Spike finds himself in a dark and exceptionally creepy hall, which is filled with the rhythmic sound of what sounds like someone chopping celery. Spike finds the source of the sound: a man sitting at a table. Spike drawls that he doesn’t want to interrupt the man’s sitting in a dark basement, but he wonders if he could point him to the nearest exit. There is no response. Spike, trying to needle the man, steps closer, only to see that the man is using a butcher’s knife to cut off his own fingers (hence that celery sound). The man’s head whips around revealing a horribly mutilated face with lacerations and the upper lip cut off.

Then, the man is gone, and a confused Spike is left alone in the room.

Later, Lorne discusses casting on his cell phone as Fred hurries into Wesley’s office, handing him a list of books she wants and asks him for them without so much as a greeting, which Wesley dryly notes. She apologizes, citing stress as her cause for impoliteness. Wesley lets the issue drop, glancing over the list of incredibly hard to find books, and concludes that, using every resource that he’s culled over the last month as head of Research and Intelligence, he should get them in . . . about twenty minutes. She’s thrilled, but he says he’ll only do it if she makes sure to get some sleep and food. She assures him that she’s totally fine, right before she turns and lets out a truly frightened shriek because of coming face to face with Eve.

Eve takes her to Angel, where it’s revealed that he project with Spike has caused her to go over her quarterly budget by 800 thousand dollars, and the quarter isn’t even over. Fred tells them that she’s trying to do something that’s never been done, and that costs money. They came to Wolfram and Hart to help people, and that’s what she’s doing. Angel doesn’t quite see helping Spike as a good deed. He tries to warn Fred that Spike can be very charming, and she agrees, rattling off a list of Spike’s various attractions, before demanding if Angel thinks she’s stupid. She knows that Spike has been playing up the charm card, but she’s not falling for it. It’s about doing what’s right. Angel lets her do it, but warns her that some people can’t be saved.

Back in the lab, Spike looks for Fred, and notices one of the lights go off. He calls out, sees another light flickering farther off. He mocks the light, but there’s definitely some fear in that mock.

So, Spike, like a good horror movie hero, goes to the flickering light, then decides that that’s a stupid course of action, and a waste of time. Then, one by one, every light in the hall he now stands in winks out. So, curiosity getting the better of him, he starts to follow the lights again, asking them what happens next. He hears gasping, and turns to see a woman in Colonial-style clothing kneeling on the ground. Then, slowly, she stands up, revealing nothing but bloody stumps where her arms should be, begging him to hold her, because It’s coming. Then, she vanishes.

Spike goes to Angel, who’s less than pleased to see him. Spike says he wants to hang, but Angel realizes that Spike is realizing how close he is to hell. Angel knows what it’s like. He only got a short reprieve from his stay, and he doesn’t even know why he got that. Spike tells him to put his martyr away, because he knows about the prophecy. Angel simply informs him that it’s fake. There’s no prophecy that’s real, because nothing’s set in stone. Angel truly believes that he’s going to hell, and Spike will be there right next to him. Spike warms to this idea, citing eternity together, and they both begin to discuss why they never liked each other. Finally, though, Angel breaks down and admits that there was one thing he liked about Spike: his poetry. Spike is not flattered, and reminds Angel that he also likes Barry Manilow. They are about to get into it again, when Spike sees a dead man hanging from the ceiling. He freezes, asking Angel if he can see it, too.

Angel can’t, and soon calls in the entire gang as Spike rants at the ghosts that are coming out of the woodwork. Ghosts that only he can see. Eve hurries in and says that the mystics can’t detect anything, either. Spike is the only spectral presence in the building. Then, all the ghosts begin to tell Spike that It’s coming for him, and It’s here. Spike starts insisting that they check again for ghosts.

But before they can really get anything out him, Spike vanishes. The Gang immediately springs into action, some wondering if Spike is hallucinating. Meanwhile, Spike, who stands exactly where he was, shouts at them as they walk off, unable to see him.

Spike follows them out into the lobby. A voice suddenly tells him that no one can help him now. Spike asks if this is the part where he asks who’s there and then something creepy happens. Another light up on the floor above him, flickers, and he realizes how right he is. He heads toward the light, following it up the stairs as an elevator opens. Spike blusters, but it’s obvious that he’s exceptionally shaken by this. Still, he goes into the lift.

Fred, Wesley and Gunn stop in Wesley’s office, speculating about Spike’s more and more frequent disappearances. Gunn isn’t so worried and figures that in twenty minutes he’ll be popping up in the bathroom and making fun of their . . . he cuts himself off at the looks the other two are giving him, sheepishly asking if he’s the only one Spike does that to. Apparently, yes. As Wes tries not to laugh, Fred pulls them back on track, insisting that this disappearance is different. Spike is agitated and hallucinating. Wesley says that, since Spike’s case is unique, dementia isn’t out of the question. Gunn agrees and starts spouting legal codes with which he would be involuntarily committed, before realizing what he’s saying and once again cutting himself off.

