Channel Zero: Candle Cove - S1E2 - I’ll Hold Your Hand

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Previously on Channel Zero: Candle Cove 

Channel Zero: Candle Cove - S1E2 - “I’ll Hold Your Hand” | Starring: Paul Schneider, Fiona Shaw, Shaun Benson, Natalie Brown, Cassandra Consiglio

While not as creepy as the premiere, “I’ll Hold Your Hand” was no less unsettling. And its opening - Katie Yolen trying to disembowel her brother with a hook while he slept - wasn’t even the most disturbing act of the episode.

While their son is in surgery, Jessica and Gary wait to learn if Katie is going to be charged; in the meantime, she’s also admitted to the hospital. Gary doesn’t appreciate Jessica asking Mike to speak with their daughter, especially when he does so without anyone else around. At this point, though, Jessica’s just desperate for answers, and even though she knows of Mike’s mental issues, she hopes his child psychologist training will bring them.

Mike’s mother, Marla, may have given up hope of finding out what happened to Eddie before, but the latest events propel her to help Mike get to the bottom of it all and prevent it from happening to another family. She does some digging into the show, Candle Cove, and learns that it has somewhat of a cult following, though no one actually knows anyone who has seen it.

The Tooth-Child only makes two terrifying appearances this episode. First, it visits Katie in her hospital room; it’s image goes unseen on the surveillance camera. And the episode ends with Marla’s friend feeding it teeth in the cave.

Yet, the episode’s most stomach-churning events revolve around a mother’s anguish.

It was heartbreaking to see Jessica read her children the same bedtime story separately in their hospital rooms. A mother’s love is supposed to be unconditional and we see that here as Jessica screamed for Katie to get away from her brother after the stabbing, but still tenderly wipes her brow when she sleeps.

On the other hand, Marla’s feelings for Mike have been suspect at best. Does she blame him for what happened to Eddie? When she mentions him leaving home, he takes offense and says she made him leave. She says it was for his own good, but I suspect looking at the twin of your missing child may have been too much for her. Any hope of their relationship being repaired all but evaporates after Mike makes a shocking confession.

After speaking with Katie, Mike visits the abandoned factory he and Eddie used to play in. There, he finds Eddie’s remains, oddly preserved. At home that night, as the news sends Marla sobbing to her knees, Mike listens from the next room. Then he confesses that he killed Eddie and buried his body. He always thought it strange that the police searched where he’d buried it, but never found it. With the body popping up now, it’s clear he thinks someone moved it and held it all this time. The news stuns Marla and she has to cut Mike’s hand with a knife before he’ll let her go stumbling into the next room.

Whether she believed him or not at the moment is unclear, but she did call Gary, and he takes Mike for a ride as the episode ends… and it doesn’t look like they’re going to the police station.

Questions

• Why was Marla’s friend feeding the tooth child? Marla needs new friends.
• In Mike’s memory of killing Eddie, a man in a mask watched from the distance. Who the hell is that?