Page 30 Part 5: ALL SOULS While REV JOSEPHS is buried, DET SUPT PASCOE reads a newspaper piece by GHISLAINE HAMMOND who has got her hands on the vicar's diary. It describes how JOSEPHS thought towards the end that he not only could hear, but also see, Jesus Christ. PASCOE throws down the paper, dismayed and perplexed. That's all he needs. "TONIGHT FOR ONE HOUR, PEAK TIME - LIVE - TELEVISION WILL TURN ITS UNRELENTING CAMERAS ON THE SUPERNATURAL..." So begins a morning-TV interview with "ghosthunters" HAGGERTY CALLIEU and SEYRIG, who calls their project the most comprehensive, exciting experiment in the history of parapsychology. "What we are looking for is nothing less than absolute concrete proof of the existence of ghosts - captured on videotape for the first time..." "Ghost Watch" is a TV event. The gathering crowds are held back behind perimeter fences by police afraid of further looting in the now-deserted towers of "The Park". It is like the crowds that beseiged the Davis house in Teesdale Street in 1938 in the hope of seeing a ghost. Great floodlights are erected to light the area for TV. A hot dog van is doing business. Big Outside Broadcast trucks are setting up generators and control units. ‘The scene is being set, around the obelisk-sculpture at the centre of the Park. In black for her deceased husband, MRS EARLY kneels at the altar of the church. In the British Library with an expert, HAGGERTY searches through folkloric records to trace the meaning behind the children's rhyme and skipping song.Page 31 “In Bath University in SEYRIG's Lab, the ghost-viewers are preparing nervously to watching the live transmissions from the centre of the hauntings, while on TV, in the aftermath of REV. JOSEPH's arson/suicide/exorcism, religious and social watchdogs are condemning the enterprise as "blasphemous" and comparing it to ouija board games - “like playing with a spiritual powderkeg". REV. JOSEPH'S BISHOP urges the channel to cancel the broadcast at once - but popular interest and opinion is hugely against him. "These are traitors to the realm of reason," he says poetically. The police incident room is closed, and in spite of the "no comments" the press assume the police have concluded that REV JOSEPHS was responsible for the dead children However it doesn't solve all DET SUPT PASCOE's worries. As night falls, HAGGERTY and TILDA, glimpsing headlines that "Ghost House Vicar Saw Jesus", finally enter the blackened shell of MRS EARLY's council flat. ‘The final arena. The electronic equipment is set up, they have visual and audio link-ups but nevertheless they feel isolated and alone. Back in the studio a PRESENTER has a couple of experts on hand for running commentary - F.A Cup or Apollo Mission style. In the flat, several video cameras record time-encoaea pictures and can superimpose graphic messages o1 information (e.g. temperature changes). To begin with they do regular tests, atmospheric pressure etc., and nothing seems amiss. Then, slowly, the temperature seems to drop. HAGGERTY tries to light the gas fire - it goes FUFF and seems to sigh at him. TILDA goes to get a blanket from the cupboard - ana shrieks as something falls out, a sheet on a broomhandle, set up by the practical joker OB crew. She doesn't find it very funnyPage 32 In Bath, the seers begin to get twitchy, leaning forward to their TV screens anxiously. In homes all over the country, viewers stare relentlessly, glued to their sets. HAGGERTY screams from the kitchen - he has spilled a pot-noodle onto his hand. TILDA laughs, but he says he didn't touch it - it moved. They try to stay calm, performing for the cameras that are set up in automatic positions like closed-circuit. ‘There are noises in the skirting which HAGGERTY puts down to mice - the noises seem to circle them - all round, then suddenly disappear. A rattle comes from a cupboard - a wire coathanger has fallen from the rail. NICK DURSLEY pops into the control room in TV Centre to see how things are going in the studio, "How much of this is set up?" he asks. The DIRECTOR'S shrug makes his smile @rop. He lights a cigarette. HAGGERTY looks out of the window at the blankly-gazing crowd. "What are they waiting for?" asks Tilda. "God?" "Who knows?" People are turning up in coffins or shrouds, with banners proclaiming Armageddon, in deathly punk- gothic make-up, as if waiting for the End of the World. HAGGERTY goes to make a coffee, but the fresh milk in the fridge has gone rancid in seconds. They hear a noise - the "moo" of the toy found in the earth. Then it is gone. Chillingly, TILDA and HAGGERTY hear the children's song coming from the bathroom as running taps fill the bathtub. They creep towards the door and push it open to find MRS EARLY testing the bath temperature with her elbow.Page 33 DURSLEY curses “What's she doing in there! Get