The Time Keeper is a haunting audio drama that unravels a deadly game at Shady Pines, where players are trapped and manipulated into believing they face life-or-death stakes. The game, orchestrated by Jacob Fairchild, exploits human hope and emotion, making players believe they must win to survive—only to find that failure means death. Through clues like 456-E, characters discover the truth: every player eventually dies, and the only way to "win" is not to play at all. The narrative reveals the game’s deeper mechanics: it’s not about solving puzzles but about psychological manipulation and the illusion of control. Charlie confronts the truth, choosing to quit the game and reject its false promises. With Zoe reprogramming the system to prevent new players from joining, the game ends—but the final twist suggests a hidden return, as a mysterious sign-in appears, hinting the cycle may continue. The story closes with the characters returning to normal life, maintaining vigilance over the game’s server, symbolizing both escape and the lingering possibility of recurrence. The audio drama blends horror, psychological depth, and moral ambiguity, concluding that true freedom lies in refusing to play a system built on suffering and false hope.
Hey, heart starts pounding listeners. I hope you've been enjoying our special four-part presentation of the Time Keeper. This is a fictional audio drama that we produced, working with some fantastic actors, Judith Lewis, who you may know from the babysitter film franchise on Netflix, Chandler Kinney, one of the stars of Pretty Little Liars, Original Sin, and Arjen Atelier, who I worked with on Nickelodeon's reboot of "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" Please enjoy the finale episode of the series and thank you for all your support. We stood at the top of the stairwell and listened. Nothing but the creaking of the old building. We started down the dark stairs. It was musty at first, but as we hit the first landing and started down, I smelled something familiar. The same thing I'd smelled in the break room at Funland Lingerd, trapped down here. We reached the lowest level and opened the door into a dark hallway, like the one on the first floor. Only the inner wall was lined with rooms with open metal doors. Everything was scorched and on the back of the doors were scratched two words. Take, talk. This is where they died. I could imagine someone showing up here, desperate, taken off street corner, signing up for the program, and being led down the hall to the elevator with thirteen floors, and then locked in the tiny room to play the game, to earn a cent for every second, knowing if they didn't win, if they didn't find the 13th key would all be gone. Awake for days, weeks, reality breaking into little pieces, and I could imagine the night of the fire, doors locked, the fists banging, just like Blake, pounding, pounding, pounding. Charlie, you heard that? Zoe pulled me back into the hall, we followed the sound around the corner of the front of the elevator, and there it was, just like the lowest level of the game, a long dark hallway that led to a single metal door with a keyhole through the center, and shining through from the other side, a red light. "You shouldn't be here. No one should be here." The woman had her back to us, stooped over working on something we couldn't see. She had short black hair streaked with gray, and a long old denim dress with muddy hiking boots. When she turned and faced us with a pistol her eyes were bloodshot like she hadn't slept in days. She was recognizable but only barely. Susan Graham. "I'm sorry it has to be this way. We thought it was over, but this time, we'll be sure this time." "You're as Graham." "Yes, and you're Charlie Dempsey, and you, I don't know who you are dear, because you're not playing the game." "You locked him in here, didn't you? You're the one who said it on fire, it wasn't fair child." "We made a deal with the devil, so it was our responsibility. You understand." "Your responsibility to what?" "To kill the devil." She turned when she said it, and I could finally see what was taking behind her. A detonator wired to barrels of what had to be some kind of explosive. The timer was at five minutes. "But this time, we'll be sure." "What is that? What are you gonna do?" "Make sure no one else dies." "No one else dies? If you destroy the game, everyone playing is going to die." "Everyone in the game always dies. That's the point." "You can't beat it. The only way to win is not to play." "It's funny, isn't it? It's funny." "No, no, that isn't true, Maria won." "Maria didn't win. She killed herself." "But in the video, you thought she won, that it worked." "It did work in its way. That's why we kept going." "That's why we agreed, everyone with Jacob, that we'll