god, of course." HE also states that there had been a number of disappearances that very week. He also recalls a rumour, from his elementary school days, concerning a baby that had been found "burned beyond recognition" at St. Martins Church and buried in town having never been conclusively identified.
• Steve's parentsconfirm that a few weeks prior to the events of the story, Steve was found wandering Mount Halycon Cemetery, having heard female voices at dawn each day telling him to check that certain graves were not disturbed.

William Roydon's Grandfather

• The legend in the basement of William Roydon's grandfather's house states: "hantainos kric gyora el".
• Roydon's grandfather states he has no regrets about living in Robin Song for much of his life, except for a period in the 1970s which were "very sad, and very painful". He does not elaborate further.
• A photograph of a boy around eight years of age appears taped to a stick protruding from the dirt in Roydon's grandfather's abandoned stable. The boy is wearing a hooded sweatshit and is stood in front of a movie theatre. Roydon determines that the photograph is only a few months old.