Jo tries every road out of the abandoned plaza. Each one returns her to the same pumps, the same frozen clock, and an Attendant who insists she has not truly answered the phone. When Jo finally sleeps inside her locked car, she wakes with the pay phone bolted into the passenger seat.

Content note: grief, confinement, supernatural peril.

Wrong Turn is an A Side Quest Original. Follow the show for the next road you should not have taken, and visit SideQuestOriginals.com for more original fiction.

After a fourteen-hour paramedic shift, Jo Mercer drives into a storm and passes a mile marker that should not exist. Every exit disappears. An abandoned service plaza is the only place left to stop—and its ringing pay phone connects Jo to a patient who died nine years ago. The woman remembers her last words differently.

Content note: grief, motor-vehicle accidents, medical emergency references.

Wrong Turn is an A Side Quest Original. Follow the show for the next road you should not have taken, and visit SideQuestOriginals.com for more original fiction.

Arabella thought she understood the pattern—houses that remember, clients who belong to them before they even sign the papers. But when she shows the Okafors a craftsman bungalow with a yellow nursery, the boundaries between her own history and the work become impossible to ignore. The mobile above the crib shouldn't be turning. It definitely shouldn't be playing a lullaby her grandmother used to hum. And it absolutely shouldn't be the same mobile from her own childhood.

As three generations of women converge in a room painted the exact shade of buttercream that runs in Arabella's family like a genetic trait, she begins to understand that the houses aren't just answering to their new owners. They're answering to something much older, much more personal. When Dulcie finally offers her the key to Meridian's locked drawer, Arabella must decide whether she's ready to learn what her predecessor knew—and what price comes with that knowledge.

**In this episode:**

- Arabella encounters a house that knows her family history

- The Okafors find their dream home in a nursery that feels impossibly familiar

- Dulcie reveals the key to understanding Meridian's true work

- A voicemail promises answers Arabella isn't sure she wants

Arabella takes on her second listing at 1203 Tidewater Lane—a charming split-level that seems perfect for retired librarian Astrid Eklund. But the house has an unusual feature: a hallway that leads to different rooms depending on which direction you walk. When Astrid mentions speaking with the missing Meridian just last week, Arabella begins to realize that some disappearances in Ash Cove might not be as permanent as they seem.

As the boundaries between past and present blur, Arabella discovers that her predecessor's influence extends far beyond the grave. And when she finds herself answering her own phone calls, she starts to wonder: in a town where realtors vanish without a trace, how long before the listings start selling themselves?

**In this episode:**

- Arabella searches for answers about Meridian's disappearance

- A mysterious hallway reveals rooms that shouldn't exist  

- An impossible phone conversation suggests Meridian isn't as gone as everyone believes

When artist Viktor Restrepo comes looking for a cheap, bright studio space, Arabella shows him a beautiful cedar-clad houseboat with perfect north light and one impossible detail: it sits three feet higher in the water than every other boat in the marina. Even at low tide. Even when the mudflats are exposed just sixty feet away.

As Viktor falls in love with the space and its strange acoustics, Arabella receives another voicemail from Meridian Osei—this one clearer than before, timestamped in the future, and containing information she couldn't possibly know. The messages are getting stronger, and Meridian's pronunciation of Arabella's name is getting closer to right. But when Meridian mentions a nursery painted the same color Arabella once chose, the boundary between client and agent begins to blur in ways that can't be explained by simple real estate transactions.

**In this episode:**

- A houseboat that defies the laws of tides and time

- Viktor's sculptures appear in places he never delivered them

- Meridian's voicemails arrive before they're sent, with warnings about what's coming next

Real estate agent Arabella thought she knew the rhythm of house showings in the coastal town of Ash Cove. Lockbox codes, hardwood echoes, and the careful dance of helping buyers fall in love with a space. But when she takes the Matsumotos to see a charming saltbox cottage, the familiar patterns begin to shift in ways she can't explain.

Every house on her roster uses the same lockbox code. Her colleague Meridian leaves voicemails about properties before Arabella even knows she has buyers. And sometimes, in the quiet moments between rooms, houses seem to be listening back. Welcome to Ash Cove, where finding the perfect home might mean something entirely different than you expected.

**In this episode:**

- Arabella meets new buyers at Dulcie's café and notices familiar patterns

- A routine showing at 47 Saltwind Avenue reveals unsettling details

- Mysterious voicemails from Meridian become impossible to ignore

Arabella finally uses the key Dulcie gave her, unlocking more than just Meridian's desk drawer. Inside, she discovers a leather ledger filled with unfamiliar addresses and a disturbing pattern: every client's name marked with the same word. When Dr. Hiroshi Sato arrives for a showing at 156 Fog Bell Road—a Victorian house with a thermostat that's been set to 68 degrees since 1894, despite having no working connections—Arabella begins to understand that some properties exist in more than one time at once.

As Dr. Sato finds what he's looking for in the house's mirrors, Arabella makes a chilling discovery in the ledger's final pages. Her own name appears in handwriting she doesn't remember creating, marked with a status that suggests her role at the agency might be more temporary—and more precarious—than she realized. With tomorrow's buyer already on the way, the true nature of her employment interview becomes clear.

**In this episode:**

- Arabella discovers Meridian's hidden records and their cryptic client classifications

- A widower finds more than he bargained for in a house that exists across multiple decades

- The answering machine reveals the stakes of Arabella's position at the agency