cover it up." "Nothing we did would bring Maria back, but the things we could do?" "We could change things for everyone." "Could give billions of people better lives." "That's what we thought." "If we just raised the stakes, make them believe it was life or death." "Because that's what he told us." "And whatever Jacob told you, you believed." "But it didn't work." "We're just not ready. The human brain?" "Sure, you can break it apart. You just can't do much with the pieces." "So you killed them. The people who went missing. But then you decided you'd have enough, so you set the fire to make it look like a fair child when crazy and killed everyone. You left them to die." "We did what we had to do." "Yeah, is that why you killed Blake and Tim? Because you had to?" "No. Jacob killed them. I don't know how, but I know it was him." "Bullshit! Fair child is dead. You just didn't want anyone to really know what happened that night. What really happened to Maria? But they were figuring it out, like we figured it out. So now you're trying to cover it up for good." "456E. What's 456E?" "Nothing." "It can't be nothing. It's the last clue Fair Child left in the game the night you killed him." Jacob wasn't himself anymore. Whatever you think he was telling you, I promise you. It doesn't mean anything. "No. No, that's how we win. That's how we beat the game." "Trust me, child. I know they're looking your eyes. I've seen it a hundred times. It's the look of hope. Because hope is what keeps you playing. If you believe you can solve the puzzle, you believe there's a way to get the next key and the next key." And finally, the last key. A way to win. That's what Jacob understood. That's what made the game work. But like I said, we're not ready. "Charlie, come on, we need to go." "So if the server goes, everyone playing dies." "Charlie, the gun or the bomb. Those are the two things that are going to kill us. Not a ghost, not a game. Isn't that right, Susan? Or why else would you have a gun?" "The gun is just to make sure nobody gets in the way of what has to be done." "So she's telling the truth." "The truth about what?" "Playing temp." "Charlie, I know we haven't slept in two days, but see." "Do you trust me?" "Yes, but. " "Then race me." "What?" "First to the wall." "I'd never beaten Zoe in a race. An elementary school should be at the swings before I'd gotten out of my starting stance. I'd kept changing the distances, hoping to find something I could beat her at. Eventually, I got told enough I could get close to a tie under six feet about the distance to the back wall of the server room." "I think it's about time you two left me alone." "Susan had the gun in one hand and a chain in the other." "To the wall?" "Yeah." "So he let her eyes drift to the wall behind Susan." "Fine." "Zoey and I took a step backward through the door, and then dip low, and launched ourselves across the room." "Charlie, grab the gun." "Got it." "I think she's out." "After they went over the wheelbarrow, Susan slammed the back of her head into the cement." "Shit, Charlie, you're bleeding." "I barely felt it when the gun went off, but now I felt the warm, trickle of blood down my left arm." "Are you shot?" "It's fine. It's fine unless you touch me. You have to put pressure on it." "Precious what hurts?" "Okay, forget about my heart. We have three minutes to get out of here." "Well, I don't know how to diffuse a bomb, but I do know how to eject a hard drive. So, if you say we need it." "We do." "So we ran our hands down the server rack." "There's only one drive that's not melted. That's the one fair child died to protecting." "So that's the one we take." "So we pulled the drive from its slot and shoved it into the back back." "Come on." "What about Susan?" "Charlie, we don't have time. Come on. We have to go." "So we ran. Back toward the elevator and around to the door leading into the stairwell we'd come down. But when we hit the door, it hit back." "Open it." "I can't. It's chained." "We, Susan had kept saying we made a deal with the devil. We are going to finish it." "It wasn't her acting on her own that night. It had to be everyone. Everyone who would work to shady pines." "Maybe she has the keys." "We checked Susan's pockets, but there was nothing. The detonator timer said two minutes, which meant Susan only had 30 seconds or so left in the game." "She's almost out of time." "We're almost out of time." "Forget keys, we shoot the luck." "Come on." "We ran to her at the elevator and as we did, we saw the floor counter above it counting down." "It was fake too. Lights for 13 floors, even though we knew they were on the three. But still they went off one by one, counting down to our floor." "What's happening? He's here." Susan staggered into the doorway behind us. "Who's here?" "The time keeper."
