Centerfield: Pilot

Title: CENTERFIELD
Pilot Episode: “And I Chanced to Meet Him One Night Wandering”
Written By: Keith Allison
Format: 60-Minute Supernatural Mystery / Coming-of-Age Drama Series
Setting: Centerfield, a rural town on the verge of suburban sprawl (circa early 1980s)

I. LOGLINE

In a seemingly quiet 1980s town poised on the edge of suburban development, a group of imaginative young friends find their world disrupted by a series of chilling visitations, a phantom tractor haunted by a dead sheriff, and an ancient, towering humanoid watching them from the shadows of the woods.

II. SERIES CONCEPT & TONAL AESTHETIC

Centerfield is a series that thrives in the liminal space between mundane innocence and creeping cosmic dread. Set against the backdrop of the early 1980s, the series combines the Amblin-esque nostalgia of ride-anywhere bike adventures and late-night horror movie marathons with a disturbing, slow-burn supernatural mystery.

The tone shifts fluidly between:

The Nostalgic and Mundane: Playing Horse under garage lights, hanging out at the local Convenient Food Mart, drawing cryptids in sketchpads, and riding bikes through dusty country roads.
The Macabre and Grotesque: A tragic, bizarre death in a sunlit field, a garage shelf filled with jarred animal organs, and children eating Gerber baby food during a fanatical recital of biblical fury.
The Eerie and Spectral: Shadows that shimmer with quiet sentience on bedroom walls, haunted dolls that speak an incomprehensible tongue, and a phantom tractor that circles an empty field weeks after its driver’s death

Key Musical and Cultural Motifs

Music is a narrative anchor in Centerfield, defining characters and driving scenes:

Acoustic/Folk-Rock: Curtis and Johnny Houston strumming “Amie” by Pure Prairie League on the porch.
Hard Rock: Tan Kelly driving fast to heavy, “hollerin’ music” in his Pontiac Firebird.
Eerie Sacred Harp Choral: The unsettling, haunting strains of “Wondrous Love” by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers playing in the Grimes’ living room.
Psychedelic Rock: “The Wizard” by Uriah Heep scoring the appearance of the towering humanoid shape under the moonlight.
Pop-Culture References: Reading Starlog featuring Roger Moore and Sean Connery, watching The Seven Ravens on the CBS Children’s Film Festival, and late-night local horror blocks like Memories of Monsters.

III. CHARACTERS AND CHARACTER DYNAMICS

The Core Youth Group

Garvan “Van the Man” Houston (11): An imaginative, sensitive boy who is highly receptive to the supernatural. He lives with his easygoing father and uncle, sharing a warm but hands-off domestic life.
Cordell Rowe (11): Analytical, protective, and artistic. Cordell draws cryptids like Bigfoot but maintains a skeptical, grounded front to protect his wild younger siblings. His father is an absent scientist working for NASA on the Deep Space Network, leaving Cordell to shoulder significant family responsibilities while navigating his own quiet frustrations.
Reggie Rowe (9): Cordell’s sister—an eccentric, self-declared lover of scary things and classic monsters. Reggie has a bizarre connection to her ragged doll, “Peepee,” which she insists is a ghost that speaks to her in an alien language of tweets, hoots, and bells, warning her about “The Quiet People”.
Larry “Scary Larry” Towner (11): The group’s sarcastic, movie-quoting jokester who wears a Montreal Expos batting helmet. Larry is obsessed with Rambo, the occult (bringing a Ouija board to summon John Belushi), and vulgar humor, but masks a deep desire to be accepted by his peers.
Andie Oldacre (11): An athletic, self-assured neighbor who is exceptional at basketball. She shares a quiet, awkward friendship with Garvan, characterized by book-swapping and bike riding.
Rory Rowe (6): Cordell’s wild younger brother who frequently runs naked into the fields, sleeps in doghouses, and crawls into kitchen ovens. He is a chaotic force whom Cordell must constantly herd away from calamity.

The Grimes Household (Domestic Terror)

Jimmy Grimes (11): A deeply disturbed boy who “smells like boiled green beans” and is kept isolated from peers. Jimmy displays a highly volatile, obsessive personality: he keeps a collection of dissected, fluid-filled jars of animals (“wonders”) in his garage, plays out violent narratives of rape and betrayal using empty prescription pill bottles as “action figures”, and greedily eats baby food for lunch.
Amity Grimes (30s): Jimmy’s mother—intensely, psychotically cheerful on the surface but deeply anxious and fanatically religious. She encourages Jimmy’s macabre “studies” of God’s creatures, despises “California” and scientific secularism, has scratched her husband’s face out of all family photos, and recites terrifying biblical threats of parental cannibalism as dinner Grace.

