Jane Janeway’s bloodstained knife and Alexis Merriweather’s mutilated body mark the breaking point at Solomon Vine’s Malibu party, where the narrator glimpses child actors exploited by media moguls—including Vine—before fleeing to Jane’s house. Detectives Graciano and Lord arrest her without hesitation, whispering ties to Serge Orozgo’s shadow network while dismissing the narrator entirely. As police sirens wail, repressed visions of dragons and dungeons surface, revealing a conspiracy where glamour masks murder, and silence protects the powerful. The episode leaves the narrator trapped between madness and a system that erases witnesses. [Automatically generated summary]
The following contains strong language and adult themes and is intended for a mature audience.
All right, so we got through the part where I'm making a movie with famous billionaire movie guy Solomon Vine.
And all this strange stuff starts happening, like an email from a guy named Cambitis and a woman who looks like a queen living in a homeless camp.
Right.
And you've turned into a scumbag who dumped your sister in a madhouse and who would allow the amazing Jane Janaway, the woman you say you love, to be humiliated and abused without doing a damn thing about it.
So you could get an invitation to one of Vine's famous parties?
Yeah.
What a great party.
Another Kingdom, the final season.
Written by me, Andrew Clavin.
Performed by Michael Knowles.
Episode 3.
madness, and murder.
Solomon Vine's home, his compound, was on a grassy cliff above the ocean in Malibu.
It was a moonless night that night, but the main mansion, a faux English country house, was lit so bright it glittered like the moon on the water.
And like the moon, it washed the stars from the sky above.
The traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway suffed beyond the screen of cypresses at the rear of the house.
The waves of the ocean suffed out in front.
But we, we chosen few within.
We could only hear the cars and the waves in those moments when the music segued in the quiet before one fading instrumental blended into a freshly thundering bass.
After that, a new song surrounded us, and everything was music and light.
Inside the compound, all over the broad lawn above the night-dark water, in the lounge chairs around the swimming pool under the whitewashed sky, at lighted window after window in the stately manse, men and women of such glamour gathered that a golden glow seemed to rise and hover over them, making the ambiance celestial.
Exhausted and crazed as I was, I was enthralled all the same by the scene.
I drifted among the fabulously famous faces, my obscurity covering me like a pallid shroud.
I felt transparent, insubstantial, a gray shadow among creatures of numinous reality.
It was a strangely glorious sensation.
It was like floating invisible among the constellations, among the heroes and the gods.
I passed from pool to lawn like a voyeur ghost among women so beautiful they were famous merely for their beauty, and men so wealthy they were famous merely for their wealth.
I was dazzled.
My shame was forgotten.
My fear was held at bay.
I put the squirrel woman out of my mind.
I forgot Jane's humiliation and my cowardice.
The queen among the homeless, the email from Cambitis, that weird conversation with my kook of a sister.
All of it was buried, smothered, silenced, beneath this starry blanket of celebrity.
Then this happened.
Solomon Vine spotted me wandering on the grass.
He came to me, greeted me, took me by the arm, and introduced me to a small cluster of incredibly famous people standing under an oak tree decked with fairy lights.
This is Austin Lively, a major, major talent.
I'm making his script and I'm telling you, this time next year, he's going to be a star.
He left me there and for the next, oh, I don't know, 20 minutes or so, I was living inside one of my own daydreams.
I was the focus of a group that included two of the most popular actors in the country and three of the most beautiful women in the world.
I won't tell you their names, but yes, your first guesses?
That's who they were.
They asked me questions about my project.
They laughed at my self-effacing jokes.
One of the women put her hand on my forearm and said, Oh, you're really charming, aren't you?
You're going to do great.
All of them so friendly and natural that I melded with the group and felt I was one of them.
I thought, is this not heaven?
Is this not the life I wanted?
It is.
It truly is.
After a while, the cluster of luminaries dispersed.
I floated away in a serene ecstasy of self-fulfillment.
No one would ever be able to take that moment away from me.
It was screwed into the face of time like a ruby in the forehead of an idol.
I ambled into the house.
The house was sort of a celebrity in itself.
It had been featured in news stories about expensive homes and big money real estate deals.
I wanted to get a closer look at it so I could describe it to my envious friends.
I meandered through a main room crowded with famous faces.
I examined the art on the walls.
They were all just framed slashes and blotches of muddy color to my untrained eyes, but I was sure they were future museum pieces.
I snagged a glass of wine from a serving girl's tray and sipped at it as I studied the Oscars and Emmys and Grammys in the trophy case.
I don't quite remember how it happened, but at some point, I found myself on the far side of the massive kitchen.