The elevator was dark, but I could smell the sharp stench of burned flesh and hair. The lights inside flickered, and I saw it, just for an instant, a tall, thin shape with a face covered in eyes that looked in every direction at once. Charlie, the gun. The light shut off and the figure was gone. When they flashed again, he was ten feet closer. The gun. I let so he'd take the gun from me. She raised it toward the figure, and the next time the light flashed, he was there, right in front of us, staring. Though he fired point blank through him, but there was nothing there. I could feel him moving past us, through us. They hurried my arms standing up like I was in a lightning storm, and the smell was so strong it was like everyone being burned alive right now. In this moment, we turned towards Susan and he appeared in front of her, his back to us. It is tonight. Do it the elevator. Come on, come on, come on, come on, we're hurt. Do you like scary stories? Think you've heard it all. We've never heard it like this. Katie Randson was a horror podcast featuring true scary stories, told by real people. He's tapping, tap, tap, tap. He's tapping on the door. He wants us to open the door. And then their light turns on, and then their light turns on in a shape of a triangle, and I'd say it's probably about the length of a school bus, you know, right above my head. She had long, ratted hair. She was wearing a dress. Her ribs were showing, her fingers were long. She looked shriveled, partially decayed. These eyes started opening. They were pure white, and I lose it. Radio Rental returns October 23rd. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Are you okay? Are you alright? Zoe? What just happened? Zoe, Zoe, it's okay. Okay, he didn't care about us. You saw that. Time was up. You only cared about her. But your time, Charlie, your time is up next. Zoe grabbed my good hand, and we stood there, facing each other. All the elevator climbed in slow motion. Charlie, you're not allowed to die. I can't do a year here without you. You won't have to. I'm going to beat the game. Promise me. I promise. We were standing so close, everything was almost touching. We have a lot of things to do once we leave this town. Yeah. But first we have to get out of here. How much time do we have? I don't know, maybe 30 seconds. We made it to the front door, but it was chained, too. We could push it open just enough to see if you all pick up truck was gone. Come on. We've got to find another way. It's gone. Hey, Charlie, there are flowers. Someone has to know. Someone has to be watching. So be careful. Flowers? Where? In the cave. There were bones and still was all smacking, and there were truck flowers, and someone who has brought them up. Maria. Why? Never mind. Charlie, we've got to find a way out of here. Where are you guys? Shady Pine, but we're stuck. What do you mean? I've changed the spot. Keep it on the road. I mean, we're locked in in the whole place it's about to go up. What do you mean, go on? I mean, boom. Where are you? Shady Pines, I already told you. No, I mean, where are you exactly? Just inside the front entrance. Big great door front. Yeah. Wait, how do you know about the door? I move out of the way. Ah, pointy. Oh shit, so we move. So we and I dove behind the reception desk just as the front Tim's pick up wide in the front entry by about 60. We climbed over the desk and onto the hood of the truck. The wheel smoked as the truck tried to free itself from debris. Zoe and I gripped the front of the hood. I tried to squeeze before I left hand, but it was now mingling from the hole for my shoulder. The sound was like nothing I'd ever heard. Like being inside of a giant speaker stack. Like our bodies were being vibrated to put out the sound. We saw the fireball in the reflection of the windshield as Buzz gunded in reverse. Was slammed on the brakes and the truck slid to a stop in the wet grass just before the tree line. Thick dust and tiny chunks of cement rained out of us. Are you guys okay? What happened? We caught each other up. They'd found Tim's keys on his body and took his truck from owls when they couldn't get a hold of us. We told them what we found inside and showed them the drive. It's real. The game is really cursed. It's almost like I was saying that the whole time and no one believed me. We believe you now, but it doesn't matter what matters is beating it. Yeah, well, we can't hang around here trying to beat it because A, you don't have anything to hook that drive to and B, everyone in the counties can have seen and heard that explosion. Gamma was right. If we stayed, we'd be answering questions from police while the last of my time and everyone else is in the game, ticked away. We have to figure out the last clue, but we need to get the game back online so we have more time. Four or five or six, it has to be the order. The order of what? The order of the changes. Yeah, maybe, but we don't have time to figure it out here. She was right, but I knew I was close. I had to be close. The other changes all made sense. All led us to something. Why would the last one be different? Give me a sec, but let me see Fair Child's watch. Yeah, I got you, bro. I took the watch from Buzz. The taking made me shudder. The first clue. The login. The second clue. The grave. The video. You wanted us to know what happened to Maria. Any ideas? I looked around our circle and everyone looked like they were dead, cut, bruised, bleeding, covered in dirt, and dust, and mud, and blood, and all because I wanted to play this stupid game, because I wanted to know what happened to Blake. I had a little more than half an hour on my timer in the game. I could see it on the phone, counting down. Charlie, it's gonna take 20 minutes to get into town. I don't know how long to get the drive set up, but we can't afford to wait here. 4-5-6-E. Maybe he just ran out of time. Maybe he was already insane, like Susan had said, and there was no final clue. I stared at the second hand of the watch and imagined Fair Child holding it in the observation room. Ticking, ticking, ticking, staring down at it. It wasn't just a clock face. There was a compass on it, too, that still seemed to work. I spun slowly in a circle and watched the needle pointing north. Charlie, what are you doing? Good? 4-5-6-E. Yeah, we know. No, look, it's a compass. 