her out of there!" The DIRECTOR says he doesn't think they can - it's her home after all. "come on, help me with the children," MRS EARLY says, seeming not to HAGGERTY or TILDA at first. "Leonard! Come here!" HAGGERTY tries to tell her that her husband isn't there, but she stares at him and says: But I just saw him - in that room right there. (In the studio, technical interference is starting to effect tranmission from Curran Park.) Nervously, they take a look in the bedroom opposite. It is empty. ‘They tell MRS EARLY she shouldn't be there She says she wanted to help them - and she produces a bag full of crucifixes and religious protections, clearly stolen from the church, which she arranges around the room. She stops and stares at one crucifix, "Suffer the children - look, the Lord is weeping..." With that the furniture starts shaking - a mirror falls and cracks. The pipes start to creak and moan, and HAGGERTY runs into the bathroom to unplug the overflowing tub - a horrid whine comes from the bath as the water ts spiralling down a Plughole that looks like a screaming mouth. HAGGERTY recoils in shock, but it's gone. Behind him the door slowly eases shut - behind 1t the Tall woman's black Victorian dress hanging on a hanger. SUZANNE is watching the screen intently in SEYRIG's Lab. "She's there," she says. “She's there..." Moving of its own accord, the discarded wire coathanger digs its talon into TILDA's heel. For a fraction of a second, she glimpses the Tall Woman, cleaning the inside of the mirror, breathing condensation ahead of a duster.Page 34 Then she is gone. “Who are you?" calls TILDA, as MRS EARLY begins to pray. HAGGERTY is trying to get out of the bathroom. "Who ARE YOU?" The typewriter thuds hard, yakketty-yak, yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak. HAGGERT busts out of the bathroom in time to see what has been typed: DDONSEDDONSEDDONSEDDONS. HAGGERTY begins to say, "My God. Seddons, Seddons..." In Bath, "Seddons, Seddons..." says SUZANNE and then the others, as a DARK FIGURE at first vague begins to form on the TV screen in the room with HAGGERTY and TILDA. SEYRIG can't believe his eyes: HE IS SEEING IT TOO!!! SEYRIG switches off the TV sets, and tells his assistants to take the testees back to their rooms ~ on no account let them see the programme, do you understand! The ASSISTANT asks what's wrong as SEYRIG races to his car. “The will of the experiencer! ‘They're creating it. we're all creating it!" He speeds off towards London, hoping he 1s not too late. TILDA demands of HAGGERTY: "Who is she? You know, don't you?" HAGGERTY admits he does now. He didn't want to tell her, because it might influence what they saw, what happened tonight - he also didn't want to tell her because he didn't want to believe it himself. "who is she?” HAGGERTY takes a deep breath. Mrs Seddons, "Mother" Seddons they called her. She was a baby-farmer in the 1850's. One time midwife, she took in unwanted children for a price but found it was much more profitable to do away with them, She drowned them in the copper and buried them in her garden. “How many?" asks TILDA. HAGGERTY is reluctant to go on, but she insists. "Five of her own children. ‘hey reckoned a hundred, maybe two hundred others..." TILDA reels, the "mooing" toy growing into a bull's bellow in her head, and passes out.Page 35 TV viewers in a pub watch the mute screen - a caption comes up apologising for the lack of sound. Over it plays "The Girl from Ipanema". Outside "The Park" in the OB truck, a cup of coffee spills mysteriously and short-circuits the lighting-board - the place is plunged into darkness. People clinging to the wire are enraptured, hysterical, weeping. Around the square cars are on fire. Police cars whoop to rip a riot in the bud. HAGGERTY makes a campfire in the centre of the floor near to where MRS EARLY bathes the unconscious TILA's brow with a cold flannel. HAGGERTY takes a slug of hard stuff. When he looks up a PRIEST beckons him to the bedroom. As if powerless, he goes with him... On the bed a body seems to be covered in the tousled sheets torn asunder by the “poltergeist" attack earlier. The PRIEST nods approval and HAGGERTY peels away the coverings to reveal the laid-out corpse of a beautiful woman. "Kiss your mother, Simon boy," says the PRIEST. Her eyes open. HAGGERTY screams and runs for the door, but the Priest slams it. He and the Priest struggle - he tears the crucifix from his neck, as the Priest becomes James the murderer, and HAGGERTY is yelling "Jesus Mary and Joseph give me -" but the room is empty. "Oh God." He rushes out to see MRS EARLY, as if possessed, cramming the wet flannel into TILDA'S THROAT. TILDA is gagging halfway out of sleep. HAGGERTY smashes MRS EARLY across the head and helps TILDA recover. "We have to get out. Get out NOW!" He