I was strolling down a hallway toward the rear of the mansion, a quieter corridor away from the main crowd.
I kept wandering along, glancing out windows at various views of the estate.
The music and the jabber of conversation grew distant and dim.
It was a relief to take a break from the intensity of the party experience.
Then I turned a corner.
And that's when my night of glamour ended and the night of madness began.
I was in another hallway, suddenly alone.
I had a sense that I was not supposed to be here, that I ought to go back.
But I didn't go back.
As if drawn on an invisible tide, I drifted down the hall a bit farther.
Turning another corner, I came into a secluded alcove.
There was an armchair there, an elegant Queen Anne with floral upholstery.
There was a window on the wall above it, just to the right.
I sipped my wine and looked with satisfaction at my own reflection on the glass.
Why, isn't that Austin lively over there? I thought.
I hear he's a major, major talent.
By this time next year, mark my words, he'll be a star.
Then my focus shifted.
I looked through myself into the darkness beyond.
And as I began to comprehend what I was seeing, the world seemed to drain away from me in a vertiginous rush.
I was looking at an angle across an empty strip of grass.
I could see over a wall into a little garden on a lower tier of land.
There was a separate house down there, a guest cottage, I imagined, but big enough for a full family to live in and as brightly lit as the mansion itself.
A tall oak spread its branches between me and the scene outside.
The branches partially blocked the view, but only partially.
I saw another party going on down there, a little private party in the little private yard around a little private swimming pool outside the guesthouse.
And of course, I had heard about such parties.
I had heard all the rumors about Solomon Vine.
Everyone in Hollywood had heard them during his divorce from Alexis Merriweather years back.
From time to time since then, the stories had resurfaced on the internet, as one former child actor or another told his sad tale on some podcast or some blog.
But the scandal would never quite break out, never make the mainstream news or even the trades.
It would fade away and the former child actor would go silent, bought off or maybe scared off, who knew.
But my point is, I understood right away what I was looking at.
I understood right away how appalling it was, how unforgivable.
The men so powerful, the children so young.
Two media moguls were there, and a director everyone has heard of.
The owner of a cable news outlet, a superstar actor, some sort of diplomat I'd seen on TV once or twice.
And of course, Solomon Vine himself.
As for the children, they were little creatures of ethereal beauty, most of them in the business somehow.
The boy from that kitty sitcom.
The girl who did those influencer videos online.
The 11-year-old actress who had stunned the festival viewers at Cannes with her sensual performance in an indie feature.
And a dozen other lovely hopefuls I did not yet recognize.
I stood there staring at them.
Staring at the children's faces.
Their eyes were glazed, as if their souls were hiding in some inner recess from the bleak reality around them.
This moral moonscape of wealth and power in which they'd been abandoned and betrayed.
But why should I have felt so shocked?
So deflated, so sickened.
Not just physically sickened, but sickened down deep in the invisible spaces where the real me lived.
Why when, as I say, I had heard all the rumors about Solomon.
We all had.
It was not that I hadn't believed them either.
It was not exactly that.
It was that I hadn't imagined what it was like.
I hadn't let the truth of it become real to me.
The eyes of the children, the flesh of their little bodies, the men in their serpentine confidence, with their hands draped lightly over the tiny shoulders.
I hadn't thought about any of that.
And now, it was there, right there in front of me.
Not even hidden.
Just down a little hallway in plain sight, a few yards away from the big party in the main room.
My throat closed.
My gaze misted.
My focus shifted.
I saw my reflection on the glass again.
And I saw something else, too.
I saw a figure standing behind me.
A caped shadow with red eyes.
The same dark figure who had spoken to me in the forest graveyard in my only half-forgotten dream.
I gave you back your life.
And more than your life.
A better life.
The life you always wanted.
This life.
Half-Forgotten Vision00:15:20
I knew what I had to do.
I had to turn around.
I had to walk away.
I had to go back to the party and forget what I had seen.
Why not?
Everyone else at this party knew what I knew.
Everyone else had forgotten it.
Why not me too?
I had to do it or all was lost.
My movie.
My money.
My women.
My life.
All of it.
I had to go back and join the glittering celebrities.
I had to forget and become one of them.
I had to be happy and successful and forget.
Maybe I would have.
I'll never know.
Because before I could do anything at all, the phone buzzed in my jacket pocket.
I drew it out.
I read the readout.
Jane Janeway.
I answered quickly.
Hello?
Jane?
There was a long silence.
Static.
Rapid breathing.
I blinked, trying to get my thoughts in order.
Hello?
Then came a voice.
Jane's voice, but as ghostly as a whisper.
Austin, I need you.
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Enter Kingdom.