456-E. 456-E. Maybe that's what he was trying to say. 456-E. I looked to the east, thick woods directly behind shady pines. Yeah, but 456-1. Maybe it's 456 steps. Maybe. Yeah, maybe, but if it's not, we're not getting back here and into town before the clock runs out. So we split up again. You guys go into town, I check it out. What? No. Yeah, you're not going by yourself. You guys are done enough, okay? If the police show up, you don't want to be here, and we already know the timekeeper only cares about people in the game. Yeah, but we care about you. Okay, I'll go with Charlie. You guys get the game back on. You don't have to come, she. Shut up. You can barely hold the laptop, and I'm not even sure you can count that high. Remember what I told you? We're not losing. We'll call you for the school. Thanks. Sorry. Be careful. Yeah, you too. Well, into the woods we go. We walked around the smoldering facility and the construction equipment scattered around it. The flames still shot up occasionally from the center of the building, but everything was so wet, there wasn't a chance of it spreading. We stopped at the edge of the tree line and turned our flashlights on. Alright, I guess we start counting. The woods were thick. You could tell there had been a path here a long time ago, but it was overgrown and had been reclaimed by the forest. We counted under our breaths, and by the time we reached 400, the tree cover was so dense we couldn't see the moon. But at 440, we entered a small rocky clearing where the moon might broke through enough for us to see without the flashlights. There's nothing here. Well, uh, let's just walk around. Gama, watch out. You couldn't see it until you were on top of it, but there was a shallow pit as big around as a hot tub and about as deep. Thanks. It's a big hole. Reminds me the fire pits for me at school for Thanksgiving. Light the match. What match? No, that that was the line in the game that Fairchild replaced. The last change like the match. We shinder flashlights into the pit. There were chunks of wood, broken branches that had washed there over the years and probably today. Grass grew up through them, but
There was something else. Something black and burnt. Are those tires? I stepped down into the pit and felt the uneven rubber under my feet. My dad would probably want these. Gama, what? Look, I shined my flashlight where Gama had just kicked. He thought it was a rock, but the rock had rolled over. And he was looking at us with empty eyes. No, no, no, no, no. No more bones. Burned tires, black and bones. I remembered the pit from the field trip. This is where they burned the bodies. What? No, I thought they died in the fire in the building with a fair trial. After Maria, the ones who didn't survived it. This is where they brought them. It's Zoe. Zoe, where are you? I'm a school, so we're online. Check the game, but it should be running. Did you find anything? Um, yeah, we found something. What? The rest of the patients? What? They're bones. 456 steps in the woods. That's intense. That's what she wanted us to find. That's the last place of the bodies. Everyone who died, that's it. They should have beaten the game. We know what happened. Maria was the first. It worked, but she killed herself. And they covered it up. But it kept happening. No one could beat the game, and it's your vibe. Maybe it was like Susan said. We weren't ready. Our brains weren't ready, so they just have to go in. That's what had happened. And Fairchild had led us to everything we needed to prove it with the clues he'd left us just before he died. I took the laptop from Gamma. Well, I already know. My game wasn't over. The clock was still ticking. It hasn't stopped. 15 minutes, but it's still ticking down. No. No, no. That shouldn't be right. It must not be wasn't the last clue. The last clue he typed to write you there, but that doesn't mean there isn't another clue there. Gamma, look around. We'll try and replace. See if there's anything else. Like the watch at the grave. There has to be another clue there. And then another clue, and then another clue. That's how it works. I understood now. Finally, I understood. Hope. Yeah, but that's how you beat the game. You can't beat the game. What? You've never been able to beat the game. That's been the point since the beginning. We know that, but this is a different game. No. No, it's the same game. Fairchild is the timekeeper. He doesn't want you to uncover a mystery. He doesn't want you to solve a puzzle and get to the end and win. I thought about the video. The talk he gave. A dolphin with a drown. A bird with crash and die. Change or die. He started with money as the reward, but he always knew that life or death takes was the only way to make it work. So we tried to convince people of that when they came to shady pines. That it was real. The button's in the elevator. The mask he wore. But it was still just a game, then. Wait. What are you saying? I'm saying the only way to beat his game is if he decides you've won. Now, you don't get to lose. That's not an option. Yeah, Charlie, come