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[11calls]

As Alex becomes more and more mired in the Tapes, their possible connections and Strand's own personal history, she becomes more and more sleep deprived, and more and more obsessed with the idea that the Tapes are connected, and that the things that they show and represent are in fact real. Where as in the beginning of the show Alex was framed as being more of an agnostic who doesn't know what she believes in (other than her early on expressed fear of demons, based on a viewing of The Exorcist too young) as what Strand calls coincidence and intrigues start to pile up around her, The abduction of a small child that she'd interviewed based on one of Strand's tapes, including her and Strand being called in for questioning and how he is subsequently found in an abandoned cabin filled with occult themes: (sacred geometry, pentagrams and mathematical equations based on the Pythagorean comma) sets off the chain reaction of her inability to sleep and where her belief in what happens seems to solidify. Her being exposed to a possible actual psychic (Tannis Braun) booking out of the cabin because of something incredibly "dark" being present, the way that the things that were drawn in Sebastian's bedroom, Simon and Trent's hospital room and the cabin are the same, the return of Sebastian's kidnapper who will only speak to Strand and the connection of monks and cave paintings only entrench her in her belief. And that's before the intrigue involving the fact that Strand's missing wife, Coralee who has been presumed dead at the hands of a serial killer in 1998 is actually alive and has been sighted, and that a multi-billionaire crashed a set up coffee date with Alex, Strand and Nic in order to steal Strand's coffee to probably procure DNA from it.

Following the new sighting of Coralee in Lake Tahoe, and with Strand angry and lashing out at Alex and making accusation about the nature of her and her work, Strand disappears for six months after the end of season one. While Alex makes multiple attempts to reach him (as would be expected by someone who called him eleven times and went to his publisher in order to ask for help in procuring an interview) Strand refuses to return her calls, texts or emails despite the fact that Alex receives conformation from others that he has. Due to the popularity of her podcast, two different women reach out to Alex with concerns that matched those involving Sebastian Torres (a weird imaginary friend, dark smudges in photographs, odd symbols and various other possibly paranormal in nature things) while Alex tries to play the skeptic she can't do it anywhere near as Strand can. Overwhelmed and worried, Alex flies from Seattle to Chicago to see Strand in his office. There, she finds him to be a changed man; gone are his suits and pristine academic nature. Instead he has grown a "unabomber" beard and is dressing entirely in flannel. The Strand Institute has turned into a conspiracy bunker with theories and possible sightings and anything that would help Strand find his missing wife. For the first time, he asks Alex to turn off her recorder, and he explains to her what he needs help with. Alex does, but she also makes him agree that if it becomes relevant to the things that she's investigating on the show then she'll be allowed to share them. When asked why he doesn't let his assistant help, Strand just replies: "you and I we have a.." Alex cuts him off simply saying "yeah."


At this point, the show splits into three different but interconnected avenues: the actual black tapes/black tapes cases (creepy kids, demons, demonic cults, Satantic months and sounds that kill you in a year) that may or may not be connected, the search for Coralee/Thomas Warren's involvement in her disappearance and Alex's continued intrusions into Strand's life. All three of these are informed and shaped by how Alex's inability to sleep causes her to make terrible decisions and disregard her journalism ethics. Alex has always been forceful and intrusive, but in season two, this moves to an entirely new level as she begins to spin out of control which is aided by various other intrusions into her own life and belief in the things that she's investigating.

The external forces that are pressing in on her are numerous: someone anonymously sending a countdown timer that ends one year exactly (down to the minute) when to when Alex and Nic were first played the Unsound. With it's mythology around people dying within one year of hearing it, and the fact that no one other than the three of them should have known the exact time and date that it played, it makes Alex frightened and paranoid. Her fear and paranoia only grow in the second circumstance: when a creepy bookseller tries to make Alex say the name of demons and she ends up chanting them later in her sleep. The third comes with Simon Reese's involvement in calling Alex, bilocating to her apartment and attempting to hold a knocking conversation with her when she was recording a sleep note, the things that he knows about that haven’t been released on her show, his subsequent unexplained escape from the maximum security mental hospital where he was held, the murders of people involved with other members of the Brothers of the Mount/The Order of the Cenophus and everything surrounding Maddie Franks.