Now, back to Another Kingdom, the final season.
My Mercedes sped east through the darkness.
I clutched the wheel, staring through the windshield with lantern eyes.
I had run out of the party without a second thought.
Jane was in trouble.
That's all I knew.
And suddenly, nothing else mattered.
I hurried away from the window, back through the house, past the vacuous, famous faces and their empty white grins.
Past the crappy, overpriced works of art on the walls.
Through the haze of glamour and the headache of music.
Across the too bright lawn and down the darkening driveway to the valet stand.
In a growing fever of panic, I flashed a big bill to get my car fast.
Now, on the road, my mind was a rushing blur of half-formed thoughts and half-seen images.
The hallway window at Solomon Vines.
The children I'd seen there.
The squirrel girl at my bathroom window.
The half-remembered graveyard in the woods.
Jane humiliated by Alexis while I stood watching.
Riley in the asylum with her drugged eyes.
And more.
New images.
Strange ideas.
A locked room in a tower with a dead woman on the floor.
A dungeon with an ogre chained to the wall.
A mansion in the woods.
A dragon in a hellish pit of bodies.
What were these things?
I couldn't make any sense of them.
I was too desperate to reach Jane.
so worried and desperate I couldn't think straight.
And yet, and yet I had a feeling all these images mattered.
These scenes flashing through my mind.
I had the sense they were all plot points in a single story.
My story.
A story careening towards its end now.
Wild, like a movie monster rampaging down Broadway, crushing every obstacle in its path.
I sped on.
The traffic wasn't bad on the freeway, but once I reached Franklin Avenue, I hit clusters of congestion outside the clubs.
I plowed through it like a crazy man, darting into every opening I could find, no matter how narrow.
I cursed and honked my horn and careened in and out of the oncoming lane, dodging the swerving fenders.
I ran the lighted western and took the hard left, jamming the gas to head north at full speed.
A night mist was rising here.
It drifted over me out of the dark reaches of the park.
It thickened as I joined the rushing traffic on Los Files.
It became a white fog.
It pressed against the car's windows.
It clung to the shafts of the headlight beams.
By the time I turned off the boulevard, I was barreling half-blind through white obscurity.
I nearly missed the bend in the road and just avoided sideswiping the parked cars by inches.
I knew I ought to slow down, but I kept remembering Jane's voice.
The strange, whispery, frightened sound of it.
Help me.
I almost went right past her house, one of Alexis Meriwether's houses, the house she let Jane use.
I recognized the driveway only as I was racing by it.
My tires screeched like the last girl in a horror movie as I swung the wheel and shot up the drive toward the garage.
The car shut down as I tumbled out the door into the fog.
For another few moments, the Mercedes headlights went on shining.
The beams cut through the whirling white so I could see the front walk.
I could make out the elaborate shape of the Spanish colonial house with its towers and chimneys rising out of its red tile roof, the oak trees looming over it, the branches hanging down.
Then the headlights went out, and there was only darkness.
Only fog.
I banged my foot on the front step.
It hurt.
I stumbled.
Grimacing, I climbed to the door.
I pressed the bell.
No answer.
I tried the knob.
It was locked.
I pounded on the door with my fist.
Jane!
Again, no answer.
Moving swiftly, I made my way back down the path and started pushing through the gathered mist on the sloping lawn.
I tried to look in the windows, but the curtains were drawn and no lights were on inside.
I couldn't even see my own reflection on the glass.
With the fog clinging close around me, I was invisible.
I came around the side of the house.
It was even darker here, even mistier.
Shrubs tugged at my jacket sleeve.
The grass dampened my socks.
Stepping into the backyard was like stepping into some kind of hallucination, fog and liquid night twining together like white and black snakes in a basket.
The shrouded house was gigantic to my left.
The trees were like looming specters all around me.
Their branches creaked in the soft breeze.
An owl hooted.
I stumbled forward by slow steps, my hands out in front of me.
Then a branch snapped in the darkness to my right.
My gut ached as I held my breath and swiveled toward the sound.
The fog churned.
The night spiraled.
And did I see a ghostly figure drifting toward me?
I stood and stared, uncertain.
The owl hooted again.
And yes, there it was.
The figure grew more distinct, a white form mingling with the mist, moving toward me through the mist.
Who's there?
And with a psycho-shriek, the figure rushed at me.
I saw a white phantom.
I saw bright, frightened eyes.
I saw a butcher knife raised high above me, gripped in a hand stained red with blood.
Her crazed scream enveloped everything as the knife came plunging down toward my neck.
Jane!
I was fast, faster than I would have expected.
As the knife came down, I turned sideways and swung my forearm, knocking the blade aside and pushing Jane away from me.