Fred finally tells them that Spike is slipping into hell, and after a pause, both boys are remarkably unsurprised.

Spike’s lift reaches its destination, which is that very hall in the basement again. Once more, he hears the celery cutting sound. This time, he is unafraid and goes back to the room, which is empty aside from a small pool of blood on the table. He leans down to look at the leftover fingers lying in it before jerking up to see a woman with a shard of glass through her eye singing “Someone’s gonna get you.” When he asks what “It” is, she responds that the Reaper’s gonna get him. He’s less than impressed until she suddenly stops singing, snapping that she hasn’t forgotten him, then ripping the glass out of her eye and slashing him across the face with it before vanishing, leaving Spike bleeding and shocked.

Spike then goes back upstairs and desperately tries to tell an oblivious Fred that the ghosts are the welcoming party from Hell, and that they not only know his name, but can hurt him. She almost thinks she has the solution, but gets exceptionally frustrated when she realizes that the solution she found will also create a feedback loop that will liquefy half of L. A. In encouragement, Spike tries to touch her arm, shocking them both. Both are surprised, but Fred is guessing that Spike’s there. Then, the lights start to shut off.

Fred starts to get worried . . . and Angel is standing right there. The mystics found nothing. Fred decides to screw the mystics and insists on a new option.

In a board room, Wesley and Gunn both wonder is they should go through with their new plan. Gunn is less than enthusiastic, citing his extensive knowledge of horror movies to know that this always turns out ugly. Then, in walks a girl in a hot red and black Goth-chick outfit, and Gunn realizes that he stands corrected. The girl reveals herself to be a medium, and one who really doesn’t go in for all the campy crap that usually accompanies a séance. Without further ado, and without any pleasantries, our medium gets to work. She calls on the spirit world, beseeching the opening of the gates. She says that she senses a presence, and Spike is less than impressed as it’s revealed he’s standing right next to her. The medium says she senses so much pain and suffering. She says that it’s coming. She can feel the Dark Soul. It’s here. It’s the—

Before she can complete that thought, though, she starts choking like someone who pissed off Darth Vader. Her nose starts to bleed, then she jerks upright, spews blood from her mouth, and collapses face-first on the table, dead. The living occupants of the room are more than a little creeped out.

Gunn and Wesley discuss the event, and Gunn wonders why Spike would kill the mystic who was trying to help him. Wesley realizes that he didn’t. Spike wouldn’t do anything to someone who was trying to help him, there’s no benefit for him there. So, the only conclusion to be drawn is that the Dark Soul is not, in fact, Spike. It’s something else, and something a hell of a lot worse.

Said vampire-ghost, meanwhile, has followed Fred back to her lab, and it seems to be about equal parts trying to tell her what he knows, and getting to watch her take a shower. He’s confused why the Reaper would have killed the medium. He shouts that he thinks that this Reaper is trying to hide something that it doesn’t want the gang to know. Reaching out, he’s shocked when his hand collides with the shower door. He tries again, and his hand passes through it. Realizing what an opportunity he might have, Spike reaches out, concentrating hard, and desperate to touch the door, and he does. Slowly, he writes on the steam-covered door.

Fred, done with her shower, turns off the shower and turns, staring at the word Reaper written on her shower door—

Right before the entire glass door blows out, and Spike is flung into the lobby, encountering a lawyer with a burned face, the armless woman and the woman with glass in her eye. He gets angry, and is suddenly in the basement, faced by a tall man with an old-fashioned surgeon’s knife, who says that he’ll send Spike to hell, but not until they’ve played a little.

The gang finds that there are over four-hundred references to a Dark Soul, four of which are about Angel, who thinks it’s unfair to label him that when he didn’t even have a soul at the time. Still, they know that they need more to go on to find the medium’s murderer—which Fred provides, running in, her hair still wet, with the word Reaper for them to cross-reference.

They do, and find a reference to a doctor named Pavayne, who was nicknamed the Reaper for performing unnecessary surgeries on people. The type they didn’t recover from. He fled from England to California, where he brutally performed ritual murders, pieces of his victims placed in a manner that suggested an intimate knowledge of the black arts. It turns out that Wolfram and Hart, who wanted to build their L. A. branch, had to unconsecrated the ground of a Spanish Mission, so they killed Pavayne on the spot to do so.

The building is built on his blood.

They realize that Pavayne has found a way to stay out of Hell, and Angel thinks he knows how. After all, Wolfram and Hart isn’t exactly low-risk employment. There should be some ghosts there, and yet the mystics find none. They realize that Pavayne has been feeding the ghosts on Wolfram and Hart to hell in exchange for his continued existence in the mortal plane.