The Adults of Centerfield

Melanie “Mel” Rowe (30s): Cordell, Reggie, and Rory’s mother. A sharp-witted, half-Vietnamese former scientist. Mel possesses a mischievous, dark sense of humor, going as far as to pull a terrifying “masked maniac” prank on her son and his friends.
Johnny “Cakes” Houston & Curtis Houston: Garvan’s father and uncle. Warm, eccentric, and protective blue-collar men who drink Falls City beer, play acoustic guitars, and debate the logistics of UFO flashing lights while playing Horse in the driveway.
Huxley “Hux” Samuels (60s): A cantankerous, highly perceptive elder who sits outside the Convenient Food Mart. He possesses unexplained capabilities—such as throwing a piece of chewing gum with enough force to embed it like steel into a utility pole—and issues cryptic warnings that “they” are coming for the town’s residents.
Tanamara “Tan” Kelly (30s): A Cherokee man and regular at the Convenient Food Mart. Tan is quietly knowledgeable about local lore, identifying the giant humanoid as Tsul ‘Kalu. He acts as a quiet, protective observer who understands that seeing these phenomena signals imminent spiritual trouble.
Neely Hudson (40s): The owner of the Convenient Food Mart and a Black Vietnam War veteran. Neely claims to have encountered Bigfoot twice—once in Vietnam and once at Jerusalem Ridge—with the creature saving his life both times.

IV. PILOT EPISODE: BEAT-BY-BEAT NARRATIVE

Title: “And I Chanced to Meet Him One Night Wandering”

TEASER

A gorgeous, sun-drenched day in a green country field. Sheriff Gordo Hedges (50s) happily drives his tractor, pulling a heavy mowing attachment. The idyllic sounds of insects, birds, and barking dogs fill the air. A single horsefly begins dive-bombing Gordo’s head. The fly lands on his neck and bites down with a wet, tearing rip.

Howling in pain, Gordo slaps at the fly and wildly fires his revolver at it. The fly bites him again on the forehead. Swatting frantically with the gun, Gordo accidentally strikes himself in the head, loses his balance, and tumbles off the tractor. He looks up in wide-eyed terror as the heavy mowing attachment rolls directly over him.

The tractor continues meandering randomly on its own into the distance. The horsefly lands on the steering wheel, wringing its front legs as if watching.

ACT I: VISITATIONS AND GHOST DIALECTS

Under a hot afternoon sun, eleven-year-old Garvan Houston pedals his bicycle past cows and rural pastures on the edge of the woods. He arrives at the house of his best friend, Cordell Rowe, who is sitting on the porch sketching Bigfoot.

Garvan, sweating and catching his breath, delivers a quiet bombshell: He saw Weird Harold last night.

Through a brief flashback, we see Garvan lying frozen in his dark bedroom, staring in terror at a shifting shadow on his wall that perfectly matches the cartoon character’s silhouette. Cordell consults his favorite book, World of the Unknown: Ghosts, trying to diagnose the visitation. They debate whether a cartoon character can even die to become a ghost.

The conversation is interrupted when Cordell’s naked six-year-old brother, Rory, streaks past the porch toward the fields. Grumbling about avoiding “tick dick,” Cordell runs off to herd Rory back.

Left alone, Garvan is approached by Cordell’s eccentric ten-year-old sister, Reggie, who clutches a ragged doll named “Peepee”. Reggie conspiratorially whispers that Peepee is a ghost who tells her secret things about the world and “The Quiet People”—mysterious, very small entities that watch, and possibly menace, the town.

Cordell returns, out of breath, noting that Rory tuckered himself out and went to sleep in the doghouse. Reggie runs inside to her closet, giggling and making a shushing gesture to Garvan. Suddenly, the ragged doll Peepee is seen sitting alone in the dark doorway, staring out at them.

ACT II: THE HOUSE OF WONDERS

Cordell’s mother, Mel, drives him in her Dodge Omni Shelby GLH to the Grimes household. Cordell desperately begs his mother not to make him play with Jimmy Grimes, complaining that Jimmy “smells like boiled green beans” and that his dog, King, is a neighborhood menace. Mel is unyielding, insisting that Jimmy has no friends and that Cordell is doing a good deed. She drops him off for a mandatory ninety-minute playdate.

Cordell is greeted at the door by Amity Grimes, who beams with a psychotic, anxious cheerfulness. Inside, the house is immaculate but deeply unsettling, filled with gory “passion of the Christ” paintings, dozens of religious figurines, and family photos where the father’s face has been violently scratched out. Amity makes passive-aggressive remarks about Cordell’s absent father and expresses her deep suspicion of “science” and “California”.

Jimmy Grimes emerges from the shadows, whispering greetings. He drags Cordell to the garage to show him his prized “collection”. Cordell stands aghast before metal shelves packed with dusty mason jars filled with fluid and dissected animal parts—mice, frogs, and a cat. Jimmy holds Cordell by the shoulders, intensely telling him that this collection “makes you special” and explaining that you “can’t understand God’s creatures until you open them up and look inside.” He coldly adds: “People are God’s creatures, too.”

They return to the kitchen for lunch. Amity places small plates in front of them containing jars of Gerber baby food. Before they eat, Amity delivers a terrifying, rapturous recital of Leviticus 26:27-29, whispering of biblical fury and eating the flesh of one’s own sons and daughters. Jimmy is giddy, greedily eating the baby food while whispering, “the breath of babies.” Under Amity’s intense, watchful gaze, Cordell is forced to swallow a spoonful, fighting back a grimace of disgust.