on. We're gonna figure this out. Susan was right. We have to destroy it. No one else could ever play. No, I'll go back to the game. I'll check the drive. We may have something okay, but to keep playing. Okay, Charlie, keep playing. We have forever. We'll keep you waiting. We'll hope. Right, guys? Come on. I imagined all the people telling themselves that in the program. And Fairchild and Susan and the others waiting. Watching. Hoping. Right along with them. Waiting for the patterns in their brain to change and stick. Not changing that snap. But the time would always run out. And when the time right now, the time keeper came. Charlie, we'll figure something out, okay? Just play. No. What do you mean, no? You can't quit. Yeah, come on. I'll climb into the bone pit and see if there's anything there. No, no, no. Fuck your game. You hear me? Fuck your game! The only way to win is not to play. Well, I'm not playing. Charlie, if you don't play, you die. And if you do play, you die. Either way, I'm done playing his game. Gamma makes him play. Don't let him give up. Charlie. Charlie, come here. Take the laptop. Please, just move around. Just do something, okay? Keep the clock stopped. I didn't care anymore. I could see Fairchild grin when I closed my eyes. Like he was watching me in this observation room. Watching as my brain tore itself apart. Like he was waiting for a seated plant to shoot through the dirt and turn into something real and alive. But I was already alive. I'd been alive before I ever started playing. This, his game, was just a little slice of reality that I'd made my whole world. I'd chosen to spend every second thinking about his puzzles, his games, and following the clues he'd left. But I was done. Charlie. Listen to me. This, isn't a game. We don't beat this. We have to beat this. Okay. We have to get the 13th key and stop the clock. We'll find a way. Sometimes it doesn't matter if you quit or if you keep grinding. You just lose because that's the way it's coded. My mom never quit. When her code said these jeans will kill you. My dad was never going to quit working a tasty program. But he was also never going to win. These were the rules that whoever set up the game decided. He just followed them. But someone else always set them. Someone else always set the rules. Zoe. What? What if everyone who played one? What do you mean? Everyone who plays dies because their clock hit zero. Okay, the keys don't matter. The only key that matters is the 13th key because that's the key that stops the clock. And Fairchild could trigger it no matter what else happened in the game. What are you saying? The code. You have the code. You have the game you uploaded. The game we're all playing, right? Yeah. Yeah, great. So can you make it so everyone who plays wins? How? By triggering the 13th key. How do you know that would work? We don't. But on the video, the one where Maria died, we watched Fairchild trigger the timekeeper in the game to open the last door. That was what stopped the clock from Maria. It would have to be an action everyone who plays the game does. Everyone who plays the game loses. Exactly. Exactly when the clock hits zero, the timekeeper comes. Zoe, can you make it so that when the clock hits one second, it triggers the 13th key. One second? You want to give yourself one second? What if it doesn't work? One minute. That's what we've got to do. Can you do that? I think so. But Charlie, that's wasting a lot of the time you have left. So what if we. Zoe. What? Everyone has died because they've played by Fairchild's rules. Right? Yeah. At least this way? We're playing by ours. Yeah, okay. Okay, just play until I figure out the code. Plan. Plan. Plan. I sat down in front of a laptop. I was on the casino floor. The same slot machine Blake had asked me to play. Waiting for it to come up all keys. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open. Pressing has been the slot over and over and over. Charlie? Charlie, stay awake. Come on, I've got you. Any luck, see? Yeah, maybe. Oh shit. What is it? I think the alarm was on a timer. But make sure no one comes this way. Just distract anyone who shows up. Or no, sure. Okay, I'm taking the change, but there's no way to touch it. Sure there is. I took my hands off the keyboard and let the seconds take away. Charlie, are you sure about this, man? We can keep looking. We've got the whole drive decreased. All of it we can go through. No. I'm done playing. No matter what happens. I'm done playing. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. You guys remember when my mom would drive us into the city at like 6 a.m. So we could spend all day at six flags wandering around. Gamma would pretend he worked there so we could get 50 cent hot dogs. Yeah, yeah, I remember. Bro, my fake uniform was perfect. I kept the patch kept falling off. Got too hot. That wasn't my fault. Besides, it's not like anyone really cared. It's hot dogs probably cause it's like $0.7 max. I think Zoe set the record for a number of times to throw up in a single day. Hey, look, I don't let little things like motion sickness get away for good time. But I was glad we got to get to the weather work. And then we all got sick from whatever waterborne death virus was on there. Oh, yeah. It poor mental Charlie. I think she had to pull the car over every five minutes from the way back. Yeah. Yep, she did. I remember she cried. She laughed so hard when she told my dad that night. How much time now? Ten more seconds. Thanks. Guys. For everything. Thank you. I wasn't really watching the clock tick down. I didn't want to see it. I didn't want to think about it. Five. Congratulations. The 13th key is yours. Welcome to an aware. And just like that.