yells into the radio "HELP US! HELP US!" but in the control room they can't hear.Page 36 He lifts TILDA but the door slammed by a bloody, invisible hand-print. He turns to see the Tall Woman in black - MRS SEDDONS - standing there. He picks up a broom and smashes at the cameras, realising that is the only way to stop her - but a clawlike hand grips his neck and he suffers a massive electrical shock from the equipment, and falls to the floor. Across the country, people are staring at their screens like zombies in a mass trance. The "poltergeist" forc are controlling not only the OB cameras, but wiping out. telephone lines - SEYRIG's urgent call to the studio is blocked - and the studio generator packs in. "What the hell's going on?" says NICK DURSLEY. Now he's getting SCARED. The pictures are going out, but they have no control over them. They are weird, disjoined, ghostly. TILDA crawls to the dead body of HAGGERTY, trying desperately to revive him but it's no good. All the equipment is down, no lights, no sound - it is a total nightmare. She looks out of the window to see just total blackness, as if she is in a cocoon. SEYRIG in the meantime is trying to get through London during a power cut - there is panic on the streets. A sandwich-board man proclaims the end of the world. SEYRIG fights his way to the TV headquarters, fighting his way past the security guards and into the control desk. TILDA, stunned and tearfully staring at HAGGERTY's body, begins to hear a high whizzing sound. The door behind her opens. She walks towards it, to see LEONARD EARLY, stripped to the waist, sitting in a chair, eating a string ©f sewing hooks while a lathe beside him spins. He winks at her.Page 37 She turns and runs, but he is after her, the twine trailing like an insect-tongue from his mouth. She beats at his chest, kicks at his shins - until the floorboards underneath, weakened by the fire, give way - and TILDA falls through the floorboards - now wedged with James's victims - and plummets, screaming, into the darkness below. She finds herself in the gloomy lower flat, where she hears knitting needles - in the dark she sees the tiny romper-suit we noticed in her own house, knitted by her mother. It is being knitted by MRS SEDDONS, who chases her out and through the tunnel-like underground car park. TILDA escapes behind some doors marked EXIT. SEYRIG finally gets to NICK DURSLEY, who is reluctant to talk. He has problems of his own - they can't get through to the OB unit - it's turning into a God Almighty cock-up. SEYRIG introduces himself and says, "You've got to listen to me! This whole this is a massive Need-Based Experience. People need to see UFOs, need to see the Blessed Virgin, need to see ghosts. Its the unconscious externalizing itself! And you've created a BIG SEANCE, with TWELVE MILLION PEOPLE joining hands!!!" TILDA finds herself in a nightmarish other world of strange lighting, and weird tinny music. She gradually works out she is in a deserted ICE RINK, chillingly cold and evil. She hurries across the ice to a far half-opened door but stumbles and falls, unable to keep a foothold on the slippery surface. Next to her face are black Victorian hook-boots. Under the ice are the frozen bodies of dozens of children and babies - we recognise CHRISTIAN BENNETT and EMMA SAMUELS, but countless more.Page 38 MRS SEDDONS stands over her with a screaming baby, mockingly. “Take her. Go on, take her, she's yours! She's YOURS!" She hands her the baby. TILDA is weeping and wailing. It is the child she was pregnant with, but decided to have an abortion - the thing that came between her and her parents, that destroyed her relationship with Ian, that has preyed on her guilt ever since, "I didn't kill it!" TILDA screams, "It wasn't ALIVE! It wasn't BORN! HELP ME!" MRS SEDDONS takes out a knitting-needle and holds it high, ready to plunge it down, smiling. "You're one of usi" - SEYRIG persuades DURSLEY to CUT ALL POWER - to STOP TRANSMISSION - millions of TVs suddenly go DEAD - As the needle plunges, TILDA shields the baby with her own body - the needle comes down but NEEDLE and MRS SEDDON suddenly DISAPPEAR... SEYRIG and DURSLEY sit silently in the dark. SEYRIG says "Judgement Day. When the living walk with the dead. All Souls. All in the mind." In a weird and ambiguous coda, TILDA walks from the deserted skeleton on Curran Park, as dawn breaks. We are not sure if she is dead, or mad, or both. She walks into a pub where she can hear "Three Steps to Heaven" on the juke box. At the bar sits HAGGERTY, and with him is Jesus Christ. The Barman, LEONARD EARLY, asks what she's having. She orders a double brandy and downs it in one, leaning back her head and closing her eyes Then our own TV picture freezes, becomes snowy, rolls - an an announcer regrets the loss of transmission... THE END