ACT III: THE PHANTOM TRACTOR AND THE SHANK OF GUM

Garvan rides his bike to the local Convenient Food Mart, passing a green sign reading “CENTERFIELD”. In the distance, Gordo’s unmanned tractor can be seen rumbling in a slow, continuous circle in the field.

Inside the store, a group of local men—Neely, Graeme, Waldek, Lou, and Tan—gather around the counter. They engage in humorous, mundane banter about Sizzler’s Malibu chicken, their wives’ newfound interest in jazzercise, and “yacht yuppies.” Garvan buys a bottle of Choc-ola and a paranormal magazine featuring Bigfoot on the cover.

The conversation turns serious when Neely claims he has met Bigfoot twice—once in Vietnam and once at a local hunting spot—and that the beast saved his life both times. Tan Kelly adds that Bigfoot is known to the Cherokee as Tsul ‘Kalu, a interdimensional traveler whose physical appearance in our world always signals that spiritual trouble is coming.

Outside, Garvan opens his baseball cards next to Hux, the cantankerous old-timer sitting in a lawn chair. They watch the distant tractor circling the empty field. Hux reveals a chilling truth: Sheriff Hedges “bought the farm” two weeks ago. The tractor is a spectral residual, visible only to certain people. Tan exits the store, quietly denying he sees anything, and drives away.

Left alone with Garvan, Hux warns that “they” are coming for the town’s people, starting with the “degenerates” but soon targeting everyone. To prove previous boasts, Hux takes a brittle piece of pink bubble gum, shapes it into a sharp point, and hurls it like a throwing knife; it embeds itself half an inch deep into a solid wooden telephone pole.

ACT IV: PRESCRIPTION BOTTLES AND PRETERNATURAL ALIGNMENT

Back at the Grimes house, Jimmy takes Cordell to the living room to play “action figures.” He dumps a plastic bag onto the floor, revealing dozens of empty prescription pill bottles. Jimmy treats them as characters, naming them “David,” “Good King Wenceslas,” and “Vain Lord Stephen.” He forces a bewildered Cordell to play as “NBC News correspondent John Palmer,” insisting Cordell mimic his voice exactly.

As they play, Jimmy grows increasingly manic and agitated. He roleplays a dark, psychosexual battle of betrayal and assault between the bottles, screaming “Not you, Jimmy!” before violently flinging the bottles across the room in a shrieking fit and fleeing.

Amity calmly walks in, claiming Jimmy just has “a case of the sleepies,” and puts on a record. The eerie, haunting harmonies of “Wondrous Love” by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers fill the room as Cordell sits frozen on the floor surrounded by pill bottles.

Later, Mel picks Cordell up. As they drive away from the waving Amity, a traumatized Cordell tells his mother with absolute gravity: “There’s something really wrong in that house.”

That evening, a spectacular, massive blue-green meteorite streaks across the twilight sky, casting an ethereal glow over the town. Curtis and Johnny Houston watch from their porch while strumming guitars; Tan and his girlfriend Luna look up from the hood of their car; Neely pauses his sweeping at the Convenient; and Cordell and Reggie watch from their porch as the cosmic light baths the landscape.

ACT V: THE SEANCE AND THE WOODS

The next day, Garvan, Cordell, and Larry Towner prepare for a backyard sleepover. Larry brings a Ouija board, determined to contact the spirit of the recently deceased John Belushi. Next door, Reggie escapes her brothers to sleep over at Andie’s house, where the girls bond over late-night monster movies, watching The Mummy and mimicking Frankenstein’s bride.

In Cordell’s cluttered, half-finished basement, the three boys place their fingers on the Ouija pointer. They chant Belushi’s name, demand he make himself known, and watch in awe as the pointer slowly slides to spell out “F-A-R-T.” After accusing Larry of breaking character, they reset.

Suddenly, a loud, heavy TAPPING echoes from the small basement window. Rory points to the glass. Staring in from the darkness is a horrifying, deformed face of a masked maniac, lit from below, brandishing an ax.

The boys scream in terror and bolt up the stairs, barricading themselves in Cordell’s bedroom. Cordell grabs a rubber toy squid, spinning it like nunchucks in defensive desperation. Heavy, slow footsteps thump up the stairs [97]. The doorknob rattles, the lock pops, and the door creaks open to reveal the masked killer.

Cordell screams and hurls the rubber squid, hitting the maniac dead in the face. The “killer” bursts out laughing, pulling off a pair of pantyhose to reveal… Mel Rowe. She smirks, mocking their Ouija board, before realizing Rory is missing. They rush downstairs to find Rory fast asleep inside the kitchen oven.

Late that night, silence falls over Centerfield. In his dark living room, Garvan wanders to the large bay window looking out into the moonlit backyard.

Movement catches his eye. A massive, towering, humanoid shape (Tsul ‘Kalu / Bigfoot) lumbers slowly across the grass.

The creature stops.

It turns slowly toward the glass. Two brilliantly illuminated, glowing eyes flash in the moonlight, staring directly back at Garvan.

FADE OUT.