It was over. The clock stopped at one minute, my name was on the leaderboard, just below Maria's. We didn't sleep that night. Gama and I went back and took buzzes, trucks, and Zoe and Buzz had taken Tim's and drove into boarden. Zoe had made another change to the code. No new players could start a game. So we stayed up until the last players in the game hit one minute, and then their name showed up on the leaderboard too. People in boarden talked about that night for a long time, but no one ever really knew what happened. We told the sheriff we'd been worried about Tim, so we went to look for him. That we'd split up to try and find him, found the body and took his keys and his truck into town because our phones weren't working. Turns out, no one was too worried about the alarm at the school with all the power issues from the storm, and on account of what happened at Shady Pines. We told them about Susan Graham and the bodies in the woods and Maria's body in the cave. We didn't tell them about the game or the server we'd found it on. That part was just for us, and we had to decide how to handle it. Kill it with fire. We can't burn it. What if someone else ends up playing it? We wouldn't be able to make any changes. No one can play it if it's destroyed, right? No one can play it if it's offline, and it is offline. It's not connected to anything. All I'm saying is I'd feel better if it was in a million little chart pieces. Oh, I've got a cutting torch. I'll burn it up. Charlie, what do you think? I think we lock it up. Where? You have a gun safe. No, absolutely 100% no. I am not keeping the curse ghost game in my garage. So that's what we did. We kept it in a thick safe, and most days we forgot it was there. The first few weeks of school, all anyone talked about was Blake and Tim and Shady Pines, and the man hunt for all the people who used to work there, and how the whole place had to be cursed. There were even a lot of Shady Pines costumes for Halloween, but then it was done. My shoulder was back to normal. Common Zoe and I were up all night every weekend playing video games, and planning out trips we could take together from her respective colleges. And sometimes Buzz was around, even though he and Zoe had called things off before Thanksgiving. And every day, one of us would sign on and check the server address and make sure it was offline. And every day it was. So what's the next all nighter? I've actually been modding the old amnesia since they released the source files, so we could do a Christmas Eve playthrough. Gama will love that. Tell him to restock his holy water. Come in. Hey, I brought dinner. I know you don't love tasty burger, but- No, that's great. I'm starving. Oh. All right. Hey, I'm gonna go easy. Hi, Mr. Dempsey. Hi, Zoe. Tell your parents I said hello and Merry Christmas. We'll do, Merry Christmas. Later. It felt like things were getting back to normal, maybe even a better normal. Come in. Hey, well, it's just coming through the security logs from last quarter, there was a weird sign-in. What do you mean? It was someone who hasn't worked here, or even well, who's been alive in like ten years. What did they do? Dumped a bunch of files, like an automatic thing, just came online and just transferred everything over. Okay. Uh, well, scan them, go through them, make sure there's nothing malicious, probably just an old server bank that came back on for maintenance or something. All right. We'll do. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] The Timekeeper, episode four, features Judah Lewis as Charlie, Chandler Kinney, as Zoe, and Argin Atelier as Gama. The Timekeeper was created, written, and directed by Matthew A. Brown. Sound design, scoring, and mixed by Jeff Schmidt. Original score composed by Joshua Zimmerman. Original dialogue editing by Marika Pearlmutter. Executive produced by Kaelin Moore, Matthew A. Brown, and Judah Lewis. The Timekeeper is a production from Heart Starts Pounding. Additional cast includes Guy Kent as Jacob Fairchild, Princess Elmore as Susan Graham, Hugo Pierre Martin as Stan, Matt Anspa as Buzz, Brian Wiggins as The Man, and Darren Revitze as The Woman. [Music] Do you want more Darkly Curious stories in your life? Sign up for our Patreon for free and get access to a rotating shelf of bonus content, our weekly Rogue Detecting Society newsletter, and the HSP Book Club. Paid members also get monthly bonus episodes and archive access, which I think is more than 40 episodes at this point. You also get a cool jing sticker after your first three months, and you can check it all out with a free seven day trial. Link in the bio or go to patreon.com/heartstartspounding. or whatever you do, stay curious.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The Time Keeper is a fictional audio drama exploring a deadly game at Shady Pines where players are trapped, forced to play, and eventually die if they fail to win.
