Cradle of Death
Friday the Thirteenth: The Series — Season 1, Episode 25: “What a Mother Wouldn’t Do”
What wouldn’t a mother do? If she was truly committed to saving the life of her sick baby, apparently, next to nothing. In this Season One episode of the always excellent "Friday the Thirteenth: The Series," a woman named Leslie Kent (Lynn Cormack, in a role with a sort of suburban evil queen aspect to it) with a coffin-like cradle and her weak, easily dominated husband seek to preserve the life of a sick infant (read: changeling child) by hunting down and murdering folks. Near a body of water.
The subtext here seems twisted: the opening scene has the mother being assured by her doctor that by carrying her baby to full term, she’s endangering her life and that, furthermore, the baby is doomed to die anyway. The fate of the baby and the mother are obviously inextricably intertwined, and so is that of the baby as the harbinger or portent of death and misfortune. Aggrieved, the mother assures the doctor that she will not kill her baby. Wandering, a lost and lonely soul, she finds her way to the corner antique store owned by Louis Vendredi (R.G. Armstrong).
We’re back in the past now, before Vendredi’s ill-fated deal with the Devil cost him his immortal soul (in a time when Jack Marshak, played by the late Chris Wiggins, was still schooling him in the occult), but the show’s plot goes back even further.
It seems that on April 14th, 1912, aboard the doomed RMS Titanic, as passengers lined up for a pitifully few life-saving lifeboats, a woman actually dragged this rocking casket to shipside and begged for the thing to be put on a lifeboat, saving the life of her baby. They didn’t, but later, as the lifeboat took off, it sank unaccountably, killing seven. The magic number.
Why, after hearing this strange, unlikely tale, the viewer will ask themselves, did the mother drag her baby’s cradle along with her, to put in a lifeboat? Seems an unlikely, absurd detail. But the very unlikeliness of such a small detail can often lend a greater meaning to the narrative structure.
Stories and films are coverings, hiding deeper truths, or symbolic subtexts. Here, the symbolism is the substitution of life for a death—rocked across the water, or in a cradle, regardless: the sins and tragedies of the past surface, their meaning a dream metaphor for the tragic twist fate has played us—and the role of human sin and selfishness in the defining of grief and death, of our own suffering and our desire to escape from it.
Jack relates the unlikely story of the cradle as it relates to the Titanic, dredging up the haunted past. Ryan and Micki (John D. LeMay and Robey) go into action as they always do, hunting down the cursed item—Micki goes to the home of Mrs. Kent and cons her way in to “just have a look at it.” Kent’s husband, Martin (Michael Countryman) is her accomplice in the murders. He dons a smiling, slasher-movie getup to do her dirty work. In time, they are only one short victim away from securing the “life” of the baby, who seems to wait lingering in the liminal space in his coffin-cradle, in a state that is neither alive nor dead. The deceptively cute appearance of this traumatic tot is a veneer for the murderous rampage that must sustain its being.
Martin recoils at the murders as they must be performed. Meanwhile, the nanny Debbie (Robyn Stevan) becomes increasingly attached to the baby, and provides Micki and Ryan with the evidence they need to finally confront Leslie Kent and bring the episode to a conclusion. We won’t give away the ending, but it implies that the suburban perfection the wildly stretched-mouth smiling maniac Kent was seeking was destroyed from within by the curse of a past sin, a symbolic aborted cruise upon the icy waters of fate, and the clinging to a cursed cradle that rocked her to a sleep that was not life.
Good episode.
Friday The 13Th The Series S01e25 What A Mother Wouldn't Do
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The Station Without Trains
Seen (1) At the far end of a desert highway stood a train station that no map acknowledged. There were no tracks leading to it, no schedules posted, and no trains that ever arrived. Still, every evening at sunset, the lights turned on. Maya found the station by accident while driving cross-country to escape a life that felt too heavy. Her radio had gone silent miles ago, and her phone showed no signal. When she saw the station glowing in the distance, she pulled over, relieved to find signs of life. The station was clean, almost untouched by time. Wooden benches lined the platform, and an old clock hung above the entrance, forever stuck at 6:40. The air smelled of dust and iron, like a place waiting to be used. “Hello?” Maya called. No answer. She sat on a bench, telling herself she would leave in five minutes. But as the sun disappeared, the lights grew warmer, softer. Calm settled over her in a way she hadn’t felt in years. A man in a conductor’s uniform stepped out from the shadows. His clothes looked old-fashioned, but neatly pressed. His face was kind, though tired. “You’re early,” he said. “Early for what?” Maya asked. “For the train,” he replied. Maya frowned. “There are no tracks.” The man smiled gently. “Not all journeys need them.” He explained that this station was a place between leaving and arriving—a pause for those who were lost, grieving, or running from something they couldn’t name. People didn’t come here on purpose. They arrived when they needed stillness. “Does the train ever come?” Maya asked. “Yes,” he said. “But only once for each person.” Maya felt a tightness in her chest. “Where does it go?” The conductor looked at the horizon. “To the life you stopped believing in.” Maya thought of the dreams she had abandoned, the version of herself she no longer recognized. Tears surprised her, sliding down her face without warning. “I don’t know if I’m ready,” she whispered. The conductor nodded. “That’s why the train hasn’t arrived.” They sat in silence as the stars appeared. For the first time in years, Maya didn’t feel the urge to run. She felt seen. Slowly, the station lights dimmed. The conductor stood. “When you leave,” he said, “you won’t remember this place. But you’ll remember how you felt.” A distant sound echoed—not a train horn, but something close to a heartbeat. Maya blinked. She was back in her car, parked on the side of the empty highway. The station was gone. The road stretched endlessly ahead. But her chest felt lighter. She turned the key and drove forward, not knowing exactly where she was going—but certain, for the first time, that she was finally on the right track.
By Do bol ho jaaye 5 days ago in Horror
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