Maddie Franks and the discovery of her body are the fourth external circumstance: while investigating the second case that a person brought to her, Alex becomes fixated on the fact that the woman's housekeeper is involved. The woman, Maddie Franks denies any involvement in what's happening in the Hochman residence, but while Nic was going over the sound activated nanny cam footage it's discovered that she too was a member of the Order and was the one who had been causing what was happening to the baby, Robbie. The Hochman family subsequently went missing and Alex and Nic went to talk to Maddie Franks. When the housekeeper doesn't answer the door, Alex tries the handle, finds it unlocked and goes in despite Nic telling her not too. There, she discovers the housekeeper's body hanging from the ceiling fan and the walls are covered in sacred geometry and symbols that have been stained with blood that doesn't belong to her.

A fifth comes from the way that people who try and help Alex go missing: Sammy the hacker who sends them a panicked voicemail just before she disappears and the way that her friend, Amalia is changed and acting different than she had before she’d gone missing while investigating on Alex’s behalf in Russia. The last one is how outside information from neither Strand or his family seem to validate the things that she already knows: a box found in an abandoned mental hospital that bares a striking resemblance to Simon’s case. The combination of all of those things cause Alex’s bosses to send her on a forced “vacation” where she heads to a friend’s cabin in the woods as she weights for the end of the unsound anniversary countdown. She’s fine and Alex does seem better when she returns.

But that doesn’t negate the other serious breach of trust that Alex does in season two: while Strand and Amalia are privately talking in the recording studio Alex turns on the talk-back mike and records what they’re saying. Further, she has a recording of what Strand asked her not to share and deletes it only at Nic’s insistence, more than that that she does it in front of him.

The branch that deals with the tapes is gnarled and convoluted, going back to Strand’s life, family and Warren all at various points. Hitting a dead end and with Strand still MIA as he’s chasing down his own leads about Coralee, Alex reaches back out to Tannis Braun who tells her that she needs to go “deeper and not wider” into the dark web around Strand and his black tapes cases. Giving him the name of a black tape that she’s not aware of ‘Cheryl’ Alex asks to see it, the first tape that Strand himself had not shown her. On it is Strand as a child with a girl who was later revealed to be his sister (when she herself called contacted the show). The tape itself focused on the two children seeing shadow figures at their home in Pennsylvania. Cheryl opens the door and lets them inside. Both children are frightened but nothing appears on the tape other than them. It's from Cheryl that Alex learns more details of Richard's past: his deeply unhappy home life, his abusive father, the way that his father "took an interest" in Richard following the tape and began to bring him home various occult things from Howard's world travels. More than that, Cheryl tells Alex to ask Richard about "the boy in the river."

When Alex does ask, Strand denies knowing anything about it so Alex begins to investigate further and discovers that when Strand was sixteen he led his friends to the body of a missing boy at a tributary of Red Brook Creek. In interviewing the boys, Alex discovers that Richard (then called 'Richie') said that he'd dreamed about where Bobby would be and he took them "directly" to the site where they found the body, and had described this to them before hand. While the police may have initially suspected that it was Strand who had killed Bobby Maimes, his friends never did. Instead they described him as the most honest and upfront kid they'd ever known.

When confronted about him possibly being psychic and the tapes being connected and Bobby being the first tape, Alex and Strand have the worst fight that they’ve ever had culminating in his asking her to leave him alone. This forces Alex to look at her choices and realize that she’d been wrong so she apologizes and he accepts. While things aren’t entirely mended their better and their relationship solidified once more following Coralee’s rescue/kidnapping them when they were finally on the way to confront Thomas Warren.

Also in connection to the tapes, we hear from a girl who's exorcism was at the center of the fifth tape that Strand showed Alex. In reaching out, she explained some things including the inclusion of a device that had been manufactured by Thomas Warren's corporation: Daeva Corp. Further, it'd become obvious that Strand's teaching gigs had been funded by grant money through shell companies that belonged to Warren as well.