The game is orchestrated by Jacob Fairchild, who manipulates players into believing life or death is at stake, creating a psychological trap that exploits human hope and vulnerability.
Susan Graham, a key figure in the game, reveals that the only "win" is not victory but the destruction of the game itself, as the system is designed so that all players eventually die.
The final clue, 456-E, leads to a burial site in the woods where bodies of the deceased players are found, confirming the game's deadly reality and its hidden truth.
Charlie realizes that the true way to "win" is not to solve the puzzles, but to stop playing altogether, rejecting the game’s false promise of victory.
In a twist, the game’s code is reprogrammed by Zoe, preventing new players from joining and ensuring the game ends with all existing players surviving due to a self-terminating rule.
The creators reveal that the game’s horror lies in its psychological design—playing the game becomes a form of self-destruction fueled by hope and addiction.
The story ends with the game being safely locked away, and the characters returning to normal life, only to discover a new, mysterious sign-in suggesting the game may have returned, hinting at an ongoing cycle.
Summary:
The Time Keeper is a haunting audio drama that unravels a deadly game at Shady Pines, where players are trapped and manipulated into believing they face life-or-death stakes. The game, orchestrated by Jacob Fairchild, exploits human hope and emotion, making players believe they must win to survive—only to find that failure means death. Through clues like 456-E, characters discover the truth: every player eventually dies, and the only way to "win" is not to play at all.
The narrative reveals the game’s deeper mechanics: it’s not about solving puzzles but about psychological manipulation and the illusion of control. Charlie confronts the truth, choosing to quit the game and reject its false promises. With Zoe reprogramming the system to prevent new players from joining, the game ends—but the final twist suggests a hidden return, as a mysterious sign-in appears, hinting the cycle may continue.
The story closes with the characters returning to normal life, maintaining vigilance over the game’s server, symbolizing both escape and the lingering possibility of recurrence. The audio drama blends horror, psychological depth, and moral ambiguity, concluding that true freedom lies in refusing to play a system built on suffering and false hope.
FAQs
The story follows players of a mysterious game set at Shady Pines, where participants are trapped in a deadly loop. The game requires them to find keys and survive, but eventually reveals that playing leads to death. The central revelation is that the game was designed to manipulate players' minds, and the only way to 'win' is by refusing to play.
The main characters are Charlie Dempsey, played by Judah Lewis; Zoe, played by Chandler Kinney; and Gama, played by Argin Atelier. Other key figures include Susan Graham, who runs the game, and Jacob Fairchild, the mysterious Timekeeper.
Players who complete the game do not win in the traditional sense. Instead, the game’s design ensures that everyone who plays eventually dies, as the clock always runs out. The only true 'victory' is realizing that the game is a trap and choosing not to play.
The 13th key is the final clue that stops the game's timer. It is revealed that activating it—by triggering it when the clock hits one minute—ends the game and saves players from death, proving that the game’s true purpose is to break the human mind.
The game is fictional and part of a horror audio drama. It is not based on real events, but rather designed to explore psychological manipulation and the dangers of obsession with puzzles and games.
This phrase is the central theme of the story, meaning that true victory in the game is achieved not by solving puzzles or finding keys, but by realizing the game’s harmful nature and choosing to stop playing altogether.
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