Spike isn’t doing very well, and has been sliced and diced in the lab. Pavayne baits him by the idea that he might go after Fred before transporting them back to the basement. Spike realizes that it was Pavayne who has been trying to drag him into hell. Pavayne tells Spike that there’s nothing there without the will. His voice, his body, they’re only there because he wants them to be. It’s all a matter of forcing reality into your own parameters.

To prove his point, Spike is stripped naked and beset by the ghosts. Pavayne confirms that, yes, they all worked for Wolfram and Hart, and he fed them all to hell, and Spike will go next. Spike realizes that the ghosts aren’t real, but Pavayne corrects that they’re real enough, and then stabs Spike.

The Gang walks in on a hunched Fred scribbling on her windows. They worry, but she insists that she’s not crazy again. She just ran out of room on her white board. Still, she thinks she’s found a way to recorporealize Spike. However, she’ll need the equivalent of nuclear evil to catalyze it. They go to the White Room, where Gunn asks the panther for part of its essence. It doesn’t respond favorably to Angel, but gives a much better reception to Gunn.

In the basement, meanwhile, the portal to Hell opens and Pavayne gets ready to send Spike in. However, Spike has other ideas, jumping up, remembering what Pavayne said about desire shaping reality. His clothes appear again, and he realizes that he can do what he wants, so long as he wants it badly enough. With that, he attacks Pavayne. They fight through walls and furniture, and things are looking up for Spike until Pavayne says that just because Spike’s learned a few tricks doesn’t mean he knows that much. Pavayne starts whaling back, and Spike goes down.

Fred and the gang get everything ready, and Gunn tells them that they won’t get anything more from the Conduit. With that, Fred starts up her machine. Suddenly, Spike and Pavayne get a good shock from the machine. Spike uses that chance to run to the lab, with Pavayne hot on his heels. Fred yells at Spike to get into the circle on the floor, because it’s their only chance to make him corporeal

It’s about then that Pavayne starts to choke Fred as he did the Medium. Gunn, Angel and Wes all run forward, but Pavayne knocks them to the floor. Making a split-second decision, Spike punches Pavayne, knocking him into the circle.

The machine activates completely, and Pavayne is suddenly corporeal. The boys get up as he rants. Angel punches him, glad to finally work off that aggression, promising a suddenly-visible Spike that he won’t kill Pavayne, just bruise him badly.

As they clean up, Wes and Gunn tell a disconsolate Fred to take a break. They’ll finish up. Back in her office, she’s joined by Spike, and tells him that she can’t build another machine. He’s not sorry. He doesn’t want to end up like Pavayne, cheating Hell any way he can. He also demonstrates his new trick: he picks up a coffee cup, citing that there are worse things than being a ghost.

Such as what Eve and Angel have done with Pavayne. They’ve put him in permanent storage, where he’ll live forever in a tiny box, completely unable to move a muscle, or affect anything, but completely conscious. Angel’s even given him a view a tiny window through which he can see his row of storage locker. Angel slams the door shut, and welcomes Pavayne to Hell.

Other than that, the only other real weapon is Pavayne’s ability to Darth Vader the living, illustrated by our unhappy Medium. I’m not quite sure how she coughed up that blood, because to get that sort of thing from her throat, Pavayne would have had to not only lacerate her trachea, bust also several of her key arteries. And there *definitely* would have been external signs of that level of internal trauma. The only other way I can think of is if Pavayne also somehow punctured a lung, but after seeing how he did what he did when he tried it on Fred, I’m not sure how. So, the source of her coughed-up blood and her nosebleed remain a mystery.

Wear:
The good: Fred’s first scene skirt. Very in character for her (she always wears that short of ruffly stuff), and the ruffles also made it look like she had more curves than she really did.

Another hit was the Medium’s exceptionally sexy outfit. I really loved her Victorian-style beaded choker, as well as her red-velvet, black-lace-trimmed dress. Very nice, and a quick conveyor of a sense of sharp, modern mysticism. Nice job.

Also of note is Fred’s wet hair when she tells the gang about Spike writing Reaper on her shower door. I always hate it when movies show the heroine running in right after a shower with her hair perfectly coiffed. Hello! She wouldn’t have been thinking styling products; she would have been thinking of throwing on some clothes really fast so she can tell everyone what she’s seen. So, good for that.

The Not So Good: Pavayne‘s makeup. A little less cheap Halloween costume, a little scarier, please. I mean, seriously, who put those under-eye circles on? A High School theatre? They were pathetic. The very definition of big overture, little show.

Wesley:
Still not a lot of Wes. I remain hopeful that this is all some sort of master plan and that they didn’t just forget about the most fascinating character on the series, so I wait.

Still, lots of fun horror-movie-style moments, though I could have done with a bit more gore if they were going for that viewer discretion advisory, anyway. Still, that’s my preference, and no one else’s.