Warren is intrinsically tied to the search for Coralee because Strand is convinced that Warren has something on her, something that made her disappear. Further, it’s evident that Warren also has access to Howard Strand’s work and is connected to the Cult of Tiamat—the symbol for which was on a ring that Coralee never removed. Alex tries desperately throughout the season to get an interview with Warren to confront him about everything.

When he finally agrees, it’s too an interview minus a recorder and at first it doesn’t include Strand at all. Nic, Alex’s producer, convinces Warren that Strand should be able to come along. When they arrive at Davea Corp together, armed security are coming their way. While Alex begins to panic, a van screeched up with Coralee and two others inside of it. She says, entirely unironically “come with me if you want to live.” Alex at first refuses until Strand tells her to get into the van saying, “Alex I’d like to introduce you to Coralee.”

Coralee brings Alex and Strand to an empty Airbnb listing, and the two others with her stay outside to keep watch. Coralee and Strand go into the bedroom to talk for a long period. When Coralee comes out, Alex asks if now is a good time for her to interview Strand’s long missing wife. She denied it with a shake of her head. Strand comes out behind her on the porch to watch Coralee leave without a word. After giving Strand twenty minutes of quiet (somewhat of a world record where Alex Reagan is concerned) she lets him just speak first. In that conversation, and throughout the night that they spend together, Strand tells her what Coralee had said: that she had been sent by Warren as a “watcher” The watcher’s role in this case was to seduce, marry and have a child by Strand. Further, she was supposed to protect him from “the other side” because of Strand’s lineage. Warren believes that there’s something in Strand’s familial DNA that would allow him to help bring about the end of the world. In the end Coralee fell in love with him, and she began to protect him because she loved him rather than because of Warren’s orders. Warren ordered her taken at that point, and that’s the reason that she disappeared on him, leaving him to be accused of murder and causing him to lose his reputation, his sister and most importantly: his daughter. Coralee then tells Strand to stay away from DaevaCorp, Warren and everything else. It turns out, after Strand and Alex went to the hotel where Coralee and he had his wedding (where they had discovered a book cypher from her) Coralee and Strand had been in contact and were working on aspects of the investigation without Strand’s informing Alex of that fact beyond something designed to make her jealous: telling her that he was working with a friend and that the friend was a woman.

Also during this conversation, it comes out that while Coralee was missing, Strand went into the woods himself for several days, trying to rekindle the same abilities that he’d used to find Bobby Maimes. When he is unable to do so, Strand takes his anger and frustration and grief (and his father’s money) and opens the Institute with the intention of discrediting anything paranormal. This is a particularly fuck you gesture given as Howard Strand’s life was based around the occult and artifacts and he was deeply involved with Warren and the cult itself.

Alex and Strand discover that in a conversation with Warren alone at a restaurant, where Warren baits Strand with how much Coralee loves him, and then he goes on to offer to fund Strand’s Institute, trying to seduce him over to the idea of working with DaevaCorp. When Alex defends Strand saying that she doesn’t think he needs that kind of help, Warren reveals that Strand doesn’t have the million dollar prize that was one of the reasons that Alex had been so keen to interview him in the first place. Strand admits it, but then Warren goes on to tell him about how Howard was working with Daeva Corp, and that what had seemed like an accidental death was actually Howard Strand being murdered.

Strand leaves in a huff, but not before Warren gives him one of Howard’s research journals as proof. From there, they return to the studio. Throughout the end of season one and in season two, someone who they assumed was the person who was involved in the tape with the Unsound had been sending them audio files from where he had gone to try and avoid dying within the year. The pieces of audio turn out to be what the Order of the Cenophus refers to as The Mysterium. The Mysterium is a five piece symphony that if played in the proper place (the Axis Mundi) will open the door to demons. During much of the last half of season two, working with coordinates that they’d been given Alex had been assuming that the Axis Mundi was located on the top of Mount Erat. Nic discovers that what they thought were map coordinates was actually the IP address of the studio. Given that it means that Alex has played the Axis Mundi in order, in full on her show. It is, in Alex’s own words: “it’s happening. And it’s our fault.”