Episode Recap: Death's Door

Welcome to Port Moore, a quiet, peaceful Alaskan town that’s about to get the bejeezus scared out of it. While delivering a eulogy for one Marty at his ceremony at Chieftain Pub, Father Dan Carpenter attempts to maintain composure even as strange phenomena interrupt his speech: flickering lights, moving objects, blood taking the place of his double whiskey on the rocks, even Marty himself showing up in spectral form.

Flashback to three days earlier, a young man named Roman is trying to make his way out of the town, because he’s sick and tired of being harassed and called a freak. What makes him a freak? Oh, just that he can sort of, kind of talk to dead people. The bus he’s riding to Anchorage veers off the road to avoid hitting a ghost boy, and an earthquake sends it hurtling toward a cliff's edge. Roman is able to make it out before it falls over the bluffs, though, and he crawls to safety. Quick trip.

Roman returns to his mom’s place, and, despite himself, gets comfortable. And that involves yet more visitations by some undead woman Maggie, who’s like his dbff (dead best friend forever). While she goes to check on her dad, Roman heads to Chieftain Pub to calm his nerves with some firewater. There he’s haunted by the ghost of Mrs. Fu, one of the passengers that perished on the bus. He tried to save her, but a ghost of one of the recently deceased thwarted his efforts, and Roman gets all the blame, that lucky dog.

But the fun’s just started. The next day, a group of laborers mending a derelict bridge decide it’s time for a break when one of them is attacked by spirits, and thrown to his death — by wrought-iron impaling. And Roman comes clean to the town Sheriff, who actually likes Roman, about his ability to see and interact with the spirit realm. Understandably, the Sheriff doesn’t buy it, and in fact wants Roman to keep that info under his hat. Best not to give people the heebie-jeebies at a time like this.

And a time like this is a very bad time. When the Sheriff went down to investigate the bridge, he found other workers dead and/or malingering for workers comp. Meanwhile, Roman is bearing the brunt of everyone’s blame, getting singled out for surviving the crash, and because his mom purportedly put a curse on them all. That night, Roman and Maggie are having an intimate, trans-planar conversation before the fire when she drops some major truths: the souls of the dead that don't want to or can't move on to the other side will take vengeance on the living. So basically, war is coming. A ghost war.

The next day a mob has formed to intimidate Roman into leaving town — like he hasn’t tried that one already. The Sheriff arrives in time to arrest the leader of said mob, a superstitions man named Dough. But the body of that snake is still left to wriggle. After Roman and the Sheriff drop in on the coroner, who shows the Sheriff the body of one of the passengers whose heart exploded. From fear.

That’s when the lights start to flicker, and the coroner takes her son out of the office to safety.

The door locks behind her, and the Sheriff and Roman get locked in with the ghost of one of the bridge workers. The ghost goes for Sam, who’s used to grappling with assailants with pulses and so unprepared for when it forces the Sheriff's hands around a medical device, and plunges it deep into his neck. Unfortunately, while trying to intervene, Roman gets his fingerprints all over the damn thing. So it doesn’t look good.

And we’re back to where we started. Roman escapes the coroner’s office and runs to Chieftain Pub, where Father Carpenter is having a run-in with some of his own ghosts. Roman shows up and gets him NOT to stick a knife in his own hand. Marty the ghost starts reaching through the vale and screwing with everybody in the bar — even more than he did in life — and things get real. Only Roman is able to prevail over him, but turning his eyes a cool pale color and summoning up the power.

The remaining decision makers in the town are almost all in agreement that ghosts have descended on Port Moore. Roman and office Larry Fu decide to leave town and alert neighbors of their predicament when Roman realizes that ghosts have laid siege to the bridge. He tumbles out of the car, but Larry and his vehicle are taken by the specters. Though the bridge looks complete, it’s not: the ghosts have planted the illusion of it in their minds. They’re trapped.