trail

From Knifepoint Horror


Published 2 December 2010
Episode Number 5
Narrator Markham Anderson
Duration 18m 37s
Transcript Availability Vol. 1

"trail" is the fifth episode of Knifepoint Horror. The episode was released on 2 December, 2010 and is narrated by Markham Anderson.

Synopsis

A courteous stranger offers three friends looking for a Halloween hayride into the woods something deeper and darker.

Characters

Narrator

Sean Locksley

Other Characters

  • Darcy Carew (friend of Locksley)
  • Jack Lear (friend of Locksley)
  • Unnamed Coachman - "a tall man in a top hat"

Date and Locations

Date

October - December 2005

Locations

State of Wisconsin

  • The University of Wisconsin
  • Milwaukee
  • Rose Creek Park (stated to be "three miles or so outside the Milwaukee city limits")
  • Four Provinces Bar
  • Hortis Avenue

Story Notes and Observations

Jack's Disappearance

  • Two months after Jack's disappearance at Rose Creek Park, Sean's friend Darcy claims that she had been "losing her recollections of the mysterious coachman", and that she can only remember Jack running away down the trail.
  • When Sean visits Rose Creek Park again in December 2005, he meets the coachman again who takes Jack to an unspecified place to shows him an "unthinkably massive pile of human bodies, an accumulation of corpses suggesting some sort of secret genocide". The coachman explains to Jack that the "city around [them] is a violent place, one that killed and killed and killed".
  • It's hinted that the location that the coachman takes Jack to in December 2005 is not a real location. Sean states that "it seemed like we were not even traveling through Rose Creek Park anymore, but rather a large wooded cemetery". Sean also states that, while in the large field, "the city wasn't there on the horizon, as it should have been".
  • The coachman appears to suggest, obliquely, that his job is to collect and contain the corpses of the people killed in the city. The coachman states that Jack had "wandered off into the woods, where a junkie stabbed him many times, and tried to hide him", and that "the police would find him nearby if they really looked". These details may suggest that the coachman, though mysterious and unsettling, is a benevolent character, of some sort.