I caught her from behind, grabbed her wrist with my right hand, and wrapped my left arm around her chest, pulling her close against me.
I could feel her naked form through the white cotton of her nightgown.
It's me, Jane!
It's Austin!
Drop the knife, Angel!
Drop it!
For another second, she fought me, but there wasn't much to her, and I held her tight.
I shook the hand that gripped the butcher knife.
Drop it, sweetheart!
Finally, I felt her whole body shudder.
She let out a trembling little cry and slumped in my grasp.
I felt her arm go slack.
The knife fell into the grass at her feet.
I sighed with relief, turned her to face me and wrapped my arms around her.
It's all right, Jane.
I'm here.
It's me.
It's all right.
I held her head against my chest.
For a long moment, she rested there, trembling.
It's all right.
Then she drew back.
She looked up at me.
Even in the mist, even in the dark, I could see her eyes were swimming in hazy, crazed confusion.
She smiled.
Smiled insanely.
It's not, you know.
It's not all right at all.
Her knees buckled.
I caught her as she fell.
Jane!
Her eyes fluttered as she fought to keep them open.
In the house.
We have to help her.
Help who?
But her mouth dropped open.
Her eyes fell shut.
Her head lolled on her shoulders.
She answered nothing.
I worked her to her feet, half dragged her, half carried her through the fog and darkness toward the house.
Her chin was on her chest.
She was mumbling and muttering incoherently.
How do we get inside?
But her answer was incomprehensible, a slurred jumble of half-formed words.
Her head fell forward, then snapped up as she fought to regain consciousness.
I groped for the back door.
Then, suddenly, she went taut in my arms.
She reached up and gripped the front of my shirt.
Her desperate face was close to mine.
Her blurry eyes were bright with terror.
What if he's still in there?
Who?
But she was gone again.
She looked into the distance and mumbled something I couldn't understand.
I swallowed and eyed the house.
I didn't know what to do.
Someone needed help inside.
But was there someone else in there too?
Someone dangerous waiting for us?
And what about Jane?
I turned to stare stupidly at her.
What was wrong with her?
Was she drunk?
Had she taken some drug or something?
And the way she looked, her cheek, her hand, the front of her nightgown, they were all stained with blood.
I should call the police, I thought.
But something stopped me.
Some fresh awareness of danger and mystery.
Something I'd forgotten.
They're all in it.
Another set of images flashed through my mind.
Police lights flashing, sirens screaming, headlights chasing after me.
A gun pointed at me.
Somehow, by rushing out of that party, by hurrying here to Jane, I had weakened some barrier in my mind.
The memories were leaking through the cracks, dribbling, streaming, faster and faster.
You have to remember, Austin.
We need you to remember.
Jane's legs went limp again.
She became a dead weight in my arms.
I had to set her down somewhere.
I found the back door, reached for the knob, but the door was ajar, and the moment I touched it, it swung in, opening onto shadows.
I hesitated, looking into the dark, afraid.
What the hell am I doing here?
I'm just a guy, just a movie maker.
Call the police!
But there was another voice speaking to me at the same time.
A strange, high, buzzy voice I couldn't quite place.
It was saying to me, No.
No.
Be a man.
And I thought, what the hell?
Here I go.
I helped Jane into the dark house.
She was still muttering.
I shushed her.
She fell quiet.
I listened.
Not a sound inside.
The house sounded empty.
I sure hoped it was.
I managed to find a light switch.
As the light came on, I had a momentary vision.
The soul leech who had grabbed me in my dream.
I saw him there, hulking right in front of me, about to pounce.
I nearly cried out at the sight of him, but he vanished in an instant.
Just my imagination, that's all.
Still, the shock made those scratches on my legs start to tingle again.
I puffed my cheeks and blew out a breath.
More images, more memories.
But I had to fight them off.
I had to keep my mind straight.
I had to.
We were in the kitchen now.
It was a pleasant little space with red tiled floors and yellow walls, very homey.
I set Jane down on one of the chairs at the kitchen table.
Who needs help?
Is there someone here?
She didn't answer.
She swayed in her seat, her eyes rolling, her mouth open, drool on her chin.
She groaned and murmured.
What now?
I thought.
Who else could be here?
Jane used to share the place with our mutual friend, the crazed comedian Skylar Cohen.
But I'd heard that Skylar had finally gotten over her unrequited crush on Jane and moved in with some more available woman.
So then who needed help?
I had to search the place.
I settled Jane in her chair and straightened.
A crawling sense of foreboding rose inside me, like roaches swarming up my inner walls.
I eyed the blood that stained Jane's nightgown.
