TRANSCRIPTS
Please note: occasionally, transcripts may differ from exact episode audio.
Episode 1: Correspondence
"Readers don’t like the ongoing exchanges between Mrs Why and Mr How. They find them distressing, off-puttingly strange, impossible to empathise with..."
David investigates a mysterious exchange of love letters being sent to the Eskew Tribunal.
Episode 2: Reproduction
"Blank white floors bleeding into blank white walls into blank white ceilings. The lights above the gaping emptiness of the lobby, glowing and blazing, sending reflections out across the void in contorted shapes and shifting motions..."
Curiosity having got the better of him, David finds himself trapped in the bizarre, horror-filled Commemoration Gallery.
Episode 3: Excavation
"Some of the men and women most intensely affected by the digging sickness fall to their knees and begin scrabbling intently and in absolute silence at whatever happens to be beneath them at the moment the urge overtakes them: floorboards, topsoil, tarmac. The biting metal springs of their own bed..."
A mysterious sickness spreads through Eskew, causing its sufferers to dig uncontrollably.
Episode 4: Culpability
"Its face was wide, and white, and clownish, as if drawn in chalk. Its eyes were black and round and horribly empty even as they stared down at him, and its mouth was set in a grin that never moved..."
David is sent to interview a murderer - and finds himself hearing the story of a traumatic childhood experience.
Episode 5: lllumination
"I still don’t understand the purpose of the second psychiatrist, the one who stands in the very corner of the room with his back turned to me, his extraordinarily long and moon-like face a silhouette against the darkness..."
David gets the therapy he needs, but finds himself haunted by a peculiar railway bridge on his daily commute.
Episode 6: lntrusion
"There are certain streets and certain pathways that darken and shift as my client walks down them, taking on shadows and shapes that are, she insists, reflective of another place entirely..."
In London, an investigator finds herself baffled by the case of a missing child - and a single word, scratched onto a door.
Episode 7: Edibility
"I forget, you know. I forget that Eskew is a city of wonders, too."
David pays a visit to the Eskew Fish Market - and finds himself less than impressed with the quality of the meat that's on offer.
Episode 8: Motivation
"This is not my home. This city, this country, this place of fake towns and bloody experiments...has never been my home."
Riyo tries to find out more about the city of Eskew - and finds herself falling down a rabbit-hole filled with government experiments and strange tunnels.
Episode 9: Respite
"The Burn Unit is, of course, on the fourteenth floor."
After his 'accident' in the Fish Market, David is delivered up to the Hospital of the Blessed Saint Bartholomew, and takes some time to recuperate.
Episode 10: Performance
"Am I still alone here?"
Against his better wisdom, David goes on a date in Eskew - and finds himself attending a strange piece of experimental ballet.
Episode 11: Product
"I don't exactly recall when the idea of human sacrifice first comes up. I do remember that initially, the team leader rather unhelpfully dismisses it as 'a first-draft idea.'"
David begins work at the Orion Building Concern, and is assigned to an exciting new project.
Episode 12: Alliance
"I am someplace strange."
In Europe, Riyo tracks down the professor responsible for the deaths at Banwell - and uncovers more than she bargained for.
Episode 13: Embroidery
"Everywhere I turn, everywhere I attempt to find solitude or solace, Kenneth is already there. Like a parasitic rash."
An irritating co-worker attempts to befriend David, with unforeseen consequences for them both.
Episode 14: Woe
"We get off the tram near the base of the hill, sheltering under our umbrellas, and begin the slippery and winding climb through the crumbling tenements until we’re out in the open air, walking amongst the quiet dead, and heading towards the church standing alone amongst the silver birch trees."
While attending a funeral, Allegra tells David the story of how she came to arrive in Eskew.
Episode 15: Crossroads
"May each of us find the one thing we're looking for."
Riyo attempts to enter Eskew - but the scientific method appears to have its limitations.
Episode 16: Tenancy
"It really doesn’t matter that, by the time the dawn comes, apartment 11a has expanded to swallow my living room and my bathroom."
David's domestic tranquility is shattered by an unwanted visitor.
Episode 17: Reflection
"The silhouetted thing in the mirror does not look anything like me. Its face is haggard, lean, the cheekbones cutting through wan and weary skin. Its eyes look as if they’ve given up."
Lost and alone on the streets of Eskew, David strays into double trouble.
Episode 18: Leakage
"They're building a tower."
A witness observes the outbreak of rapid - and unusual - construction.
Episode 19: Bug
"A brilliant, electric-blue bug is tottering up the sleeve of my coat, its fragile little feelers extended."
Still without a home or hope, David makes a resolution.
Episode 20: Cruelty
"So long as the searing flame shapes what it kills, I can accept almost anything."
Back with Allegra, and safe - for now - David takes on some temporary work, and returns to school.
Episode 21: Border
"I avoid looking any more closely at the tourist poster, whose words are all the more evident to me now - STAY WITH US IN ESKEW - nor at the three figures inked upon it, who seem to have somehow waded further into the lake, the child itself plummeting helplessly into the depths of the water, its parents cheering it on from the shallows."
Riyo makes the crossing into Eskew - although not without difficulty.
Episode 22: Ingratitude
"And above all there is Happy Jack Adam, the monster that walks on four angular legs like a great black lizard, crawling over the walls and ceiling, and at the very end of its long craning neck is a face that’s like a human face, a squashed corpselike smile with no eyes, only lids, face that could belong to Mummy or Daddy, and that face is the first thing you see peering around the corner and over the threshold, a smiling sightless human face, before the rest of the monster comes out and is upon you and gobbles you up."
David is startled by an unexpected arrival into his life in Eskew.
Episode 23: Mindfulness
Centre yourself and regain your sense of inner calm, drifting away into a state of focused, mindful peace with the first volume of this nine-tape collection. (Volumes II-IX not included.)
David tries to relax.
Episode 24: Festivity
I am fickle, for such is the nature of good drama. I am merciless, for such is the nature of history.
In his latest job, David finds himself enjoyably exploring the history of Eskew - but his own competitive nature gets the better of him.
Episode 25: Melody
Pendulum, like all nightclubs of my limited experience, seems to have grown quite organically like a discreet parasite from inside the belly of a featureless patch of streets.
Together, Riyo and David investigate the peculiar Pendulum nightclub.
Episode 26: Outbreak
The angry mob doesn't start out angry.
On the edges of a non-descript town, a new building development causes consternation.
Episode 27: Breakout
There's no way that I can be where I am.
Help comes for David from an unexpected quarter.
Episode 28: Belonging
Far above us, both looming and distant at the very highest precipice of the hill, we can just make out the ruined dome and spire of the cathedral, shining in the rain, a colossal skull struck through with a savage nail.
Riyo goes home.
Episode 29: Victory
There must be a limit to our adaptability in the face of our own destruction.
While David and Riyo make their final ascent, Eskew finds new worlds to conquer.
Episode 30: The Boy Who Saw Cracks In The World
I hope that it mattered, having someone beside you in the dark.
An unexpected return. An end to the journey. Our heroes part ways.