I remembered the butcher knife she'd been clutching outside.
Why had she had it?
What was threatening her?
What the hell was I going to find inside this house?
Stay here, sweetheart.
She made a noise of reluctance.
She grabbed clumsily at my shirt front.
Don't go.
Shh.
Stay here.
I'll be right back.
I had left the butcher knife out in the grass.
I grabbed another big blade, a cook's knife, out of the rack on the kitchen counter.
What if he's still in there?
Gripping the knife for protection, I headed out of the kitchen, down the hall.
I lit the place up as I went along.
Each time I passed a doorway, I reached in and flicked the light switch so I could check the room.
All the rooms were empty, all silent.
There was a workroom first with a computer on the table, then a small bedroom with the small bed unmade, an overturned glass on the floor, and a reading device lying next to it.
Must have been Jane's room.
Graciano And Lord Rush In00:04:32
I could see her schlumpy clothes hanging in the closet.
I went on, down the hall, gripping the knife, my palms sweaty, my guts crawling.
I was nearing the end of the hall.
I remembered the layout.
The front door was up ahead of me, but before that, there was a large living room with sherbert-colored stuffed furniture and a big wagon wheel chandelier.
I reached the entryway.
I put my hand on the wall, on the light switch, and I stopped.
I could already smell the death in here.
I could already smell the blood.
I flicked the switch.
The lights in the chandelier glowed brightly.
I saw Alexis Merriweather.
The body of the movie star lay sprawled on her back along the length of the red sofa.
Her head and one arm dangled down over the side.
She and all the cushions and the rug and the floor were soaked in gore.
The walls were spattered with it.
Through the shreds of her nightshirt, I could see her flesh had been ripped to pieces with savage strokes of a blade.
The famous and beautiful face was mangled.
The blue eyes stared at me through a mask of blood.
I had only a moment to register my horror at the sight, an upward spinning horror as my mind flashed back to the scene outside my office.
Jane humiliated by her cruel movie star boss.
And now Jane here, drugged out of her mind, covered in blood, a butcher knife in her hand and Alexis murdered.
The police will think she did it, I thought.
And right then, fresh horror.
Sudden sirens scurled loudly just outside.
The edges of the window curtains flashed red and blue with the lights of patrol cars.
What seemed only a second later, there was a pounding on the door.
A man shouting, LAPD, open up!
I hurried out of the room, headed breathless down the hall to the front door, turning on the foyer lights as I went.
Only at the last moment did it occur to me to ditch the cook's knife in the nearby coat closet.
Then, quickly, I pulled the front door open.
I stared aghast.
Two detectives were standing on the front step.
And here was the thing that rocked me.
I knew them.
The second I saw them, their names leaped into my head as if out of nowhere.
Graciano and Lord.
He, Graciano, was a smallish white guy who looked like he was made entirely of rectangles.
She, Lorde, was a large black woman with features fixed in a permanently bored and suspicious expression.
They were both wearing trench coats against the chill of the mist.
As I gaped at them, I heard Riley's sleepy whisper inside my brain.
They're all in on it, boss.
And yes, I suddenly remembered.
These cops, Graciano and Lord.
They were both wholly owned and operated by Serge Orozgo.
I stood confused and staring as the two detectives stepped over the threshold into the foyer.
Graciano first, then Lord.
I was about to say something to them, to try to explain.
But what could I say?
And anyway, they were gazing right past me.
I looked over my shoulder, following their stairs.
There was Jane.
Blood-drenched Jane.
She was standing in the hall behind me, swaying on her feet, open-mouthed, dazed, drugged.
Graciano and Lord shoved me aside and went to her.
As they passed the open entryway, they glanced over into the living room where Alexis lay dead.
That was it.
Just a glance.
They didn't even look surprised to see her there.
They didn't react at all.
Jane, Jane away, said Lorde in a flat, ironic tone.
You're under arrest for the murder of Alexis Merriweather.
Just like that.
And just like that, she maneuvered Jane's arms behind her and began to snap a pair of handcuffs on her wrist.
Jane stood woozy and unresisting.
I finally broke out of my stupor.
I moved toward them.
Hold on a second.
How did you— Graziano turned and put his hand flat against my chest.
Not a blow, but a jolt that brought me up short.
His eyes met mine hard.
You were never here.
I stood stunned.
The two detectives pushed past me again and hustled Jane out of the house.
Supervising Producer Mathis00:00:43
Another Kingdom, the final season.
Written by me, Andrew Clavin.
Performed by Michael Knowles.
Voice work for the Secretary, Caitlin Maynard.
Episode 3, Madness and Murder.
Was directed by Jonathan Hay, produced by Austin Stevens.